Midi Controller: ARGH!

Continued work on the midi controller has been somewhat fruitful today... the MPXM2010GS actually delivers the output with *seemingly* no issues, and my el-cheapo multimeter is actually capable of reading the voltages down the the milivolt range, so woo! No need to lust for higher-end instruments.

On the downside, whilst things did work, I lost both the breath sensors. I have one more but I'll not touch it. They're kinda expensive >.> One of them (the left) died in a soldering accident. The 2nd one on the right was working very well, till I was fiddling with the differential amp and broke off two of the pins >.> SMT components are really not meant to be handled this way.

ARGH!

Checking the freescale product sheet, there is actually a sensor that comes in a larger packaging and seems to be (generally) working to the same specs (MPX2010 series). I guess I'll have to go for that.

I also could not get the differential amp to work, so I'm probably going to get an on-chip instrumentation amplifier instead.

If not, I thought this prototyping phase is quite successful, once the voltage can be amplified to max out the arduino's analog input levels, it will be a simple matter to read in the values and convert them into midi cc values.

In theory ;-)

Sony's Xperia Ray

I've had the original iphone for about 5 years now, and after all this time, through many, many drops, trials and tribulations, still hums on without a hitch. Well mostly.

After 5 years of service, this baby's battery life has dropped significantly from almost a week between charges to less than 2 days :( I thought this was a good excuse to change to one of those nifty android devices.

My needs are quite simple, it needs to be able to
a) Make/receive phone calls
b) Send/receive sms texts
c) Alarms
d) Calendar
e) map application of sorts; I only use this (occasionally) overseas on tours.

One thing I looked forward to a new phone is proper 3G access; I've never actually used 3G before. Talk about out of date. It was a tough choice between two phones, the Nokia Lumia 800 (tried it, loved it) and one of the smaller sized android phones, and picked the sony for a few reasons: it used a regular sized sim card, and is much smaller and lighter than the iphone. In my pocket, I kept wondering if I left my phone at home as it was so tiny! I also got it off the amazon warehouse for a much better deal than retail (~£130), so it was a no brainer.

From what I've been playing around today, a few things stand out.
First, the iphone's screen, old as it is, still seems more vibrant. In addition, I felt the menus and menu transitions were far more polished. And we're talking about the very first iphone here, that's never had it's OS updated! My iphone has *never* ever been connected to iTunes.

I think what works for IOS is simplicity. Some call it a dumb OS, but the fact remains that I actually had to read the instructions as well as do some googling to figure out how to use some of the functions on the xperia ray. Iphone? Everything is onscreen, with only one home button. Took me a while to register the need to use the "settings" button on the bottom right of the ray to pull up menus and stuff.

That said, I think the Android OS is really neat for creating your own custom screens! I really enjoy setting up some of the very cool widgets - love the gallery widget - though I have concerns about battery life.

As mentioned above, with my usage pattern, I used to charge my iphone roughly once a week. Nearly all my friends tell me the longest they go without charging their android handset is 2 days, and it is more common to recharge the handset *every* day.

That's somewhat... inconceivable for me, with all this advancement in tech (quad core cpus in a handphone?! I don't need that for a calendar!), surely the battery life should have improved, and if not, at least matched what older phones are capable off.

So far, the phone (full charged in the afternoon) is down to about 55% of its battery life (insert big, very sad smiley face).

To be fair, I've been spending ALOT of time on it, poking around the various programs and setting up that delightful home screen as mentioned.

I hope once things settle down, the battery life can at least last 4-5 days. If not, there is a "power save" mode that shuts off all non-essential transmissions, so hopefully that will help.

Solatorobo: Red The Hunter

Horrors! I decided to buy a game to play! And as expected, I have zero self control, and have already completed the game *twice*.  What can I say, I can get quite driven ;-)

Anyways, it was a stroke of luck I came across the music for this game, and thought I'd check out the actual game. This isn't a review, more of what I liked and disliked about the game.

Difficulty
First, the difficulty. On the first run through the game, it was *extremely* easy. I didn't die a single time throughout the game - and it's actually quite difficult to die since you take so little damage, and save points (exactly before a boss!) fully restore health. In addition, there are heal items to be found along the game, and they usually bring you up to nearly full health. (hmm... I actually haven't actually seen a game over screen yet... I have to just.... purposely die or something).

The most difficult part of the game is probably the flight portions of the game, where your robot docks with an airframe and goes racing. The controls are actually pretty good, it's just that it's totally different from the usual controls so it does take a little getting used to. The first few flights I was getting last all the time >.>

I think the ease of play is actually good for me, for one I'm not into grinding; more interested to see where the story leads. I finished the main game in about 17hrs, which seems to be the norm. The 2nd play through does increase the difficulty a fair bit; enough so that I have to be careful where I tread else my health gets low; the first run through was like.... hit me! I can't die!

The Story
I think it was very well done, and the flow of the events worked quite well. Upon completing the game I was pulling out the various elements that made up Solatorobo: the main character was the results of an experiment and had his memory wiped (familiar?), parts of the story involved traveling inside giant robots to destroy their core (familiar?), some of the bad guys were actually good (familiar?).

The area where the final boss resides is quite loltastic as well, a giant spherical thing (familiar?) and you need to go through a passage (trench? :P) to get to the final boss. What can I say, it's the usual bad guys want to destroy the world, and the lone savior and his comrades come save the day.

The World
This is where the game shines, IMHO. If you are a fan of Miyazaki/Ghibli style designs, this will be right up your alley. Even though it's a DS game and the resolution is a far cry from what modern desktop games are capable of, it's still very evident the amount of love and detail put into the design. Every single location has depth, and some towns feature really nice camera work as you walk through it. Each town has a motif, played up to the max. Good stuff designers!

The designs of the mechs and robots are quite delightful as well. One of the bosses is a mechanical fish, reminds me of the painful times playing Darius. Some of the robots are very Zoid-like, and as a big fan of zoids, that's a big thumbs up. At the very end of the game, the main character's robot fuses with two of his siblings' robots (WOO!) to form a bad ass dragon robot.

As with any RPG, we have to do *things* to complete the story. Some of it is the usual boring go here, get this for me. Thankfully, the developers have tried their best to avoid this, and while we still need to go on quests to push the game forward, alot of it is quite uniquely designed and fits into the story quite well. Even for certain similar quests, a new element was put in so that there would be _some_ change.

Replayability
Give that I'm only on my 2nd play-through, from what I've read the 3rd play-through will be tougher, but it is compensated by having a really kick ass mech upgrade down the road. Apart from the difficulty, the difference between the first and 2nd playthrough is more items to purchase. Already the stats of my robot's attack are maxed out, it's quite amusing to see how much damage a thrown wood carton can inflict on an enemy mech :P

What I'm trying to say is, apart from some cool new toys to pick up, the story appears to be the same.

Ok 'nough gaming. I got to go back to regular life.

Strings!

A new original piece :)

Dubstep

Latest track I finished - an original dubstep production by me!

Midi Controller: Phase 2

I'm feeling like a wet paper bag right now, I really want to do some more stuff but my nose is totally clogged up, and my mind is all woozy. Thank you very much, common cold.

In anycase, I can't seem to sleep so thought I'd quickly do two things with my put-aside midi controller. Setup the Step Up converter so that it outputs about 10V DC (from the arduino's 5V), and do a test hook up of the breath sensor to the tubing. All done in a few minutes >.>

Next up will be to solder the bloody smt device to a breadboard or something. Maybe for this trial I'll just use jumper wires, yeah, that should work.

I'll also be working blind as the full scale voltage out of the breath sensor is about 25mV.... peak. My multimeter has a 200mV setting, hopefully it will actually register _something_ when I blow on the breath controller. I've looked at the more affordable oscilloscopes, but the cheapest that has a suitable mV/div appears to be about £300 quid. Uh no.

So, the current plan is to wire up the differential amplifier, blind, and hope that it works :-/

Looks like I'm going to hobble back to my bed and attempt to sleep again. Oh, and more meds.

Already mid July!

Ho ho ho! Can't believe how fast time has flew past this year. It is the 13th of July - Friday the 13th, at that - way past the mid point that is June. The weather here in London, is still bloody boring, unlike the last two years here. Cold cold cold, thankfully all I need is a jacket when outside, not the heavier winter stuff.

Being distracted by music after work nowadays, and am getting back to the arduino soon. Looking forward to finishing this year with a bang!

Moar piano

:3 Hopefully I can finish up this saxophone cover I'm working on. Duuurr

The Big Issue

The Big Issue is aimed at helping homeless people get back on their feet, by giving them a legitimate means of earning income from sales of this magazine. Each copy of the magazine costs £2.50, and sellers keep £1.25.

Today I met a friendly fellow near where I am taking my piano lessons, and resolved to ask him a bit more about how he finds selling this magazine, and if it helps.

According to this seller, who was once homeless, selling The Big Issue has changed his life from being once homeless to someone who now has a roof over his head.

He sells seemingly 80 to 100 copies a week, and on a good week, perhaps a dozen more.

He says that it was difficult when starting out. New sellers are simply not sure how this would work out for them, and they have no confidence that this would actually really help them. People totally ignoring them is also a major bash against their self esteem. (He also mentions that it would help ALOT even if we were to smile and greet The Big Issue sellers, even if we do not purchase a magazine.)

For this gent I was speaking to, it turned out well for him. Most of his sales are on weekdays, with the working crowd passing to and fro the train stations and their offices. Saturday is a quiet day, and he takes Sunday as his day off.

In the future when I meet more big issue sellers, I'll be sure to spare them a moment to acknowledge them, even if I'd already picked up my weekly copy. I truly hope that after this gets them off the street, that they will be able to build an even better future for themselves.

Sick and depressed, or is it depressed and sick?

Have you ever had one of those stretches where you know you are sick, but well enough to head to work? Well I'm having one of them and it is annoying my toenails off. Ok, maybe not my toenails but I am just. Not. Feeling. Good.

I feel tired and have low energy. Heck, it feels like after a swim session at the gym, whole body aching.

Argh, need some downtime this weekend.

It's also affecting my mood, I think I'm feeling alot of down 'cause of this. The best part is, I'm feeling worst *after* work. Like my fingers are somewhat numb as I type this. I'll bet it'll be as usual - I wake up bright and cheery (I love the early sunshine btw, it's like nice and bright 7-ish), feeling all good, then it all starts to go downhill late afternoon :( Tired tired tired. Ack.

Days like this I wish I can just take off and sleep.

Death

Short piece I arranged for the ocremix FF6: Balance and Ruin compo. This is the piece of music that plays when the party gets KO'd, and I've titled it "Lied für die Toten"("Song For The Dead" in German).

I finished 22nd of 28. Very pleased with my progress over the last half a year. :)

Prometheus

Friggin' awesome effects. Like really friggin awesome. There was nothing not perfect in the entire show. For some reason, this flick reminds me of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. TSW was groundbreaking on many levels, and Prometheus takes cg worlds even further.

It's like FF7, then comparing the original against the FF7's PS3 tech demo.

One thing I'm really glad about this show is that it is more sci-fi than horror. I didn't watch any of the trailers, only knew this was sort of a prequal to Alien or something. Truth be told, I was cowering behind my jacket for many of the scenes, but it was more the gore factor versus the pop-up horror I was expecting.

Whew.

-- spoilers ahead --

Lots of odd things that I want answered though, like the geologist, why was he still alive and kicking butt? And why was there no super friggin' awesome cannon mounted on the prometheus? And why didn't tony stark come to save the day? Ok nevermind.

Congrats to all the artists that worked on it, this is just totally stunning.

New macs drop features, but will we miss them?

New macbooks evidently have been announced, and for us who use our macs for audio work, several things have been dropped from their newer "Retina" macs. I'm not directly affected by it, but computers will be upgraded when time moves on, and there are some features I would miss.

First, there is no firewire port. Many audio interfaces and external drives run off firewire, and whilst there is a thunderbolt -> FW dongle, that's another piece of equipment to keep track of. One also questions any side effects on latency when running FW equipment through thunderbolt.

Next: Lack of a cd drive. I mean, come on, if I buy CDs from a live show, how am I supposed to convert it? And even though I rarely burn disks or watch dvds, I still do. I was also thinking of getting one of those optibays to stuff an extra hdd/sdd into my mac. Can't do that with the new ones. Mainly, I use my DVD drive to install sample libraries. EastWest/Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra comes on more than 10 dvds for goodness sake. Just bought some VSL stuff, don't know how many dvds those will come on.

Damn you apple for OSX's Core Audio that works so well :P

Crummy weather

Last week we had pretty awesome weather here in London. Blue skies, nice and warm, perfect T-shirt weather.

And this week. This, feels like Autumn! In the first week of June! It is 12 degrees C outside, I'm thankful I brought out my winter jacket - and the skies are a uniform patch of grey. Boo! What's worst is I'm at work and the sims are taking awhile on the farm. Bwa.

To Zanarkand

Due a big music competition, I didn't do any arrangements for saxophone, but I'm still practising and all! Here's me on keys doing "To Zanarkand"

Ok recable time

Grados are now like definitely in need for recabling. Found this guide here.... do I want to DIY?

Thames Path

Walked at least 15km today. Pooped....

Grados dying... again >.>

I own a pair of Grados SR80 headphones, since about about 2004,2005 thereabouts, and oh my god open cans are definitely my personal favourite.

A year or so ago though, the cabling on those SR80s died, and I had them replaced. Once again, they have failed >.>

The casing of the cabling probably doesn't deal to well with the UK's dry weather - the SR80s have travelled with me to the US and Oz with the bulk of its time in Singapore, only to fail here in the UK. Twice. Bleh.

Question is, do I want to get them re-cabled, or do I sell them off and get another pair of AKG 240 MKIIs?

Pro for AKG240 MKII: I will use them both at work and at home, and I can get "used" to the sonic signature of the AKGs. I am also somewhat weary of how over-detailed and fatiguing the SR80s are.

Pro for re-cabling SR80: Cheaper, and the SR80s are highly portable, unlike the AKGs that I will definitely have to leave in the office. SR80s also don't need an amp.

In either case, the SR80s are kind of working, so I'll decide when they give up the ghost.

Sucky weather this year

It's already the first week of May here in London, and the weather is utterly crappy this year. According to my weather applet, it's 7 degrees C out there, and I was hit by a slight drizzle on my way home. It's May, supposed to be all pretty blue skies and nice warm weather but what we have now is a pseudo winter weather.

Bleh, I say, Bleh!

I only hope it gets better; the last two years here were very beautiful during this period.

Work your butt off

Came across this thread on the ConceptArt forums. Bottom line: Work your arse off if you have a dream.