Just a typical day…

May 15, 2008

in the ring at the office.

I love my job.

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California, here we come.

May 6, 2008

OK, so I know that my postings as of late have been sparse, at best. My apologies. Things are quite hectic now, but I did want to post a short note to explain what’s causing the slowdown.

I’ve just been hired to the ranks over at Bebo.com, as a software engineer. This entails a relocation for my partner and I (and Dixon!) over to beautiful San Francisco.

Needless to say, this move means a lot of work: I’ve been in overdrive mode for the last month. The last week alone has been dominated by arranging all of the details of the move before I fly out this coming Friday. However, this move also means an incredible wealth of opportunity, both in my professional and musical careers.

I’ll be posting more news and updates soon, once I get settled and back into a routine. I have a bunch of cool news to post about the newest (and oldest!) musical project my friend Bxiie and I are working on.

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Green Planet

April 15, 2008

I’m pleased to announce that version 2.0 of the Away3D open source framework for Flash has been released. The release comes along with a new demo, dubbed Green Planet. I use the term “demo” lightly here, since this is a less an example of features, and more like a full-fledged game.

The power and flexibility that this release offers Flash developers is, in a word, astounding. If you are an Actionscript developer that has ever wanted to incorporate 3D visuals into your creations, there has never been a better opportunity and toolset available for you. The new list of features available in this release are expansive:

• Simulated phong shading (with blinn-phong specular highlights)
• Environment-mapped materials
• Normal-mapped materials (an open source first for Flash)
• Z-depth filter for large outdoor scenes
• Fog filter
• Straight-to-bitmap rendering for fast scaled views
• Surface caching for fast rendered lights
• Package refactor for easier learning of basic classes

I designed the sound for this demo—and I promise that no aliens were harmed during its production.

You can read more specifics about the release of Away3D 2.0, along with some details about the demo itself on the official Away3D website. I think the team deserves a huge round of applause for reaching this milestone. You guys are nothing short of brilliant.

Oh, and a hint: click on *everything* you find in this bizarre, beautiful world!

Enjoy!

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Away3D: Physics with WOW

March 1, 2008

I’ve been very busy these days. In addition to starting a new music project, I’ve been doing quite a bit of Actionscript 3.0 coding as part of the build-out for the new atombang.com and soundemitter.com websites.

This is an experiment in realtime physics, using the Away3D and WOW frameworks. It also incorporates some other features, such as dynamic depth-of-field, dynamic motion blurring, camera tweening, and object mouseover tracking.

Warning: the rest of this post is geek-talk. If you don’t get into this sort of thing, skip to the next post!

The system is kept ‘alive’ by adding random forces to each of the spheres every 100ms. If you want to agitate the system further, press and hold the mouse button.

:: Update: There are now controls in the upper-left that will allow you to adjust some of the physical scene properties in realtime!

In order to integrate the two engines, I wrote a wrapper class around an Object3D instance to allow for calculation of its physical properties once each time through the main rendering loop. It’s a quick & dirty solution that seems to work very well. However, I’m currently in the process of writing a more robust solution—which also includes my own physics classes as a compliment to what is available in WOW.

I’ll be happy to open the sources up for anyone who wishes to have them. I just need to clean up the code and pull out some stuff not pertinent to the experiment.

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Sound Design for New Away3D Tech Demo

February 24, 2008

Away3D was recently updated to version 1.9.4. Along with this update comes a fantastic new tech demo, the Away3D Temple.

I produced the sound design for this demo, a one-minute atmospheric loop to compliment the incredible visuals.

Here are the links to the Temple, and the original post by Fabrice on the Away3D homepage.

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Nord Lead 3 Patch Generator for Mac OS X

February 21, 2008

Download NL3PG 1.0 for Mac OS X

This is a patch generator / randomizer for the Clavia Nord Lead 3. I love this synth, and I think it’s a shame that it was recently discontinued by Clavia. Here’s my little bit of help to keep the synth alive, since no new tools will be coming from Clavia anytime soon.

I developed this app in MaxMSP, using an external I wrote in C++ with XCode. The Max external helps handle the somewhat obscure MIDI format that the NL3 uses for its patch dumps. I finished this a few weeks ago. After some testing, I’ve decided its ready for public consumption.

While it doesn’t have the prettiest GUI in the world, it serves its purpose very well. This is especially true when you consider that the entire project was completed in under 2 days.

I’m releasing this as freeware. I will open-source the code, patcher, and Max external if there is a demand.

Special thanks go out to Jonathan Mérel, for his original C code and standalone Win32 NL3 randomizer.

Since this tool is made with MaxMSP, it is possible to compile and build a Windows version. Currently I’m only hosting the Mac version, but if there is a demand, I’ll post the other. In the meantime, if you need a Windows NL3 randomizer, check out this tool from Jonathan. Finally, if you are looking for a similar app for the Nord 1/2 series, Mikhail Bohonus has written one. It is available here.

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Movement Magazine Reviews The Big Bang

February 12, 2008

Hi,

Just received word this morning about an incredible review over at Movement Magazine.

Check it out…

http://movementmusicreviews.blogspot.com/2008/02/atom-bang.html

While you’re at it, why not go to their homepage, and check out the magazine? It’s a class act, with top-notch design and a killer presence. Definitely worth checking out - and I’m not just saying that because of the awesome review, either.

http://www.movementmagazine.com

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More Discogs Fun: Newark, DE in the 80’s and 90’s

February 1, 2008

Batz Without Flesh
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Batz+Without+Flesh
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Claude+Willey

Spit
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Spit+(4)
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Spit

Sinister Attraction
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Sinister+Attraction

Zen Guerilla
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Zen+Guerilla

XenophoN
http://www.discogs.com/artist/XenophoN

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GPC001: A Blast From The Past

January 30, 2008

I was recently browsing through the Discogs database, and stumbled across a submission that brought a smile to my face.

This is an old project of mine from back in 1989. It was a collaboration with a friend of mine, Sandy; some serious old-skool industrial. One side—Sin Drome—was my solo work under the pseudonym of Cliff Tkac, the other side—Factor 42—was his. The whole thing was recorded directly to 2-track at his home studio. The cover art was photocopied onto transparent overlays, scored, and folded to produce multi-layered, composite titlings when the piece was placed inside the cassette shell. Sandy was pretty ingenious when it came to creating artwork and design on a budget. He was a very cool guy; I wonder where he is now.

I wrote an email to the submitter at Discogs, Vor-Teks, inquiring as to how they managed to obtain a copy. I heard back from him the same day. “This is one of the reasons I like Discogs so much!”, he said.

Apparently, he received a copy from Sandy back in the early 90’s. He was the publisher of an Industrial music fanzine out of France back then. He was also kind enough to send me a link to a copy of the album that he had ripped to MP3. My copy of the tape has long since been dead—the cassette just didn’t last long enough for me to rip it myself. Thanks, Vor-Teks. You are too cool for old skool.

It’s awesome how technology enables this sort of thing. It’s hard to believe that an obscure release such as this managed to make it half way around the world, and then back to me, over 15 years later. Crazy…!

If you want a copy, let me know. I’ll send you link to the download. One warning though, this is some really raw work… nothing like the current sound I produce. Its as nasty, hissy, and badly performed as it is fun (in that home-grown sorta way).

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The Revolution Will Be Televised

January 28, 2008

I just finished watching the State of the Union address. GW has some cojones, I’ll have to give him that.

As we all know, he’s earned a massive drop in popularity during his term, mainly due to the ongoing war he and his administration unlawfully waged on Iraq. Despite this, he’s asking for more troops and more money to help fund it. Simply amazing. No real shocker, though. I stopped being shocked a long time ago.

I was, however, fairly bewildered at his announcement of plans for the formation of a peaceful relation between Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Didn’t Clinton already try this and fail miserably?

The only way I see peace ever coming to this area of the world is: 1) the Palestinian people being given their homeland back, or 2) Palestinian genocide. The Palestinian people have shown the world, in no uncertain terms, that they do not intend on forgiving and forgetting the atrocities they’ve been put through. Quite frankly, I don’t blame them one iota. I’m not saying I approve of their retaliatory methods, but I’d be pretty friggin’ angry if someone treated me like a sub-human and stole my homeland, too. Kind of rings a bell in terms of the founding of the Americas, and the backlash of the indigenous American Indian population, no?

I hope the eventual solution is the former, and not the latter scenario I propose. I’m probably not gaining any friends with this view, but quite frankly I don’t care. The truth can smart, sometimes.

Another non-shocker was the bill asking for a measly 300 million in education-based funds. A mere drop-in-the-bucket compared to the amount of money spent on military and homeland defense, as usual. I’m a firm believer now that our government would just rather keep the masses stupid. It makes it easier to control the people when they can’t think or do for themselves.

More foreign aid is also on his current agenda. Ugh. When will our government wake up to the fact that millions of people across our country are suffering from things like the inability to pay their bills and feed their families? I find it hard to believe that increased aid given to foreign countries will do anything at all to help the problems we are facing at home. A quick glance at some raw numbers gives an insight as to the direction we are headed. Yet he’s urging that the government buy crops directly in order to feed third-world countries.

Huh?

I mean, I’m all for helping my fellow humans—but considering we can’t even feed and house everyone here in the States, all of this starts becoming quite ridiculous. We continue to give immense foreign aid when we should first be applying aid to ourselves. What’s that famous key phrase you hear while watching the in-flight safety video before takeoff? Something along the lines of, “Make sure your mask is in place before helping your child apply theirs”?

In general, a majority of what he proposed will never see the day of light. Except, maybe, for the appropriation of funds for the war. Oh, and The Protect America Act, basically a watered-down foreign version of the Patriot Act, will most likely be re-enacted on Friday.

I don’t even want to start my rant about his proposal for free-trade agreements with Columbia.

Argh, now I’m just frustrated and angry. I’m glad this is GW’s last SOTU.

Of the people, by the people, and for the people?

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