• Sunday: Visit family, relax, read, play games
• Monday: Game Programming
• Tuesday: Write music
• Wednesday: Wire the studio, other electronics (non-computer) projects
• Thursday: Work on web sites (Ragtrader, KBMOD, etc.)
• Friday: PC Building / set up workshop
• Saturday: Housework, brew beer, play games, go to Pittsburgh

Of course any sort of scheduled activity with friends/family/band/etc. will override this list, and I can swap out activities as the need arises. It’s just a set of guidelines really, to keep me from sitting around watching Netflix when I could be doing something real.

First installment: Game Programming Night, turned OS Reinstall Night

Writing a decent game is still on my list of life-long goals, so I decided to start working on it little by little. Game programming night actually started early in the day when I found a tutorial on programming with Allegro, a C++ library for game making. Really useful stuff there. I skimmed the first few tutorials while at work, then once I got home (after making camp-style bacon, hardboiled eggs and a huge salad for dinner) I started watching the videos.

From there I tried to get Allegro installed, but the version in the Ubuntu repositories is old (go figure) so I decided I would use this as an excuse to stop putting off an Arch Linux reinstall. About an hour later, I was back in a comfortable, minimalist Openbox environment (with Xsnow thrown in for good measure). I got Allegro installed, got some of the tutorial code to compile, and then I installed and tinkerd around a bit with Aseprite, a sprite editor meant for use with Allegro. Maybe next week I’ll make and post a few sprites on here. I’ve already got a couple game ideas in mind.

Next up: music writing night. (The rest of these posts will be shorter.)

(originally posted here: Productivity Posts, Introduction and First Installment: Game Programming Night)

Bro Cave from an Alternate Reality

In some alternate universe, the fashion and decor tastes of bygone eras might still be with us today. And instead of laptops, we might have desktop PCs that are “luggable” like the old Commodore SX-64. And not only that, but we might all be using the Ubuntu operating system instead of Windows.

A man can dream can’t he?

We might have flying cars too.

As detailed in the original build post, here are the specs:

• Currently, Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit OS
• Intel DG45ID multimedia motherboard
• OCZ 700w modular power supply
• Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 CPU
• Intel GMX4500HD GPU (integrated)
• 8 Gigs of Mushkin DDR2-800 memory
• Two 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda drives (one just for backups)
• SanDisk multi-card reader
• IBM Model M keyboard
• Gigabyte WiFi PCI card (I forget the model)
• 22″ widescreen LG LCD monitor

Not very impressive by today’s standards, but this post comes just in time for me to mention a new PC build I’ll be undertaking, funds-permitting. The next one will be a real gaming & recording rig, inspired by the beastly rigs over at KBMOD, to replace my rapidly aging recording PC (which is actually an old dual-Xeon server I inherited from work… and we don’t get rid of them unless they’re pretty dang old).

(originally posted here: Suitcase PC, finally done after 2 years)

Unfortunately my original design was full of fail because the power transformer ended up right next to a bunch of unbalanced, guitar-level signal wires. So the thing buzzed like crazy when I put it together, and no amount of shielding trickery could eliminate it. The next thing to try, then, was moving the supply into an external enclosure. For this, I found an old failed network hard drive (actually the little mainboard is fine, just one of the drives failed… don’t get me started on the stupidity of RAID-0) and gutted it. After adding a fuse and properly tying the enclosure to ground, I ran 8 discreet 9-volt DC lines out of the enclosure via CAT5 cables and added an RJ45 jack to the back of the Atari.

The next iteration will likely incorporate two or three more pedals in the Atari, since there was plenty of room in there when I was done. What I’d really like though, is to grab the guts out of a newer-generation 2600 and mount them in there too, so it still functions as a game system.

After a hectic day of finishing this project up, I used the set up at a gig that night (the Repeal Day Brew Fest in Sharon, PA) and I was really pleased. The pedals, unlike my previous wall-wart-powered rig, were totally noise-free. The only annoying thing is that it’s a little difficult to turn the tuner on and off using my feet (since it’s turned on and off via the original Atari switches). Some sort of additional foot-friendly momentary button may need to be added at some point.

(originally posted here: Atari 2600 Guitar Stompbox)

(originally posted here: Desura game distribution service)

So here it is:

• THE MAZE (DOS .EXE and source code included)
  

You’ll need 7-zip or be on Linux to extract it, and DosBox to be able to play it. Just extract, run DosBox, “mount” the C drive by typing (press [Enter] after each line, and replace the path in the first line with the path you extracted to on your PC):

mount c: /path/to/maze/folder
c:
GAME.EXE

Object of the game:
Explore, collect diamonds, open doors with keys, avoid enemies, find the treasure. There are also warp tiles, traps, mines, and save points. If you’re clever you can kill enemies by luring them into traps or mines.

Controls:

• Cursor Keys: movement
• E: enter editor
• Esc: Quit
• -/=: Speed up/slow down enemies
• L: Load new world file (don’t type the .dat extension)
• Left Mouse Button (in editor): Place the currently selected object type
• Right Mouse Button (in editor): Remove currently selected object type

That’s it, enjoy! Trust me, you will be underwhelmed and frustrated. :)

(originally posted here: The Maze)

So to dig into the implications of Darwinism, allow me to posit a list of items that I’d say represent (some of) the things that bring meaning to human existence:

• Art, Music, Creativity
• Aesthetics (a sense of beauty, design, elegance, ugliness, clunkyness)
• Pleasure, Happiness, Sadness, Longing
• Ethics, Morality, opinions on how people should and shouldn’t behave
• Love, hatred, altruism, valuing or devaluing life itself, the drive to better the lives of all people
• Purpose, ambition, desire, will
• Religion, the search for meaning or the decision to reject it
• Math, Logic, Philosophy, and Science

Consider the above list for a moment, and ponder how each of these characteristics manifests itself in yourself and in the world around you.

Now, consider these items under the each of following “If… then…” type of extrapolations of different truth possibilities regarding Darwinism:

• If Darwinism is true, then:
  
  Life arose without purpose or direction; an organism or specie’s continued existence is driven purely by random genetic mutations and the resulting ability to not die. This implies that each of the items on the above list is not an end within itself, rather they are means to the ultimate end of survival: None of the items, under Darwinism, have any meaning on their own; they are curious electrochemical reactions that occur in the context of our particular species. They are vestiges that arose as part of the evolutionary process and happened to allow certain populations to survive, while populations without these characteristics tended to die out faster. They are survival tactics, in the same category as opposable thumbs. Of course a Darwinist doesn’t have to reject the items on the list… I doubt that’s even possible. But if Darwinism is true, there is nothing on the list that cannot be understood solely in terms of its impact on raw survivability.
• If Darwinism is false (i.e., there is/was some purpose or design behind the development of life), then:
  
  The items above are valid ends to be sought in themselves, because they are characteristics left behind by whatever created us as part of its intentions for how we should live. The love we feel for friends, family, humanity, etc. is not an illusion; it is more than just an electrochemical reaction in our brains. We seek and embrace the items on the above list because they are real. We are more than just bags of meat hanging on calcium sticks: frail and imperfect as we are, we exist for a reason other than raw survival.

Interestingly, if Darwinism is true, then it undermines science itself, because the abilities humans afford to reason and seek truth are just survival mechanisms, and the truth values determined by science cannot ultimately be known. Our understanding of the universe could be completely wrong, as long as it helps us survive. Either truth is a worthy end within itself, or it doesn’t really exist — and we’re ultimately subconsciously seeking survival by way of an illusion we call truth. And because Darwinism is the only origin-of-life theory that a die-hard atheist can reasonably embrace, an atheist really has no right to appeal to reason, or even morality… seeking scientific truth cannot be said to be the right or best course of action, and ethics don’t really exist outside of their impact on humanity’s longevity. Darwinism thus ultimately neuters the atheist’s ability to argue for their position, because under Darwinism, atheism is an ideological belief system which can only be understood as the manifestation of some survival mechanism — perhaps the very same mechanism that causes most of the world to believe in God.

That all of the above ends have no higher a purpose than opposable thumbs is something I’m just not willing to concede; therefore I can’t bring myself to be a Darwinist. I could, of course, be completely wrong. If that’s the case, truth doesn’t actually exist and none of this post ultimately matters — though if I’m right, it matters a whole lot.

(originally posted here: The real reason Christians have trouble embracing Darwinism (and why Atheists should, too))

Retro-Love Extends to Automobiles, Too

First, I have been spending a lot of time reviving the ’89 Chevy conversion van that belonged to my previous band (Idiosympathy) and has found her way back into my driveway. She’s got a rather convoluted history… we got her in May of 2005, give or take a year, and she served us well for a couple of years until her transmission went out. That was about the time I moved to Harmony, PA, and when I moved back to Grove City two years later, I decided to have the transmission fixed. Keep in mind she had sat in a field for those two years, so after the transmission was fixed she still needed quite a lot of work (brakes, body work, other misc. things that fail over time). So it sat for another year in my parents’ driveway, as I didn’t really have the means to do the other repairs. It was at that time I decided to sell it to my brother-in-law, since he and my sister have a large family and needed a big vehicle more than I did. Then it sat for another two years, because he didn’t have the time to work on it (did I mention he has a large family?). Finally after all that time sitting, over this past summer I decided I would buy it back from him… and he was kind enough to just give it back to me! The best part: After replacing an obviously bad battery, an oil change, and a can of sea foam, she still fires right up like the day she rolled off the lot– even with 5-year-old gas in the tank! The 350 is (or was) definitely an engine Chevy knows how to make right. I plan on giving her a tune-up too, of course. After a bit more work (the most daunting being the body work), she’ll be fully ready to serve as Yellow Lady Slipper‘s super-sweet retro ride.

Some Website Work

Been spending a little time helping out some friends from high school with the revamp of their PC Gaming web site, KBMOD.com. I’ve mostly done invisible stuff (server maintenance and bug fixing) but I also made a theme for the forums to match the the blog. I’d never done anything quite on that scale before, it’s been a big challenge but a lot of fun. Check out the site, they’ve really got a solid following… pulling in a steady 100,000 hits a month now!

I’m also in the midst of redesigning my girlfriend’s handmade jewelry website, RagtraderVintage.com. I designed the current site, but we quickly ran into various usability issues with the store engine running it (Zencart), though it’s at least stable which of course is the most important part. Currently I’m playing with Magento and WordPress; the latter would be ideal since I’ve got a decent amount of experience with it.

New Recording Studio Plans

In previous posts, I detailed a little bit of the work that was going into building a studio in the basement. Unfortunately, after all of that work, the massive Spring Melt revealed flaws in the foundation and gutters that allowed just enough water into the basement to prevent us from being able to move forward, for fear of having to undo work in the future (mainly putting down a nice floor and/or carpet). So the studio has been on hold for almost a year, coinciding pretty well with my decreasing sanity. :)

So recently it dawned on me, I need a studio more than I need a comfy living room or a nice dining room. So I decided that I’ll shuffle things around a bit and move the living room into what is currently a spare bedroom (converting it into a den), moving extraneous dining room stuff into other areas of the house, and making about a 480 sq.ft. studio on the first floor. Right when you walk in the front door. Fortunately, I also need a studio more than I need people to think I’m normal. :) So work will begin on that project in the near future, and if I think of it I’ll try to update the blog.

Commercial Recording Services Again?

I hate how often I’ve flip-flopped on this subject. I really enjoy music production, and I now realize I need more of it. But at the same time I’m not convinced there’s much of a market for the kind of production I do (out of necessity because I don’t actually know what I’m doing), emphasizing the basics — simple analog workflow and mic technique — rather than “in-the-box” perfection. Most bands out there, understandably, want a well-polished product rather than an honest snapshot of who they are. But maybe, just maybe, if I belabor the point enough, I’ll be able to find the bands who like that kind of approach, and who say “We can fix it” rather than “can you fix it?”. And maybe if I make a few compromises on my end (e.g., spending money on a little bit of *shudder* proprietary software and modern fx gear, being ok with some in-the-box edits), I’ll be able to appeal to the perfectionists out there too. So I won’t count this as any sort of official decision, but it’s just a growing thought in my mind. Maybe I’ll end up dropping the whole thing the first time someone asks “how much do you charge?”. Or maybe I’ll operate entirely funded by paypal donations and kickstarter campaigns, so that I can avoid the subject altogether.

Well that’s all I can think of for now.

(originally posted here: New Projects on the Horizon, Anterior and Posterior)

Not much has changed on the TODO list but a few things just tend to work better and there are some added apps. A lot of the recent work has been just in keeping up with the way the Arch release engineers have changed ISO building in the last 6 months or so. Experimental (i.e. largely untested) support is in place for loading a persistent config from a USB stick… To use this feature, just pop in a USB stick (which should automount to /media) while SynthBox is running and copy the whole home dir to the USB stick by issuing this command from the terminal:

cp -R /home/synthbox /path/to/usb/stick/synthbox-config

Then the next time you boot SynthBox, it’ll replace the stock home dir with the version you’ve backed-up. It creates a symlink and points the synth user to use that as its live home dir, so further changes should persist on subsequent reboots. Note that the resulting directory has to be called synthbox-config or SynthBox won’t find it when it boots. The nice thing about this approach is that one can tweak SynthBox without running it by editing the contents (startup scripts, .config dir, etc) of the synthbox-config directory on another system.

As usual grab the latest version here. Screenshots haven’t really changed much but I added a couple anyway (mainly to show the updated app list and new wallpaper).

(originally posted here: SynthBox 2011.10 Kinduva Testing Release)

1. Get an MPD server going.

If you don’t use MPD yet, you’re missing out. MPD is the Music Player Daemon, which basically means it’s a music player designed to run as an invisible system service and be managed by one of literally hundreds of different clients, depending on your use case.

How you install MPD will depend on what OS you’re using. On Arch Linux, MPD is in the extra repository, so a simple sudo pacman -S mpd will install it on your system (there are setup instructions in the Arch Wiki). On Ubuntu, it should be in the Ubuntu Software Center. On Windows*, well I have no idea but it shouldn’t be to tough (try browsing the MPD Wiki for Windows-specific instructions). You’ll also want to install either Lame or Vorbis, depending on whether you want an Ogg or MP3 encoded stream.

*Edit: It appears the Windows port is still in development, sorry to get your hopes up if you’re a Windows user. I guess there’s no better time than the present to set up a Linux box!

Since MPD will be accessible from the internet, make sure you exercise your due security diligence by setting it up to run as a user without a login shell. I’d also recommend using non-standard ports for MPD and streaming. The defaults are 6600 for MPD control and 8000 for streaming. Pick two of your own numbers (greater than 1024 and less than 65535, though I recommend going for the higher end of the spectrum) and write them down. Also come up with a secure password to assign MPD. Here’s what a basic /etc/mpd.conf looks like to enable some security and allow http streaming:

music_directory         "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/Music"
playlist_directory      "/var/lib/mpd/playlists"
db_file                 "/var/lib/mpd/mpd.db"
log_file                "/var/log/mpd/mpd.log"
pid_file                "/var/run/mpd/mpd.pid"
state_file              "/var/lib/mpd/mpdstate"
user                    "mpd"
port                    "INSERT_YOUR_DESIRED_MPD_PORT_HERE"
password                "MAKE_UP_AN_MPD_PASSWORD_HERE@read,add,control,admin"
default_permissions     "read" #Leave empty to keep people from viewing your MPD instance without the password
bind_to_address         "0.0.0.0"

audio_output {
  type                  "alsa"
  name                  "Onboard Audio"
}

audio_output {    
  type                  "httpd"    
  name                  "HTTP Stream"    
  encoder               "lame"        # optional, vorbis or lame    
  port                  "INSERT_YOUR_DESIRED_STREAMING_PORT_HERE"    
  #quality              "5.0"         # do not define if bitrate is defined    
  bitrate               "96"          # do not define if quality is defined    
  format    "44100:16:2"
  bind_to_address       "0.0.0.0"
}

2. Set up Dynamic DNS on your router.

Most routers have Dynamic DNS support these days. Dynamic DNS is a service that lets you point a domain name at your home router. This way, when your router’s publicly-visible IP address changes, you can still access it without having to know what the address changed to.

As a preliminary step, you’ll want to give your streaming machine a static IP address or a DHCP reservation (whichever applies to your network). Once this is done, you can also control MPD on your home network via Wifi.

Setting up DDNS on your router will vary depending on the manufacturer. But in generic terms, here’s what you’ll want to do:

1. Sign up for a free Dynamic DNS service, such as dyndns.org. Don’t worry, they have a free plan, you just might have to poke around their website a bit to find it. Pick a meaningful domain name that’s not too difficult to remember. Unless you sign up for a premium service, your domain name will be something like yourdomainname.dyndns.org.
2. Log into your router and find the DDNS option. On my Netgear, it was one of the main options on the left.
3. Put your Dynamic DNS account credentials into the DDNS setting on your router. If DDNS registration is successful, you should be able to check the logs on the router and see that it signed into your DDNS account, and you can also check by issuing the command nslookup yourdomainname.dyndns.org from your computer which should return your router’s external IP.

3. Open up the ports you chose on your firewall

On your router, open up the two ports you chose for MPD control and streaming, and forward them to the IP address of your MPD machine. Look for an option called port forwarding in your router’s configuration.

4. Install MPDroid on your phone.

MPDroid is one of those hundreds of MPD clients I mentioned earlier. It’s free in the Android Market. Install it and go into the default MPD Server settings, where you’ll plug in your hostname (the DDNS name), port, password, and streaming port. Once those settings are saved, go back to the main screen and if it’s connected to your MPD server hit play. Then hit the menu button and select Streaming. Playback should start in a few moments.

And voila, that’s it! Of course you’d also benefit from installing a local client on your MPD machine, so that you can locally play and manage your music.

Troubleshooting

If it doesn’t work, here are a few hints I picked up along the way:

• Make sure it works on your internal network first. This is actually how I used it for a long time before I opened up ports to the outside. If you do this, just create a Wifi-network-specific configuration in MPDroid and point it at your MPD machine’s internal IP address rather than your external DDNS name. Everything else should work the same.
• Make sure you restart MPD when you edit the config file. This can be done by issuing (on Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/etc):sudo /etc/init.d/mpd restart or (on Arch):sudo /etc/rc.d/mpd restart
• On your phone, make sure Wifi is enabled. This was a big gotcha for me because I was testing it by turning the Wifi off. But apparently MPDroid doesn’t properly access your MPD server over 3G unless the Wifi chipset is turned on, even if you’re not actually connected to a Wifi network.
• Also make sure the ports you chose for MPD aren’t being used by any other services. To see what ports are currently in use, you can use the netstat command (on both Windows and Linux).

Enjoy!

Now go forth and enjoy the fruits of do-it-yourselfism* abroad!

*do-it-yourselfism is of course a myth, none of this would be possible without the work and generosity of thousands of free-software developers! Oh how I do enjoy software liberty.

(originally posted here: Streaming Music to an Android Phone)

$ yaourt doukutsu

It works great with a USB gamepad — I prefer using a SNES pad myself. The game is also available on the Wii via the shop channel, with updated graphics and sound (though I prefer the more pixely look).

Sorry I don’t have any original screenshots of me actually playing, these were grabbed from the web… the game runs fullscreen by default and it’s not terribly easy to capture screens. But here’s a fan-made trailer for the game:

(originally posted here: Modern(ish) Game Highlight: Cave Story)