Astral Physics

Jun 29, 2009 0

Fontaine

I have now publicised my musical alter-ego, Fontaine. The sound is not quite where I want it yet, but I am posting my progress as I create with new tools: Logic Studio 8 and Live 7.

Check out the “Drop It Like It’s Hot” (Snoop Dogg) Remix!

Fontaine on Virb

Apr 24, 2009 0

Crossdomain Security and GIF Images in Silverlight 2

As mentioned in my brief talk at Microsoft MIX 09 a few weeks ago, we are working on a Silverlight application for a major photo-sharing website. This is the first post of a couple that will explain a few issues we ran into while developing a Silverlight 2 application.

First, Silverlight does not support rendering of GIF images with the <Image> component. You can use a component from ComponentOne to display GIF’s, but it uses WebClient or HTTPRequest to grab the raw image data to process, and therefore becomes restricted by cross-domain security policies. You can find a very clear explanation of Silverlight’s URL security restrictions here, but to summarize, the <Image> and <MediaElement> components are more lax when loading from one domain to another (they do not require that crossdomain policy files live on the server) so you are allowed to load content from domains other than the one that the Silverlight app was served from. However, when using WebClient or HTTPRequest directly (or direct sockets, for that matter), you must have crossdomain policy files on the deploying server.

So, how is this worked around? You can do a few things:

1. Set up a web server proxy solution - Server-side code does not have crossdomain restrictions, so you can deploy server-side code (on the server that is serving the Silverlight application) that will broker requests from the Silverlight client application, go out and get data from wherever you need it, and then tunnel it back through to Silverlight. This has been done for years with Flash and AJAX server requests, but in my opinion, it’s still as messy as ever. Thinking about it just makes me feel a bit dirty.

2. Deploy crossdomain policy files to ALL servers hosting image content - This means that the “major photo-sharing website” that I mentioned above will have to do some work. Fortunately for us, they are in the process of doing this anyway, but if they weren’t, this wouldn’t quite be an option. Quite a few public API’s do have crossdomain policy files in place for this very reason, but many don’t (including Twitter’s API).

3. Host the Silverlight application on a subdomain off of the same domain as the images? - In other words, can we host the application on http://search.yourphotosite.com and access images on http://images1.yourphotosite.com and http://images32.yourphotosite.com? The short answer is no, not without crossdomain policy files…which, according to #2 above, would solve our problem anyway. So, that doesn’t get us anywhere either!

4. When the API returns with a list of images, filter out all images ending in “.gif” - Okay, this is easy to filter out, but not so easy when dealing with the total number of results. We pagination results and show the total, so if the API says there are 4000 images and 2000 of those are GIF’s, we’re going to have a completely incorrect count at all times. Since this is public and popular image-sharing, there are A LOT of GIF’s. This option definitely does not solve the problem.

As far as I know, these are the only options available in this particular instance. We are hoping that the photo-sharing site will expedite the installation of the crossdomain policy files on their image content servers, but without that, we’d be out of luck.

Aug 30, 2008 Comments Off

The Beginning of Something Beautiful

Work in progress…this was actually an accident while trying to create something that will hopefully be much more badass. Stay tchuned!

Tendrils (make your own!)

Inspired by:
Like Spinning Plates (Live) - Radiohead

Aug 25, 2008 0

Processing Hearts AIR While Merapi Lends a Hand

As promised at my brief demo at 360|Flex San Jose last week, I’m now releasing the Merapi library for Processing.

Processing is a Java-variant built mostly for artists or for anyone who wants to create quick prototypes.

Merapi is an opensource Java library that gives access to Java from AIR - Adobe’s own OS-agnostic runtime (for the desktop, not a browser plugin) built around the Flash Player.

But most of you already knew that.

It’s really nothing too complicated (just wrapping the JAR file correctly), but it will make it a bit easier for you to get started with Merapi in Processing.

What to do:
1) ~~Download Merapi Processing Lib Beta~~ - Merapi is not being publicly released yet.
2) Wherever your actual Processing binary resides, you will find a folder called “libraries”. Unzip merapi.zip into this directory. (Your directory structure should be {ProcessingDir}/libraries/merapi/library/… which will contain all the necessary JAR files for Merapi.)
3) Open your Processing IDE (restart if it’s already open), go to the Menu->Sketch->Import Library->merapi. This will import the necessary packages, but there’s one last step before you’re in the clear. The way that Processing imports all of the packages becomes a bit troublesome. If you simply try to create an instance of the Merapi “Bridge” class, you will get a compile error. To resolve this… (See Step 4)
4) Change the import line import merapi.*” to “import merapi.Bridge;”

Also, Adam Flater whipped up this quick video demonstrating the Lego Mindstorm robot cruising around thanks to Bluetooth<->Java/Merapi<->AIR.

Jun 3, 2008 0

Life

“Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.”
-Bumper Sticker

“The best things in life aren’t things.”
-Bumper Sticker

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.”
-Ekhart Tolle

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive…And then go, and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
-Harold Whitman

May 22, 2008 0

Sketchy

Processing is a sketching language. It is very nice for prototyping!

I have been enamored with astronomy and astrophysics lately, and I’m really wanting to model a supernova or galaxy formation, but my skills are just not quite there. I need to better understand the math behind the physics, and the physics behind OpenGL.

Anyway, I made some of these little spherical doodles today.

May 3, 2008 0

Fibonacci

Fibonaaci was a real swell guy. He figured out some things about life and nature. And numbers. He was neat. Boy, I like smart people.

I did this the other day because I needed a distraction. It’s kinda the Fibonacci sequence. It looks like hair. The calculation choked and took a long time to draw all of the points. This computer was working hard for the money.

Figure 1: Not Hair

Inspired by: Fantaisie Impromptu - Frederic Chopin

Apr 28, 2008 0

Art Part Deux: The Update

The art show on Friday went well. We didn’t face any technical difficulties, the art was good, the music was good. I played keys with The Novelist, and our performance went well. Jake Hand recorded it and it actually sounds great for a little stereo mic. I’ll post the full recording when it’s uploaded.

Also, I modified the original visualization a little bit. It was really just a starting point, and once I got all the technical kinks worked out (related to analyzing the audio spectrum data without playing the audio in real-time) I was able to modify the visuals a bit. As you might have noticed, the original was based partially on Brendan Dawes’ Sonic Dots - with some important modifications - but based on it nonetheless. I changed the code up to add some different flare, and I was in the process of changing it more when I ran out of room on my hard drive. Processing tried to save my sketch and since there was no room, it actually deleted all of my code. I can re-write (probably best to refactor now anyway), but this was two days before the show and I took it as a sign that I should just get on with it and turn in what I had. I ended up displaying both versions because I couldn’t decide which I liked more. Here’s version two of the visualization based on Jesse Cohen’s “My First Music Toy.”

Apr 23, 2008 1

Look Mom! I’m an artist!

This is round 1 of what I’m doing for this new-fangled art show coming up on Friday, here in Oklahoma City.

The music was created by Jesse Cohen of The Weather Inside. Yes, I’m in this band, but Jesse writes most of the music, and this is one of my favorite songs he’s done.

Apr 13, 2008 2

NetStep : Browser-based Step Sequencer in Silverlight 2.0

I was finally able to put some time into making sure that the NetStep application runs using the most recent (publicly) available Silverlight runtime. I have tested this version on the Mac (pretty good performance!) and in Windows (through Parallels on my MacBook Pro). The performance in my particular setup was much better in OSX, but I have a feeling that would be different if I had a dedicated Windows machine.

NetStep is a collaborative musical step sequencer. While this isn’t an electronic music primer, I’ll give a brief overview of what NetStep actually is.

A step sequencer is an electronic music device that allows the musician to program patterns of various “samples,” or sounds. One sample may be a bass drum kick, another might be a snare hit. The musician can use a sequencer to control when these samples are played back, the tempo in which they are played, and usually what effects are applied to the samples.
NetStep is collaborative. In two-player mode, each user is given two “tracks” to work with. (A track is simply a row of “steps” where each step is tied to a sample. When a step is active, the associated sample is played when the playhead moves over that step). When a user hits the “Play” button, NetStep syncs itself with the other user’s sequence, and the two sequences are played back simultaneously. In this way, two musicians can work separately, but preview the joint composition at any time.

Currenty, NetStep only supports built-in samples. In my initial tests, it seems that not all samples are playing correctly, but I’m sure this will be worked out (most likely by a future release of Silverlight).

To get started with NetStep, click here.

**EDIT** - Patrick Hansen, my designer cohort in this NetStep affair, made an informative and attractive user manual.

1. Enter whatever username and password you’d like; this functionality is only used for identification with the other NetStep user.
2. Select single- or multi-user mode. Currently, multi-user is very very primitive. It will only work for two users at a time, and it’s a bit buggy. I hope to improve the backend in the future, or I might just set it up to run as an MSN Messenger application and use the real-time chat network for data transport…we’ll see.
3. Click on the samples in the top 3 “Sample Boxes” in order to preview them. As I said before, it seems that not all samples are playing, so click around until you find some that work.
4. When you find a sample you like, drag it onto a “step.” (The little orange buttons in the main part of the app.) The step will light up, indicating that a sample has been dropped and activated.
5. Play around with different samples, placing them on different steps. If you’re unfamiliar with step sequencers, just play around until you get the hang of how these things work.
6. When you’re ready to test your creation, hit the big orange “Play” button on the bottom. It doesn’t say “Play,” but if you don’t know what a Play button looks like, turn off your computer and pick up a shovel and kill a moose.

You’ll notice the numbers near the play button on the bottom. These represent “pages.” When you start the app, you are automatically on the first page, but the sequencer actually goes through 4 pages before it cycles back around to the beginning. Think of each page as a separate canvas, where all 4 canvases are linked together back-to-back.

I hope this brief tutorial helps the beginner get into this program. Keep in mind that this was built very quickly and is still quirky; I would call this release a Pre-Public Alpha v .2 Super Deluxe Hi-Five. So, please give me feedback; tell me what makes sense, what doesn’t…what works, what features you’d like to see (unless it’s already the most perfect piece of interactive software you’ve EVER seen).

Cheers, Enjoy.

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