A Recording Junkie Goes to College

What is that movie even about, anyway? Not sure if I really care, but the title pretty much describes my experience here so far. Seems like Seattle doesn't want to let me sleep. That's a commodity that's currently too rich for my blood. My first night was spent just sitting. Right on the sidewalk. About as uneventful as you can get. I relaxed as much as possible but couldn't let myself doze off because I was on the job - guarding my mobile office from those grabby types. This time, I'm here on business and only have exactly what I need - no more, no less (though I certainly wish it were less). In the morning, I realized that I had just enough change for a cup of coffee, but accidentally walked into this weird special Starbucks "Reserve" store. They handed me a menu. What? I ordered a large... I mean, Venti, and it was nearly five bucks! Normally I would have bought it and felt extremely stupid. But since I was unable to do so, it was not only sup

The last album I made was in 2013 on a MacBook using Logic Pro and Massive, a setup that cost a couple thousand dollars. Since I no longer have that machine and the software was proprietary, I no longer have access to all of that work. This has sparked a great interest in searching for a replacement digital audio suite, one that would provide a comparable workflow but also offer longevity, the ability to archive my work in a format that can be shared across platforms and improved upon. An artist should demand nothing less! What if a painter had to stop working on everything because they didn't want to use canvas from a certain company, and then none of their brushes or paints would work? That's what is actually happening in today's creative landscape, but with software. Whatever program I use must, above all else, use a standard file format for music encoding, which is usually MIDI but there are others. That way none of my work is dependent on any specific piece of

sudo apt-get install python3-pip sudo apt-get install python-pip sudo pip install --upgrade youtube_dl sudo apt-get install dosbox sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-jdk sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility sudo apt-get install leafpad sudo apt-get install libreoffice Emacs - do whole video on this. Leiningen - save lein script to /bin/lein, then: sudo chmod a+x /bin/lein lein sudo apt install emacs24 git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs ~/.emacs.d .spacemacs config: (setq-default dotspacemacs-configuration-layers '((clojure :variables clojure-enable-fancify-symbols t))) vim/fireplace (do whole video on this): sudo apt-get install vim git clone https://github.com/ctford/vim-fireplace-easy.git .vim ln -s ~/.vim/vimrc.vim ~/.vimrc vim -c "helptags ~/.vim/bundle/vim-fireplace/doc" -c "q"

Get retropie-4.3-rpi2_rpi3.img from  https://retropie.org.uk/download/ Flash it to your sdcard, boot and press F4 to exit to shell. Install graphical desktop: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg sudo apt-get install xinit sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-ui-mods sudo apt-get install -y rpi-chromium-mods sudo apt-get install -y python-sense-emu sudo apt-get install -y python-sense-emu-doc sudo apt-get install -y realvnc-vnc-viewer sudo apt-get install lxde Your best friend: sudo raspi-config There you can do all kinds of stuff, I recommend changing your password and enabling ssh in the interface options. Set your appropriate locale (mine is en_US.UTF-8), keyboard layout - English (US, alternative international), and wifi country. Use the spacebar to select/deselect. Type startx to load lxde.

In this post we will set up a super efficient programming environment - on a $10 computer, in just a few short lines of code! Step 1 - Install tmux , a terminal multiplexer. This will allow us to work in as many simultaneous terminal windows as we need to, just as if we are in a graphical desktop but all from a single text console: sudo apt install tmux Begin a session with the "tmux" command. Open a new window with Ctrl-b c and switch between them with Ctrl-b n. Step 2 - Install leiningen , vim and fireplace (formerly called "foreplay"). They work together with the Clojure programming language, which uses an extremely concise syntax to generate highly optimized Java and Javascript code: sudo apt install vim git clone https://github.com/ctford/vim-fireplace-easy.git .vim ln -s ~/.vim/vimrc.vim ~/.vimrc vim -c "helptags ~/.vim/bundle/vim-fireplace/doc" -c "q" (Paste the contents of this file into /bin/lein) sudo

Advent of Code 2016 problems Since they all involve parsing some kind of input data, this will be a job for ... Instaparse ! With it we can use a context-free grammar to generate a tree-like structure from our data. For example, here an input string for the day 4 problem. Each room is represented as a key, id and checksum: aaaaa-bbb-z-y-x-123[abxyz] The key is made of one or more strings of letters separated with hyphens. The id is a string of numbers, and the checksum is a string of letters in brackets. This is how we represent that in EBNF notation... In Clojure!: (def room-parser (insta/parser "room = key id checksum key = (word <separator>)+ <separator> = '-' word = #'[a-zA-Z]+' checksum = <'['> word <']'> id = #'[0-9]+'")) Now we pass the input to our shiny-new parser: (room-parser "aaaaa-bbb-z-y-x-123[abxyz]") And we get our magical tree! Ooowee! => [: