Kim Gentes

Sometimes all you want to do is make some pattern for rhythm that you can use as a loop pattern for other things. Or maybe you are working on a quick idea and aren't at home to put it down in your music creation software or access to your instrument.  Or, perhaps you are just curious as to how you can see a rhythm track in a linear format.  Beatlab is an online simple tool for building basic loop tracks, much in the same core way that anyone would compose a loop for electronic music, or even lay down a rhythm section with MIDI or loop software. But it is online, simple and free to use.  There are user plugins for uploading your own sounds and a lot of features once you have the basic things down. You can even download your loop for use offline, which is kind of nice.

Beatlab isn't necessarily for hard core development of songs, but I like it as an inspirational pit stop on the creative internet highway. I stop by occasionally if I have a rhythm in my head and I want to flesh it out without pulling out all my musical gear.  You can save your compositions too, so you don't lose online ones you've created. It uses your Facebook credentials to store context, but it is not heavy handed (like some Facebook apps are) as it always asks if you want to post things to Facebook before doing so. I like that courtesy. One note on the technology side of this site- like almost every music app online- it does use Flash. So it won't work on your iOS devices. Just pure web folks.

Anyways for the loopers, scratchers and tweekers of the electronic and rhythm worlds, BeatLab is like stopping at Wafflehouse- not exactly the kind of meal you'd do important dates at, but it has the basics when you need to use them. And heck- its free.  Check it out.

http://www.beatlab.com

Here is a very simple loop I created with it.

http://bit.ly/oRQQSS

I noticed a lot of other users creating more beat loops for rap and such. I prefered a bit of an electronica loop myself, but you can create whatever you want. Go try it out.

in the rhythm of heaven

Kim Gentes

Remember the promises of science fiction? Well, things haven't turned out quite the way the Jetsons promised us. When they said "Flying cars, robotic servants, instant meals", we didn't know they meant "Southwest Airlines, automated sales calls to our cell phones, and McDonald's happy meals".  But who's to blame? Well certainly not Batuhan Bozkurt.

Batuhan is a "sound artist" and programmer living in Istanbul, Turkey.  And he has done his part in bringing forth the joyous reality of that fantasy of almost all great science fiction- the fusion of technology and art. But is it that hoped-for utopia where ones own thoughts of melodies were enough for mind-reading computers to generate the symphonic masterpeices of the future?  Mr. Bozkurt doesn't promise such glorious realities, but he takes the needed baby-steps for our neophite, web-connected world. He calls it Otomata.

Quite simply, Otomata, is a sound generation web application. It generates tones based on a 9x9 grid which contains any number of bouncing boxes. You start with a blank grid. You add your boxes. You click play. The fun begins.

This might seem trivial (and it is), but Otomata is based on the same rules of operation that most iOS apps and even the first video game (Pong) held to- collision and redirection.  The boxes you place on the grid all move, in any of the 4 directions you instruct them to. When they hit another  box or a wall they alter direction. When they hit a wall, they emit a sound. The grid is set up in a specific musical configuration so that notes ascend a scale from left to right. You get the idea quickly. You develop patterns that create sound loops for basic rhythm and meter. Add some melodic chaos notes (boxes) to overlay said patterns of rhythm.

But the more complex you make them, the less sure you are of a clean results, or one that sounds musical (instead of an explosion of computer sounding blurps).

But enough talk. Try it out! Otomata is online, for all to try (apparantly, phone apps are in the works as well). You can go here and get started:

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata

Now for the really cool part. Once you develop an interesting pattern on Otomata, click the "Copy piece link" and you have the URL to your musical/web/grid configuration. Share it with your friends, build on each other's patterns. All very fun, time wasting and addictive.  Real musos will initially bauk at this trivial tool, but finding the patterns is the key. Don't waste your time just throwing blocks on the board (at least don't keep doing it after 30 minutes or so). If you just do that, of course, you will be bored. Instead, start to develop a library of patterns that you can re-use for your bass end, your mid-chords and your high end rhythms.  Then, start to mix and match and see what happens.

The app is online for anyone who has a web browser. Oh, a real web browser I mean- this one is in Flash, so you can't play it on iPads or iPhones (at least until they add Flash).  However, the folks who wrote this online application have a great new port for the iOS devices and you can also download an app for your iPhone/iPod/iPad as well to take Otomata mobile.

Here are a couple patterns I worked on that I use as a base for more "compositions". Real music? Hmmm.. maybe not. But inventive, thoughtful, and certainly musical fun. You decide.

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata?q=4g3k5z4x0d0v7n7a8d8v

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata?q=3n4n5n3a4a5a8j0q177r

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata?q=3n4n5n3a4a5a8j0q

It's a fun time waster.. and your pattern recognition skills may just improve along the way!

Thanks Otomata! Thanks Batuhan Bozkurt!

Let's go people---

Go forth and blipify! 

Kim Gentes

Sometimes you just need a reliable time keeper while you work on a tune.  You don't always remember to bring your metronome with you as you go through your day.  Now, you can have one with you, ready to work when you are. MetronomeOnline.com is an online web app that has tempo settings from timing, style and mode. You can change all the important parameters.

They also have purchasable cell phone versions available, but they charge for those.  It's not necessary to pay, since either Android or iPhone both contain free metronome apps in their respective markets.

If you need an online metronome, though, this free, usable and well thought interface is a nice quick web answer.

Check it out here:

http://www.metronomeonline.com/

Keeping His timing,

Kim Gentes

If you use generated reports from websites that contain important operational or reporting data, it is often important to bring that data into an Excel Spreadsheet. If you do that regularly, you might find yourself bringing that data into a spreadsheet on a regular basis.  This can be tedious, because you have to do a repeated number of steps that require regular maintenance at all points:

• Generate the CSV/Excel data
• Download the CSV or Excel Data to your local computer
• Delete the old data from your main spreadsheet
• Import the Data into your main Excel spreadsheet
• Reformat the data to fit your spreadsheet formulas and layout

If you find yourself doing this kind of thing on a regular basis, you might consider an alternate approach- connecting to your CSV/excel spreadsheet reports by a refresh-capable data connection.  This means you don't have to download the data manually, you don't have to delete the old data version from your spreadsheet, and you don't have to import the new data and reformat your spreadsheet once again.

All this can be automated, once you setup your CSV/excel data to be an external data source. Below are some easy steps to doing this.  I have included a lot of screen shots, but this process is really quite quick and simple.  After you have done it once, you won't have repeat it on that data source again, and you should be able to remember it quite easily for other uses.

The following example below is done with Microsoft Excel 2010 on a Windows 7 OS.  Most Windows OSes should work the same way, but I cannot get this same functionality using the Microsoft Excel product for the Mac.

Most importantly, MAKE sure you read STEP 1 carefully. Do NOT select "from Web", but use "From Text".

STEP 1 - Open up your main Excel Spreadsheet you use as the location where you import your data (this might be a final summary spreadsheet or such).  Once your are there, on the sheet you wish to import the data select the Data Tab. Select "From Text" (strangely, do not select "from web") as shown in the graphic here:

STEP 2 - A file selection dialog will appear. Instead of entering a file path or searching for a local computer file, enter the website URL of your CSV or Excel spreadsheet file, as shown in the graphic here:

STEP 3 - Select "Open" file and the file will begin requesting to be imported via the regular text import wizard, as is normal for Excel.  Enter the configuration of the wizard as you would if the file was local, configuring it to the fields and formats you wish. Shown in the graphic here:

STEP 4 - As per usual, choose the location of the data import placement on the current sheet.  Shown in the graphic here:

STEP 5 - Your data will import on the current sheet.  Once it does, select the "Properties" button in the "Connections" area of the menu. This will bring up the "External Data Range Properties" sheet. Shown in the graphic here:

STEP 6 - You can configure it to your liking, but I prefer the following settings that seem to work well in most settings- Unselect "Prompt for file name on refresh".  I leave the refresh control buttons off as well, so that I must click the Refresh button to ask for updates. I also unselect "Adjust column width" so that the spreadsheet is not altered in format/layout by the new data each time. Look at the graphic below for the other settings I recommend in most situations:

The goal of all this is to provide you with a instantly refreshable CSV data source that is web based. No more downloading, deleting old data, importing new, and reformatting.

I hope that helps some of you who have projects that this applies to.

Happy spreadsheets all!

Kim Gentes

I own an iPad. I love using it. I use Netflix and stream movies when I am sitting on the couch. I check my mail, calendar, and even write notes in some meetings. I use a Bible application for following along in church and I access maps for quick references. I have already written two articles about the iPad- one a positive review of it, the other a critique of Apple's decision to exclude flash technology from the platform. Check either of those articles to see that I love the positive attributes of the device, but remain skeptical of some aspects of the device.

That said, nothing burns me more than to see someone fly completely against reason and logic with an outright lie. Apple recently did this with their new advertizement for the iPad. So that you can review it for yourself, I encourage you to view the ad on Apple's website here:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/gallery/#ad

What you will see is a brilliant marketing and visual story. Compelling and fresh. I love it. Except that while it is listing the sparkling features of the iPad, at 0:17 through 0:20, the commercial says this:

"All the world's websites in your hands"

This is simply not true. Literally millions of websites run either completely or partially based on Adobe Flash. This is not a guess, this is a fact. Any website using Flash will not be able to function on iPad. In fact, a huge number or them won't even be visible at all, except for a "not supported" message.

According to several studies, approximately 1/3 of all websites will be useless on the iPad. In one of the largest online reviews of website technology, Opera Software surveyed 3.5 million web pages and about 33% of them used Flash.  That number gets even larger in developing technology regions of the world, such as China (at 67%) and Turkey (at 60%).  You can see the results of this survey data at http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/mama-key-findings/#flash

Admittedly the report is 1.5 years old, which is a long time on the web. But with the web following its trends, Flash implementation actually could reasonably be believed to be higher now than it was 1.5 years ago. With the iPad coming out just weeks ago, any change in that strategy would not have embedded itself in the majority of websites.  Those websites that are working to accommodate both Flash and HTML5 (iPad's only online web media player solution, except iTunes and Quicktime of course), such as Youtube.com have done so only very recently and have provided both options (Flash and HTML5) in deference to the vast hundreds of millions of users who use Flash as their web media player.

Back to the original point. Apple clearly says "All the world's websites in your hands". Why lie? Why not spin the commercial to say something complimentary about the browsing experience. Why lie blatantly in the face of undisputed facts?  I won't answer the question, but I hope Apple does do something.

My hope is that Apple will listen to my request to them:

Apple, change the commercial. Advertise honestly. You didn't want to put Flash on your device. That is fine. Your call. But don't lie about the capabilities of the iPad in the face of the decision you made.

Here's hoping someone cares about "truth in advertizing" these days... we'll see.

Happy iPad-ding and web surfing...

Kim Gentes

One of the great things about today's software development culture is that competition has driven change to a feverish pace.  If you watch Google, Apple, Microsoft and the biggies, you might think things plod along relatively quick. And for those companies they do. But with huge staffs of developers they can mitigate against quality issues by planning and throwing modern techniques (and hordes of people) to the technical challenges of keeping up with smaller, nimble companies who are focused on niche markets.  The little developers have their pains- small staffs and tiny budgets mean they only have a few swings at the plate before using up the resources available will drain away.

The savior of all this was supposed to be open source. In the open source world, we would all be able to benefit from larger efforts shouldered by many, and let the specific applications be driven by those who cared about applying a great technology to a market.  So those fundamental technologies became the backbone of open source development. Things like: Linux, PHP, (Apache/HTTP to a lesser extent), Javascript, Java, AJAX,  and a cadre of other core technologies would let us all play nice and develop fast.

But what happens when one of those core technologies drops the ball?  It lands on the consumers e-foot, that's what!  The latest revision of lameness in technology land? None other than the mothership of ubiquitous programmatic lifeforce- Java! Java was lauded as the end-all-be-all language that would unite all platforms, hardware, OS, devices into a playground of loveliness for app developers. Java would bring us all together and unite our efforts to work everywhere. If Java proponents were to believed the Borg, Klingons, Ferrengi and Vulcans would be having tea parties and celebrating peace and harmony conferences to endorse Obama's nuclear disarmament agreements. Such is the hope.

Well, on March 31, the Java fiesta of loveliness was interrupted by a blip on the "what the!" radar. Turns out that Sun (the company that builds and releases the Java language, engine, clients and its updates) managed to release its update 19 of Java v6 with the profound ability to break literally every single applet that was signed by one of the largest authentication agencies in software credentialing.  Tech geeks keep on reading for gory details, but for all you folks who already want to slap me, here is the short answer.

Java programs (called applets) need to be verified as "safe". The process of verifying them and "publishing" them as secure is done through a method called "signing". This signing basically places encrypted information on to the Java applet that verifies itself by announcing its identity and a secret code.  When people use the internet and are about to use a Java applet that is "safe", their computer reads the identity and secret code from the applet. That code and identity is verified against a database at a "trusted" digital security company (companies that do this type of verification checking are called "authentication services").  If the identity and code don't match properly according to the standards at the security company database, it tells the web surfer that the Java program they are about to use is not to be trusted.  Users, understandably, react by blocking the program from running.  This is they way digital signing /security works on program applets for Java. Has for many years.

The problem is that Java recently released an update (both v6 updates 19 and 20 include this problem) that incorrectly breaks all the code signing certificates (the digital security) issued by Thawte. This is sad and funny, depending on who you are. Thawte is one of the largest digital security providers in the world. Having Java drop the ball on this is no small item. Thousands of applets all over the web are now reporting how unsafe they are! Thanks Java ! Thanks Sun!

To get the detailed skivvy on this, I went to my friend and web/developer guru Kevin Lott for the nitty gritty details. Lott says,

Java SE 6 update 19 was released on March 31. Java SE 6 update 20 was released on April 16th. Unfortunately, both of these updates are botched releases that will break all code signing certificates issued by Thawte.  The algorithum on the Thawte Premium CA is MD5withRSA, however Sun released the update with the wrong algorithum - SHA1withRSA.  This will cause the browser to prompt you with an ugly message saying "Java has discovered application components that could indicate a security concern" with the option to block unsafe components.  Naturually customers will want to protect themselves and agree to the block breaking your Java Applet application. (Kevin Lott, April 16, 2010)

What does this mean? Well, if you are using any Java applets on any of your favorite websites and they suddenly say "Java has discovered application components that could indicate a security concern"--- you might contact the company before assuming there is anything wrong. There is a good chance that Java itself is causing the problem.

The fix? Well, for users and web surfers, your best bet is to uninstall Java and go back to v6, update 18. For companies who develop applets? Encourage your customers to revert to update 18, or hope and pray that Java releases a fix before the whole web GUI world decides to move permanently away from any use of their technology.

Well, now that you have had your juicy tech update... back to the grind stone people!

happy teching,

Kim Gentes

Whether you are trying prepare for Sunday morning and need to get media from home to church or preparing, sharing resources while emailing a friend and need a file quickly, sometimes you need a direct ability to transfer files quickly from one person to another. That is what Files Over Miles is (http://www.filesovermiles.com/).  It is computer to computer, browser to browser file transfer, without needing to upload your file to a cloud service or website or across an IM service, all of which make transcient copies of your file and are inevitably slow.

Tracing the real history of the Internet is a little like telling who the most important people where in the 20th century-- you will get a different answer from different people.  Although generally agreed upon major players and organizations make it in to most stories of the Internet, you will find derivations from the source material that depend on, well, the source!  The Brits, French and Americans all think they did something major to help develop what would eventually become the internet.  But frankly, one thing should be said that is not normally expressed in most text books or fact lessons- the Internet itself was not a pre-planned notion or idea.  No one woke up one day and said "hey, we have computers. Let's build a world wide connected system of redundant path communication nodes, with a robust protocol and extensible architecture."  In fact, most of what we now have that is used on the Internet was an amalgamation of ideas and systems that merged over time, to meet the needs of different governmental and commercial entities.

For me, as a software engineer, I began using the Internet in 1993.  One thing commonly minimalized by "Internet" historians are two major points: 1) popularization of network services to home users by the CompuServe service (the first true precursor to the modern day ISP).  2) the explosion of the Internet directly attributable to the development of the Mosiac Browser and the work done at NCSA-UIUC.  Frankly, most "historians" tend to think technology drove the Internet explosion.  But that is short sighted.  We had connectivity technology long before 1993/1994.  But no one really cared much about it (except scientists, academics and military minds) before the release of the Mosaic browser.  Mosaic was the grand-daddy of all web browsers.  From it, all browsers came. Once we have a graphical viewing tool to accompany the information storage and retrieval devices of the internet, common use of the web exploded- and Internet found a lifeline to become the predominant technological and commercial wonder of the last 20 years.  These two points (CompuServe and NCSA-UIUC's Mosaic browser) are often trivialized by historians, because, frankly they see the non-academic/scientific influences as being somehow less valuable. But they are crucial. Keep that in mind as you read or watch any history of the Internet.

For those who want a somewhat extensive (and less than clearly scholarly) review of the Internet development, I would refer them to the well-kept article at Wikipedia. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

Yes, it is actually fairly accurate and is kept under close scrutiny by the myriad of people who watch over that portal.

For a more terse, though somewhat euro-centric branded, view of the growth of the Internet, there is a good web movie online at YouTube that does quite well. See below.

Hope this little informational walk-through helps you understand a little bit more about the technology we now use everyday.

Kim Gentes