To the banded mammals that live off the flight line; when I’m walking home after a long day of work, please refrain from scurrying out of the bushes across my path. You may think you’re being playfully cute, but I’m running out of clean pants. Thank you for your assistance with this matter.
I’m on MSNBC, baby!
http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/20/6503821-10-slightly-cracked-ways-to-celebrate-easter
You can also get there by going to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ – “Tech & Science” – “10 slightly cracked ways to celebrate Easter”.
In the spirit of Easter, I’ve designed and constructed an audio-animatronic “Peep” Show. This is inspired by a long-running pun amongst of group of friends of mine. Total part count: 10 Servos, 29 LEDs, 1 Arduino, 1 Audio Decoder IC, 1 Push Button, 1 0.5 W Speaker, ~650 Lines of Code, 3 Sheets of Foamboard, 5′ of Balsa Wood, 3′ of Dowels, 25′ of Wire, & 11 Peeps.
Extra-special thanks to the SPYAG for the inspiration to do this, I couldn’t / wouldn’t have done this without y’all!
I’ll be playing in church again tomorrow, going to rock* the electric violin this time… should be a good experience. That said, here are a few more transcriptions I wanted to make publicly available.
*rock… is that the right verb? Also, just FYI, this is a continuation of the original post here.
I recently updated my copy of Finale to PrintMusic 2011 and was appalled to find that CodaMusic is still using their crappy 16×16 pixel file icon (see left) from the mid-nineties! Now, I understand that I’m nitpicking at this point, but is it too unreasonable to ask that the icon used on my *.mus files don’t look like something out of Windows 95?
So, I decided to do something about it. I created a new icon for the *.mus file extension (see right) and have developed a handy-dandy little batch file to automatically copy it into the Finale resource directory and (by tweeking the registry) set it as the default icon for Finale Music Files. This new icon scales all the way up to 512×512, so it should be pretty future-proof. If you want to set up the same configuration on your own desktop, just download THIS zip file, extract the contents, and then double click the enclosed MUS.bat file. Follow the on-screen instructions, log-off and log-back-on to Windows, and BOOM, you’re done. Enjoy!
Lately I’ve started playing violin with the praise band at church. It’s been a really rewarding experience getting a chance to help lead the congregation in worship. As part of my preparation for each Sunday, I’ve taken the time to transcribe melody lines from the songs we’re set to play. I created these files originally just for my own use, but now figure… “hey, I’ve taken the time to do this, why not throw the files on the web for fellow musicians to use”. So… here you go… I hope someone, somewhere finds these useful.
You Are Holy (Prince of Peace)
PS: In case it’s not evident by the religious nature of this music, do me a favor and don’t pirate the actual songs. I’m providing basic melody lines here to aid the praise-band musician in leading worship with pieces they have previously obtained licenses to.
In the late fall of 2009 I finished work on writing & producing the soundtrack to the independent feature film “The Artist”. I’m really proud of my involvement in this project… especially (what I consider to be) my top 3 compositions: “The Artist“, “Eternity“, and “Daybreak“. What follows is the official film synopsis and a few links related to the project.
From the critically-acclaimed creators of “The Receipt” (2008) comes the “The Artist”, an independent film which tells the story of Alex, a comic-book connoisseur who is entering his final year of college. Through a psychology class he meets, and falls for Rebecca, and as his relationship with her grows, he discovers that hiding beneath her soft, caring surface is a troubled past and signs of continued anguish. Reminded of buried trauma from his own past, Alex begins to confuse past and present, fantasy and reality, and weaves for himself a delusion wherein he comes to believe that he is the real-life hero from his comic-book sketches. As delusions unravel and reality sets in, “The Artist” becomes a story of star-crossed lovers, secrets revealed, the enduring pain of loss, and the encapsulating psychological hold the powerful wield over the powerless.
Soundtrack Home – Download Audio & Sheet Music
IMDB Home – Internet Movie Database Entry
Film Home – Official Film Homepage
Amazon MP3 – Buy the Soundtrack on Amazon or iTunes
DVD Sales – Buy the DVD Direct from Source
Wow, it’s now been 1 year and 8 months since I last updated this particular portion of the website. So, here’s a stab at re-instituting a more regular update schedule. That said, the last 1.5+ years have certainly not been devoid of projects, so I’m going to systematically start sharing those (in chronological order) over the next few days / weeks / months / years / whatever.
Oh yeah, I’m also trying a new Facebook cross-post script to automatically share what I post here on my Facebook account. We’ll see how that goes.
As you might imagine, I’ve been spending a lot of time working with Microsoft Office 2007 lately. I really love the new interface and I’m a huge fan of the new font “Calibri“. I noticed, however, that the default document now uses “Calibri Body 11pt” rather than “Times New Roman 12pt”. I was curious why the font size shrank, so I wrote up a sample document to compare the two. Here it is.
As you can see, Calibri 11pt is a bit smaller than Times 12pt, but it feels just as readable. I think it’s the difference between a serif and sans serif font. Anyhoo… I just found this comparison interesting and thought I’d share my findings with the world.
Since I’m going to be taking a long road trip from VA to TX next week, I decided I wanted to add a new audio source to my car. Rather than buying a whole new sound system, I decided to do things the “fun” way.
This little project was waaay too much fun… how often do you get to solder wires on the inside of your car’s dash? 8)
