Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Theo Verelst's LiveJournal:

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Friday, February 15th, 2008
12:03 am	server runs YEsterday the server came back on line, finally, and it has even slightly more upload and download bandwidth (it's 10 percent faster) and I hacked the website back online, so in principle all content is back except the cgi scripts (fortune). i might want to reinstall the Fedora 8 / 64 operating system so I didn't do all efforts now. www.theover.org again points to the server I maintain. i'm also working on the latest diary page 44. "local" means it resides on a server I maintain, so your browser connects with a physical machine I put pages and programs on, and I´m working on a birdhousecam! Amps and speakers on the move in my case need lots of space http://www.theover.org/Diary/Ldi44/27122007033bm.jpg which is available in that trunk, but still not everything just fits in...
Friday, February 8th, 2008
1:04 pm	Still no internet via adsl today it seems Well, According to schedule it should be there, and connected too according to some telephone person, but it doesn´t work somehow. SO I tried different connection cords, checked what a RJ11 modem cable should be connected like, checked it all out, but no connection, though maybe I saw a blinking power light yesterday some time, and then I reset the modem in fact during that: maybe not good. I didn´t have the password of the router anymore so I must set it up again, but that shouldn´t be too hard even thoug I´ll have to make it all safe again, like I had set it up thus far, and was perfectly good for years, no virussus and such even though the server of course was on 24/7 was good, so that is possible but took me alittle finding out in 2004 or so. Calling the Isp is hard (takes long, costs phone minutes), that is not good, so I´ll mail them again I guess. In the meanwhile I connected the router such that in fact it could route a mobile internet source (with the blazing speed of 460 megabits per second) from a XP machine to other machines like my newly installed Fedora 8/64 machines which can browse and yum fine that way, so I installed some of the pulseaudio stuff, and indeed have played audio over the network, but am struggling making it work cool with the user priviledges and real time jack. It of course isn´t cool to download hundreds of megabytes over the wireless net because I don´t want to create such major datastreams, and probably at some point it isn´t fair use either. Watching lectures for instance is completely doable but honestly also a bit data intensive, so it will be good to have adsl working where I can use it. The Lexicon Omega can again be used with 4 audio inputs active over it´s USB to the Linux workstation and it seems Rosegarden allows 4 channel simultaneous recording, though it with a half connected test recorded only stereo. But the quality when there are no failues or XRuns (setting good enough buffer, running as root) is absolutely marvelous, even more so at the new monitoring site: almost really transparent. Clearly I´ll want to run multi-machine audio applications, I fould a remote midi connectrion and can connect pulseaudio to jackd by pacmd-ing the modules, which makes the connectons appear in qjackctl but the while thing isn´t running good yet. Lucily another adfvantage of Fedora 8 is that using the new firewire stack I can use dvgrab to grab High Definition MPEG-2 correctly from the HD cam, without losing frame or resync requirement. I walked to a harbour and made this picture:
Sunday, January 20th, 2008
2:24 pm	Server has to wait THe local server is off the air at the moment and will most likely return the 6th of februari, if the ISP indeed makes the move work at that appointed date. It went wrong because 2 (!) previous requests had failed somehow, I think the web formsomehow must have failed at their site. This is a test to use an image at imageshack: it is from a long used dish which can receive 2 channels at the same time even though it is only 35 cm, the computer I used on it alreayd for years can do that with for instance bbc1 and itv1 to see one and record the other. No internet, though, which requires much more accuracy than this shaky improvised pole and and small plastic parabloic... I went out to get a birdhouse and I did some Ikea things, too: and of course I finished laying carpet, too.
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
1:01 pm	Webserver to new address Well, itis at the moment of this writing not working hopefully because my ´moving´ request to the provider  has gotten through quickly anyhow, after it had failed to do so and I was affraid I´d have to wait another 4 weeks for the reconnect. I´ve sometimes got a phone which acts as a internet server, at     theover.mymobilesite.net And I´ve made a page which should always be there at   home.tiscali.nl/theoverelst but at the moment I can´t change it. The former is really something, because it concerns the well known Apache server on a actual mobile phone (a Nokia E90 communicator) so when you surf there, a connection will be made over mobile internet to the phone, and then it will serve you the page when it the server is set to on. It is not always, because it takes more power to do so (batteries run out earlier) and like now when I´m using the rather fast mobile link to work from somehow the mobile server and the connected notebook internet are not perfect together (read: they the server causes delay in internet access). At the second Url, an example HD (High Definition !) video can be downloaded at high speed (probably real time) so you can look at a small piece of processed HD film I made (does require FAST internet and FAST machine and a HIGH resolution screen). I hope the server will be online again tonight, but I am not sure it may have a change of IP address, which I don´t hope because accessing the www.theover.org domain name service might be hard, too. Most curiously the same day I´d planned the server move (Jan 7) the provider is taken over by another so that may cause complications, too. Coincidence? brrrr...
Monday, November 12th, 2007
2:29 pm	Just adding new pointers The tiscali adsl based server is still there, and should be reachable at all times by:    http://www.theover.org Anyone have a great place in the us left ? Lots of pictures and even HD film on the site, don´t hesitate to check out the local diary pages. oh jeah, I´m on flickr´s foto site as theover, because its cool to have a web slideshow     www.flickr.com/photos/15877867@N04/ (for the moment the IP address should be right to load a picture here:) some of the equipment built by me.
Friday, January 30th, 2004
2:19 am	Local server IP address change The local server can most easily be reached over: http://home.tiscali.nl/theover or possibly via theover.tripod.com. It's previous IP address was 195.241.128.75, the direct link to the local main page is: http://82.168.209.239 You can get a private message readable to me by using this secure link . When the IP changes again, use the topmost link to find the latest one. Dont't forget to check out the latest local diary page there, I made pictures of a Usb high quality (audio) AD/DA converter in builtup, based on a sample chip I had from TI. The public key for the local server secure (start URL with https"//) pages is: 30 48 02 41 00 ba 52 01 07 ac 65 30 2a 2a 4b 16 24 09 ce 5d 40 6c e0 18 4a be 82 ab 0c 4c 27 7d 12 94 df c4 c2 eb ac 2d 9d 96 f0 c6 21 10 8c 17 b2 29 8f 5e e2 b8 42 c8 db ed d6 13 18 45 cc 80 eb 06 62 4a 0d 02 03 01 00 01 When you get a certificate indicating it is mine, by checking page info --> security --> certificate --> details in your browser, and the browser info window under 'Subject's public key' indicates the key from above, you can be pretty sure the page is coming from my server, no-one without mega computers and a lot of time can even start to generate such a certificate from the public data, and make your browser indicate that public key, they'd need a private key for that, and I never made or will make that public. Today I did update the certificate's expiration date, to make it valid for another year. This sort of page is normally not changeable, so its a good place to look up the public key.
Saturday, October 4th, 2003
5:01 am	Life in France I'm in france at the moment, an though I'd try to update some stuff from the country of liberty equality and brotherhood (that sounds better in french), which sure feels a whole lot better than my country of birth, which sucks bad, which is an strong understatement. Maybe I should be carefull when I'm going to return there, but hey, I guess they know it themselves. Apart from nature with space, I was in Paris some times, where last time I did a little electrical guitar playing on the Centre Pompidou yard, using my portable high quality audio amplifier and (just one) of the small portable speakers, which was good, when I can access the server, which for security reasons can currently only be done locally (I wasn't sure I was going to be on the web much, being abroad), I'll make a audio and some video file available for download of some of the excellent enough sound. I put one photo on photo.net: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=1798658 I've been preparing but not much putting on diary page stuff on the local server, probably I'll put pictures and movie stuff and text somewhere next week, if all goes well enough, also from the Musee d'Orsay and the Musee d'Art moderne, and maybe some (as it appeared slightly illegal) recent exhibition of a chinese artist in the centre Pompidou. Much of the the modern art seems like i've been working around there, well well, somebody ought to pay me..
Thursday, August 14th, 2003
2:35 pm	Building computers, are we? It's been a while since I entried something here, and also since a new local diary page, though I guess one is coming up soon. I'm into the computer building stuff again, not plugging pentium based systems together a la ibm from 20 years ago, but along the lines of microcomputer stuf from even longer ago, which can be overseen, and are completely defineable enough to be interesting. I mean, every bit can be accounted for a lot better then in many modern designs, though of course the result is simpler. With CMOS parts, clock rate can be at least in the 30 MHz range, which of course is nothing much compared to a modern chips internally useably 2 GigaHerz. Still, processors like the Z80 I will make tick again are advanced enough where it is needed to do computer design with which is even educational for contemporary computer building, which is of course a rare hobby, that not many in this country (holland) will try, though it is quite usefull to stay out of IT wonderland. And possibly business, incidentally, but I'll have to win that little game... The picture shows a counter/buffer board with 16 leds as address counter feedback, some breadboard which will connect up various boards and contain the control and clock logic as well as the interface to an old compaq 75 MHz PC I put together from gotten parts, mainly from (actual) garbage, which has a z80 cross compiler on it I used before, and code to let the printer port act as DMA interface for the microcomputer, for which various chips can be seen on the black piece of conducting foam.
Friday, December 27th, 2002
3:43 am	Theo Verelst Local Web Server Well well, there's a currently often on server I can locally access, that is I can make it run my own stuff. I've almost all previous web pages and images and programs I made downloaded locally now, and will make it available from one place, without the jumps back and fro over tripod angelfire, geocities and others, and mend the broken links, probably add searching, and I've got (as long as the server runs and I can access it) some of the advantages of a local server: a webcam, a starting message post possibility, and that works over a secure link (ssl), because I am currently my own secure server operator most of the time. So for all those who want a safe line to moi in person, don't miss out, it seems to work fine, I'll probably add an option to upload stuff. I'm not doing broadcast like things, but there are audio and even some video links, though most of the time not operating, or non-live. I need to check into the possibilities to have live stuff broadcasted to multiple destinations (and maybe promotion) non-commercially, because it may be good to have a serious enough station going. I have access an average good amount of good and excelent CD copies, and though it maybe slightly illegal, not even in the us the small webcasters have (as yet) to pay much copyright dues it seems, and there are some nice enough webcasters, but certainly not that much and in all important areas. Maybe I should find a christian sponsor and do a worldwide gospel c.q. education channel. Online university does a goed job, too, I may put on some off-line course material, maybe with pictures/cam stuff, I did build a high Q microphone amp (with a free conderser mic unit) which is at least good for some music and quality enough audio feed. I did a few musical piece (see bottom of page) which are completely worth while downloading the mpegs for. It may be the above link has the wrong IP address in future, in that case simply check my tripod home page for an updated link. I'm working on my string simulator, and expect a 'menu' and standard windows version to be available for secure download soon. I'm working scanning pictures, which for some part will also be online.
Wednesday, September 18th, 2002
2:30 pm	Back a few days Major event could be said, in spite of all obvious difficulties, I've been enabled to travel cross a significant part of europe again, albeit not with my own means, with reasonable freedom. I've even shortly visited one of the people on my list, I will not comment now, but I'll certainly, also in her interest start writing about some of my own and some others', amoung which some well known ones, whereabouts, and about some general situations I've only alluded to, because I want some changes, and I'm going to get them. Yesterday I saw the new sorryfull excuse for the dutch minister president (And seriously, for those foreigners who have not informed themselves about all this, don't jump to the conclusion I'm using this writing to try to force party political purposes through slander, realy this stuff is too obvious and objective, and I don't even care that much about dutch party politics anymore, though I'd strongly suggest to vote for the only environment friendly party with an equally long history in years as my own life), and the liptalk, propaganda like strange language and general image I got, also through a cooperating interviewer was such that I didn't want to puke, but simply understood I wasn't just fighting ghosts, but that the dead party leader story must indeed have been pretty much an act of war against a systen along very evil lines, which never should reign, and certainly not with public approval. On the positive side of things, I drove through belgium, france, switserland, luxembourg and germany, with definately great satisfaction to be abroad again, and even abundantly enough so. I think the french are giving up their illuminati, probably major local and global process, what a rest and space for the first time in years. I made more than a few (conventional) pictures, I don't have digital stuff, maybe later I don't know. At least their realy pretty good, few humans, landscapes, water, nice. I'll be writing a lot I think, I've updated my main theover.tripod.com page, so at least I can add more diary and other page links to other sites, while I'm in the process of transering pages and files that have been removed to other places. I'll also put the latest working version of my string simulator program on, and probably I'll get to making some more example sound files, because I saw the few which are on are not realy representative of what it realy can do, which si quite worth listening to, even more so on a high quality audio system which does justice to the transients as well as the waveforms and generally doesn't suck the power out of the sustain and strength of the sound. I've used my portable audio system also for that purpose, at luckily geographically wonderfull locations, and its very high Q amp, reasonable broadband, solid enclosures and damping and excellent dome tweeters make most materials come alive and strong enough to listen to at up to 50 meters or so. Until I came back to my non-experimental prototypes of my latest big speaker products, whic apart from the tweeters do everything much better still. Vive the dynamic range of the decent CD player, and lets work on the digital signal line limitations. As it is, some CD's are good enough on my system to make nothing much more desirable, except for of course the more spatious sound system, multi channel, or otherwise, so the strickt sitting in the centre of the equally sided triange between the speakers for the correct stereo phases is not needed anymore. Any decent job offers out there, lets say a hundred an hour, using some of my obvious skills, and lets say at some wonderfull location, or simply remote? I guess I'm hard to market. Gmph.
Wednesday, August 14th, 2002
1:23 am	What was I doing, again? I was enabled to read the ACM Siggraph proceedings of last year this morning, with articles about a lot of things I've been into, had informed opinions about, and even which I'm currently into, such as generating virtual sounds. Synthesizers did that already long ago, making virtual sounds, but that is not the same as for instance simulating the physical motion of an excited string or air column, as I did, or simulate the motion of sound through a room or space, as I read about, in combination with a geometrical model of a space. Someone or something makes a noise an the computer computes what the surroundings of that sound source will add to the sound. Revererations units, vurrently all digital, do that job, too, and have been around since roughly I entered university, but they do not so much have the aim of making an echo sound like a certain place or with a well defined instrument placement. They must sound right musically, but are not so much part of a virtual reality walkthrough idea. Though I had a Yamaha Rev-7 for years which does have actual concert halls as the basis for its reverberation algorithms. Interesting machine, I remember when I was into thinking a lot that I could hear some yamaha-er suggest to open the unit because I might take it I wasn;t into strange design material, and found out that both there is more than a little electronical filtering of input signals before the analog to digital converter, to prevent samping problems, and be in touch with the fact that digitisation using sampling must take int account the theoretical boundary conditions to sound right and work right. Also I found less obscure finding the same comparator cicuit that I was experimenting with to drive a switched filter, probably as AD comparator, and the memory was astoundingly small, for such a major machine, and it seemed to have not simply a dsp or processor chip in it alone. Anyhow today I was reminded of the theoretical rules of wave propagation, as I also looked at when I was doing graphics, from which time I knew the magazine, or actually the conference proceedings, in very high quality glossy colour print, which it should be, its a world top conference in the field. Waves bouncing off at surfaces and object edges and diffracting into new waves, thats good, when that game is simulated right wonderfull concert hall reverbs are possible, but the number of computations, even for a 1 gig+ pentium or a fast DSP are way over our current computers' capacities' head, though maybe one could try some simple cases of line as exhoustive computated examples, that take enough sound rays and send them through a not to hard reflecting space to come close to the physical sound patterns that would occur. Might be possible. Off line, that is not real time. More fun ? A good 3D helmet,or something similar, good headphones, and a complete live simulation of some event involving sound. Completely worth it, any serious studio musicion should knoe at least a little of what reverberation does, and for instance what it does to an instrument ot let it 'breath' into a simulated acoustical environment, and work with that to make the music more subtle, a reasonable or good digital reverb unit will let you that. I know what happened to my homestudio when I got my rev7 to go with my symths and especially my DX7 piano sounds:ot started to work as serious music (I had a 3 by three room at the time). Current computer effects as I've seen them rarely crack it for real, though some sound not too miserable in terms of superficial properties, but rarely do they sound musical enough to be a real pleasant addition. A delay line alone can do miracles for a synth solo, that works fine, but reverberation to make an instrument 'feel' musical, thats not so much there, usually. Not so hard to understand, good reverbs need major computer resources, and do not come 10 at the time from an average pentium. last week I could read the journal of the acoustical society of america, which had more than a few interesting audio articles ranging from a almost clinical measurement of the damping properties of industrially made glass wool isolation material, the stuff I just stuffed a set of speakers halffull with, to be quite, quite well damped as a infinte baffle pressure enclosure with little internal reflections, preferably at every frequency. They sound *real* good with it, I think they are up to real top standards. Maybe I should search to be able to do more of them. In that same magazine, I also found an article on piano string simulation, with some very familiar equations and observations (I felt at home enough), maybe I will try to look at their string hammer and string properties models, to see if my string could do a piano tone. Not so easy. A guitar box analysis also seemed at least interesting, all modes of vibration explained based on a guitar body made by a good builder, including measurements and as I remember 3d data. Funny enough they used a graphics model of the body which resembled pretty well the model I have made for my masters thesis as and example of a curved surface (3d degree rational bezier surface). I didn;t do any sound simulations with it, but it would be good to add a body to the string simulator, even if it were just to see wether sounds even more like actual guitars would result. Siggraph also had various articles on graphics along lines I though about some years ago, and with interesting results. I've been able to make a small amplifier unit, the size of two thirds of a pocket book, with two of the mosfet amplifier chips in it which I used also for the amps I did a few years ago which are on my website. It can be fed by accupack of twice 10 penlight NiCd rechargable batteries, which gives it about 20 watts music power or so, and which last for several CD's long at loud level. Music comes from a sony walkman radio or a philips portable CD player, and the whole system is quite excellent enough to listen to with picky hifi ears. And as of a few days, the small speaker set, with pioneer broadbands and the same jvc dome tweeters I've used before, which all together fits in a portable bag, has been replaced by a set of 40x40x70 cm studio or hifi or PA speakers with dome tweater, a small decent sounding squaker, and a 12 inch moderately light rubber suspended woofer with as it seems quite good properties, all that built into 18 mm thick 'spaanderplaat' wood made of glued together wood chips, with a light coloured finsh. And thorough damping at all sides of packaged glasswool cussions to prevent glass fibers from entering the speaker unit, and held together by almost a hundred strong screws. Rock solid. Open sound, more than crisp high end, and as it seemed today completely insensitive to power buildup to sound completely rock solid and accurate without bending. I used a halogen electronic transformer I happened to be able to use ti try the amplifier with those speakers at higher power than the wall wart charge and low power play plug allows or than the stable and hum free batteries allow. I put some more windings on the output transformer ring of the halogene tranformer, louded the normal output with a smal halogene lamp, put the extra winding in series to get about 50 volts top top voltage, which I fed into the amplifiers rectifier. The amplifier is built from an aluminium enclosure, which has direcct contact with the amp chips, without electrical isolation, so the chips heat the housing directly, and the whole case of about 12x12x4 cm acts as a cooling plate, which appears to work also at such voltage without becoming to hot to touch, so I had some more power to play with, and tried the various software synths I can use with itm and for the first time in years had the right experience of a more then good speaker system with sufficient power handling capacity and a more than good enough amplifier systen wth just enough power to kick a little real ass. Ha, heard bass drums, bass sounds never falling short or findinf much of the systems limites, snare drums good enough to concert with the better things out there, synth notes to kill for, synth basses I never heard in no disco, pianos made of samples which actually came a little alive and all that because I did all my jobs right with a modest supply of the right parts. And I heard bass drums and *heavy* synth lines break down because the small (60 watts) halogene transformer decided that a quarter of a second or so of the peak power I demanded was just too much and it switched of for half a second or so if I wouldnt lower the peak or continuous power use. Also it needs to deliver a certain minimum power or it simply switches of the begin with, and tries again every few seconds if it has a serious load, which requires more than a fre bike headlights in series, a 20 watt halogene light did the job fine of keeping the supply alive. Such experience in sound is wort quite some work, and makes one want more, especially of the synth stuff at even more appropriate powers. Which is, like, 10 TIMES MORE! Or something... Like the max rating of a few hundred watts, and then those lines, those fills, and those stabs and solos, those drum patterns. Or a straight feed from the string simulator with the spread stereo image, and wheel conrol of feedback, preferable on a bigger keyboard to have the worst bassnotes contenestants at the same time as the higher pitched stuff, AND the wonderfull lower chord range. Takes power to sound right, but then it does, no distortion of kinds that start to show up, no breakdown anywhere in the amp speaker line, no audio feedback trouble, strings, sound, major sustain times, period.
Saturday, August 10th, 2002
12:49 pm	the internet blues I still have to bog down my number or size of files on my main site, theover.tripod.com, so I still can't access that homepage or diary pages, or correct the error in the wavelab page which could be the result of the automatic addition of another popup window. At least I seem to be out of danger zone with the angelfire.com/ab/theover, where I've backed some files up and removed them from the site to go under 20 Megs. It could be some work to change a lot of old pages (again) to for instance 50megs.com, which could hold my old diary pages. Even though I mostly (except in some javascript and cgi scripts and maybe a few java applets) have neat and standard will-always-work straight html links in my pages, it could be a bit of a hassle juggling all the references, absolute and relative all over the place, and make sure I don't crossload images where such isn't desired. Maybe aI should write a decent Tcl/Tk script for such purposes, too, to keep a distributed site easily manageable. I worry a bit about the standard trouble with such approaches: do I get verbatim lines separated from actual links, and the same for some of the script constructed things. The html itself, as a special case of tagged langaudge is only prone to undesirable newline and spacing artifacts. Enfin standard programmers stuff for those who did go through the school of actually knowing what you are doing, leading to correct use of files (non win-) sockets and interprocess communication, and making effective use of compilers and text processing tools which do get a decent and efficient job done instead of juggling a handfull of object classes around forever, waiting almost as long for which error will show up this time, and never giving up that that is the Only Wau and the Better Thing on this earth. Gosh. Where are my copies of Lex and yacc, have bison or lion lying round somewhere for you major software project? Not just kidding. Yesterday I had the chance to play around a bit with the library computers of my old university, which are open to install your own things on enough, and I put on cygwin, which nowadays can be instructed to automatically download and install also the open86 XWindows port to the windows platform, that is on can run an Xwindow server in a seperate windows 95 + window, and have those familiar xterm or other windows to work with, have focus follow the mouse smoothly, and even get some decent enough multitasking done, with a rich enough set of unix tools. Got all that, and the latest Java compiler running in a few hours, including getting a decent enough shell and xwindow setup, hear hear progress and T1 lines. I've been downloading the Intel pentium datasheet pages, both general and instruction set ones, to use with the ar assembler, which nicely deals with pentium assembly as it seems, and GNU CC can also generate a bit verbose assembly code from my C code. Good to have a look at my string simulator core audio interupt code, which performs fine on a pentium 4 but the more strings the better, and I'm looking at simulating a 2 dimensional set ouf coupled oscilators, for instance a drum pad. The software simulated strings sound wonderfull on a new speaker/amp system I was able to make I've not spread the strings over the stereo image automatically, did some more adjusting, and cen get a Simon and Garfunkel concert in central park kind of sustained chord sound out of the thing which is actually convincing. For real. As in muscially, not primarily as an excact copy. I tried a (real time version) of csound with some guitar models, which sound rediculous in comparison, even though they include waveguide modeling and sampled imulse resonses. Rediculous is realy about the word. A sort of cheesy keyboard compared to a seriously impacting instrument I have heard come from not synth I've played yet, ever. Fun, though. I'm making a midi playable sampler, which works also as driven from a tcl/tk program, which is fun enough, too, and I've included additive synthsesis to do some nice organish notes, I'm thinking about blowing that up some more to include the analog modeling I've before used to make the microproccessor samples with which are on the demo somewhere on mydiary pages, which should be able to do real good sounds, and probably with major polyphony. Maybe I"ll include recording in the thing and make it more extensive, I have at least reasonable access to the means to make such a full blown program it may well be worth producing PD and commercial versions with. I would be good to crack the winsock socket unease with cygwins unix sockets, because I still get communication hangups when pushing a lot of data through a socket, which makes for instance a Tcl/Tk user input (lets say a slider move) lag behind before it arrives at the synthesizer core program, so that the whole thing becomes practically not useable. It shouldn't work that way, but it does. Maybe I'll peek in the Tcl/Tk sources to see how they do their socket stuff, or get into winsock just for the sake of getting such link (on XP for isntance) to work. I've downloaded, compiled and played with some windows UI unified library, with lots of bells and whilshed, which compiled fine under gnu C++, except that as always my nice tens of K's executables with standard glulib and cygwinlib dll's would become the horrible multi megabyte bulks so many inefficient dragonic userinterface wrapped programs seem to have to become. I like to know what I'm doing, have the complete code of a well working, actually usefully number cracking, and amazingly complicated program well under control by having a set of well chosen datastrucures, decent and effective contol hooks, and have it all assembler outputable way under the size of a small phonebook when printed in megafont. Nobody likes to go through megabytes of code and explain me that that is all usefull and needed to make some menus flap and get some trivial stuff done most script could do in no-time. Realy, there are serious observations in this area. We now have microsoft even underlining what I'm saying, a new babylon platform with a hundred and fifty (...) languages to go with it. My god. A single if statement takes a conditional branch and some flag setting instruction each in the order of 4 or 8 bytes. So fourty kilobytes of code can contain thousands of interrelated choices, even when programming them on a row, who needs more than that, normally, not including driver issues, which we have to chose between 5 zillion possible combinations of mouses keyboard layouts disc protocols, memory configurations, etc. And who can type or click faster than lets say three choices per second, normally speaking. Going over all files on a (sub) file systems, and reading them to find a certain word, that is computer work, that is fine enough. Create or manipulate a complicated structure of thousands of 3D graphics objects, with more or less complicated operations, that can call for some overhead of using object oriented modeling to give each kind their own behaviour and let them influence eachother dynamically, that is sensible enough. Talking to please myself, becasue I did that, successfully, with my own graphics language and Objective C (an academically more extensive forerunner of C++) ? No, I think it makes objectively speaking enough sense. I bet many modern 'programmers' don't even have a very good conception of what the machine they are dealing with actually does, and where the ideas that they are dealing with, such as functionaly programming, datastructures, pointers, arithmetic and logical operations, actually come from, and have been clearly intended. They came forth decads ago out of the ideas and practices of people who liked to make things work with the computer technology that preceded the current computers, and for clear reasons, the currentl technology has characteristics completly logically following from what was pioneered than. Except that some choices are FAR from the most effective or pleasing, ask intel why they carry around three memory models, none of which are very nice for achieving what some very ancient computer systems probably did a lot nicer and streamlined. I have the impression people want a computer even to be sort of an idea oracle, meaning that it gives confirmation that the idea about some part of live they may want to have actually has the credibility that it is Eternally True with Bill Gates to swear with them it is Good and Incredible, the eternal Karma's way, and unrebukable. Kicking at the information technologists again, are we? Not sure it is kicking, I observe what goes on, and get ideas, and respond. I remember when I gave (unix incidently) courses, and made for incredible amounts of money at the time with it (when I was just over 20), because I had taken years to be very knowledgeable in the area, which evidently would be popular enough with anyone who wanted serious computers to get some work done. I got sort of kicked aside (not so much out) because I'm sure some powerfull enough hidden parties were against me making it in their world. I didnt get to 'sour a feeling about it, I did get my pay, I did get recognized enough for being more than good enough at what I did, but still, I'm sure I missed a few 666 signs along the way to realize that realy some people are stupid enough to want those sort of ways in the world, and even want them bad. Because they haope kick some whore madam's ass? Maybe at times. Because they best at what they are, miserable sons of bitches, and want to continue being so, preferably with more power than a democratic makeup would warrant them? Possibly. Because they are deluded by so called spiritual leaders who are nothing but a countries and childrens'worst nightmare? Probably. I'l be doing some electonics, too, with production good values of almost negligable level, that might realy bug some 'people' at certain times. Maybe they've been warned by principles from that same type of world before, that it is not generally so that the worst evil becomes the most powerful. I believe there is God up there who also judges, and who needs no miserable power games to be himself in holyness. Maybe we're all 'victims of the inhouse drive-by', because one of our (well, uh, Hollands') leaders has (unnicely but aptly put) 'a bullet in their f* head', in the words of a well known CD of the rock/punk funk band Rage Against the Machine, of some years before the event. Probably a better idea than built and support it, that machine. Wanna see , buy, run, or otherwise know about some nice machines? Stay tuned. Dawn Marie is passed away. Goddamn. That is a biblical word, realy it is also in line with the ground text, let there be no misunderstanding or accusation of abusive language, it sais in the bible that those who have not the message of the gospel (good news) which the actual Jesus and His actual apostles gave, they will be damned as a result. And the evil world system has been damned by the highest instance of them all, God, as far as evil people didnt already damn themselves and others. I don't like it that I have to think about the reasons why a person who I think blessed instead of damned at least me is not any longer on this earth to maybe meet one day, or at least to get a bit more cheerful by. That it might be not a stroke but through the same circuits that must have made her psychologically harmed and even had her beaten up some time ago, and possibile abused her bad longer ago. I hate people who are into that. I don't think I'd write the truth if I'd put it differently. The idea that nazi dogs and dutroux's kind of killers and abusers are walking around freely and can get away with their horrible deeds and can hardly even mentioned because of being unallowed to break that taboo makes me more than sick. And than at least I don't feel I live the same society fabric or breath the same air as they do. Which I think helps. At least when children see me they can be certain that I will not at one or many unhappy points will have to surrender myself to some satanist rule which makes it necessary for me to kill or wrape or betray or whatever. I'm sure that makes them less schizofrenic then when they would like I at some point would have to deal with some official doctor who think they can call my electronics handywork some kind of a relaxing nitting excercice of no value, and who think that they can simply ignore the fact that it was quite some man enough who they were dealing with, and continue the surroundings' depersonalization work without hindrance, to make themselves place in my place, as some homeless know the principle of very well. Unlucky for them I did have an official degree given to me by what now have proven to be my enemy's, and more than enough working and live experience to not be touched in as a person by their ways, but still a world made up by such kinds is horrible for those who are information, strength, happiness, power or money have-nots. And I don't intend to stand helplessly by and let them get away with it. And I also don't intend to use the expression 'over MY dead body'. When it's a war people die. What they deserve and are often effectively into, is a war. A war against democracy, pushed upon them by american, and probably german, control. A war against humaness, normal enough personhood and spiritual which isn't miserable. destructive and liarish from the start, pushing against them by natural children and adults not having surrendeered themselves to such systems, and people with spiritual discernment and power, and moist certainly by God and His Holy Spirit, and I mean the real one here, not some deamon calling itself antichrist, or giving colorfull liarish revelations or images, or some people who claim to have taken the place of being the sole and only ligitimate respresentatants of christ on this earth, and have to remain so because otherwise their world would come to an end and their power wouldn't last. I didn't last through reformation either. And a war against anything good and worthwhile, agains every freedom, against sincere love, against power which is not infected by them and a war against simple and complicated truth, such as not abusing your neighbour as a rule of the thumb, or the truth that computers do no and will never sing satan's (the devils) praises, ever. They weren't constucted to, they couldn't for the life of them become un-(mathematically) logical enough, and I have claimed them, every nanometer, every electron, every bit every transistor and every wire of them, and I do claim to be the better one, and I simply don't give them over to such systems. Ever. They'll have to go through me, beat me first and make me convinced they are the better ones or that they can claim to own the ocmputers origins, and I know for sure that they can't. So computers will not be given over, damned or anything of such kind, even if it were only because of ME not allowing that. Ha. Period. And of course that is jsut a spiritual thing and a sort of a game, but not even in the sense of that game will children be convinced that the nazi or whatever system is agreed on by computers making clear that they are right. They'll be just machines to have fun with, to use for various purposes, and that's it. Just like remote controlled choppers, pocket calculators, synthesizers, and bull dozers. And I challenge any one of the adverse kinds to prove they are more knowledgeable about the fundaments, functions, programming and use of computers than I am, and if they don't, I sustain me claim that not just they have me against them, but that I am contentwise, effectively and actually the better one. So that they do not just lose such game because I happen to have some place, or because of meeting the all-powerfull God, but theat they have been challenged to play against me, and that they lost or are chicken against a better person. And incidently, I have been sort of forced to take it that all such is of such relevance, I prefer to simply compete in interesting fields make nice enough things, and lead a happy life, that is I don't take it as very interesting or something I desire to be engaged in such a game. Not at all, in fact I think such kinds are not just horrible and uninsteresting in their predictable evil-ways-as-of-old, but also dispicable. There is not much honour in defeating them. Unless I guess before the true God. But it sure helps to make the world a nicer place for those who deserve or can afford to at times live in it.
Sunday, July 7th, 2002
4:10 pm	Theo Verelst, p.a.:Postbox 94180, 1090 GD Amsterdam, Netherlands is a new address where I can be reached through snail mail, btw. I don't guess I'll check it more than once per week, but still, its good to be reachable for anything funny or serious or in between.
3:54 pm	Short note about website and diary I'm what one could call fine enough, but don't want too much info to spead this way now, will see. My diary pages aren't realy on hold, but Tripod and angelfire decided to LOWER the amount of free space. which of course I deplore and find not logical, but it means I'll have to rearrange things to see if I can find enough space somewhere to move my files so I don't supercede the newly allotted amount. Until then I can't upload. Maybe http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/theover wil hold some new pages and stuff, and I rememer there was a site where on could put up unlimited amount of self made multimedia stuff, I just forgot where that was any hints? I've got about half a CD worth of music worth listening to. The music program stuff is going well enough, the string simuator with midi keyboard input ticks out quite amazing sounds, and I'm working on a real time sample player/synthesis program based on the same sound, graphics and midi libraries, which combined should be able to run on most windows machines and have a ton of possibilities. Yesterday I've tried recording some of my christian thought pages in audio form, of course with some processing and for instance cathedral type reverberation. Jeleous, verelst? No, I don't think so, just for fun, and to show I can. Maybe I'll make a CD. Anyhow its good to see the liveyournal thing still works.
Wednesday, May 9th, 2001
12:29 pm	Medical library? Why the hell would that be? Basically, after some interactions and thinking I decided to at least also make effective use of my time by taking up a main lead I've worked on in the past, which has proven fruitfull, and quite foreseeing what may be of interest, and read in more into the areas of lets say nano-biology, and the physics and models that go with it, with and eye for applications. Ever heard of motor molecules? They're sort of a spindle in a bearing which make jerkey rotational motions at the molecular level, making the assembly mobile in the interior of cells, where there is fluid (cytoplasm). Just as an example of the quite rich and newly researchable areas of nano scale activities in human celss,of which brain cells have a special interest of me, just as the source and operation methods of morphogenetics and their alledged 'fields'. And I have an interest in how the whole machinery of the powers of the human brain works, and at least to simulate and quite sophistically and scientifically challenging model and simulate such behaviour I'm (knowledge and experience) equiped quite more than average.
Saturday, April 21st, 2001
10:59 am	Just a scribble I was seeing if this account atr least is still operative, since I don't have an easy backup means for this stuff. I just browsed to my own wavelaboratory page on a completely different computer system and network, and well well, it works wonderfully well, that's good advertisement.
Thursday, October 5th, 2000
1:42 pm	straight from scratch journal file sept 27 00 The synth startup Because I've been doing a lot of 'unknown' work, this journal makes it clearer what i've been up to, and also the things i'm dealing with in let's say the development sense of the synthesizer (electronical / digital musical instrument that is) that i'm making. The sonic part of the research is about the type of sounds I'm interested in and how they can be effectively made, the computer part of the research is how to effectively enough, both in engineering sense and in efficiency of the resulting machinery, the desired sound algorihtms can be specified and and built into a digital system, and the design part of the research is how i feel comfortable working with the results, given the limitations of my current tools and equipment, and how i can prepare for using the same software and built equipment in more state of the art environments. The development is about the actual machine i'm in the process of making, that is an extended micro computer system (fast cmos Z80 system), with communication possibilities (currently a parallel port driveable DMA interface), the analog part: filter(s), VCA and modulation/signal modification circuits, and a speaker/amplifier system to monitor it all. Points of specific attention are the DA (digital to analog) converter, which is a self made 8 (or some more) bits multiplexable and pulse width modulable high speed design, with room for analog multipicative behaviour, even exponential (for generating envelopes). Currently, the Z80 ticks at about 10MHz, which could be 35 or so with a better chip ($4 or so), and the DAC simply directly feeds a high quality amp chip with some high quality speakers basically laid on their heavy cardboard box, the DMA interface is operated after selecting memory range and resetting manually, the PC with the printer port interface is an old laser 286 system with simple enough analog (VGA/EGA) monitor and a few dozens of megs of free harddisk space. The computer hardware basically consists of circuit boards connected with quite some band-cables, and a few breadboards. The display is a 16 digit large led display, the keyboard an old TI calculator keyboard, alternatively a baby-keyboard (small 'organ' keys), which is now driving an analog synth prototype with one of its three octaves. There's no proper enclosure for the (mainly) cmos computer circuitry, resulting in electrical/magnetical field sensitivity, which is constantly noticed because every few minutes an old refrigerator switches on, generating a major inductance pulse, picked up by the computer circuits, which then usually f* up some way. Mainly this is because the fridge thermostat is broken, so i drive the motor over a relais-card driven by a digital pulse generator from one of the computer circuit boards. The nearness of a cable conencted to the relais card alone is enough to disrupt some of the HC (cmos) computer chips, though luckily not the memory, most probably because there are many long wires connecting them, that act as antennas. These chips are very fast by themselves (up to few hundred megaherz effectively), and have very high input impedance, that means a small antenna picking up a rapidly changing magnetig field can already generate disturbances that end up changing some of the circuits ones and zeros. I play my own watchdog timer regulary resetting the system, and if necessary reloading programs and/or data. What does the system currently do? The computer ticks, that means it is a valid system, with at least 8 kilobytes of battery backed-up memory, taking z80 programs from for instance a PC, or by inputting them by hand even (which i did thus far for short test programs). The dma interface fills the memory effectively with anything needed, it has counters over half the 8k address range, and can be switched to the lower 4kbytes (which are normally protected to be red only, for storing fixed programs), or the upper 4k, which can even be written while a program is running. Basically, the computer can be given a dma request by pressing a switch for 'dma-mode' which is honours in usually a microsecond or so, after which the dma circuit start filling the memory up, with data provided on its 8 bit input. It can be given a pulse for writing that byte into the memory, and advancing one memory location. This process is repeated until the computer is switched out of dma mode, and resumes running, possibly after first pressing the reset button. I've made a few cables with the right connectors to fit a standard parallel printer port, which can connect to this dma interface. Then any program that can access the printer can write data into the Z80 systems memory. A basic (gwbasic or qbasic) progam can easily write 4 Kilo byte into memory in maybe 10 seconds, a possibility I've used to dump data in hex format into the z80, and to generate additive fourier synthesized samples and download then as a 'one page' (256 bytes) wavesample. Development software The 286 pc has basic, an assembler, recently a sort-of-C compiler, for the pc, a cross assembler for the z80 (good enough), with standard ihx (or motorola) hex output files, that can be read by a basic program that checks the memory map and downloads it into the Z80's memory. The z80 assembler also takes input from a 'tiny' C compiler, which should be able to produce serious enough C programs with little library (I'm working on it), that should download straight into the z80 as well. I've tested that compiler, and it produces sensible z80 code, with basic library for io (including character/string IO, basic 16 bit math (including mult/div), and the assembler I've used for making display and keyboard driver software, including keyboard driven menu texts on the 7 segment display (with ok enough rendering of ascii character strings), a keyboard scan routine with hex and ascii output, number conversion from byte to decimal and hex, and from decimal to byte, and simple one byte decimal calculator with the to operands and the result on the display (two decimal number with a cursor moving over the 6 digits circularly , and a 3 digit result, of course limited from 0 to 255). This all works from decently formatted assemly source files that with two short dos (norton) commands can be assebled, linked, ihx coded, and downloaded into the Z80 memory (currenlty using gwbasic) , overall re-assemble time for all this and the below is mayby 30 seconds. What does the synth do now The Z80 is tested for acting as a waveform generator, and as delay line. Neither job necessarily fits the 10 MHz not-dsp, but waveforms are needed, and when they'e made good enough, can make up for a significant portion of a synthesized sound. A basic program can add sinewaves together like a drawbar organ for instance, and generate frequency tables, that are used to link a certain key on the keyboard with a certain pitch of an oscilator. A generator routine for the z80 takes a 1/4k wavesample and a pitch number, to generate a wave on the DAC, and two of them have been combined (using the alternate register sets in the Z80) to have two oscillators, with sampling frequency somewhere between the ultra sonic boundary (my tweeter and amp are quite up to undegraded peformance way over 20kHz) and CD rate, depending on the key scan code up to about 50kHz. One row of the keyboard (8 keys) is scanned at sampling rate, and table converted to one octave of pitches, with the black notes being playable by two adjacent keys, and an octave shift by pressing the highest key with other notes. The main fun is to have a good sample, and detuned oscilators, to get beating patterns in the sound. The key-to-pitch tables are per note, and can specify slighly different pitches for the oscilators, completely controllable per key combination. The accuracy of the pitch control (basically the phase increment sampling error) for the current try-out software makes it possible to have slowly varying relative phases of the oscilators, fattening the sound. The samples themselves are mainly three types: simple waveform, simple harmonic content, and more advanced. The first types are fine, like sine (nice and quiet for the higher sample rates where the mechanical damping of the sampling frequency is good), sawtooth, triangle and pulse (both ok enough buth sensitive to the interferance of the sample frequency with the (fundamentally infinite) harmonic structure), the latter in need of additional analog or digital filtering. More complicated samples I've generated by making use of additive (sine) synthesis, subtractive digitally simulated filtering synthesis and by newer forms of synthesis: additive time localized harmonic synthesis, combined with the former two methods. The latter method should not be confused with wave table sequencing, that is clearly planned extension, requiring only overseeable software changes, I'm refering to making a single harmonic come up and damp inside a wave-sample, i.e. within one period of the fundamental. Idea wise its like producing a smooth spike, which envelopes an harmonic (a sine wave) with a rise and fall time of roughly the same order as the wavelength of the harmonic. Interestingly enough, the ear is quite capable of distinguishing the harmonic even when the visual sine characteristics are almost completely masked by the pulse. The pulse shape that I use can be a gaussian is like a gaussion distribution function from statistics or physics, a sort of bell form, or a the sine wave can simply be divided by its own (zero-centred, i.e. phase shifted to k+pi) argument to arrive at the fundamental 'sinc' function in frequency band limited fourier resynthesis / sampling theory. The result is interesting, and definately more varied than only traditionally made waveforms. The traditional ones include additive organ tones, similar to the ones on my web site, because when the detune is carefully chosen, nice vibrating effects can be made, and filtered notes, even including resonant filter simulations, which are starting to get more then satisfactory (although they take quite some time to compute in 286 basic)m though I'm not yet satisfied with the relation of the filter coeeficients and the analog filter diagrams I'm interested in, and of course the waveforms to start with combined with the filter (a 4th order IIR with +&- overall feedback prceeded by a 3 sample weighted average FIR) must be bandlimited (easiest with additive synthesis) to be fed moise free enough through this. The idea of the smooth pulse within a wave sample acting as an envelope for a single harmonic is similar to a pulse waveform added to a sample, with possibly the same 'nasal' qualities, but it offers other possibilities as well, it adds the harmonic to the spectrum without making the sine wave of that harmonic sample-long. Now consider the beating patterns that result from detuned samples with similar harmonic content (including phases). When the phase difference between the samples is 0 degrees, all harmonics are added and basically the samples are reproduced at +6 dB (i.e. twice as loud) as a single oscilator. No lets say the phase difference is 180 degrees: then all even harmonics cancel out, because of their symmetry: the second half of a sine wave is exactly inverted compared with the first half. There is no way out of this, that is in the beating patterns there is a complete daming of all even harmonics at some point, no matter what their amplitude is. By phase shifting, it is possible to make them damp out at different points in time, which makes their interaction more interesting. For instance in the case of detuned organ notes, the vibrations in amplitute (and after non-linear mixing also in frequency) become more varied when the harmonics (such as 1st, 2d, 3d, 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 12th, 16th) are mixed with a phase offset. Still, the beating patterns are regular (they can be computed), and have the same envelope for each harmonic as a result, except with different time scale. When a harmonic is present in only a part of the (repeated) wave sample, the interference between the two oscilators for that harmonic has a different quality, amplification and/or damping take place when the pulsed harmonics 'come together', because the phase diffence slowly makes the locations where they occur have equal phases and then move away again. The result is worth it: interesting harmonics can be combined, and have sudden amplitude changes when two oscilators are combined. The sound is good enough to use as basis for good synthesized sounds, with peaks that are actually good enough to be presentable straight away from keyboard-ish imitations and squeeks. Some of the sounds have quality enough in them to be realy pleasing. Various organ sound in some key ranges, various simulated filter sounds from good enough starting samples mainly because of their pleasing filter fatness, and a some of the engineered standard plus localized harmonic sample pairs with mild or heavily resonant filtering are good enough to switch on and keep listening to for a sustained period of time, because they sound good, depending on the sample rate and the accuracy of the phase increment computation, they sound clean enough to be real loud even (with 8 bit per oscilator and no particular attention paid to the optimal use of headroom), while they don't need volume to sound rich. Mind that all this is without envelope generators (only note on or off), with two samples of 1/4 of a kilobyte each, no wavetable sequencing, i.e. the samples remain the same. In general there are interesting (and predictable enough) observations: the phase increment must be accurate enough (otherwise the result sucks), the sampling artifacts must very much be part of the sounds and the reproduction system, they easily noise up the result considerably, and give sampling rate with harmonics interference products that are absolutely unacceptable. Ah, and there is more to the current synth software, it does a digital delay simulation as well, even with feedbach control, though currently only at quite a low sampling frequency. Sound? serious enough, depending on the sample fed through it, and not too long (only 4 k samples lenght, at lets say 12kHz sample rate for the sake of argument, that is about 1/3 second.). The interesting part of the sound being that the direct driving without any processing or tricks in the signal pathm which gives it a solid general and 'slap-back' effect. Of course on louder volumes the echo-ing component gets grainy with 8 bits resolution. It currently takes only one oscilator as input, and the result is that for certain sample and note combinations, the delay line starts resonating with the oscilator slowly, which makes the whole sound nicely acoustic as an effect. Over the whole the in digital sense limited horsepower of the system as it is (not in old analog type synthesis terms, btw) requires accurate engineering of sounds, that mostly sound strong enough as basis, but regularly are limited and often not up to high beefyness standards. Some of them already are, and reasoning leads to the whys for this, which makes for interesting enough possibilities. The next things? Prepared for are that I have more memory (128k CMOS e.g.), more synth circuitry (several filer types, non-linear circuits, vca type of circuitry), and maybe more digital circuitry to do sample playing and also sampling with, mayne i'll get some wav's with instrument samples from the web or something, though on a 286 its not all too fast. While i'm at it, maybe some buffered parallel port (wav based) sample output is an interesting id, though this would beinteresting enough on a bigger system, too. That is the development work might be saved for later. The z80 system is good for its job as synth controller and waveform manager, as well as doing a lot of IO, but not as a dsp or fast number cruncher, of course. Industial thinking type of assessments, of course. sampling tests special hardware facils actual UI for synth
Tuesday, July 25th, 2000
12:00 pm	little update I found an interesting book about electro-magnetical waveguides in the physics library, which is lets say the theory behind microwave systems and possibly photons, from just after the war. Donno about the rest of 'life' at this moment. A real full blown synthesizer can be made now, but I'm short of resources.
Monday, July 10th, 2000
6:56 pm	Small update I've been working on my synthesizer, for instance a Z80 based software oscilator with sample waveform, 8 bits, 100kHz sample rate, controlled by the keyboard of my system. All the notes of an octave can be played with good frequency accuracy, and the 8 bit converter produces nice flutey trianges. The sample waveform is currently generated by a small program that can do trianges with varying duty-cycle, c.q symmetry, up to a sawtooth, for instance rise time 10 times higher than fall time. That wave passed through the same analog circuitry as an analogly generated saw or block wave makes quite nice two-note polyphonic lines. The guitar-type of distortion incorporated in a 2 pole voltage controlled filter makes for quite heavy sounds too with this configuration. Since the DA converter and microprocesser system function well (currently at about 8 MHz, because I couldn't get a faster CPU with my current means after I accidently blew up the second), I can now generate envelopes as well. I've used a few libraries to read up on my theoretics, for instance FM synthesis gives harmonics described by Bessel functions, which also appear in high frequency circuits. Various synthesizer books with electronical and digital circuits are interestingly showing I'm doing fine in various synthesizer building blocks that have been used in well known older synthesizers. The fundaments of electrical engineering deserve and got attention, I've been reading up on transforms and mathematics, filter circuits.
Saturday, June 3rd, 2000
1:54 pm	Synth I've been working also a bit on the 'little' analog synth: 3 osc., highly non-lin fet-based filter.