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Archive of my old blog

This is an archive of a blog I updated infrequently between 2004 and 2009. I update my Twitter stream more often so I have updated my front page to simply pull that in.

Birthday

It's around that time of year that I celebrate my birthday. I got my Iron Key working, hung out with my friend Craig, brought my drums home, saw Cynic with my wife and played some guitar with my daughter.

Avery

My daughter was born a few days ago: pictures.

Oregon

Erin and I are back from a trip to Oregon. The picture above is from Cannon Beach which is a 1.5 hour drive from Portland. I was there for a conference hosted at Reed College. Last week I was in Austin, Texas visiting Dell.

New Life

I've changed a lot of things in my life. Erin and I bought an old house in Easton PA and I'm now working as a System Administrator at Lafayette.

England Prevails!

I am back from two weeks in England. Read all about it.

Lisp in Mexico

I'm back from Cabo San Lucas. While there I enjoyed Practical Common Lisp and other vacation activities (beach, boats, beer, ...)

ruQueue

In two weeks I'll be going to Educause to present ruQueue.

I'll be giving out many LAMPPIX-based demo CDs.

I'm happy that something I designed at work is being released as Free Software.

Long Time, No Posts

It's not that I haven't been busy (and would have nothing to post) it's that I've been so busy that I every time I think of posting I put it off. Now summer is here and my top five posts contain Summer Vacation from last year... not any more.

Recent news:

• I taught the second half of an Intro to Programming course in Python at SCILS.
• I have a new laptop and I found lots of handy guides on how to set it up (install install wifi X buttons firefox keys)
• I'm moving from Edison to Helmetta.

Free Software Foundation Meeting

I attended the FSF 2005 Associate Member Meeting this weekend.

This meeting was more exciting than the 2003 and 2004 meetings and it also left me feeling more optimistic about the movement. Unfortunately, I was rather tired and didn't take as good notes as I would prefer. However, some of the people that I attended it with have posted some information on it (Richard and Beth).

Here are some pictures.

Music Notation

Here is the notation (with tablature) to The Mullet Burden:

• PDF
• Postscript
• LilyPond Source

I've posted this because:

• I found some Dillinger tab on the net, so I see that people are interested in this kind of thing.
• I thought that typesetting this song would be a good way for me to learn LilyPond.

I'll probably typeset more songs in the future and archive them in the Music section of this site.

All Hallow's Eve

Not much to say. Just enjoying the season (pictures).

Recording with Free Software

I'm interested in recording music again. AGNULA, a Debian based distro looks promising.

I'm happy to see that there is a recording-grade sound card that works with the Linux kernel, the RME Hammerfall. I found an article about how to set it up. The equipment from the article is not too cheap ( PCI and Multiface). I might start by seeing how far I can push SoundBlaster Live.

Summer Vacation

Erin and I have just gotten back from camping in the Adirondack Mountains and visiting Montreal.

It was 40 F on the first night. I enjoy going north to start the Fall early. Aside from kayacking, hiking, and eating well I read Hackers & Painters, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. Now I'm back. Aside from writing PHP and going to meetings I'm reading Mostly Harmless.

Dillinger at Vintage Vinyl

I got to see dillinger two nights ago. It was good to catch up with everyone. I mirrored some pictures of the performance.

While there I picked up a copy of Miss Machine. I love it. It's the perfect next step for them.

Permanent Link to this node

Fractal Music Explanation

Rolf Wallin has an article that gives you an idea of how to actually start making fractal music. I.e. this article is different since a lot of the other fractal music pages on the net don't seem to explain how the music is created.

My New Media Player

Wouldn't it be cool if my audio player had some visual representation that was a function of the audio so that I could watch "new age dreams of flying" as I listed to my music? That way the complexity of all those fancy graphics could introduce bugs so that my audio player could work less reliably... Hmmm. Perhaps it wouldn't be that cool.

In my applying the "small is beautiful" philosophy I am opting to use command line tools instead of GUI ones like xmms to play music. This approach may not be for everyone.

For example, I am now using madplay to play music that is encoded in the popular but patent encumbered MP3 format:

jfulton@grond:~/tunes/euro_metal/Meshuggah/none$ ls
01_humiliative.mp3*       03_ritual.mp3*
05_aztec_two_step.mp3*
02_sickening.mp3*         04_gods_of_rapture.mp3*
jfulton@grond:~/tunes/euro_metal/Meshuggah/none$ madplay -v *
MPEG Audio Decoder 0.15.2 (beta) - Copyright (C) 2000-2004 Robert
Leslie et al.
>> 01_humiliative.mp3

It's easy to interface with:

• type "p" to puase it
• type "b" or "f" to move back and forth in tracks
• type "t" to cycle through stop tracks
• type "q" to stop it

Croquet

My Niece

Reading List Update

• I'm focusing on ANSI Common Lisp again.
• I enjoyed The Swine Before Perl.
• As for fiction, I finished Snow Crash and I'm now reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

An old picture

My Dad sent a picture of me from 1983 having a half-pint of Shandy in Dover England.

Read an interview with Ben.

My Introduction to Kendo

I had my first Kendo lesson this week. My feet still hurt. I also borrowed A Book of Five Rings from the library.

Today is my birthday

Each year I look forward to a card from my friends the Panykos. This year they have not failed me. Behold:

Attempting the Scheme Modal Web Server

I set things up so that I could follow the Modal Web Server tutorial:

1. I built (./configure, make, make install, ldconfig) Chicken Scheme and compiled some Scheme into C.
2. I then extended my chicken with three eggs: ssax, regex-case, and http (as root: chicken-setup ssax.egg, chicken-setup regex-case.egg, & chicken-setup http.egg).
3. After untaring the modal webserver and going into the directory of its files, doing a csi *.scm started the chicken and (spawn-server 5000) started the server.
4. I could then point a browser at http://localhost:5000/ and see the HTTP requests printed on the Scheme prompt.
5. After pasting some of the examples into the read-eval-print loop I was able to type (show page1) and see the output of Hello World, however I was not able to see it run in my browser by pointing the browser at http://localhost:5000/page1.

I might have misunderstood something in the tutorial. No time to fix now. I will respond to this when I find the time to figure it out.

Also, I read an article about using S-expressions to make dealing with XML nicer via ssax.

I found a nice tutorial about using continuations for web programming in Scheme (which was linked from Finding Lisp).

Someone showed me a great rant that was posted in response to a "Should I learn Perl?" question on comp.lang.lisp.

Interesting links that I recently found:

1. Omniscience Protocol
2. This is what it's all about: Freeing the Mind!
3. I've redesigned my site.
4. A good article: Thoughtful Programming and Forth
5. Start might be as cool as Google.
6. A comment on Slashdot I liked.