rugoso

maybe instead of just a loud sound, they should put a loud voice telling them the situation and what to do ... I guess some alarms do that

About 90 dollars a month in a little iPhone app called TweakyBeat .. it was free for like three years, then some day I asked myself if I could change it from free to pay, and yes you can.

hmmm, mission impossible? which one?

agree, if you've got this far, why not show it real time, as an option maybe

thanks raquo, and yes, this is kind of the teaching i meant ;)

this is certainly useful information for me, something i could try

I'm in mexico city, if you ever visit this city ;) ....... ok not exactly south america but anyways ;)

i thougth your where talking about the grand theft auto "rockstar" company, that would have been interesting ;)

"could the age of celebrity finally be over?"

Thats like saying that the piano would kill all virtuosos, because all the notes are already there, as opposed to a violin where the player has to press the string on the right spot.

Just getting the pitch right is not gonna make the music, not by a long shot.

"Taking the time to author original, thought provoking and/or informative posts ..."

But maybe you should do this sort of thing just because is good for you in the first place (as opposed to good for your blog/PR). Write down and develop your thoughts on paper, just as you do with code/pseudocode. Then once you have something worthy, publish/share it.

thanks!, supercool! ;)

hey ericb, can you tell us how you learned social psychology? maybe what books, sites ... etc ?

also im checking the material that FleursDuMal mentioned ;)

thanks jgc

ive heard a lot about the arduino, i think im gonna get one or build one

but i also want to be able to build my own circuits, to learn to program the microcontrollers, so i can get closer to the idea of designing the hardware for my software

i have recently been interested in microcontrollers, chips you can program, to control things like motors and leds, and to recive data from sliders / knobs (potentiometers)

i got some PIC programmer and some pic chips and started doing some experiments ... but it seems like for me, a mac os x user, the AVR is a better option

im looking to buy some AVR "kits" from smileymicros.com very soon, as soon as i get some money ;) (i live in mexico so i have to pay more to get fedex)

im into programming music apps to make my own music, and i see a lot of potential to make hardware to control music/sound

hey, if you try the smilemicros kits, let me know ;)

LOL, this is always one o my favorite insults, "he uses tables in his html"

I usually listen to only one track in repeat (for about an hour), one that I'm very familiar with, so i don't get distracted by it (it may or not have vocals)

I've notice that by doing so i stay in the same mind frame all the time.

Also, it is good to choose a track that puts you in the right mind frame, examples: "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens puts me in an optimistic and somehow upbeat state, "A Warm Place" by Nine Inch Niles puts me in a more introverted-deep thinking state

i think it's a great book, not a "serious" book, whatever that means

as i mention in another comment, I'm willing to call it mental-masturbation, in the sense of exciting one's mind (the nerdy mind anyway), so in a way I'm probably not too far from your vision of the book

i also think this kind of excitement is the basic motivation of the nerdy minded persons, and any text/experience that can get you in that state is something to appreciate.

lastly it exposes the reader to many topics, the reader may get interested in some of those topics and make some further investigations on its own, and at least in that sense it is a science divulgation book (it's more important for science divulgation to get you interested in the topics that to give you some raw facts)

GEB is not a scientific paper ... if you don't realize this, then there is no point in continuing with this answer

Yes that kind of mental-masturbation excites me too ;)

from reading other posts (comments) I've remembered another good book, sort of on the same flavor as the "biological" parts in GEB:

-"Investigations", by Stuart Kauffman

exciting lecture too

- Godel Esher Bach

- The Development of Mathematics, by E. T. Bell

not that i understand mathematics that well, but this book gave me many ideas of how an abstract/complex thing like mathematics can evolve through history, i found that exciting

- when i was a teenager i liked a couple of books by Martin Gardner

a way to make it change direction that works for me pretty much every time: see it, then look away from it, so you see the image only with your peripheral vision (it will look like someone skating to you, or away from you), then consciously make it change direction

i currently don't

it would be nice though, but the thing is that since right now im making apps for my own, this apps are very "hermit" apps, they work for me, but for others they would be very clumsy, unintuitive, buggy, pain in the ass apps ;)

but when i do i'll let you know ;)

i do use mac, by the way, these apps are build using cocoa

hey, do you have some of your music online?

nice, is that your work?

Im making music apps, to make my own music ... im still not really good though.

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I'm pursuing the idea that a programer can do art with his programming (and his programs), and actually be good art, not just "look what i did with some code because I'm cool and can write some lines of code just like that" kind of crappy art, but something that a regular person listens, and say, "wow, thats sounds great", without explaining them first how the piece was made and trying to win some points with that explanation.

I know that if the music doesn't sound good then i have to get better at it, else I'm just fooling myself ... pretty much in the same way you just can't make a web app and say "i code it myself!", and then expect it to be a success.

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I think the hardest thing is to actually get a good sounding thing (synth, efx, etc).

Is very exciting, to be a programmer and a "music maker", to be able to come up with crazy ideas for music instruments and then actually build them. Just wanting to know how will they sound is a very strong motivation.

You can listen to some of what i've been doing (music tracks) if you are that curious:

http://myspace.com/rugoso

Most of it its done with my software, i just use audiohijack and logic to masterize - add "punch" - and to do some edits - cut the bad parts, put together the good parts.

The track called "Setup Seeker" is an exception, there i only used a sequencer and a midi controller I made, but the sound actually comes from commercial software.

I realize its not really good, I'm working on getting better at it ;)

Some one else doing music apps here?

agree, pretty lame that they dont show a believable, casual conversation with someone not related to the project

still, this bot seems many times more articulated than me :P

Paul Graham is so brainy, he has 2 left brains, and uses 0.3% of one of those to emulate Picasso's right brain, only with a better interface.