Hacks from the kitchen

Making Pd useful with Soundflower

I've been using Pd as a sound environment, generating midi as well as generating sounds, although more of the former than the latter. The main reason for that was that I didn't really have a useful way of getting sound to and from Pd - but I do now, with Soundflower which I don't know why it took till now for me to find.
Add to that the Percolate binaries I just found for Os X - with a lot of granular synth instruments and I have a ton of great new reasons to work with Pd.

Creating websites with builtin APIs

Whether or not its RESTian kosher I don't know, but the live Apollo 11 transcript is built natively around a JSON API. If you don't like mine - feel free to make your own.

Details: The API is at

http://www.classy.dk/cgi-bin/apollo_transcript.pl?q=transcript&jsonp=somejsonp_prefix

- note the jsonp parameter, which lets you call the api from JQuery and similar libraries without cross site worries. Don't need JSONP. Don't know what it is? just use

http://www.classy.dk/cgi-bin/apollo_transcript.pl?q=transcript

instead. If your javascript api needs the parameter, the doc will explain how to use it.
The output is quite simple: There's a 'now' parameter indicating server time (seconds since unix epoch), time of liftoff in same terms and notes from the log. The item 'current' is the latest transcript item before now. The item 'future' a list of the next events to occur.
The format of the events is an array with four elements: time, an id for the speaker, the actual text and a text representation of the time - relative to 'now'
If you build something using this script, please be conservative in how frequently you call the API - the future item gives you an idea of when it makes sense to call.

If something is unclear just view source on http://classy.dk/moon - which explains in source how to use it with JQuery, and gives tables describing the IDs of speakers.

This way of building websites: Presentation with HTML+CSS+JQuery and a pure API backend really appeals to me. Clearly there are fallback concerns for non-modern browsers etc. etc. but the separation of concerns is appealing - as is the instant availability of an API for other's to use.

Getting to the Flash developers

It worked wonders for the ARToolkit to be connected to the Flash developer community. Maybe it will work for Arduino and hardware hacking as well - using the Netlab toolkit.

Plugging the holes in the free Mac video toolchain

It must be a money making scheme - but iMovie won't eat Quicktime video for editing. Annoying way to make money is all I'm saying - fortunately there's an easy workaround: iSquint will compress and convert to MPEG4 - which iMovie will gladly handle. Obvious caveats on quality and compression rates apply.

Demo Dag - vil du være med?

Har du lavet noget der (næsten) virker, så kom og vis det - eller kom og se på de andres ting.
(English? Summary at end of post.)

Første gang: 9/6 kl 20:00. Sted: Egmont, Vognmagergade 11 (kom præcis, så vi kan lukke jer ind)

(location: Egmont HQ, Vognmagergade 11, Kbh K. Be there sharp at 8PM - we need to traverse access control. )
Sign up here (or by leaving a comment on the post)

Jeg ved ikke af at der findes en begivenhed med følgende plan i København: Man møder op med sin dims. Noget man har lavet. Noget der virker*. Man har 15 minutter til at vise det frem og så er der fem minutter til snak. Så er det næste projekt. 5-6 projekter per aften og så en ølpause Demoer er 7 minutter lange, med mulighed for dommerens overtid. Diskussion i pausen og bagefter. Tænk pecha kucha, bare uden slideshows.

Vil du være med til at lave en? Jeg kan ikke se nogen grund til begrænsninger af hvad projektet kan være - web, visuelt, auditivt, mekanisk, elektronisk, til køkkenet, søfarten eller soveværelset - udover nogle grundregler:

• Det virker - det er ikke konceptdag, men demodag.


• Don't tell us - show us Vi vil hellere se hvad den kan, end hvad du lavede den af.


• Ellers ingen grænser Intet er for stort og intet for småt. Kom med dit million-dollar produkt eller din hjemmestrikkede, ørkenhærdede, touch-enablede pandekageopskriftlæser.


• Gem dine slideshows, servicekoncepter og forretningsplaner til en anden aften

Datoen er ikke skrevet i sten. Jeg foreslår tirsdag som en god ugedag - fordi torsdage og fredage for ofte er optaget.
Læg en kommentar hvis du er interesseret. Skriv om du gerne vil se på, eller om du har noget i skufferne du gerne vil vise frem.

English Summary Want to participate in a (software or hardware) demo day in Copenhagen? June 9th. Only running code. Demos are 7 minutes (with negotiable slack) Other than that hardware or software, woodware or anyware, web or desktop, mobile or stationary - anything goes. Leave a comment if you're interested. Include whether you've got stuff to show or want to look.

* Om det er lavet af træ, chips, papir eller bits er op til dig. Det skal være lavet. (næsten) af dig. Man skal kunne demoe det. DET VIRKER er de magiske ord, der åbner døren op. Tvivlstilfælde afgøres af Deres ærbødige overdommer.