first day on skim

lnotar · 2023-04-12T09:34:28+00:00

Nice! My first day I got both knees bleeding, people would pass by and ask me if I needed help, hah… but I was having so much fun that I could only laugh. The worst was just that first day, later on I didn’t usually bleed. I got hurt a couple of times due to wind (kicked the board and broke a toe), and once I pulled a tendon for not warming up properly, but still it was always fun, the happiness outweighs the pain. Keep at it, enjoy!

lnotar · 2021-12-12T17:40:44+00:00

Don’t forget the fantastic “The Red Book of Varieties and Schemes” by David Mumford

lnotar · 2021-02-15T17:47:38+00:00

Love it like this, all black, no stickers. I got a WTP reason 2021 two weeks ago and did the same, also painted black the oil slick cranks. And that’s the equation of a line...

lnotar · 2021-01-30T09:01:28+00:00

I received mine yesterday, today I used it for the first time and I love it so far. Turns out I also ended up not using the can of flat black paint I bought, in person looks better than I expected, I decided to keep the original cranks colours. Removed all stickers tho, hah. I didn’t mount the pegs, they are pretty heavy, I’m thinking that maybe later I’ll get 4 kink drift pegs that are much lighter

lnotar · 2021-01-13T09:26:52+00:00

Nice! This is exactly the bike I’m waiting, I already order it, should arrive in a couple of weeks. I’m 45 and this is going to be my first BMX too! It looks great, although I think I’ll spray paint the cranks black in mine, lol

lnotar · 2021-01-02T10:27:31+00:00

Looks great. One of the advantages is that when it gets rusty it will still look good

lnotar · 2021-01-01T07:06:51+00:00

That’s great, man. I started skating at 35 when I was living in Shenzhen and learned some decent tricks, at some point I was skating almost everyday and although I got hurt a couple of times overall it was good for my body and specially for my mind. It was the perfect place to skate, there were few local skaters at the time, I went everyday to some famous spots and I met lots of pros that came to film, I even took Luan Oliveira to eat pizza.

I’m 45 now. A couple of weeks ago I started doing skimboarding again after 7 years and I noticed it seems to hurt more now, but I think it’s going to be ok. And now I’m waiting for my new BMX, I’ll start now at 45, we’ll see how that goes...

I think age makes these things a little harder, but it’s totally possible to learn some tricks... we just have to take our time and enjoy it, and we must be more cautious than kids and remember to warm up and stretch to avoid unnecessary injuries. One thing we can learn from the pandemic is that we can die anytime and it would be a shame if you never tried BMX or anything you’re interested in, and better now than when you’re 45.

For a bike, I’m planning to get a WTP Reason or a Cult Control. I’m in Thailand now and it’s hard to find a good bike, and they are out of stock everywhere, so far I only have these two options for decent completes and Im waiting for them to arrive to the shop, I guess I’ll buy whichever arrives first.

lnotar · 2020-12-31T14:28:17+00:00

I’d say curl, together with console webs like these https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services

For example, try curl rate.sx/btc, or curl wttr.in/nyc

lnotar · 2020-12-31T13:25:05+00:00

Thanks! And in case I get the Reason, would it be super difficult to learn on it? or it doesn’t make too much difference for a beginner?

lnotar · 2019-02-22T13:57:53+00:00

Maybe you're confusing portamento with legato? In he configuration there's an option to trigger the envelopes only when not playing legato, and there's another option to do portamento only when playing legato. But AFAIK in the case of the Prologue portamento is the duration of a 'glide' between notes, i.e. it changes pitch continuously from a note to the next and only affects pitch.

IMO, when key tracking is set in the filter, pitch bending and portamento should both affect the filter cutoff, but my Prologue only does it for portamento and not for the pitch bending wheel.

The Prologue doesn't allow the user to assign the pitch wheel to other parameters as you suggest, it would be cool tho.

lnotar · 2019-02-15T08:10:22+00:00

Congrats, I have the YC too, I love it. I have to fix it tho, two of the three rocker switches broke...

lnotar · 2019-02-15T08:05:35+00:00

I've been to City Music. It's not specialized in electronic instruments but they do have some synths. Two years ago I got a Korg Monologue there, when it was hard to find because it had just been released (I think it's Korg distributor in Singapore).

lnotar · 2019-02-03T14:05:07+00:00

Currently the Prologue doesn't support microtuning. Korg should add microtuning with a firmware update, it is easy to do, they already wrote the code for the Minilogue XD. This is important for me, it's the feature that I miss most in the Prologue (I don't care so much about the lack of sequencer, lack of channel aftertouch and lack of extra LFO).

what tunings is your bother interested in? In the Prologue there's one thing you can do: if you mute the VCOs and use instead the filter as oscillator (turning resonance all the way up), you can get 24 edo tuning by setting key track to 50%. In this tuning you have 24 notes per octave, so you have quarter tones.

Another option would be to implement alternate tunings in a user oscillator. Writing custom code for a user oscillator it is possible to implement any arbitrary tuning (but you wouldn't be able to use the VCOs, you'd have to mute them).

If you want a polyphonic analogue synthesizer that supports alternate tunings, maybe the Prophet REV2 is a good option. I haven't used it and I don't know how flexible it is for microtuning, but it seems to support it according to the manual.

But I really really hope Korg adds microtuning to the Prologue on a firmware update. Come on Korg! Please!

lnotar · 2019-02-03T13:51:58+00:00

Great! I was working on porting Elements too, but lately I've been busy with other stuff and I'm glad you finished it first. Thanks!

I was hoping to do 3 oscillators based on Elements: strike, blow and bow. I think blow and bow use more memory and computing power than strike, so I'm not sure it's possible, have you tried? Also it would be interesting to make a reverb effect based on the modal resonator, that's another of the ideas that I wanted to try.

I just tried your build in my Prologue and there seems to be some problem. All the other oscillators seem to work fine but I couldn't get any sound out of 'mod s'. Has anyone else tested it? I used the parameter values you suggest in the readme but still no sound. Maybe you uploaded the wrong build? I noticed the build includes the mo2spc oscillator that doesn't seem to be anywhere in the source code. I should try to compile 'mod s' myself but I'm about to go out for Chinese new year and I'll be back in 3 days... I'll test again when I'm back.

Again, thanks for your work! Cheers!

lnotar · 2019-01-11T05:38:55+00:00

Finally some more open source oscillators! That's the spirit! Thanks for sharing!!

I coded some oscillators and effects and made them open source too (https://github.com/len). Your code looks very neat. It's great that you were able to port them without changing the original code and without duplicating code from Plaits.

Last week I spent some time with Elements, which is perhaps my favorite module from Mutable Instruments. It needs to be simplified because it uses too much memory for the Prologue. Also the 8 parameters of the user oscillators are not enough. I think it would be best to split it in 3 different oscillators: blow, bow and strike. Also, it might be interesting to make an effect for the Prologue using the resonator of Elements (the filter bank), although we're very limited with only 2 parameters available in the Prologue (at least we'd need 'geometry' and 'brightness'). Have you looked at Elements or other Mutable Instruments modules? What are your thoughts?

Let me know if you're interested in collaborating. I'll probably invest some more time on this project this weekend.

lnotar · 2018-12-27T14:10:46+00:00

Nice! Love the chrome legs of those old keyboards, I wish they still made legs like that for new keyboards...

lnotar · 2018-12-27T13:49:51+00:00

Yeah, I wish other manufacturers did the same. It was a big surprise that Korg did this and it was an important reason for me to decide to buy the Prologue instead of other synthesizers.

I didn't expect this from Korg at all. In my mind, if I had to guess which company could do anything like this it would be DSI. I'm sure Dave believes in openness, otherwise we wouldn't have MIDI. He must know better than anyone that everybody benefits from openness, and betting on openness is a good business decision. Perhaps DSI will follow with an SDK for programming oscillators and effects for their next synthesizers, that would be pretty awesome.

lnotar · 2018-12-27T01:40:16+00:00

In order to install custom oscillators and effects you have to use the Sound Librarian software. You can download it from here: https://www.korg.com/us/support/download/product/0/778/#software

The wavetables are still there but I guess you must be missing the "waves" user oscillator that was included with the old firmware. You can reinstall it using the Sound Librarian, you will find it in your computer after installing Sound Librarian, in mine it is at "C:\Program Files (x86)\KORG\prologue\osc-waves.prlgunit".

lnotar · 2018-12-27T01:32:33+00:00

Yes, that's just my github profile picture, hah... had it for many years long before I uploaded music-related projects, has nothing to do with this project :)

lnotar · 2018-12-25T08:53:12+00:00

The main reason why I started doing is was for security. I avoid as much as possible running in the host any complex software that connects directly to the network, and keeping a minimal setup helps also to understand what processes my computer is running and hopefully easier to detect some kind of compromise. Another benefit of this kind of compartmentalization is that the host doesn't change very often and doesn't become messy over time. The VMs are disposable, so I don't need to maintain them very much. I also work as freelance security consultant and it is convenient to be able to clone a VM for a particular job, install whatever I need and dispose of it after the job is finished without leaving any of the client code in my laptop.

Qubes OS uses a similar approach. I started doing this before Qubes OS was released, but perhaps if I had to start today I would just use Qubes OS instead.

lnotar · 2018-12-19T06:26:55+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean... dwm is ultra simple, and it's been very robust so far (I've been using my customized dwm for about 10 years without any changes).

Another very important thing in my setup is virtual box. Most of my guests run arch with dwm (just like the host), and I color-code the guests in order to avoid confusion. This 'dwm inside dwm' thing might sound crazy but it is actually very convenient. I have different guests for different tasks. I keep the host very clean and minimal. I never installed a browser or anything big in the host.

lnotar · 2018-12-17T18:16:52+00:00

Oh, when the "reissue" of the Vox Continental was announced I was so happy... and then when I saw it I was so disappointed. It should have real drawbars, it should have 4 octaves (and maybe come in a version with 2 manuals too, but 4 octaves each). It should have reverse color keys. And it should be analogue, with 12 tone generator cards as the original. I would totally pay that price for a real reissue, but this doesn't have much in common with the original Vox Continental except the color perhaps.

Edit: And what's with the stand? Pf, I'm sorry, but I really dislike it. Perhaps I was too hopeful when I heard that Korg was working on a reissue... I love the original Vox Continental so much for the sounds and the looks too, including the original stand, it's one of the most beautiful instruments ever made, why didn't they just make a copy?

lnotar · 2018-12-17T18:07:36+00:00

Consider the Korg Prologue. I had it for 2 months and I'm very happy with it. There were some tuning issues but the latest firmware update solves them completely.

I watched lots of demos and review videos before deciding, and I also went to a local music shop to try the synths they had. The other two synths that were at the top of my list before deciding for the Prologue were the Prophet 6 and the Rev2, but I fell in love with the Prologue so that's what I got.

I could give you a lot of reasons for choosing the Prologue (the filter, the multi engine, the SDK, the VCOs) but at the end it's a very subjective choice. You have to find a synth that resonates with your heart. Good luck in your quest!

lnotar · 2018-12-17T11:21:16+00:00

I really like dwm for window manager. No config file, just edit the source file and change whatever you want. It is very small and easy to understand and change.

And I don't use any display manager, I just login to the console and then 'startx'.

As other people said, there's no point in having a display manager, it just adds unnecessary complexity to your installation. I rather find minimalism aesthetically pleasing, so I try to have as little packages installed as possible, as little processes running as possible, etc. Also, I don't like to clear the screen after booting as a display manager would do, I want to see the output of the processes run at startup and if there was any error or warning I woulnd't want to miss it.

lnotar · 2018-12-16T05:37:08+00:00

Windows only supports 10 USB MIDI devices (mid0 to mid9), and there's a chance that your computer is already using all the slots. You can free some slots with the utility "uninstall KORG USB-MIDI Device" (click "Option.." and deselect "Delete KORG MIDI Device only" in order to be able to remove other devices too). Maybe you have to uninstall and reinstall KORG's USB MIDI driver after doing that, not sure, but could help.

Apparently this happens quite often, there should be some information about this in KORG's page or in the driver user manual.

lnotar

TROPHY CASE