Tcddk

Started working on the DSP. Turns out something is wonky. Trouble with one or more of the knobs in the core. After putting a couple of debug statements into the asm, Looks like one knob is awol and/or tied into another's signal path. At any rate, whatever the cause, one is stuck at 0x400000 permanently, but the GUI for debugging has the knob being moved by another knob. That is not good.

Despite the hurdle, it did cause me to go into investigation mode and have a look at all the source. That was definitely a good thing, and now I'm comfortable digging into it. It's funny how all the texts and stuff on DSP make it sound like it is difficult - something only for people that are not you, etc. When really it's normal everyday programming -- it just happens that eventually your program enters a function which contains some math operations.

So, I guess, at the root of it, that's all "mathematics" really is -- a bunch of data getting passed around between registers... on paper... with a pencil.

Step

Picked up a MAM SQ16. It hits the spot.

(defun go-time ... )

Crisis averted. After reading through error logs and spying on processes, etc., I discovered that the fatal loop / hang in the opening phase of the eclipse startup was due to a missing SBCL_HOME var. After defining that in my .bashrc (I like it there) things went fine. Now able to get to into Eclipse, and also view the REPL view, so it looks like I am good-to-go.

(defun a-good-time ... )

Because of the lack of l33t h4x0rz at my current place of employment, I have taken to reading the books and essays of people who have the same inner need for creativity. I stumbled across an essay called "Teach Youself Programming in Ten Years" and somehow made my way to Hackers and Painters, which I'd skimmed before. (That link is to an essay form, but there is a full fledged book.) The book is also available through Oreilly's Safari bookshelf thing, which rocks.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I put a certain Debian-related (Linux) distro on my laptop a number of weeks ago after feeling like something was missing. A proper JRE, Eclipse, Python(s), MySQL, Apache httpd, Tomcat, hex editor, etc...

I messed around for a while writing a bunch of utils and the like, including some bootstrap-type tools that do the "I'm tired of coding this every time I start a new project" kind of work for me in a way that is more succinct and elegant. When I did this, I noticed that what I was doing was text crunching and parsing and making lots of lists of things. Not really a revolutionary revelation, but that, plus the H&P book in the back of my mind, means the next thing I added was Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) and Cusp (Eclipse SBCL-friendly plugin). I'm trying to get that up and running as I type. After a few false starts with wrong versions, misleading installation instructions, files in the wrong places, etc, I think I am on the right track. About to get to the make-or-break point. Will it make, or break?

It breaks. Hmmm.

Away and back

Well, shortly after my last post, I got married. That was planned. What wasn't planned was adapting to the new lifestyle.

Curiously, with all the female voice happening in the house now, I'm finding less of an urge to work with the synthesizers. I read somewhere(s) that complex music and sound stimulate the part of the brain that is also stimulated by the female voice. I guess I was compensating.

But.. also, since I have less time, I have chosen to focus on programming ('hacking', if I may be so bold). Haven't had time to hit the ToneCore DSP yet, but I did find something exciting to do. See next post.

A new adventure

Having done pretty well with MCUs and assembly, I'm going to try moving on to DSP land. Picked up a Line 6 Tone Core developer kit. Looking forward to seeing what this DSP business is all about. I know the signal processing maths, but pretty much nil about implementing audio processing in code. Can't wait.

Wow my walls and curtains are ugly

This is my command station. From this cockpit, I steer my glorious wooden abode and its inhabitant(s) through the lines of light, ranged in the non-space of the mind.

One moment during transition

Take from the table

Resuming aerial vibrations. Stay tuned.

Point of privilege

God is Creator.

Creator is Artist.

Art is Experience.

Experience is Memory.

Memory is Storage.

Storage is Human.

Human is Individual.

Therefore, you are a cache of art.

Furthermore, you are the result of an artistic process.

Therefore, you are art itself.

The artist who is creating you is God.

Choose to yield to the Artist, or choose to be cast away.

State of the nation

Blacksmith

I put together this graphic - it's a composite of images from the area where my ancestor had his blacksmith workshop for the King Ranch in Kingville. Today, on that spot is the King Ranch Henrietta Memorial Museum or something like that. Not sure of the official name. Anyway, the graphic is an ode to the past. Kind of a chiascuro effect.

Stretch

This will become something else.

Vim-deo

Put up a video at Vimeo a few days ago. Just a bit of messing around with Vermona DRM1mkii. Was mainly running a sound-quality comparison with YouTube. Vimeo wins - easily. Kind of makes me anxious to put up some audio-visual pieces...

...and also to fabricate and/or program a non-step-sequencer. Not sure how I will do that. On the one hand, doing a hardware PIC-based version would be great for keeping my assembly language chops up, but otoh, a C# program that renders to MIDI file would be good for other sorts of practice.

I think I will work on music and videos for a while and since the new FL Studio (8) is satisfactory in the interim. Now that laptop is around, I have a free platform for rendering some Premiere/AfterFX work.

Here's the vid...

Work sum

Mainly focusing on plans for the remaining months of the contract's first term. Taking some ITIL-derived documents and activities, and elaborating on them to extract a customer-agnostic list of IM/IT processes. We will then take the processes and procedures we have been provided and do a cross-check to see what our current inventory looks like relative to a possible to-be model. Also, still trying to get the project rolling in EAC, and may end up attending some EAC-specific training with the heads of state as it were. • Also, looking at visualization and navigation options for making surfable maps of BP/BPR. Possible extensions in the future to provide a place for trend analysis etc. • Apparently still on the hook for realtime IT dashboard. The service desk software must be gently excised from the enterprise. Maybe that is possible after all the trouble (downtime) it caused this past week. I hope so. It would open the door for SOA efforts which are more aligned to upper echelon requests for net-centricity.

Re-in stall

Looking to start using the laptop as the main music and video workstation, so I gave in and reinstalled Vista. The biggest issue with XP was trying to find proper drivers for some of the features, most importantly the ieee1394 ports. Since I'll be using the AudioFire2 with the laptop now, that pretty much forced my hand. I'll miss XP. (Windows 2000 is still the best (only?) non-BS-OS, but life goes on. Well, I guess DOS was about as non-BS as possible.)

So anyway, to compliment my new gear setup, I decided to get around to grabbing my free upgrade to FLStudio 8. After installing, the longtime desire for a plain ol' multitracker / portastudio manifested as an upgrade to the Producer Edition for the audiotrack-in-playlist support. Hopefully that works like I'm imagining it will. I think FLStudio has finally surpassed Cubase and Logic. No joke.

While I was at it, I grabbed Visual Studio 2008 Standard as well because VS2005 on Vista was a real pita the first time around.

In other news, I picked up two books for CMMI. CMMI SCAMPI Distilled: Appraisals for Process Improvement and CMMI Assessments: Motivating Positive Change. I hope they're decent. Can't be too bad, I imagine. Report later.

Received my ITIL score: 37/40 for 92.5%. I missed one question in each of Service Desk / Incident Mgmt, Problem Mgmt, and Service Level Mgmt. Those were the areas I was most comfortable with, so I probably didn't pay close enough attention to the questions. :o

Let's play 40 questions

ITIL cert exam was today. Overall, there was nothing unexpected. Finished the 40 questions in about half an hour. Results maybe Wednesday. • The seminar was well worth the time and money - not only because of the expected successes in the exam, but because we got our customer involved in this, and three lead IT folks participated in the seminar and took the test. It was a great way to get everyone thinking from the same point of view. Now that we have a common lexicon and and understanding of the ITIL "processes", I think everything will start to fall into place including a better understanding of how to proceed with all the BPR efforts. • Perhaps the most important result was that the seminar and testing gave customer and contractor a common goal which was very low risk (i.e., possible negative outcomes only significantly impact the individual(s), while the possible positive outcome can be shared by the group). It was kind of like a war games exercise - no one truly loses, and everyone comes out increasingly assured of the other's competence. I guess it is a trust / team-building type of experience that is actually relevant to the real tasks at hand whereas a non-business-at-hand experience would miss the mark. • On a closing note, ITIL implementation is a great way to lay a foundation for CMMI because aligning to ITIL will provide the 'business engine' that will be tuned within CMMI, and not, I think, vice versa. Also, I don't agree with the view that CMMI-DEV is only for software and ITIL is only for backoffices and helpdesks. They are both concepts that aid in the orchestration of people- processes- tools systems.

The secret life of gear

Minimalism is is and isn't isn't.

ITIL seminar

ITIL seminar this week. The material is looking pretty good - better than just reading the ITIL docs - as having a sense of business context makes some of the more dubious ITIL verbiage a little clearer on the reality side. Certification exam is set for Friday.

Artifactual

Today we started taking a look at IM's collection of docs. We'll be getting these sorted and put into a matrix of CMMI subpractices as artifacts. What I'm thinking is that an excel spreadsheet is a horrible way to do this, even in the short term, but it's a lower barrier to entry. • Definitely am going to have to figure out a way to make an intranet type resource, dynamic (web server) or not (web pages in a directory). Hopefully this will either be a satisfactory solution, or it will provide a starting point for making a move into a proper set of web apps.