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Archive for July, 2009

Studio Day 2

13 Jul
Studio Day 2

Studio Day 2

I have spent a bit more time adding appliances, and setting up the Mac. So far, looking quite nice. The Mac previously had OS/x removed so I could run Linux and Windows XP on it – but Im now going through the 1 hour 20 minute install to put the original software back on.

Once everything is set up I’ll tidy up the cables and sort out the rest of the room. I’m even thinking of decorating the room so its a bit more homely than it currently is with its office-style decor. I think I might need some soft furnishings too as there is quite a lot of echo for such a small room.

 
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Posted in Hardware, Music, Software

 

Akai APC40. Worth the money?

13 Jul
apc40

Akai APC 40

I have always thought one of the most frustrating things about Ableton is the lack of real hands-on control. You can do so much with it, but for me it has always been quite difficult to tweak sounds with the mouse. For example, it would be nice to be able to tweak the resonance and the cut-off at the same time when in Live mode.

This sweet looking piece of kit allows you to control pretty much everything in Ableton with your hands for instant gratification.

At the moment they cost £399 so they are not cheap, and seeing as I dont know how to use Ableton yet, I wont be purchasing one just for now.

I’d be very interested to know if anyone has got one, and how they get on with it though.

 
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Posted in Hardware, Music, Science and Tech, Software

 

Unlawful arrest. Silence the protester.

13 Jul

What does it say when someone who has broken no laws gets taken away by the police for using a megaphone? Weirdly, the Police seem quite happy to leave his 10 year old son with people they do not even know.

I’m certainly not an expert on the law of the land, but after doing some digging it seems that there was no legal reason to arrest Darren in this clip. For those who are interested in the path this country takes, We Are Change have a UK website: http://wearechange.org.uk.

Seems we are still on the way to becoming a Police state. If only George Orwell had been a politician….

 
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Posted in Politics, Videos

 

The Wolf and the Pig

13 Jul

Excellent stop motion animation featuring a wolf and a pig. This has now been ripped off by Olympus and the same technique has been used in one of their adverts. Enjoy!

 
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Posted in Videos

 

Ableton Live and XioSynth working

12 Jul
The NC20 running Ableton and the XioSynth 25

The NC20 running Ableton and the XioSynth 25

I managed to spend a bit of time today setting up some of the music equipment I mentioned in my previous post. So far, I have Ableton Live 5.2.2 working (legit) and the Xiosynth. Im a bit annoyed as when I bought Ableton a couple of years ago, it came with a free downloadable upgrade to v6 – which no longer seems to be available. Im downloading the new v8 demo, so will see if it is worth the £250 upgrade once I have had a chance to try it out.

My new Samsung NC20 Netbook / Laptop seems to be handling things just fine. The only major problem is that when I have it on mains power there is a massive amount of noise. At the moment I have cables everywhere – so hopefully this issue can be addressed properly once I have a tidy up. Seeing as the battery lasts for about 5 hours, hopefully this wont be an issue for a while

I might just set up the Mac mini in here anyway. I wonder if Ableton support upgrading on a different O/S?

 
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Posted in Hardware, Music, Science and Tech, Software

 

Update for Nokia E71

12 Jul

There is a new firmware available for the Nokia E71 smartphone.

Details and download available on the Nokia site here:

http://europe.nokia.com/get-support-and-software/download-software/e71-update-phone

 
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Posted in Hardware, Science and Tech, Software

 

A CSV from XML using XSL

10 Jul

I was asked recently to add the ability to export XML data from our web-based facilities management software. This was so our client could write some of their own scripts that would update their Wiki with some information from our database.

This was simple enough, but then I was asked to add CSV functionality to make it easier to code the simple scripts they would be using at their end, which would run nightly via Cron. Once the XML was working, I didn’t want to write another page so instead, I created a XSLT file that transformed the XML in to neatly formatted CSV text.

The code below is all that was really needed (I have chopped it to only use 2 fields). The fields in this example are delimited by double-quotes.

<xsl:for-each select="//media">
"[<xsl:value-of select="@field1"/>]","<xsl:value-of select="@field2"/>"<br/>
</xsl:for-each>
 
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Posted in Programming, Science and Tech

 

Welcome

10 Jul

Welcome to gEt DoWn ToNiGhT!

Its been a long time since I did anything on this domain so I’m glad that you have found me here… This site will now become a dumping ground for anything I want to make publicly available. This will most likely be music, code, photos and videos or just ideas and general ramblings.

Nothing much here at the moment, but hope to get set up soon.

free debate

 
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Posted in Site Information

 
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