Agora Gallery - the proud sponsor of the Chelsea International Fine Art Competition, which offers contemporary artists the opportunity to show their original art at one the most acclaimed juried art shows in Chelsea, New York’s art galleries district.

I’ve recently exchanged links with their directory, so please have a look at the other great artists collected there.

basic skin shader 5.2 MB turntable QuickTime video

I’m currently doing this in Modo.. feel free to comment + critique. I think I know where it needs work still but what can you tell?

Diamanda Galás – Wild Women With Steak Knives

Here are some open-source projects and project ideas that I think deserve attention, work and/or contribution. This is sort of a personal scratch pad and wish list for now anyways…

1. SolarSeek
   Their aim is to give OS X a reliable native Soulseek P2P client, but they’re currently rewriting the new backend around museekd and could really use help! 
2. Tag
   A simple, quick and efficient AAC/MP3/MP4/etc media meta-tag editor.
3. Virtual Burn
   iTunes plug-in for writing disk images from extra large playlists.

And here are some smaller scripty ideas…

• Convert DAISY audio books to M4B with chapters and metadata from smil/html files.
• Import album artwork from existing Folder.jpg files.
• Command-line render Flash FLA to QuickTime videos.
• Command-line batch caption images using Python and CoreImage.

If you care about maintaining your music collection, sooner or later iTunes will frustrate you. At that point, 3rd parties can create scripts to control it in some really amazing ways. Here are the the essentials I use…

1. Quick Convert
   Uber-easy way to compress your existing Library files. The default 128Kbps AAC sounds as good at MP3 does at 192. You can probably save about 30% of your disk space by compressing down bloated MP3s. Use with XiphQT to recompress OGG or other formats to any of the iTunes encoders (AIFF, ALAC, AAC, etc). And did I mention quick and easy?!
2. Find Album Artwork with Google
   First place to look for most covers. Saves typing or endless copy/paste.
3. Discogs.com.scpt
   Better quality covers (especially for more obscure bands) than Google. Also great for track listings and year.
4. Search Wikipedia
   Good quality covers and metadata, especially for classic albums.
5. Super Remove Dead Tracks
   When files get moved or removed iTunes gets confused and believes they’re still there. Then you get an annoying exclaimation point and no sound! When this happens, you should run this script to prune the ghost tracks.
6. MetaX
   Ultimate video tagger. Perfect for movies, music videos and TV.
7. X Lossless Decoder
   Speedily transcode 1:1 FLAC, APE and other formats to ALAC or other formats for playback on all our idiotPods!

Amazon actually sucks for album covers I find, so don’t bother. Also don’t forget to put the scripts in your ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts folder. Happy tagging!

Psychic TV – New York Story

Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops are deployed in the region. (more…)

Chances are the time may come, where you find yourself running out of space on your default iTunes volume. Moving the location of these files (without rebuilding all the metadata) can be done, it just may not be that obvious how…

1. Open iTunes Music Library.xml from ~/Music/iTunes/ in a text editor. I recommend TextMate.
2. Find and replace all the paths to your old (or current) library files with new ones. ie: /Volumes/External/Music/ to /Music/
   (this operation can take awhile even on modern Macs, especially if your library is huge… I waited a few minutes for about 30 thousand tracks) 
3. Open iTunes. Don’t panic if you try to play your songs and they’re all missing!
4. Open Preferences (Apple+,) and under Advanced change the Music folder location to the new music path.
5. Wait another long while, while iTunes rebuilds the binary library data from your XML file.
6. Voila! You’ve moved around your files and kept the metadata intact. 

Another useful maintenance script I’ve found is Super Remove Dead Tracks. If you’re like me and don’t allow iTunes to keep your music folders organized, it can be a lifesaver when renaming files.

This is the iPod Classic I bought myself for turning 30… His name is Pubertus. The name is from a Robot Chicken spoof of Harry Potter.

It currently holds almost 30K songs. Yeah that is a lot. I also got a gay little green sock to put him in. I needed something dammit.

Now I just need to find some pimp earbuds. Update: I’m using a pair of Sure SCL4 Noise Cancelling buds. These are the best sounding and more comfortable earbuds I’ve ever experienced. Worth every penny! MusiciansFriend.com can probably hook you up. Most earbuds don’t even fit my bloody ears but these work great.

Here are some essential extra programs I’ve found that make my OS X Leopard experience that much better. Edit: This is a living document and continual work in progress.

They may not be all that killer in that they may not convince you to switch (although some could) but at the very least they’re all totally awesome programs. (more…)

I just wanted to share a great book I read called Masters of Doom by David Kushner. It’s the story of John Carmack and John Romero, the guys who founded id Software and created the landmark DOS game, DOOM.

I really enjoyed the rock star attitude of these punk kids who got rich doing what they loved. Also the dynamics between the two Johns and just the story of how Ideas from the Deep grew into id.

I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested in computer games, the hacker ethic, or even pop culture. I ordered the print copy from Amazon.ca.

Want to resize a folder of images for the web? The quickest and easiest way by far is with ImageMagick.

First, make sure you have it installed…

• On Ubuntu/Debian:
  sudo apt-get install imagemagick
• On Mac OS X:
  follow the instructions here
• On Windows:
  download it from here

This makes commands like convert and mogrify available…

Now open a Terminal and change to the directory containing the files you want to manipulate, then execute the following:

mogrify -resample 72 -quality 66% *.jpg

You can substitute other values if you prefer.. For a complete list of options see the ImageMagick documentation.

Warning, this will overwrite the files in your directory. If you had images in a different format, and/or wanted to convert them to smaller, lossy versions, you could try something like this:

mogrify -resize 25% -quality 66% -format jpg *.png

This will make copies of your resized images next to the originals in that same folder (Windows users may have problems using the * for batch file manipulations however).

That’s it! This really is the quickest and easiest way to resample a whole bunch of images.

As some of you may well know by now, I have recently started a new job at Trapeze Animation. They have afforded me a shiny new white Core Duo MacBook. Despite using Final Cut Pro for editing in college, this is really my first “official” Mac ever.

And what a good time to start using it! With the release of Apple’s OS X 10.5 Leopard they seem to have a very appealing and mature operating system on their hands.
(more…)

Towards a professional GIMP workspace…

I hate to say it, but I really don’t appreciate the default workspace of The GIMP. I have come to love this program but only after extensive tweaking and customization. Perhaps this alone is the best feature of this under-rated graphics application.

Here is my current workspace. I have provided a zip of the my preferences if anyone wants to try it. The brushes were especially awkward at first to use I recall, but here you can see they are quite easily accessible.

I still have some gripes about it however. In my Windows environment it often opens dialogs on my secondary display, even after I repeatedly move them over.

Making this screenshot was as easy as pressing my Print screen key and then…

File > Aquire > Paste as New…

Download: gimp-pro-22-01.zip

Unpack this to your ‘home’ directory, overwriting any files. Make sure to back up your own folder first, if you wish to restore any of your own preferences.

Edit: this has since died. Sorry Gallery² but your day has come.

This Wordpress plug-in looks very impressive and useful for DRViD.ca and other sites built on these open source packages.

It lets you easily embed images from your G2 installations into your WP posts. There’s a nice pop-up browser and plenty of granularity. Now the bigger challenge will be getting DEiWAZ theme to render properly in embedded mode.

Here is a quick script to test input events from your connected keyboard, mouse and/or joysticks.

It is built on similar scripts found already, but I’ve added handlers here for hats and axes, plus displayed the names of all inputs, so I could easily read what my wireless Xbox 360 controller was doing.

Hopefully this will help mapping of your controllers and joysticks for gameplay programming. This script requires Python and Pygame, and should theoretically run on any platforms they support.

import sys, pygame
from pygame.locals import *

pygame.init()

size = 300, 60

screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size)

njoy = pygame.joystick.get_count()
print "Number of joysticks detected = ",njoy

for j in range(njoy):
    gamepad = pygame.joystick.Joystick(j)
    gamepad.init()
    print "Joystick #",j+1,"(", gamepad.get_name(),")"
    print " nb of buttons = ", gamepad.get_numbuttons()
    print " nb of mini joysticks = ", gamepad.get_numhats()
    print " nb of trackballs = ", gamepad.get_numballs()
    print " nb of axes = ", gamepad.get_numaxes()

clock = pygame.time.Clock()
keepGoing = True

while keepGoing:
    clock.tick(30)

    for event in pygame.event.get():

	if event.type == JOYAXISMOTION:
            print "Joystick:", event.joy, " axis:", event.axis, " value:", event.value

	elif event.type == JOYHATMOTION:
		print "Joystick:", event.joy, " hat:", event.hat, " value:", event.value

	elif event.type == JOYBUTTONDOWN:
		print "Joystick:", event.joy, " button", event.button, "pressed"

	elif event.type == JOYBUTTONUP:
		print "Joystick:", event.joy, " button", event.button, "released"

	elif event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
		keyName = pygame.key.name(event.key)
		print "key pressed:", keyName
		if event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE:
			keepGoing = False

	elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
		print "mouse down:", pygame.mouse.get_pos()

	elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONUP:
		print "mouse up:", pygame.mouse.get_pos()

	if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
		keepGoing = False

pygame.quit()

inputTest.py

I am Basil Elton, keeper of the North Point light that my father and grandfather kept before me. Far from the shore stands the gray lighthouse, above sunken slimy rocks that are seen when the tide is low, but unseen when the tide is high. Past that beacon for a century have swept the majestic barques of the seven seas. In the days of my grandfather there were many; in the days of my father not so many; and now there are so few that I sometimes feel strangely alone, as though I were the last man on our planet.
(more…)

Beware of the iTunes version 7.2 (and higher) in Apple Software Update!

iScrobbler plug-in version 1.1.0 will no longer submit your tracks to the Last.fm database. Shame upon Apple and their nefarious crippleware.
(more…)

Behold the official DRViD.ca version 2.0 theme, entitled Deiwaz. The name belongs to an eldritch rune, known best to true initiates. It’s symbolism remains occult, but you may consider it just a secret name for the design you see before you…
(more…)

Currently I am working to increase my programming skills using Python. For anyone who doesn’t already know, its a modern, open-source, object oriented programming language.

(more…)

Let me begin by saying I have been a die-hard Winamp user for almost a decade. I have stayed up with all versions (except the buggy v3 series) and have arguably used it more than any other application.

These observations are also all made on iTunes for Windows, obviously. (more…)

For everyone who is celebrating today’s bullshit holiday, enjoy a special something I made just for you! Actually the truth is that I like Valentine’s Day, I mean why else would I go to such painstaking efforts?

And just for the record, this is obviously a joke.