A drone rack in Ableton Live

I should be sleeping, but I’ve been sick for a week (and still is) so I’m tired of sleeping. It dawned on me that I could use max4live to make a drone-preset. Then it dawned on me that I do not need max4live.

I could use a rack, some chains and the XXX plugin. this is what it looks like:

This is where you can download it:
LittleDroneHelper.adg

And this is the song I made when testing it:
LittleDroneHelper by Larsby

Global sound art installation. (that I need help with)

 

I’ve been wanting to make some art to put in the public space for a long time now. Probably since forever. Since I like sound and synthesizers that has been my focus-area.

What?
Imagine a small box, Almost like an altoids-box, but thinner. On that box there is a string and on the other side of the string there is a weight or a hook. This box is thrown up in a tree, dangling back and forth and sounding. This would be an electronic sound, probably a pure sine or a dirty square-wave. This sound changes in pitch as the tree moves in the wind and the day dawns or set’s. The box is not alone. It has friends, and they sound together, creating a wonderful cacophony of sounds. Now imagine that there are many of these trees, all around earth. Now imagine that you could be part of that creation.

How?
The boxes contain a speaker, a circuit to produce the sound and a solar-cell to get the electricity.

Objectives.
I want the circuit to be cheap to produce, real cheap, so cheap that you wont mind throwing a bunch of them up a tree.
I don’t want to put a light sensitive resistor in the circuit, I’d rather have the electricity gathered set the pitch.
I’d like this to be funded via kickstarter.com, that way ppl will be able to contribute and get the sound-making devices and I wont have to shell out loads of cache, but most importantly I will have found people around the world that likes this idea and will be able to put it into action.
It has to be environmental friendly, in this case, it means that it wont be impossible to get the sound making devices down and recycled.
Volume should be of a 30 something while male speaking, not louder or softer. I think that is a good volume that will both be heard but not tinnitus inducing.

Why is this not already on kickstarter?
I want to be able to present a working solution and have prices on the hardware before I go on kickstarter, and right now I’m still prototyping the sound-making circtuit, these are what I’ve tried:

* 555 oscillator: (Needs amplification and does not change pitch when starved)
* A Couple (two)  LED-blink circuits changed to talk to speaker instead of a LED (could not get to work, probably needs amplification)
* Four or so Hex schmitt trigger IC’s (I really like these, cheap IC’s, very moddable but they need amplification and does not handle battery-starve as I would like them to do).

Maybe I’ll try and find some 2ohm speakers, right now all I’ve tried with are 8ohm’s, perhaps then amp would not be needed.

Prices range between 10sek and 20 SEK, without the solar-cell (witch are about the same in price). Then add casing and we’re up at like 50-60 SEK. This will lower with volume ofcourse, but not by much.

I’ve been glancing at clockwork robot’s heliophone, but the schematic is using a 1381 voltage detector that is 1.75 USD in.

Help?
I need some help, good ideas about the casing and the amplification. Also a good place to source solar-cells would be awesome. Any thought on making PCB’s would also kick ass. I’d like the circuit to be easily modifiable so that everyone putting them up can add their own artistic touch if they please.

____________________________________________ some links

555 oscillator: http://www.piclist.com/images/www/hobby_elec/e_ckt5.htm

clockwork robot: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/kinetic-arts/sculpture/gallery7/1.htm

Recepie for hotsauce

 

My son and I wanted to make chilli-sauce, more him then me really. We’ve already experimented with adding chili to Hollandaise but to little sting in that. Lukas was disappointment.

This is what we came up with:

1: A handful of chillies, some dried since last year and some fresh.
2: An equal amount of garlic slices.
3: Some oil
4: Some salt
5: some honey.

Clean and rinse the chillies and the garlic. Remove the seeds from the chillies, put it in a bowl and mix it. (Lukas tasted one of the chilli seeds, then he drank a lot of water).

We keep ours in the fridge.

Contour HD 1080p

I ordered a small camera to mount on my longboard (since my last test proved awesome for keytarring but not for filming skateboards). That camera was ordered some weeks ago and have still not arrived (guess I’ll have to talk to paypal about that). So I went out and bought a Contour HD 1080.

The camera is cheaper then the GoPro but has fisheye and about the same specs. I really liked the connectors and the 720p in 60fps option. I’m falling in love with HD-movie, dont know how that happened. A few reviews I’ve read holds the Contour as the better camera, and a few the GoPro. The Contour was available when I had the itch so I got that.

The program that comes with … well, it’s not good. Let’s just leave it at that. It’s way WAY more limited then iMovie. huhuuhhh. Thankfully you get the camera as a removable drive so it’s up to you to use whatever program you like.

There comes two connectors with, one to tape stuck on to something, and one to put on your ski-glasses. I tried both on the longboard. At first both acted a bit flimsy, and liked to drop the camera. Really not ok. So even after drilling holes and securing the base the camera was dropped of. It’s a special feeling dragging a brand new camera on the concrete after your longboard. And what ever I tried it did not help, it still fell off. Enter overkill. So I stuck it on there really really hard. That resulted in really shaky videos and that the memory-card lost connection with the camera and then spazzing out and stop recording.

My solution to this was to go get some real super grade Velcro. I mean the new kind where there is only one type of connector. It worked great, the shakes are tolerable and the camera very seldom falls off.

What would a camera review be without some sort of video? lame!

Diy plant press

My mother recently retired from her teaching job and while this is a good thing she misses the plant press she had acces to there. On another side I’ve recently bought a really really big plane cutter and I wanted to use it for more then planing wood for the longboards so me and the kids decided to make a plant press.

Having only seen these as a kid remaking them from memory might have been a bad idea, but it was not. I decided we should go for the simplest solution, pretty oak and wingnut.

First we planed the wood, you could probably use plywood, but that does not look as nice.

Then all we had to do was to drill some holes and test it.
Here are some images of us trying it out on basilica.

20110909-053742.jpg

Here it is in it’s closed state, note the small whole in the middle, it’s so you shall be able to hang it on the wall, not a mistake. defensively not a mistake.

 

20110909-053804.jpg

Opened

 

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Ready for the press

 

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This is how the basilica looks 2 days later.