Thank you WordPress.com for all the good times. This blog has now flown to it’s own host @ blog.djbarney.org …

blog.djbarney.org

Future posts will be published there.

I just set up file sharing to and from my home PC from my Samsung tablet. This is through my home wireless network. All without Samba ! This involved following this guide and setting these variables …

export APACHE_RUN_USER=djbarney
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=djbarney

… in “/etc/apache2/envvars” to my Linux user name. I had to do this because I’m sharing files in my home directory which cannot be set to the usual web server permissions. Notice the line starting with “///WebDAV” in the screen shot above taken from my tablet. That is a directory on my home PC. This is using Total Commander with the WebDAV plugin.

Security experts will probably try and scare you with all sorts of stuff about how bad this method is, but for home sharing we are …

1. Behind a fire walled router.

2. Using encrypted WiFi that needs a password.

3. On my BT router the WiFi is separated from the internet. Local “LAN” addresses (the usual “192.168. …”) cannot be accessed from the internet, only from the home network.

I must admit I was a bit unsure of moving away from my wired LAN network simply because WiFi can be seen (but not accessed) by anyone near by. But I think the convenience out ways the risks, and what we’re looking for here is easy access and usability. Becoming obsessed with heavy security, needs to be balanced with giving the user easy access to their files.

Why do so many people recommend Samba for file sharing to people who just want to share files through their home network ? It is not at all an appropriate suggestion and seems to be based on a couple of damaging myths ….

1. “Samba makes life easy”. Wrong. Samba is a huge, complex and messy application that is designed for large corporate networks. It can go wrong in any number of ways and is not easy to set up.

2. “Samba solves the problem of sharing files between Windows and Linux”. Wrong again. In fact very wrong. Samba has simply not been required for years because something called WebDAV has been built into Windows since Windows 98, as well as Linux.

WebDAV is a name for internet file sharing using the same system that serves our web pages to us. It was bought to us years ago by the same people that invented the HTTP protocol which is the basis for the World Wide Web. It runs using the widely used Apache web server. You might have seen it named as “Web Disk” on your WWW host. That’s WebDAV.

chrome://flags

Now, after you’ve read the warning, use this address to go the relevant setting on that page …

chrome://flags/#delegated-renderer 

You will see … “Delegated Renderer (AKA Ubercompositor) .If enabled the renderer delegates compositing to the browser, merging both compositing passes.”. Enable it and restart. You should now have smooth scrolling.

If this fix is not consistent then another possible setting is chrome://flags/#impl-side-painting which may even provide some more acceleration especially on multi-core CPU devices. But I have not messed with that setting yet as I want to see how stable the “delegated-renderer” setting is first.

Happy 2014 touch screen surfing !

UPDATE: Left the above because, apparently, this works for other devices. The “Ubercompositor” (great name ;P) is a developing feature for Chrome that hopefully Google will get fixed and released soon. Sadly, at the moment, it does not work quite correctly on my device. This seems to happen when multiple tabs are open. With multiple tabs, pages eventually refuse to display. So it’s back to the built in “Internet” browser provided with my device which does do silky smooth high frame rate scrolling. As it should be. Especially on a 1.2ghz 2 core 1gig memory device. Weirdly, the in built browser is based on Chrome so I can only assume that Samsung have optimised it themselves. I prefer Google Chrome because its a bit more advanced than the built in browser.

Man has lived a long time the way he has lived [violently and unconsciously]. By the end of this century, a critical quantum leap is possible. Either man will die in a third world war or man will take a jump and will become a new man. Before that happens, a great Buddhafield is needed—a field where we can create the future.—Osho

How can I say this ?

Finitribe said it best in their release “forevergreen” …

“People used to dream about the future. They thought there was no limit to progress. They dreamed of a clean, bright future, where science would make everything possible, and everybody better off. But somewhere along the line that future got cancelled.”

(Source)

“Time’s up” (Riddick).

Terrence McKenna (deoxy.org page) has been right all along despite the “atheists” decrying his “nonsense”. He predicted what he described as an “Omega Point” …

“Change more radical by magnitudes than anything that has gone before looms immediately ahead.”—Terence McKenna

His outlook was firmly grounded in a cultural movement that started around 2000 years ago, and an enormous knowledge of science, art and religion. The Gnostics were obsessed with comparing different Religions, Spiritual traditions and cultures. They foresaw the cultural Diaspora that we are now seeing develop today. It’s totally mind boggling and a bit of a shock (although I hope a good one) to anyone emerging from the cynicism and “realpolitik” of the twentieth century. The barriers are coming down between Religion, Culture, Science and Art … as Terrence McKenna predicted, although his pronouncements were much more like informed projections.

But what do I MEAN ? I hear blog readers saying.

One example is this damn game. X Rebirth. Look at the art direction in it. It has a lot of Manga themes that go right back to Akira from the 1980’s. Also notice the styling has an alarming (in a good way) relationship to current real life design of something like the latest Range Rover, the Evoque Coupe …

Range Rover, the Evoque Coupe

Themes like this may seem overly subtle to those not grounded in the history of art and culture. But with a bit of vision I think anyone can see the cross hybridisation that is occurring between science, art, religion and technology … and with our hopes and dreams of a future world. Not some perfect “paradise” where all our problems are solved. This is not some kind of wish fulfilment or magical thinking. This is an expression of a strong desire for FREEDOM … and that includes Earth being, what it has always been, a planet as an integral part of an alive cosmos. This is really happening. I was thinking … “what will I say to my children when they ask me … what was it like on Earth back in those times ?”. I really wonder what I will say. Will I say it was like living under the duress of a kind of blockade between human freedom and the rest of the Galaxy ? Will I describe the compartmentalisation of science, spirituality, religion, politics and so forth, that we are now seeing put in their proper relations ? I’m not sure what I will say yet. I’m only sure that I trusted the strength of my convictions and knew that a better future was approaching.

See more video’s and images of X Rebirth on the official site or Steam page.

The PhantomJS based thumbnailer in action !

I’ve made a WWW page thumbnailer. I started with this example. This is based on the way MATE desktop and other Window Managers allow definition of new thumbnailers. There seems to be some confusion about official documentation and specification, although there is an old guide here. It does not quite match the current way of doing it but at least its something. Apparently this is due to Freedesktop not being an official standards producing body, although the thumbnailer system has been adopted by many Window Managers.

A Small Thumbnailer Mystery

Initially it was a bit of a mystery why this PhantomJS based thumbnailer did not work. On my system (Debian), Blender thumbnailer did work, but “text/html” thumbnails did not show. Turning on “Caja Preferences -> Preview -> Show text in icons” did show the actual HTML text in the file as the thumb. But I was stumped. I decided to create a “dummy” thumbnailer to find out what was going on. Creating a dummy executable script for the thumbnailer with something like echo “$1 $2 $3” > /tmp/test.txt never created anything so it seems that Caja never called the thumbnailer. I tried restarting Caja (killall caja). Nothing ! Then I realised. I was assuming that Caja would recreate the thumbnails when presented with a new thumbnailer. But it doesn’t. Thumbs need to be deleted from “~/.cache/thumbnails”.

Dummy Thumbnailer

#!/bin/bash
echo "$1 $2 $3" > /tmp/phantom-test.txt
# write dummy PNG of size $3 to output file $2
convert /home/djbarney/bin/phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-i686/bin/dummy-thumb.png -resize $3 $2
exit

Now “phantom-test.txt” contains

"/media/fifth-element/Unextracted_Net_Grabs_Archive/mars/zero_longitude_on_mars.html /tmp/.mate_desktop_thumbnail.CKT85W 128"

… and Caja looks like this …

Dummy thumbnailer test

This “dummy thumbnailer” method could come in useful when writing other thumbnailers.

The PhantomJS Linux File Manager WWW/HTML Thumbnailer

Extract PhantomJS to “~/bin”.

djbarney@djbarney-anubis ~/bin
$ ls -lah
total 28K
drwxr-xr-x   3 djbarney djbarney 4.0K Nov  9 14:51 .
drwxr-xr-x 106 djbarney djbarney  12K Nov  9 14:51 ..
-rwxr-xr-x   1 djbarney djbarney 4.3K Nov  5 14:57 blender-thumbnailer.py
lrwxrwxrwx   1 djbarney djbarney   40 Nov  9 14:43 phantomjs -> phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-i686/bin/phantomjs
drwxr-xr-x   4 djbarney djbarney 4.0K Sep  7 07:58 phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-i686

Create a symbolic link in “~/bin” to “phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-i686/bin/phantomjs”.

Put the actual Bash script that calls the Javascript into “~/bin”.

#!/bin/bash
# Called by Caja using definition in "~/.local/share/thumbnailers/caja-phantomjs-webkit.thumbnailer".
# Using "%i" = Input/file path/URI. "%o" = PNG filename with path but without PNG extension. "%s" = Thumbnail image size.
# Assumes executables in "~/bin" are in system wide $PATH, or install to "/usr/local/bin".
# Write requests from Caja to somewhere where we can see them.
# echo "$1 $2 $3" >> /tmp/phantom-test.txt
# Call the actual WWW thumbnailer and write messages and errors to somewhere where we can see them.
phantomjs ~/bin/phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-i686/bin/make-www-screenshot.js "$1" $2 $3 2>&1 
# | tee -a /tmp/phantom-test.txt &
wait
# PhantomJS javascript cannot write direct to a PNG file with a PNG extension as Caja requires. Could use
# javascript to rename file but its fiddly so do it here !
mv $2.png $2
exit

Put “make-www-screenshot.js” in “~/bin/phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-i686/bin”.

// MATE Caja PhantomJS Webkit Thumbnailer, Barney Holmes/DJ Barney 2013
//
// Requires PhantomJS. See readme.txt
var system = require( 'system' ),
 webpage = require( 'webpage' ),
 page = webpage.create(),
 url = system.args[ 1 ] || '', // Set default path to generic thumb here ?
 path = system.args[ 2 ] || '', // set a default value if argument was not set
 width = +system.args[ 3 ] || 256, // set a default value if argument was not set
 height = +system.args[ 4 ] || 256; // set a default value if argument was not set
function getFileName(filename) {
 // Converts URI to normal system path (removes URL encoding like "%20".
 // Not used at the moment (currently thumbnailer only for MATE, Gnome uses a URI).
 var filename = decodeURIComponent(url);
 return filename.match(/[^/]+[.][\w]+$/i)[0];
}
page.onError = function ( msg ) {
 system.stderr.writeLine( 'ERROR:' + msg );
};
page.onConsoleMessage = function( msg, lineNum, sourceId ) {
 system.stdout.writeLine( 'CONSOLE: ' + msg, lineNum, sourceId );
};
// Each of the following is set to "width" as thumbnail is always square.
page.viewportSize = {
 height : width,
 width : width
};
page.clipRect = {
 height : width,
 width : width
};
page.open( url, function( status ) {
 console.log( 'Opened URL/URI: ' + url + ' ... with NAME: ' + url + ' ... to write thumbnail: ' + path + '... with SIZE=' + width + ' PAGE OPEN STATUS=' + status );
window.setTimeout( function() {
 var outputPath = path +
 '.png';
 console.log( 'Rendering to ' + outputPath );
 page.zoomFactor = 0.25;
 page.render( outputPath );
 phantom.exit();
 }, 500 );
} );

Put the thumbnailer entry in“~/.local/share/thumbnailers”.

[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=caja-phantomjs-webkit-thumbnailer
Exec=caja-phantomjs-webkit-thumbnailer %i %o %s
MimeType=text/html;

Remove thumbnails from ~/.cache/thumbnails” (Anyone. Is there a better way of doing this ? We are clearing all of the users thumbnails!).

Restart Caja … “killall caja”.

That should be it.

The final result

~~~

On the 5th of October 1991 a fellow by the name of Linux Torvalds released something called the “Linux Kernel”. Way back then computing was seen as an elite closed world, populated by intelligent boffins in white coats, hovering over expensive corporate computer systems and closed source software development. Microsoft Windows had already established itself on PC systems as the latest Graphical User Interface. In fact Windows came to be seen as the computer. Many people would refer to their system as Windows, seemingly ignorant of the fact that the underlying hardware is operating system agnostic. Windows had become God in the PC computing world. Any other contender was seen as simply heretical to what most people defined the PC as. In fact the distinction between the marketed idea of “a computer” and how Linux defined the use of the a computer, was to become a heated debate not without some religious overtones of spiritual freedom versus worship of the holy “creator”, Microsoft.

So now we have reached this massive watershed today, Nov 4th, 2013, and lo, the detractors have gone very silent, VERY silent indeed !

Why is this ? Well, what we are seeing in computer land is certainly not isolated to Linux and open source software. We are seeing breakthroughs in many areas … various technologies, scientific outlooks, society, culture, money … and video games.

“Paradoxically, it is at the point of diminishing returns of an existing technology when it is most difficult to consider alternatives. Institutions that grow up with a technology become too established, too uniquely adept at their technology to consider alternatives. Alternatives are outside their area of expertise. Established institutions prefer to modify, augment or find new applications for their technology rather than to search for ways to go beyond their technology. Historical evidence shows that this refinement approach does not guarantee sustained market superiority (Innovation, the Attacker’s Advantage, R. Foster, 1986). If an existing organization wants to avoid its own obsolescence, it must be willing to explore alternatives.”

Breakthrough Technologies (NASA), Breakthrough Technologies (AVG Aerospace).

“As technology evolves, a given device or method will reach a point when it can no longer be improved. At this point it has reached the limits of its underlying physical principles. To exceed this performance limit, a totally different device or method with different underlying physical principles is required. Examples:

The limits of sailing ships were exceeded with steam ships.

The speed limits of propeller aircraft were exceeded by jet aircraft

The altitude limits of aircraft were exceeded by rockets

The travel limits of rockets will be exceeded by… (to be determined)

This process has been progressing with the release of Android in 2007. Android proved the commercial viability of open source and Linux while maintaining the open and free access to the actual code. Some commentators may disagree with this due to some of the proprietary and closed source nature of Android. But without allowing mobile phone companies some leeway in protecting their IP and closed source hardware, Android would never have become successful. Other areas of success have been Linux based internet servers and Linux based embedded systems. Now what used to be “the unthinkable” is happening. Nvidia is working with open source developers as a result of its agreement with Valve. Gabe Newell used to work for Microsoft and the first few versions of Windows. He, no doubt has read things like Innovation, the Attacker’s Advantage, R. Foster, 1986 and it is not some impotent risk taking against the arrows of outrageous fortune that he and Valve have announced SteamOS, and the have ignited the potential for a whole new area of video game development. Which is based on a Linux that is breaking through  the “diminishing returns” of Microsoft and Windows. In may ways this has all been inevitable, or was it ? Maybe this process always has to entail an enormous amount of work and tireless vision as it has done in the areas of aeronautics (propellers to jets) or from sails to steam. Even the name of Valve’s video game distribution platform betrays some of their deeper market knowledge and planning. Classically Microsoft have failed to “explore alternatives”, preferring to “modify, augment or find new applications for their technology”. Just like in any other field they have become the levelling off curve that has reached the limits of its performance with the closed source approach and limits of its style of dovetailing into prevailing social attitudes and fast changing social outlooks.

This has led to the true breakthrough situation where something akin to UFO’s landing on the White House lawn has happened; Nvidia working with open source group Nouveau. To people not steeped in the history and law of computer land development that event may seem minor. But to those in the know, that event heralds a massive change that has taken over twenty years to achieve. What if you couldn’t open the bonnet of your car and fix your own engine ? Naturally you would probably be outraged to find non-tamper restraints over components, yet this is exactly the way the computer world has been working up until now. Initially companies thought that they simply could not make their money if they went into open source land. This was disproved by things like Android, and anyway, since the beginning, the open source software licences have been designed to allow companies to make money out of open source while insuring that the code is made open.

Now the avalanche has started. Some games like Bohemia’s ArmA Tactics and Natural Selection 2 as well as Valve’s entire product range (Half Life, Team Fortress) have been ported and are available for sale on Linux via the Steam platform. But more importantly it is the 3D engines (Steam ? Engines ? Steam Engine ?) that are now being ported to Linux in readiness for SteamOS. Crytek are porting CryEngine (Crysis and other games). Commentators on the internet sometimes seem baffled by this “risky” venture into Linux land, seemingly ignorant of well known market planning strategies (see above). All the indicators match up. the breakthrough has occurred and is occurring at the moment in many other fields actually. I don’t think it is any coincidence that gamers seek innovative social visions and commentary in things like Borderlands 2 and have also become frustrated with the usual stock of macho PC shooters. Innovation has been healthier in the console gaming field but that has also become increasingly restricted by Microsoft’s approach to game distribution and the raising of barriers to game developers who want to move beyond “AAA” title restriction of creative innovation. The gamers know they want to see creative breakthroughs in game design, in a world that is rapidly moving away from 20th Century Balkan-ism, towards rapidly opening vista’s of technological and creative innovation in the 21st century. In the movie industry there have been some innovators in the Fast and the Furious franchise or Riddick (Vin Diesel, et al) with social themes that remain mysterious to many still lost in 20th Century thinking. But it has been in video game land, where the kind of social observations are made that Political Correctness usually makes impossible, that gamers have found what they are looking for in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Half Life or Borderlands and many other games.

So for me, the Valve announcement symbolises a wider change going on. For example look at the E-Cat “energy catalyser” or Electric Universe for just a couple of much maligned areas (as Linux used to be) with all the hallmarks of the breakthrough phenomenon. A historical process over the last 500 years (if not a lot longer some might argue) became established to the point where alternatives have been almost impossible to consider. But the “diminishing returns” of that paradigm have now led to the alternatives, in all areas, breaking through. This is not a coincidence and appears to be related to wider cosmic biological patterns of organic history and our place in an alive cosmos. This has been reflected in the much maligned “2012” phenomenon which has been an examination of the historical “breakthrough” process that has been examined in creative works like Star Trek and other Science Fiction. If you notice Star Trek never really defined how society gets to a point of solving poverty and war. Well, we are seeing HOW right now ! Right in front of us. It’s time to sit up and pay attention to The Breakthrough. What happens when you really get what you want ?

Sources used on this article …

Nvidia Working With Valve, Linux Community For SteamOS | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

[Phoronix] Wwise Engine Being Ported To Linux, SteamOS

Valve Announce Linux-Based Steam OS | OMG! Ubuntu!

Valve’s Lessons Learned: Porting Source Engine to Linux

List of AAA publishers coming to Linux? : linux_gaming

aaa windows games being ported to linux – Google Search

vote and support for AAA (or less) titles to be ported to Linux :: Suggestions / Ideas

Why SteamOS will challenge Windows for PC gaming supremacy | PCWorld

Crytek hiring to bring CryEngine 3 to Linux – GameSpot

Thoughts on how Valve will bring more games over to Linux? : linux_gaming

The pros and cons of SteamOS | PC Gamer

ExtremeTech » Gabe Newell made Windows a viable gaming platform, and Linux is next

If we consider Newell’s history porting Doom to Win to show it can be a gaming platf. – NeoGAF

Analysis: Can SteamOS drag the PC game industry over to Linux? | Ars Technica

Valve’s Newell: Windows 8 “catastrophe” driving Valve to embrace Linux | Ars Technica

“The kick drum of the 808 is little more than a bridged T-network sine oscillator, a low-pass filter and a VCA”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_TR-808

“All drums except for the hi-hats and cymbals are synthetically generated; there is an oscillator circuit with a dedicated filter and envelope curve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_TR-909

(If you doubt that digital synthesis can produce an identical sound to an analogue circuit then watch this video by someone who knows what they are talking about).

Skip to the tutorial/guide if you think you know your stuff (are you a sound Guru?). But I’d recommend reading the preamble as it gives a good background to what we are doing in Yoshimi.

Preamble

The drum. A simple instrument. Usually made of some kind of cylinder container, open at both ends with a skin stretched over one of its ends. If you have ever heard anyone playing a Djemba, or any other specially made drum, or even played one yourself, then you will know the enormous range of subtle expression that can be played on it and all of the various percussive rhythms that can be used. Rave culture or Dance Music has been defined by the basic drum beat or rhythm that calls people to dance and to gather in peace. This is no coincidence …

According to the Bamana people in Mali, the name of the djembe comes from the saying “Anke djé, anke bé” which translates to “everyone gather together in peace” and defines the drum’s purpose. In the Bambara language, “djé” is the verb for “gather” and “bé” translates as “peace”.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djembe

The drum is much more than just a basic “hit hit hit” sound and is an instrument in it’s own right. When the drummer hits or strikes a drum, complex fractal wave forms are set up as shock waves move chaotically through the drum and drum skin and resonate the surrounding air. Mathematics cannot predict those shock waves, and resulting sonic waves, due to the “chaos” effect. You may remember Brownian Motion in your “O” Level science classes which describes a liquid or gas but its the same principle. The random motion of smoke particles hitting together cannot be predicted. So why would we bring a predictable electronic machine into the equation ? Simply put, who would ask a human drummer to carry out the repetitive drum patterns for hours at a time ? It reminds me of an avant-garde classical composer who I can’t remember the name of now, who composed extremely repetitive music for his orchestra. His musicians almost rebelled against him. It was just too monotonous for them to play. But I digress.

So electronic drums that originally started being used, en mass in the 1980’s, and with the arrival of the TR-808 and 909, came about as a matter of convenience, experimentation, and growing popularity of very repetitive trance inducing Dance Music. Add real drums into the mix and we have come full circle and the two actually compliment one another.

In electronic music composition samples of percussion and drums have become widespread. Even some dedicated drum machines such as the TR-909 use some samples. Samples may be appropriate in some circumstances. However in computer based music production, in this case using the Linux system, most people have access to a sound card or some kind of sound generator, that has a DSP chip. This can be programmed mathematically to produce various sounds. To synthesise those sounds. The various analogue circuits found in the first synths and drums machines are modeled using mathematics to produce what can be proved to be an identical sound to an analogue circuit. However science cannot model everything and along with psychological factors an original TR-909, TR-808 or TR-303 will always sound unique. But who’s telling ? Just don’t mention to anyone that you aren’t really using an original TR-808 and I won’t let on, OK ? You can always invest in vastly more affordable clones of things like the TB-303 if you have to. Or even make your own TR-909 ! There are plenty more clones attacking out there.

Bottom line. A synthesized drum sound is going to sound vastly superior to using a sample. The speaker is designed to move faithfully in response to the electronic reproduction of that sample. A speaker diaphragm behaves differently to a drum skin because its designed for a different purpose. Therefore we design our sound digitally and give it some kind of randomness and depth so it sounds as dynamic, natural, rich, and interesting as possible.

So without further ado, here is the tutorial/guide …

Guide

This guide is based on How to create drum sounds in ZynAddSubFX or Yoshimi, Part 1.

1. Start Jack and setup Hydrogen and Yoshimi or ZynAddSubFx.

Jack Audio Connections

Notice that Hydrogen has no audio connections. Yoshimi is connected using its main outputs, but we could use it’s individual outputs per part to mix sound in a DAW such as Ardour for example.

Jack MIDI Connections

The Hydrogen MIDI output connects straight to Yoshimi.

Hydrogen MIDI Output

Notice the areas highlighted in yellow in Hydrogen. This colour will be used throughout to highlight important interface elements. There are only two instruments defined. A drum and a percussion sound. The first is set to MIDI output on channel 1. the second is set to MIDI channel 2. The note is set to an appropriate pitch.

Now we can set up the synth. Here is a copy of my drum instrument as well as the synth state.

Yoshimi Main Window

Make sure the two “parts” are set to MIDI channels matching the Hydrogen outputs.

Now edit the part or instrument. You can use the edit button or middle click mouse on the instrument name.

Yoshimi Edit Window

Edit the ADDsynth (additive synth).

ADDSynth Global Parameters

First we tune everything to “A” (440hz). click on “Show Voice Parameters”.

Edit Voice Parameters

Here are the ADSynth Voice Parameters.

ADSynth Voice Parameters

Click the 440hz check box. Now we adjust the Amplitude Envelope as recommended in the Sharphall.org guide …

Back on the ADsynth Global Parameters window, lets turn the R.dt knob on the Amplitude Envelope to 62.5 to let the sound decay when a key is released. Next, change Octave from 0 to -3. This is what a kick drum’s pitch might rest at.

… and then …

Next lets use the Frequency Envelope. Turn A.val up to 117. Listen to how this has changed the sound. Next, change A.dt to a value around 35.4. Listen to how this has changed the sound.

I changed some of the recommended settings so the knobs won’t match what is recommended in the Sharphall.org guide. At this point you should hear a deep base, rounded drum sound when you start Hydrogen sequencing Yoshimi. After a few adjustments I was happy with the sound I was getting but you might want to continue with the Sharphall.org guide from “A more advanced kick drum”.

Here is a recording of the basic 4×4 beat that is produced on my system using this set up …

Download: Drum Basic Random.flac

To produce an even more dynamic sound that does not sound monotonous to the ear, Yoshimi and ZynAddSubFx both have randomisation controls. For example in the ADsynth Oscillator Editor …

ADsynth Oscillator Editor Randomisation Control

There are also other randomisation controls that can be used …

ADsynth Global Parameters Randomisation Controls

These can effect the sound as well as the actual timing and length of the drum sound to create a more interesting type of drum percussion. Of course, as always, nothing can replace a real human drummer ! But the two can work together very well.

Lastly as you become used to Yoshimi it may be worth creating a dedicated drum kit instrument, although I have not experimented fully with this yet.

Yoshimi Drum Kit

The sounds in the default drum kit are not very inspiring but with this guide you should be able to create much better sounds.

So that’s it, I hope you have enjoyed this guide. Go and create lots of drums ! But remember, find a human drummer as well or sample of human drumming, and knowing how to drum yourself always helps.

I have a lot of information, reminders and so forth on my personal Wiki (Mediawiki). At first I was thinking of installing Mediawiki on my Android Phone and keeping the two Wiki’s synced, but this is not practical on Android. I found the Pdf-Book extension for Mediawiki and set a cron job to export my entire Wiki to a PDF book every day. Really nice extension. It creates a TOC that links to each exported page in a single document. Polaris Office 4.0 on Android is capable of using TOC PDF links. Here is the anacron line.

1 15 barneypedia-export wget -O /home/djbarney/DJ_Barney_Docs/Backup/Phone_Sync/barneypedia.pdf /
"http://192.168.1.5/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Pdf-export&action=pdfbook"

So I have that writing to a file every day. The following shows how to use the command line to send this file via Bluetooth to my device, which I’ll add to the anacron line.

Install bluez-tools …

sudo apt-get install bluez-tools

Find out the MAC address of the device using bt-device. For some reason I could not get hcitool (part of the bluez package) to scan for devices.

$ bt-device -l
 Added devices:
 GT-I8160 (78:52:1A:B4:65:AC)

Test the connection using l2ping (bluez package). I had to use sudo here. I think I’m supposed to put myself in some kind of group but I don’t think it matters too much at the moment.

$ sudo l2ping 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC
 Ping: 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC from 00:15:83:15:A3:10 (data size 44) ...
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 0 time 8.85ms
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 1 time 7.83ms
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 2 time 24.87ms
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 3 time 10.84ms
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 4 time 18.84ms
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 5 time 12.86ms
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 6 time 24.85ms
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 7 time 10.90ms
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 8 time 7.73ms
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 9 time 11.90ms
 44 bytes from 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC id 10 time 11.88ms
 11 sent, 11 received, 0% loss

Then use sdptool (bluez package) to find the Bluetooth channel we need to send the file on.

sudo sdptool browse 00:16:CF:DC:B9:81

You’ll see lots of information. You only need this section. Notice the channel number.

Service Name: OBEX Object Push
Service RecHandle: 0x10004
Service Class ID List:
"OBEX Object Push" (0x1105)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 12
"OBEX" (0x0008)
Profile Descriptor List:
"OBEX Object Push" (0x1105)
Version: 0x0100

Now we need to bind the device using rfcomm (bluez package).

sudo rfcomm bind /dev/rfcomm0 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC 12

Now you can send a file to the device using ussp-push (ussp-push package).

sudo ussp-push /dev/rfcomm0 DJ_Barney_Docs/Backup/Phone_Sync/barneypedia.pdf barneypedia.pdf

That’s it ! Now I can take my valuable Wiki information where ever I go.

By the way, I originally started investigating this issue using the MATE Bluetooth applet. Originally I could only send files via Bluetooth but not receive. That was fixed by whatever libraries installed or updated when installing the utilities above. But OBEX file browsing has never worked.

This apparently is due to a current problem in MATE. However, even though I seem to remember being able to do this before, bt-device shows this.

$ bt-device -i GT-I8160
[78:52:1A:B4:65:AC]
  Name: GT-I8160
  Alias: GT-I8160 [rw]
  Address: 78:52:1A:B4:65:AC
  Icon: phone
  Class: 0x5a020c
  Paired: 1
  Trusted: 0 [rw]
  Blocked: 0 [rw]
  Connected: 0
  UUIDs: [OBEXObjectPush, AudioSource, AVRemoteControlTarget, HeadsetAudioGateway,/
 NAP, HandsfreeAudioGateway, PhoneBookAccess, 00001132-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb, PnPInformation]

OBEX push but no OBEX FTP ! Ha, that must have been on my previous Nokia phone. But apparently MATE do have some kind of problem with this anyway. Maybe this blog post can help them test with these commands.

Reference documents

1. How to run Bluez
2. How to use OBEX
3. How to use OBEX: ussp-push

Parcelite

In a previous post I showed how to use command line scripting to improve the Linux GUI experience. This included the use of “xsel“. This can be used for those who use the Linux console. Not the console that is loaded in the GUI but the consoles available on key presses CTRL-ALT F1 to F6. These are useful because they can be more robust than using the console in the GUI which are dependent on the GUI not crashing or freezing. If the GUI crashes then the Linux consoles on the F1 to F6 key presses remain untouched. However there is a problem with pasting and cutting between those consoles and the GUI. The GUI and external consoles do not share a common cut/paste buffer. This is solved like this …

First at the in a terminal in the GUI find the name of your GUI display.

$ echo $DISPLAY
:0.0

You need to tell xsel this so it knows where to send you cut/paste.

Now you can send any text to the GUI cut/paste buffer from a console. There are two buffers. The first command sends the text to the primary buffer which is available on middle mouse click or SHIFT – INSERT.

$ echo "hello world" | xsel -i

You can now paste from that buffer in the GUI. However this won’t work, as I found, in places such as the WordPress blog post text box. To fix that copy text to the secondary buffer. Like this.

$ echo "hello world" | xsel -s -i

Now you can paste in the usual way in the GUI with CTRL – V.

If you are using gpm mouse in the F1 – F6 consoles then you will highlight text and use mouse middle click to paste. I think there might be a way to link gpm to xsel but I’ve not worked out how to do that yet. A much better way is to use the utility screen and use keypress CTRL – A then [ and then RETURN to highlight, and then RETURN again to copy. CTRL – A to paste. Not exactly easy but, at least for me, this all beats pasting things to text files and having to open them in the GUI just to get text between the console and GUI. However it may be possible to use screen to handle the mouse without gpm and get it to put the copy buffer straight to the GUI, but I have not worked out how to do this yet. For example this is in the screen manual.

writebuf [-e encoding] [filename]

Writes the contents of the paste buffer to the specified file, or the public accessible screen-exchange file if no filename is given. This is thought of as a  primitive means  of  communication  between screen users on the same host. If an encoding is specified the paste buffer is recoded on the fly to match the encoding.  The filename can be set with the bufferfile command and defaults to “/tmp/screen-exchange”.

With the use of something like Parcellite in the GUI this method makes it much easier to work with text snippets between the GUI and console.

~~~

(Update: I foundthis add-on, UnloadTab, which does exactly what the Android Browser does – unloads unused tabs from memory but keeps the tab markers there – BINGO !)

As this blog points out …

Can you believe that you can crash any linux machine with a web page displaying stamp size images, while an iPod can display it without an glitch?

This is exactly what I found on my EeePC, while on my Android phone the browser, on the most part, properly manages pages with hefty content. On the Eee I ran into massive swap file thrashing paralysing my entire system ! On my PC Firefox/Iceweasel is using system memory that should be available for other applications. Why is this so ? Listen …. “Beware of geeks bearing gifts”. There are some profoundly bad decisions/assumptions going on in developer land …

1. The user has an enormous PC as big as their house with a squadillion number of Gigabytes.

2. Even if the user has that much memory its OK for us to use it because, hey, they are only running OUR application right ? (this is after decades of having multitasking operating systems, insane!).

So it was with some annoyance that I had to fight my way through numerous developer obfuscations, the classic being the old “you need to upgrade your memory” … Er, excuse me ! I think it is YOU who is using up my expensive memory thankyou very much ! To this solution …

At the command line: “export set MOZ_DISABLE_IMAGE_OPTIMIZE=1”, then “iceweasel” or “firefox”, or add “export set MOZ_DISABLE_IMAGE_OPTIMIZE=1” to “/etc/profile” or “~/.profile” if you want to keep the setting permanent.

Now my Iceweasel does not bring my EeePC 701 to it’s knees. If you want to see what is going on here is the background. Using “xrestop” you can compare loading a large page of images before and after setting “MOZ_DISABLE_IMAGE_OPTIMIZE=1”. The difference is insane ! Before applying the fix, large pages of images generate HUNDREDS of megabytes of memory. Afterwards there are, at maximum, only a few tens of megabytes.

Compared to Android operating system behaviour, I question many of the decisions going on in the desktop world. I had a Linux user telling me that Android is “not real Linux” whatever that means. It’s heavily modified by Google of course but its an interesting project. More so, where is the innovation going on in Linux/Desktop world ? We are stuck about 15 years ago in this horrible “window manager” paradigm. When will the smartphone, touchscreen revolution in simple accessible usability, catch up with desktop Linux ? Why can’t I start up an OpenGL web browser and be two touching web pages, zooming in and out and flinging pages off into a “pile” in the corner for later reference ? In fact why is the entire “desktop” not running on an OpenGL touch aware, WWW paradigm based environment already ? I’m surprised the success of Android has not shaken up the desktop market much more than it has. There must be a lot of secret bedroom projects going on out there !