Mark Tomlinson

Guitar - Fretboard Fingerboard Note Positions

2012-02-06T14:48:00.000+01:00

When I was young I started to learn guitar, but for some crazy reason I ended up taking violin lessons instead. I seem to recall that guitar was not an option back then. I stuck it out for about half a year but finally resigned myself to never learning the notes on the fingerboard also all that bowing exercise was as boring as hell.

Now many moons later I have decided to pick up the guitar once again. This time around my hands are a little larger and my fingers a lot stronger, strong but pudgy. I am also intent on learning some music theory as I go along and one of the first things I wanted was a guide to the note positions on the Fretboard using standard tuning AGBDAE. The notes by the way are a piece of cake to find compared with the violin.

Anyway I learn better by doing so I made a chart not so much to refer to but making it has helped fix the notes in my head, and I thought I would share it with anyone interested in having a copy. Do what you like with it as long as you share and share a like and aren't making money from it.

Six String Guitar Fretboard Notes

Mac OS X Lion - Enable Quick Look Selection

2012-01-27T11:55:00.000+01:00

To activate the setting, open a Terminal window and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE;killall Finder

The changes take effect immediately. To deactivate the setting, open a Terminal window and type the following:

defaults delete com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection;killall Finder

Lion - Trackpad Touch Click and Drag

2012-01-21T12:02:00.002+01:00

As I move over to Lion completely I am noticing a few differences and some annoyances; one of the first to really frustrate me was the lack of touch click and drag. A little bit of research and I find Apple in their infinite wisdom have moved this setting from the Trackpad section of System Preferences to the Universal Access Section. So it hasn't gone it's effectively been hidden. This is not the most intuitive place for a Trackpad setting, especially as it used to be under Trackpad Settings.

Apple does seem to like moving things around for no obviously sensible reason, I suppose it keeps us from getting complacent.

Trackpad - Dragging with or without Drag Lock

Drive Wheels - Flying Scotsman

2012-01-16T12:42:00.002+01:00

A quick post. I just tided up some of the components on the drive wheels, they got messed up due to constraints on the model. I did a quick render here is a long shot down the drive wheels. Spot the paint mistakes, not to worry this is only a WIP.

Flying Scotsman - Right Hand Drive Wheels

A3 Pacific 4-6-4 - Crosshead & Slide Bars

2012-01-14T20:54:00.000+01:00

I have just finished the support bracket for the Slide Bars on the LNER A3 locomotive the Flying Scotsman. The bracket is tucked away quite a bit and is pretty hard to see at any decent angles so this is a bit of an estimation, artistic license they call it. I thought it would be an opportunity to post some more pictures of the Crosshead Slide Bar area as I am almost done on it, for now, there is more to do but that'll be later.

Crosshead and Slide Bars from below.

Slide Bars Support Bracket from below.

Crosshead and Connecting Link.

There is still quite a lot of stuff to put in here but I want to get the last connecting rods in place and rig up the Walschaerts valve system soon. I will have to move things around no doubt when I put this on the Frames, but it looks okay for rigging and that'll show up any oddities.

Okay back to the model, will update again soon.

A3 Pacific - Locomotive Crosshead Slide Bars

2011-12-29T14:16:00.000+01:00

Another little update, not a lot of progress due to the festivities, but I have finally finished the Crosshead. The Slide Bars took minutes but the Crosshead and Crosshead Connecting Link took longer due mostly to remodeling and the old problem of lack of reference.

I have decided to take a little artistic license in the Valve Gear and use picture reference from the A1 Tornado as well, it appears, to me at least, to be pretty much identical, and there is a hell of a lot more reference for that locomotive on the web.

So here is a little render of the parts in question, moving slowly but surely to the piston and the eventual rigging and animation.

A3 Pacific Locomotive Crosshead and Slide Bars

I am starting to wonder though if I haven't gone a little too high detailed but I figure low poly has been done already very well so why not use my 12 Gbytes of RAM.

A3 Pacific - Locomotive Cranks Gearing (wip)

2011-12-19T17:31:00.001+01:00

A quick update to the A3 4-6-4 Pacific I am working on.

The cranks on the Flying Scotsman model are proving to be very interesting. As I have no detail drawing or even decent photographs I am assuming a lot on the relative dimensions.

The nuts as far as I can tell are all held by split pins, at least in this part of the model. Which given the amount of vibration and rotation makes engineering sense.

The whole gear assembly for this A3 is a lot more interesting to model than I'd first thought. I intend to finish and animate this section before going back to the locomotive and tender.

Maya to Collada - Conversion Problem

2011-12-11T20:12:00.001+01:00

I was having problems reading the Collada DAE files produced by Maya 2012 and by the FBX 2012 convertor using Preview on my Mac. Preview allows you to quickly check the compatibility of the DAE files you are producing. If you can see it in Preview there is a pretty good chance other programs will read it too. Of course you also get a nice icon of the model as a bonus.

As Maya doesn't seem able to produce compliant files, at least I have never had much luck, and the FBX convertor is breaking them in version 2012. I found the answer is to use the older 2011 version of FBX convertor the one I used is here: fbx2011.2 convertor. Here is the full FBX archive list if you are interested in trying other versions of the FBX tool.

The problem by the way seems to lie in the formatting of the xml tags and in particular the <float_array> tags, although I can't be certain.
Why Autodesk seems so haphazard with its DAE is beyond me, either support it or don't.

Wacom - Scroll and Pan

2011-12-06T13:40:00.001+01:00

We don't update our drivers enough, but why bother when they're working right?
Well I have just (after many years) decided to start using my Wacom pad more in Maya and my Mac in general and I was bemoaning the lack of panning in my browser window among others. So I had a quick look to see if I was alone, I wasn't and in fact Wacom had predicted my search and added the function to its latest Mac drivers (it may be on Windows I haven't looked).
You assign a button on the pen to scroll and off you go, it doesn't work as a hand function but as a scroll bar function, which is fine by me. Now I can scroll through a web page or Finder window without having to reach for my mouse or trackpad. I have the bottom button as right click and the top as scroll a very nice feature. This is not turned on for Maya obviously as I need three buttons.

Adding Models to Photographs

2011-12-04T16:33:00.001+01:00

This is amazing stuff and from the look of it very easy to set up.

4-6-2 Pacific A3 Wheels

2011-12-02T10:19:00.001+01:00

One of the more interesting, euphemism for frustrating, aspects of modeling is reference.

The Internet is full of pictures and facts, but finding the ones you need is often a needle and in a haystack experience.

I am modeling the LNER Gresley A3 4-6-2 Pacific Locomotive the problem is I haven't seen one. I might have caught a glimpse of one steaming by when I was younger but that was in the day's of steam.

For reference you really need drawings, technical drawings (blueprints) or quasi-orthographic photographs (these can be done using a long lens and taking the picture from a distance). However most pictures are three quarter shots, of the front side type and are of limited value as reference. It doesn't help that people seem to take the same shot over and over again, there must be a million of the name plate alone.
Without access to decent drawings I am left to reconstruction using low resolution photographs and photoshop.
Here is a screen capture of a template I made for the drive wheels, it is based on a photo I found on the Web.

Drive Wheel Template

Reference Photograph Marked Out

It would be nice if the NRM would organise its archive and put some plans online, even if it where a subscription / donation service.

A3 Pacific - Locomotive Maya WIP

2011-11-24T00:50:00.001+01:00

I am on a new little project that is a little more involved than usual.

This should end up looking like the famous Flying Scotsman the LNER A3 Pacific Locomotive number 4472, but I think it will be the 502 in the end as I love her in black.

Here is a glimpse of her as a work in progress:

O is for open - on a Mac

2011-11-13T11:25:00.001+01:00

We all know that the RETURN and ENTER keys on a Mac enables the renaming of a file rather than the executing or opening of it.

We have all down arrowed through a list and hit the Return key intending to open the file but instead end up renaming it. Windows users find this particularly strange where F2 is used to rename. Most of us will finally give up and just use the mouse button to Open a file.

However; how you Open a file in the Finder is the same as you would in any Application such as TextEdit you use the shortcut key which is ⌘O that is CMD and the letter o.

It all makes sense when you know, how but it isn't that intuitive.

iOS Tip: Getting Your Glide On

2011-11-07T09:43:00.001+01:00

The @ key is probably one of the most used puntuation keys that is not normally on the top level of the iOS keyboard, apparantly requiring one to hit the .?123 key type the @ and hit the ABC to return. At least that is how most people do it.

However there is a better way, which isn’t that obvious if you haven’t read the iOS guides and who has. A quicker way is to touch the .?123 key then slide to the @ key and let go, the keyboard then returns to the initial state allowing one to continue typing letters.

This works for all secondary keys but unfortunately not tertiary keys, another odd quirk in Apple's conformity.

There was a problem installing Mac OS - Lion

2011-10-25T20:48:00.001+02:00

If you are trying to install a fresh copy of Lion and you get this message it could be that you need to reset the PRAM. This is because Lion makes certain changes the PRAM when it is installed: these old values are screwing with the install and need to be removed.

To reset and clear Lion from the PRAM hold down the ALT CMD P and R keys as you start/boot the Mac. The Mac will start and play the dada sound then it will then reboot again, after the reboot you can release the keys.
The PRAM is now reset and you should be able to do a fresh install of Lion.

1955-2011 Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T12:37:00.002+02:00

Filling time - restoring a device

2011-10-05T02:14:00.002+02:00

I am presently updating my iPhone to the latest version of the iOS operating system: the update is in fact complete but the restoration of all my little apps is in progress. This restoration of the apps is the part that takes all the time. I have about 20GB of data on the phone and that takes an age over USB 2.0. theoretically it should be faster over modern WiFi but I have yet to be convinced.

So to fill time and keep my mind from running off in panic I am trying out the Apple bluetooth keyboard with the iPad (using Wordpress's app): so far it seems to work quite well. There are a few things that are strange but the most obvious is that you have to touch the screen to interact with dialogs or windows. For reasons best known to Apple they didn't implement a cmd tab option within the bluetooth interface, perhaps that is a future thing - I hope so.

So I think I post this and see how my restoration is progressing.

What A Difference A Day Makes

2011-08-16T09:31:00.002+02:00

There is in reality very little point in anything we humans do on the planet: given our brief life spans and ridiculously short time on this chunk of rock it is in some ways amazing that we have achieved as much as we have. In a tremendously short time on earth we have gone from tree swinging apes to iPad tapping great apes: I like to remind myself that we are apes and no better than our cousins.
At the moment we are in the middle of an ice age — the period is called interglacial and is like some sort of epochal Indian summer — a little rest bit in an otherwise cold and nasty cycle of glacial activity. Normal these breaks — in the weather — last around eight thousand years; our current break has lasted about ten thousand years and a change is very much due.
When that change comes, and come it will, we are to say the very least fucked. It may happen at any time, no one quite knows; it may be hundreds of years in coming or it may happen in decades: either way we are not equipped to cope with it and we will undoubtable starve to death. Some humans may survive but civilisation won't as I said we are fucked as individuals and as a species.
I am an atheist. I have no delusions of divine intervention or a meaningful after life — beyond the cellular reappropriation of matter, and yet I am not concerned it is how we arose from the _swamp_ in the first place. To moan about potential extinction events is obtusely hypocritical.
I often look at my species — as would an outsider — drawn to observing some crazy experiment in social engineering. The arguments, struggles, wars, greed, lust, envy, hate, passion and love are all just transient hormonally triggered responses in our overly developed ape brain by cellular demands.
If we are eventually doomed anyway is there a point to any of it? No, I don't think so but there doesn't have to be one. Sentient life surely has to be one of the best rides in the Universe so hold on and enjoy it while you can: I know I am.

Synology - BusyBox Login Root SSH Password

2011-08-15T20:23:00.002+02:00

I recently had some problems with remote login over SSH to my Synology *DiskStation* the OS reports its self as *BusyBox*: I was able to log in as admin but not as root. Admin is a fairly limited account on the BusyBox as you are unable to use **su**.
The correct login for SSH to the *BusyBox* is root, but I was unable to get the password to work. It turns out that the password for root had been reset to the default:
Synology default *root* password is *synopass*

The next thing I wanted to do, obviously, was to change this default password. Normally on 'nix systems you would use the *passwd* command, but the BusyBox shell doesn't have one. A little poking around reveal the Synology way to set the password:

`synouser --setpw root `

Where `` is your preferred password: `FredQK2` for example. By the way when you log in as root for the first time the shell tries to change to your home directory and you may notice the following message:

*Could not chdir to home directory /var/services/homes/root: No such file or directory*

The problem is that root doesn't have one set by default. You will need to create one – if the message bothers you. Just type the following command at the prompt:

`mkdir /var/services/homes/root`

Otherwise it isn't important as you'll be logged in only into the / (root) directory.

Lastly if you can't even connect via SSH or Telnet you probably need to enable one or both **ssh** is more secure. To so log into the DiskStation and goto *Control Panel* > *Terminal*

Hope this has been of some help: if you are still stuck check out the Synology Forums they are very helpful.

Jabbering - A ramble with speech sythesisers.

2011-08-14T23:42:00.002+02:00

For no particular reason I am writing a Web article, and I am sure eventually I will find a theme: perhaps even a purpose too.

The problem – I have at the moment – is distraction. No matter what I start to do, something always seems to come along an interfere with my concentration. At this very moment the tea timer is beeping for all its worth: it has been doing so since the start of this paragraph, hang on…

Good that’s that taken care of: I don’t mind the peeping so much as the way it appears to be tuned to prod in a very persistent way: done by design I suppose.

I am now at my third paragraph, and yet still nothing comes to me as a theme, perhaps it is destined to be abstract: a piece of post modernist jabber. In reality the content seems to matter less than the form these days, and perhaps it has always been so. Shakespeare’s writing style may or may not have been _of the age_. Personally; I think he was a poet that liked to play with words. It appears efficiency of thought was hardly at the top of his priorities: unless saying things backwards gets one to the point more quickly in a topographic sense.

I have spent the time whilst writing this piece to try out some functions with in the _Text to Speech_ system in Mac OS X Lion. Truth be told the new voices are amazingly realistic: they aren’t perfect by any means. They are still clearly synthetic but they have come a long way since their last incarnation.

Playing back what one has just written is very helpful, especially as far as spelling is concerned, and to a lesser extent grammar: neither of which I am particularly good at. My poor grasp of grammar stems from moving a lot as a child. Between the ages of ten and fifteen I attended five schools in as many years, in nearly as many different towns.

So I guess that can be the purpose of this article: to demonstrate the usefulness of the Speech system as an semi-autonomous proof reader, and to try out this wonderful piece of software called Scrivener.

Social Marketing - New World Preaching

2011-07-27T11:27:00.002+02:00

I am in the process of developing an hypothesis regarding the _follow worthiness_ of some of the social commentators on the web: be it on their blogs, Twitter or more recently on _google+_. The idea is simple enough the more their _About Me_ sounds like a curriculum vitae the more they are in it for the PR and should be considered as social marketeers, tending to broadcast more than discourse.

As a point in fact there is a person one here I hadn't really heard of before but he seemed well tracked. I won't mention him by name as he clearly well able to self promote, suffice to say he has an avatar in the style of me and me camera, lame enough. I digress, so in an effort to expand my circles and to achieve some better feeling for this new social network that google has created I added him to one of my circles.

Wow! Was that an enlightening experience, I follow a few people with quite well developed egos on twitter and so I have experience of their kind. (I should note the egos on twitter are more than compensated for by the quality of their writing and their technical knowledge, I might add they also have a dry sense of humour). This particular person is in a similar vain with one big difference; the rapidity and length of the posts, these then weighed down by fawning fans gibbering on about how blah! he was and how meh! that was. The upshot, and I suppose the elusive point of this piece, is today I _minused_ my first _pluser_ (un-followed is just so un-dramatic). Of course this doesn't seem to effect any existing posts: they remain on the stream like so much flotsam in a mire of babble.

I suppose this is because g+ is in beta and is as buggy as WindowsME at the moment. Which reminds me that ME was the only version of Windows never to infest any computer of mine, personal or otherwise.

All this seems to reinforce my feelings, which I alluded to yesterday, that this so called social networking technology is in reality nothing more than a promotional networking platform, preaching to an already converted congregation. I for one find many these new age preachers both tiresome and not a little pompous.

So if you should wonder whether a person may be worth you risking an invasion of their self promotional spouting check their About's, if it reads like Wikipedia entry for some celebrity I probably would be wary, as unlike Wikipedia they are allowed and do write their own biographies which tend to be somewhat illusional if not a little delusional. False modesty, by the way, is little better but as least it requires less bile to digest.

I thank and commended you for your patience and gastric fortitude in making it this for. If you jumped here directly: ignore all previous questions, sign the paper and close the article.

_Written on an iPad using IA Writer._

Style Council - Apple Reference Quality

2011-07-01T19:47:00.002+02:00

There are times when you come across something I you just have to say wow! today I came across something I had seen before many times, that is to say the content, but never presented so nicely.

The site or rather the pages are from Apple and cover the documentation for the iOS Reference Library. Perhaps not interesting to anyone not in development but if your in web design you should have a look it is very nicely done. However there is a catch you will need to look at the site in the Safari browser on the iPad. This is where the wow! comes from. The presentation has a real ebook feel about it, way more than just a pdf which it isn't by the way.

Anyway I just wanted to say wow! which I have now three times I think so get hold of an iPad and check it out.

WWDC - 2011 Developer Videos 100+ to watch

2011-06-24T11:58:00.002+02:00

After what seems like an age the Developer Videos for the WWDC 2011 are available on the Apple Developer site. I am now looking forward to a virtual feast of tech which unfortunately I wont be able to share with you here as it is Confidential information. Which is fine as anyone interested in the content will be willing to pay the $99 to view it legally right.

At the moment I am downloading an introduction and a session, but it looks a lot like I am not the only one by a long chalk, the server seems to be quite loaded. A little patience and then for the next days I will be buried in techie video viewing which is one of my favourite things to do.

xcode - persistent store is incompatible

2011-06-21T20:03:00.002+02:00

If you get a SIGABRT in xcode and you see the following error in the terminal window there is a good chance you have updated the iOS target version and recompiled on a device (simulator included) that contains a store for an older version of the iOS data.

It wants you to remove it and try again. In the simulator under the iOS Simulator menu select the reset device and contents. This will cause a new store to be created, obviously all your non-persistent data will be deleted including photos so be aware. To fix it on your device do an icon wobble and hit the x, this will remove the app and associated data it even tells you.

"The schema for the persistent store is incompatible with current managed object model

Check the error message to determine what the actual problem was."

Theme - Changes One ...

2011-06-20T20:11:00.002+02:00

It appears that I am in a constant battle with the themes on wordpress and no mater how hard I seem to try I am not able to find one and stick with it. So here I am again with yet another theme change, not really a new theme though as I have used this one before in an previous incarnation, so this time it is (back) to cleanr.

I would really like a clean theme and ideally I should modify the one on English Bloke as that is my favourite but I can't be arsed with html and css anymore it all seems so pointless. Pointless because the web is already full of wonderful work by far better and more dedicated website designers than I. Reinventing the wheel is so dull.

The problem with most of the clean themes is they are too focused on the text with works really well but at the expensive of imagery. I need both, I need to have a place for clean images as well as my text. I mangle language enough without the typographic presentation adding to the disorder and as the old saying goes "Bullshit baffles brains". Which means if it looks good at first glance people generally believe it is.

I don't suppose this theme will be anymore permanent than the previous but I like it very much and the designer has a good eye for the subliminal, if you can have an eye for subliminal.