TubularCorporation

Instagram asceticism. Has nothing to do with musical minimalism at all.

Yeah, it's when people think that things like "healthy amount of space" and "too much" are objective, proscribable things that you get into Minimalist territory, and that stuff has more in common with an eating disorder than with finding and maintaining a healthy level of order in your life. Minimalism and hoarding aren't really that much different, it's just that one of them is usually more socially acceptable than the other at any given time.

I'm so against the new minimalism.

Making progress. Not sure if I'll make a wood panel to cover the front edge of it or use more of the thin aluminum I used for the bottom panel. Both options have their issues. After lunch I'll be drilling holes in the bottom panel to mount all the PCBs and then wiring up the power and MIDI jacks so it's back to a usable state. Should have no problem getting all of the wood parts shaped, sanded and finished by the time I go back to work next Wednesday. It'd be a lot faster if I wasn't limited to hand tools and whatever scrap wood and aluminum I've got lying around, but I think it hits the "70s kit microcomputer" aesthetic I'm going for pretty well. 100% coincidence that the top board I found in a discount bin at a woodshop a decade ago was exactly the right width already to the millimeter and just needed to be cut to lenth. No idea how that happened, I hadn't even thought about using it when I laid everything out, and the spot where I put it is a completely arbitrary length that was just based on roughly placing the PCBs to make sure I had enough room without too much wasted space, I didn't even measure it.

I've got some of the parts and PCBs to start building a bunch of new stuff but I've got no plans to do it any time soon, the only thing I want to do is finish up the current project and use what I have. I'll probably build one of those Gieskes video crossfaders but that's to fill a really specific job in something I've been getting together slowly for a few years and am finally finishing pulling together, not just because I want new gear. More like buying extra cables or something.

How has nobody mentioned Burnt Weeny Sandwich or Civilization Phase III yet?

Beau has been blowing up lately, it's great.

The only thing I could actually wire up today is the power switch, but the rack rails are out for delivery and once I have those I can start working on a real enclosure. Once I have the enclosure designed and at least the ends and bottom built I'll know where everything is going to be and then I can hook it all up. USB jack should be here in a few days, too, but I don't need that to get started.

Yeah, Veda looks like a good option for you, the others I was just throwing in there because I think they're interesting. Atom and GLSL are both very active and well maintained (GLSL is part of the OpenGL standard if I'm not mistaken). Veda's just a library for livecoding GLSL in Atom, so it benefits from their community support. Anyway, I discovered Whorld while I was looking for stuff to suggest, installed it on a 15 year old Windows XP netbook and it runs fine, so I'm going to use that with a VGA to composite converter to get some MIDI synced generative patterns as extra source material for the analog video feedback stuff.

Also, it's not quite a live conding environment and it's extremely old but I always like to plug Visual Jockey Gold. It's getting harder to find these days, the official website seems to be down now (it was actiave a couple months ago) and most of the mirrors are dead, but you can still get the site on archive.org and this official mirror is still up: http://www.ackagi.com/visualjockey/VJO-SP1-V1.msi https://web.archive.org/web/20190412100716/http://www.visualjockey.com/index.html It's Windows only but it also hasn't had a major update since 2006 and hasn't had any development at all since 2008 so there's no way it wouldn't run in Bootcamp on a Mac. It's dated but still useful and I think you cna do some limited reatime coding in there soemplace. Also, the list of software that supports FreeFrame plugins has some old but still decent stuff that would be worth checking out if you're doing video: http://freeframe.sourceforge.net/ Stuff like Gephex won't even run on x64 systems (EDIT: I take that back, Gephex is running fine on my laptop; could have sworn it didn't work on the previous one) but the flip side is you can run it pretty well on any old $20 Dell from eBay. Anyway, this is all way off track fro what you're after, jsut spreading awareness of some goofy old freeware VJ programs I like.

I just found this: https://github.com/fand/veda https://medium.com/@amagitakayosi/vj-live-coding-on-atom-glsl-livecoder-329eec5462df EDIT: yeah, Pixilang is the Sunvox guy. About half of his things were coded in it, actually (not Sunvox though).

On Mac there's a free version of Vuo https://vuo.org/download

I was going to say VVVV and Processing, too. You might look at Pixilang, not sure how useful it would be for processing live video but it's definitely worth a look. https://warmplace.ru/soft/pixilang/ EDIT: it definitely can process live video because some of the live video apps the dev has made were coded in Pixilang, but as far as using it directly for live coding I don't know.

Banana cables are by far the easiest cables to DIY, it's basically like soldering a piece of wire to a nail. Only difficulties are that depending on the speciic jacks you might have to be careful about soldering neatly to make it fit, and because the plug part is a pretty big hunk of metal you need to really heat it up to get good wetting, and that means it takes longer than usual for the solder to cool so you have to be kind of careful about keeping everything really still to get a good joint. IF you have a thick board with 4mm hokes to stick the bare plugs on and one of those "helping hands" things to hold the wire still while it cools they it's easy. While the first end is cooling you can solder the second end, and then while the second end is cooling it should be OK to put the plastic housing on the first end and in the en every cable takes less than a minute. Eurorack patch cables are more tedious and usually not worth the hassle IMO. You don't realy save much money per cable unless you need them really long, and making a decent one is a lot of work, - stripping the inner and outer wires, crimping, soldering, shrink tube, making sure you don't forget to thread the cable through all of the parts of the jack in the right order before you solder.

Never tried that. I've had plenty of times when I accidentally got pots that were like 2" long and had to saw and file the shafts down, but not the other way around. Are they plastic or aluminum?

Banana cables are really easy to make yourself, and also you can get pretty decent ones cheap if you buy them as test leads. These aren't anything special but they're fine: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07179VF5J/ This is really nice wire you can use with your connectors of choice: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018H1BDP4/ EDIT: that's assuming you want a really flexible wire, but for a desktop synth that can actually get in the way more; for stiffer wire I don't have any suggestions, jsut get something with PVC insulation instead of silicon. These plugs are pretty good for $1 a pair, and 16AWG fits them really well but they're a little tight inside so you have to be efficient with your soldering: https://www.ebay.com/itm/10PCS-Stackable-Soldering-Banana-Plug-Connector-Test-Probe-Binding-Post-5-Colors/163814682226 I haven't tried these but they look like they might have a bit more space inside for the solder joint: https://www.ebay.com/itm/10PCS-2mm-Stackable-Banana-Male-Plug-Gold-Plated-Connector-for-Speaker-Amplifier/163747782966 For me the trick to making them quickly, reliably and without burning myself is to open up the plastic housings on all the plugs and take the metal pieces out. Have a hunk of 2x4 with some holes drilled in it that you can plug them in (I forget the right size, 4mm, maybe 4.5). Then you can easily assembly-line them and not worry about stuff moving around while the solder cools (you want to really heat them up a lot to make sure you get a good joint). Once you get a feel for it and figure out the best spot to solder the wire on so it fits well in the housings of the plugs you chose, it's actually really satisfying. I spend about an hour doing it a few months ago and now I have at least three times as many cables as I could possibly use because I just kept going. A solidly made 1 meter DIY banana cable costs about $2.50 USD and takes less than a minute to make. Even though you already bought some, no reason not to make some more - they stack so well that you always need more than you think you need.

https://archive.org/details/The_Electric-Film_Format_Acid_Test_1990

I've also gotten some perfectly good, non-rare, in-production ICs from major vendors over the years that look REALLY fake but work fine, so it's hard to tell.

Two MIDI_IO boards for the Midibox SEQ, but with headers for the MIDI jacks so I can mount them inside stacked like that and connect 8 panel mount MIDI jacks instead of putting them on the PCBs - easier and more durable. Yeah, the world of fake ICs is interesting. I've got a pile of suspicious voice chips for the Matrix 1000 that I got cheap on Aliexpress. They look very real but I doubt it. I've got two I know are real, so if I ever have to replace one I'll install a socket and test all the likely fakes first. It's a really big business and kind of fun to read about. https://www.aeri.com/counterfeit-electronic-component-detection/ https://www.engagez.net/posting/29099?snc=0 https://atadiat.com/en/e-introduction-counterfeit-ics-counterfeiting-detection-avoidance-methods/ For what it's worth, none of the Aliexpress CEM3396's have any of the signs of fakes, they're perfect matches for the real ones I can find online and I can't see any blacktopping or anything, the suspicious think is that they were $6 each and I bought them at least 5 years after the last known NOS wide body 3396's had sold out for almost $100 each.

Not tested yet because I don't have the panel where the DIN jacks mount yet so I don't know how long the wires will need to be and I don't have many IDC connectors left so I'm not going to make a temporary one. These things are so simple I'd be shocked if they didn't work.

I've got a ton of unreleased tracks that I could pull from.

New Platform Masters update yesterday (reposted to Youtube from his Facebook page):

Never mind the stuff that was in the post before this edit, none of that's available any more at all. But I'm really starting to have a powerful urge to build at least one of these:

I've looked at it but never messed with it, I'd be really interested to hear about it if you give it a shot. I finally dug out the 3trinsrgb+1c that I'd half finished before I moved and then never picked back up. Should be done tomorrow, hopefully it'll work. EDIT: works!