Creative Bump

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Intellectual Property Tax (Score:5, Insightful) by apenzott (821513) on Friday May 09, @03:58PM

This could be a wonderful revenue opportunity for cash-strapped state and local governments.

 

When such a court claim is made on infringement of this intellectual property by a business located within the tax jurisdiction, just take the claimed infringement value and multiply it by the prevailing property tax rate and invoice said property holder. (Be sure to tack on interest and penalties for back taxes.) If property holder doesn’t pay in 90 days, start lien and foreclosure proceedings.

 

To recover the costs of this collection, auction off this IP. If there is no starting bid (1% of value), property becomes public domain.

Ztar Musings : Romantic Jazz Etude from Myles on Vimeo.

Here’s a short piece utilizing my Ztar MIDI controller. I am getting more accustomed to the legato technique. I can use the string triggers but generally find a double handed tapping technique to be a little more expressive and also as you can (almost) see here, this allows me to make use the left hand for sustained chords to accompany a little improvised solo performed with the right.

If you are interested to know, I used the free/donationware MrRay 22 VST Electric Piano and the very powerful Zebra 2

This may not be the most appropiate place to go too depth into the musical theory side but the etude revolves around the circle of fiths in resolved C major harmonies. I’ll be happy to explain in a bit more detail the basic jazz in the comments for this post.

Apologies for the camera shot being a little too high thus you cannot really see what’s going on with my right hand. I’ll make sure to get a better shot next time!

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This news is hot off the press. Harvey Starr who builds custom MIDI instruments and sells them direct from his website www.starrlabs.com has unveiled a new web site design and also an attractive small-form Ztar called the Baby-Z.

There has been some small yet excited murmurings about the new compact model as it promises some unique features that have not been included in any other model as of yet.

Perhaps for many guitar orientated musicians and sound designers the aspect of the small Baby-Z to get the most excited over is the small price-tag. It is the first time a Ztar will be debuting at under $1000. More details and specifications following the break…

Read the rest of this entry »

This is some very neat software coming from Hungarian creativist Gabor Papp. You can see information about the application and other works at his site http://www.mndl.hu

Animata although not yet available it seems, will be Open Source, multi-platform (Mac, Windows & Linux) and can be connected with widespread programming environments (e.g. Max/MSP, Pure Data, EyesWeb). What’s nifty about this software is that once you’ve set up the ‘puppets’ and connected them up to invisible rigs which will define their movement, you should be able to provide any kind of input (live audio or from a MIDI controller for example) and effectively "play" an animation in real-time. Great stuff for lazy animators like myself.

The creator Gabor Papp who incidently appears to be affiliated with Dorkbot|Budapest (quite possibly cooler than my local Dorkbot|NYC) also has some good taste in music. Cue the demonstration video hosted on Vimeo, mmmm jazzy Rhodes & flute - a delightful combination.

Animata Jazz Pub from gabor on Vimeo.

Among all the hype, boring product demos, glitzy million-dollar budgets and scantily dressed booth girls, there probably is only one site worth visiting for news from the NAMM floors and that’s

NAMM Oddities.

Where else are you going to read about Egyptian God Guitars, Toilet Seat Covers made out of Guitars, Rock vs Jazz chess boards and other crazy musical inventions for the up-coming year?

Go head over and enjoy Barry Wood’s titillating site now, go, mirth!

After a many month wait for my custom built Ztar Z7-s to be constructed and delivered, it arrived last week direct from Harvey Starr at StarrLabs and I have been getting to grips with the way it feels and plays, not to mention the depth of complexity in splits, zoning and setting up the way it interfaces with MIDI to your computer.

Funky Rhodes Ztar I from Myles on Vimeo.

 Expect a lot more to come as I explore the potential of this amazing electronic instrument.

I use Gmail.  A lot. 

Here’s a list of things that would make my grin even wider when splurging messages in Gmail:

1.  XHTML Support - A biggy, especially for signatures.
2. Default text for composing emails - Wish I could choose Verdana to be my default font face. It’s more readable! 
3. “Refresh All” - Check for new emails for all your assigned accounts in one go.
4. Non Java/pop-up window for Inserting URLs - Gets blocked by IE7 every time, grrrr!
5. Inline image insertion - Not just appearing at the end of the email but optionally amongst the text too.
6. Individual signatures for each email account - Seperate work from play under the same Gmail account.
7. Tightened spam filtering - Already good but starting to get spam in my inbox once-a-day now.
8. More (free) storage space - Either bump up the rate of increasing MB or an annual increase (sort of birthday present for your account).
9. New email sorting/browsing options - List by date received or file size.
10. And finally, for fun…  Doodle ability! I want to doodle straight into my emails or even live into Google chats.

Well, that concludes my list.  Ya better be listening Google!

OK, I’m going to profess that as much as I wish that I was a guru and wizard at patching together my own audio-visual apps using Max/MSP/Jitter combos for my own performances and exploration.  Unfortunately. each time this is attempted, I have been presented with the Max interface,  scratched my head, tried to consume the manual and tutorials only to feel a headache coming on and become disapointed at my inability to piece together anything that does what I am envisioning in my head.

I have no shortage of ideas for musicial looping performances and custom MIDI editors that I would like to build but the learning curve is so intense for Cycling 74 products that I am overwhelmed each and everytime.  I just don’t know exactly what ‘ingredients’ I need in order to bake that amazing ‘musical pie’.  It’s all very well trying to read a manual about the basics of cooking and that ‘pepper’ is a ’seasoning’ and is used to make something spicy and add flavor, and then to be given some recipes for making a jam tart when what you really have your eyes set on is that fancy Coq Au Vin.  Unfortunately there are fewer resources for learning to become a Max master than there are cooking and recipe sites and to finally get to the point, I just wish the Max program was easier to get into from the perspective of making your own inventions from scratch.

Well, it is fortunate news to find out that this is indeed what Cycling 74 have in mind for the new iteration of their software flagship software.  They want to make it easier for the beginner to learn and get into the program and so most of the updates focus on the interface and providing a GUI that is intuitive and informative (through inbuilt help and online training resources). 

Essentially after reading about what is coming, the new Max 5 is going to be easier to get into and also more fun for the veteran user.  This program has been around since the 80s after all and so there is an established user-base. However I am excited that Cycling 74 have decided to target the more inexperienced programmer musician such as myself (who I consider to be more musician than engineer) and make the learning curve that much smoother.

Some specific details and changes:

Easier to Use

1. Multiple undo is available.
2. Objects interact with time in ways that are more meaningful than milliseconds.
3. The patcher is variable resolution and can be zoomed in and out.
4. A simplified and more consistent interface, identical on Mac and Windows.
5. A new object palette (with nice big resizable icons!) works as a visual catalog.

Easier to Learn

1. The documentation is completely integrated into the user interface.
2. A searchable database of objects, media, examples, and documentation integrates all of the provided material.
3. Introductory tutorials have been completely rewritten, and include integrated patches.
4. New interactive debugging tools make figuring out what your patch is doing (almost) fun.
5. Third-party object developers can now use all of our documentation tools for their products.

Easier to Deal With

1. The interface can easily be localized and customized.
2. A new file format is more readable, extensible and reliable.
3. Support for Unicode text and filenames.
4. A new interface layer — “Presentation Mode” – provides a new way to build user interfaces without cluttering your patch.
5. The installation and authorization experience is vastly improved.

I suggest reading the whole article to see what’s in store. It’s a good read and shows that there are interesting times up ahead for musicians/visual artists worldwide, unsatisfied with current “DAW” (Digital Audio Workstation - music software hosts basically) offerings and wanting a more customized way to create and perform.

I just saw a recent entry on Dmitry Fadeev’s blog where he posted a design he made for an ebook reader. It mimics the classy Apple styling to great effect and looks like a sibling of the iPhone.  If these product concept design was actually taken on by a company and implemented with a great looking screen and battery life as well as wireless functionality (Wi-fi or Bluetooth?) I’d defintely snap one up.

You may or may not remember that last year Sony unvieled their take on the eBook readerand Engadget.com went quite nuts for them at a $300-400 price tag.  However this thing has no form factor and I’d much rather be seen holding Dmitrys concept.  I’m a big fan of screens taking up the whole front side as opposed to being a window.

Another point to make is, I feel we should move on from the name “eBook”, it’s so Web 1.0… 

Joking aside, seriously, what does “eBook” make you think of?  Badly written affiliate-promoting spam PDFs are the main images floating around my head.  A fresh name for the medium is required!  Of course it’s in vogue to use “i” but the name “iBook” (no doubt already trademarked) will probably suffer the same fate as the lowly “e” and by the time Web 3.0 rolls around, prefixing words with today’s “i” will be passé too.

So ‘Digital Pages’ it is for now (shortened to ‘Di-Pa’, pronounced ‘dee-pah’).  Or perhaps that’s going too far.  I’ll leave on a high note and display the full sized concept in all it’s glory.

Yum.

Wow, so this is what the Alienware team have been up to lately? This new Laptop from Dell is and I quote “Head Turning”, most likely due to sheer shock to see such a huge and powerful computer dressed up in “mobile” shoes, that manages to mimic a granite slab with trim and flares.  Not to mention the arrays of blinky LEDs that will do wonders for it’s battery life.

 This “Brute” of a Laptop (squashed legs, yes) actually has a full size keyboard, so far as to include a 10 key numberpad on the side naturally as the target market (gamers with infinitely deep pockets)  are always running out of keys to bind short cuts too for that taunt or auto-grenade-spam script.

 OK, perhaps I am being a touch too critical here, there are of course plenty of merits here, I mean, a world-first for the mobile generation - PPU (Physics Processing Unit), which does the same role as your graphics card does except for number-crunching anything related to computing physics. Heck I’m not ready to put one of those in a desktop machine yet!  That said, anything the relieves the load of sorely stressed out CPUs is going to be a welcome addition and now that the hardware is trickling through to the consumer,  game and application developers will follow suite in adopting and supporting this feature. 

Rock on.

Of course, no stone is left unturned and the very latest of everything is included from Blue-ray drive, 4GB RAM memory options and dual SLI-based Geforce graphics card to even 5.1 channel surround sound! I suppose our rich gamer is going to have no trouble with their personal chauffeur/assistant lugging around a deluxe multi-channel speaker rig and setting it up for them where-ever they go.

Ah, all in the name of fun and entertainment.

Well, if you happen to have some extra cash stashed in your back-pocket “for emergencies” then you may be eligible to place an order for that premium model - A cool $4,486, minus tax.  Enjoy.