Latest Five Posts
Playing music
In 2020 I started making electronic music, mainly as a more creative way to unwind during lockdown evenings.
It's mainly quite meditative stuff, inspired by the early pioneers of electronic music: Laurie Spiegel, Pauline Oliveros and also the early work of Steve Reich.These musicians either used tape loops or sequencers to experiment with melody, harmony and rhythm.
This piece uses two step-sequencers (software the triggers a set of notes over a number of bars). Each sequencer is in a different odd time signature and they're pitched a fifth interval apart.
— Flint Mountain (@FflintMountain) January 24, 2021
Both sequencers are controlling a single synth. Then I'm controlling both the sequencer and the synth using the a single media keyboard contoller, improvising in C minor with delay and other effects.
I get the sense that for those early experimental musicians, making their music was about breaking compositional rules and about play and discovery with the new technology at the time.
Link Notes 1 May 2020

Today's Links
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Raspberry Pi unveils $50 interchangeable-lens camera board: More things you can do with the diminutive computer.
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City leaders aim to shape green recovery from coronavirus crisis: Cities in Europe, the US and South America are making sure people can move round safely by widening footways and installing cycle paths.
Link Notes 30 April 2020

Today's Links
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OpenAI’s Jukebox AI produces music in any style from scratch — complete with lyrics: Music that sounds like there are lots of people involved in making it, but it's made using Artificial Intelligence
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What if Covid-19 Returns Every Year, Like the Common Cold?: We could be in and out of lockdown until a vaccine is developed.
Link Notes 29 April 2020

Today's Links
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Greater Manchester councils stand to lose more than £110m from Manchester Airport: We need to break the link between quality public services and public investment in industries most damaging to the planet.
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On this day, from the archive: 2004, 2003, 2002
Link Notes 28 April 2020

Today's Links
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Van Gogh Museum Virtual Tour: View Van Gogh's paintings in 4k resolution, as if you were walking around the gallery.
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The British Museum has published 2 million images under a Creative Commons license: View the artefacts plundered by British colonialists over centuries from the comfort of your home.
Link Notes 27 April 2020

Today's Links
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The Great Biomass Boondoggle: Switching from coal to biomass for power generation is seen as a way to decarbonise electricity production, but it's not effective enough in lowering CO2 emissions
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Meet ‘Spot’: The Robot That Could Help Doctors Remotely Treat COVID-19 Patients: After all those videos of amazing robot stunts, an unlikely application for Boston Dynamics’ robot ‘Spot
Link Notes 26 April 2020

Today's Links
- Legal Bid Launched To Stop U.K. Government’s £29 Billion Road Building Plans: The UK Government's plans to spend £29 Billion on road expansion may not meet obligations for the Paris Climate Agreement, and therefore be illegal
- If Andromeda Were Brighter, This is What You’d See: The Andromeda Galaxy is our closest galaxy and would appear much bigger in the sky if it was brighter
Link Notes 25 April 2020

Today's Links
- How I Photograph the Milky Way with Medium Format Film: Photographing the stars using photochemistry
- UN Chief Says Human Rights Must Be Central in Fight Against Covid-19: In the international effort against the COVID-19 outbreak, human rights and climate justice should be central in our recovery
- ‘Expert Twitter’ Only Goes So Far. Bring Back Blogs: A call to bring back better tools for long form writing
Link Notes 24 April 2020

Today's Links
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Hubble Space Telescope's 30th Anniversary: For the last 30 years, images from the Hubble Space Telescope have been revealing the beauty and scale of the Universe.
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Please explain how NHS app will work, asks Open Rights Group: Privacy groups are calling for more transparency around the UK Government's COVID-19 contact tracing app.
Link Notes 23 April 2020

Today's Links
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NASA's Plan to Turn the ISS Into a Quantum Laser Lab: Harnessing a phenomenon that's at the edge of our understanding
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The Dangerous Rise of COVID-19 Influencers and Armchair Epidemiologists: Sarah Weinman on why armchair epidemiologists ‘had such all-encompassing belief in their own interpretation of the data’
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Astrophotography in the era of Starlink satellite clusters: More on the impact of the Space X's confetti-like approach to launching communications satellites.
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Margaret Burbidge: The astronomer who established that the Earth’s chemical elements were formed inside stars
Previous posts
- Link Notes 22 April 2020
- Link Notes 21 Apr 2020
- What matters
- Modified Social Benches
- Frequency
- Fictional spacecraft on the ground and real spacecraft in space
- Celestial mechanics and the new political landscape
- Bowie and the 90s Internet
- 2013: The Year the BBC Looked Like a Bogus Signer
- We Are All Netizens Now
- The Science of Doctor Who
- Is cycling getting more or less dangerous?
- Greasemonkey script to remove promoted tweets from Twitter
- How short-term thinking about road safety has failed to make liveable towns and cities
- Wikipedia > New Year's Resolution
- Fixing a non-booting Raspberry Pi (constant green LED, no video)
- The only kit you need is a bike
- Gateshead, Tesco
- Using your energy, not battery power, to light your bicycle
- Infinite ASDA
- Boston Dynamics Petman
- Darktable
- Johann Hari's Wikipedia editing history as David Rose
- Johann Hari's Wikipedia editing history as David Rose
- Secular Americans praise Bloomberg - 9/11 ceremony religion free
- Bike Lanes
- Apple iCloud
- Norfolk Landscapes
- We need another Cosmos
- Kurt Vonnegut on being addicted to oil