ksixty

this week’s favourite #internetradio: [Resonance Extra[(https://extra.resonance.fm/)

direct stream: http://stream.resonance.fm/resonance-extra

plays radio art / experimental music that is pleasant & my concentration vibe. also the site is beautifully done.

so I wanted to make an audio file of a ZX Spectrum program today as part of a gag for an event annoucement. step one. you need a compiler. thanks to @boriel@mastodon.social, there is ZX Basic that just works. it's awesome. you just do ../zxbc.py -f tap -a --BASIC jingle.bas and that's it. step two. you need an emulator. yay—I thought—retroarch has libretro-fuse that's even packaged for Alpine. it worked strange, displayed a lot of weird stuff and looked too compilcated. so I resorted to JSSpeccy3, which runs in a browser. it was okay, but I got tired of switching between the compiler and my browser, uploading the file, checking it out, etc. I gave retroarch one more shot, spent some time researching why on earth the audio was not working, even though the retroarch menus had it. one strace later it became clear that libretro-fuse does not use retroarch's sound system, but the ALSA sequencer. okay, modprobe snd_seq, done. now i can iterate much faster, by compiling my program and loading it into the emulator with a single command. neat! step three. you need a way to convert your tape image to an audio file. the original FUSE emulator (not to be confused with FUSE-the-filesystem-in-userspace-thing! damn it, google) contains some utilities, and among them there is tape2wav, which does exactly what you need. to get tape2wav you just need to compile libspectrum, then fuse-utils. sources are available for both, it's really almost as simple as: ./configure && make && doas make install. alas, tape2wav won't build without a warning, if your system's libaudiofile is broken. Alpine's package seem to be exactly this, so I had to check out the original source code, figure out the exact way to build the thing, since READMEs were updated almost never it seems, and, finally I've built everything and had my tape2wav working. step four. you may want to check that your audio file can be loaded into a ZX emulator. I thought the audio2tape program from the same fuse-utils suite would do exactly that. alas, it does not support the turbo-encoded tapes that it's sibling tape2wav produces, and there's no way to turn the turbo encoding off in the latter. the retroarch's libretro-fuse won't load wav files either, it just ignores them. so I thought to give the original fuse a shot. after doing apk add gtk+2.0-dev and having some pleasant nostalgic flashbacks, it compiled successfully, and — finally — i got my wav played and loaded. step five. you may want to make the audio file sound like a real tape recording. for this I went to my studio computer, loaded the wav in Logic Pro, applied my favourite tape emulation, some compression, normalized the volume et voila. soon the announcement will go live, and I'll show you the results. nothing much, but a deep dive nontheless.

@hi@romanzolotarev.com I’ve been running OpenBSD successfully on: Panasonic CF-SZ6, which is kinda slow but weights some 800 (!) grams and feels amazing, has a nice display, Ethernet and even a DVD drive;Huawei MateBook X (2020) that is my daily driver, has no fans and looks okay, see also this report by @jcs@jcs.org: https://jcs.org/2021/08/20/matebook

randomly found this while browsing the Alpine repository: ecasound. I've been dreaming of a simple and composable suite of programmes for manipulating live audio. the workflow of @?t=max@soundhunte.rs/msp, @?t=puredata@soundhunte.rs and the like never felt natural to me. Ecasound is a software package designed for multitrack audio processing. It can be used for simple tasks like audio playback, recording and format conversions, as well as for multitrack effect processing, mixing, recording and signal recycling The basic working principle of ecasound is similar to the widely used gdb (software debugging) and mysql (database admin) tools. Ecasound allows the user to perform most common tasks directly from the terminal console now I want to try this so much, hoping there’s a guide or a book or something. @?t=dsp@soundhunte.rs

it took just a small shell script to enable cross-posting from @?t=snac2@soundhunte.rs to a telegram channel, with formatting, attachments etc. oh, and one busybox call, too. here's the script: soundhunte.rs/k60/?doc=snac2tg.sh invoke it like this: inotifyd snac2tg /snac/user/me/public:ny

speaking of #internetradio, this is what I use for listening:

• iPhone: foobar2000, free
• Android: foobar2000 also
• at home: radio.sh, an unholy amalgamation of mpv(1), pick(1) and proxychains4(1) that runs on my studio Mac, mostly remotely

browser works for most (if not for all) of the stations too, but I usually want a real player at least to know what’s playing.

also been tiptoeing around the state of audio on Linux and discovered that @?t=openbsd’s@soundhunte.rs sndiod has been ported over for quite a while. sadly, on Alpine, even though the software that supports the protocol is usually built without it, and alsa-sndio’s compat layer is abandoned by its developer. even though there are examples of first-class support in some Linux distributions (e.g. Void Linux maintainers seem to care a lot about patching in sndio support in many applications), sadly on Alpine it’s this: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/issues/13355 the thing I liked while daily driving OpenBSD about sound was that it just worked. can’t say the same about the ALSA/Pulse/PipeWire mess—I've had my sound broken by updates thrice since August, and I’m using PipeWire, which is the least insane of the three... wish more people would care about even giving a shot to simple, robust and sane-ish solutions.

https://www.freebsd.org/press/press-rel-1/ Concord, CA, April 22, 1999: 32 Dual-Processor FreeBSD systems were used to generate a large number of special effects in the cutting edge Warner Brothers film, The Matrix.

soundhunte.rs/¿/the-unasnwered-question-ives.mp3 soundhunte.rs/¿/the-answered-unanswered-question-kurtag.mp3 @?t=nowplaying@soundhunte.rs

The Field - Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime @?t=nowplaying@soundhunte.rs @?t=minimal@soundhunte.rs

Когда я храню пост, я тщеславлюсь; когда же, для утаения подвига моего, скрываю его – тщеславлюсь о своем благоразумии. Если я красиво одеваюсь, я тщеславлюсь, а переодевшись в худую одежду, тщеславлюсь еще больше. Говорить ли стану – тщеславием обладаюсь; соблюдаю молчание – паки оному предаюсь. Куда сие терние ни поверни, все станет оно вверх своими спицами. Преподобный Иоанн Лествичник. (via https://t.me/a0xRef/249)

as for when things don’t go the expected way, the rule is—be light and playful, or don’t be at all, fade slowly and gently into nothingness until it bores you. forcing expectations is a sure way to fail. this concerns most kinds of doing. been to a music improvisation session tonight, seen how people exist through the unexpected they have brought on themselves, willingly. great fun!

also been tiptoeing around the state of audio on Linux and discovered that @?t=openbsd’s@soundhunte.rs sndiod has been ported to linux for quite a while. sadly, on Alpine, even the software that supports the protocol is usually built without it, and alsa-sndio’s too quirky and abandoned. even though there are examples of first-class support in some Linux distributions (e.g. Void Linux maintainers seem to care a lot about patching in sndio support in many applications), sadly on Alpine it’s this: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/issues/13355 the thing I liked while daily driving OpenBSD about sound was that it just worked. can’t say the same about the ALSA/Pulse/PipeWire mess—I've had my sound broken by updates thrice since August, and I’m using PipeWire, which is the least insane of the three... wish more people would care about even giving a shot to simple, robust and sane-ish solutions.

what’s a sleep?

“no smoking”; “due to the fact that [abbreviated]”; “communism is our goal!”

This is an example of the spirit I expect from people behind all the technologies.

Found in the documentation of the s@-protocol, a primitive technology for bloging, socially. http://satproto.org.

unix_prog_design.pdf

I’ve found out that some of the computer programs originally written for John Cage’s musical experiments with chance, aleatorics, and non-serialism are still available online (albeit as shareware). Running them is just a matter of configuring DOSBox. It feels like opening a well-sealed time capsule with the contents preserved.

See: https://anarchicharmony.org/People/Culver/CagePrograms.html


(On the contrary, when I think about reviving my school projects from around 7–10 years ago—node.js and all that—my head hurts.)

#music #permacomputing #dos

things you do: a thing, a thing, and a thing the crowd it attracts: [the crowd] now: things you don’t try it

I mean, just do stuff for friends and be happy.

Nothing really ever scales or should be scaled, I believe. “Machine were mice and men were lions once upon a time. But now that it’s the opposite, it’s twice upon a time!”.

(Quoted from: soundhunte.rs/mu/k60/acad/moondog/moondog/02_Stamping_Ground.mp3)

soon we will all be in front of the red. again

by the way, here’s a stat(1), and a stat(1) manual. oh, the first one is merely a brief description, not really a manual per se... but “if the info and stat programs are properly installed at your site, the command info coreutils aqstat invocationaq [sic] should give you access to the complete manual!”

what’s a sleep?

https://www.anarchicharmony.org/index.html (ca. 2001)

the-unanswered-question-ives.mp3 the-answered-unanswered-question-kurtag.mp3 @?t=nowplaying@soundhunte.rs

The Field - Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime\n\n@?t=nowplaying@soundhunte.rs

anyhow all my sound comes through sndiod now. no more tears~!

this week’s favourite radio station: https://extra.resonance.fm/ (UK)

direct stream link: stream.resonance.fm/resonance-extra

plays ambient / experimental / somewhat background music that is pleasant and good for focus. also the site is beautiful.

#internetradio #nowplaying

it took just a small shell script to enable cross-posting from @?t=snac2@soundhunte.rs to a telegram channel, with formatting, attachments etc. oh, and one busybox call, too. here's the script: soundhunte.rs/k60/?doc=snac2tg.sh invoke it like this: inotifyd snac2tg /snac/user/me/public:ny

what a day huh

I really enjoy that in this picture it seems like the script synchronises not only the posts but the follower count too... I mean, both accounts have just two

some folks over at hackernews postulate that resisting the vibe coding movement is gatekeeping. well, maybe it is. just the gate’s not a gate—it’s a boundary people maintain for their own sanity. I like my little garden with pets, not cattle, and with interfaces that are visible and distracting—and the best part’s that it all fits in my head nicely.

File tags: icy-title: Jonny Nash - Eternal Life @?t=nowplaying@soundhunte.rs

today — a web service for @?t=openbsd’s@soundhunte.rs calendar(1) built with cron and sh. https://soundhunte.rs/today the page shows data from calendar.russian, .computer, .history, .holiday, .discord and .space calendars. each entry has a link that goes to search. the service lists events for today only. and tomorrow it will list events for tomorrow. you can make it your homepage and see what today brings, every day, and easily search that, too.

The Field - Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime\n\n@?t=nowplaying@soundhunte.rs

https://rakhim.exotext.com/modern-ui-is-not-invisible So, on the surface [an interface] looks cleaner, but in my mind Apple Music is a lot more dirty, confusing, and disorienting. Like an attractive sociopath. I like simple interfaces. picture two: ncmpcpp on my laptop, controlling the mpd server on the studio computer that is ultimately responsible for what comes through my beloved stereo system at all times. the problem is this kind of simplicity is actually simple only when you learn how to work the interface. whereas the interface of Apple Music requires no prior learning. and learning is unacceptable for things that are meant for the greater audience. right? on the other hand, driving an automobile requires a license, maybe there ought to be one for computing, too?

how is it? I took a quick glanced at the ssh sign-up wizard, and it's the cutest thing ever!