Motorola ringtone composer

I have an old motorola hand phone with fascinating ringtone composer function. However there is no information, even on internet about how to compose a music there. Here I try to share my experiment on how to compose a notation in it. I'm sorry for my music knowledge.
The grammar is the following
ABDE
A= *Number, eg *1, 1st octave. This is optional
B= # sign, 1/2 ascending
C= Note Letter, abcdefg = ordinary note, r = stop note
D= Number, length of note, 0 is the longest, default is 2
example: *4#c0
We can also use up/down button to get all the notes, but only in standar length (there should be correct term for this). To change the length we must change it manually.

Happy composing!

Here is an example from star wars opening theme
b1b1b1g2r4*5d2b1
g2r4*5f2b0*5#f1*
5#f1*5#f1*5#g2r4
*5d2b1g2r4*5d2b0

oil on lens

Camera lens indeed has sophisticated mechanical parts. As other mechanical devices, lubrication is an essential treatment. However it doesn't mean that a lens needs lubrication.

Here is a severe example of the impact of a drop of oil on the aperture. The aperture mechanism is using a very light force. Therefore a small inhibitor will affect its functionality. The aperture blade is so light and designed with such kind of matte surface, apparently to prevent any glare. Therefore the oil fill the matte texture of the blade, and the cohesive forces between blades increase, so they are harder to move. Finally the diafragm cannot be changed.

I wonder from where did the oil come from? Apparently it came from the melting grease. But still I'm unsure, it may also came from silly human action.

Learning math by writing program

A bright idea grab from a talk below. In general he is questioning the mathematics curriculum in this computer age. One suggestion is instead of teaching students to have magnificent skill being computing machinery, it would be better if students are taught to develop that machinery by writing a computer program.

However there is a question left, how we can teach student to have skill for solving basic problems that usually solve without any tool. I feel somehow there are something can be learnt by learning this skillful calculating machinery that might develop our understanding in other field of knowledge.

Graffiti

Graffiti(1) is an old handwriting input method from Palm. Very fast and accurate, though unnatural. Probably this is the best input method for handwriting, at least a newly released version for Android has just been released.

It maybe a very nice example of an awful impact of a patent infringement. The lost of Palm over Xerox in this case forced Palm to ship its gadget without Graffiti, instead they are shipped with Graffiti2 which is less intuitive. It caused outcry to Palm fans, who have been well trained with Graffiti. Furthermore it might be the cause of the plummet of its market.

asnf audio system

Reading posts on jimmyauw's blog send my memories back when I was child. I bought an amplifier kit for Rp20.000(around USD10), ready to plug without chasis and power supply. Rode bicycle to the town (yes I lived more less 10km outside the town) with Reza, who lived 3-4 km from my home. Now I'm wondering on how we made appointment without phone, sms nor email, it was beautiful day isn't it.
It was quite complete kit, preamp, tone control and power amp. I used a bare casette/tape deck as head unit, and two full range pioneer speakers(grab from my parents stereo set, hmm my parents were quite rich for they afforded to buy this precious portable stereo tape player). It was not very long until Reza generously gave his tape sharp walkman, I used it as my new head unit, it sound definitely better and louder.
The powersupply was 5Ampere trafo, quite big. I didn't assemble it together in a chassis since I need it to fed my head unit(fortunately there was 3V output to feed the walkman battery power). The chassis was half centimeter wooden multiplex and some coconut tree wood, painted red, never finish :(. The driver casing was made made from soft wood(kapuk), ex concrete construction works, painted contemporary also never finished. I almost forgot to mention that this two fullrange speaker was put in the same box! ok I admit it was dumb.
I got cursed by DIY project, modifications. As I remember I only did modification on single capacitor that change the tone higher or lower, given bigger capacity it went lower and vice versa.
Full range was not cool, I wanted extreme bass and treble. I went for one tweeter and one woofer, actually they weren't bought at the same time. Build the case using ex concrete construction works again. It was quite big and time consuming. I meant to build sub woofer actually, but finally it went to single channel of my stereo, and the other two fullrange went to other channel. Another blatant dumb.
It sounds, good? well everything is relative. This system filled days of my adolescence for couple(4-5) years. I think it was not the amp, the head unit was the most important.. thank Za :D.
Many casettes were played on it, as I remember only one was copied version, the rest were originals; Iwan Fals(a lot), P-Project(I knew their parodical songs version more than the originals), dewa19(all of their album), Def Leppard (a bunch of them), MLTR(yes we're chicks), Saigon Kick(sometime also kick out), Kenny G, SlanK, Oasis, Alanis Morissette, Green Day, Metallica, Sherina(when she was cute), and many more. Most of them were borrowed.
After some years in university I feel that I lost my respect to music, probably due to mp3 format that can be easily copied and pasted. I feel sorry for myself, I lost respect to what I loved. Practically I never bought a single song/album after I leave my fancy audio system.

for computer scientists

http://www.janestreet.com/technology/ocaml.php

Such an explainable stuff during my undergraduate. How could be such programming paradigm get the claws in this respectable area. It's really a great opportunity for computer scientists who cling on scientific field instead of hacking.

It was nine or ten years ago, when I was introduced to LISP and prolog, which that time considered as unprospective programming language, therefore soon they were left and I switched to procedural language; C, pascal and the descendants.

Anyhow I must realize that this is not for mediocre. Meanwhile job market demands more procedural programmer that must be filled.

This post is only encouraging top students to stick to their area of interest instead of devoting theirselves into market demand which is suitable for mediocre like me. Somehow there must be appreciation for hardwork, somewhere!

graphic equation plotter for linux

We have notoriuous expensive bulky powerful Mathlab for this purpose actually, but we can also use gnuplot.
Here is the screenshot.


Therefore this the online graph drawing will be a history.

GPU for computing

Really surprised while reading an email this morning, moving computation task on GPU instead of using CPU. Last year I was really surprised knowing graphic cards memory usage for virtual memory, I imagined how fast it would be. And today they moved further, move computational task on parallel GPU.
You can see there are four graphics cards installed, with 2 GPU each, so it has 8 GPU. Quite interesting technique, considering GPU has more processor register than CPU, since many years ago there are GPU with 128 bit processors, meanwhile CPU has just moved to 64 bit. GPU is not a multi purpose processor, so it is easier to design a sophisticated one.
Thanks for PCIexpress technology that makes multiple graphic cards installation possible. In AGP age it was truly impossible since AGP is only allowed single card installed.
Eventhough they said it is an affordable supercomputer, it is quite expensive, $6000, but in the next two years eventually it will be affordable. Would it be a big threat for sgi? No, I don't think so, SGI still provide far more reliable devices. Anyhow this Fastra computer was build upon consumer class devices, but maybe it is suitable for particular works that do not require strict reliability feature.

Further information: http://fastra.ua.ac.be
Picture is courtesy of the owner.

hifi

Until my boss told me monoblock and tube lamps I thought that the best audio devices are sony, kenwood and so on with sophisticated term such as surround, subwoofer and so on. Yes I was wrong.

Our ears are only two, therefore stereo sound system is actually enough, and a good sound system is the one that reproduce a sound similar to the original, not more or less such provoked by subwoofer stuff, that what was Pak Arief said. But the problem is about what kind of stereo sound system can produce such incredible sound. Unfortunately any transistor sound system which is widely available is never adequate for this purpose due to transistor characteristic. Somehow transistors degrade electron flow, such as electron hole jump.. ahh I don't know exactly.. I'm not an electronic engineer, that eventually degrade sound quality.

Fast backward to the time when transistor was not yet invented, people use tube lamps that has characteristic such as transistor, even computer processor was made from this tube lamps in this age. Its size and power greedy characteristic made any devices contain this tubelamps become monstrous big, but it has a nice characteristic for sound reproduction. It has a smoother 'curve' that preserve sound quality. Therefore audiophilies prefer this kind of tube lamps audio amplifier sound system.

In the case of surround sound system, dts, and so on, this tubelamps system gives a more natural output. Such as when attending a live music concert, from the sound we can determine where are the vocalist, violin, bass, and so on, even though the sound is only coming from the front. This kind of opportunity coined into a notion of staging.

Sure for producing such kind of sound you need a really good resource, forget about MP3, even for the highest possible sampling rate. CD audio is considered as the worst affordable source, preferably vinyl, or any other recording source with quality between them.

This entry was provoked when I saw a bunch of vinyl and the player, it is cheaper than I've thought...hehehe, maybe it was the worst. But the tubelamps sound amplifier price is truly crazy, even though someone offer me for USD500 for the cheapest, home made.

Mekanik Robot, art or engineering?

Edan ini orang.

Mekaniknya.....amazing.... keeereeeeen

above of that it is powered by the WIND, yes by the wind


crazy..




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supper high definition

The Last Supper in high definition photo. I feel this picture form factor is fit exactly in human eyes, divine proportion eh... Let's examine it later.
Do you feel familiar with this picture? Yes, I think this picture is also used as Coreldraw or Adobe illustration icon? Sorry for forgetting it. Is she Maria Magdalena?