any sufficiently advanced blogging is indistinguishable from blather

Reading and writing and blah blah blah

Been a while again, eh?  I submitted my short story, Oberon’s Paradise, to yet another publisher, this time online magazine Strange Horizons.  They publish stories about once a week on their site free for anyone to read.  The story’s been rejected three times so far, but it never hurts to keep trying.  I’m also trying to get back into the habit of critiquing other people’s work through Critters, a free online writing workshop, and I’m hoping to put my newer short story, No One Was Abendsen, through the critique line.

I also finished another orchestral piece for my album which I call On the Edge of a Dream.  So far my album is up to a bit over 20 minutes, so I’m about a third of the way there.  One song that will be on the album, White Castle Waltz, is already available on iTunes and CD Baby.  I must say, it’s pretty cool seeing one’s work on iTunes, even if they’re not really a selective distributor.

I finished reading Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, and I have a few quotes from it to put up on my Book Quotes blog.  It was a very good book, definitely worth a read if you’re interested in non-fiction.

I also finished reading a fantasy book by Kage Baker called The Anvil of the World.  It was a short book that came out in 2004, and I think it’s out of print now.  I wanted to read a book by Kage Baker because I had read a few of her short stories and enjoyed her style.  It was pretty light reading; the plot never got extremely thick or dark and the world never seemed very complex, but it was still engaging and believable and very humorous.  Not a bad read at all.

I’m still reading The Lord of the Rings (50th Anniversary Edition), a nice all-in-one volume I got for Christmas, but now I’m also reading T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, the book of the legend of King Arthur, which has definitely been enjoyable so far, especially since I already know how parts of the story go, and this book kind of fleshes things out.

And… I think that’s really all I have to blather about for now.  Kinda boring, eh?

By S P Hannifin, ago

Songsmith and irrationality

[display_podcast]

In this episode I blather about Microsoft Songsmith and the book Predictably Irrational.  I am a bit out-of-breath at the beginning of the podcast because I was running around the house…

First, I mention that my short story Oberon’s Paradise has once again been rejected because it’s such a terrible story.

Second, I respond to comments made on the tech news podcast, TWiT regarding the new music tool from Microsoft, Songsmith.  Songsmith is discussed in this episode of TWiT.  The awkward and cheesy ad for Songsmith is here on YouTube.  (It might be purposefully cheesy to be funny, but it’s still a bit awkward, I think.)  An interesting video describing the creation of and research behind Songsmith is here.

Third, I talk about the book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely.  I’ve only read the first two chapters so far, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to buy the book because it’s so fascinating and eye-opening for a foolish predictably irrational person like me.  I first heard about the book in this podcast episode, an interview with Derek Sivers.

By S P Hannifin, ago

A CD single

[display_podcast]

In this blathering, I talk about my experiment of creating a CD singe with kunaki.com.

I also mention my plans to try to get this piece on iTunes and elsewhere with CD Baby.  I’m mostly experimenting with these services because I don’t have the patience to wait until I have an entire album finished before seeing what they’re like.

Finally, I mention Derek Sivers’ website, more specifically his music advice page.  There’s a lot of good information there for any maker of music.

Oh yeah, here’s the kunaki product page for the CD.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Daily melodies

[display_podcast]

First of all, you might notice I added little picture of me in the corner there.  I made that with a website called befunky.com.  The site allows you to upload a picture and it tries making a cartoon out of it, though just how cartoony it looks is up to you.  It’s not nearly as good as a real artist doing to work, but it’s fun to play around with.  So that’s how I made my stylized picture up there.  Doesn’t it look great?

Second of all, I just launched a new site.  Do I really need yet another site?  Yes.  I started FreeDailyMelody.com, where I hope to release a new melody every day into public domain.  I have hundreds saved up right now, so I have no worries content-wise, I just hope I can keep up the energy posting them.  I hope it will be a good musical resource for someone out there; there’s no way I’d be able to use all the melodies I have saved up, yet I’d hate to see them go to waste.  If nothing else, the site will serve as a nice public archive.  And I’m releasing the melodies into public domain, so they’re really free for the taking.

Lastly, I finished composing that waltz this morning.  Woohoo!  First piece completed for my album!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Failed that test

[display_podcast]

Yesterday I took that C programming test I mentioned as part of my application for a job to a game development company… and failed!  *gasp*  The test basically consisted of writing two functions.  They said they hoped it would take three to four hours, five at the most.  I wrote the first function successfully, but it took me four hours.  I spent an hour on the second one, then just gave up.  I’m sure I could have done it if I spent a five to six more hours.  Designing the algorithms for the functions weren’t that hard (definitely a bit tricky, but not impossible… kind of fun actually), but doing the actual coding in C slowed me down a bit since I haven’t done it in a while.  I guess it was a good refresher though.  The functions used a lot of the “char” data type, which I just haven’t used much recently; I’ve been using Java lately (mostly because that’s what classes in college used, those traitors!) which I suppose has sort of spoiled me because it makes things like dealing with strings much much easier than the archaic way C deals with them.

My awesome desk

My awesome desk

So, I guess I can’t have a job with that company!  I wonder how often chars are used in the modern game development process?  I really can’t imagine it being used much… so it’s too bad I blame them for my downfall.  Anyway, I’m still keeping my eye open for game programming jobs that look interesting, and I hope they won’t test me too much on dealing with chars.

Anyway, I’m working on composing yet another waltz.  Not sure what to call it yet, but it’s sounding good.  I give a little excerpt in the podcast.  I’m hoping to make it a part of my upcoming album, coming sometime in 2009, at least an hour of all new music… I hope.

And… oh!  I joined TwitPic.  Kind of like my Twitter account, but with pictures.  In fact, I guess I should add links to those on the side.  A fun way to use my camera since I don’t really go anywhere.  I’m a hermit.  And I don’t have any money.  I’m in debt up to my eyeballs.  Somebody help me.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Driving home from work

[display_podcast]

I recorded this driving back from the place I drove to during the last podcast.  The sound quality is awful because I recorded this in the car again.  You don’t have to listen!!  In this episode I blather about:

– I orchestrated a tune called The Cornish Wassail for the free album A Garritan Community Christmas.  I put the piece at the end of the episode.  It’s my first orchestral piece to utilize the piano!  What do you think?

– Saw the book The Complete Guide to Blogging.  Looks interesting, I’d like to buy it, or get it for Christmas.

– I failed NaNoWriMo at 34K words, but continue to work on The Book of Harbringer.  I blather for a bit about my writing experiences.

Sorry for the horrible quality, my car made a lot of noise.  Zoom, zoom, zoom!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Driving to work

[display_podcast]

Here’s an awful sounding podcast because I recorded it while driving to work, and the car made a lot of noise.  Might be too annoying to even listen to.  But here’s what I talk about:

– I applied for some programming jobs and have been feeling quite nervous about taking programming tests.

– Water drop sounds.

– I don’t want to go to work.

– Got a camera for my birthday, took a picture, and made that illustration with it.

– New Compose Pile episode coming today, December 5th, 2008!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Happy birthday to me!

I turned 23 years old today, and WizardWalk.com turned 5 years old.  Yay.  Woohoo.  So begins my 24th year of life!

In my 23rd year of life, I didn’t get much music written.  Last year I somehow managed to write over ten pieces, but this year I think I only finished four more, Opuses 42 through 45.  I haven’t uploaded all of them to my MP3s page yet, but I think they’re all on YouTube.  Only four, that’s pretty dismal.  Oh, I also did a Christmas tune orchestration, I orchestrated the Cornish Wassail tune.  I’ll be releasing that soon; it’ll be part of a free Christmas album released by Garritan this holiday season.

Besides writing music, I did get graduate from college.  I suppose that’s the big thing.  No more school.

Oh, I also began my “melody project” … I haven’t been working on that at all this month, but I’ll definitely get back to it, there are a lot of things I’d love to experiment with it.

I’ve been having a bit of an Internet hiatus really this month, since I’m trying to do NaNoWriMo; that is, I’ve been trying to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month.  I’ve got five days left, and to be honest it really doesn’t look like I’ll win, I’m currently behind at about 33K words.  It would still be possible to catch up though, so who knows.  I will say that so far I’ve had the best progress I’ve ever had trying to write a novel.  Most importantly, perhaps, is that I actually planned out the entire plot so I know exactly where everything is going, and I’ve been sticking to it, not adding things that screw everything up like I did with The Game of Gynwig.  Anyweigh, my novel this month is called The Book of Harbringer.  I’ve made a little website about it here, which also contains the first few chapters.

I guess that’s pretty much it!  I think the rest of the week will be mostly dedicated to celebrating Thanksgiving.  We’ve got some relatives coming down so my family can’t cheat and go out to eat like we usually do.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Programming and melodies

[display_podcast]

Been a while, huh?  I haven’t been up to much besides programming.  I did compose a wee bit of music for my album, but my programming has been too much of an obsession lately for me to get much else done.  (I’m also way behind on my email, a couple hundred messages still unread.  Of course, most of it is spam or newsletters I don’t care about, but I’m sure there are some people I need to get back to in there too… and a bunch of YouTube comments I want to respond to eventually.)

Anyway, hopefully you won’t mind it if I just blather a bit on what I’ve been working on.  I started out writing a book on melody, though I didn’t get much writing done at all; I mostly just planned out how I was going to analyze melodies.  Then I started writing a computer program that could be fed melody information and spit out an “analysis” of that melody (“analysis” being mostly a collection of statistics).  It was my intention to use these statistics in my book, but then I decided to try reversing the process.  So I made my program take a melodic analysis and create a melody for it.  That in and of itself isn’t special, it just gives you back the original melody you put in.  But if you change that analysis around a bit, based on similarities of other melodic analyses (and some randomness), you get … new melodies!  Or at least melodies that are variations of the original melodies.  In other words, the more similar two melodies are, the easier they will mix.  The more different they are, the more my program will just regurgitate one of them, after having been unable to mix them that well.

That said, I’ve so far only tried a very limited amount of melodies… probably only around ten at this point.  It’s kind of a tedious process because right now the program only takes text files as input and outputs another text file.  So every melody you want the program to use you have to convert into numbers, and then to hear the melody it comes up with, you have to convert numbers back to notes.  It’s an utter pain!

So right now I am trying to make some sort of a GUI (graphical interface).  I’m working with Java, and I know just about nothing about Java’s GUI, or how to program 2D graphics for it.  Sun Microsystem’s website has a lot of resources about it, but no real solid tutorials that I could find; they’re resources are kind of all over the place and I’m having a lot of difficulty figuring out how to do what I want.  So I might go to the bookstore here soon and see if there are any good books on programming 2D graphics with Java.

My eventual ambition is to create something worth selling, so I don’t really have any plans to share the code or the specifics of exactly how the program works yet, though I admit that I definitely do not think it’s something so incredibly complex and amazing that it will change the world of music… still, I think I personally would really enjoy creating melodies with it… if I can make an easy-to-use GUI.  The logic behind how the program works is pretty much all in place though, though there are some areas that could use improvement.  But I really think the program needs to be using more the 10 or so melodies I’ve given it, so I’d really like to have a nice GUI that would make feeding it melodies much easier, faster, and less tedious.

I’ve uploaded some melodies it came up with at:

http://www.wizardwalk.com/melodies/

… some of them sound awful, some of them have pretty good ideas I think, and some sound too much like one of the melodies fed in (especially that Beethoven’s Ninth one).

So, that’s what I’ve been up to!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Don’t know much about marketing

[display_podcast]

I had a weird dream the other night in which I was in a used bookstore and was looking for some good books but I couldn’t find any. My siblings, on the other hand, were finding tons of books, some of them even finding books that I myself wanted, but they wouldn’t tell me where they found them. Finally I came upon the musical score for Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, only to open it up and find it was an arrangement for two tubas. What a horrible nightmare.

In other news, my parents came back from my uncle’s with a wonderful surprise: a foosball table! Yay! It’s what I’ve always wanted! So if you ever want to play foosball… get your own foosball table.

I am almost finished reading a boring book called The Marketing Gurus. It’s basically a summary of a bunch of other marketing books. Unfortunately most of the books it summarizes must be horrible. They’re repetitive and spend a lot of time making blatantly obvious points, “be honest in your advertising” and “know about your customers” … if you can’t figure that stuff out on your own, you’re a fool. I guess books on marketing are like books on writing fiction; there are some good ones out there, but most of them are just a waste of bundled paper. Some of the books it summarizes are a bit out-of-date as well, with little or no mention of the Internet.

Anyway, there’s one chapter that states that you should first find a niche, then create a product for that niche.

You don’t need passion … you don’t need a lot of creativity

I blogged about something similar in my Stuff I Found blog. This concept of finding a niche first and not needing passion seems backwards to me. I guess if you can pull it off, good for you, but I can easily imagine most people being unsuccessful at it; passion can be hard to fake. Although, now I kind of want to try it. But I don’t think I will, as it also seems much harder. Seems like you need even more creativity to find a worthy niche. It’d be easier to just think about what product I myself would want and then make that product, if I can afford it. For example, a blog in which I blather would be great. Oh look, here it is!

For a good and up-to-date resource on marketing, I highly suggest the podcast Marketing Over Coffee. Even if you know very little about marketing (like me), these hosts are quite thought provoking, and they don’t just state the blatantly obvious. The podcast also makes me want to eat donuts.

By S P Hannifin, ago