MiniMoog VST

I've been shopping for a softsynth version of the MiniMoog, for aesthetic reasons, and because I think it is more preferable for me to have a software version of this classic synth than to ever think of purchasing a real one.

Aesthetically, the Mini has been used on so much of my favorite music from Kraftwerk, to Gary Numan, to Nine Inch Nails, you name it. I am still very much oriented towards the kinds of sounds it creates.

From a practical standpoint, it is easier for me to record these things with MIDI and Cakewalk Sonar, using multiple instances of the device at times. The original beast can cost anywhere from $1,500-upwards of $3,000. I was pricing software versions that cost around $200.

I looked at Arturia MiniMoog V, which is a very true copy of the original synth, endorsed by Robert Moog, bearing his name. And it was hard not to just fall in love with that version. The one I wound up getting is by GForce, called the MiniMonsta. There were several factors that influenced me.

A major part of my decision was based on whether I could design my own sounds with it. Arturia's interface is a bit smaller, and some of the features didn't seem to work right. I could never quite get oscillator 3 to modulate things as I thought it should. The MiniMonsta has a larger display and in stand alone mode, I was able to make new voices, save them to disk, and use their morph feature, more about that later.

Both synths have extra features. Arturia has a modulation matrix, a dedicated LFO, so you don't have to give up the third oscilator, and they put in a chorus and delay effect. GForce went an order of magnitude beyond that however. Not only do they have a dedicated LFO, they have one for nearly every single aspect of the synth! Not only that, there is an ADSR envelope that may be used for all of these features. They made nearly every control so that it could be latched onto and changed via MIDI. There is a delay. They have this really bizarre feature that I am starting to love where you make variations of your patches and then have the ability to morph between them, either selected by a pre-assigned octave of the keyboard, or automatically, or by pressing a button. From a performance standpoint, you could use the stand alone version on a notebook computer in a live performance, and have all these options at your control.

The GForce MiniMonsta delivers on sound, comes with about 6,000 preset voices, many created by Rick Wakeman, but goes way beyond what the original instrument was capable of. Granted, Arturia has a polyphonic mode, but MiniMonsta has unison mode and a polyphony that is not watered down. Playing a chord on it is like playing a fleet of MiniMoogs. It is really fantastic.

Another nice thing in my case is that when you buy it, you get the PC and the Mac Universal Binary versions. So I can put it on my Powerbook and design sounds with it, and then use my sequencer on the PC to play them back. It is quite liberating to have an instrument of this quality that I can use in so many different environments and aspects, stand alone, VST, or on the mac as an Audio Unit in Logic. I don't use Logic as much as Sonar, but when and if I do, it is there for me.

I still will continue to play my Moog Prodigy. It has a certain niche of sounds that the MiniMoog doesn't have. The MiniMonsta doesn't have an oscilator sync, which is something that really shines on the Prodigy. Also, many people gloss over the fact that the Prodigy has ADS-R envelopes, whereas the Mini only has ADS envelopes. [update: I stand corrected. The MiniMoog does have a "release" feature for the envelopes, it is the switch over at the performance controls called "decay."] This is a subtle difference, but it makes a difference in sound design and in the way you might play the instrument. There are lots of bass voices on the Mini that only use two oscillators, and many of the ones that use three are not so usable because the sound becomes too complex to just be a bass line. So now I have what I feel is the best of both at my disposal. I will still be recording with the real world Prodigy, but will also have my appetite for the MiniMoog satiated by this GForce product.

In a way, it is better to have a synth endorsed by a pro musician than one endorsed by Robert Moog. Rick Wakeman has actually used the thing, and though Moog may have helped in the design of Arturia's product, I don't think it is as playable, or as versatile as MiniMonsta seems to be. I will write more later after I've done some recording with this thing, and I'm really looking forward to that.

The Visitor
(a Quin Martin Production . . . )

I've started work on my next album today. It will be called "The Visitor" for reasons that may or may not be obvious. It is in part an homage to The Man Who Fell To Earth, staring David Bowie, from 1974, I believe.

My last album was mostly re-workings of earlier renditions, but helped me get familiar with some new equipment. Even though I'm already off to a quick start with this one, I will be taking my time to work on this. I do have a few skeletons of MIDI sequences that I intend to bring into this century. I think the sound on this one will be more atmospheric, though I can hardly resist my pop influences.

All of Gary Numan's work for the past decade at least, has some kind of atmospheric intro section, so that nothing starts into a groove right away. My inclination is to combine atmosphere with a groove. Maybe I can keep it from being just noise!

I just registered all the songs from the last album with ASCAP, so if any of them get played somewhere on earth, I am due a royalty. Here, earth is defined in a rather limited scope. Maybe I should have called the last album Limited Scope. That would have been appropriate. It is interesting to me that anybody who can make some MP3's on their notebook computer, as I have, can make them available to sell on iTunes, napster, amazon, etc. with very little effort involved. It cost me fourty bucks to have somebody set all that up for me. All I had to do was upload the tunes to them and use paypal to secure their services.

For me it is not a question of how many I can sell. Rather, it is a matter of having them for sale. There is a status that is reached where some potential is leveraged against the economic market of musical ideas. Without some strong promotion or otherwise notable event, nobody will know my stuff is for sale. Errant iTunes power searches may yield a song that someone will play the snippet sample given. Perhaps I will buy some of my own recordings, just for fun. But I will have entered a playing field that is now almost level, among players who are like gods to me, who I've worshiped and admired for decades, or whom I see on television and go "I like that." I am my first critic and I like what I make. For me, it compares well with the songs I've purchased and if nobody else finds it, or gets it, or thinks it's cool, that's okay. For me, I think we have it.

Inference Patterns Released

My latest album is now available to try out at SoundClick.Com. If you like synthesizer music, especially if you like Gary Numan's music from around 1982, this might be a winner for you. I'm quite satisfied with it. You can try it before you buy it. Available by the single, or as an MP3 album for $7.99. Order the CD for $12.99 from Cafe Press.

There's some new material and some of the songs are from my classics that have been re-worked with newer and more varied equipment. There are also a couple of remastered oldies like Velvet Elvis, and Reflector. Those were two songs that I didn't feel could be made any better except to be tweaked a little bit in Adobe Audition's mastering rack.

There is one very old recording of a live version of Myths About Paper, performed by my first band, A Presence Called Fred at the 1985 Poe Boy jam. I think that's my favorite live recording of my work, performed in a 1000 seat auditorium with good acoustics.

Also included is the 50th remake of Plastic Hand, the "apple mix", with all vocals sung by my Mac PowerBook. On the new stuff, my vocals are noticeably less effected, and made better by my M-Audio microphone interface. I use a Shure SM-53, and though I've had arguments with people who say, "that is an instrument mic," I just look at its frequency response curve, and like to hold it in my hand, so there it is.

Song List:

Myths About Paper 3.0
Prodigy 7
Laser Jack Ruby
Beryllium Zinc
Control
Song on the Radio
Class IV
What are Pure Thoughts Not
Plastic Hand
Reflector
Velvet Elvis
No Regrets
Myths About Paper Live

Korg Poly Six vs. Roland Juno 6

Korg and Roland both came out with 6 oscillator polyphonic synthesizers around the same time. They were the first fully programmable polyphonic synths that ordinary people could afford. Twenty-some-odd years later, you can get them for next to nothing campared to a Moog, which has acquired an even greater prestige since Bob Moog passed away in 2005.

Those new MiniMoogs, the Voyager series, are some pricey mono synths. $2,100.00 - $3,400.00 in that range is pretty steep, though they are hand made and limited in quantity. I wouldn't mind having one, though it would be hard for me to justify when soft-synth MiniMoogs are available for about $200.00.

Speaking of $200.00, that's about what it costs to get a Roland Juno 6 on e-bay. I found one that was in great shape, for about that price, and it came with an anvil case that is big enough to house most of my long synths.

I got my Korg Poly Six for $100.00 at a pawn shop. It was beat to death though, and a couple of months after I had it, I discovered that the battery which backs up the memory had leaked acid on the circuit board. Things went downhill further when I used the wrong solvent to clean the key contacts and melted the plastic membrane that holds them in place. Oh well. I did get a few recordings out of it before it died, and I've still got it in case I want to destroy a keyboard on stage some day, a-la Nine Inch Nails.

I've read that the Poly Six is not too far distant in sound from the Korg MonoPoly, though the later has more flexibility in programming I believe, despite only 4 oscillators. The Poly Six has a very warm sound, whereas, everything you play on the Juno 6 has that characteristic sound of its filters. In this day and age, the polyphonic kind of voices that you might find in either a Juno 60 (the Juno 6 with a preset memory) or the Poly Six, either one, sound a little bland and weak. The Juno 6, having no memory, must have the controls set for each new sound, though that makes it a good performance keyboard if you like to mess with the knobs while you're playing it.

Okay, so the Poly Six has preset memories. It has a killer unison mode, where it becomes a very stacked mono synth. While mine was still alive, that's mostly how I used it, to get this really heavy airplane engine sounding bass voice. Interestingly, the Juno 6 can approach that heaviness in full polyphony. It has a sub-oscillator in addition to the pulse width modulation, much like the Poly Six.

To me the Juno has a place where you want it to be obvious that you're playing a synth, and be able to play chords and such. The Korg has more of a niche where you just want some pretty sounds, maybe a string ensemble, or synth woodwind sounds.

It is weird to me though that a Juno 6 still goes for around $200.00 and I'm seeing Moog Prodigy mono synths going from near $1000.00. I guess it is the name brand and that distinctive 24db Moog filter that is driving it. None of these synths are still being produced, though in a since the MiniMoog is in new production. Used MiniMoogs are going for upwards of $1500.00 and you're liable to get an early one with unstable oscillators that you have to tune constantly.

I'd say the Juno 6 is the must-have of the two old polys. The Korgs may be harder to find, and have that battery problem in every one, so if you get one, open it up immediately and dig that battery out to replace. One of the reasons I chose the Juno 6 over the Juno 60 was that I knew the '60 would have the battery peril, and they cost about $100.00 more. They sound virtually identical though, and I like tweaking the knobs and sliders while I play it.

Secrets of the Moog Prodigy

I traded a toy casio keyboard for my Prodigy around 1987. It had one cracked key, but was fully functional and in good shape other than that. The guy who had it, thought it was probably worth about $50.00. God bless him!

I love my prodigy. It took me several years though to learn to like it next to my Realistic Concertmate MG-1, which is a somewhat similar Moog synthesizer, with a few different features. I had played the MG-1 so much that I knew it like the back of my hand. Both MG-1 and Prodigy are 2-oscillator monophonic synths, both have a 24db filter, the same number of keys, etc. I had learned to coax just about all the MG-1 could deliver, but it was laid out a little differently from the Prodigy so some of the controls on the Prodigy didn't mean the same to me at first.

At first I used the CV and Trigger output from the MG-1 to control the Prodigy (this was pre-MIDI for me) and though tuning could be a little tricky, I was able to get some really fat layered synth sounds from them. I was still enamored by the MG-1 though.

A few years later, after I'd been using MIDI sequencers and synths, I'd gotten away from the analog stuff for a while, but noticed that the Prodigy was increasing in value. I just saw one on e-bay today in fact going for $975.00! So I took out the keyboard from the MG-1 and replaced the broken one in the Prodigy. Now it is in very good condition. The output jack is a little loose, and it had been pretty dusty at one time, so I've cleaned it up quite a bit.

Now, about those secrets. I picked up a few tips about the Prodigy while reading things about it on the Internet.

Some people modify their Prodigy so that oscillator 2 will go down to 32'. A very simple trick if you don't mind not syncing the oscillators is to flip the sync switch off, tune the oscillators together, and then bring the pitch bend wheel all the way down. This gives you osc. 1 at 64' and osc. 2 at 32'! I like to switch osc.1 up to 32' and then you get this really phat as hell voice using both sawtooth especially. It rivals the textures of the MiniMoog.

The second trick involves the mod wheel. The LFO is selectable as a triangle wave or a square wave with a switch. If you move the switch, ever so carefully between them so that it is set to neither, then the mod wheel gives you manual control over the filter or the oscillators, depending on which of these you have selected. It's great for expression with the filter control while playing. If you set the cutoff low enough, and put in a little emphasis - almost self-modulating, then when your rock the mod wheel, you've got this huge range of expression at your fingertips. If you select to modulate the oscillators it gives you this really wild pitch bend, way more than one octave.

Moog Music makes this thing called the Mooger Fooger CP-251 that provides alternate LFO settings, sample and hold, PWM modulation, and some other stuff. I really don't feel like I need that. For one, I haven't found much use for the sample and hold stuff. The MG-1 can do that. It is good for making a "computer sound." Some of the demos I've heard of the CP-251 weren't that musical, and I can do strange effects on my computer.

In closing, the Prodigy is often derided as a basic synth, but is really a nice piece of work. It doesn't have a 3rd oscillator like the MiniMoog, but I think it really is the poor man's MiniMoog. If you want a Moog, and want to spend less that $1500.00, the Prodigy is a great alternative. If you're on a budget and can find one, the MG-1 is a great little keyboard. Prodigy's oscillators have triangle wave shape, but you can live without that. MG-1 has sample and hold if you can think of something to do with it. It also has a continuous and auto-trigger mode, though in a MIDI-fied world, those are not as useful as a MIDI/CV kit would be.

I play the Prodigy live and in the studio. I use it to write bass and lead lines, and base songs around the sounds I get from it. I also plunk around on a Roland Juno 6, from the same era, and used to play my Korg Poly Six until it died from a battery leaking acid on the circuits. The Korg though to me was only useful in unison mode, so was kind of a one trick pony. I'd much rather have the Prodigy than that keyboard. The Juno 6 is a nice polyphonic compliment for a guy who couldn't afford a Jupiter 8.

Do you ever have that dream that you're back in high school but you're only wearing your underwear? I've been having that kind of anxiety a lot lately. It comes from having a one track mind, and not being good at multi-tasking. Yes, I admit that I don't like to multi-task. I'm not even sure if you're supposed to hyphenate it.

I let my food touch, but when it comes to events and tasks, I like to focus on one at a time. I get nervy when there is more than one thing to anticipate in a day.

Maybe it is the anticipating that gets me in this state. If I have to anticipate everything, does that make me lack spontaneity? I may be a robot. I think I've got a single processor brain in a dual or quad processor world. I may be blowing this all out of proportion.

M-Audio Fast Track USB

M-Audio is becoming one of my favorite musical equipment companies. I've been using Cakewalk Sonar 7 Producer Edition and Fast Track USB audio interface. When I bought the interface, I thought it was just some kind of digitizer that would allow me to connect a microphone or plug in a guitar or a keyboard. It turns out that it is like an external sound card, and has very good latency with ASIO drivers. I've been very happy with the purchase. There are better, higher priced solutions for this sort of thing, with more inputs, but this unit was really just right for my notebook/studio projects. The mic input is an XLR connection, and has worked well with my choice of microphones. Basically, for the price of a digital vocal mic, you get an interface that also handles my keyboards well.

I've recorded some Moog Prodigy lines and a few vocal tracks with it so far. The low latency means that I can play soft-synths without any problems. I've been using Moog Modular and Mini Moog soft-synths with great satisfaction.

My latest recordings are online at SoundClick

Latency

Why is it that a 4 year old mac powerbook has almost negligible audio latency when playing "virtual" instruments, while my core duo notebook has about a half second latency? I suppose it is the stock sound drivers and hardware in my HP budget notebook.

I know, I should have invested in a newer mac than buy a budget notebook, but I thought I would only be using the HP for work related grunt work. Little did I know that the trackpad would be better than my powerbook, and when I really get down to aesthetics, there are some nice features in a windows computer, like a delete key, separate page up and page down keys, little stuff like that.

So I am torn between the neat-o factor of the powerbook and the grunt work machine that I find myself spending more and more time with. Apple has some nice features, and Vista is kind of a lumbering giant of an operating system. Somebody said, "wouldn't it be nice if you could roll them both together into something really nice." That might be the way to go if it were possible.

I do musical things with my computers, and the mac has carved itself out a nice little niche in my doings. The HP has processor power, and though I may record things on the PC, I will probably actually "play" them on my mac, using it's sweet sounding software synths and low latency drivers.

I guess I'm lucky to have both worlds to visit, though I can't seem to decide which box is my home computer. Maybe in a few years I'll invest in another mac, or not.

Is wikipedia worth the effort? Frequently, wikipedia articles rise to the top of google searches, but how much weight should one put on these articles that are often biased, fabricated, prejudiced, or fictitious?

I used to think it was a good general reference for factual material, but case in point: Jenning J-22. The article on wikipedia is biased, uses blogs as references, and is just plain crap. I tried to add some references to their miasma, but got labeled as a vandal and had my account closed.

I have since discovered other articles that bear little relevance to reality that make me want to avoid wikipedia in the future. It seemed like a great notion, that people could actually be trusted to edit factual information, but I guess it is just a bulletin board full of advertisements and disinformation. Dig a little deeper in your web searches and find the references that wikipedia claims to use.

I've done some updating to the Turinghub.com site recently.

I have what should be a more random selection of the bots now when you click on the "Take the Turing Test" link. Some of the bots are running at mimetic-science.org, and I'll probably keep those there. One of the new additions allows the hub to fall back on the turinghub.com bots if the server at mimetic-science.org takes a dump. That happens from time to time, and now there's a way to recover partially from that.

I moved all the polls from IMS server to TH, and hopefully got them lined up with the right bots. I also added a "how robotized are you?" - poll for the fun of it.

For members who subscribe or are invited to the hub, I've added a mailing list. It will probably be mostly news about the hub.

I'm adding some content here and there, trying to make the site fun and useful.

Robby.

This is my mantra for the new year (2008) :

Tune out, Turn off, and Drop down.

I like to ask people how robotized they are. The average hip, cool person will say, "I'm not robotized at all." Some people will say, "I'm about 50% robotized." I like to say that I am 99.9999% robotized. It's the other 0.0001% that provides the inner soul gyroscope of humanity.

Okay, I stole most of this from Dr. Timothy Leary. He's dead. No, no, no, he's on the outside looking inside.

Okay, I stole that from The Moody Blues.

I stand on the shoulders of giants. Give me a lever, and watch me move the world.

Radio Free Robitron

I've just opened a new internet radio station to feature my favorite programming and to spotlight new music from my friends and my studio.

click here to listen in.

The play rotation is very rock oriented right now, as I gather songs that I'd like to include in my play lists.

The station has the capability for live shows, and I'll be looking into that as things progress. I may add some talk shows or possibly live concerts from my geographic area. (northwest Georgia)

If you have new music on the web, as downloadable mp3 files, or if you have any suggestions for content that listeners might enjoy, send me an email at robby@robitron.com

Robby.

The Atavachron project is getting to be quite fun to work on. My python skills are building up nicely, and I've found new ways to utilize Hugo Liu's MontyLingua for my purposes.

It took me a while to find my most productive tool set. I tried IDLE, the free development environment that comes with python. Unfortunately, it leaves orphaned processes running when you close windows, so then I tried ActiveState's ActivePython editor, but didn't much care for it. I got rid of that entirely. I finally settled comfortably into using Edit Plus and the console window. It's hard to beat simplicity sometimes.

I've been using MontyLingua to break out verb and noun phrases and modifiers to make the program understand commands. I can do sql queries for now that tell me the memory is working. Later, I'll break those out into natural language equivalents after I get a feeling for what I want it to do.

The AIML bot, named Atoz, is the interface to Atavachron, and I'm using a specialized AIML set to accomplish that. So far PyAIML is exactly what I needed for that. I like what I'm seeing so far, and the future looks promising. (time to make a backup!)

Robby.

The Atavachron

Do you remember when . . .

I've often wanted to talk to something that remembered everything I ever said, could recall it in whole or in part, could remember who did what, where, and when. I think we have it.

Today has been so productive I didn't want to stop, but I must rest for a while. Working in Python has been a joy, and I think I'm going to like this language. All the main components are connected and working together for stage one. The next stage will be one of reflection and planning; mustn't go too fast. Must remember to savor this so that I can tell Atoz.

Atoz is the librarian in charge of the Atavachron. He is my interface to that world. It is my world now but someday you may make your own with him.

I spent some time editing the standard AIML that came with PyAIML. That said, I'm not making another chatterbot. This is an application of AIML and lots of helper packages that will allow for the creation of a memory model of the world. Does this sound nutty? Wait till I tell you about the spin-offs! ;-)

Robby.

The Atavachron Project

June 15, Cedartown Georgia, Cyber Mecha Studios announces a new project involving natural language understanding and reality modeling. Robby Garner, director, gives the following hint: "Every life is a story." Having spent years trying to make computers imitate us, we believe it is time the computer got to know us for who we are in order to preserve our memories for posterity.

Hub Back Online

It took me a while realize that I had blocked tomcat's port during some other firewall changes, so the automated Turing test simulation has been down for a while. I have been busy with other things and simply didn't notice.

All systems are go at this point.

Robby.

Tanker Down!

We were stranded on this planet in a gravity well too deep for the bushvac turbine to get away from. Falling, doomed to be here, we'll survive on rations and whatever we can scrounge. Our only hope is to stay fit and ready, and perhaps to comprehend more about our surroundings while we wait for another ship to return here for us. This is my seat on the great galactic vessel. This is my berth for the main voyage. Damn, I hate it here.

I've just got to keep my mind focused on the task at hand, which is guiding this blimp through the airspace it was intended to pass through. The task is not to waiver from the course too much. The wind was heavy but constant. "We should be reaching Canal Street Beacon seven momentarily," the voice behind the screen was saying.

"Turn on the landing lights and prepare for docking," I said, more or less to nobody, but somebody replied, "Aye aye." We were floating a bit past the processing plant near Plymouth that sold mostly automobile tires but was also known for it's famous fruit pies. They used to pay all these people in India to run the computing facility, but now they're all being imported to live in this complex where raw materials arrive by barge, and come out as CD's and DVD's containing copyrighted material, fit to be sold in any mall or shopping center. They even had their own light gauge rail system.

Ron Jon surpassed the expectations of all when he declared his allegiance to the just cause of the day. "Just because it was just cause it to be just a cause." Or so they told me. But he was with us, so I tried to lay low. I didn't wear any jewelry or color or even a hat. Since we were there in numbers, it was much harder to go unrecognized. The trick was to seem like you lived there.

The woman with the fur coat nodded, and we passed into the open courtyard between Victor's and The Plaza. Somebody was laughing on one side of the reflecting pond, while a man lay prostrate on the other side. A leftover from the noontime traffic nightmare. A baby cried as we all went past the fountain and into the entrance of the "Face of Reality" exhibit at the Embassy Hotel.

Long faced clowns with umbrellas guarded our every move. We walked down long hallways past ballrooms and cafeteria. There was a vendor selling trinkets next to a hot dog stand. "How many of these things have I eaten this week already?" As if to no one, I reached up to pay the vendor and took my change.

"Where is this?" I tried to find the others but they were on the other side of the counter buying things. So I waited there as I watched them carrying on and joking with each other. The wall near the elevator was rusted in several spots. When the elevator doors opened, it was rusty as well. I suppose the ocean air was salty enough to do this over a period of time. I would measure the electricity and see about that later. Right now there was too much to see and do to be sitting around worrying about the air. Then all hell broke loose.

The attack helicopters came thundering up, just outside the building. Heavy gunfire could be heard. A woman rushed to pick up her little girl as a tank nearly squashed her on it's way toward the square.

The ship was on a hill top overlooking a multilevel parking deck. We were working our way down the alley towards the hill when a concussion literally knocked me unconscious. I woke up an hour or so later and the ship was still there, but everyone else was gone, and now there isn't a soul to be found here. It is so quiet that I can hear the rubble settling.

The wind was gusting like crazy. I was afraid the blimp would be ripped free from it's moorings, but it held on thankfully. After making my way across the square alone, I encountered the throng of people who had taken refuge on the other side. I was alone in a thicket of people who were making their way back inside the offices along the way to the cafeteria. I could smell something very good to eat. I wished I had taken time earlier to grab a bite.

There was broken glass everywhere. Everyone who could take shelter had taken shelter, and the rest were either dead or terrified. I felt like I was moving in slow motion. The people around me were murmuring to each other about something. I saw Ron Jon on the other side of a pile of bricks, with what looked like a rifle and a black case of some kind in the other hand. It was starting to get cold as the sun was going down. I looked at my watch and it was broken.

"That's not your cheese!" A man yelled as he chased a woman with a flashlight. The smell of burning plastic burned the eyes. It almost sounded quiet except for the rubble settling. A lot of people were either just laying down or dead. I kept moving towards the exit door. There was no pause button or stop.

Copyright (C) 2005 R. Glen Garner

Your own private singularity

Kevin Copple wrote this in the Robitron discussion group earlier:
> There is no way to find out if we are in a simulation.
> Except, perhaps, to achieve our "own" Singularity within
> the simulation, I guess. Get it?

This reminds me of the time I joined the students with disabilities association on campus. I had been going to the student center to pass the time between my classes, hanging out in the lobby where the TV and all the comfy chairs were. It is a wireless hot spot, and though noisy, provided all the amenities of home except one or two. Anyway, one day while I was making my way across the parking lot on the way to the student center, this guy in one of those scooters stopped me and said, "where'd you get that cane?" I told him CVS pharmacy, and he said, "let me see that." So I handed it to him, and he said he liked it, the way it folded up to fit in my backpack. The guy said, "do you go to the student disabilities office?" And I said, "no. where is that?" So he told me all about them, how great they were, and that I should go there and fill out an application because it would really help me.

Without much expectation, I went to the students with disabilities office, filled out a form, took them a letter from my doctor that he'd written me for something else, and made an appointment to be "evaluated" by someone. This eventually came to pass, and I spoke face to face with someone who told me they would "put my folder right here, add me to their mailing list, and when you graduate, we will take some credit for that." I asked them where the best handicapped parking was for my health class. The lady said, "we don't keep up with that" and started telling me things like "They don't pay me enough to talk to some of these professors." I finished listening to her complain and left, wondering why I had bothered.

A few weeks later, around finals, I left out for class one day and went off without my cane. I got to school late and it was raining, and I fumbled my way into my first class. Afterwards, I drove over to the student center, and started making my way across the parking lot, trying to unfurl my umbrella. And on the horizon I see this guy on one of those scooter things.

As I approached him, he yelled, "Hey! Where's your cane?"

"I don't have it today," I said over my shoulder to him.

"Where is it? I thought you were disabled," he said to my back as I tried to break free of his gravity.

Already encumbered by not having my cane, I tried to make my way past the phalanx of wheelchair dudes, and paraplegics riding equipment gurneys. I made it to the elevator but had to wait for some time until the doors would open. Meanwhile other scooters were coming into view from the cafeteria. I thought I heard someone say, "get him!" I finally got inside the elevator and went downstairs to the lobby and the relative safety of geeky kids playing video games.

Now, whenever I pass a paraplegic or some guy in a wheelchair I can feel them sizing me up, looking at me sideways as I waddle by. The Students with Disabilities office helps those with attention deficit disorder and other learning difficulties as well. I am on their mailing list twice which ensures that I receive two of every message they put out.

Robby.

Summertime at last! I would have liked to have posted something before now, looking back at my last post in January. For now I'll just say hello again, and I'm looking forward to writing more here soon.

Robby.

Music Boxes and Chatterbots

The player piano made significant advances over its predecessor, the music box.

The music box could only play one song, and for a voice, it only had little metal strips that would be plucked to make a tune. There were advanced music boxes that came out later, that could play more than one song.

People didn't stop making music boxes.

A player piano was an output device for playing back human behavior. That's right, those little music scrolls contained holes that transcribed the behavior of the pianist's keyboard articulations into something that you could hold in your hand.

And you could recreate the pianist's behavior later, on another device, over and over, as many times as you liked. The pianist wasnt needed again, once the recording was made.

The roll of paper played more than just strips of metal, it had an entire piano at its disposal! It was a form of software in terms of it being a way to program a player piano. And these piano rolls could be bought and sold, just like any other commodity.

And then Edison introduced the gramophone. Not only did it record some representation of the panists' behavior, but it reproduced the original sound that was heard at the initial recording. That sound could take the form of pianos, flutes, trombones, ....., or simply the human voice, anything that could make a sound.

People stopped making player pianos.

Computers have historically been limited by the amount of audio and video they could store. Good sounding audio might take 10 million bytes per minute depending on several things, but in terms of the old school, audio and video recording makes huge files.

Yet hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper while at the same time getting better and better, having more and more capabilities.

If the typing behavior of people may be recorded, why not the audiovisual behavior as well. If typing behavior can be simulated, why not audiovisual behavior?

The threshold for this comes when we can make comparisons between two audio segments, and determine if they are "equivalent." Perhaps that is already here.

In some ways it makes sense to keep recording text, and keep working with that, while using converters to go from voice-to-text and from text-to-voice. But then again, if a recording of behavior is to be played back, wouldn't it be nice to keep the original inflections, tonality, and "voice" of the original speaker?

People are still making chatterbots.