Disabling Sticky keys in Ubuntu Studio's version of XFCE

Sticky keys in Ubuntu Studio's version of XFCE have been driving me crazy. This solved it for me.

"xkbset -a"

from the very end of: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1943778.html

Two Month Long Experiment with Ankle and Wrist Weights

For a long time I have been curious about practicing with ankle weights and wrist weights. I have seen many forum posts on different drummer sites and the answer to "should I practice with weights" is always "No, you'll hurt yourself / it won't help your speed or control". On the contrary, Gene Hoglan, an amazingly fast metal drummer, swears by warning up with heavy sticks, constantly wearing ankle weights and only removing them to play the really fast songs.

So to find out for myself, I started practicing on my home kit and rehearsing with my band while wearing wrist and ankle weights.

I wanted to avoid hurting myself so I started with very light weights and worked my way up. I could not find any that were lighter than 1 lb per hand so I made one by filling an adjustable wrist weight with pennies until it weighed enough, checking it on a food scale.

The first thing I learned was rehearsing with weights amazed the rest of the band. They said it was like I was training under some sadistic kung-fu master. It was really just a pair of baby-blue wrist weights similar to the ones that sweet old ladies wear to go mall walking

The second thing was I rehearsed a lot harder than I practiced. The 1 lb per hand / 5 lb per foot setup that worked great during practice killed me in rehearsal. I switched to a 0.5 lb per hand / 4 lb per foot setup for rehearsals.

The third thing I learned was that once you get used to playing with the weights, it feels very strange to immediately play after you remove them. When you play with weights on, your forearms and thighs move less as they are heavier, forcing you to work your ankles and wrists more. When the extra weight is gone, you want to continue using your wrists and ankles which unexpectedly "kicks back" your forearms and thighs. It's like "the tail is wagging the dog". You feel like you have "light limbs", like you just took a lot of cough medicine. It butchers your ability to play quick light ghost note.  It's horrible.

So if this is so disorienting, how can Gene Hoglan remove weights in the middle of a gig and play smoothly? Gene Hoglan is an amazing drummer and also a really big guy. i believe that the ratio of the weight of his ankle weights to the weight of his legs is so low that he doesn't get the "light limbs" feeling.

Lastly, the wrist weight did seem to help strengthen the muscles you use to do rolls around the kit. After the “light limbs” feeling wore off. I noticed easier movement on hi-hat 16th notes to snare transitions and multiple tom rolls.

I believe that it is important to practice out of your comfort zone, so you can nail a performance even when it is hot on stage, when the monitor mix is bad, when your drums are sliding around and the lighting is bad. I think that adding and removing weights may be another way to practice outside of your comfort zone. I am going to try to practicing while adding and removing the weights every 10 minutes.

So in summary, wrist and ankle weights are not a magic ticket to strength or speed. If you try them, make sure to playing without them for a few days before a gig to get your balance and finesse back.

Installing Citrix Receiver in Slackware 14.0

1. Go to http://www.citrix.com/downloads.html
2. Download and extract the linuxx86_12.1.0.203066.tar.gz file.
3. Use "su" to run the set up script "./setupwfc".
4. To avoid SSL error 61 messages, use "su" to link the web site certs from the Mozilla folder to the Citrix folder with "ln -s /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/* /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/".
5. Use Firefox to navigate to your company's Citrix XenApp application site, authenticate, click on your hideous office icons and get to work.

* Strings in quotes go in the terminal.

Tone Generator with Python, PyGame, SciPy and SciKits AudioLab modules

Project: 

Generate sine wave sounds with drums triggers while changing the pitches with a MIDI controller using Python modules some fancy IF statements.

Baby Step:

Read MIDI events and output changing sine wave sounds

Progress:

Working but laggy, see code below and here http://pastebin.com/VTBQxjQm

# f is the frequency of the tone in Hertz,
# fs is the sampling rate, and
# T is the length of the tone in seconds.
import scikits.audiolab
import scipy
import pygame
import pygame.midi
from pygame.locals import *
pygame.mixer.pre_init(44100,-16,2,2048)
pygame.init()
pygame.midi.init()

f = 440
fs = 11025 #22050
T = 0.1
x = scipy.cos((2*scipy.pi*f/fs)*scipy.arange(fs*T))
scikits.audiolab.play(x, fs)


for i in range( pygame.midi.get_count() ):
    r = pygame.midi.get_device_info(i)
    (interf, name, input, output, opened) = r
    in_out = ""
    if input:
        in_out = "(input)"
    if output:
        in_out = "(output)"
    print ("%2i: interface :%s:, name :%s:, opened :%s:  %s" % (i, interf, name, opened, in_out))

mydevicenumber=raw_input('See list above. Please enter the number for your midi input device: ')
print "you chose " + mydevicenumber + ''
reserved_channel_0 = pygame.mixer.Channel(0)
my_font = pygame.font.SysFont("Arial",104)

pygame.fastevent.init()
event_get = pygame.fastevent.get
event_post = pygame.fastevent.post
input_id = int(mydevicenumber)
i = pygame.midi.Input( input_id )
pygame.display.set_caption("midi to sine wave sound generator")
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 600), RESIZABLE, 32)

print "starting"
going = True
while going:
    events = event_get()
    for e in events:
        if e.type in [QUIT]:
            going = False
    if i.poll():
        midi_events = i.read(10)
        #print "full midi_events " + str(midi_events)
        #print "my midi note is " + str(midi_events[0][0][1])
        if str(midi_events[0][0][2]) != "0":
            mymidinote = str(midi_events[0][0][1])
            mymidinumber = int(mymidinote)
            mymidinumber = mymidinumber + 0.0   #types matter here!  
            #freq = 440*(2**((m-69)/12))
            f = 440*(2**((mymidinumber-69)/12))
            x = scipy.cos((2*scipy.pi*f/fs)*scipy.arange(fs*T))
            print "before (fast here)"
            scikits.audiolab.play(x, fs)
            print "after (laggy here)"
            #print "on event"
            #print "freq = " + str(f)
        if str(midi_events[0][0][2]) == "0":
            mymidinote = "0"
            #print "off event"
        #convert them into pygame events.
        midi_evs = pygame.midi.midis2events(midi_events, i.device_id)
        for m_e in midi_evs:
            event_post( m_e )
del i
exit()

Auctions, Juniper Devices, Headaches, and Another Blender Book

Wednesday:

The simple Intranet auctions site that I built with jQuery, javascript and ASP was launched. There were no real issues. I should have built an interface for a Power User to remove mis-bids so I would not have had to do it... ("email subject: I CHANGED MY MIND I DONT WANT THE IPOD PLEASE DELETE MY BID"). It was a lot of work for a 3 hour auction but it should be reusable for future company fund-raisers. When to practice and installed a power supply and video card on the "band PC" for a hellishly long complex video editing project.

Thursdays:

Did a telecommuter site visit to replace a printer. I had to page an IS Tech because I was unfamiliar with the networking on Juniper devices. (You have manually type in IP addresses like a freaking caveman!) There were heavy rains, flooding, and closed roads on the way home. The power was off when I got home and later my media server's hard-drive booted up to a terminal read-only prompt. FAIL!!! Went to practice for more hellish video editing stuff.

Friday:

Had headaches all day. I listened to a loop of white noise to block out the TGIF chatter while working on another JS worklist. I ate well and took walks at lunch and during breaks but it was no use, I was still shooting Death-Rays out of my eyes. I got home and showering. Penni cooked spaghetti for dinner. The murder-funk* finally went away around 8pm. TGIF indeed.

* murder-funk: copyright pending, un-authorized duplication prohibited.

Saturday:

Woke up early to visit my parents in Statesville with my sister. I bought my parents a used Dell laptop off ebay and installed ubuntu on it. My sister was teaching my mom to use it. My sister was able to install the HP printer drive from a ubuntu How-to website. (I am so proud!) I helped my dad clean out the gutters with a borrowed cherry-picker. I got home, showered, fixed a morningstar chik'n sandwich, took a nap, and ordered a book on video editing/Sequencing with Blender. I went to bed and fell asleep while watching Hulu pink panther episodes on my EEEpc. Life is good.


Sunday:

I woke up early, got coffee and groceries. I took a long walk with Wifey. I posted a question on BlenderArtist.org about video sequencing and got a quick answer. I went to practice and worked on the video editor. We found out how to render small sections of video at a time and work faster. I ran FSCK on my hosed media server and it seems to be working fine now. Hooray for the superior Linux ext3 file system.

Wifey twittering away at Boading