Katapult source is public

The source for Katapult, in an early, but working state is now up on Google Code. Check out the Katapult page for more details.

Katapult update

Update: All the source, plus an absolutely-alpha-beta-alpha build will be put up on Google Code very soon, but please be patient, since I have a lot of work right now. I’m trying to squeeze in work on this wherever i can, so I can get it out there

So, here is a few more details on Katapult. I’ve been adding a lot of stuff today, and getting close to something that is release-worthy. The current features include:

Fully customizable layouts can be mapped to the entire grid of the Launchpad

Multipart layouts are supported and can be toggled using buttons on the Launchpad

The layouts are loaded into Katapult from a simple easy-to-write text-file (line example: yfader 0 7 8). This is kinda like mrmr-style layout files.

LED-colors of the controls can be set to any of the supported colors of the Launchpad

Katapult supports bi-directional control-messages. This means that changing a fader in for example Traktor, will also update the corresponding fader on the Launchpad surface. Me thinks this is cool.

Controls currently implemented are:

• Hold button
• Toggle button
• Horizontal fader
• Vertical fader
• Horizontal slider-zone
• Vertical slider-zone

Okay, might have forgotten something, but it does give a good overview of the current state of the thing. I’m going to implement support for 2D-pad controls, as well as an “indicator” control, that doesn’t send output, but can be used as an indicator light, before releasing it. I think that will make it out for a pretty suitable start. And after that? More advanced visualizers (beat-grid style, etc), timed functions, triggered after x beats, controller-chaining (altering one control can influence others), macros(!). A visual layout-editor would be nice but definitely won’t be first priority, since the layouts really are very easy to write by hand. Here’s a new video. It doesn’t show any of the bi-directional stuff, but it does make it clear how multi-page layouts are handled.

The more technical stuff: It’s all written in Processing. I’m writing and using it on OS X 10.6, but should work fine on other platforms as well. I found Processings MIDI support a bit annoying to work with (for output), so I took the easy route and offloaded the MIDI output handling to PureData through OSC. When I get the motivation, I’ll probably move the MIDI output back into the actual program, but I couldn’t find any MIDI-framework that did what I wanted to do, so PD is a fine solution right now. The patch is very simple and looks like this:

So, that’ll be it for now Hopefully a release soon!

Katapult, I say

Yes, I say Katapult. What is it you say?

Well, I recently, after much struggle, got my hands on Novations Launchpad controller, hooray. It’s pretty cool, and very functional for controlling Ableton Live. Unfortunately my plan was never to use it with live, but instead with Traktor. In this regard, it is utterly lacking and uncool. Mostly because Novations Automap software is absolutely featureless in terms of what i wanted to do.

So when the software to make your dreams come true doesn’t exist, you just have to write it yourself. Hence I started writing Katapult. It’s intended to be a dynamic, totally customizable mapping solution for the Launchpad, that allows for much more functionality than the pretty mediocre hold-button scheme of Automap. So what does it do?

It allows you to create various controls on the surface of the Launchpad such as faders, buttons and “slider zones”. The MIDI output of these indivdual controls can then be mapped to different fuctions in Traktor, for example.

I have a lot of interesting ideas planned for this thing, but basics first. When I feel I’ve gotten all the basics down and tidied up the code a bit, I’ll release a preview and move on to some of the more interesting stuff

Okay, it’s late and I’m brainsmashed, so this might not be a very informative and detailed post. Intsead, I give you ZE VIDEO!

Here’s a rather uninspired and boring “mix” using the thing. It definitely won’t give you eargasms, but it’ll give you a general idea of how it works. Promise to post the technical nitty-gritty later

Snow Leopard 64-bit Weirdness

So, I’ve been running Snow Leopard for a couple of weeks now, mostly in 64-bit mode, which contrary to my initial expectations hasn’t caused any real problems with any software or hardware. The entire OS seems very stable and snappy, and I’m oh so happy. I have noticed a few weird quirks, though.

For one, it seems that whenever I try to run something in Quartz Composer, or just launching a Quartz composition in Quicktime, it will utterly fail to render properly. Everything is either garbles of what looks like old video memory (Safari windows, random images, multicolored visual noise) or just plain nothing. I came to think that this might be some kind of memory addressing issue, so i booted up in 32-bit mode, and presto, no problems at all.

That, on the other hand caused my Citrix Metaframe connection to one of my clients to stop working. Whenever I try to connect to the presentation server, I will get a Java exception thrown at me (a null-pointer one to be specific, which again might point at some kind of memory issue). Weirdness!

So to recap, the only issues I’ve experienced with Snow Leopard is Quartz not working in 64-bit mode, and the Citrix Java client not working in 32-bit mode.

Update: Seems I was wrong on the Citrix client only working in 64-bit mode. It seems that it has a bit of its own life, suddenly deciding not to be cooperative in any way, regardless of bitness. On the light side of things, opening up Java preferences (Applications > Utilities > Java-preferences) and clearing the applet cache does seem to resolve the problems, at least for some time.

Dreams

There can be so much more. Your mind already created your world. Why be content with just what you unconsciously bricked together? Start imagining. Your wildest dreams live right inside you. There’s no reason to chase them. Start putting them into everything you do. There’s no other way. Recognize that you live them now, and you will find that you are. Take back control. Create your own world, it’s what we all do. There’s no reason not to do it consciously.

Let go

Sometimes life points the fucking flash right in your face and fires it without warning. But when the purple dimples and traces fade from your vision and sight is recovered, the world isn’t at all what it used to be. Well it is, but you see it upside down, inside out, metatranscribed onto a swirling wall, inprinted with esoteric symbols, unreadable but screaming meaning and emotion in your face. And that’s when the torrent starts. Somewhere from the backwaters of your mind, it trickles it’s way from your subconcious, like tickling drops, moving their way forward in constant and rhythmic motion, slowly, barely noticeable gaining mass for each drop you let through. You don’t want to stop it. There is no way you can. As the frequency rises, the drops start interconnecting, becoming an unbroken line connecting you with an essence you didn’t even know you had forgotten, and much less carried with you every time-quantum of your life, from the very moment you was conceived in your mothers womb, to the place you stand today. As you allow the stream to move freely within you, the boundaries break, and pressure is released. The trickle becomes a river, washing over your existence. You move deeper, because you have to, because you need to see the other side, because this is what you were always meant to be doing. There’s only letting go now. This is it.

Oh. Yes.

We’re All The Pirate Bay

from http://thepiratebay.org/special/2009mmtpb.php

The Swedish artist Montt Mardié thought The Pirate Bay needed an theme song, an anthem. So he created one!

We like it a lot and hope you like it too. You can download the torrent here, and watch the video as well.

We also got the audio files so all you TPB fans can make your own version, your own remix!
It would also be cool if you did your own version of the video and post as a video response on youtube. As Montt Mardié put it: “To show the world, that we’re all The Pirate Bay…”

Here’s Monty’s coments about it all:

An artist has got to make a living just like everybody else, there’s no doubt about it. And these are tough times, believe me I know. The thing is though, if I were to go back in time, 10 years or so, and tell the 15-year-old version of myself that over a night, 60 000 people had heard one of my songs, the first question I’d throw back at myself wouldn’t be “how much money did I make?”.
Don’t get me wrong, I love money and I want to make a lot of it. Bathe in it just like Uncle Scrooge. But money isn’t the main reason why I write songs. First and foremost I want people to hear them.
Times are so strange at the moment and a lot of people are angry and upset. Still, for each day that goes by I get more and more convinced that we shouldn’t try to fight the future, we should embrace it. Try to see opportunities instead of catastrophys.

I’ve written a song. I call it “We’re All The Pirate Bay”. It’s free and nobody will ever have to pay for it, though if you incist you are welcome to make a donation!

Take care, Monty

More Montt Mardié at
www.monttmardie.com
www.myspace.com/monttmardie
www.hybrism.com

Donate: paypal account: monttmardie@hybrism.com

Download, re-mix, re-make, re-download!, re-seed, re-edit, re-enjoy!

Download:
Montt Mardie – We’re all The Pirate Bay (single)
Montt Mardie – We’re all The Pirate Bay (Remixkit!)

Apple’s In-Ear iPhone Headset…

Turns out to double nicely as a headset for your Mac! How sweet! Just got myself the in-ear iPhone headset today, and plugged it into my Macbook to listen to some music. I accidentally fiddled with the controls on the headset cord, and lo-and-behold, they actually worked for adjusting volume and play/pause/skip controls. Turns out, the little microphone in the headset is also recognized and connected to the Mac when plugged in, so it doubles as a full headset for Skype/iChat/whatever, even though it’s only plugged into the headphone port. Pure genius.

When you need a little ideology…

Sometimes you just need a simple and comprehensive ideology that will give you the answer to the meaning of life, and make you feel all happy and content inside. But how to choose what pseudo-useful gibberish to erect as a pillar of your existence? Well, fear no more, because I bring you the Ism-Generator Public Beta Technology Preview Release Candidate 1. This nifty little piece of software will have you living strictly within your own unique and personally generated ideology in no time! Go ahead now, I know you want to…

It’s made in Processing by the way, and it’s Creative Commons as everything else I spit out here, so go ahead and modify it. But if you make something cool, please show me. I like new toys.