• Omg rock bottom brewery's seasonal ipa "h-bomb" is phenomenal! ( assuming h is for hops). #beer #
• Hey Michael Jackson fans. Tell *all* your friends, I'm not the attorney general for Los Angeles. I'm an engineer in silicon valley. #
• Hundreds of Twitter apps and not one that lets you block tweets by key words. Think outside the API, folks. #differentiation #
• Beatseqr software and firmware is now open source: http://beatseqr.com/blog/ #
• Eagle should be priced by the layer instead of by the feature. I'm never going to produce more than a 2 layer board. 4pcb instead, I guess #
• friggin' earthquakes! #
• Friggen' adrenaline! #
• almost everyone here felt it @sfearthquakes A 3.2 quake just happened 4 mi NE of Alum Rock, CA. ( http://bit.ly/bqryQU ) #
• Didnt we have a 3.03 earthquake today, too? RT @unsaturated: it's 3/03 yall #thisisacid (via @connerrrr) #
• Not much difference to go from no selection to a nose election. #
• Hey 4sq/gowalla/locaware user. You're screwing up the signal to noise ratio. #blocktweetbykeyword #unfollowingisnotagoodsolution #

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Hey, so I’ve been super busy with lots of cool stuff. I’m working on the Beatseqr project, and I’m also putting that to work with my band Haptic Synapses. And along with those projects, I’ve been building some interesting tools with Max/MSP. Here’s one that I’m calling “sCCweet!” and in this particular instance, I’ve tuned it to work on Reason’s Malström synth. (You can either say that as “skweet” or “schweet” depending on which kind of person you are.)

click through to see the quicktime movie with audio

So… why? Well, a lot of modern soft synths have a randomizer function, but Propellerhead doesn’t follow market trends. They try to influence them.. sometimes to a good affect, and sometimes to the effect of going in the wrong direction of the rest of us. Reason has some really awesome sounding synths, it’s just kind of… funky… about a lot of stuff. So you can either choose to accept the Reason reality as a foregone conclusion, or make your own reality. I prefer to make my own. Anyone interested in getting a copy of the max patch that does this? It’s not limited to working with Reason, it can work with anything that uses midi CC messages. Leave a comment!

• Guess whos on the makezine blog? http://bit.ly/ajIpZt #
• Now in the long tail of makezine blog traffic. 1000+ hits in 2 days, really nice. One beatseqr still available. #
• Aww man! Empty keg. oh well, time to brew up some more. Back to an IPA I think. #
• Filemaker could rock a larger portion of the world if they'd ship with an easy MySQL ODBC driver. C'mon guys, all that cash in the bank. wtf #
• Aaand now I'm in a totally unexpected meeting with a filemaker team. :-} #
• Playing live techno at Works/San Jose 2010-02-24 (Broadcasting live at http://ustre.am/1tWz) #

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Well our lineup was a little different this time. Derek was sick so he couldn’t make it, but we did have two other people join Charles and myself. Holt Sorenson and Nick Swerdlow added some really nice elements to our jam, so check it out:

• Great release! RT @boxbanga: new on dobox:: 'NHT' release by Keckclip http://doboxrecordings.com #
• It makes me sad that opensoundcontrol.org is overrun with wiki spam. #
• watching pairs skating… r: know why they're all falling? me: no, why? r: Because it's effin' hard. #
• RT @boxbanga: new on dobox:: 'Circulation EP' by Jemset http://doboxrecordings.com/db/index.php/2010/02/16/circulation-ep-by-jemset/ #
• Watching PBS nova's show on how Mayan iconography was deciphered and experiencing a profound mind explosion. #indigenous #typography #
• twitter, allow block by originating app.. learn a lesson from facebook #
• Sigh. #
• big updates for my beatseqr project! http://bit.ly/cUABRa and more on the way #
• Hey, beatseqr on the Makers Market! http://bit.ly/92fRIw deep breath… #
• Protip: Don't bring a PowerPoint preso to a Keynote fight. #
• Followup tip: it's always a Keynote fight. #
• RT @dan_at_makezine: Beatseqr V3 just hit Makers Market. Check out his video. http://makersmarket.com/products/431-beatseqr-v3 #

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Derek and I have been hard at work making some really great improvements to the beatseqr firmware and steppa sequencer. Here are a few of the things we’ve been doing lately:

• I added a really nice feature that we’re calling “voice trigger indicator” … essentially what it does is flash the voice select LEDs as your sequence is running to indicate to you when each of the 8 channels is triggering. It’s easier to show than to tell, so I’ll get to work on a video for that asap.
• Steppa now has a “current beat” set of indicator LEDs on the front interface. This was added so you can get an idea of where you are timing-wise if you’re doing stuff on your computer (instead of looking at the hardware, which will give you a *really* good idea of that all the time )
• There’s been a bunch of minor features added to Steppa that mostly facilitate being able to pick up sequence data from within Max5. If you’re a max user, you can do all kinds of crazy stuff with the sequence as it’s running.

More good news while we’re talking about good news:

• I have applied to exhibit at the Bay Area Maker Faire. We’re considering applying for Detroit and New York too, so if you want us to apply for those, leave a comment!
• The arduino mega firmware is now open source. There are a bunch of things you would need to do in order to get started and I’ll highlight those in another post soon. I’ll update the license to indicate my intentions, but in a nutshell you’re free to download, analyze, improve, or modify the source, as long as you don’t resell it and you keep the original attribution intact with the code. Please do improve the software. I’m a school-trained artist first and a self-taught engineer second. http://github.com/stevecooley/beatseqr-software
• Derek is going to our local ninja academy! Very exciting.

Once again we present another healthy slice of dancefloor goodness from Jemset in the form of the Circulation EP. He’s been patiently waiting to drop another release here on DoBox, and we’re glad to say that now is the time. Four tracks of heady thump make up this great release, and best heard played through a large set of loudspeakers…loudly. So get those bits and pump it up!

Artwork by Steve Cooley

L23
Vibrations & System
R.U.S.H.
Magic’s Wand

Complete release in a .zip

• Oh, thank God. Arduino 0018 works with the libraries I'm using and serial. Now I can stop using 0015. WHEW. #
• And so a jazz mutant is heard crying a sad song… #
• Now on Etsy: Beatseqr – an arduino mega based computer interface by steve cooley http://bit.ly/drPK2X #
• omfg RT @nokapixel RT @nsobject: Jason Fried of 37signals nails it: http://bit.ly/interruptions #
• retweeting @processingjs: http://iProcessing.org a framework for making native iPhone/iPad apps using the processing.js framework. SWEET! #
• Hey, I'm writing a wordpress plugin to embed etsy listings. Check it out: beatseqr on etsy http://bit.ly/ar3Od1 #
• Wow. Just lost an hour and a half's worth of work. Sigh. Oh, man! NOW I find the autosave preference. #
• I can hardly believe we're actually talking about legalization AND taxation! I predict a high turnout for the vote. :-} #
• Lip syncing at the opening ceremonies FTW. #
• Man, much respect for such a strong representation of native people in the opening ceremonies. That'd never happen in the USA. #

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‘NHT’ (Normal Heights Techno) is the latest episode of sonic ruckus brought to you this time by Keckclip. The San Diego-based producer is no newcomer to the game, and it shows in his music. All 4 tracks of this release are overflowing with chunky beats and dense textural elements that take your mind and body to another world. So put on your dancing shoes and zip up your spacesuit because it’s time to go!

Artwork by Steve Cooley

NHT001
NHT002
NHT003
NHT004

Complete release in a .zip

Hey, just testing out a wordpress plugin I’m writing to embed etsy items into wordpress posts… it’s working pretty well, and there’s room for improvement, but here we go: