Johan Ronström » Ideas

wpaudio as standalone

Johan — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:25:20 +0000

Hey guys!

I have been using the great WPaudio plugin for different Wordpress web projects. Now I’m working on a PHP/HTML web site, and so I was looking at using the great WPaudio player as a standalone player for that site too.

It was actually quite easy to do this, here is what you need to do:

1. You need the plugin files, download the plugin here.

2. If the following sounds hard, skip this step. The plugin uses jQuery, You can use one of the publicly hosted ones (I use the Google API one), but you can also download jQuery here. (it doesn’t seem to work with latest jQ (1.6.2) so I use the 1.4.4 one).

3. Insert the three

Orientexpressen – Nattritt

Que sheet - beat sync

Johan — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:46:20 +0000

(hint: Google Translate)

Jag går just nu en väldigt intressant filmmusikkurs med Johnny Wingstedt som tillval på musikhögskolan. Vi håller på att lära oss använda beat sync för att skriva filmmusik som synkar med synkpunkter i filmen.

Vi fick en massa formler för att räkna ut vilket slag i musiken en viss synkpunkt kommer på (beroende på tempo och starttid). Vi ska också göra que sheets för musikpartierna. Så jag tänkte att man måste kunna låta ett kalkylprogram (excel) göra jobbet åt en.

Så nu har jag gjort ett kalkylblad som utifrån absoluta tidskoder (timme:minut:sekund:frames) räknar ut relativ tid, och utifrån relativ tid och tempo (bpm) räknar ut vilket slag man hamnar på. Frames måste tyvärr läggas till i en separat kolumn för att det ska gå att använda bas 25 (eller vilken FPS man vill).

Filen är gjord i MS Excel 2002 och är inte testat i något annat program, men jag tänkte kolla i Open Office Calc och Apple Numbers vid tillfälle.

Formlerna är dock desamma och borde fungera oavsett program (här med svenska funktionsnamn). Kolumn D innehåller den absoluta tiden (inkl. omräknade frames) som sekunder med decimaler.
A4: [BPM]
C4: [FPS]
A7: 1
A8 och nedåt: =E8*$A$4)/60+$A$7
E7: 0
E8 och nedåt: =D8-$D$7
D7 och nedåt: =B7*24*60*60+C7/$C$4

Jag har dessutom en massa felkontroll.. Man måste givetvis inte ha det, men de ger automagiskt en snygg utskrift. (de tomma fälten i B- och C-kolumnerna innehåller =SAKNAS() (or =NA() in english))

Jag har också lagt till lite snygga vilkorsstyrda formateringar, t.ex. att frames-fältet blir rött om värdet är högre än FPSen, och att radlinjerna bara syns om raden har data.

Nu har jag gjort en uppdaterad version som räknar ut om ett beat ligger innanför leeway-marginalen (som man kan speca i gömda rad 7).

Här är nya filen:
-> beat-sync_que-sheet_lee-control.xls

KOPIMI: Gör vad ni vill med den. Hör gärna av er om ni har nytta av den!

Här finns nu också en “bar layout” som PDF (numrerade kryss från 1 till 288), till att planera takterna:
-> barlayout.pdf

BTW så använder jag VirtualDub som spelare. Den visar frame count och millisekunder, kan stega mellan frames med pilknapparna och är grymt snabb. Funkar till PC och MAC, dessutom.

Video embed codes

Johan — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:53:04 +0000

I’m building a site where users can embed video into their profiles. Letting people use custom HTML is way too risky, so I’ve made a script that detects the video service and builds the embed code from the video URL.

I have added the video sites most popular here right now, I’m probably going to add more on request. I’ve minimized the embed codes as much as I can, removed all unnecessary (for me) parameters.

The video sites as of now are:
YouTube
MySpace
Google
Vimeo
Yahoo
Flickr

And audio:
Soundcloud

(separating audio and video might not be necessary for other sites)
Here are the PHP functions, getVideoEmbedHtml() and getAudioEmbedHtml() with some testdata at the top:

embedcodes.txt
embedcodes.php

if you run the PHP script you can see the outputted embed codes in the source.

KOPIMILL

Johan — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:32:09 +0000

Med anledning av Rasmus inlägg “Hej då Newsmill“, och kommentarerna därefter har jag nu byggt ett litet KOPIMILL-script.

Det finns här:
http://www.johanronstrom.se/kopimill.php

Det finns ingen text lagrad på servern utan allt hämtas och parsras (?) från Newsmill dynamiskt. Idén är att man säkert ska kunna länka till t.ex. den här artikeln utan att tvinga in sina läsare på Newsmill (hemska tanke). Så nu kan man läsa artiklarna utan äckliga kommentarer och “millningar”.

Att scriptet ligger på min server är inte så hållbart i längden, så om någon vill hosta scriptet, kanske t.o.m. regga kopimill.se så finns scriptet att ladda ner i footern på sidan. Det är bara en fil. Bara att spara om som .php så är det igång. Alla kan ha sin egen KOPIMILL!

Ser för övrigt trevlig ut i lynx

Buggrapporter, förslag på förbättringar och sånt tas med fördel på padden kompisen.se/kopimill .

UPPDATERING: KOPIMILL hostas nu på kopimill.info.

Image game

Johan — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 13:52:52 +0000

We were playing games last night and I was reminded of a Swedish TV game show where each team of contestants was shown five images and had to come up with a song that related to three of the images.

So we came up with the idea to do that at home with a laptop and randomized images from the web. So I made a page that does that!

It simply fetches five images from the flickr’s random “interesting photos from the last 7 days” using this function (derived from this post):

loadHTMLFile("http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/"); $xpath = new DOMXpath($doc); if($xpath){ $src = $xpath->query("//td[@class='Photo']/span/a/img/@src"); $url = $xpath->query("//td[@class='Photo']/span/a/@href"); print ' item(0)->nodeValue.'" />'; print ' item(1)->nodeValue.'" />'; print ' item(2)->nodeValue.'" />'; print '
'; print ' item(3)->nodeValue.'" />'; print ' item(4)->nodeValue.'" />'; } ?>

PHP function, time_since

Johan — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:22:03 +0000

I’m building a site and was looking for a PHP function to say in words how long ago stuff was posted. I couldn’t find one, so I made one based on a JavaScript function my brother dug up.

So, now there is one for the next preson to find. This is also very easy to change to any language; I use it in Swedish.

function time_since($original) { // accepts a datestring in any format, or a unix timestamp. $original = strtotime($original); $today = time(); $distanceInSeconds = $today - $original; $distanceInMinutes = round($distanceInSeconds / 60); if ($distanceInMinutes < = 1) { if ($distanceInSeconds < 30) return "less than 20 seconds ago"; if ($distanceInSeconds < 40) return "half a minute ago"; if ($distanceInSeconds < 60) return "less than a minute ago"; return "1 minute ago"; } if ($distanceInMinutes < 45) return "$distanceInMinutes minutes ago"; if ($distanceInMinutes < 90) return "about an hour ago"; if ($distanceInMinutes < 1440) return round($distanceInMinutes / 60)." hours ago"; if ($distanceInMinutes < 2880) return "1 day ago"; if ($distanceInMinutes < 43200) return round($distanceInMinutes / 1440)." days ago"; if ($distanceInMinutes < 86400) return "about a month ago"; if ($distanceInMinutes < 525600) return round($distanceInMinutes / 43200)." months ago"; if ($distanceInMinutes < 1051200) return "about a year ago"; return round($distanceInMinutes / 525600)." years ago"; }

Learning music with YouTube and VLC

Johan — Thu, 27 May 2010 00:06:34 +0000

I use the web a lot to discover new music. If you play an instrument I hope you have realized already that the video sharing sites, YouTube being the biggest, is filled with people, amateurs and professionals, sharing videos of them playing.

I want to share a neat method I use to learn tunes and techniques from YouTube (or any of the major video sharing sites).

The basic idea here is to download a video to your computer and play it back slowly, without changing the pitch.

There are commercial products that does this - for audio I use the nice little program Amazing Slow Downer ($50) that has great control and quality - but this method is completely free and works for video without any time consuming re-conversions or re-renderings.

Step 1 - Find a video!

I’m gonna use this one, with Hamilton de Holanda and Yamandu Costa on mandolin and guitar. You can clearly see their hands, so this will be great to see how they do this, exactly.

This video is also available in very high quality, and that is of course nice if you want to study technique, but even with relatively poor quality video it always helps to see something of what their hands are doing when you listen. For a lower quality video you might want to look for something more zoomed in, if available…

Step 2 - Download the video

A note: I firmly believe that doing this constitutes fair use and is fully legal. You might want to check if this applies in your location. If it is not allowed in your jurisdiction, consider fighting for making it legal.

There are several methods of downloading content from video sharing sites. The one I use right now is KeepTube, because it’s simple, fast and flexible. And you don’t have to install anything.

Just copy the YouTube adress and paste it in the URL box on KeepTube (or get the KeepTube Firefox Plugin)

You will now get a few different download options depending on the available qualities of the video. Choose the highest quality FLV version availiable, and the download will start.

(In this case you could go for the HD MP4, but the MP4 option most often requires an additional conversion of the video that reduces video quality).

Step 3 - Get VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is a free media player that works on all platforms (OSX, Windows, Linux). It can play most if not all video formats, DVDs, AudioCD and different streaming protocols. It is the player you’ll want to have.

It also has many advanced features, such as subtitles, audio offset, and the feature we’re going to use here: Playback speed controls!

So download and install VLC from here.

Step 4 - Controlling the speed

So, open your FLV in VLC. This is how it looks.

The box in the lower right corner is the speed control, clicking it brings up a slider that lets you control the playback speed, and the audio pitch is not affected.

This is controlled by a setting under Settings -> Show all settings -> Audio, called “Enable time streching audio”. It is enabled by default so there is no need to change it unless you want to listen half tempo in the low octave.

Step 4 - Listen and learn!

Now, just play along, learn, and make great music!

Ideas for 3d-print

Johan — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:21:56 +0000

I’ve been looking into this 3d-printing thing for a while, and it is starting to look very promising to say the least!

My initial reaction is, of course: I WAN’T ONE!

And after that I have been thinking about what I would want to make. Here is a little compilation.

The first I would do i is Kitsch!

I love kitsch, and it really suits the makerbot’s capacities. Whether it is gold plated garden gnomes or wobblehead jesus, I think the makerbot would deliver. Just add a few layers of paint.

And on to Action Figures!

This is also perfect for the makerbot. You might have to change size since small details can dissapear, and also simplify (or remove) joints. And the old warhammer painting skills’d come in handy.

Next up: Interior stuff

As a bit of a typography geek I’d definitely make wall letters. I love what they make of a room and what the different typefaces invoke.

I olso find other decorative elements that i’d like to print. Like these for example:

And then: Candy!

I don’t know if the materials used are safe enough (that can always be fixed with some kind of varnish) but I like candy! One cool feature of digital 3d files is that it’s really simple to invert. Even if the makerbot can’t print anything edible, if you extrude an object from a cube you get a mold that can be used for chocolate, or ice, or anything!

And because it is so simple to make your own molds, I hope we’ll start seeing holiday and party decorations that isn’t super lame, as most molds in the store are.

I also found these great helvetica cookie cutters that I’d most certainly make.

Last up - Theatre props and art

I work in a small theatre, and it is often my job to build, or scavenge second hand shops, for props and scenography details.

Just imagine the possibilities of printing and painting anything the director asks for! “A 16th century hairbrush?” - “Coming right up!”, “A severed arm?” - “2 sek, printing now!”, “A Glock 17 replica?” - “Just copied the model from Couter Strike!”

Yep, that’s it!

Note that I haven’t even gone into the practical stuff, like a battery lid replacement for my remote, but only covered decorative stuff. Thats because that’s what I’d focus on first once I get my hands on one!

Also, take a look into Thingiverse! They already have a lot of sweet stuff in there, and it’s growing fast!

Hope I inspired some of you to make sweet stuff, as soon as you can access a 3d-printer!

EDIT:

I keep finding images that inspire me to print stuff. So I’ll keep adding to the list.

Pipe lamps

Johan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:21:11 +0000

I love this idea that I found a while back:

I’ve been thinking about doing something similar, but bigger. Like a tree shaped, pipe floor lamp.

I went to a plumbing store yesterday and realized that pipes are sooo expensive! So unless I can find a scrapyard with piping I’ll have to reconsider my idea…

I could do it with plastic piping, but it’s not as pretty… So I was thinking of doing something tree-like with garden hose. Something like this:

And if I can get a hold of kitchen taps, this might work:

Room for the light bulb fitting could be a problem, but I’ll have to try different approaches to work it out.

Update: RoboLamp! This is what i’m talking about!

Framed blackness

Johan — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:54:41 +0000

I just finished my latest creation. It’s pure framed blackness

I got a big gold painted wooden frame and a small golden metal frame from a sale. And I used black non-reflecting theatre velvet fabric inside the frames.

It turned out very nice and arty