I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

Category: Tech

At times wonderful, and at times totally frustrating too. That’s technology, my experience of it anyway. I do a lot of stuff with technology and I suspect I will continue to do that.

Some random music

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Randomly generated music created using Processing Code

I actually made this quite a while ago, but decided to revisit it as I thought that I might do a little more in Processing this year. I know I’ve said that before. There’s no guarantee that I will in 2020, but I might.

I was always quite pleased with this sketch though. It was fun and interesting to play with. Above is just a video of the sketch in action as I can’t work out how to embed the sketch here so it can be played. I’d like to be able to do that too, but it might take me a little while for me to figure it out.

Anyway, if I managed to do anything else with Processing then I’ll share it too. That is, if it’s good enough.

And so that was Mixtape Alpha

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I had one of these for a fair old time, and did, on occasion play with it a little. In 2019, along with lots of other bits of technology, I decided that I didn’t really need it anymore. Don’t get me wrong. It was fun to play with. I enjoyed it, but at times you just need to move on.

So now it’s gone to someone else who will hopefully find it useful, fun or whatever. I hope that they enjoy it.

MIT App Inventor at 10

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It’s quite an amazing thing that App Inventor has been going for 10 years now. I think I can remember when it actually launched, and it’s come a long way since then.

I’ve dabbled with it on and off over the years and it can be fun. Fun and useful. Although I haven’t actually finished anything with it as yet. That’s pretty normal for me though.

Mute Synth 4.0

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I’ve been a fan of the Mute Synth from Dirty Electronics since the very first one. I’ve got 3 now, Mute Synth 1, Mute Synth 2.0, and now the 4.0. It’s certainly the most complex of the Mute range, and, after a very brief play I think it has some very interesting possibilities.

I’m also interested to see how it can work with Mute Synth 2.0. Hopefully I’ll get to experiment with that in the not too distant future.

KDJ-One

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Cyberstep KDJ-One

I backed this device on Kickstarter a long time ago, I mean a really long time ago. It was really late, and, to be honest, I’d wondered if it would ever arrive, but it did, and here it is.

But it’s here, and it works. It is actually better sounding than I expected it be. The keys are actually velocity sensitive and the touch screen is huge. I’m still getting to grips with it, and I think that’ll probably take me some time.

In some ways it reminds me of an updated Yamaha QY type device, which is, in my opinion quite a good thing. The other really interesting thing about the KDJ-One is that it has a whole bunch of apps that go with it. There’s a macOS app, an iOS app, and an Android app too. So far I haven’t found a way to get everything working together, but that’s on my personal roadmap.

Goodbye RandomBus

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You probably don’t know what this is about, and that’s just fine. RandomBus was a twitter bot that I built with one singular purpose. It was there to suggest new and interesting Audiobus set ups. Now, if you don’t know what Audiobus is then there’s pretty much no point in going any further I’d say.

If you do know what Audiobus is then you’ll understand this a bit more. Basically RandomBus generated 3 random apps to work inside Audiobus. The tweet would have links to all three. All you had to do was to click on them to try out the ‘scene’. Anyway, after running for a couple of years I finally decided to close down the bot. It was fun whilst it lasted, but I’m not sure of its relevance anymore.

Pi Sound is a go (nearly)

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IMG_2481

This is the Blokas Pi Sound board attached to my Pi 3 with 7″ touch screen. I’m looking forward to getting some time with this soon. I’m keen to see how it works with the Android app too.

My plan is also to see how I can use Pd on the Pi as well, possibly other stuff too, like Supercollider. Who knows. This card opens up a lot of possibilities.