Mary Anne Hobbs playing at Neumos for Decibel Festival 2009

I did visuals for a couple acts this past weekend for Seattle’s 2009 Decibel Festival. There were some great artists playing, though I was a bit of a non-goer. I was working on my visuals software right up until the Nosaj Thing show. Ended up going back to a software setup from about three years ago and took about five hours changing some things around to make my software a bit more friendly. As usual, I was editing the software during the shows as well. Thankfully, I didn’t cause any weird errors or crashes while doing this. That is definitely the danger.

Nosaj Thing played some nice music and had a very appreciative and fairly packed audience.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of messing around with Max/MSP/Jitter and have most everything figured out. There are a couple main things (and I’m sure some small ones I’ll run into) that have been stopping me from using Max/MSP for my gigs. Main one is that the way I end up using my current/previous visuals software, Troikatronix Isadora is that I set up a MIDI dial controller for all of my main mixing, levels, hues, saturation, contrast, and set up a couple (or sometimes three) bin pickers, where I can look through my various folders of video. The way Jitter is mostly used is with drop down text lists. I don’t even know what most of my clips are named, since I just choose them visually.

Decibel Festival 2009: V8 Media visuals for Mary Anne Hobbes (Nature)

All the methods in which I’ve tried to programmatically fill in icons and make them clickable have thus far failed. Because I really wanted to use Max/MSP this time, I started manually creating these things. I got about a third of the way through and Max/MSP crashed upon loading my file. I also tend to use some forms of feedback, by looping video back into parts of the software that I’ve already gone by, or by looping sections with specific filters. I’ve had a hard time getting this going in Max/MSP as I did a bunch of work to get the effects to be processed on the video card. The recursion I want to do looks like it might almost have to be outside of the video card, which might mean that the video card setup might not work. You can tell I’m still working on it. Hopefully by next time I’ll have some pretty crazy things happening.

Nosaj Thing

(Photos by Russ, kochs.org, and Donte. Thanks to Luara for pointing me towards the Mary Anne Hobbs photo!)

This just in, Breona’s sister Cedra does catering on Orcas Island and makes some mean cake. She actually makes a great vegan, gluten free cheesecake that could take over the world! Back to the topic, she made a cake to donate to the auction on June 6th. Go to the event, and bid on some amazing cake.

Take a gander at the images above.

My girlfriend Breona applied and was accepted for one of the OLPC Africa grants that is happening this summer (very soon!).

The broad information is that OLPC Africa gave grants of 100 laptops and $10,000 to 30 teams of students and non government organizations (NGOs). The teams will have a very short amount of time to prepare, as some people are leaving around June 4th to go to a training in Rwanda.

The NGO that Breona is associated with is called the East African Center. They are having a fundraiser June 6th downtown. Breona and I will be there with a few XO laptops for people to play with and will be talking about the laptops and the project.

The village of Takaungu makes some great clothing, bags, and other assorted textiles that will also be available for sale. You could ostensibly finish your Christmas shopping very early and help out a worthwhile cause!

Thanks, and hope to see some of you there, Ian

Information about the EAC fundraiser in Seattle on June 6 and a link for tickets:

http://www.eastafricancenter.org/auction/09

http://brownpapertickets.com/event/64113

Blog post announcing the grant to the EAC:

http://eastafricancenter.blogspot.com/2009/05/one-laptop-per-child-olpc-awarded-for.html

(great pictures and information about the village and school from here)

I am doing visuals for a show up the hill at Easy Street Records. I’m still working on recreating my software and interaction for doing this, so we’ll see if I do it the old school way, or the new school way.

Samples of the music are in the links below.

See you there?

—–

music provided by:
Specs One (ABDUCTION, SOULTHEFT, FOURTHCITY, 206 VINTAGE)
nth + ronin (FOURTHCITY, EXPONENTIAL MEDIA) CD release event
with LoFreq (FOURTHCITY, SUBAUDIBLE LOVE SOUNDS, BEDroom HEADZ)
visuals provided by:
Ian Page-Echols (v8media)

Friday, January 23rd, 9:30pm
Easy Street Records West Seattle
4559 California Ave SW
Seattle, WA 98116
$5, 21+

myspace.com/easystreetafterhours
myspace.com/specsone
myspace.com/eswizard
myspace.com/lofreqmusic
v8media.com/
myspace.com/nth808 (various links)
soundcloud.com/nth808

The 1955-1957 combination shop manual and seals and other various parts showed up from Danchuk. The shop manual is very nice and descriptive! I was just reading through the carburetor section and it describes every possible piece of info about how it works, including different ways of talking about vacuum (as a point of low pressure) and on and on. Good stuff.

Since I had the car working perfectly, I took it on the freeway and when I got home I had the oil light on. Trying to find how to test the oil pump. Breona said her dad had a shop for me to take the car to for the engine, so I will probably do that to be safe.

I realized that the headlights already in the car are halogens. They are sealed though, so you have to replace the whole thing, as opposed to just a halogen bulb, and one of them had a chip broken out. It likely got oxidized or maybe just dirty inside the lens. I realized after pulling that headlight that I shouldn’t have messed with the adjustment screws, as you don’t have to. When I get the lights back in, I will have to adjust that.

To get the new, replaceable bulb, headlights in, I have to trim down the piece that attaches to the lights that then attaches to the headlight buckets. So I went looking for a sheet metal nibbler. I have tin snips, and somebody at the hardware store suggested aircraft snips, but both of those cause bad ripples from my experience, so trying to find the nibbler. I think I finally found a place that might have those in town, Graybar, which is a telecommunications wiring supplier. If not, I can order the thing. It’s just a $25 manual one (Klein 76011B, if you are curious).

Replaced the indicator and taillight lenses, which made me realize that I need to get some more replacement bulbs, as their finishes are wearing off. There were also two screws which didn’t want to leave their spots in the metal and snapped off. Trying to figure out a good way to drill those out and then pour something like JB Weld in to re-tap the holes for new screws. I think I need to make a jig and put the whole light assembly under a drill press, but then, of course, some of the screws holding the light assemblies are stuck. Didn’t mess with those yet. I put the new lenses on for now, there are just a couple screws I will have to figure out later. They look much nicer and I’m sure they wlil let through much more light. I’ll have to ask around to see if any friends have had to re-tap holes before. Might mean I need a tap and die kit. I think I need to find some car buddies to share a garage and some tools with.

As if I didn’t have enough to do, I ended up buying myself a 1956 Chevy Bel Air 4dr Sedan (that’s the one with posts in the center, ie frames on the upper parts of the doors, as opposed to the Coupe, which just has the roof floating above) a bit ago. I used to own a 1956 Chevy 210 4 dr wagon when I was in Boulder and I have missed it very much. This car should fill in the gaps a bit. I was about to just send a ridiculously long message to my dad and realized I’ll probably have a bunch of messages about the car, so I added a ‘1956 chevy’ category.

The car is about in twice as good of shape as my previous one. I drove it straight for a few weeks there and didn’t touch my Saturn besides to move it every few days so it wouldn’t get towed. Had to tweak the carburetor a little bit, which took more time than it should have. I’ll be getting the shop manual to help with that type of thing.

I’ve found that it leaks and I will have to replace some seals. I ordered the door and trunk seals, and realized that I will have to order the rear window seal as well. That should be fun. I really should grind down the rust under the rear window as long as I am doing that. Those are a few of the worst spots on the car, along with a spot on the back right end of the car and a bit under the headlights. Seems pretty good overall, but I now have to figure out how to keep the car out of the rain. Looks like I’ll have to get a car cover and potentially a garage spot somewhere.

I love these cars as they are, but there is one thing that could use some heavy improvement. The gas mileage. It’s about 10 mpg as is and not so great on emissions. Here are the current ideas:

Something like a Chevy Volt without the batteries, similar to how a diesel-electric train works. Or getting an engine from a Ford S-Max minivan European Turbodiesel and transmission. Should get easily over 70 mpg with better performance than my current 265 V8. The S-Max idea would be much easier, but I am enthralled with the diesel-electric idea. I’ve never seen it done in a car without batteries though, so I have no idea if components exist at this point to do something like this, compared to doing a normal electric car conversion.

(White Zombie, World’s Fastest and Quickest Street Legal Electric Car)

Here’s a comment I made on the NPR site about a story they did. A person from “The Detroit Bureau”, said that electric cars need to get up to 100 miles of range before EVs will be bought. Which ignores the fact that GM doesn’t try to sell EVs yet and so can’t actually have much data on this.

Here’s the show, so you can listen for yourself:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97295908

My comment:
“First of all, even if “The Detroit Bureau” is an independent auto news service, given their location, I can hardly believe that they would be anything but pro auto industry. What the industry doesn’t need is apologists, what it needs is can-do people that realize that in order to exist, not even succeed, they have to change with the times. Those times are coming to the point where it’s getting to be pretty irresponsible to own Hummers and Suburbans in their current condition. If you look at the average amount of energy expended by US citizens, it’s on the crazy side of high compared to other citizens of Earth and it’s not sustainable. For that matter, buying a Prius or Tesla isn’t sustainable, but they are at least steps in the right direction. What GM and the others should be doing is trying to change minds.

Right now most people in the auto industry think that people need a 100 mile range. That’s patently false. Most people, like myself, only need a fraction of that amount of driving most days. Even Bob Lutz, who doesn’t believe in global warming, agrees with this fact. Most days, I only go downtown on the bus, and/or up to my girlfriend’s place in my car, maybe down South. That’s 12 miles round trip, maybe 16 miles with errands. Any home built electric car can make 20 miles of range, and highway speeds, fairly cheaply. It’s just a little more work to get 40 miles of range, and some home built EVs can get this “holy grail” range of 100 miles. The car industry should be able to best these home built EVs by a huge margin, but all we hear are complaints, whining, and how they need more funding and bailouts. If I ran my business like GM, I would expect to go out of business. They were tanking before this economic downturn, and they’ll still be tanking if they’re given a bailout, unless they are forced to change their ways.

To respond directly to Paul, on what it will take for electric cars to succeed? Professional, wide-spread, advertising, promotion, and availability of electric cars. Whining and complaining never sold a product and it shouldn’t be expected to now. Switch half of the market over to electric cars with even a 40 mile range and have everyone hearing how little their neighbors spend on gas, seeing ads during the superbowl about how normal/fast/quiet they can be, can look good, and can save you over the cost of your car if you keep it for X years, and you will definitely see people buying them.

Feel free to respond on NPR’s site, or add your own 2 cents. Do you need to drive 100 miles every day?

Ian

View on Vimeo

This is a weird little conglom made using various pieces of software. The main audio was created on the fly using the Korg DS-10 software for the Nintendo DS. This was transmogrified using the RjDj app for the iPhone and the Echelon patch. A small amount of leveling was done on the file in Sound Studio, a simple audio program on Mac OS X. The resulting audio file was dropped into Apple’s Motion program.

The video clips are all of my creation, I use some of these files when I am doing live visuals. I tend to use Motion sort of similarly to the way I do visuals. I blend multiple layers of video and fade clips in and out while trying to have the video go with the audio. I can’t work fully live in Motion (at least with the machine I have it running on), but since it can loop segments or the whole project, I get a pretty good idea of what the end result will feel like.

I’ve got 15 photos ready for an art show. No specific art show in mind yet, but I have the prints. There are five sets of three images.

Here’s an overview of the sets (from top to bottom):
Blurry
Detail
Light
Music
Texture

(click on the image for a preview of the blurry plane image, which is one of my favorites)

I am doing visuals again for Decibel Festival in Seattle! I’ll be holding down the fort in the Baltic Room and doing visuals for a few specific acts, including:

Welder at the Baltic Room
weldersounds.com, myspace.com/weldersounds
Friday 9/26 at 10:15

and

Fax at Neumos
faxmusik.com, myspace.com/faxmusik
Sunday 9/28 at 9:30

(clicking the image above will load up a java sketch created using Processing)