What I’m Reading Now: A book called Death From the Skies! written by Philip Plait, the author of Bad Astronomy. So far, it’s pretty interesting.
What I’m Writing Now: Still a lot of very short stories.
What I’m Playing Now: Nothing.
My Inspirational Thought of the Week: “Sometimes, bad days come before really good days.”
If this series was a witty running gag, then right about now would be when it started to wear thin.
…damn…
What I’m Reading Now: I recently finished Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. I wasn’t impressed. Actually (forgive me for saying this), I thought the movie was better. I also read Chuck Palanihuk’s Fight Club, which I liked better than the movie. So the universe is in balance.
What I’m Writing Now: A lot of very short stories. More on that later.
What I’m Playing Now: Not much.
A Random Fact About Me: My memory is terrible. The only thing I can remember with any great clarity is movie quotes, which always annoyed me.
My Inspirational Thought of the Week: “When you’re feeling really down, go to sleep. Things usually look better in the morning.”
Ever since I discovered it a few years ago, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of algorithmically-generated music, but I’ve lacked the programming skill to experiment with it myself. Well, the other day, I was sitting around and John Conway’s “Game of Life” cellular automaton came into my head. Somehow or other (I’m never quite sure how my ideas get started) that connected to my interest in generative music, and using NetLogo’s awesome sound-generation extension, I wrote a NetLogo program to run the Game of Life and turn the pattern of cells into musical notes.
That worked fairly well, but the Game of Life isn’t great for this application because the patterns tend to become less and less dense over time, and because of the way the model “plays” the cells (which I’ll explain in a moment), that means the music gets less and less interesting over time, until it’s basically just an endless loop with little variation.
Fortunately, there are other cellular automata out there, and the one I settled on for my next model was Brian’s Brain. The Brian’s Brain rules produce more active and interesting patterns, and the overall density tends to remain higher for longer. Also, the patterns that form have a structure that my intuition told me would be better-suited for conversion into music. The results, while not earth-shattering, were a lot more impressive than I’d been expecting:
Here’s how it works: at the beginning of each simulation step, the program selects the first vertical column of cells (that is, the one on the far left). It then asks those cells that are in the “blue” or “yellow” state (that is, state 2 or state 1) to play a note, with the pitch of the note based on the cell’s vertical height. Yellow cells generate a square-wave tone, and blue cells generate a sawtooth-wave tone. Then, the program waits for a fraction of a second before moving one column to the right and playing that colum in the same way. It continues like this until it’s played every column and reached the right edge of the world. Then, the cells evolve one step (according to the Brian’s Brain ruleset), and the process begins again. Although the “music” starts out a little rough (since the cells’ values are set randomly at setup), eventually, there’s enough order and structure in the patterns that the noises sound almost musical.
As usual, I’ll go about uploading this to the NetLogo site, and I’ll keep you posted on any interesting developments.
If this series was Lost, then right about now, right about now would be the point where it stopped making sense and I stopped watching it.
What I’m Reading Now: I’m about to re-read the entire Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. I’m also pecking away at the stories in Gardner Dozois’s The Year in Science Fiction for 2008.
What I’m Writing Now: I’m working on a few short stories as part of an ultra-secret, clandestine, and very secret project.
What I’m Playing Now: A little Burnout: Paradise, but not much else.
A Random Fact About Me: I completely lack binocular vision. When I was a kid, those little red-green “3D” glasses were a huge disappointment because I can only see out of one eye at a time.
My Inspirational Thought of the Week: “Whenever you’re in a boring or unpleasant place, imagine it’s being attacked by zombies. That’ll brighten your day right up.”
My Other Inspirational Thought of the Week: “If you’re not happy with your life, remember: every decision is a chance to do things differently.”
If the Weekly Update was House, then right about now would be when I’d bring in the pain-in-the-ass detective that derailed the whole series and annoyed the hell out of me.
What I’m Reading Now: Nothing much.
What I’m Writing Now: Nothing much. I’m researching publishers, if that counts.
What I’m Playing Now: A stupid and poorly-designed game called work. The puzzles are too hard and even when I beat the last boss, he still comes back the next day.
My Inspirational Thought of the Week: “Some day, each of us will die. The good news is that, whatever might or might not be on the other side, none of your enemies can follow you.”
