Ill Gotten Gains

Turning an iPad into a kiosk device

2012-01-24T22:33:00.000Z

So I was asked to set up an iPad so that once an app was running it couldn't be quit. This is becoming a fairly common use case as iPads make their way into retail and other public spaces as kiosk or POS devices.

Looking at MDM solutions and combing the wisdom of StackOverflow didn't tell me how, in fact the resounding answer was "can't be done" or "only with jailbreak".

Of course if you have been into an Apple store recently you will know that this is possible because next to every display device is an iPad running their smart sign app with the home button disabled. So how do they do it?

It is actually really simple. All you need is a mobile configuration profile that sets the iPad into 'Store Demo' mode. The relevant key is SBStoreDemoAppLock in com.apple.springboard.plist and can be set with a config profile.

It is actually pretty trivial to make this work, all you need to do is install a correctly formatted mobile config plist over the air from a web server. It's possible that you can load the config using IPCU too but I have not tried this. You can combine this with whatever other enterprise configuration profiles you have in play. It also works on iPhones.

BEWARE
Once this profile is installed the first app that is launched when the device is rebooted will be the only app that will run until you reboot the device again.
To remove the profile plug the device into IPCU and delete it then reboot the device. Everything will be back to normal.

Hopefully this will help anyone else trying to the same thing only to be told it's not possible.

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>  
 <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">  
 <plist version="1.0">  
 <dict>  
   <key>PayloadContent</key>  
   <array>  
     <dict>  
       <key>PayloadDescription</key>  
       <string>Disables home</string>  
       <key>PayloadDisplayName</key>  
       <string>Home Button Lock</string>  
       <key>PayloadIdentifier</key>  
       <string>com.hbkill.kiosk</string>  
       <key>PayloadOrganization</key>  
       <string>My Org</string>  
       <key>PayloadType</key>  
       <string>com.apple.defaults.managed</string>  
       <key>PayloadUUID</key>  
       <string>B2D02E2D-BAC5-431B-8A29-4B91F71C9FC1</string>  
       <key>PayloadVersion</key>  
       <integer>1</integer>  
       <key>PayloadContent</key>  
       <array>  
         <dict>  
           <key>DefaultsDomainName</key>  
           <string>com.apple.springboard</string>  
           <key>DefaultsData</key>  
           <dict>  
           <key>SBStoreDemoAppLock</key>  
           <true/>  
           </dict>  
         </dict>  
       </array>  
     </dict>  
   </array>  
   <key>PayloadDescription</key>  
   <string>Disables Home Button</string>  
   <key>PayloadDisplayName</key>  
   <string>Home Button Lock</string>  
   <key>PayloadIdentifier</key>  
   <string>com.hbkill</string>  
   <key>PayloadOrganization</key>  
   <string>My Org</string>  
   <key>PayloadType</key>  
   <string>Configuration</string>  
   <key>PayloadUUID</key>  
   <string>614D1FE3-F80D-4643-AF6B-D10C4CC8737A</string>  
   <key>PayloadVersion</key>  
   <integer>1</integer>  
 </dict>  
 </plist>

Lollipop

2011-10-26T20:22:00.001+01:00

Workspace redux

2011-06-03T17:05:00.003+01:00

Replaced my old MacBook with an iMac. With the 2 secondary screens I now have some 6,307,840 pixels of screen real estate. Sick.

In the clearing

2011-03-25T08:13:00.002Z

Taking a shortcut through the trees I came across a circus.

Hometime

2011-03-22T17:50:00.000Z

Instagram: the autotune of photography

2011-03-21T18:11:00.000Z

It's technology that I guess my multiple real camera owning acquaintances no doubt sneer at but I find the results rather pleasing.

Serpentine Fog

2011-03-21T00:13:00.001Z

How was your Monday lunchtime?

2011-03-14T20:56:00.000Z

Freya's New Trick

2011-03-09T11:27:00.000Z

So this morning as usual Freya is clamouring to grab my iPhone so she can do her usual turning it over and over in her hands, sucking on the corner and looking at the home screen when she manages to press the button to make it light up. Not taking too much notice I carry on getting ready but when I turn back to her I see that she has unlocked the phone and launched an app. Must have fluked the slider I assume, so I grab the phone, lock it and give it back to her. As soon as she got it back she determinedly starts jabbing at the slider until she gets it to slide across. Cue big cute baby smile.

Within ten minutes she could do it first try on both the iPad and the iPhone, another ten minutes after filming this and she had worked out pressing the home button on purpose to show the slider and then unlock. Looks like I will have to put a pin lock on all my devices now.

Time to lock down everything.

2011-02-26T12:20:00.001Z

Mogwai

2011-02-23T21:35:00.000Z

Miserable Glaswegian bastards and their melancholy wall of sound.

So that's what happened to him

2011-01-19T08:21:00.000Z

Not even Geoff Capes can make the trains run on time.

365 Days #6

2011-01-06T22:09:00.000Z

That's Christmas all done then. Never did finish the Stilton. Blue cheese and swine flu are not a great combo.

365 Days #5

2011-01-05T22:01:00.000Z

Christmas tree is still in good nick. Not looking forward to taking all the decorations down tomorrow.

365 Days #4

2011-01-04T21:58:00.000Z

6 days into the swine flu hell this year has become and Freya manages to crack a smile through the snot.

365 Days #3

2011-01-03T19:50:00.000Z

I feel as if I am honour bound to finish this off before 12th night.

365 Days #2

2011-01-02T19:58:00.000Z

Still got loads of cream left after Christmas so I bought some half price clearance Christmas puddings to use it up with.

365 Days #1

2011-01-01T20:37:00.000Z

Let's see if I can keep this up all year. A photo for every day.
This pretty much sums up how our new year came in. With a cough and a groan.

Just in time

2010-12-17T17:38:00.001Z

Left early today to avoid any train carnage. Luckily tonight the last working stop seems to be Oxford. This is the usually quiet concourse that greeted me.
Thank fuck it's Christmas now and I don't have to do this anymore for three weeks.

[How To] Compiling VLC in XCode for iPad simulator and device

2010-11-28T23:21:00.003Z

[NOTE]:
Sorry but I am not able to distribute pre-built binaries for any part of this app so please don't waste time asking me to send you a compiled version, it probably wouldn't work anyways (code signing etc.)

I have been messing with the VLC iOS source recently to see if I could hack it up to work with the new airplay protocols for Apple TV. Sadly any airplay hook up is not going to be straight forward as the VLC player is not using a MPMoviePlayerController instance or subclass to display the movie. It's not clear yet if I can hijack the video stream from the custom view and pipe it over the hard way but I will keep hacking in spare moments.

[UPDATE]:

Now that VLC has been pulled from the AppStore I am expecting that there will be many more people interested in compiling VLC themselves. I will hopefully find some time soon to do some more hacking on VLC myself soon and will update this guide if I find bits of the process change.

Actually getting the source to compile was a bit of a mission and looking at the videolan forums there are a few others out there struggling to compile the sources too so here is how I managed it. There are quite a few steps so I have split it up into the three main tasks.

Build the Aggregate libraries.

Install git if you don't have it already. You will need this to grab the latest source and for the build script to complete.
Open up a terminal window and cd to the directory you want to download and build in.

clone the MobileVLC.git repo.

 git clone git://git.videolan.org/MobileVLC.git

Open up buildMobileVLC.sh in your favourite editor.
I had a problem with the build script failing trying to remove symbolic links that didn't exist. I fixed this by editing line 121 to wrap a remove in a conditional.
From:
```
 rm External/MobileVLCKit  
```
To:
```
 if [ -e External/MobileVLCKit ]; then  
 rm External/MobileVLCKit  
 fi  
```
If you have XCode setup to use a custom build location (for instance if you use a shared location to leverage project includes in your other projects) then the easiest way to get this working is to go to preferences and set the option back to the default (Place build products in project directory). If you don't do this then you will need to edit the buildMobileVLC.sh lines 117 and 118 so that the products can be found.
In theory the buildMobileVLC.sh script should take a flag to set the SDK you want to use. However in practice I found that it didn't so edited all occurences of 3.2 to be 4.2.
At the time of writing a recent commit causes the AggregateStaticPlugins.sh script phase of MobileVLCKit to fail. Check that ImportedSources/vlc/projects/macosx/framework/MobileVLCKit/AggregateStaticPlugins.sh does not have plugins+="access/access_mmap "~~. If it does then just delete this line.~~ ** This has been resolved in the latest revision.
In terminal cd into the MobileVLC directory and execute buildMobileVLC.sh passing the -s flag for simulator, then run it again without the flag to build for device. This is just so that later you can switch between simulator and device in XCode without any problem.
The script will take a little while to run, especially first time out as it needs to bring in 2 repos from git.videolan.org and compile a metric ass ton of dependant libraries. There are a shocking amount of warnings and errors reported by the build of the libraries, no wonder building this thing is so brittle. Once its finished you are looking to see the magic words "Build complete" and you should be OK.

Configure XCode to get simulator working

Next open up the MobileVLC.xcodeproj. We will get it running from here in the simulator first.
Select the project root and open up the inspector (get info). On the General tab set the "Base SDK for all configurations" to be the SDK you are using (in this case it was 4.2).
Close the inspector and toggle the target select dropdown to debug then back to release so that the "missing base SDK" warning disappears.
Now you can set the target hardware to Simulator and the active executable to iPad (although this guide should work for iPhone too).
You can if you like hit build and run but the VLC app will crash as soon as it launches. This is because there is a bad path to the MediaLibrary data model for core data.
Expand the External/MediaLibraryKit group and select the MediaLibrary.xcdatamodel (it should be highlighted red showing there is a problem) and open inspector.
Hit choose to find the correct the path. Project relative it is ImportedSources/MediaLibraryKit/MediaLibrary.xcdatamodel.
Finally you should be able to hit build and run and see the VLC app open up in the simulator.

Configure XCode to get it on a device

I am going to assume you already have a developer certificate and an application agnostic Team Provisioning Profile. If not then this next bit is of no use to you anyway.
Select the MobileVLC target and open the inspector.
On the build tab set the code signing entity to use your developer identity.
Change the target to device in the target select dropdown, plug in your iPad and build and run.

If the build fails at this point with something like:

 file was built for unsupported file format which is not the architecture being linked (armv7)  
 Undefined symbols:  
  "_OBJC_CLASS_$_VLCMediaPlayer", referenced from:  
    objc-class-ref-to-VLCMediaPlayer in MVLCMovieViewController.o  
  "_OBJC_CLASS_$_VLCMedia", referenced from:  
    objc-class-ref-to-VLCMedia in MVLCMovieViewController.o  
  "_OBJC_CLASS_$_VLCTime", referenced from:  
    objc-class-ref-to-VLCTime in MVLCMovieGridViewCell.o  
  "_OBJC_CLASS_$_MLMediaLibrary", referenced from:  
    objc-class-ref-to-MLMediaLibrary in MobileVLCAppDelegate.o  
  "_OBJC_CLASS_$_MLFile", referenced from:  
    objc-class-ref-to-MLFile in MVLCMovieListViewController.o  
    l_OBJC_$_CATEGORY_MLFile_$_HD in MLFile+HD.o  
 ld: symbol(s) not found  
 collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Then go back to terminal and run buildMobileVLC.sh again with no flags.

You should now be seeing the VLC app running on the iPad.

Graffiti on office wall

2010-11-19T16:40:00.001Z

Problem with @dynamic property declarations for core data managed objects

2010-11-19T16:09:00.000Z

I have just had the most frustrating debug session I can remember due, I believe, to the (recommended by Apple) use of the @dynamic declaration for NSManagedObject properties.

I have an object that is defined like this:

 @interface SomeObject : NSManagedObject {  
 }  
 @property (nonatomic, retain) NSNumber * isRead;  
 @end  
 ...  
 @implementation SomeObject  
 @Dynamic isRead;  
 ...  
 @end

Apple tells us to use the @Dynamic declaration instead of @synthesize as a speed optimisation. What this means however is that the return type of isRead can not be relied upon to be an NSNumber, nor can it be relied upon to be the same every time!

In this particular situation the core data was being refreshed from a JSON web service if the device had an internet connection or read from disk if it was offline. The behaviour of the application depends upon the YES/NO value of isRead.

As an aside here the reason that isRead is NSNumber rather than BOOL is because when the data is read in from the JSON service it is converted to an NSDictionary and the true/false string of the web service ends up coming out as NSNumber 1/0 because only objects can be added to a dictionary and BOOL is a primitive.

SO...
when offline

2010-11-19 15:27:21.732 MyApp[1086:207] SomeObject isRead is 0
2010-11-19 15:27:21.742 MyApp[1086:207] SomeObject isRead is of type _PFCachedNumber

when Online

2010-11-19 15:30:41.415 MyApp[1111:207] SomeObject isRead is 0
2010-11-19 15:30:41.424 MyApp[1111:207] SomeObject isRead is of type NSCFBoolean

This caused a monstrous bug because we were trying to compare an NSNumber like this

 if(SomeObject.isRead == [NSNumber numberWithBool:NO]){  
  //do stuff  
 }

Which would work if the device was online but not if there was no network. try tracking that one down! To fix it I had to reverse the polarity on the test.

 if(![SomeObject.isRead boolValue]){  
  //do stuff  
 }

Which in all honesty is probably a better way of writing the test.

Bitmasks, how the fuck do they work?

2010-11-19T10:18:00.000Z

This was an actual question I was asked when I suggested "Use a bitmask" as a solution to a messy option list problem.

The Scenario:
The web service (or whatever) you are communicating with has a load of options that can be toggled on and off for a particular resource/operation/whatever. The somewhat basic design comes back as specifying in the JSON (I'm going to stop adding the whatever now mmkay) that you set these like so...

 {  
  "thing" : {  
    "option1" : "true",  
    "option2" : "false",  
    "option3: : "true",  
 ....  
  }  
 }

Which looks fine enough except that when there is a lot of these options its both a pain setting them up before you send and its not really that efficient data transmission wise.

Instead think about using a bitmask. First there is the spec. (This is using C/C++/Obj C)

 typedef enum {  
  Option1 = 0,  
  Option2 = 1 << 0,  
  Option3 = 1 << 1,  
  Option4 = 1 << 2  
 } OptionTypes

If you are using some other language you could have a hash/dictionary/associative array etc. where we are increasing the count in base 2 such as...

 OptionTypes = {  
  "Option1" = 1,  
  "Option2" = 2,  
  "Option3" = 4,
  "Option4" = 8,  
 ...  
 }

Then to define the set of options in use you just use a BITWISE OR and test for options in use with a BITWISE AND.

 // set  
 myOptionSet = (Option1 | Option2 | Option4);  

 // test  
 if(myOptionSet & Option1) doOptionOneThing;  
 if(myOptionSet & Option2) doOptionTwoThing;  
 ...

Which can be sent to the web service with a single integer value.

 // assuming 1,2 and 4
 {  
  "thing" : {  
    "options" : 11,  
 ....  
  }  
 }

Simples.

Up at the crack of dawn

2010-11-19T06:49:00.000Z

System restore "disk" for MacBook Air

2010-11-15T13:08:00.000Z

First Apple TV app - Hello World

2010-11-14T11:41:00.001Z

What else was it going to be? I still don't have a clue what the published headers all do but at least I can get something to compile.

Getting the Apple TV 2g into DFU for jailbreak

2010-11-10T22:11:00.000Z

I've been having some fun the last couple of nights poking around inside the new Apple TV. Out of the box it doesn't really appeal to me at all, I am just not interested in having a locked in iTunes rental box. Once jailbroken though with access to all that lovely iOS framework underneath there are definitely a few uses I can find for a £100 HD N class wifi media streamer with a palm sized form factor.

Anyways I had a whole heap of trouble actually getting the bastard thing broken in the first place because no matter what I tried I just couldn't get it into DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode to flash the modified firmware onto it. I tried using the Pwnage tool with just the USB plugged in as all the tutorials suggest, I tried the manual reboot method (holding menu+down then menu+play) but nothing worked.

From all the trawling on the internets trying to work out what was going on I saw that I was not the only one having trouble. In the end I didn't find the method that worked for me online so am posting this in case it helps any other poor sods out there in the same spot.

Chances are that in trying to get it into DFU and failing the device is in restore mode. Plug the ATV into the TV and power and if the screen is showing the "connect to iTunes" graphic then it's in restore mode. If so then get it back into a fresh state and connect to your computer using only the USB cable and let iTunes restore it.
- Note that this is still when the only official FW out is the original 4.1 so doing a restore and update is no big deal. You did of course save your SHSH blobs before you started all this right?
Now that your ATV is back to factory settings unplug the USB and plug the power back in. No need to connect it to the TV. Fire up the Pwnage tool (I am assuming here that you have already built the custom .ipsw file but if not now is a good time to do so) select the ATV device and hit the DFU button.
With the power cable plugged into the ATV now plug the USB into the computer as directed by the Pwnage tool.
Pwnage tool now tells you to disconnect the power. Do as it says.
When instructed hold down the menu and play buttons together for 7 seconds and release when instructed.
Hold your breath. (not sure this is mandatory but it worked for me).
Now you should be in DFU and can go ahead with the option-restore in iTunes to load your custom firmware.

I think the key step here is the initial connection with the power cable attached. Unplugging the power cable lets the device reboot at just the right time for the timed DFU steps in the Pwnage tool to work "just so".

Once you have the new firmware installed plug the ATV back into the TV and power and go configure it for your network. It will not look any different to normal at this point. Once you have a network connection you can ssh into the box as root (default password "alpine" change it as soon as you are in) and get to the hacking proper.

Good luck to you, hope this helps.

Automating build versioning in XCode for iOS with SVN and Dropbox

2010-11-03T20:00:00.000Z

I am working on an iOS project at the minute that is heavily dependant on a test team actually getting the latest version of the app onto a variety of devices and tapping away to verify the latest feature*. At certain times in the sprint as defects come in are fixed quickly and a new version put out it was becoming very difficult to keep track of the builds and who had what.

To make matters worse the way a tester would get a new build was for them to walk up to a developer and ask for the latest stable version. The developer would then need to stop what he was doing, grab the relevant version from svn, plug the test device into their machine and hit build. This was horrible for workflow and productivity.

This week sees the first real run with my automagical build system and so far its working great. Basically it uses the "build and archive" function to share an installable build to a dedicated build station running iTunes. All the devices are synced to this version of iTunes and the binary gets to the machine by a network folder - we happen to use Dropbox for this.

This works OK but there are a couple of gotchas. In order for iTunes to recognise the incoming build as an update the version number must have changed. This meant that the developers needed to keep the minor version number rolling along and we resorted to naming the binary with a number including the SVN revision and the date and time. I didn't like this much so came up with a better way of numbering the versions.

Modifying a script I found here I added a bit that pulls the last subversion revision from svnversion (including the Modified flag if appropriate) and creates a build version number like M.M.M.svn.m for example. 2.0.1.1923M.3 is the third build from a modified SVN revision 1923 of release 2.0.1.

Here's the script:

 #!/bin/bash  
 PROJECTMAIN=$(pwd)  
 PROJECT_NAME=$(basename "${PROJECTMAIN}")  
 echo -e "starting build number script for ${PROJECTMAIN}"  
   
 # find the plist file  
 if [ -f "${PROJECTMAIN}/Resources/${PROJECT_NAME}-Info.plist" ]  
 then  
   buildPlist="${PROJECTMAIN}/Resources/${PROJECT_NAME}-Info.plist"  
 elif [ -f "${PROJECTMAIN}/resources/${PROJECT_NAME}-Info.plist" ]  
 then  
   buildPlist="${PROJECTMAIN}/resources/${PROJECT_NAME}-Info.plist"  
 elif [ -f "${PROJECTMAIN}/${PROJECT_NAME}-Info.plist" ]  
 then  
   buildPlist="${PROJECTMAIN}/${PROJECT_NAME}-Info.plist"  
 else  
   echo -e "Can't find the plist: ${PROJECT_NAME}-Info.plist"  
   exit 1  
 fi  
   
 # try and get the build version from the plist  
 buildVersion=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print CFBundleVersion" "${buildPlist}" 2>/dev/null)  
 if [ "${buildVersion}" = "" ]  
 then  
   echo -e "\"${buildPlist}\" does not contain key: \"CFBundleVersion\""  
   exit 1  
 fi  
   
 echo -e "current version number == ${buildVersion}"  
   
 # get the subversion revision  
 svnVersion=$(svnversion . | perl -p -e "s/([\d]*:)([\d+[M|S]*).*/\$2/")  
 echo -e "svn version = ${svnVersion}"  
   
 # construct a new build number  
 IFS='.'  
 set $buildVersion   
 MAJOR_VERSION="${1}.${2}.${3}"  
 MINOR_VERSION="${5}"  
   
 if [ ${4} != ${svnVersion} ]  
 then  
 buildNumber=0  
 else  
 buildNumber=$(($MINOR_VERSION + 1))  
 fi  
   
 buildNewVersion="${MAJOR_VERSION}.${svnVersion}.${buildNumber}"  
 echo -e "new version number: ${buildNewVersion}"  
   
 # write it back to the plist  
 /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleVersion ${buildNewVersion}" "${buildPlist}"

Just place it in your project directory and tell XCode to run it as a the first phase of the build by adding a new "Run Script" build phase. Then getInfo on the new phase and set shell: /bin/bash and script: ./path/to/script

Now when the build and archive runs I can grab the build version from the results window and add it to the resolve comment in Jira so the tester knows which build to grab from the dropbox. All they need to do is go to the build station, click the build in the dock stack (hooray for stacks and instant context opens) which will replace the version in the iTunes library with that build. Then they just plug in the device and it updates.

Next step will be to subscribe all the devices to a twitter feed using some iOS client that does push notifications on @mentions so that I can tell a device to get a new build from the station.

Tea made by robot. (kind of)

2010-11-03T17:57:00.001Z

I have a new robot friend.

Hey little buddy lemme look in your belly, yummy camomile flowers.

Nooo! what are you doing? halp!

slurp!

iPhone Dev Tip - Blocks are great, er.. kind of.

2010-10-27T16:18:00.001+01:00

I found myself confronted by this rather vague and unexpected error today when dropping a new build onto a test device.

dyld: Symbol not found: __NSConcreteStackBlock

Vague because the symbol didn't reference any library that I was expecting to have been added and unexpected because the build was working on the other dev and test devices.

The only difference was the test device was running iOS 3.1 rather than the 4.x variants of the others, which was in fact the root of the problem.

In an animation block I had used the nice new method

[UIView transitionWithView:duration:options:animations:completion]

Which takes a set of animation operations as a block, which is an iOS4 only feature. Thought it worth leaving a reminder as the usual stack overflow/google trawl didn't throw me any bones.

Freya Gets Milk

2010-10-17T14:18:00.002+01:00

Freya Plus UZU

2010-09-19T13:33:00.002+01:00

iPhone Dev Tip: Watching for 404's

2010-09-17T08:29:00.000+01:00

Something I have seen a few times when debugging iPhone apps for clients is a misunderstanding of the definition of "Success" when it comes to the NSURLConnection class. In the NSURLConnection delegate protocol a "successful'" connection is any one that makes a connection to the target host and gets an ACK. This means that when using these methods to get HTTP content (such as JSON and XML, a common pattern) any 404 or 500 errors returned by the target host are treated as a success if not handled correctly.

The way to fix this is to cast the NSURLResponse object to an NSHTTPURLResponse in the didReceiveResponse delegate method. For example set up a connection in the standard way.

 // url for download  
 NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:[self urlString]];  
 // request  
 NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url cachePolicy:NSURLRequestUseProtocolCachePolicy timeoutInterval:30;  
 // connect  
 NSURLConnection *connection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];

Then in your NSURLConnection didReceiveResponse method.

 - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response {  
      // cast the response to NSHTTPURLResponse so we can look for 404 etc  
      NSHTTPURLResponse *httpResponse = (NSHTTPURLResponse *)response;  
      if ([httpResponse statusCode] >= 400) {  
           NSLog(@"remote URL returned error %d %@: ",[httpResponse statusCode],[NSHTTPURLResponse localizedStringForStatusCode:[httpResponse statusCode]]);  
           .....  
      } else {  
           // start recieving data  
         ...  
      }       
 }

Rick Has Mostly Been Listening to...

2010-09-13T13:52:00.000+01:00

Baby Bear

2010-08-12T18:25:00.000+01:00

Compiling CyberLink UPNP for iOS redux

2010-08-11T19:36:00.004+01:00

A while back I posted some - admittedly vague - instructions on how to compile the CyberLink UPNP library into a static .lib suitable for use in an iPhone project. The method turned out difficult (if not impossible) to reproduce because a) it had been quite a while since I worked through the steps myself and b) because the files included in the distribution of the CyberLink library had changed subtly so my method wouldn't work any more.

The key to getting the library to compile in the way that I managed it is a set of Objective C wrapper classes that sit between the standard c distribution and your iPhone cocoa project. These wrapper classes were included in the distribution as examples in the first few releases but are missing from later versions. At the time of writing the CyberGarage website is down so I have not been able to check the current status.

As a result I have had several requests to share my Xcode project so that others can also get the UPNP library compiled. I have been a little reticent to do so because although the library was released as an opensource project on sourceforge it is possible that the author Satoshi Konno changed his mind about including the wrappers after he no doubt used them in some commercial products. I sent a couple of emails over to Satoshi San asking if he minded if I share the code or if he could re-include the wrappers in a new release but have not had any response.

So now I have decided to make available my Xcode project with the original wrappers included along with my tweaks to get it to compile for iOS "as is" until such time as I am asked to take it down by the author if he objects to it being available. I hope that it helps you get UPNP working in your projects, of course official UPNP support would be even better.

You may want to update the c portions of this project from the latest sourceforge snapshot to take advantage of any bugfixes or improvements but note that this might break a couple of the wrappers where I have added my own functions to the c library. This will only be minor breakage however and easy to iron out.

To compile and then include it in your project use a shared build location as described by the modular shared library scheme discussed in the Clint Harris tutorial. This is for sure the most important part to getting the library to link into your projects correctly. The problem is that to use the library it must be compiled for the exact configuration you are using it in. Emulator != Device and SDK versions can be significantly different. This means that you need to go back and tweak the build settings for the static library project, rebuild and then redo the link in the parent project each time you switch between emulator and device testing. A real pain. The modular linking method solves this by linking the entire static library project as a sub-project and rebuilding automagically where required. You will struggle to use the library unless you follow those steps. Go read it now, really.

Back? ~~OK now make sure that you have recursive header search paths~~

[path to]/CyberLink/std/av/include 
[path to]/CyberLink/include

~~in the build settings for the CyberLink target as the paths are set explicitly in my project and probably get mangled when you use it.~~
I have updated the project to use ${SOURCE_ROOT} as I should have done from the start.

Make sure that the paths to the local libXML are correct too so that building the release and debug versions work as expected. You will need to update the path to use the SDK version you are building for. Or you could try using this technique to make an SDK agnostic link.

When that's done just import the modules you need as so...


#import <CyberLink/CGUpnpControlPoint.h>
#import <CyberLink/CGUpnpAction.h>
#import <CyberLink/CGUpnpDevice.h>
#import <CyberLink/CGUpnpService.h>
#import <CyberLink/CGUpnpStateVariable.h>

Happy hacking!

Original post
Download Xcode project CyberLink.zip

Selecting the most apropriate toys for junior

2010-03-22T14:58:00.001Z

It is very important to set the expectations of the young realistically via play.

iPhone Dev tip - (another) Note To Self

2010-03-18T16:30:00.001Z

The Quartz core animation methods are easy and simple to use but don't help you if you are are doofus. Setting up a CAKeyframeAnimation to act on the a property of a layer/view whatever will not warn you if that property does not exist.

I just spent 2 hours trying to figure out why this didn't work...

CAKeyframeAnimation *moveLeft = [CAKeyframeAnimation animationWithKeyPath:@"postion"];

The answer was - there is no such property as POSTION.
Doh! FacePalm! etc.

A trio of new tracks

2010-03-09T12:51:00.001Z

A little catch up for those that don't follow me absolutely everywhere I go on the internets (Hi Mum) two new tracks and a quick sketch.

First out a track using a crappy guitar loop as the only sound source, crappy because both my guitar and my playing skills suck. Trust me you wouldn't want to listen to it unprocessed. I fed it into the Ableton Looper device and then dragged some of those loops kicking and squealing into the M4L Buffer Shuffler where it got cut up and mutilated in real time driven by some MIDI from the Tenori-On. The FX chain I am using for this is a bit of a favourite at the minute. It can make nice pad sounds out of pretty much any noise (as you will see in a bit) and the Resonator in the middle of the chain can retune it wherever I like. I am going to have to be careful not to overuse it as it is just so so easy to throw a noise at it and say "I has made soundscape!"
As If Nothing Happened by Dionysiac

Next up a track I made as a remix of sorts for the Cloudcycle project. They provide some interesting and diverse sound sources as seed and have produced themselves a massive output of different styles. For my part I took a very short cut from some pad like sound and stretched it right out and ran it through some multiband rhythmic gating. Underneath it is a bit of one of their drum loops, and a lovely synth line that I reversed just for good measure. To top it off I added a long sample of air traffic control chatter around JFK airport.
Cloudcycle - Stratus (JFK Approach) by Dionysiac

Finally a quick sketch for the first in a series of pieces I want to do using recordings of cold war numbers stations. I have been a bit fascinated with these strange espionage artefacts for a while now and their resonance (both psychological and auditory) is really quite compelling. This is a recording of the New Star Broadcasting Station from the magnificent conet project. The only sound source is the station recording run into my favourite FX chain with the resonator tuning tweaked every 8 bars or so. I'm using the rhythmic gating again to give it movement and a bit of delayed and clean sample overlain back on top.
Numbers - New Star Broadcasting by Dionysiac

Compiling CyberLink UPNP into iPhone SDK

2010-02-24T14:52:00.002Z

Recently I was asked about a post to a forum I made back in 2008 when I first started hacking around with UPNP applications on the iPhone. At the time I was working on an application to control my Sonos devices using my iPhone as remote. Although I was successful, shortly after I got my first stable prototype running the "official" version was released and was plenty good enough for what I wanted so I abandoned the project. I did not however abandon UPNP on the iPhone as it remains a large missing link in the iPhone SDK.

UPNP is used by many connected home devices to notify other like minded devices of their presence, capability and services. Responding to UDP broadcasts a device and service description is made available in XML for digestion by client programs. Most media servers and streamers speak UPNP along with some wireless photo frames.

UPNP is missing along with all the other XML based web services provision in iPhone SDK for... er reasons best known to Apple I guess but there exists a well used and stable open source UPNP library for C, C++ and Obj-C that compiles into the iPhone SDK with a bit of hacking.

CyberLink UPNP is an open source C framework for UPNP written and maintained by Satoshi Konno. The C source files and Objective C wrappers are available from the sourceforge project which you can get to from the CyberGarage site. However all the example code and the framework project are linked against the MacOSX Cocoa framework not the iPhone Foundation framework. This means that in order to compile it for use on iPhone you need to repackage the whole thing into a Cocoa Touch static library.

It has been a while since I repackaged it for my needs so it would take me a deal of time to recreate a detailed step by step but the main tasks are:

Locate and download all the source code from sourceforge.
Create a new Cocoa Touch static library project.
Copy all the source files into your new project.
Get rid of all the #import cocoa cocoa.h lines and replace with #import foundation foundation.h (easiest to do this in the prefix headers)
Change the use of imports to "CGUpnpDevice.h" for the classes used. Or create a UPnP.h combined header.
Compile, track down and squash the errors, rinse repeat.

The most elegant way to then use the static library in your projects is to use a shared build folder and implement the modular shared library scheme discussed in Clint Harris' excellent tutorial. Good luck and happy hacking!

Multi-band Dynamic Gating

2010-02-14T18:06:00.001Z

I have a new compositional obsession at the moment, dynamic multi-band gating. It pretty much looks like this...

With a rich timbre sound source input the source is split up into different frequency bands that are then gated using different patterns. Add on some FX to the chain for extra sauce and away we go. Making the patterns have different periods makes for some interesting cyclic interactions. I am working on a method to modulate the gate patterns in realtime as a way of playing live and improvising compositions.

Here is a session I did this weekend with a prototype.

Impulse (manifold) by Dionysiac

iPhone Dev tip - Note To Self

2010-02-09T12:16:00.004Z

This is pretty much a note to self but might help some other poor shmuck out there who fails to notice, as I did, a seemingly unimportant bit of a reference page.

Here is the problem - You create and initialise a UIAlertView or UIActionSheet object and your application crashes with EXC_BAD_ACCESS. "How can this be?" you wonder, it's a brand new object, how the hell is it accessing bad memory?

Well the error is misleading, in fact you have probably not read the reference page right. If you fail to terminate the otherButtonTitles parameter with a nil like this:

UIAlertView *myAlertView = [[UIAlertView alloc] 
                           initWithTitle:@"some title" 
                                 message:@"a message"
                                delegate:delegate 
                       cancelButtonTitle:@"cancel" 
                       otherButtonTitles:@"foo", nil]

Then you get the EXC_BAD_ACCESS error, not, as you might reasonably expect an error telling you that the parameters were wrong.

I lost a lot of hours learning that so you don't have to.

A Max4Live device control

2010-02-03T18:15:00.005Z

A little gift from my Live 8 studio control template. Control the parameters of the currently selected device on a track in Ableton Live 8.

A Lemur module and max device. with eight knobs and labels that synchronises to the selected device without the need for MIDI mapping. It is designed to work on device racks so will have strange behaviour if pointed at a device preset that is not contained in a rack with macros.

The patch relies on the CNMAT OSC Max objects. You need to get the "Everything for Mac" or "Everything for Windows" pack from here: http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/downloads and install that somewhere in your Max path.

Download from the JazzMutant user area.
Unpack and copy the "Live Device" subfolder to your Live library (I suggest under Max Audio Effect)
Add the "Live Device Control" to your master track.
Fill in the IP address and port for your Lemur's OSC setup.
Load the module onto your Lemur.
Select a device on any track and hit the green 'sync' button on the Lemur module.
Play with the knobs!

The interface will follow as you select different devices on the same track but will need synchronising again if you move to a different track (although it will continue to control the last selected device).

The EsoWave Sequencer

2010-01-23T16:08:00.013Z

Introducing The EsoWave

The EsoWave sequencer is a project for the Jazzmutant Lemur. It is a esoteric/generative midi sequencer that sends midi notes according to the positions of 32 nodes in a 2D plane. The nodes are connected along an elastic string and can be additionally controlled by two waveforms that drive the X and Y coordinates.
Available from the JazzMutant user area

The EsoWave is given away for free under a creative commons license but if you like it and would like to make a contribution then you can send something to me on paypal.
Some examples of it in action:
First an early prototype run with some ambient drone noises.

Using the nodes to trigger beat clips in Live (poor sound quality)

Finally more ambient drone, just audio this time.
x²+y² = a²[arc tan (y/x)]² where x=cos(2*pi*t) by Dionysiac

The Scale Editor

The nodes control midi out on four channels. Each channel has a scale that determines the note pitch and can be independent from the others.

fig1 - Scale Editor

Standard scale types can be selected or a custom scale created. Scale lengths between 5 and 9 notes are supported. The scale is defined as the root note followed by a number of semitone steps. The starting octave of the scale is also selected. Figure1 shows the wave editor and a C major scale. The root note of C is followed by semitone steps of 2,4,5,7,9,11 (or a pattern of W-W-H-W-W-W-[H] in standard notation).
The 'make chromatic' button sets the scale to basic chromatic scale (all steps of 1 semitone).
The scale can be copied to the other tracks using the buttons at the bottom.

Node Note Assignment

Each node in the string can be assigned a note from the scale to play when activated. The note assignment screen allows notes to be assigned to the nodes over two octaves from the root note of the scale.

fig2 - Node Note Assignment Screen

Each step is a note in the scale, step zero disables the note for that node. Using a seven note scale step 8 would be the same note as step 1 but an octave higher. The highlights show in real time the activation status of the nodes and also the triggering status of the nodes.

Note Velocity

The MIDI note velocity of the nodes is controlled from the Velocity Settings screen.

fig3 - Velocity Settings Screen

The note velocities for each channel can be assigned here or set to oscillate by switching on the physics for the velocity slider and adjusting the friction and tension sliders. Another view of the velocity sliders is available from the main control screen.

The Wave Editor

The Wave Editor screen allows for the creation of waveforms to drive the X and Y coordinates of the nodes. Many interesting complex shapes can be created through the combination of waves available. Each waveform 'buffer' is split into 32 steps, one for each node. The value of the step in the buffer determines the distance along the corresponding axis.

fig4 - Wave Editor

At the top of the screen are the two waveform buffers, X on the left, Y on the right. Between them are selectors for sine and cosine function when the wave is in SinCos mode. A ReSync button resets the incremental LFO for both waves to zero so that waves can be synchronised.

Below each wave are physics settings for when the wave is in Manual mode and buttons to toggle the wave's control of the nodes and the wave movement. The friction slider adjusts the friction of the wave buffer and the tension slider adjusts the tension of the wave buffer string.

To each side are buttons to select the different wave modes and sliders that adjust the wavelength and speed of the waves. The wavelength slider adjusts how many cycles appear in the buffer at any moment and the speed slider the rate of change. The wavelength and speed sliders have no effect in manual mode.

Wave Modes:

Manual
In this mode a waveform can be drawn onto the wave buffer and set to oscillate by switching on the physic toggle.
SinCos
The wave buffer displays a sine or cosine waveform selected using the 'Sin Cos' toggle switch.
Interlace
The wave buffer displays an interlaced sine or cosine wave. Each alternate step of the wave is swapped with the corresponding value from the end of the buffer. For example step 2 swaps with step 15 and step 4 with step 13.
Comb
A simple comb wave with alternate values of 0 and 1.
Spiral
The buffer is filled with the spiral function - x²+y² = a²[arc tan (y/x)]²

Main Control Screen

This screen is the hub of the sequencer. From here you can adjust the range of the node activation areas, set which nodes are triggered, adjust manual waveforms, adjust note velocities and 'play' the node string directly.

fig5 - Main Control, trigger page

On the left of the screen is the node surface. Around the outside are the activation ranges for each of the tracks. Whenever a node is inside an activation range it is 'active' and able to trigger a noteon message, leaving an activation range will trigger a noteoff message.

When the node string is not being controlled by a wave buffer the sliders below the node surface control the physics effects of the surface and string.
First is a friction control, high values will make the nodes slow to a stop over time and low values will allow the nodes to move indefinitely.
The next slider controls the speed of the node movement, a high friction and low speed will make the nodes feel sluggish when moving them manually.
The third slider controls the rest distance between the nodes. Low values will attract the nodes to each other forming tight bundles. High values will make the nodes repel each other and move to the edge of the surface. The rest distance slider can be made to oscillate by pressing the toggle switch to the right.

Below the sliders are two sets of buttons. The first on the left controls the physics mode of the node surface. The physics modes are:

no physics - nodes will remain where dragged
mass spring - nodes will move according to the physics settings but are not attracted to each other nor can they cross each others vertical plane.
super spring - nodes move according to physics and are attracted by an elastic string joining them.

The next set of buttons apply grid settings:

hold x - no change of horizontal position possible
hold y - no change of vertical position possible
grid on - surface divided into a 32x32 grid. nodes will align to the nearest grid point.
'snap' - nodes will distribute evenly along the X and Y axis (regardless of other grid settings)

Trigger Settings
The trigger grids shown in figure 5 determine if an active node can send a note (if assigned one). Each grid is an 8x4 array of squares, one for each node in the string. As the nodes move through the activation ranges the trigger grid for that node will light up. Selecting a grid square will highlight that square and play the note assigned to that node (if any) when it is activated. The grid squares will 'pulse' when a note is assigned to the node it represents.
Wave and Velocity Views
Also available from the main control screen are views of the wave buffers and the note velocity assignments. The wave buffers active and physic toggles can be controlled and the waveform edited if the wave buffer is in manual mode. The velocity levels can be changed and will be reflected on the main velocity control screen.

The EsoWave Sequencer by Rick Hawkins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Velocity Sensitive Drums on iPhone

2009-10-24T14:53:00.002+01:00

New app that magics velocity data from the iPhone touch screen. It's using the mic to detect the strength of the tap which is really clever and seems to work well. If that wasn't sweet cool enough the finger drum skills of the guy in the demo are amazing!

Steampunk

2009-10-23T14:32:00.000+01:00

Cool steampunk exhibition in history of science museum, Oxford.
Including original period pieces and new imaginings.

Flickr Embed Test

2009-10-05T13:44:00.001+01:00

Another contract closes

2009-09-09T19:16:00.001+01:00

End of the summer and end of my work for Symbian. Not quite sure what
to do. I don't feel like looking for a new job right away but the
thought of not going to the mountains in the winter due to lack of
money is a bit crap too. Guess I'll have to see where next week takes
me.

Something about gift horses and mouths.

2009-08-31T10:51:00.001+01:00

What seemed like a good offer (500 quid and a free hotel) has become a Fucking nightmare. Too long a story to deal with now but know that i have discovered several circles of hell in palma airport.

Stay another day

2009-08-30T14:17:00.001+01:00

Got to the airport in good time to be told the flight is full and would we mind awfully staying another day. Free hotel and £500 for a shopping trip in palma made it a fairly easy to take.

Beach beer

2009-08-26T15:58:00.001+01:00

Waiting for paella

Mobile studio setup in action

2009-08-25T15:28:00.000+01:00

Sitting by the pool sipping beer and working on some tunes. Korg nano
control and keys make up a classy little mobile studio.

Hapless potter and the spacecake of mong

2009-08-08T16:53:00.001+01:00

Sunshine for the suns

2009-08-08T13:13:00.000+01:00

Suns of arqua kicking things off. Going to be a scorcher.

Around Random Corners

2009-08-07T19:57:00.000+01:00

One finds really cool dual flamenco guitarist hippies.

The Joy of Filter

2009-08-04T12:04:00.003+01:00

Been getting increasingly obsessed by a kind of filtered reverb/delay/reversed stabby sound that is part post Berlin techno dub and part deep house synth.
Thinking of artists like Yagna, Lucine ICL and Pezzner here.

So when I came across some remix stubs for Pezzner's Valldemossa I found it impossible to remix playing with. The result is hardly sophisticated, I haven't really done much but throw some beats at it but getting it into my Lemur jamming/production interface it was a whole heap of fun jamming out this little remix "live". No edits, no EQ or levelling yet, just a jam.

Valldemossa - sunday remix by Dionysiac

Minor moment of beauty in an otherwise bleak day.

2009-07-23T21:05:00.000+01:00

Last party of the weekend

2009-07-05T23:50:00.001+01:00

Rained in

2009-07-04T18:02:00.001+01:00

Luckily the tent is enormous

Turned out nice again

2009-07-03T18:21:00.000+01:00

Shitty rainy start to the festival weekend but the sun is shining now
and I have a beer in my hand. Sorted.

Real world agile framework?

2009-06-29T19:57:00.000+01:00

Spotted outside the Symbian office. Perhaps they are here to show us
the way. And top marks for the erection innuendo.

Hexagon Square Sun

2009-06-21T23:39:00.003+01:00

I have mentioned the coolness that is the harmonic table layout and devices that use them before. Being a bit fascinated by the layout and also in possession of a programmable touch screen control surface I set out this morning to try and build myself one.

After a bit of messing and a substitute of squares for hexagons I had myself a harmonic table on the lemur. Add a couple of sliders for velocity and note length, a global hold and it was done.

The results are most pleasing. I find the layout to be much easier to play than a standard piano keyboard with scale and chord patterns much simpler to see. I have never really been any good on a keyboard but after a few hours of learning some chord and scale shapes it's very easy to plonk away on.

Here is a totally live recording, no sequencers or arpeggiators just a single synth voice and my new UI.

Hexharmonic by Dionysiac

Demo Day

2009-06-12T12:00:00.000+01:00

Big demo to the Symbian board today. Side by side comparison of the
mobile developer experience. I'm running the iPhone section and will
be coding a hello world application live to various VPs and execs of
global mobile corporations. The scary bit is live coding the app from
scratch to device in under 6 minutes!

The Lemur/Ableton control surface project

2009-05-26T21:23:00.002+01:00

I have had the Lemur for a few weeks now and have been (between various career and personal crisis) climbing the learning curve of:

The Lemur scripting language- A fairly standard Javascript like thing.
The Lemur Object reference - Very cool but still a bit odd and buggy in places.
Python - Never used it before, for the shame.
The Python Live API - Access to the objects (clips, tracks, devices, scenes) in Ableton. talk about in at the deep end.
OSC - The open sound protocol, think Midi 2.0. Seriously as Deadmau5 has already said, "Midi should fuck off and die already".

All of this means that I haven't got much actual writing of music done and although I would have deeply loved to take Alex up on his offer of a slot at BeatHerder it's looking like there ain't no way in hell I can have a set ready in time.

Also I am struggling with exactly what a "set" entails. There are so many ways I can make noise now that are all quite satisfying ranging from semi random, set it off and see what happens kind of things to very tightly controlled scene by scene progression.

Anyway I thought I would share a piccy of the UI I have been working on so hard. This bank holiday was pretty good as I finally got the Python code to send and receive mixer data patched into the Jazzmutant clip launcher scripts. This means that I have added a bank selectable row of faders below the clip launch grid.

I am still trying to work out how best to utilise the new track group function in Ableton and wondering how much (if at all) I want to use scene triggers. See a well constructed group is like a mini scene and I think that sits better with me rather than just stepping through the scenes to progress a track.

At some point when I have it all working nice I will try an do a video of it in action with a bit of a walkthrough.

Looking up

2009-05-24T18:29:00.000+01:00

Teh Awwsuum has landed

2009-05-08T21:10:00.000+01:00

Open Source music part 2 - A tale of two mixes.

2009-04-29T09:01:00.006+01:00

Some time ago I bemoaned how solo production lacked the creative frisson of having a band-mate to bounce ideas off and to tell you that the synth line you just spent 3 hours fiddling with is actually crap.

So last night I finally resurrected one of my old (like 15 years!) arpeggios - the tale of how I completely forgot how it went even though I have heard it in my head for years is another post entirely - and because he was online fired it over to a work colleague who just happens to be a talented (and published) producer as well as a PHP developer.

The completely raw arp+variation+4x4 sounded like this.

download mp3

While I continued down my comfortable rabbit hole of layered bleeps and freq/res tweaks fed into long tail delays Ryan got all Euro on my ass. He popped the BPM up a couple of notches, added a nice - if aggressive - pad/lead thing, a second melody and a bassline change.

Rick's morning trance noodler...

download mp3

Ryan's Euro mankini...

download mp3

I think this could be a winner. Think the 36 minute ambient version of "Kincajou" versus the bass and lead heavy upbeat live version. Or perhaps the 3 different mixes of "Song for Life" mixed back to back by Sasha at the start of the very first Renaissance mix.

Oh and I have 5 days off work from tomorrow to noodle and I have received news that my Lemur is shipping this week too. Happy days!

Headlong into thunderstorm.

2009-04-28T19:19:00.000+01:00

Arkham Asylum might not suck.

2009-04-24T11:02:00.004+01:00

Not too sure how this game snuck up on me but it looks like we might finally have a Batman game that doesn't suck balls. Don't want to get too excited just yet but this gameplay video looks interesting. Not too sure what's going on with the camera changes in the combat however. I guess we wait and see.

Sushi lunch feast

2009-04-21T19:47:00.000+01:00

Westminster still blocked

2009-04-20T20:20:00.000+01:00

So you still can't get through parlement square two weeks on. How come
this "illegal" protest is left to run for two weeks no kettle and
disperse and the G20 gets crushed right away? Which one had more
strings pulled and better political reasons for the action or lack of
it?

Behave

2009-04-17T12:36:00.000+01:00

Job's a good'un

2009-04-10T18:09:00.000+01:00

Re-arranged everything to my satisfaction, almost. Still need to get
something to lift either the laptops or the mixer out of the way and
there is a question mark over where the lemur will sit. Still it's
better than it was before.

Diversion pleasurable

2009-04-08T19:20:00.000+01:00

A forced diversion due to the Tamil protest offered a different view
of my twice daily river crossing.

Equestrian Crossing

2009-03-31T23:16:00.001+01:00

On my way to and from work I cross Hyde Park Corner using the Wellington Arch. There are two variations of the button working the crossing. One for pedestrians and cyclists and one for those on horseback.

Tongue Biter Jailed

2009-03-31T23:08:00.002+01:00

A bloke in Newcastle had his tongue bitten off by his psycho hose beast girlfriend because she was upset that she wasn't pregnant. Having asked for a "smoochy kiss" the lass turned into a "massive monster" and bit through his tongue then spat it out. Apparently two bottles of vodka were involved.

The best bit of the story is the judge's quote:

"These courts have had plenty of experience of people biting noses off a person, or ears, or parts of noses and parts of ears"

Well it is Newcastle after all.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/7935311.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/7974247.stm

Schott’s Vocab

2009-03-29T10:37:00.000+01:00

http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/

Heavy traffic in Hyde park

2009-03-27T10:11:00.000Z

On my commute this morning ran into a troop of Queens Guards on
horseback. The took up the entire width of serpentine road. They did a
little shimmy to let me past.

W.F.H.

2009-03-26T11:34:00.000Z

Way too true.

A Booka Shade vs. Mandy How-To

2009-03-25T08:52:00.002Z

This is a really nice demo of how easy it is in Operator to make that lovely warm Booka Shade/M.A.N.D.Y. sound. I think I need to spend some quality time in a comfy chair with Operator and a cup of coffee or three.

Still unsure as to why it's taken me this long to discover Ableton.

Brompton

2009-03-23T12:39:00.001Z

My new bike sat next to my desk. So cool. Can do Paddington to Waterloo in 20/25 minutes.

Takes 30/35 on the way back as its a little bit more uphill.

Listen with your eyes.

2009-03-15T21:04:00.008Z

I've spent most of the weekend hacking away at the detection grid project for creating generative ambient music from video input. As is usual in these kinds of experiments the end result is quite a long way from my expectations, fortunately pleasingly so.

Snap To Grid

My first challenge was one of granularity. To create pleasing tonal compositions I needed to restrict the number of possible active notes. After a bit of trial and error I figured that around 16 notes was optimal. However using only a 4x4 grid across the video didn't provide enough granularity for detection. Increasing the size of the matrix really slows down the frame rate however and quickly adds too many notes into the mix.

Short And Snappy

Next issue was that the notes themselves were very short and often repeated very quickly. This is great for quick glitchy noises but not so great for the ambient soundscape I was trying to create. I tried making patches that had a very short (zero) attack phase with a long release and these worked well for sparse hits, the repeating notes however still didn't sound right.

Messing around a bit more I fired up my favorite Ableton arpeggiators and tried feeding the notes into a held pattern. This has the effect of negating the displeasing rapid repeating notes but leads to a continually sounding arpeggio.

Less Is More

The original composer patch I used as the base for my work used a bit of Javascript to restrict the notes to a specific scale. This worked well but I found it more pleasing to have the generator output from the full chromatic scale and use the Ableton scale plugin to filter the notes. This allows for me to tweak the scale in use and it's tonal qualities in realtime in Ableton should I want to. It also means I can optimise the Quartz composition to use math expression patches to calculate the note output rather than Javascript that runs significantly slower.

Invoking Reich

At some point in the proceedings I ended up with an arpeggio and scale that produced a repeating composition with the period equal to that of the video clip. It's sound and mood was immediately reminiscent of Steve Reich so I tweaked the hell out if it to make it more so. Unfortunately during recording it Quartz Composer crashed and I hadn't saved in ages! I managed to get most of the way back to where I was and decided that the whole point of this was to be generative so shouldn't sweat it too much.

Didcot Plays Reich from Rick Hawkins on Vimeo.

This video shows four movements of Didcot Plays Reich (a working title). The frame rate sucks ass as performing the analysis, generating the OSC messages and rendering to disk all at once strains even my new Macbook pro. This means that the video and soundtrack have become a bit out of sync in the final render. I have ideas on how I can optimise the processing by swapping out Javascript for math expressions and programming my own Quartz plugin in Cocoa to do the grid analysis and reduce the load on the iterator macro in Quartz. As it is intended to be a "live" piece (if generative can be called that) I am not too worried about it right now. You will just have to trust me that it looks and sounds pretty cool in realtime.

Although a long way off from being perfected I am very happy with the results of this weekend's hacking and am looking forward to working up my improvements.

Motion detector for ambient music generator

2009-03-13T09:03:00.002Z

I have been hacking away at an idea burning its way through my skull for the last couple of days. This morning on the train to work I made a breakthrough and got the motion detection grid up and running.

I based this on a patch by the fantastically talented Memo Akten but even following that it has taken me a couple of days to understand the processing and how to represent that in Quartz Composer. The biggest challenge was getting all the layers to render in realtime to a video file on disk. Took me most of the time to get my head around output buffer redirection in Quartz and compiling plugins.

I will write about the overall vision for the project later but for now you can have a look at the pretty squares.

Motion Detection Test 1 from Rick Hawkins on Vimeo.

I think I am going to have to write a custom plugin in Cocoa to do the heavy lifting work of splitting the input into the grid and iterating over them. Memo's patch (which was in itself a proof of concept test) does this using an iterator that generates as many cubes as needed along with the outputs. However this doesn't scale too well if you want very granular control or sensitivity. I know that he recoded the whole thing in C++ and processing for his installation, I want to try and keep it in QC if I can.

White Board Addiction

2009-03-11T13:17:00.004Z

As anyone who has ever worked with me will attest, I have a similar affliction.

Power Station Flare

2009-03-04T16:09:00.000Z

A thousand things well

2009-03-01T01:29:00.004Z

I've been kicking a bass line around for a couple of weeks with various kicks, hats, glitches and samples on top. It felt like it wanted to be minimal, perhaps glitchy but neither of those is really in my bag of tricks. With that in mind I set out to finish off the track today and promptly ran out of disk space on my macbook (I suppose trying to install the full 40G Ableton library was never going to work out).

Anyway 2 cycle journeys, 1 new hard disk, a large cappuccino, half a bottle of red a spliff and 14 hours later I have this:

download mp3

I suppose it's about as minimal as I am likely to get given my trance tendencies and again all the progression transitions, filters and effects are tweaked live so don't go expecting timing perfection. It also needs serious attention in the mix (soundsticks+sub woofer sound great but do not a reference monitor set make). If only I knew someone with a decent mixing setup, reference monitors and time on their hands who could help me out with a mix. (cough, Kirk, cough)

Oh, and yes I am using that Facebook fake album cover meme as a way of naming these tracks. Random quote generator FTW!

A place with its own harvest

2009-02-28T02:56:00.006Z

Some more live ambient performance. This time no video, I didn't use the Tenori-On so didn't really have any pretties to look at.

I have been learning how to use Ableton and this is my first effort with its wonderful instrument racks and effects chains.

This is an unfinished, unmixed work in progress. I need to do all kinds of things to this before I am done, but seeing as it was sounding kind of nice at 3am I thought I'd stick it up for comments.

download mp3

Radioactive Paedophile On The Run In Ireland

2009-02-27T14:01:00.001Z

That's the headline the BBC should have gone with if they had any guts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7914758.stm

Do video games do enough to prepare our children for the post apocalyptic future?

2009-02-26T12:02:00.002Z

Another turn of genius from The Onion.

Playing video games all day alone, friendless is still the best way to prepare for the solitude of the apocalyptic wasteland.

Late winter sun

2009-02-19T15:52:00.000Z

After what feels like a very long month of rain and snow it's starting
to get dry enough to cycle to work comfortably. I'm looking forward to
my Brompton so that I can ride both sides of the train.
Right now I'm sitting on the train staring at the cloudy sunset and
fiddling with arpeggios.

The Star Trek Future is now.

2009-02-14T12:30:00.006Z

Well a little tiny bit of it is at least and unfortunately not the whole no-need-for-money and united-earth bit either. Nope, it's the groovy touch screen interfaces bit I am thinking about.

Take a look at this:
Now compare with this:
Every time I see that control surface in action I can't help but think Star Trek NG. It's so damn pretty. And flashy lighty. And touch screeny. /goes into homer like head back drool/.

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work

2009-02-10T07:24:00.002Z

Elysium Hexagonal Generator

2009-02-10T00:17:00.003Z

First I got excited by this thing. That was the first time I heard about harmonic tables and any other way of grouping notes than ebony and ivory (I'm not counting guitars etc. here I'm thinking about interfaces to electronic production).

Then I got super excited about this thing. But that was just way too expensive to get into (Lemur + Ableton + MAX/MSP = big $$). Then came this other thing.

Now if only I bothered to blog them all as I found them eh?

Anyway now I have found this thing. This one is free, Mac only (suits me) and very cool indeed. Spent the evening feeding it into Garage Band and stacking effects and generally making noise. I definitely think I can find a space for this in my (currently being but together) semi generative ambient noise performance set up.

Analogue Bubblebath

2009-02-08T20:48:00.000Z

Ambient Music for Snowscapes

2009-02-08T18:34:00.004Z

I got my Tenori-on a few weeks back and have had no time to fiddle or get inspired by it so I resolved to spend some quality time with its flashy lights over the weekend. What little time I had spent with it told me that I needed to get it hooked up to some other stuff to make the most of it so I spent the first half of Saturday pulling my old music kit out of storage and trying to remember how to get it all connected. One fried multi-voltage power supply and a couple of hours later I had a bare bones synth rack and a floor covered in discarded cables.

I was going to use the Tenori as the only sequencing midi controller in the set up as it was the interface I wanted to inspire me. I wanted to poke around, assign a few noises and noodle along. It took me a while to get to grips with what midi messages the Tenori was sending out to the other synths and I still cant figure out how it is doing bank select but the happy side effect is that selecting random positions in the grid yields sounds I didn't know were there on my CS1x.

Many cups of lesbian tea later I had enough layers to improvise a pretty rich soundscape. I am using no sequence layers at all for this just push, bounce and random. All fed through a shitload of delay and phase. It's hardly going to rock a dance floor but I am pretty pleased with it. I can probably tweak a couple of layers and add a better counterpoint to the pad but there is enough depth here for a decent length ambient piece.

For those that care the Tenori is feeding midi to my Yamaha CS1x and a Novation Super Bass Station. These are being routed through a (now getting scratchy) Macki 1202 mixer in and out of a DigiTech Studio Quad effects processor. Tape out being recorded off the crappy line in on my laptop. As was ever the case I am using the CS1x for too many voices which ends up making it sound muddy as it only has one output. At some point I'll grab ableton or something and use some VST voices so I can separate them in the mix.

Fuck, Cunt.

2009-02-05T03:10:00.000Z

Proper snow

2009-02-05T02:29:00.000Z

The things you find in a kebab shop at 2:30 am

2009-02-05T02:21:00.000Z

Computer Tan, it's TanTastic!

2009-02-04T13:48:00.005Z

Do you want to look great in the office? Are you tired, overworked, pasty? Then just go to computertan.com and you can have that just come back from holiday look all year round!

At first I thought this was a joke, I mean it has to be right? Upon looking at the website and its accompanying bullshit it seems as if it is for real, well at least its real that they will take your money for looking into a blue screen on your monitor for an hour a day.

Computer tan is claiming that it is able to convince the backlight in your LCD monitor to emit ultra violet radiation strong enough to give you a "just got back from holiday" tan while you sit and eat your lunch. at your desk. in the office.

The on site infomercial has that well known orange faced "TV Presenter" Hannah Yasmin take you through all the tricky science of how the "revolutionary" technology "converts the electrical impulse delivered to your PC into radiated, factor free UVC rays". Hannah struts, poses and grins like the desperate media whore she so obviously is round an office where people sit at desks basking in the blue glow of their PCs. Some of the safety concious ones are even wearing those little over the eye black goggle things.

Call me cynical but considering the site also offers tanning creams and other products I am guessing that best results are only had when used in conjunction with their own creams. I'm going to try out the free trial at lunchtime I think.

http://computertan.com

[UPDATE]:
After trying the five minute trial I finally got to the punchline. It is a genius piece of public safety campaign warning about overexposure to UV. Complete with some nasty pics of people's burnt faces. I am really disapointed. I really wanted this to be a real scam but full marks to the production company.

Sunrise. Time to go

2009-02-04T07:43:00.000Z

At least it's light by 7 these mornings. For a while there I was only
seeing daylight through windows.