2015 is apparently the year that I get inspired to work on web projects again, and rediscover the joys of the change-refresh cycle, JavaScript/jQuery, and HTML5. I just finished (is that really possible, though?) a couple new web apps and I’d like to drop some knowledge about them.

Lullabies, by Michael Chadwick

Sometimes, you just need some relaxing solo classical guitar to lull a young person into a state of unconsciousness.

In order to facilitate this, or maybe just to offer up a collection of pleasant music to play in the background for some other task, I made a Lullabies album. The whole shebang is pay-what-you-will, or you can just stream for free.

I’ve messed around with my own personal file host system for years, so that I could share stuff with others over the Internet. Initially, it was just a lazy (FTP to host) + (email link to friend) system. However, the uber way to handle something like this is to write a slick terminal script one-liner.

My OS of choice is OS X and I updated to Yosemite recently, so I decided to figure out how to do it and I’m thinking someone out there may find this information useful for any script that needs email capability.

Well, I finally released “Dumeh“. To those whom I’ve spoken to about this piece over the last decade, it may be a bit surprising that I’ve finally finished, but I think it’s time. I’ve written a bit on this piece on the blog, but the story of how the idea behind Dumeh began goes way back.

$ echo 'Hello World!'

Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are a great thing and they make computing a lot easier. I’ve been fiddling with audio programming a bit lately (mainly loading/modifying/saving WAV files), and while getting your hands dirty allows for more flexibility and automation, I still love Audacity and Logic for their accessibility.

That being said, the command line is still often more powerful, but it comes with a higher learning curve.

That, and it still feels like magic most days.

I’ve got a bunch of albums on Bandcamp. They’re generally anywhere from 20-50 minutes long. Sometimes, you just want to test out something and not try to take in the whole enchilada in one sitting, so I decided a while ago to start making “samplers” that are ~2 minutes long and provide a kind of appetizer mashup option.

This is kind of tedious, so what else but code could come to the rescue!

For some reason, I’ve really wanted to make a game lately. I play them so often that it’s natural that I’d eventually want to make one. My recent renaissance in personal development is helpful in accomplishing this goal. But where to start?

While dynamic creation of collections of variables is often a very helpful thing, sometimes it treats all its members the same, even though they are not. Jekyll, the tech that creates this very site, is a bit non-picky about what it puts in its site-wide navigation, but it can be taught.

As promised a few days ago, I come back to you with my list of favorite apps and utilities, only on the Apple side of things.

People love lists. The Internet especially loves lists. It’s no surprise, really: a note followed by another note in a simple, structured order is easy to follow and gain knowledge from. Thus, it’s time to kick this new blog off with a tried-and-true, yet still hopefully useful, list of my favorite Windows apps.

Code(dev) + coda(music) + name + wanton need to use a specialized TLD = codana.me :)

My friend Jimothy L. Quadratic made something pretty neat a while ago: Lita (a chat bot). He surpassed me in coding ability and interest a long time ago, and has been progressively making a name for himself on the Internet with all sorts of projects besides Lita, too, but his chat bottery seems to have garnered the most attention thus far.

I've used say.app off and on for many years to play around with the OSX say command, and grab the occasional text-as-audio file for various projects. It's the quickest and easiest way to get speech in digital audio form via a GUI on a Mac that I know of (awfully specific, but still useful!).

Due to the unexpected relocation of my wife’s parents from a house they’ve lived in for more than 38 years, a piano’s fate left hanging in the balance.

Inspiration (the spark of creativity) is a well.

That well can be in one of many conditions. At its best, it’s filled with a welcome overflow of water that drowns you until your mind is crying out to fill a usable container with its bounty. At its worst, it’s a barren drought that you scrape the sides of, trying to extract anything meaningful or significant.

I'm not a game developer, but I like to think I could be one in some way, so a few weeks ago I attended an IGDA meetup in San Diego. It was the first official one in many months (efforts have been in effect to get the local chapter humming again). A nearby "barcade" -- think small bar plus old coin-op games surrounding the tiny space -- hosted and it was a blast.

It’s been nearly a month since my last post and some stuff has happened. The following text elaborates.

Oculus Rift! I got to try one! It pays to know people who know people who buy things like this.

Albums

• Monomer – Quite Operational
• Pearl Jam – Lightning Bolt
• Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
• Super Guitar Bros.

Podcasts

• 99% Invisible – Wild Ones Live
• Sundown Lounge #344 (I’m actually included!)
• Composer Quest

This post was a long time coming. Time to officially put PYC, in an Internet way, to bed.