Blog

From Tyler Zahnke

Revision as of 09:11, 16 June 2013

This is my official blog! Hear from me; news updates, show details, random commentary on life, news commentary, and anything else you'd expect from a blog.

09:11, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

As all of my fans who follow me on Twitter know, I am still technologically active. Sorry if this sounds like an insult to my own webhost, but EditThis.info is often slow. Even for visitors of sites hosted on it! So I have to wait for my blog to load, wait for the log-in page to load, log in, wait for my blog to load again, type in a command to create a new post, and then wait for the post page to load. Well, that's what I finally did; of course, it probably HTML-cached along the way, making things faster. I know! I could be using Blogger or Wordpress or Tumblr, but then I wouldn't feel like a programmer! You might not know, but I manually enter a command to put the timestamp on my blog posts, and a command to make it look like a section heading. Well, even though you blog readers probably think I tossed out my technology, and all of you who wonder if I'm still alive, everything's fine! My Magicassette computer game is done, but I wasn't even eligible for the XYZZY Awards. Why? Because it was already 2013 when I finished coding, so it will be in next year's awards. Also, I received the first music-related publicity of my life. I wrote a song for an online songwriting show called Song Fight. And, before you ask, I'll say it; no! I'm not going to tell you the names of my Song Fight Songs, or even give separate MP3 links on my site; Song Fight already has a site for my Song Fight songs, so if you're interested, go visit it. And I didn't say that to be mean; it's a simple fact; they have a web page for me. A mean person wouldn't even link to their page! February 2013 was my first appearance on that show, and I got both good and bad publicity in the Song Fight Review. It is mostly loop/ambient/experimental, while most of you here know me as a comedy/parody/filk musician (filk is a modern term for fan fiction music, such as songs about Star Wars). Also, my more filk-style songs (for example, a parody about a sci-fi novel, but not one about programming) will also be put on the Filk Archive site. I have no songs there, so I don't have a profile to link to. Also, since the FileUpYours.com server shut down on 12/21/2012, I have to move everything. My album will be individual MP3 links, hosted on SoundCloud.com. But instead of having you listen via SoundCloud, I'll be nice to blind people (especially BrailleNote users), and get direct SoundCloud links using wimp3.net. So I know my site currently looks like a parody/filk songbook with no audio, but once I have time to load each update box, I'll do that. So, I have new apps out. One is as simple as checking if a randomly-picked integer is odd or even, and playing one sound loop for even, and a variant of that loop for odd. I've also got some DECtalk singing/talking synthesizer files made. So if you want those up on the SoundCloud (and eventually on one of the virtual albums on the site), email me at programmer651@comcast.net.

08:57, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, I haven't updated this thing in three months. I figured that since it's getting close to Christmas that I should give you an update. Even though fans of my music (well, most of them) don't know it, I'm getting quite a bit of publicity among the interactive fiction computer game scene. My new game, Magicassette, is out now, and I'm going for the XYZZY Award. As always, I've been experimenting with music looping, computer programming, and much more. I've recently designed a JavaScript-based app that can tell me how many days I've lived so far. I'm also taking a challenge: I'm going to try and learn the x86 Assembly programming language. Sorry for my album not being available for download; I've been so busy that I haven't had time to resample it. It consists of comedy accompanied by electronic music. The sound quality's not all there, though. On Looper's Delight (the international sound looping mailing list/website), I'm going to get smoked! Per Boysen has the album Science and Technology Music from 2012; Michael Peters has Escape Veloopity from 1998; my looping is nothing! They know live looping; I know the delay/echo built into my Yamaha keyboard. But it's still worth a listen, if you like electronic music. I, the owner of Prosomawi Media, design websites. So, by New Year's, you should see a little surprise. Hint: It's not my music, but it is looping.

21:30, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, TapeVille is active now! Remember I was joking around about the tape sampler network a few posts ago? Well, it's no longer a joke! We at Prosomawi have established a discussion mailing list for all interested in different things you can do with cassettes and other analogue tape. Some tape machines can do some crazy sounds (such as reverse effect). To subscribe to TapeVille, send an email to tape-request@freelists.org with the word subscribe in the subject and/or body. You can unsubscribe at any time. To post to the list, send an email to tape@freelists.org.

09:41, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, I finally converted some cassette tapes into digital format. No, we haven't started the Tape Sampler Network yet! I very well could be working with Jim Schuyler. If so, he will send me tapes of the Neil Rogers Show (a talk show that was only heard in Miami and online). I would digitize these tapes, and send them to the archiver on Digital Colony. Still experimenting with new JavaScript looping techniques! Here's what to expect in future posts to this blog:

• Current events
• Commentary about my own work and my own life
• Reviews of movies, TV, music, websites and internet phenomena, amateur Internet audio/video/text bits, etc. (Links to the material given if possible)
• Updates about our think-and-do-tank, Prosomawi Media
• Stuff that will make you say "I can't believe I'm reading this!"

Questions or comments, email programmer651@comcast.net.

06:08, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, if you want to read things from before this date, read my Facebook and Twitter. But now I'm doing it on my own website, so there's no length limit! And now my non-social-networking fans who just like reading websites can hear from me! So, a lot of interesting things happened. From July 13-16, I got a chance to go to Ohio for the graduation party of one of my cousins. I calculated that that was the ninth time in my life that I went to Ohio. Life has been swell lately. I know my website as a whole has been up for ten months now, but we're finally setting up a little music studio! All my computer equipment is there, and so are all of those things (you know, cassette tapes! Those old things from 1962!), my microphones, cords, an electronic keyboard system, keyboard effects pedal that I stopped using in 2004 but just started using it again, and much more. Pretty soon, due to my male-male cord, I'll be able to get rid of every single cassette tape! Plug one end into the tape player, the other end into a microphone adapter which will plug into the computer. Hit Record on the computer and Play on the tape, and voila! Converted to MP3! Tape sampling, as this process is sometimes known, becomes part of every-day life for a tape-geek looping musician that reads and writes articles on Looper's Delight. If all my tapes were sampled into a computer, it would make the place a lot cleaner! Should I rip the CDs too? But those haven't really phased out yet. You still see new ones listed on Amazon; any tape you see on Amazon is used. This studio may mean something! If you noticed, my album is temporarily unavailable. Well, the re-release may be of studio-quality, but we still need to experiment with the equipment. Well, I don't want to make this too long, so please email topic suggestions or anything else to programmer651@comcast.net.