Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
After the success of getting Gig Taggr up and running, I thought I’d dust off another little tool I worked on ages ago. Tube Mappr was a very basic experiment for me to explore the Flickr and Google Maps APIs. It’s not ‘useful’ in the way that Gig Taggr is, nor is it anywhere near as complex, but it was fun at the time.
I came across map data for the London Underground over at Wikimedia Commons one day, and, coupled with the (then) recent full-scale rollout of geotagging support on Flickr, I had the idea for Tube Mappr. It’s a simple script that plots Tube stations on a map, and clicking on a station displays random Flickr photos tagged with the name of the station.
The curious thing which I’m now realising is that Tube Mappr makes absolutely no use of the Flickr geo stuff (neither data nor functionality), but i’m pretty sure it was part of the motive.
http://tubemappr.ebotunes.com
Saturday, August 30th, 2008
This is an app i’ve been wanting to build for a while now, but was held back for a couple of reasons. The usual lack of time, but also some shortcomings in the Last.FM API
The main purpose off the application is to allow people who use Last.FM and Flickr to easily tag their photos with the relevant machine tags. Almost ever since Last.FM started doing event listings (I think), they’ve offered a feature allowing users to feed their own gig photos onto the Event page.
More recently, Flickr decided to complement this feature by displaying a link to Last.FM on the photo page whenever a machine tag exists. This prompted one of the Flickr devs to blog about it which, in turn, prompted me to get my finger out and finish Gig Taggr! [UPDATE: also looks like one of the Last.FM devs mentioned it too!
The main thing that had been holding it back was the lack of an API method to get a user’s past events. This was easily solved by asking for it. Thanks again to vincro and joanofarctan!
As an added bonus, Gig Taggr also lets you geotag the photos while you’re at it, based on the venue location info given by Last.FM. Cashback!
http://gigtaggr.ebotunes.com
Photos tagged using Gig Taggr
http://www.last.fm
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
With only a few weeks left in London before I move back home to Glasgow, I thought I should fill my time with something quintessentially ‘London’ (thats the first time i’ve used that word, I’m uncertain at best..we’ll see how it goes). For the past year or so I’ve carried my camera with me pretty much everywhere I go, never wanting to miss a good photo opportunity and looking to boost the interestingness of my Flickr photostream.
I’ve always been impressed with Banksy’s stencil graffiti art, but for some reason never had the inclination (nevermind the time) to purposely go in search of it. That is until a few months ago, when I discovered the big yellow flower one is just round the corner from my house - so that got me started. Not long after that we stumbled across the Tesco flag one on Essex Road (which we must have passed a bunch of times, but always waliking in the other direction!).
So now that Ive got some time to kill I’ve started on the purposeful search thing. Despite a plethora of lists and maps and photos all over the web, it has proved difficult to find one definitive, reliable, accurate list of existing Banksy’s artwork. Some have been ‘vandalised’, painted over, removed by local councils. Some have even been auctioned and removed along with the wall they’re painted on! Initially I planned to plot an entire tour of London and set off on my bike to cover it all in a day, but then it came apparent there were pockets of them not too far from home, then i tried to fix my bike and made it worse so it turned into several long walks instead.
One sunny Saturday afternoon I jotted down a list of a few locations around Brick Lane. Either I didnt look hard enough or they’re all gone now. I did end up wandering past the yellow flower one though and found that someone had scrawled some nonsense over the top.
On Monday I had to go into town so it was an ideal time to finally snap his newest ‘One Nation Under CCTV’ piece. Since the weather was decent I thought I’d walk the length of Oxford Street and try and hunt down another older one near Marble Arch. So this turned out quite a productive trip, much more so than the Brick Lane jaunt! Since then I’ve decided the most reliable source of information is from Flickr photo geotags and EXIF data. Sifting through the Banksy pool, I can check for locations on the map, and then check the ‘Taken on…’ date to see if it’s recent and most likely still there. I reckon there’s still a few more good ones out there to find, so keep an eye on my Banksy set on Flickr to see how it goes.
And to those who would criticise my ‘quintessential London’ comment, yes I know that Banksy’s art has appeared in Bristol, Brighton and other places all over the world, and I don’t have that ‘London-is-the-centre-of-the-universe’ complex - but he’s done a LOT in London, and certainly none in Glasgow.
My Banksy set on Flickr
Banksy on Wikipedia
Banksy’s website
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
Something a bit different in the studio. One of the guys had arranged for a Jazz quartet to come in to record, so I jumped at the chance to help out. Aside from being a refreshing change from the guitar bands we’ve been recording so far, it would most likely pose a few new challenges and a chance to learn something other than how to mic up a Marshall Amp and plug a Bass guitar into a DI box.
One thing people have been saying all along is that if you’ve got good musicians, you’re off to a good start. And these guys were not only brilliant, but they were musicians, in the truest sense of the word. That’s not to say the guitar bands we’ve had in arent very good at what they do and great to work with, but this session just had something infinitely more enjoyable about it.
Luckily by the time I arrived the drumkit was set up and most of the mics in place, so the hard graft was mostly done. I was the only one there who had done a proper drum session previously, so I was able to lend a few pointers (having learned from my mistakes, my drum recordings are nothing spectacular!). As well as the drums, we had a double bass, a keyboard and a trumpet. Such is the nature of Jazz music, the band needed to play ‘live’ and be able to look at each other while playing. This threw a few curve balls in terms of isolating the instruments, specifically just the bass and the trumpet (drums are in a separate booth and the keyboard was DI’d).
As luck would have it, Itamar had done his Written Assignment on microphone techniques for Trumpets (!!?), so he set about that (with a Shure KSM 32) while we wired everything else up. For the bass we used two mics, a Shure SE1A and an AKG C414. Initially we had the C414 sitting just above the fretting hand (I know they don’t have frets but I’m a guitarist, I don’t know the proper word) to catch the slappy-clicky sounds (that’s a technical term) on the strings, and the SE1A down low, at the f-hole to catch the warm bass sound. Like I said the band wanted to see each other, and we didnt have any baffles shorter than about 6ft, so we ended up having to turn one on its side and put in front of the double bass to try and isolate it from the trumpet.
With all that in place we did a couple of takes to fine-tune all the levels. Unfortunately the bass wasn’t sounding great and the C414 at the top was picking up too much trumpet. We swapped it round with the SE1A, which is more directional so we were able to use the rejection points to eliminate a bit more of the trumpet.
So after almost four hours setting up, the band had just under two hours to actually make some noise (a fairly typical ratio!). But when they did it sounded awesome! As we sat in the control room listening, it became quite clear that mixing the tracks would require very little effort (compared with the 16 channels of guitar I’ve been wrestling with on my project!). It would be almost difficult to take the credit as engineers for it sounding so good, as it was mostly down to the quality of the band. Although to be fair, I’d learned the lesson after my drum sessions that the more effort you make before pressing that record button, the better results you’ll get, so that four hours (which we could easily have rushed into two and a half) really was worth it!
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
Today I spent half an hour writing my first Greasemonkey script. It’s pretty simple, just displays a little Google Map on a Flickr photo page, with the location of the photo (if available!). I had a look around but couldn’t find an existing script that did this, which was quite surprising. It was made an awful lot easier by the new Google Maps Static API.
Download the ‘Google Map on Flickr photo page’ script here
If anyone can think of a snappier name let me know :)
Now that I think of it, possibly the reason it hasn’t been done before is that the Google Maps Javascript API made it too hard (or even impossible??). Who knows. Anyway, it’s my first attempt at a GM script so its VERY simple and VERY rough. Post any suggestions/ideas in the comments!
Iain
[UPDATE: Join the FlickrHacks discussion]
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
Woohoo! Flickr now lets you upload videos. Unfortunately my Mac crashes whenever I try to play AVI vids from my camera, so that could be something of an obstacle in how creative I can be with them….. Luckily I just shot this one last week and knew it was short enough (90 second limit) and suitable enough to upload without trying to open it on the Mac.
Monday, March 31st, 2008
This is the Written Assignment I submitted as part of my Audio Engineering Diploma course at SAE London. You can view the original PDF version here , but I’ve tweaked it to a more blog-friendly version, which is published below.
As with most of my coursework, it ended up a bit rushed and not as good as I’d have liked it to be, but PLEASE leave comments and let me know what you think of it - especially if you’re a Metallica fan! Thanks!
[It's also posted as a journal on Last.fm , if you'd rather read and comment there!]
Bob Rock began working as Metallica’s producer on their fifth album, ‘Metallica’. This was generally considered to be the point at which the band crossed over to the mainstream, and Bob Rock is generally credited with making that happen. As Metallica’s career progressed with Rock as producer they alienated a lot of their hardcore metal fan base; most of whom believed Rock to be the primary reason for the band’s apparent downfall. Though his involvement with the band over the years is difficult to understate, there were several other factors contributing to the direction of Metallica’s career.
More…
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
Seriously, buy this album. Now. I know its only March but I might as well just give it album of the year right now and get it over with.
As is normal practise with a new album I get addicted to too quickly, I needed to go cold turkey for a few weeks on this one. Delete it from the iPod, stop telling people how good it is, and find something else to keep me amused, perhaps an old classic. In this case I had to resort to Metallica’s entire back catalogue, due to being approximately 50 words into my 3500 word essay on Bob Rock, and with less than a month to finish it. But that’s another story.
Thankfully I’m now past the annoying phase of Studio Head and am onto the appreciative phase. Man this record sounds good. It was produced by Bernard Butler - ok so his bands were shit but I’m willing to let him off with that now. Eilidh’s bass sounds awesome - solid, present, but not obtrusive. Another thing you notice with This Gift compared with The Repulsion Box (ebo album of the year 2005) is that Adele’s voice is much more controlled and focussed, but no less feisty. Overall the album sounds a lot thicker - a bit less mandolin and tambourine this time around, and the guitar riffs are louder and heavier.
Best track? It was Chains, but now it’s Flags. Make up your own mind (…what? you haven’t bought it yet? how many times do I have to tell you!)
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Today I attempted my first proper cycling commute since the Lewisham move. Although in my typical disorganised fashion, I did it the hard way. Leaving from Fiona’s in the morning instead of my house (+2 miles), and having to go to college in the evening instead of just straight home (+6 miles).
The morning wasn’t too bad, I’d estimated about an hour, had the route pretty clear in my head and left plenty of time to get to work reasonably early in time to grab a shower. Half an hour later I was still only as far as London Bridge, but the traffic through the city was mental so I knew that had taken longer than it should’ve. As I crossed the Thames, passing the hoards of people with feet pounding towards their offices, I couldn’t help but think of pigeon racing and the Great North Run, and ended up singing the Geordie Racer theme tune for the rest of the journey.
Plain sailing from there down through Borough, along the Old Kent Road through Peckham and on to New Cross. Pretty much just following the Number 21 bus route, slightly apprehensive about having to tackle Amersham Way, which shall henceforth be known as The Hill of Death. But such is life, what goes up must come down, and I sailed down the steep-but-safe-enough-to-enjoy decline of Lewisham Way, for a glorious arrival at the work just on the hour mark.
Knowing that the next leg, from Lewisham all the way to Caledonian Road was an extra couple of miles, I really should have adjusted my time accordingly, but I left with 1h 10mins to spare. I didn’t fancy going all the way back up Lewisham Way from a standing start, so decided to take a detour and just follow my sense of direction and take reassurance from the ‘towards…’ signs on the bus stops. This was working out pretty well and I eventually found myself joining Old Kent Road about halfway up. I tried to cut across and take a more direct route toward London Bridge, closer to the river, but hit a dead end and had to go back and face O.K.R. (thats my hip new slang term for it). My determination took me a closer and closer to the Thames Path, and I struck gold - GOLD I say.
To be honest I’d never really taken much interest in Tower Bridge, but it looked pretty impressive as I cycled past at dusk. So that was another few minutes added on to my journey time for taking a few pictures.
Again, getting through the City was a bit of a slog, and I probably could have picked a better route, but I was still just following my nose at this stage. I seemed to be making pretty good time as well, considered my dead end at OKR and my scenic detour along the Thames Path. Still no chance I was making it to college for half 6 though. About halfway the steady mile-long slope of Caledonian Road I had to admit defeat and walk for a bit, but still a decent effort.
After some dinner and rest at college, all that remained was the usual jaunt home, but even that proved a bit too much and my legs gave in just after Brick Lane. Late shift tomorrow I think!
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
Yes I know it might not sound like news, but Google really can find out absolutely anything! Sitting working on my MIDI project, getting more and more frustrated with trying to suss out the tempo of the vocal track i’m trying to use. A lightbulb moment ensues and i decided to call on the big G for some help. “garbage androgyny bpm” says me, and sure enough 0.26 seconds later, I’m told the answer is of course ‘93 beats per minute’, according to some website that doesn’t even exist anymore.
Not that my assignment ended up being anything brilliant, but I might post the results here soon.
