Soundcloud

After the summer holiday in 2010 I decided I to revive an old hobby of mine, which is making digital music. It's great that professional equipment is really affordable these days. That was different in the 90's, when I was also experimenting with synthesizers, MIDI and computers (an Amiga 2000, which can be admired here http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=63). I was on a bit of a tight budget then, being a student those days... But this has changed fortunately ;-)!

So in september 2010 I bought some nice digital sound equipment (effect processors, groovebox, sampler) and some other new hardware (a new and very fast 64-bits Windows machine with solid state disks, a Patchbay and LOTS of cables). I already had my old synthesizers so fortunately I didn't have to buy those ;-). I also bought ProTools, which is great intuitive sequencer software to create music with (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_sequencer). In the past I used CubaseVST and before that some obscure software on the Amiga, but these programs are not so user friendly...


So I arranged everything (that took also some time) and then started to work on the new stuff, and I must say it's a great pleasure again to create digital music! Publishing music also has changed significantly, everybody can easily publish music via Internet! So today I published one of my musical experiments, it's a kind of meditative song. I'm using Soundcloud (www.soundcloud.com) to publish the song, this is a very convenient cloud based service for musicians to publish your own music. Enjoy your Zen moment!

ZenO2 by erikvanderzee

Blog to tweet should work now

I configured feedburner to create a Twitter message when I'm posting a Blog, should work now. Let's check Twitter when I'm pressing the "publish" button in Blogger...

Favorite websites and links

So today I transferred some of my favorite hyperlinks from my browser to my website. Some I really like e.g. the ballet excarvators, looks like these monster machines have a soul and mind and are very gentle... Maybe that's why I like the Internet of Things; if the things start to interact with us they just become more "friendly" and human (I mean, how can you hit your TV if it says AU ;-)... As an example. people can get really attached to robot dogs, http://bit.ly/IhF6T, really interesting. I would love to have a robot dog like an AIBO (he goes back to his charger and sits on it when his batteries run low, isn't that cute?!), but they are a bit too expensive to my taste (...I rather buy a synthesizer for the same money). But one day (soon I guess) I will buy a robotic vacuum cleaner, and definitely a ironing robot as soon as it's available ;-). Sodaplay is a game I spend hours playing, trying to make nice walking creatures by tweaking the muscles and bones, you should definitely try this game! A-Net station is nice to listen to because it's broadcasted without any advertising. Really relaxing music from the south pole (!). The USB typewriter doesn't need any extra explanation, just enjoy ;-).

Polymath

Always working on becoming a Polymath (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uomo_universale) but it's difficult these days... In ancient times the knowledge was limited, but nowadays simply too much research is carried out to read in a lifetime, so I guess I will never become that good old renaissance man... As with many things one has to make choices here, so I guess I stick to my favorite subjects, which are Geography, Music, Technology and Science. I also like  to combine these subjects, Geography-Technology (my work) and Music-Technology (my hobby making digital music). So in the future you will probably find me blogging on these subjects, happy reading!