Atlhack

Books: (Or, 1000 Monkeys et al)

Atlanta Computing Resources contains links to Atlanta stores, programming groups, schools, jobs, and other tech resources. Atlhack Users Projects contains pages describing our projects. Add info if you can!

News: (Or, Roxor the Bloxors)

Last week I setup two feed categories to track atlhack-interesting content, prominently displayed in light-green sidebars (in the default theme). If you know of any cool tech feeds that fit the bill, please add them to the aggregator! Details below.

Maybe this can be a book page. For the sake of structure, I’m going to add my edits directly to the page. Comment to add to the list.

Atlanta Tech
Technical blogs of Atlanta developers. Right now we have Titus, Vinny, and Luke so that we may follow their exploits! If I start writing tech on this site, I’ll add my onsite blog to this feed as well. If you know any other Atlanta tech bloggers, ask permission and add them!

Everywhere Tech
More general technical articles and news. I tried to add some of the less traffic and more specialized blogs so we’d have a good mix of material, but this policy is definately up for discussion.

The Theory Blogs –
Computational Complexity, Lowerbounds, Upperbounds, Machine Learning (Theory) – Hardcore theory blogs, but contain useful CS career articles and notes on formatting your TeX papers.

The Hacker Blogs –
Hacking for Christ – Gerv hacks Mozilla.
Paul Graham – Well-spoken essayist, tech entrepreneur, and lisp hacker. Essential creative tech.

The Digital Music Blogs –
Duke Listens – Paul Lamere, who works for Sun, talks about issues of interest to the Music Listening community.

Tech Culture –
Wired News – Allow me to simulate Wired’s editorial bias. The future is here. GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GOGOGOGO!
Microsoft Watch – News from about the 800-pound gorilla in Redmond, WA.
Lifehacker – Software tools for improving your life in a general sense.
Lawrence Lessig – Proponent of copyleft and the free culture movement.

The Game Theory Blogs –
Grand Text Auto – Game theory, culture, and new media links from a roundtable of experts, including Michael Mateas, a professor from Georgia Tech.

Software Design –
Creating Passionate Users – Entertaining blog about creating useful software.

Stuff I Didn’t Add –
Slashdot, BoingBoing – Wonderful resources, but ubiquitous and huge.

Stuff I’m Still Considering –
We Make Money, Not Art – Plentiful source of tech arts.

SWIMM is a music player that automatically learns a user’s preferences with regard to generating music playlists.

links of interest:
How Much Does iTunes Like My Five-Star Songs?

Titus suggests Sonic Fountry’s ACID which uses audio data pre-labeled with beats.

Tristan’s page references Celemony’s Melodyne, Bias’s Peak, Ableton’s Live, and Emagic’s Logic Audio.

I’ve personally used Cakewalk, Audacity, Fruity Loops, and Tracktion One (raw material software). I still must try Fruity Loops Studio (latest), and Tracktion Two.

[ynniv: you should check out Dr. Rex in the Reason suite, as well]

Review Criteria:

1. Automatic Segmentation Processes present – algorithms that find the beat, find the notes, or anything novel in this regard.
2. How the sound is organized into a GUI
3. Any other special features or upshots

Creating Passionate Users proposes that one way for software to be engaging is to have a number of “levels” which users naturally progress through to achieve greater mastery.

Here are some proposed level tasks for Mused users and developers. They range from Level One: Music Fan to Level Ten: Grand Collage Ninja.

1. Simple Modification – Take an existing music track and speed up the tempo, or change the key.

Sample Addition – Take an existing track, add samples from another song.

Sample Addition-Subtraction – Take an existing track, delete rhythmic or melodic material to leave holes, and add material from other music to replace it.

Harmonic Meddling – Take an existing track, and change the key of a limited part of the song.

Static Tempo Mixtape – Take a string of tracks, and modify them to have the same tempo. Cross-fade between them in the transitions.

Dynamic Tempo Mixtape – Take a string of tracks, and change the tempo smoothly from one track to the next, as well as crossfading between them in the transitions.

Power Hour – Create a beatmatched one hour mix for Jim’s Power Hour.

Stylized Mixtape – Make either a Static or Dynamic Tempo Mixtape with elements of Simple Modification, Sample Addition or Subtraction, and Harmonic Meddling in each song. Come up with a creative concept for the mixtape.

Classic Mash (Sample Addition x2) – Take two familiar but stylistically different songs and interlace them.

Cover Song (Sample Addition x5) – Recreate a musical track as in Sample Addition, but draw most of the musical material from at least 10 tracks in equal proportions.

Creative Composition – Make an original composition from 10’s of songs, using bits of vocals, rhythms, and instrument lines in new arrangements.

10. Comprehensive Composition – Create a song with a totally novel structure containing samples from 100’s of different tracks, each of them lending a recognizible style to the song, but without any full melodies lifted from one particular piece.

This approach affords several benefits. It gives a set of intermediate milestones for development. Once development is finished, it provides a clear path (like a tutorial) for a user to gain mastery in progressively difficult tasks. Also, it makes us all feel like ninjas. Which is good.

Tristan Jehan

Ross Bencina

Francois Pachet

Places where you can Learn to Get your Hack On

Universities

Georgia Tech
Depending on what kind of career you’re looking for, there are probably quicker routes. Then again you might learn something.

Morehouse CS

Non-Traditional

Big Nerd Ranch
Technical bootcamps in retreat settings.

Fun Tech Culture that’s based in Atlanta

Homestar Runner (HR Wiki)
Beloved internet mascots Homestar and Strongbad, and the obsessive collaborative fansite that loves them. Worship the Brothers Chapps!

Lifeform Project
Hometown electronic music label that does periodic laptop shows at bars and restaurants.

Atlanta Bloggers
A group of Atlanta bloggers who get together and go out and drink once a month.

or, Places Where You Can Get Tools for Hacking

GIM Computers
Friendly Mom-and-Pop PC store right off the Tech campus. Good for finding those extra parts when putting together a machine.

Fry’s Electronics (Gwinnett Place)
Biggest-box discount computer hardware. Wonderland.

Apple Store Lenox
The Atlanta center of Mac geekery.

Atlanta PHP
(wow… atlphp.org sounds a lot like atlhack.org)

Atlhack.org
Creative code, resources for Atlanta developers.