Ed Colmar's Blog

Dj set from trust sunset - Sep 2011

2011-11-14T18:07:00.000-08:00

This is a dj set I did earlier this year.

Jungle/dubstep

Enjoy.

Ed Colmar at trust sunset Sep 2011

Gamedraft

2011-09-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I was playing World of Warcraft far too much. I was in a raiding guild with some of my real life friends, and some virtual friends. What this means is that we would get 25 people together to accomplish very specific and technical trials in video games.

Now, this presents a lot more challenges than just clicking and pressing keys at the right time. The hardest part of raiding isn't the raid. It is the research, strategizing, and the organization, that is time consuming and difficult. Often in the group you need an exact "class balance" in order to finish objectives. For example, you might need a mage casting a particular spell, with a paladin keeping the mage alive in order to control one aspect of the encounter. This delegation of tasks happens for each player, and making sure that every spot is filled with the right class is critical.

Being web developers, we immediately thought of ways we could use a website to make this easier for us, and Draft was born.

We wanted the site to accomplish a few things:

First, we wanted to have signups be optional. In gaming terminology we were a "soft core" guild. If you could make it to the event that's great. If you couldn't make it... tThat's fine too. You weren't going to get kicked for not showing up. So, we needed a way to track who was available, who signed up, and who didn't.

Then we needed a way to deal with class balance. We needed to be able to see which classes were available, and move them into a group selected to actually perform the raid.

We needed notifications, so lazy guild members would get a message telling them that there is a new event they needed to sign up for, or that they have been picked and are therefore committed to the raid.

Then, after working with it for a few months, we needed a way to track people that did not fulfill their obligations.... Either by leaving early, repeatedly disconnecting, being late, or not showing up at all. These people would get flagged, and the raid leader would give them lower priority for future raids.

This all went great, and the tool evolved a bit with use... But eventually, the guild grew tired, and we all stopped playing WoW. Draft collected dust for a few years, but always was in the back of my mind whenever guild event organization was the issue being addressed - and in the world of MMOs, it frequently was.

Since I have been developing heavily with app engine, I decided to recode Draft, remove the WoW specific elements, and make it useful for other MMO games. It can be used for more than just raids. Pretty much any guild activity can be scheduled and organized.

Now we have google authentication, notifications through google chat, and event transport to google calendar.

If you are an MMO gamer, I'm sure you'll find it useful. Mention it to your guild or raid leader.

It is currently in beta, so I'd love to hear any feedback or comments on it.

Try out the new version of Draft!

How not to set up a backyard garden.

2011-08-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

Alternatively titled: “u r doing it rong”

I just read this (http://www.survivalblog.com/2011/08/experiences_of_a_novice_garden.html) and really wanted to reply, but the site does not allow in line comments, so I am posting my reply here instead.

About a month ago, while I was living in Oakland, I was walking home and I noticed someone had 10 small pots on their balcony. Good for them, I thought. They are growing a little bit of food for themselves. Then I looked closer. They were growing CORN. CORN out of a planter. UMMMM FAIL. The only thing I could think was that they are either stupid or totally inexperienced with the means and process of food production. I’ll go with inexperienced because nearly everyone in our culture has no connection whatsoever with plants. Nor do they have any concept of what happens when plants grow. Conceptually, it is just some industrial process involving tractors, and maybe chickens or something.

I know immediately when people think of farming they think of corn. We have vast fields of corn in the states, so corn must equal farming, right? And therefore, If I want to grow my own food, I have to grow corn. WRONG! The corn we grow in this country is mainly grown for two things. Ethanol, and Livestock feed. Since you are unlikely to be manufacturing ethanol or raising cattle in your apartment, the primary arguments for growing corn are now gone. Also, if you just think about it for 15 seconds you will realize that corn is probably the worst annual crop you could grow in limited space. It requires a large amount of vertical space, and remember that only half of the plant is above ground. It is heavily resource dependent (water and soil nutrients). And, it produces very little edible product for the total amount of mass it creates.

DO NOT grow corn in a backyard garden unless you have plenty of unused space, nutrients and water available on hand.

Similarly, you can extend this example out to most industrialized food products. If it takes a lot of space to grow and you don’t get very much return, DON'T GROW IT AT HOME!

Well what do I grow instead?

If you are growing in planters like my example above, I would suggest perennial culinary herbs. Thyme, rosemary, sage, oregano, etc... They are almost entirely edible. They require very little attention or resources. They are very robust and hard to kill. You can use them almost every day, and they will just grow back. You’ll make great friends with your perennials and they will be with you for many many years. You will develop a meaningful connection with the plants and the food that they enhance. This is a start to the development of a relationship with food, the earth, and your role in it all.

This example can be extended as well. If you focus on perennials, and scale up you end up with a “forest garden”. Basically this means, you have a food producing area that requires no tilling of the soil, no fertilizer, no planting, and very little human intervention - other than harvesting.

Do some research on permaculture, and forest gardening before you go out and start planting seeds in toxic containers, using chemical fertilizers, digging up perfectly good soil for no sensible reason, and generally wasting time and effort. Trial and error is good and all, but research, trial and success is better!

Agribusines and Organics

2011-08-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

This planet used to be a place of vast vast diversity. Different species of plants and animals were everywhere. So many species that we could not even classify them all. Now we are removing this diversity at an astounding rate. The human race is systematically converting the planet instead into a farm. A farm that breeds one thing - more humans.

Diversity of plant life is destroyed in favor of the most productive crops. Diversity of animal life is destroyed in favor of more farmland. Ocean life, well that's a topic for a whole other rant regarding growth.

This planet is a farm, and you are the livestock.

If you believe that increasing productivity in farming is a good thing, you have been deceived by the agribusiness industry. The marketing and spin has clouded you into thinking that the way of life we have gotten accustomed to over the past 50-75 years is not only acceptable, but it is right, and it is the best! Worst of all it has you believing that it can continue.

Take a look around you. Go down to the sugar plantations and tell me about the quality of life changes there. Go visit the quinoa farms where land that was lovingly cared for by a family for countless generations, is now owned by international mega corporations. Do a little research on Bananas. There is a reason for the term "Banana Republic".

Lets talk about sustainability for a minute.

For every calorie of energy in food consumed in the developed world, it requires 10 calories of petrochemical energy to produce it. This energy is used in almost every facet of the production and distribution of the food: fuel for tractors, fertilizer (derived from natural gas), transport, and plastic packaging, to name a few.

In case you don't know, Oil and natural gas are a FINITE resource. We are either at the peak of production, or past it already, which means that there will be less and less petrochemical fuel available in the future. This, by definition, is not sustainable.

If you want examples of sustainable farming practices, there are many. None of them are dependent on fuel for tractors, artificial fertilizers, or pesticide/herbicides. It is a simple idea, actually, to derive the energy inputs you need, grow and produce food, and consume it all in the same place, with very little (if any) external input. It requires some forethought and planning, but not a massive industrialized infrastructure.

Mostly, I have been talking about agribusiness in general. Now let me touch on gmos, pesticides, herbicides, and the evil that is monsanto.

Most of Monsanto's genetically modified "products" are designed so you can use MORE herbicide on the field - not less. Of course, Monsanto makes this herbicide - glyphosate. You know it as "Roundup". Naturally they want to sell more of their product, as any good manufacturer of a product in a capitalist society would.

As an herbicide, it has to be applied in a limited amount, otherwise you risk damaging or killing the food crop you are looking to protect. The "Roundup Ready" GMO products are designed to be more resistant to this chemical, and now are completely dependent on the herbicide. This (alongside the emergence of glyphosate resistant weeds) has resulted in a 15 fold increase in the use of Roundup. GoGo capitalism!

When you objectively look at a monocrop (A huge field full of exactly the same genetics), it is obviously highly susceptible to damage. This damage can come from "weeds" or "pests". The common assumption is that these things are bad, and in standard human reasoning, must be killed with extreme prejudice. Never is the premise questioned: "Oh look, we created a completely fragile system. Of course it is going to be attacked by more robust lifeforms".

Here is a personal example from my organic (and sustainable thank you very much) garden: One day I was looking at my Amaranth. I had 15-20 amaranth plants growing alongside a wide diversity of other plants. Three of them had an infestation of aphids. What is the reaction? "kill, destroy, eliminate the bugs with the most vile poison I can find?" Of course not. I don't want that crap anywhere near my food. I'd rather let the bugs feed on the weak plants. Two days later, I see a small flock of birds - quite lovely actually - mounted on the amaranth, happily devouring the aphids.

Complex dynamic systems are quite capable of adapting to change all by themselves.

Walking away from debt

2011-08-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

Wheeee. This is the exciting part of the ride, where we accelerate down the big ramp towards all the hard to predict twists and turns. “No hands!!!”

I’ve been giving advice to my close friends for a couple years now, warning of imminent massive instability and change that will disrupt, and bring into question, the entire premise of our society. Most of this was met by “you’re paranoid” or “why are you such a pessimist”. Now there is a ominous silence as the downward plunge begins.

The design failures of the system are starting to become obvious to anyone that is even slightly paying attention. On the bus to work today, an elderly woman looked at me and said “The stock market crashed, again.” She asked “Is it because of the downgrade?” To which I replied, “It goes much deeper than that. The root cause is energy.” This was too subtle of an answer to her, and she started mumbling about how she could have been a millionaire... She obviously wanted to talk to me about it, but I had to get off at the next stop. I walked off the bus with “We’ll see what happens. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

The thing I wanted to talk about in this post is debt. Not the big debt of the government, or the world. Though they are correlated, and you could say the things I suggest could be applied to all debts... But here, I want to talk about your personal debt.

Personal debt sucks. I have several friends that are either underwater on a mortgage, or have a pile of credit card debt. They all share the same desire to fulfill their end of the agreement - paying back the debt. This comes from some sense of personal integrity, or pride, I’d guess. I think this is misplaced, and ultimately serves to slowly degrade the very things they are trying to honor: integrity and pride.

Before I dig in to debt, let's go on a quick detour so we can get some perspective.

We need to look closely at the “G” word. This word seems to be in every single speech or press release recently, and it is used every time as an unquestioned fundamental principle of fact. Growth. Growth is good, right? We want to grow because it indicates a healthy system, right? Growth shows us that we are expanding, and expanding is always the thing we want to do, right? This is why “recessions” and “depressions” are bad, because they aren’t growth anymore.

NO. Growth is profitable. The reason why we have Growth as the basis of our economic system is that it makes money for the people that control it. Our (and the rest of the world’s) currency is not only based on growth, it REQUIRES it. Unlimited exponential growth is mandated by our system in order to function. Don’t believe me? Google “Fractional Reserve Banking”.

I question the logic of this. To assume that we can grow anything, exponentially, forever, is not very well thought through. I would suggest that instead of focusing on how we can get back to growth, we should be focusing on how we can work towards being sustainable. Or, even how can we scale back to a level that makes sense for ourselves and our planet. But, I digress from the topic at hand.

Back to debt...

Let’s talk about the creation of debt from the perspective of a bank’s CEO. If you want to maximize profits, you maximize volume: Lend to as many people as possible. When you run out of legitimate borrowers, you lend to people that don’t have a way to pay you back. They will pay you more interest, and this vastly expands your prospective borrower base. This practice is commonly known as “predatory lending”, or more commonly “fraud”. Then, after you have loans out to everyone, you can optimize again by abstracting away form the original loan and creating other financial products out of them. These loan packages are called “derivatives”, nearly always assigned false “AAA” credit ratings (more fraud), and then leveraged and sold to other institutions. This leverage is a multiplier. Multiply the risk, multiply the gains, and multiply the losses.

This optimization leads to massive profits on the expansion phase, and massive catastrophic losses on the compression phase. It creates an environment where all of the lenders have to follow these optimizations in order to remain competitive. This is known as “Gresham's dynamic” - where bad ethics drives good ethics out of the marketplace. When every lender is pursuing every possible optimization (including fraud) to increase profit, you end up with a huge expanding financial bubble. Needless to say, the losses on this bubble will be significant.

What I am getting at here is that your debt, your personal debt, is fraud. It is very likely that it is in at least one way fraudulent, and more likely that it is fraudulent in many simultaneous ways.

Now, lets talk about the other side of the debt: your personal interaction with it. If you pay it back, you are supporting fraudulent institutions. If you don’t pay, you are subject to legal recourse, and they have better lawyers than you. But there is a way to not support fraud, maintain your personal integrity, and not get demolished in court. Bankruptcy.

Currently in the USA, declaring bankruptcy is not against the law. It is not a felony. It is not a misdemeanor. It will not result in any jail time. In fact the only negative result of bankruptcy is a temporary debt rating downgrade for your person. Fraud, on the other hand, is a federal crime. Fraud (if prosecuted) will result in severe punishment in a federal prison for everyone that can be connected to it.

The economic environment we exist in was designed from a flawed premise. It was then exploited using not only unethical, but illegal means to extract as much value from the individual as possible. We now live in an artificial financial bubble which is endemic with fraud. As this becomes common knowledge, the bubble will contract or more likely burst.

Walking away from this environment in advance seems like a prudent and morally correct course of action.

- disclaimer - disclaimer - disclaimer - disclaimer -

Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.

Make Space - new Drum & Bass Studio Mix

2011-06-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

Some of the music I've been listening to over the past week here in NM.

And yes, I would like to play at your lovely weekend campout. =)

Ed Colmar - Make Space

Footage from trust CoR 2009

2011-06-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

Just found this video hiding on the vcrux site.

Complete Vcrux listing

New soundcloud profile

2011-06-01T15:31:00.000-07:00

I finally gave in and made a soundcloud account.

I'll be posting more tracks later. For now here are the most recent 3 from my blog.

http://soundcloud.com/edcolmar

App Engine Bulkloader - Troubleshooting

2011-05-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Amna and I were working on an app engine hosted website for her job, and it required an import of data from a comma delimited database file. An initial search returned official google documentation, and a few posts with some trivial seeming issues.

In practice, getting the bulkloader to function was a lot of work, and the documentation was not helpful. Google, please include more examples!

So, I'm posting this in case anyone else wants to do a bulkloader import.

One huge gotcha that took us hours to figure out was that the High replication datastore requires a different application name than the master/slave datastore. if you are using the high replication datastore, you must use the flag --application=~s[your app name] Without the ~s, app engine will error out and tell you that you don't have permission to access the datastore.

We then searched for a long time to try to find correct examples on how to do import transforms on different data types. The default data type on import is a string. Unless you specify a different type, it will get imported to the db as a string.

We also had problems finding the correct format for the column titles.

Here is our final bulkloader.yaml

###################################

python_preamble:
- import: base64
- import: re
- import: google.appengine.ext.bulkload.transform
- import: google.appengine.ext.bulkload.bulkloader_wizard
- import: google.appengine.ext.db
- import: google.appengine.api.datastore
- import: google.appengine.api.users

transformers:

- kind: Franchise
connector: csv
connector_options:
column_list: [franchise_title, franchise_added_on, franchise_description, franchise_description_two, franchise_tfu_c, franchise_tcou_c, franchise_tu_c, franchise_tfu_vp, franchise_tcou_vp, franchise_tu_vp, franchise_tfu_vp_percentage, franchise_tcou_vp_percentage, franchise_tu_percentage, franchise_management_employees, franchise_veteran_management_employees, franchise_management_percentage, franchise_wfnetwork_listing, franchise_wfnetwork_url, franchise_class, franchise_logo_profile, franchise_validated, franchise_summary, franchise_logo_rotate, franchise_of_the_week]
# TODO: Add connector options here--these are specific to each connector.

property_map:
- property: franchise_title
external_name: franchise_title
# Type: Key Stats: 119 properties of this type in this kind.
#import_transform: transform.create_foreign_key('TODO: fill in Kind name')
#export_transform: transform.key_id_or_name_as_string

- property: franchise_description
external_name: franchise_description
import_transform: db.Text

- property: franchise_description_two
external_name: franchise_description_two
import_transform: db.Text

- property: franchise_tfu_c
external_name: franchise_tfu_c
import_transform: transform.none_if_empty(int)

- property: franchise_tcou_c
external_name: franchise_tcou_c
import_transform: transform.none_if_empty(int)

- property: franchise_tu_c
external_name: franchise_tu_c
import_transform: transform.none_if_empty(int)

- property: franchise_tfu_vp
external_name: franchise_tfu_vp
import_transform: transform.none_if_empty(int)

- property: franchise_tcou_vp
external_name: franchise_tcou_vp
import_transform: transform.none_if_empty(int)

- property: franchise_tu_vp
external_name: franchise_tu_vp
import_transform: transform.none_if_empty(int)

- property: franchise_tfu_vp_percentage
external_name: franchise_tfu_vp_percentage
import_transform: float

- property: franchise_tcou_vp_percentage
external_name: franchise_tcou_vp_percentage
import_transform: float

- property: franchise_tu_percentage
external_name: franchise_tu_percentage
import_transform: float

- property: franchise_management_employees
external_name: franchise_management_employees
import_transform: transform.none_if_empty(int)

- property: franchise_veteran_management_employees
external_name: franchise_veteran_management_employees
import_transform: transform.none_if_empty(int)

- property: franchise_management_percentage
external_name: franchise_management_percentage
import_transform: float

- property: franchise_wfnetwork_listing
external_name: franchise_wfnetwork_listing
import_transform: bool

- property: franchise_wfnetwork_url
external_name: franchise_wfnetwork_url

- property: franchise_class
external_name: franchise_class

- property: franchise_logo_profile
external_name: franchise_logo_profile

- property: franchise_validated
external_name: franchise_validated
import_transform: bool

- property: franchise_summary
external_name: franchise_summary
import_transform: db.Text

- property: franchise_logo_rotate
external_name: franchise_logo_rotate

- property: franchise_of_the_week
external_name: franchise_of_the_week
import_transform: bool

##############

And here is the command we used to send the data up to app engine:

appcfg.py upload_data --config_file=bulkloader.yaml --filename=../F4V.txt --kind=Franchise --url=http://franchises4vets.appspot.com/_ah/remote_api --application=s~franchises4vets .

Hope this helps!

Dj sets from TECHNICAL STORMS

2010-10-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

I played two short sets on Oct 2nd.

This was at the same place that I produced "Audition Tape" to try to get a show. The Buffalo Bar.

It was really a great show. I had to put away most of the music that I pulled for it, because people just weren't digging on the softer stuff.

Set 1
Set 2

Enjoy!

New Original Track - Improvised Cardboard

2010-08-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

This one is kinda hard to classify... 180 BPM with some jungle feel, though mostly disguised as hard noise.

Ed Colmar - Improvised Cardboard

Play loud for best results.

Original Track - Bowfry

2010-08-03T14:57:00.000-07:00

Another recently finished track that needs to get out.

IDM style.

Ed Colmar - Bowfry

Lochae - New Original Track

2010-08-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a new track that does not have a home as far as an official release. It is IDM flavor with a dash of dubstep.

Ed Colmar - Lochae

Enjoy!

Declassify - 1996 Ambient/IDM Studio Mix

2010-06-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

Another one from the archives. Yes, '96.

At the time I was playing as "LMNT" and released this on a very limited (maybe 50) run of CDs.

Ed Colmar - Declassify

DJ / Live hybrid set at OW NYE 2003

2010-06-28T18:23:00.001-07:00

Let me apologize for the timing glitches in this recording every so often. My collection of DAT tapes are nearing the end of their useful life, and beginning to fail.

Hence I have undertaken the massive goal of moving them onto a more redundant magnetic storage system, and uploading the public files to the cloud (thanks amazon s3!)

This is an old set that I played at Otherworld in 2003. It was new years eve. I was stoked! I think this was the blue Gateway system, if I remember correctly.

I like to refer to this as a dj/live hybrid. It was composed of partially other people's music that got sliced up and mangled with sounds and loops from my music. All of it was being sequenced and affected live.

Ed Colmar - dj/live hybrid - Otherworld NYE 2003

project...

2010-06-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

A project I've been working on at City of Rocks. Thanks Amna for the footage and editing. =)

Techno Practic3e

2010-04-23T10:37:00.000-07:00

50+ minutes of minimal ish techno tunes from a dj practice session last night.

http://bit.ly/edc_techp3

Audition Tape

2010-02-21T15:38:00.000-08:00

I was asked to provide a CD to audition for a possible DJ gig in town.

My initial reaction was to flat out refuse for the absurdity of it. Playing in a NM bar, for country music fans... Probably not the best idea. Maybe a few could be converted. Maybe I'd get shot.

After some careful consideration, I decided it was better to produce the audition material. My goal was to make something honest, sometimes pretty, and (of course) hard.

It's a job application, and a warning at the same time.

Thanks for listening.

Also, please support these artists. They are remarkable.

SIDE A - Dubstep
Mount Kimbie - 50 Mile View
The Prodigy - Breathe (Numbernin6 rmx)
Statix - Purgatory
Subscape - Slow Moe
RSD - Accepted
Broken Note - Dubversion (Hecq rmx)
Ed Solo - Egyptian Horns
Noisses - Square Face
The Streets - Blinded By The Lights (Nero rmx)
6Blocc - The End
Statix - All The Sauce

SIDE B - Jungle
Dj Hidden - Drawn In
Dj Hidden - Scry 2 7734-5335-34
Rregula - Corner Hashman
Spectrasoul - Organiser
Dj Hidden - The Traveller
Ant Tc1 and Dlr - Space and Time
Metrik - Moving On
Commix & Rufage Cru - Justified
SPL - Nihil (The Panacea rmx)
Broken Note - Pyrotek
Rregula & The Panacea - Down Underneath
Ebola - Painkillers

DOWNLOAD (and share)
SIDE A
SIDE B

OSC to DMX on Android

2010-01-10T16:22:00.000-08:00

OSC to DMX testing from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

I'm using a G1 to drive a G2.

Basic testing here, just showing that it works.

Earth and Technology

2010-01-07T15:43:00.000-08:00

For a long time I have been trying to reconcile two seemingly opposing beliefs:

I love the earth and humanity. I believe that individuals and groups should be sustainable. That they should provide for their needs without much reliance on other people or groups.

I love technology. I believe as a race, we have to grow beyond this planet (and solar system) if we are to survive. Ultimately, the sun will destroy us if we don't.

Last night, I was reading Bill Mollison's "Permaculture A Designer's Manual" and in the "Strategies for an Alternative Nation" chapter I read:

"I do not, in my lifetime, or that of my children's children, forsee a world where there is no eroded soils, stripped forests, famine, or poverty, but I do see a way in which we can spend our lives towards earth repair. If and when the whole world is secure, we have won a right to explore space, and the oceans. Until we have demonstrated that we can establish a productive and secure earth society, we do not belong anywhere else, nor (I suspect) would we be welcome elsewhere."

I don't know if this completely seals up the rift, but the sides feel more connected now.

System Check Edits

2009-10-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday we took the sound and lighting rigs out for a test. Lots of new gear, and lots of new connections. The sync from the dj, to the sequencer, to the lighting rig was one of the crucial things we were testing.

Here are a few stitched together clips from the best footage.

System Check Edits from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

Time Slips By at ASR

2009-10-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

This was one of my all time favorite performances. Things just came together so perfectly. Pascal's new soundsystem, Mike's Lighting support, Great energies all around. The recording attempts failed, so we recreated the set as closely as possible before I came home to NM.

Enjoy!

Time Slips By / Live set from ASR : As you like it 2009 (Redux)

Android Developer Challenge

2009-09-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

The ADC2 is open for voting.

If you use android, please help the voting process. And give a little extra love to my app, Auradust.

Please grab the ADC2 app on the android market.

More details on the process here

Auradust Launch

2009-08-25T21:07:00.001-07:00

Auradust is live!

The primary component is an application for android phones. It allows you to leave and retrieve information for the places around you. A post to auradust can share out images, text and audio about where you are. A local search can reveal details about places near you.

The android application is available for free in the android market if you search for auradust, or click the barcode above.

There is a facebook app that lets you share locations with your social network. Please try it out.

The website has a global public overview, some general info, and a selection of designer ring tones.

You can view android market comments here:
Auradust on Cyrket

I would love to hear everyone's feedback on it.

15Hz Test tone

2009-08-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

I could not find a proper sub bass test tone on the net, so I made one.

You can use this to test subwoofers for blown drivers. Even in residential neighborhoods.

Download 15Hz test tone

NO CLIMBING!

2009-08-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the awesome photo Shango. Love it!

Dynos at Penny Park

2009-08-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

There is a small bouldering area in one of the parks in town. All of the holds are old, and many of them were loose. We gave them some love, and were messing around on some problems. The most fun were these dynos!

skate TRUST - Day party on Sunday

2009-08-11T17:03:00.000-07:00

We are doing a day party at the skate park in town. Which will also double as a test of the new sound system.

Accepting suggestions for music and requests. =P

My Climbing Surface

2009-08-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

With a few seconds of climbing at the end.

I'm working on a problem using all yellow SoILL holds. The Crux is moving across the big Nicros hold. I have yet to finish it from the start, but I have done it in sections. Hopefully Sunday it will go down!!!

dub.09 - Studio Mix

2009-07-29T21:20:00.000-07:00

Download my dub.09 Studio Mix

I will be handing out CD copies at FnF this weekend too.

tracklist:
Broken Note - Dubversion
Broken Note - Mortal Bass
Pinch & Moving Ninja - False Flag
Clubroot - Sempiternal
Clubroot - Talisman
Scuba - Volt
Wolf Man - Eye of the Demon
Mista - Call Center
Current Value and Rodell - Corridor
Riskotheque - Just You (Original Mix)
Riskotheque - Dream State (Original Mix)
Current Value and Rodell - Requiem (Balansky Remix)
Eskmo - Agnus Dei
Eskmo - Hypercolor (Original Mix)
Ital Tek - Deep Pools

!!! SUPPORT THE ARTISTS !!!

Hardcore set from 2007

2009-07-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

Here is a set I did at otherworld in 2007. The edits are really rough, and off in a lot of places. But, big thanks to Ray and crew for filming and putting the time in to splice it all together. It sill gives a feel for the show, even though it's not perfectly synch'd.

Yes, it's pretty hard. =)

Ed Colmar at Otherworld 12/11/07 from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

As a side story... The pioneer mixer that is in almost every shot... Well, it kinda fell apart during sound check. The crossfader came disconnected and dropped into the housing of the mixer. Of course, there were no spare mixers to use, so Dave took the whole thing apart and attached the crossfader. During one of the breaks, you can hear Dave explaining to the dude who owned the mixer that he "used the utmost care" in repairing it.

Climbing wall phases 1-3

2009-07-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

Wood and fencing arrive.

Painting the first round of panels results in cool patterns on plastic.

Sunset on day 1, from the back porch.

First round of holds arrive.

Let me just stress. When they say So ILL what they mean to say is SO F*%CKING ILL!!!! These guys have just been a pleasure to deal with, with probably the best customer support I have gotten with any company, ever. Not to mention the holds. Great stuff. Big ups.

First panel goes up on the 45 degree wall

Second panel on the 45 degree wall

THA BRAIN!!!!111

Drilling and cutting the remaining panels.

Panels ready for priming and painting.

The evil tape measure. It tried to kill us. Many times. Seriously.

Vertical wall section going up.

More holds arrive.

Vertical wall section complete.

Stacks of panels for the roof section.

Two roof sections installed

We were a bit off in our original measurements. But it was mostly due to the irregularity of the deck.

Another great sunset off the porch.

Testing out the roof problems.

Green Graphics blog

2009-06-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

I just put up a blog to document the design and print work at my employer, Green Graphics

We will be posting images of the newest and best materials to come off the press, and to go up on the web.

GG official blog

The Grand Tour!

2009-06-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

Well, more like a quick walk through.

Moving In

2009-06-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

Matter and I, before we started unloading the truck

BIG garage. We could have unloaded the entire truck into here.

After the unload we fired up the teeny grill on the porch. It is strangely named the "Party Cooker" but can only really handle a party of 2.

Silver City NM

2009-06-14T16:59:00.000-07:00

For a lot of reasons which I won't go into here, I moved to Silver City NM.

On the road. Monday was 9 hours into Palm Springs. Tuesday was an aweful 13 hours, due to a highway closure.

The view off my back porch.

Macro shot of a cactus growing in the backyard.

Amazing cloud formations. What do you see?

Exploring the backyard... Lots of deer poop. Lots of space to grow food. Going to have to find a way to reconcile these.

Hawk laying down the law. GTFO!

Sunset power line view from the backyard.

Hawk showing us the way back up.

Google App Engine, I love you.

2009-04-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

I started coding in python like 12 years ago, within the zope environment. It was for a project called StarRave. It was designed to replace the thousands of websites like "midwest raves" "sf raves" etc. It did end up getting deployed on several servers, but did not get adopted widely. It was a great project to dive head first into python.

I've been coding inside zope ever since. With great results.

About a year ago, Telly, Joshua, and Chris all started working on me to try django. After a few months of resistance, I gave in, and started to install and configure it. The install and configuration was a nightmare. I had to install python, django, mysql, and apache across 3 different machines, all with isolated environment vars. It did not go well.

After 2 weeks of consistent effort, I finally got all 3 machines working, and sharing the codebase over SVN. I kept working in django for another few weeks, until I finally abandoned it when Todd needed to get at the source. He was going to have to go through all of the same installation and configuration headache to get his dev environment working. We went back to zope, and finished the project in there.

This past weekend, I went looking for a server solution for my next project. I wanted something running in the cloud, that was distributed and scalable, and hopefully python.

I found Google App Engine.

Following this great django how-to I had a django instance running inside a windows local app engine server in less than 5 minutes. I had SVN connected and an install on a mac running 5 minutes later. No mysql, no apache, no configuration. Just a cute installer and a command line.

I'm just getting back into django, but this is the way. It has completely removed the installation headache, and has so many inherent bonuses that it's just amazing.

It is one of those days where I am completely struck with the awesomeness that is google.

/win

New TSB Album

2009-04-13T12:40:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note that the new Time Slips By album is out.

Read about it on the TSB blog

Pre-release promos sent!

2009-04-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

Advance copies of "In the Shadow of Machines" has been sent out to our allies list.

My evac kit

2009-04-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

I keep these bags near my bed, pre packed and ready to go, in case of emergency.

The main bag is a dakine snowboarding camelbak, which is quite heavy with all this hardware.

Inside:
First aid kit, with all the usual stuff, plus I added a few herbal remedies, and activated charcoal to it.

LED flashlight
Leatherman
2 knives
Passport
Katadyn water filter
Zippo, with extra fuel, wicks, and flints
waterproof anorak
am/fm solar radio and phone charger
gas mask
notebook and sharpie
2 paracord bracelets

Things I still need:
space blanket(s)
5 watt walkie talkie

Official Time Slips By Blog

2009-04-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

The official TSB blog

I'll also mention important things here.

Climbing @ City of Rocks

2009-03-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

Some climbing this weekend at city of rocks, NM

Dalas Verdugo

2009-03-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

Dalas Verdugo mentions TSB in his blog

ESKMO Ancestor mix

2009-03-24T11:36:00.000-07:00

One of my musical heroes ESKMO has a new mix on his website. Free download!

LOOP'd likes me

2009-03-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

http://vimeo.com/channels/loopd

Caution.. Some videos NSFW

TSB on iTunes

2009-03-04T10:10:00.001-08:00

The Time Slips By "Lightshield" and "Strength in Numbers" releases are now available for sale on iTunes.

Gym Climbing

2009-02-24T15:24:00.001-08:00

Thanks for the photos Amna!

Warming up on some easy stuff.

v6+

I have yet to finish this one.

My First v7+. =)

Time Slips By - mp3s for sale

2009-02-17T11:57:00.001-08:00

I have been working on getting the TSB material up on various websites, and have opted for digital distribution through cdbaby. Two releases consisting of four mp3s are available for purchase on cdbaby directly. Buying from cdbaby as opposed to itunes or amazon gives us the biggest percentage of the sale.

Time Slips By - Strength in Numbers

Time Slips By - Lightshield

Time Slips By on Last.fm

2009-02-06T10:59:00.000-08:00

I just updated the Time Slips By profile on Last.fm with the LIGHTSHIELD 12"

It sounds quite a bit better than the myspace encoded version.

Tag us, Love us, and Shout to us.

Time Slips By - Vagary pt. 1 - Sync test

2009-02-04T18:41:00.001-08:00

Time Slips By - Vagary pt. 1 - Sync test from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

Double Trouble

2009-02-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

Tracklist:
Lucine ICL - Act 4
Lucine ICL - Act 3
Sense - Day off
Trifonic - Emergence
Photophob - What went wrong
Loess - Viscer
Trifonic - Infiltration (Creeper mix)
Maps & Diagrams - Abseil (van53)
Aural Planet - Hydropoetry Cathedra (inst mix)
Aural Planet - Sunfruits Avenue
Trifonic - Parks on Fire (orig mix)
Loess - So Far
Rude Ass Tinker - U cant Touch this

DOWNLOAD THE SET

TSB myspace

2009-01-29T09:08:00.000-08:00

I updated the Time Slips By myspace page, with a few older tracks that were only played a few times at shows.

Enjoy.

TSB on myspace

Mortar/Indian Rock this weekend

2009-01-12T20:34:00.000-08:00

What amazing weather the past few days. Holy crap.

Telly and I went climbing at Indian/Mortar for a few hours.

We were mostly just messing around and eliminating holds.

Here are some of the things we finished.

Velocity to Sample Start

2008-12-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

After commenting on Dj Mad Wax's Blog post I thought I should go into a bit more detail on the subject.

Samples, by nature do not change. They are reproduced faithfully every time they are played back. While this is great for reliability, it is generally not what we want to hear. It's boring.

Assigning velocity to control the sample start offset on a digital sample is one of my favorite things to do to bring life to digital samples. It sounds natural, because this is how instruments behave in the real world. Strike a snare drum softly, and you mainly hear the tail end of the sound. Hit it hard, and you get a snappy attack with the decay afterwords.

To help visualize, here is a standard 909 kick drum sample.

Normally, every time this sample would play, it would start all the way at the left, every time it were triggered.

If we overlay a velocity to sample start, we can visualize it like this.

(note. this is not en envelope, it is showing the velocity relationship to time.)

With a velocity of 127 (maximum), the sample will start all the way at the left.

With 64 velocity, we only hear the second half of the sample. It sounds softer.

Programming this into a sequencer is fine, and will achieve the desired result. But, this technique really shines when playing the sounds off pads, or keys. It feels responsive, like a real instrument, even if the sound is totally synthetic.

Drums and percussive sounds are obvious candidates for this, but try it with other sounds too. Bass, pads, noises, and vocals all can benefit from this approach.

Not all samplers have this feature. For me, it is mandatory, and I refuse to use a sampler that can't do this mapping.

Samplers that I know can do this include:
SEQUENCERS:
Renoise

VSTS:
E-mu Emulator X
GURU

HARDWARE DEVICES:
Akai S series
Akai mpc series
E-mu emulator series

If you know of other devices that can do velocity to sample start mapping. Post in the comments.

SIEGE RECORDS - New website

2008-12-09T11:00:00.001-08:00

New SIEGE RECORDS web

Bambaat

2008-11-09T17:29:00.000-08:00

I found this dj/producer the other day, completely at random. I was going through a folder of random netlabel mp3 downloads placing them in the proper organized directories.

Generally, I skip through the track, with a quick evaluation of (1) do I want to bother keeping this at all, and (2) what genre and hierarchical structure to give it.

This set, though, for some reason, I let play all the way through. like 4 times.

Bambaat - Obscured Rays 1

I kept trying to rationalize how I could genuinely like a (house, trance, progressive, breaks) track... Eventually I just allowed myself to believe that there are talented and inspired artists in every genre.

Granted, there are some cheesy-as-hell tracks in some of these sets. But, they are offset by the truly amazing beautiful ones.

Good stuff. While I've been coding this weekend I've had Bambaat on the air, non-stop.

Bambaat - Journal on Last FM

My set from Otherworld's halloween party

2008-11-03T09:31:00.000-08:00

There were some other great sets on Friday. As always, a classic event, thanks OW!

I had been working on this set for 3 weeks prior to the show, mostly involving the programming of the strobes and color changers.

Download mp3

Tracklist (all of these tracks were heavily modified from the original version):

ESKMO - (unknown title)
Bar 9 - Soundboy
Celcius - Monday
Waldhaus, Weichentechnikk - Lost Darkness
audiosex - Better Kill Others Than Yourself
Tymon - Kickn da Flow
Stormtrooper - And a Storm Arose
Phace - Moore's Law
The Panacea - Motion Sickness
Zardonic - Apocalipsis
Hellfish - Prism Break
Earfist - The Drill
Hardcoholics - Scratchin Terror
The Destroyer - Fuck The Title
Moleculez - Synth of a Bitch
Vague Entity - Terreur
Noisefucker vs Painetration - Die

Video and photos from New Mexico

2008-10-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

Climbing at the City of Rocks.

This is the Northern Arete, in the Cepheus Boulders area. It is rated as a v2, but it took me a good 20+ tries to finish it. There was no walk-off, so I decided to just treat the last jug as the finish, and skip the top out.

City of Rocks at night

Zade was cheering us on.

"If your wife drives you to drink... Have heer drive you to...! LAST CHANCE LIQUOR" --lol

A few shots of decomposing signage.

Some slime texture that was in a drying up riverbed.

Sunset on the road.

OTHERWORLD HALLOWEEN 2008

2008-10-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

OTHERWORLD HALLOWEEN 2008
-> Friday October 31st <-

3 rooms of sound featuring:
Techno / Minimal / Electro / Dubstep / DnB / Hip Hop / Downtempo / & more…

Sound by Know:Audio and Gateway
Lights by Coil
Visuals by Viberation and Laskfar Vortok

Featuring:

FOREST GREEN
(Cute Fang Productions / forestgreen.org)

PRAXIS
(Omniscient Records)

ALIXR
(rEvolution / Friends & Family)

ALEX WINDSOR
(Friends & Family)

ED COLMAR
(Siege Records / Trust)

AZEEM
(Oaklyn Records / OM Records)

CHELA SIMONE
(myspace.com/chelasimone)

MARC STRETCH
(Foreign Legion / Oaklyn Records)

DAVE SYNTH
(SPAZ)

MARC(O)
(Otherworld)

RTYPE
(Teen Suicide / 5lowershop / Otherworld)

THE STAPLER
(sofat! / Teen Suicide)

MIZ ROWDY
(Otherworld)

EL JUAN HUBBARD
(High Jinx)

MARIPOSA
(Otherworld)

MARIN
(Otherworld)

NEIL HARRIS
(Bulletproof)

DJ RY
(Tour de Dance)

MUTEX
(Otherworld)

CHIEF ENABLERS
(Diamond K Recordings)

WHITETRASH
(Otherworld / In Your Face)

NOTORIOUS PIG
(Otherworld)

10pm-6am - $10 at the door - Located in Oakland

IMPORTANT INFO!
*We're running several large shuttle buses for this event from a nearby
parking location. We need even those who know where the venue is, to still
take the shuttles. Thanks…
(it’s only a 3 minute ride and shuttles leave every 5 minutes)

For more info and directions visit us at:
http://www.otherworld.ws/halloween2008

My impression of the debates - Both sides.

2008-10-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

"Well I know you want me to answer a question, but I'm just going to stand here and make familiar sounding animal noises."

Oink.

ABS Regional bouldering comp - 3rd place

2008-10-02T15:15:00.001-07:00

3rd place in male advanced category RAWR

DM ISOLATION

2008-09-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

The studio reconfigured into more of a theater type of setup with all workstations facing forward to view the video screen.

Our empty laundry room, which was really just being used as a NOC for the house.

We needed some foam to deaden the sound reflecting off the tile floor and walls. Telly had the great idea to use the packing peanuts in the attic.

We shoved the peanuts into garbage bags, piled them up, and hung them from the cabinets. Already making a significant difference in sound quality.

This is a shot in progress at the sample session last Friday. Jeff is working on the audio workstation soft patching the signal through various VST effects. Telly is dialing in (or out) an am/fm/shortwave radio, sending signal into the audio pc. Meanwhile in the ISO room, a microphone was mixing signals with the radio.

Meme(me)

2008-09-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

Meme(me)

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair… just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

As seen on Jure Cuhalev's Blog

Vote for TSB on starfrosch

2008-09-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

Starfrosch is a european podcasting site, and has always generated a significant amount of exposure for us. They now use a voting system to promote the music that the users like best. Please take a few minutes and vote for the TSB live set.

Thanks!

Vote for Time Slips By on starfrosch

Time Slips By - Live at Chillits 2008 - Audio

2008-09-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

The bootleg copy of the TSB live set at Cloud Factory's Chillits Camp out, 2008.

Time Slips By - Live at Chillits 2008

A few notes, for those of you who weren't at Chillits this year. We had a few technical issues. Some of the obvious ones in this recording are the abrupt volume changes, especially in the bass as we tried to correct for the clipping of the bass amplifiers. Also, the harsh ending on the set when we blew the breakers on the generator.

I spliced in some of the audio from the video camera at the end to give it some context.

Thank you everyone who helped to make this set a reality this year!

Chillits technical staff:
Scott Nelson Windels
Jacob McCoy Wade
Rocky Mullin
Brian Behlendorf

Lighting and video support:
Mike Bissell
Dave Fodel
Wallace Winfrey

Datameltdown collaboration crew (folks who had a hand in a/v source creation):
Telly Koosis
Matter
Matt Holland
Chris Yap

Pictures and quotes from Time Slips By live @ Chillits 2008

2008-09-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

Catweasel

Catweasel

Catweasel

Lisstieg

"I really enjoyed the music overall, especially time slips by--that set was fantastic!"
-Dj Pie

"This music is awesome. I think I'll go for a nice crawl. See ya!"
-George

"TSB is in control of the environment right now"
-Jeff

"Gold stars for both of you"
-Matthew Weaver

"You guys totally killed it. If there was an it to kill, you did it"
-Ian 23

"I also really liked the LED lights flashing to the music on sat night
during the live set. It was subtle, but very visually entertaining.
Same with the video projection."
-Jon Stevens

"Are you fucking kidding me?"
-Emilia

"You are just playing with us like we are little toys."
-Curley

"The music and lighting synchronized blew my mind and changed my life."
-Hickory

"Aw yah! You got the Best Little Tree in Chillits! We spent like an hour tripping out to that little jewel. Time Slips By really did a great job with that."
-Goolie

"It's like the beautiful decay of radioactive isotopes."
-Kevin Watson-Graff

Time Slips By - Performance Teasers

2008-09-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

Joshua and I have been putting in hundreds of hours into our performance coming up on September 13th. Writing brand new music, programming synchronized lighting, and developing video footage.

Here are a few short teasers that give a sense of what we're doing, without giving away any of the surprises.

Time Slips By - Live PA Teaser #1 from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

Time Slips By - Live PA Teaser #2 from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

Time Slips By - Live PA Teaser #3 from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

Time Slips By - Live PA Teaser #4 from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

Time Slips By - Live PA Teaser #5 from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

Time Slips By - Live PA Teaser #6 from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

More seeds are required - Chillits 2008

2008-08-28T23:06:00.001-07:00

Friday night
19:00 jahsh darker dub
20:30 tim gotch dark ambient
22:00 chris bishop deep, dark, ambient, spiritual, gospel
23:30 jade juhl ( )

Saturday
12:00 teemoney soul on ice
13:30 daps/laurel pardue smith melodiglitch indie-tronica
15:00 we are not pandas chunky funk
16:30 owls are cool
18:00 fuzzboy (live) carefully subdued noise
19:00 little mishka cirque chiaroscuro
20:30 deathray (live) very chill to somewhat upbeat
22:30 missmeliss sweet&savory intermission
23:00 time slips by (live) seeds
0:30 randy jones (live) visual music
2:00 telephone jim jesus (live) down-tempo, break/collage, soundsherics
3:30 caliban musical batter and audio dough
5:00 matt holland ambient, drone, ambinoise
6:30 sig post-matt-holland (music to sleep too)
8:00 david siska (live) ambient
9:30 megan hug shoegaze
11:00 drenalin ambient / shoegaze / acoustic

Acopa Chameleon - Second Pair

2008-08-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

After Acopa read my post: Change the color of your skin - Acopa Chameleon, someone from the company got in touch with me. He apologized profusely and told me that it had to be a manufacturing defect.

We exchanged emails and I learned quite a bit about leather, and dye-transfer.

Here are some of the tasty bits:

Most split hide leather do exhibit dye transfer (feet or skin turn pick up color from the leather). This is because the dyes are water soluble (vegetable process tanning). The only way to prevent this dye transfer is Chromium dyeing which is very toxic to the skin. Although your feet turned green it will not harm you. I have heard of feet turning a little green but nothing this bad.

Is it possible to get this leather without dye?

Yes sort of.... Even "natural" colored leathers have dyes in them. As strange as it sounds the dyes are needed to restrengthen the leather at the end of the tanning process. The most neutral leather we have is the leather used on the Aztec but is a little thicker than that used on the Chameleon (2mm instead of 1.8mm). It also exhibits dye transfer but nobody notices it because it's almost skin color anyway.

Acopa sent me a new pair.

Visually the new ones were a lighter shade of green than the old ones (even after my scrubbing session with them).

My first climbing session with them resulted in my feet turning green again, but not nearly as dark green/black as the original pair. I only had to scrub my feet for 5 minutes to get the color off. I used the opposite end of my exfoliating towel, which is now maybe 25% of the green on the other side. Not great, but an improvement.

I pushed through, and climbed in them on my regular schedule of 4-5 days of climbing per week. Now, my feet still turn slightly green, but a rinse in water with just my hands will remove it.

So, Acopa, you're off the hook.

I'd still like to see a natural leather version. Oh, and raise the rubber on the heel another half inch. They keep slipping on heel hooks.

Fun with textures

2008-07-30T12:12:00.000-07:00

Thanks to ArtificialEyes great and personal support, I've been making some progress setting up 3L for midi control.

Here are a few short clips that I grabbed last night with my camcorder. 3L does have the ability to capture the output direct to disk, but I was going for some of the blurred and motion effects from the camera itself. The audio is pretty bad due to the tiny mic on my camera. Maybe I'll motivate next time to actually hook up one of my good mics. But the audio isn't essential anyway, just what I happened to be listening to.

I'm running renoise sending midi to a macbook pro, running 3L. Inside 3L, I've set up one object, one light, and one mask generator. A farily simple patch, considering all that 3L can do. But I think it looks pretty good.

3L Textures from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

And another one, same patch, different lighting settings.

More 3L Textures from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

If you watched my video Controlling LED color changers with Wacom tablet you can see the white milk crates that I have my laptops sitting on. They make great interference patterns when the LEDs shine against the wall.

My walls are painted a sort of brownish tan, so I taped some white paper to the wall to capture this.

Setup is wacom tablet driving max/msp, which is converting signal to DMX and sending it to a cluster of LED lights. Video captured on my camcorder. Again, the audio is not really important.

LED Interference patterns from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

When insulting your customers is OK

2008-07-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've been going back and forth with Michael aka exiledsurfer over email and on the official artificialeyes forum regarding the 3L video software that I've been working with.

When people see it running in my studio, I get comments like "Holy UI insanity".

It is so complex and user hostile, that when I asked how to save a preset on the official forums I got 2 pages of text description, and later a 7 minute video tutorial showing step by step how it's done.

Wall of text crits you for 7000 damage.
You die.

More failed attempts at saving and loading prompted me to post new questions, and emailing Michael personally. Some stuff is working, others not.

Then, Michael asked me to ring him on skype so he could go through it with me. I appreciated the offer, but pretty much blew it off, for a few reasons. I don't have skype set up yet (it's on my list). And, I recently got booked for a show, which I need to prepare new material for.

So, I explained to him that I'd probably just skip the video portion of the show, and focus on the music and lighting effects.

To which, I got this response:

"i want you to have video for the show. call me, dork."

HAHAHAHA

OMG

This is the only time I have ever genuinely laughed from a technical support request. And the first time that a potentially insulting term has been used to effectively connect in a business oriented relationship.

Grats, Exiledsurfer, you just achieved ed's top honor: hero status.

Driving LED units with wacom tablet

2008-07-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

Controlling LED color changers with Wacom tablet from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

Dreams

2008-07-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

I have wacked out dreams.

Usually describing them as nightmares would be more accurate. I've gotten so used to it, that having a pleasant dream would freak me out.

2/2/97 - Dream

In some kind of light weight motorboat that is not running. It is night time, and Jana and I are in this boat, still on the shore. We push it off into a semi-protected area of a large lake. I was using oars to move us along. The boat was extremely efficient, it seemed to glide over the water with very little force.

I got in the water as Jana paddled around me. I lay back into the the water trusting, but fearing it, and then safely climbed back into the boat.

It is very dark, but there are a few shadows suggesting some light sources. We are back in our bedroom. Jana asks "what's that?". Then her voice changes... Fear and inescapable doom take over. Almost trembling, "AAAAAgh , What is that?"

I can't see anything and I nudge her away from it towards the light switch. "Turn on the lights", I say. She cannot move staring at this thing that I have not yet perceived. I shove her harder. "Turn on the lights!"

The allure of popularity

2008-07-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

When I first got involved in the electronic dance music scene around 1992, every event I attended was saturated with music I had never heard before. As I got more educated with the material, I would be able to pick out a few tracks here and there. But, the dj's always pushed new, hard to find, or unreleased material. Being the first to play a great cut for an audience was a sort of honor and privilege.

This was the mentality that inspired me to create custom exclusive tracks for djs. Not only is it hard to find, It's impossible to find. It's a secret weapon that only one person has access to. I thought dj's would be all over this, and soon I'd have so many requests that I couldn't fill them all.

I realize now that nowadays, in most cases, this is completely backwards. They want to play songs that everyone knows. Or, they are pushing some record label's agenda on everyone. "Oh, I know the words! I can sing along! It's my favorite song." - CRAP

It's just another product of the broken failure of mass market pop culture brainwashing. If you want to hear the same thing over and over again, please don't go out any more. Just stay home with your ipod that has 1 track on it. The world will be a better place.

Moving the blog (again)

2008-07-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

Hopefully this will be the last time.

I got fed up with coreblog's inability to embed videos, accept comments, and trackbacks.

So. Blogger is my new spot.

Everything on.

2008-07-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

I turned on every piece of gear in the studio over the weekend. I was a bit afraid that i'd blow a fuse, but there was sufficient power.

I had to run power from the garage, and the upstairs living room to pull the 240v power that the cyberlights require. Everything else is on a 30 amp circuit.

Full power on studio test from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

Sync testing - Audio, video, sound

2008-07-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

Lighting video audio sync testing from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

This is a fairly simple loop test, illustrating the direction I'm going with this performance project.

The music is a sketch that Joshua, Telly and myself were working on Saturday night, which I believe was a branch from a piece that Owen and Joshua originally wrote. It is being played in Renoise with Massive and Circle doing the synthesis.

Midi is transmitted to a macbook pro running 3L with a very simple patch setup. No textures, or effects really, just flat shaded objects and background color changes.

The midi stream is translated to midi over IP on the macbook pro and sent to a macbook running max/msp. A custom max patch converts midi data to DMX, and drives the 16 LED color changers scattered around the room.

A view of the 3L interface while testing from Ed Colmar on Vimeo.

Here is what the 3L interface looks like as the loop plays back. Sorry it's kinda blurry.

Change the color of your skin - Acopa Chameleon

2008-06-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

I don't think most people look for this feature in rock climbingshoes, but I must say I'm impressed.

After climbing for 2 hours in a brand new pair of Acopa Chameleons, I was thrilled and amazed to see that my feet had changed into a dark almost forest green color. I was immediately approached at the climbing gym by a group of beautiful girls, obviously attracted to the new look of my feet. SEXY!

But my excitement did not end there. Once I got home, I gave my feet a rinse, to see how durable this new feet coloring technology really was. There was no effect whatsoever! I had to scrub with soap and an exfoliating towel for 30 minutes to remove the coloration. Now, my exfoliating towel is green! That's value added right there!!!

The next day, In an attempt to see how long this effect would last, I began washing the inside of the shoes themselves. After scrubbing the shoes with soap and water, they drained a nearly black, dark dark green color. I cleaned them for 30 minutes, and the water still did not drain clean. That's some potent dye! After finishing with both shoes, I scrubbed my hands with my exfoliating towel but could not remove the dye that had colored my blisters and climbing tears.

Amazing work. Perhaps you could sell replacement dye packs for when the color starts to fade.

--

All kidding aside. This is completely insane. I'll never buy your shoes again (and I go through a pair every couple months), unless you release some that are not coated in this crap.

3L First impressions

2008-06-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

I had my doubts.

The only thing worse than stupid 3d objects spinning around, is flying through a textured tunnel.

A program that is built specifically to do real-time 3d rendering would primarily generate this kind of stuff, and most of the demo videos I've seen were examples of this.

Thankfully though, after wrapping my head around the interface, I was able to come up with some interesting results with just a few minutes of setup.

Screen view, MIDI control, and a few peeks at the output

I created two default spheres, changed the draw mode, and assigned two quicktime movies to them. I connected a Behringer B-Control Fader box via MIDI, and mapped some controls to the setup.

There's still a lot for me to learn, but I'm feeling really good about this software. Seems like Artificial Eyes are pretty cool guys, and my interactions with them have been great so far.

Sorry about the cheesy trance in this clip. I was really not paying attention to what was playing, totally absorbed in the visuals.

6 minutes of output testing

New Green Graphics deisgn

2008-06-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

One of the joys of working at a print shop, is a limitless budget for printing of in-house propaganda. Whenever I get bored (or we run out) of our business cards, I take the opportunity do design new ones. And I make it a point to challenge the production staff as much as possible.

The cards are printed 1/0 on 130lb French Muscletone. The Green strip is printed 1/0 on 70lb parchment, then glued across both sides of the card.

The envelopes have a similar but bigger strip that covers the flap.

Cutting the strips and manually gluing them is the hardest part of the job, and it is so time consuming we only make a few cards a day.

Fred cutting the invoices.

A box of parts to be glued.

The final product.

From the archives - "tribell"

2008-06-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

Here is another track off the "apple" DAT. 1993-1994 I'm estimating.

This track was played several times at downtempo and ambient events. The one I remember the best was an event put on by "Pro Soy" Called Portal 13.

At the time, I was using a sequencer package called "Vision", which I still miss for some of it's MIDI tools. Nested subsequences, Yum.

Samples were played off of an Ensoniq EPS. This was my first sampler, and my first /real/ audio workstation, and served me for many many years.

I was also using this E-MU Morpheus. The bell sounds and bass in this track came from here.

immersiveArts - Tribell

Bio For RSC

2008-06-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

Rope Swing Cities will be getting a design makeover, and I've been asked to provide an updated bio/photo/discography.

Bio:
Ed Colmar has been working with electronic musical instruments since he was 12 years old. Over 20 years of practice, experimentation, live performances, and noise combat has given him the opportunity to interface with many different devices, people, and waveforms.

He has written exclusive custom tracks for DJs, performed countless live sets, and been involved in the organization and execution of dance related events.

Ed is currently working on a new audio/lighting/video project that will be demoed in the late part of 2008.

Discography:
Fatal Data - Compliation - Fatal Data Records, 1994
immersiveArts - Substructure - SIEGE Records, 1996
immersiveArts - Radiate One - SIEGE Records, 1997
immersiveArts - Radiate Two - SIEGE Records, 1998
immersiveArts - Radiate Three - SIEGE Records, 1999
esc - Tec Trx - SIEGE Records, 2002
Time Slips By - CTRL-N Compilation - Modsquare Netlabel, 2005
Time Slips By - Demonstration CD - 2005
Ed Colmar - San Francisco Laptop Battle Compilation - Daly City Records, 2007
Ed Colmar - Everything Has Another Meaning - Rope Swing Cities, 2008

From the archives - Apple track 3

2008-06-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

This one is somewhat of a mystery. The notes with track names is missing, and I have no idea what the original titles were. The only identifying mark on the dat is a little apple.

Written during the period when I was living with Joshua in the sunset of SF, I'm estimating the date at 1993. If I'm wrong please correct me. I'm horrible with dates.

immersiveArts - Apple Track 3

From the archives - "um that jim song"

2008-06-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

In 1989 (I think) I went to this recording school in Massieville Ohio for a semester intensive. I learned a lot there, mostly because of the recording and mixing of live bands. Most importantly though, were the friends I met. One of them was Jim. I can't remember his last name, but he was fearless with his music intentionally going for cheesy, insane sounds and melodies.

This is a track we worked on together. It is nuts.

Um That Jim Song

While working on it, he looked at me intently, and said "we need a sample that goes.. DEET DEEET DEEEET FLIIIING" I laughed at him so hard until I realized he was serious. Then I hooked up a mic... It works there don't ya think?

HAHAHA

From the Archives

2008-06-06T14:13:00.000-07:00

I'm finally undertaking the task of going through all of my Digital Audio Tapes. Dumping the data digitally onto a set of RAID drives.

I'll be periodically posting material from them that I liked, hated, or think are worth sharing with the world.

powerdelay on WOD

2008-06-02T14:11:00.000-07:00

One of my tracks was played on the radio in Colorado this weekend.

+++
review
download
streaming
+++
setlist:
.Paul Williams and Jim Henson - Rainbow Connection
.CPU War - Time To Step Up (everyone fight)
.Drop the Lime . Do it now Kill
.Black Unicorn - Unicorn Chemicals
.Lobsang Rampa - elektrojacko
.Exillon - Stomper Acid (Terminal 11 remix)
.Terminal 11 - In Love With You
.Venetian Snares - Herbie Goes Ballistic
.Algernon - track 14
.Algernon - track 15
.Mochipet (remix of Otto) - Earjuice Synthesis (earjuice Daly freestyle...)
.Duran Duran Duran - Hard Girls
.Fanny - Heidi's Goatherd
.Aphex Twin - Mt. Saint Michel Mix/St. Michaels Mount
.Air Supply - All Out of Love
.Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips - Software
.Autoclav 1.1 - This Is Untitled (Broken Face Remix by Sporadik)
.Prometheus Burning - Beyond Repair (Xanopticon Remix)
.Mu-Ziq - Silk Ties
.FFWUC - FFWUC (clean edit)
.Otto Von Schirach - Milk a Cow and Dozy Doe
.Xanopticon - Elfuckin Vibes
.Venetian Snares - Einstein-Rosen Bridge
.Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips - Hardware
.Merk - Euthanasia
.Ed Colmar - Powerdelay
.Phoenecia - Boombonic Plague (Gorge! Binge! Purge! Edit)
.Ukuphambana - Crisie mix by Kolo
.Scooter Computer and Mister Chips - Number Cruncher
.The Wizard - promotional record
.W.A.S.T.E - Suburban Crime Scene
.Drumcorps - Grist
.Syphilis Sauna - The New Style
.Circle Six - Glitch core
.The Vomit Arsonist - For you
.Air Supply - Lost in Love
.Myo - Infinite Complexity
.Converter - Death Time
.Kate Mosh - Crawford's Theme 2
.Devo - Mongoloid (EZ Listening)

Acid Rain

2008-05-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Eating away at the awnings at my work

Stealth foam

2008-05-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

Mike dropped off some more foam for my walls.

This stuff is really fatty. The spikes are about 5 inches long, and the material is really heavy duty. Apparently it is designed to absorb RADAR... !!!

I spent a good hour cleaning in the cracks before I mounted it. There were all kinds of metal particles in there, which sparkled in the light.

2008 Studio Upgrades - Days 3&4

2008-05-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

The last few items I was expecting arrived over the course of a few weeks, giving me lots of time to thoroughly test configure other gear.

First was my screen. It is designed mostly to be used for performances. It has legs, and a folding frame, all packed up inside a case with wheels. It's big too... Too big for my studio, so I rotated it 90 degrees, and used the top half of the screen in vertical orientation. Not really an ideal setup, but it works.

A few days later the projector arrived.

Of course I had to play the matrix through it for an initial test. =)

Some macro shots of the projection on screen.

Some shots of the cyberlights making circles on the wall.

Last to arrive were these little LED color changers. Mike calls them Rats, because they're so small, and have little black tails coming out of them.

Here are a couple test videos of them in action:

random test
test 1
test 2

Mike surprised me by giving me a bunch of acoustical tile... SWEET!

Live set from "Paradigm Shift" July 19 2003

2008-05-09T14:05:00.000-07:00

I have played under many different aliases in my musical "career" (using quotes because I don't think a career where you only lose money is a very good one).

After my move to California, when I started getting serious about the rave scene, I was using the pseudonyms "immersiveArts" and DJ Element. I found 3-4 other people using "dj element", so I changed mine to read "LMNT". I eventually found someone using that too. So then I started playing as my initials, "ESC". But, again there were people that started using it after me.

So in my frustration, I decided to encrypt my performance name with the show I was playing at. Now, nobody would they know my actual performance name, let alone want to copy it.

For Paradigm shift, my performance name was:
[ 8F36CAA25E43B24126D490BC0ED44B5A ]

Mc's and flyer designers did not like that very much. Longer than 2 acts tag-teaming, and orders of magnitude harder to pronounce. =P

HAHA!!! Yea, I was into it.

Here is my set from the event.

[ 8F36CAA25E43B24126D490BC0ED44B5A ] a.k.a. Ed Colmar, part one

[ 8F36CAA25E43B24126D490BC0ED44B5A ] a.k.a. Ed Colmar, part two

[ 8F36CAA25E43B24126D490BC0ED44B5A ] a.k.a. Ed Colmar, part three

[ 8F36CAA25E43B24126D490BC0ED44B5A ] a.k.a. Ed Colmar, part four

[ 8F36CAA25E43B24126D490BC0ED44B5A ] a.k.a. Ed Colmar, part five

There are also pictures, and all of the other sets, here:
On the DEFSF site

2008 Studio Upgrades - Day Two

2008-05-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

More boxes arrive from sweetwater!

The obligatory candy photo. FYI - I don't eat this crap!

About 10 years ago, I vowed to never buy a mac again. But In order to run some lighting software that is OSX only, I had to.

First Boot

"Golden Profit Electronics LTD." - LOL

L2branding

Studio is coming together. I moved in my old machines, and got the lappie all situated in it's new home.

2008 Studio Upgrades - Day One

2008-05-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough this year to be able to upgrade my studio. I replaced some gear that was old, and picked up some new technology that I've always wanted.

First step was to get everything out, and clean real good.

I pulled the 1200 watt lamps out of the cyberlights, and retrofitted them with tiny little 50 watt lamps. Prevents my retinas from getting burnt out, saves energy, and allowed me to bypass the fans, which makes the units somewhat quiet. There is still a lot of servo noise when they are moving around.

Telly Helped me move them into the corners, standing on some anvil cases. They are remarkably stable in that position, because the yoke is wedged between the two walls. Even in an earthquake I think they will be ok, assuming the house does not fall apart.

Now to unbox the new studio monitors

A few macro shots of the label that was on the box. The toner from the print was cracking off, and the label itself looks like it had been punctured with staples or something.

Nicht werfen!

These new monitors replaced my old KRK 7000b, which served me very well for 15+ years.

Hands on: M-Audio Torq Xponent

2008-04-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

Normally, I hear M-audio, and I think cheap, poor midi implementation and bad quality converters. So, when I went to the SF machine battle a few months back and saw the xponent being demoed, I was very skeptical.

That is, until I saw the dude scratching with it like it was a turntable.

I had been using Native Insturments Tracktor as my DJ software controlled by a Behringer B-control fader. Which was ok. It served the purpose, but it certainly required some getting used to, and was not intuitive at all. My favorite thing about Tractor is that you could cue up an entire set, and it would just play it for you. That, and I did use the built-in streaming features for netcasting.

I felt that it could be risky getting the xponent, especially considering my horrible luck with new audio interfaces, but I decided to go for it anyway.

First I installed it on my macbook pro... The installer errored out for some reason... So I found the drivers and installed them manually, then the torq software installed properly. Everything was configured and ready to go out of the box. Pulled up some mp3, hit play, and I had sound... All good.

My biggest worry was the unpredictable latency that m-audio is notorious for. So I sat there with the crossfader, slamming it back and forth for a good 5 minutes... Solid. undetectable latency. Then cued up another track, and tapped cue on beat. Again, totally solid.

So I started mixing some techno tracks together... .., it does beat analysis, and shows you on screen with little gray lines where the beats land, and the 1 beat is indicated with a thicker gray line. Sometimes it guesses the wrong tempo range, and you have to tell it to double or half time what it guessed.

While it's playing off one deck, loading and previewing in another deck is seamless, there are no gaps or pops when doing file I/O. With the second track loaded, you can hit "sync <" which will take the estimated bpm and lock it to the other track. Also, if you hit start at the wrong time (not exactly on 1), it will offset the start point of the new track to match. Total hax. The only time this does not work properly is when it gets confused with strange percussion that isn't immediately obvious. Though even with jungle it did a much better job than traktor did.

While it is in sync mode, it has some strange behavior. The scrub and pitch wheels are connected, which seems very strange to me, and there is a tendency for little pops as it's moving it around. Apparently, you're not supposed to do this... I switch off sync, and it behaves just like turntables or cdj, whatever. I'm thinking that there's a way to nudge one track to be on, while it's still in sync, and just haven't found that functionality yet.

I installed it on an older 1.2 ghz athlon PC, as a test, and it performed equally well. I actually left it on the PC to free up the macbook for other tasks.

Mixing on it is fun. It feels a bit cheap to the touch, and if you're a spaz with a mixer, it's probably going to snap a fader at some point.

I didn't get into the VST effects yet, or try it as a midi controller, but it can do that too.

Overall, a solid piece of hardware, with a flawless software suite.

World Of Danger - Radio Play

2008-03-31T13:15:00.000-07:00

One of my tracks was played on WOD this Saturday. Here’s a link to the full show:

+++
Inspect: http://kgnu.org/cgi-bin/programinfo.py?time=1206856800
Download: http://kgnu.org/audio/SleeplessNights_2008-03-30.mp3
Stream: http://kgnu.org/cgi-bin/play.m3u?show=SleeplessNights&date=2008-03-30
+++

Setlist:
.The KLF - What Time Is Love? (Live at Trancentral)
.Ladyscraper - Gangbanger
.Duran Duran Duran - Y.O.T.M. (Vytear remix)
.Duplo_remote - Hallucination Acid Lobot (lego infared.mix2)
.Raxyor - Track 2 off of ’Scale Plastron’
.Dev/Null - LCDNB
.Otto Von Schirach - 3 Billion Electron Volts
.Venetian Snares - Donut
.Mochipet - Justin Timberlakecore
.Terminal 11 - Nobody Does It Like You
.Doormouse - Skelechairs Remix
.Sweet Pea Pod - Your Dress is Ugly
.Sporadik - Christians on LSD
.Ed Colmar - Powerdelay
.Syphilis Sauna - The New Style
.Prometheus Burning - Beyond Repair (Xanopticon Remix)
.W.A.S.T.E - Suburban Crime Scene
.Terrorfakt - Punishment
.In Ether - Mechanical Bypass
.Alec Empire - Microchipkinder
.AFX - Astroblaster
.Math You - Ball Smasher (live)
.Primes - Weapons Tank Fires
.The Jams - Top of the Pops
.The [Law-Rah] Collective - Track 8
.The Vomit Arsonist - Transmission
.Bereft - Slowly Travelling Through the Nighttime Sky
.Skincage - The Eagle Has Landed

Rumbling Bald Bouldering

2008-03-19T14:21:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was a trip to NC, and I got a chance to climb at this bouldering area called "Rumbling Bald". It is seriously huge. In the guide book there were 833 problems, and did not even cover everything. Vast vast landscape of boulders. Fun stuff. This is a pretty easy problem, but was the only one I shot on video.

SF Laptop Battle Compilation CD

2008-03-19T13:15:00.000-07:00

My Track "Powerdelay" appears on this compilation of tracks from the SF laptop battle. There were a lot of talented artists there, and though I haven’t heard the CD yet, I’m certain it rocks!

One-Sheet
http://www.dalycityrecords.com/dls/press/DCR123-LaptopBattle2007/one-sheet.doc

Cover
http://www.dalycityrecords.com/images/items//lg159.jpg

BuyCD Webstore
http://www.dalycityrecords.com/dalycity.php?SCREEN=store&department=14

Climbing at Indian Rock on Saturday

2008-03-10T14:22:00.000-07:00

Matt and I went to Indian/Mortar Rock over the weekend. I managed to finish one of the problems that I'd been working on for a while. It's short, just like 3 moves, but it's pretty hard. Someone told me that it is a v5, but I don't have any verification on that.

2008-03-04T14:24:00.000-08:00

I cleaned out some space on my camera, and found some interesting stuff.

The side of a truck that was all shiny and silver.

Macro shot of a candle

A fence with trippy sky

I think this was a lamp shade... or something...

Another lamp shade, lit from behind.

Macro shot of an LCD display

bzzzzt

Something red. ???

Foam stars covered with silver glitter.

2006-11-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

A macro shot of something that is hanging from a tree in my yard. Some sort of lamp?

Another unidentifiable glass thing in my yard.

This one I think is used as a vase...???

Great texture on this face of a dustpan.

Found this fire hydrant that is beautifully eroding

From another angle