Building this website

July 8, 2023
Software
website, continuous-integration

This post is a short guide to setting up your own static website based on the Hugo framework using GitLab’s free hosting to serve it either on yourwebsite.gitlab.io or a custom domain you own (helioslyons.com) in my case. Not being a web developer, I took advantage of Hugo’s great documentation, as well as GitLab’s generous tier of free build servers and pre-built Docker images with Hugo installed to speed up development. ...

Murphy compatible embedded systems updater

September 23, 2022
Software
linux, embedded systems

“If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilisation.” Murphy’s Law of Technology #5 Introduction # If you’ve ever used a modern computer, either Windows or MacOS, there’s a good chance you have come across the following message: “Whatever happens, do not pull the plug or reboot this system until the update has been completed”. Ignoring this instruction will, in a lot of cases, turn your device into a brick. ...

Interactive Dance Music II

July 5, 2021
Software, Sound
max, HCI, machine learning

Aims & Overview # This post serves as background and technical explanation for the Interactive Dance Music II system submitted for a final year 40 credit Music Technology module. It will describe the aesthetic and technical ideals researched to build an interactive music system capable of analysing and reproducing sound-motion relationships, and the historical precedent for this practice. It will also delve into the motion capture techniques used to track movement, and the machine learning techniques which correlate separate gestures and physical patterns to the extracted sound features played simultaneously with the recorded movement, taking into account its temporal and acoustic properties and reproducing the learnt patterns via granular synthesis. ...

Interactive Dance Music I

November 2, 2020
Software, Sound
max, HCI, generative

Objectives # Building on last year’s Max device, Blue Space, I would like to continue exploring technical solutions for electronic music performance. Blue Space provided an easy way to generate a granular backing track / effect for instrumentalists, with a simple set of grain controls. In this new project I would like to use a dancer’s movements to generate music, extending the ‘ease of use’ theme from Blue Space. I find the relationship between music and dancer fascinating because it makes the dancer into an instrument without necessarily introducing to them to the mechanics of how the music is produced. ...