#obliqueeasel — Public Fediverse posts

@davebauerart @bitsavers
That's what the #ObliqueEasel project is for!

Also, the book Code: The Hidden Language of Computers might be really enjoyable to you!

https://archive.org/details/CharlesPetzoldCodeTheHiddenLanguageOfComputerHardwareAndSoftwareMicrosoftPress2000

Man, I really wanted to get a #framework machine. I was thinking about building one into an #ObliqueEasel as an sound art-focused rig.

They're kind of pricey, but I pay my few, teaching-earned dollars for design because good design makes my life better.

When those dollars go toward DHH's Right Wing conspiracy churn, that makes my life, and that of all humans — including the students I want to understand the world in both technical and ethical terms — horrifically worse.

The #ObliquePalette is the first of a series of tools/toys (including at least the #ObliqueEasel but also extrapolations of it) designed to increase one’s contact with computation, to make it something you use for creativity & exploration rather than something that sells you.

But it feels like I’d have needed to live a different life to get it to people in time.

Still, guess I’ll set up its website. I’m putting all this work in. Might as well share it and hope it survives <waves hands around>

Just plomped down some money for an MNT Reform by @mntmn !

I’m really excited to see how this works as a creative machine. I of course got the raw aluminum one.

I’m hoping to learn some things for the #ObliquePalette and #ObliqueEasel processes, as they’re also Open Hardware creative tools coupled with Open Source software in the form of #plugdata .

https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next

I had some really good programming success today on the #ObliquePalette and its companion #plugdata #ObliqueEasel patch, thanks in no small part to @ArchiteuthisFlux helping me reason out what I was doing.

In the process, communicating samples now takes about 200 microseconds for a 384 byte packet. It was taking about 50 times that long the way I was doing it before.

One of the great things about being Jewish is that you get a chance to sit down on December 25th and be quiet by yourself to think about how the magic about retrocomputing for you is not the computers of the past, or even their particular constraints, but that they were exploratory, and that you want new computers to have that sense of endless creative wondrous exploration, not that the particular design decisions of the time should be replicated as an imaginary glorious past. #ObliqueEasel

@tschak
When I learned they’d abandoned not only the hardware, but Papert’s entire set of principles in favor of locked down spyware Chromebooks it broke my heart.

I’m working on a new machine (the #ObliquePalette and its standalone big brother the #ObliqueEasel ) that apply many of his principles with analog controls to encourage experimentation. Software is designed with #plugdata so you can live tinker.

Maybe too little too late to save our civilization but I got here as fast as I could.

Hey, Tim Schoen, the core developer of #plugdata , finally opened up a Patreon! He’s put uncountable hours into making it thoughtful, creatively inspiring, and backward-compatible with its immediate ancestors Pure Data so that artists have a programming languages designed by and for us.

It’s an enormous amount of work, and is critical to the #ObliqueEasel and #ObliquePalette projects that I’m working on to build computers to be art- and exploration-first. https://www.patreon.com/TimothySchoen

Personal computers are such a cool idea. I hope we invent one soon.

#ObliqueEasel

I was utterly blown away by the number of people at #superbooth who already were using #plugdata as their preferred patching/programming language. I handed out some 40 of our cards and, of the creators who even *knew* of Pure Data, ALL of them were actually using plugdata!

It’s frankly amazing to be part of this beautiful thing as it enters the world.

Version 0.9 is imminent. Tim’s “no new point release until we’ve solved all the known bugs” process is an ongoing gift to future-us. Not to mention the users.

Who are us.

By next Superbooth, we’re hoping to have 1.0 to show off along with my #ObliqueEasel and #ObliquePallete hardware! That should make the entirely digital plugdata compatible with Eurorack and whatever other weird electronics you want to control with it!

Here’s a thing I’ve been thinking about a lot over the years.

If you know me, it’s probably because of my game design (Mobile Frame Zero, Shock:Social Science Fiction, The BLOODY-HANDED NAME of BRONZE, etc).

The impulse that makes me make games also makes me design machines (#ObliqueEasel, bikes, flying machines), write fiction (Feral, Ligaments), build and illustrate alien beings (Almost Real Vol. 4, tons of work on my blog…), and draw a LOT.
(You can keep up at https://patreon.com/joshua).

And that same impulse induces me to teach in the Makerspace of my alt school in Holyoke, MA, a very poor, minority-majority city where we work daily to help kids find their human dignity and the power they can foster with each other. (Https://patreon.com/PunkPedagogy). We’re also being squeezed by a school system trying to write a bunch of our kids off for budgetary reasons. It’s ugly, and the solution is, of course, money (we need $150k to make up for the kids they want to fail). If you want to help, you can over at https://www.lighthouseholyoke.org/give/).

So, here’s the thing!

I’m constrained from experimentation in both teaching Piaget-style, and in developing Papert-style educational technology, by what I can commercialize, or at least gain patronage for. I wind up trying to work on the things I think are less important (eg MFØ 2), but give me the resources I need to do the more important things (teaching, building the Oblique Easel).

I can see capitalism doing damage to me, and thereby my students (who are exactly the people our society is designed to fail), and the only ways I can think of to ameliorate it are further engagements in it.

I’ve been trying to gain a network of dedicated supporters, but I see what happens when we go that route: If the patrons are on the winning side of capitalism, we wind up performing for the patrons instead of doing our jobs. If they’re not on the winning side of capitalism, they can’t sustain their support because their resources are being extracted.

I need solutions. I don’t need advice.

Hey, wanna see a weird digital/analog art computer come into existence? I'm working on the #ObliqueEasel and its analog #eurorack IO board, the #ObliquePalette over on my Patreon!

I'm tired of computers designed for businesses to more efficiently extract labor. I want computers designed to make art!

Fill your (touch)screen with plugdata (https://plugdata.org) and control real world things! Make your plugdata patches respond to things happening in the real world!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/climbing-rock-in-102478254?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

The #ObliquePalette is coming together. It’s for building an art-centric computer called an #ObliqueEasel with analog inputs and outputs, compatible with #Eurorack, #Arduino, and whatever crazy #SynthDIY thing you want, all programmed with the plugdata (https://plugdata.org) patching language.

We’re getting down to the last parts of designing the first PCB prototype. Patreon xenophiliacs get one for the cost of shipping! https://www.patreon.com/posts/output-tile-pcbs-101454824?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Getting ready to have the first round of PCB prototypes (prototype 0.3!) printed for the #ObliquePalette! If my Patreonfolk let me know before I put in the order, I'll get one for you, too!

The #ObliqueEasel project is a cyberdeck for what we forgot computers are best for: being spaceships for your mind.

It's for art, and uses the plugdata patching language's (https://plugdata.org) deep powers to listen to real world inputs and generate real world control voltages to control #synthDIY, #Eurorack, #robot
or whatever your weird-ass mind wants.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/moving-from-to-101060281?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

I can do better.

An OS designed for music. Https://plugdata.org

A machine built for artists.
#ObliqueEasel #ObliquePalette

Not for the investors.

If they want to buy in early, they can buy an upcoming PCB and build it themselves.

Or they can wait for the kit.

Or they can wait for the Kickstarter and help get production up.

I’ll let them pay extra if they want to.

Or they can watch as a generation learns about computers as a way to explore mindspace and risk missing out as their AImetaNFTcryptogarbage fills their internet while their hosting costs rise.

#retrocomputer #retrocomputing

Thanks to @attksthdrknss ‘a soundtrack, the prototype I/O stage of the #ObliquePalette is complete! And now, terrified, I must test it!

This took waaaay too long to solder together. Any errors here are soldering errors, not design errors. It works great in Falstad and the firmware is all humming along nicely.

(Follow the #ObliqueEasel artmaschine cyberdeck project at my Patreon! https://patreon.com/joshua)

The #ObliquePalette firmware is now working, the #ObliqueEasel software is working, and now I'm back to working on the Palette's hardware.

All of the individual parts have been tested so I'm building a little test panel, a single input and output that should take IRL input and report it to the software, and take digital outputs from the software and turn them into analog voltages.

If that works, I'll assemble the complete bank of 8 inputs and 8 outputs so we can graphically build plugdata patches that speak #Eurorack!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/fixing-it-by-100163833?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Mapping out the control panel for prototype 3 of the #ObliquePalette, the analog IO board of the #obliqueeasel.

This version has 8x 10-bit inputs, twiddlable by thumb or with voltage control, compatible with #Eurorack (as long as 5v PtP works for your purposes).

It also has 8x 12-bit outputs, also with a 5V spread. I’m hoping to get audio out & USB 3 on the same board.

There are a couple things I want to make better in future versions, like it being bound to #plugdata ‘s Control Rate, which is only about 100Hz. I’ll need to rewrite a #puredata external and that’ll be a leap for me.

PCB is probably next? I’m hoping to get kits together eventually.

You can follow along and support all my weird arts at https://patreon.com/joshua !

I was having a hard time with the #obliqueeasel for a reason that might not be my fault.

So I fell back to building a little #eurorack around a power supply that stopped working as soon as everything was bolted in place.

So I fell back to building a simple little passive matrix mixer, which took all of like an hour, but now I’m afraid to try it.

Happily making something for the sake of delight.

I’ve been working so hard (and am stuck) on the #obliqueeasel that I had to take a break and build with my hands instead of my brain for a while.

This is going to be a weird little Eurorack.

You can follow along and discuss through https://patreon.com/joshua and then I’ll be able to keep making art that you can use to make art!

And, speaking of the #ObliquePalette and its #ObliqueEasel host, I'm working out a conceptual model so I can explain to people what the fuck I'm doing. ”It's what I wish computers were in the 80s" isn't a pitch that most people will understand if they only know them as good for business and sucking on YouTube.

I'm trying to pick up on the promise of HyperCard, that it's a new way to interact with ideas, where you build a machine that takes in changes in the real world, churns them through a process entirely composed of your creative intention, and then makes changes to the world.

In short, we got stuck on keyboards, screens, and mice

I want EVERYTHING to be a possible IO device. And I want us to be in creative control of what happens, not The Shareholders.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/conceptual-model-97590990?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

This month has been one of those "Learn a lot so I can make a really sophisticated mistake” months.

The #ObliquePalette project, part of the #ObliqueEasel #cyberdeck project, has so many parts working, except for connecting the working parts.

And, hey, you can support the project by supporting my Patreon (it's how I "make a living”) and by working on it with me, if you're a weird computer art kind of person!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/getting-mistakes-97579102?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Please share to communities where this craftsperson might exist!

The plugdata project (https://plugdata.org) is a graphical programming environment based on Pure Data — a programming language for art, particularly music. It's an extraordinarily mature, well-developed flow language.

plugdata is a wholly-compatible fork designed to make it work for human eyes and hands, with the three big OSes, with computers designed for art (like my #ObliqueEasel), as a plugin for DAWs and audio software, and with microcontrollers (like the #daisyseed ).

The language can run live and interpreted, or it can be compiled to run as its own externals, as DAW plugins, and as microcontroller code. But we need help with the Heavy compiler! (https://github.com/Wasted-Audio/hvcc) There's only one guy working on it, and someone who lives at the rarified intersection between art software and compiler coding would be a huge boon to a powerful, positive software project!

I'd love to answer your questions about the project!

Things are about to get more difficult for me financially.

I’m a teacher in an alt school in a very poor city, getting paid about $13k (just got a raise!) but I need to run a Patreon to get paid enough!
https://patreon.com/PunkPedagogy
Fortunately, I love writing about my students and teaching!

I’m also a sci fi game designer, artist, author, musician, and technologist, trying to build a new kind of computer — for people! https://patreon.com/joshua
#obliqueeasel

Help a weirdo out!

I can smell multichannel analog output on the #ObliquePalette #cyberdeck. I’m so close.

There’s so much to be said for doing things you don’t know how to do at the pace you can do them. Any professional programmer would have been done with this in hours.

But professional programmers already can do what the #obliqueeasel enables. They’re not its audience (yet).

The Easel project is about bringing the “The developers are the users” principle to a new class of minds.

I have discovered a new depth of wrongness in the serial communication of the #ObliquePalette with the #ObliqueEasel! For some reason, the data that the Palette gets from the Easel isn't being parsed by the parsing function, so I'm geting ASCII values of numbers instad of, you know, the value of the numbers.

I figured out why I wasn’t getting data to the #ObliquePalette from the #ObliqueEasel : plugdata has inherited data types from its immediate ancestor, #puredada, and I was sending a List, not a Symbol. Which contains the same data.

The Palette was like “I don’t know what all this ‘List’ nonsense is, so I’ll just time out every single second the serial is connected.”

Now that I’m feeding it a Message of Symbols, it’s no longer giving me an error.

And yet, there’s still no output.

Moral: I didn’t leave out a cookie and a grommet for the gremlins, then forgot to blow in the cartridge.

Don’t make the same mistake I made.

I’m going to bed.

We have serial communication! This one of six #ObliquePalette Analog inputs, soon to be tuned to take 0:5v buffered analog inputs so the Palette can receive signals that the #ObliqueEasel — a general-purpose, graphically-programmed computer — can use to respond to its environment!

DAC output is up next so the Easel’s programs can talk back to the outside world!

(If you want to support the development of a computer designed for mindspace exploration and art experimentation rather than designed to make money for your boss, https://patreon.com/joshua !)

10 bit input from the #ObliquePalette v.03 to #plugdata (eventually running with custom objects in the #ObliqueEasel).

There are weird artifacts! Those spikes in the test signal are being generated somewhere in my patch, likely by a race condition while I figure out which byte is the high byte.

Plus, I don't have a protocol that even says which one is high! If I tap that ”1" in the upper left, it puts the bytes in opposite order …half the time, of course.

Having a great #decemberadventure!

Think I got a pretty info-dense output here for the #ObliquePalette's output stage — a DAC converting from a live plugdata patch on the #ObliqueEasel:
Output is from 0:5V.

The lights are off from 0:~0.1V.

The white LED brightens in proportion to the strength of the outgoing signal.

The yellow LED lights @ 2V, which is a HIGH signal for both 3.3V and most 5V electronics.

The red LED lights above 3.3V, which is dangerous for 3.3V electronics, and just above HIGH for Arduino.
#DecemberAdventure