During a short holiday, playing with Propellerheads “Figure” app, I made three little, experimental pieces.

Starting with these tracks I also experimented with the naming of my work; I generated haphazardly some Nordic-sounding names. Of course I also have to keep track of the chronology, so I numbered them Op.16, not sure in what order I made these pieces.
So:
Op.16,1: No Ryhemu
Op.16,2: Rerefyjo
Op.16,3: Pydodo

I exported the files with AudioCopy to FlStudio Mobile, and tried to make it into one composition by adding some tracks to it with the Alchemy synth and some native FL instruments. However, I’m not satisfied with this piece, so I will consign it to oblivion.

It is probably the most dadaistic, moronic piece I ever made ánd published (there are a lot of unpublished projects on my HD), but in my current flow of creativity, obviously triggered by the music apps that are on my new iPad, I made something with GarageBand that I think is not too bad.
It is built around the sample “Oink” – confronted with the mic on my iPad’s screen I just spoke the magic word into Garageband’s sampler and modified it with the arpeggiator and the intelligent scale system.

Finally I played around with the smart instruments and stirred the patterns in the sequencer. Ready! Opus 15: The Oink Song. Export to SoundCloud.
That was fun, wasn’t it?

In my last post I wrote about MyScript Notes Mobile, an app for the iPad. That was before I discovered the Moleskine app,  which is a virtual rendering of the original Moleskine Notebooks that I always used before I switched to LiveScribe.
THE CLASSIC FUTURE OF DIGITAL JOURNALS
The look and feel is classic Moleskine. Tap the familiar cover to enter your journal and a powerful range of tools and templates—everything you need for unprecedented productivity, creativity and passion.
The artist toolset comes with paintbrush, Moleskine pencil, Moleskine pen and Moleskine black eraser, to use on your choice of three Moleskine paper styles (plain, ruled, squared), or page templates from some of the most popular Moleskine journals, including the Moleskine Weekly Planner, Moleskine Passion Recipe Journal and Moleskine Storyboard Notebook. Run out of pages? Add more. The possibilities really are limitless.

Another interesting note-taking app is Penultimate.

It integrates seamlessly with Evernote.
And there is Paper 53. Beautiful, but while the app is free, you have to buy your tools from the in-appstore, which will cost you $8,-. Moleskine is free and has the same possibilities – only less “Zen”. So, I tried and removed the Paper app.
Now the only problem is the stylus. I still use my Targus Stylus. It is good, but not good enough, the nib is too thick. So I’m thinking about the “Hand”-stylus.

But maybe my next project will be to buy an iPen.

MyScript Notes Mobile is an application that allows you to create and customize an unlimited number of notebooks or other documents like sticky notes, in which you can write or draw. You can search for keywords and convert your text – although I have to work on my handwriting for that to be efficient .
You can also insert multimedia content (audio, videos, maps, links or pictures) and then export your creations to Twitter, Facebook, Evernote and Dropbox – or e-mail.
MyScript has a whole line of products, MyScript Memo (writing notes, shopping lists or memos on-the-go) and MyScript Calculator are free. MyScript Notes will cost you some money, but since you can maintain an unlimited numer of notebooks at the same time, it will also save you a lot of money. And, you can still have the best of two worlds: maintaining a paperless life and old-fashioned note-taking in you own handwriting.
That brings me to the one thing I forgot: you need a stylus. And a tablet, of course…

Connotea, nature.com’s social bookmarking site, is closing on March 12th, 2013.
Bad News? I don’t think so, because there are a lot of bookmarking tools, and the world of the internet is changing rapidly.
So: in the beginning you simply bookmarked inside your browser. AFAIK you can still do that with most browsers, but who cares. Then Social Bookmarking came into existence: Delicious was the thing. My account still works, but it is only kept up-to-date automatically via Diigo, and from there I sync (once in a year or so) with Evernote. I’ve got seven followers at Delicious, but if Delicious decides to shut down, I probably even will not notice it, unless, of course they’ll send me a notification.
For my more scientific bookmarking and reading I use CiteULike and Mendeley. And of course Connotea, because I always try everything there is on the Web. Mendeley has a desktop tool, an app for my tablet and talks to CUL. CUL syncs with Delicious; the problem is that Connotea, “developed for clinicians and scientists”, chose to reduce noise by not syncing with Delicious (and other bookmarking sites). There is a way to synchronize with CUL, but there were simply to many mouse-clicks needed to do that. The internet is fast and Information Overload – is there is such a thing like that – is part of the game.

I just exported my Connotea bookmarks to Diigo: there were only five, four of them already in my CUL and Mendeley library, the one that wasn’t, was a paid article (> $30!) that I won’t ever read.

So, I regret to say, I won’t miss it.

Last Christmas…I bought my iPad Retina. It took some time to decide about the platform, because actually I’m more into Android. But, iPad has some good MusicMaking possibilities, so I decided to spend that $300 more to buy my fourth screen
I’m now the proud owner of an Asus Notebook (6 years old, running Vista, slow when booting, but still working fine when up and running), a HTC One X+ smartphone, a Sony E-Reader (overloaded with > 1700 ebooks) and an iPad.
Talking about music: Garageband is Apple’s Flagship music app, but actually it is just a collection of out-of-the-box samples you can order and re-order. More interesting stuff is Image-line’s Fl Studio Mobile, Propellerheads Rebirth, the original desktop-version is now a free download, and Korg’s iMS-20.

Today I put together this little piece of music “Korgelig”- a portmanteau of “Korg” änd the Dutch word “korzelig” – “grouchy”. Not worth to assign an opus# to it, but I uploaded it to SoundCloud. My skills definitely need to be improved, but practice makes perfect – or at least permanent.

Another little composition I made a few days ago was with ReBirth – baptized “ReBird”.

What’s in a name? Probably the squeaky sounds

I found this pic on FaceBook, posted by Martin Ciupa.
Interesting, because “Geek” is the fist syllable of the word, so I followed the link to Urban Dictionary:
a geek punk is a new steriotypical genre, usually one who dosent want to be emo/goth or anything like that. they usually listen to any kind of rock music, nintendo t-shirts, have belt buckles in the shape of a vintage games console controller, and wear either baggy jeans, camo trousers or staright leg jeans.
they cant call me emo, cos im a geek punk

I don’t recognise myself.
But now I see there are a lot of more words with “geek” in it,
Geekotel, geekout, geek out, geek out with your meat out, geekozoid, geekpatrol, geek patrol, geek pie, Geek Pimp, Geekpin, geek pit, geekpoint, geek porn, Geekporn, geek pride, geekqual, geek queen, Geek Queers, Geekquel, geekquinox, geek quotes, Geek Ranch, geek rape, geek reckoning, Geekrection, geekret, Geek revenge, geek rich, Geek Rock, Geekrodite, geekromp, geekronicity, Geek Rule #627, geeks, geeksauce, Geek Seekr, geek session, Geeksexual, geek sheik, Geek Shiek, geekshit, Geek Show Podcast, geeks-in-law, Geek Skeet, Geek Slap, geek slut, Geeksmack, geeksmas, geeks me, geeksniff, geek-soldier, geekspank, geekspeak, geek speak, Geekspertise, geeksploit, geeksplosion, Geek Squad, geeksta, geekstar, geek star, geekster, geeksterbating, geekstick, geek stick, Geeksticles, geek stink breath, Geekstream, geekstress, geeksturbate, geeksturbation, Geeksumer, geeksweater, geeksy, geek sympathiser, geek syndicate, geektacular, GeekTard, Geektarded, geektastic, geektasticity, geek tax, Geek Teak, geek thing, Geek Tie, geektitude, Geektopia, geektosterone, geek treat, Geek Tree, geektwat, Geek Tweaker, geekument, Geekundated, Geek Up, Geek (Variant), Geekvice, geek-wad, GeekWad, Geekwall, Geekwank, geekward, geekwater, Geek Water, Geek weapon, geek whistle, geekwhore, geek wood, geek wound, geeky, geeky bastard, Geeky Bboy, geeky cute, geekyfantastic, geekyfun, Geeky Gangster, geeky!hot, Geekyleaks, geekyness, Geeky Punk Rocker, geeky weirdo, geekzoid.

I like “Geek Out“:
The act of engaging in intense and excited conversation over a highly technical topic or otherwise geeky subject. The term alludes to the intimacy of a makeout session, wherein the participants relish in one another’s expertise in the subject.
The two wanted to geekout when they realized they were both huge fans of battlestar galactica.

and GeekWall:
The invisible barrier that sets your geek side apart from your normal self, used to protect other people from seeing your geekiness. It’s the difference between talking about sex and talking about Star Wars.
Joe made sure his geekwall was set, and headed out to the party.

I also feel empathy with Geek Tax:
Geek Tax is the amazing waste of time that you must endure when crap stops working.
Today my internet stopped working. I’ve been troubleshooting various things for the past few hours, and I’m not sure I’ve accomplished anything. I think the problem is upstream from me, but I didn’t get to this conclusion before unplugging, uninstalling, restarting, cursing, for a few hours. I almost redesigned my network topology in the process. What a high Geek Tax!
Of course the next tax will surely be in the form of re-installing windows or something like that.