Unfortunately, the default ALSA device seems to have no way to access the “Line 2/Mic 2” channel on the front drive-bay expansion which I use for recording due to it seemingly being the lowest-noise channel.

If you point JACK’s “Input Device” to “hw:0,2” then it will pick up the 16 channel inputs and you can connect them nicely to be able to access this port (channels 9 and 10) in JACK-enabled applications.

I’m currently working on some voice acting for The Nameless Mod (which is looking like it’s going to be spectacular, check it out) and the best program I’ve found to do this recording in is Audacity. Audacity however seems to stubbornly refuse to let me use it’s JACK support (which is apparently buggy beyond use currently anyway).

I found that if I point Audacity to record 16 channels from “hw:0,2” then I can access all the Audigy’s input channels (as JACK does) but unfortunately this means that every time I record I get all 16 channels (a PortAudio limitation from what I can tell from the source). This isn’t ideal as it means, to record a bunch of lines in rapid succession, I need to spend huge amounts of time deleting the unwanted 15 other channels. As it’s not possible to select the channels to record from Audacity I needed to get a little more creative and ended up with this:

pcm.mic2 {
	type plug
	slave.pcm "hw:0,2"
	slave.channels 16
	ttable.0.8 1
	ttable.1.9 1
	ttable.8.0 1
	ttable.9.1 1
}

If you add the above to your “~/.asoundrc” or “/etc/asound.conf” then you will find that in Audacity’s “Recoding” dropdown you will now have the option “ALSA: mic2“. This is simply the same as “hw:0,2” but with the 9th channel swapped with the 1st and the 10th swapped with the second, thus allowing you to select “2: Stereo” or “1: Mono” from the “Channels” dropdown and get the Line/Mic 2 input(s) in Audacity without the need to constantly delete unwanted tracks.

Enjoy!

Note: You probably also want to ensure that Audacity records at the Audigy 2’s native rate or 48000Hz and using a 16-bit sample format.

I’m going for my Last.fm top artists and the songs I liked the most at the moment.

Béla Fleck and the Flecktones

• Earth Jam
• Scratch and Sniff
• Off The Top
• The Sinister Minister
• Big Country

Neal Morse

• Colder In The Sun
• Sing It High
• Reunion
• The Conclusion
• In The Fire

Spock’s Beard

• At The End Of The Day
• June
• The Light
• Wind At My Back
• She Is Everything

Dream Theater

• Learning To Live
• Metropolis (Part 1)
• Lines In The Sand
• In The Presence Of Enemies (Part 1)
• A Change Of Seasons

Jamiroquai

• Emergency On Planet Earth
• Runaway
• Soul Education
• Canned Heat
• (Don’t) Give Hate A Chance

I tag Gareth, Jonas, Duncan and Thorsten to do the same.

Like most people I’ve made a few New Year’s resolutions this year whilst trying to take on a few bits of advice on how to make them and keep them.

Anyway, here goes:

1. Hack more on KDE. I think the combination of starting a new job and not running KDE4 as my desktop (until recently) has made me slack from working on KDE. Once I actually am using it daily then I reckon I’ll be able to do more work and help with KDEPIM for 4.1.
2. Practise my bass more. Playing every two weeks with a bunch of music teachers and session musicians is making me feel a little insecure about my playing! I need to practise more, especially working on my soloing and probably buy a Fake book.
3. Study rather than just reading my Bible. I’m normally alright about reading my Bible regularly but I’ve just been reading it like a novel rather than actually using commentries and then like to properly study the passages. I’ve done this a few times lately and it is far more beneficial, I need to get up earlier and try and do it more often
4. Play less computer games. I do enjoy gaming but it is one of these activities that really benefits no-one except myself so I want to try and divert more time into things like hacking/music where I can benefit others whilst enjoying myself.
5. Be a better friend/boyfriend. Just generally take more of my time to try and focus on others and help them with their problems.
6. Become a better software engineer. Improve my knowledge of my main languages, maybe try and pick up some more and improving my algorithmic math skills.
7. Take more of an interest in politics. Now that Nick Clegg has been elected the leader of the Liberal Democrats I’ve felt myself want to try and get a little more involved and interested in British politics in the gradual run-up to the next UK elections.

I’m sure there are more but that’s all I can think of for now!

You can see some pictures here.

It was a good night and I enjoyed myself. My KDE t-shirt got a few odd looks earlier on in the evening with people being evenly spread between calling me a huge nerd as a compliment and calling me a huge nerd as an insult
Anyway, heading to Liquid was pretty good banter, got to dance like a fool with some mates and get high on Red Bull whilst trying not to pass out from the really bad body-odour.

I’m far from easily shocked or a particularly morally conservative but I was pretty disturbed by the majority of videos for the dancey songs being just women dancing insanely suggestively in their underwear. I just don’t really see why they are like that. There tends to be more women than men in clubs and certainly more women than men actually dancing so I’m surprised more women aren’t bothered by how insanely one-dimensionally they are being portrayed by the flashing images above the dance floor. I don’t really know what I think should be done or even if anything should be but I find it a bit odd.

Perhaps I’m just not the target audience but I find absolutely nothing attractive about the videos at all. Looks are important but when they are focused on so soley (as in the videos) it is a massive turn-off to me .

I like going out clubbing and dancing and having a laugh with mates but it really bothers me sometimes. If men (outside of early-era Take-That, Relight My Fire is the gayest video ever) can seem to produce videos where they aren’t mindless sex-objects then why is the role reversed seemingly every time a woman is on screen?

Discuss!

1. Load your whole music collection, and place your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question.

Due to my large quantity of music by the same artists (All Dream Theater’s/Spock’s Beard’s/Neal Morse’s/Jamiroquai’s CDs), I chose to skip to the next track when I repeated an artist too.

The questions are:

• What does next year have in store for me?
• What’s my love life like?
• What do I say when life gets hard?
• What song will I dance to at my wedding?
• What do you want as a career?
• Famous last words?
• Your favourite saying?
• Favourite place?
• What do you think of your parents?
• Where would you go on a first date?
• Describe yourself.
• What is the thing I like doing most?
• What is my state of mind like at the moment?
• How will I die?

My answers:
What does next year have in store for me?
“Spock’s Beard - The Good Don’t Last” (The Kindness of Strangers, 1997)
Well, I guess this could be referring to me getting up at 10am for uni!

What’s my love life like?
Dream Theater - “Finally Free” (Metropolis - Part II - Scenes From A Memory, 1999)
Eek! Lindsay, darling, I don’t feel that way about you at all!

What do I say when life gets hard?
Madness - “One Better Day” (Our House, 2002)
Well, I am an optimist!

What song will I dance to at my wedding?
“Green Day - FOD” (Dookie, 1994)
Hmm. Bearing in mind FOD stands for “eff off and die”, I somewhat doubt this romantic number will go down as well with my wife.

What do you want as a career?
“Queen - Somebody to Love” (A Day At The Races, 1976)
I hope they love my code!

Famous last words?
“U2 - A Man and a Woman” (How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, 2004)
A man and a woman are the best team in the world!

Your favourite saying?
“Four Musicians and a Drummer - Take Five” (Live At The Jazz Bar, 2006) [My Band! MP3 Available on the music page]
Take five whats? Five fingered discount?

Favourite place?
“Dave Matthew’s Band - Let You Down” (Crash, 1996)
Let You Down could only describe Dundee, and I despise that hole.

What do you think of your parents?
“Bela Fleck and the Flecktones - The Sinister Minister” (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, 1990)
Sinister, I’d perhaps agree, and they always told me they thought I’d be a minister.

Where would you go on a first date?
“Aretha Franklin - Think” (The Blues Brothers Soundtrack, 1980)
A CS lecture! Chances of a second date: slim.

Describe yourself.
“Yellow Matter Custard - Wait” (One Day In New York, 2003)
Must reserve judgement until you get to know me better
What is the thing I like doing most?
“Genesis - Drum Duet” (Live - The Way We Walk - The Longs, 1993)
Well, bass guitar > drums, but I still enjoy messing around on the drums!

What is my state of mind like at the moment?
“The Aquabats - Idiot Box” (The Fury Of The Aquabats, 1997)
No uni for 3 weeks has turned me into a drivelling fool.

How will I die?
“The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club’s Band” (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)
Playing a gig, sounds like the perfect way to die!

Answer it yourself! Either in the comment box, or on your blog and do a traceback!

Going well though, got a lot of work done on some 3D graphics work and a OpenDocument exporter for PRISM.

Had the university Careers Fair today. I was surprised by the sheer number of investment banks, and how many of my friends seem attracted to them. Possibly the best coder my age I know was talking about going into investment banking, which means pretty much totally turning his back on coding, and I was amazed. His reasoning was that it pays REALLY well.

Maybe its just me, but I honestly couldn’t care how much I get paid at a job, as long as its enough to live on and have a few luxuries on the side. The most important thing is that I enjoy it, which is why I hope I get the job at Wolfson Microelectronics, as I love coding, and that would be a perfect job, as I loved my summer working there with them.

I’d be interested hearing from anyone who has any views or advice on looking for jobs, as its all a bit scary for me at the moment!

In other news, Liston lent me his Dave Matthew’s Band CD, and I’m absolutely loving it. He’s got an unusual, and maybe slighttttly irritating voice, but the music behind is absolutely fantastic.

I can see myself buying a few of their CDs in the coming weeks and months.

Time to take out my contacts, brush my teeth, read my Jon Stewart Book and then my Bible (obviously the latter being slightly more important reading!).

G’Night!

I’m aware this server is sometimes a bit slow, as I don’t have as much upload bandwidth as I’d like, but the MP3s are stored on my Google webspace, so have stupid amounts of bandwidth and throughput, so feel free to share the links and/or tell me what you think of the music.

Adios.

Professional Issues exam went pretty well today, my business studies skills were used in writing some essays and generally spraffing.
I got an interview for a job doing embedded C programming on WinCE and uCLinux at Wolfson Microelectronics, which has just been put forward to next week, so I need to try and revise for 3 exams, brush up on my C and write Google Summer of Code proposals all at once. Need to try and not stress about it.

Speaking of girls, sadly, my beloved girlfriend is away on placement, and I’m really missing her. When exams have been before, I’ve worked lots, but at least she has been avaible to see me at the weekends, but not now, so I need to resort to playing bass and watching my system recompile with GCC 4.1.

Sleep well Internet.

I’ve never been able to just learn a list of facts unless they interest me, and this exam season seems to be no exception. Hopefully, I’ll be ok, and if you are of the God-talking persusian, again, a word to the Big Guy on my behalf would be much appreciated.

There’s some beautiful flat awkwardness at the moment, which is just what we all need right now, combined with trying to apply for jobs and write a proposal for the Google Summer of Code.

Just got Bela Fleck and the Flecktones first album, on a brighter note, which is awesome, and got some funky but not overly difficult lines from our man Victor Wooten (arguably the best bass player in the world) that I will get on learning.

Anyway, night Internet, and wish me luck!

It’s a bizarre combination of a youth group, worship session, outreach session and funked up church service. This month we saw around 400 kids pack into St Thomas’ church. It was a pretty inspiring sight. I was along before I became a Christian 6 years ago or so, and the turnout was never as good, and the worship never seemed to get people going as much. It was amazing seeing 400 kids really giving their all to worshipping God, and a privilege to aid them in doing so.

It’s also a humble exercise as a bass player, as, as fun as playing Victor Wooten style double-thumping and sweeping picking is, it really doesn’t have its place in this situation, and sometimes just hitting crotchet root notes are what is required to drive the rhythm.

The band are an awesome bunch, and are described more fully on the music page. Hopefully, post exams, I’ll be able to upload some MP3s, but currently you can satisfy yourself with Gareth and Neil’s blogs from my menu bar.

Procrastination continues unaided, but hopefully 2 days of intense revision tomorrow and Monday will be able to get me through. It seems most people who are actually talented programmers and computer scientists really, really hate revising and find it really hard to put information to memory. My own humble opinion is that it would be better to make the courses more coursework based, and offer more continuous assessment, but really, I think its a bit of a pipe-dream.

Just back from seeing my girlfriend tonight, Lindsay. Sadly, I’m not going to be able to see her for 3 weeks, as she’s off on her placement to Oban, to learn more about being a physiotherapist. I’m gonna miss her a lot, but its probably necessary for me to actually get satisfactory grades in these exams.

I feel bed calls, as I’m playing at church in the morning, and need to work tomorrow, and have an unpleasant conversation to have in the evening. Those of you who are in contact with the Dude Upstairs, I could do with a shout out about my exams and this conversation, and moreso, just thank him for how lucky we are in this country, for being able to speak freely and belong to whatever religion we choose, which those in North Korea and China sadly lack.