Moriash Moreau: My Second Life

http://moriash.blogspot.com/

= Sunday, August 26, 2007 =

Roto-Tracker

“…a primitive drum loop tracker, allowing the user to pick out simple repeating patterns with various percussion instruments.”

“The concept is fairly straightforward.

A central physical rotor smoothly turns (counterclockwise) through 360 degrees, using llTargetOmega. Spaced out over 180 degrees (22.5 degrees apart) are eight collision sensors (shown as white columns of light), which use filtered collision events and llVolumeDetect to sense the passing of the rotor.

Each time the rotor passes through the sensor’s volume, the light briefly flickers off (as if the rotor is blocking it- a superfluous effect, but kind of neat) and the selected sound sample is played. The rotor moves on, the next sample is played, and so on.

Each collision sensor comes loaded with 15 drum sounds, including various tom-toms, a bass drum, a taiko drum, a snare, a couple of cymbals, some wood blocks and, of course, a cow bell. The user cycles through the sound samples by clicking on the base of the lights. The sounds for a given sensor can be turned off altogether, as well.

The rotor has three speeds: low (about 48 beats per minute), medium (96 BPM), and high (192 BPM), where a “beat” in this case is defined as a single sample played by a sensor. The random control directs the eight sensors to select random sound samples, or randomly turn themselves off. A sync control is provided to synchronize the rotors of multiple adjacent Roto-Trackers, allowing more complex patterns. Using multiple trackers, and a relatively lag-free sim (unfortunately, severe lag sometimes pulls rotors back out of sync), some fairly complex drum loops can be created.”

CBC News – Consumer Life – Faulty designs responsible for 75% of toy recalls: study

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/09/07/toy-study.html


Toxic Toys: Is this just China bashing?

‘Chinese’ Barbie’

“A new Canadian study examining toy recall records suggests that while problems have been found in China’s factories, toy companies should shoulder their fair share of the blame for faulty designs and varying standards.”

‘What I see happening is [the toy companies] seem to be putting the blame on the Chinese manufacturers and escaping their own responsibility.’
–Hari Bapuji, researcher

See also:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_drohan/20070818.html”

Sept 21st from the Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/99b42156-683a-11dc-b475-0000779fd2ac.html

jenjen1352s reviews – StumbleUpon

http://jenjen1352.stumbleupon.com/review/9777489/

What do you think of the SU BETA ?

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FYI – I think the new SU BETA is awful.

Why do I say that?

Well…

Most of the new features now appearing on the web page seem to be duplicated by options available from the the SU toolbar or are currently available anyway. They also give the give the new page an ‘amateur’ look and feel by ignoring the need for clean lines and making good use of white space. Other blogging web-spaces give their customers options, SU seem to want to impose their solutions and are making the classic error of designing for the ‘average’ user rather than addressing the needs of the whole customer base.