Some further string-hunting in the Quartz Composer framework has revealed an interesting value:

QCShowPrivatePatchSettings

It looks like Quartz Composer is reading a value with this key from the global user defaults repository.

In fact, enabling it by bringing up Terminal and typing

defaults write -g QCShowPrivatePatchSettings 1

causes Quartz Composer to present some additional options for well-known patches.

Tonight we had a short conversation with Laurie Anderson after she performed as Denison University’s 2006 convocation.

Melinda approaches Laurie Anderson.

Laurie Anderson: Hello.

Melinda: Hi! I’m Melinda.

Laurie Anderson shakes Melinda’s hand.

Melinda: And this is Steve.

I meandered from Digg through some rabbit holes to this Roughtype post on the “amorality” of “Web 2.0” by Nicholas Carr.

This is what I read:

“INTERACTIVITY IS TURNING THE INTERNET EVIL! Now Digg my post plz!”

For someone trying to remind us of the “objectivity” of the Web, Carr seems just as hysterical as the ecstatic self-styled e-prophets this article seeks to rebutt.

He also misses the point of Wikipedia as well as overvaluing print materials as a general information source. (I have noticed that one side effect of the era of the Internet and T.V. is that anything with a binding is automatically uncritically revered, but that is a subject for another blogpost.)

I wrote a few new patches for Quartz Composer.

MIDI Global Output CC :: This patch, when triggered, outputs a MIDI Custom Controller message on a specified MIDI Channel to all MIDI outputs.

MIDI Global Input CC :: This patch observes a specified MIDI Custom Controller on a specified MIDI Channel, and outputs the Custom Controller Value and a Value-changed trigger. Unlike the “MIDI Controllers” patch that comes with Quartz Composer, this patch doesn’t require the user to manually select the “Observed MIDI Sources” individually for every controller/computer combination - so you’re free to take your composition to a different machine and/or controller and jam without needing to hack the composition.

String With File :: This patch reads a file into a string.

String With URL :: This patch retrieves a URL into a string.

Document Info :: This patch returns some information about the zeroth Cocoa NSDocument.

Get them here: http://softpixel.com/~smokris/widgets/quartzComposer/kinemePlugins/

Steve Mokris is a developer at Kosada, Inc.

In a famous blogpost from summer 2005, ClockSkew poked around inside Quartz Composer and discovered some fairly-complete-looking patches that aren’t available through the interface. ClockSkew also made a cool patch plugin that made these available through the interface. Unfortunately this plugin was written when Intel Macs didn’t exist, and it isn’t a Universal Binary.

Having myself somewhat of an obscurity-obsession, I decided to investigate how ClockSkew did this, and insodoing discovered a few new hidden patches.

Dearest Vostek,

Every time we hear someone mention the word technologies we mentally prepend “amazing…” and append “…that will drive our economy”.

This has increased overall conversational verbiage by 39.1%.

Thinking of you.

project ruori

So, a while ago I met the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson in a corn maze. He was chasing some kids around that appeared to be in his care in between muttering things like “This is like a Republican conundrum!”

Today at SIGGRAPH 2006 the phantom of Spalding Gray appeared in front of the booth in which Steve and I are functioning as ornaments. He was wearing 3-D glasses and delivered a short monologue about how he was from a suburb of Ohio. When asked where in Ohio, he said, “Manhattan”.

A moment after he left, Steve realized our mistake in not talking to him so I went after him armed with a DIY ruori sticker (the ruori URL and the words “You are a Winner!” written on a stolen Lufthansa baggage sticker) and explained that he had impressed us with his impromptu performance technique at our booth and after assuring him that I was not selling anything (nor was the website), and – after answering his inquiries about whether I was old enough to be admitted to SIGGRAPH (the minimum age is 16) – I gave him the sticker, accepted his obviously sarcastic thanks and handshake, and retreated, terrified and exhilirated, to the safe boringness of the booth.

Oranienburgerstrasse 38 is right across the street from the skin of this wall. Beneath the skin of this wall is a foodstand staffed by a very disdainful man.

“Ketchup and mayo? Ay ay ay.”

And the unpunctuated question that is clouding the Berlin consciousness:

HOW
LONG
IS NOW

Several hours into the night in which the door was locked, the curtain of erich zann began producing a most disturbing klanking noise. It was a regular, rhythmic beating – like that of a monstrous dumpster being emptied into a monstrous garbagetruck.

When we arose, we discovered that someone – or something – had unlocked the door in the night.

Oranienburgerstrasse 38 is a good hotel.

But there is something terribly creepy about the GIANT RED CURTAIN barricading the hallway after room 18.

Whatever lies beyond is clearly some kind of perilous heterotope, but for the mere mortal the curtain holds both the finality and the mystery of an interrobang and the menacing eerieness of the deepest abysmal realms of time.

Tonight we will lock the door.