I finally started work on my DrumKit project today. Essentially this is an attempt to create a electronic drum set from some pads, an old keyboard and a computer. I got down to buisness and wrote up a Java app that plays back the drum sounds on key press events. It filters them and even handles shift for the hi-hat open/close, which I’ll use to make the hi-hat pedal work.

The source is messy, and still has relative path’s for the sound files. Essentially it’s a frame, a keylistener and some clips. Not too rough, though patching this together from the Java API and sparse information on javax.sound.sampled was tougher than I guessed it would be. Anyway, it’s got some bugs and features not implemented, but I can play drums with my keyboard now, which is a good start.

The Cutting Edge DrumKit GUI

I suppose I should upload the code just in case, and to keep track of my versions. You can get the source and the sounds for Version 0.01 below. As a heads up, all the kit samples are absolute path’d for my machine, so you’ll need to adjust them if you intend to compile it.
» DrumKit001.tar.gz - Everything
» DrumKit.java - Main class
» KeyHandler.java - Event listener
» KitClip.java - Kit sample class

I just finished installing Gregarius because I wanted to access my feeds no matter where I was and have a consistent read/unread status across all machines. Before I used to use RSSOwl, which is a great app, but when I got home I would have to go through and “read” items I had already read elsewhere. I had tried Google Reader, but there weren’t enough features.

Sure enough, as soon as I installed Gregarius on Dreamhost one of the first feed’s was Robert Scoble’s. It was a brief on the new Google Reader features. I’m going to try out the new Google Reader, but for now I’ll leave Gregarius installed, as it’s a very nice application.

I’m a fan of portable applications. One of my professors used portable Firefox in class once, and now I’m hooked. It’s so handy to have every program I need right at my fingertips on any (windows) machine I use. So what apps are on my 1Gb disk’s right now?

PStart Menu

PStart
This little system-tray launcher is the backbone of any good USB apps setup. Easy to configure and handy to have around.

Eclipse and JDK 1.5
Thats right, I’ve got a Java compiler wherever I go. I haven’t had any problems with this yet, and since it’s got the JRE in there too, Eclipse can run anywhere. This was a little more trouble to install than most, but really not all that bad. Instructions.

Firefox
Nothing better than having all your extensions with you, and all you cache and history to yourself. Thats really all there is to say. If there is one app that I use the most on USB, it’s Firefox

PuTTY Config

PuTTY
This is the terminal application to use on Windows. It’s easy to use, small, portable, and reliable. I use it almost every day to get onto Vulcan or my home machines.

WinSCP
This falls into the same category as PuTTY. It’s a great all-around file transfer client with secure protocols built in. Great application.

Notepad++
For a long time I was looking for a simple text editor that had syntax highlighting, but was light and easy. I tried cream for a time then I found Notepad++. It works quite well.

RealVNC Viewer
For those times when you can’t get something done over SSH in the terminal, I use RealVNC to get to my desktop and take care of it.

Xlight FTPD
Take an FTP server with you wherever you go. Not useful very often, but when it is, it’s great.

KisKis Entry

KisKis
Keep It Simple, Keep It Safe. This is a good java password manager. It’s java, thus cross-platform, which is key for a password safe.

Photoshop CS
This one is a bit shady. I bet you didn’t know that Adobe made a portable Photoshop CS. They don’t.

Gaim
Gaim is an instant message client, you can do AIM, MSN, Jabber, even IRC.

RSSOwl
The best RSS reader I’ve ever found. Plus it’s java, so with some tweaked scripts this can run on linux and windows, all of the USB stick.

Foxit PDF Reader
I hate Acrobat Reader with a passion. Foxit is light and free.

Explore_USB.bat
In addition to my standard programs I have a few simple batch files I made to ease the use of my USB apps. These are simple one-liners, but they are handy to have around. First among them is my Explore_USB.bat. I got tired of all the effort involved in opening an explorer window on my drive. Since I have a my portable apps separated from the rest of the drive I used .. to jump to my drive root. This one comes into use most of all the batch files.

@start explorer ..

cmd.bat
This one is another obvious one, launch a “dos” command window without getting the start panel involved. Like I said, these are really simple shortcut files.

@start cmd

DSLinux
This is a nice, full distribution that uses Knoppix to pack a ton of apps into a 50 meg disc. I use the “embedded” version which comes with qemu binaries for windows and linux. No matter where I am I have a linux machine. As long as its not on a mac I guess. This has it’s own 1 gig stick, lots of /home space.

I’m in a Linux distribution! Well, sorta. A wallpaper I made is the default background in an alpha build of fluxbuntu. If you go get nBuild1-Revision2 from fluxbuntu.org that background is of my design. Also, if you just go to the fluxbuntu.org page it’s the background in the screenshot.

It’s kinda neat, I posted it to the forums as an alternative to the boring white default and they added it to the distro. Too bad I’m at school with no way to burn the disc and install it to my laptop. Maybe I’ll download it and make a QEMU style USB version. Then I’d have to buy a USB stick… This isn’t working out. Oh well.

P.S. This is a good, light distro btw. My current fave for my old PIII laptop.

I was looking at my top artists over at last.fm and noticed that I have some weird tastes. I made a table of my top 10, along with the genre I consider them in.

What does all this mean? Maybe nothing at all, I’m just posting it for posterity (and as a must-listen list)