Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics

The visualization of all of the permutations is significantly more interesting than a simple (and clean) tool-assisted run.

This reminds me of the terrible Nicholas Cage movie “Next” wherein Cage’s character can see two minutes into the future. There’s a visualization near the end of him following all of his ideas out to their conclusion as he searches a warehouse. They composite together a bunch of different shots of him walking off in different directions, testing all of the possible decision branches.

Anyway, this is an impressive work. I’d love to see more people use this technique!

I’ve reached the first milestone: potentiometers for Volume, Tone, and Duration are all responding as expected (after correcting a few mistakes).  Here’s a movie showing how it all currently works!

The toughest bit to get working was the momentary button that will eventually play the currently selected tone.  I had it hooked up to digital pin 13 originally, and it seemed to work for a minute or two.  Then it stopped.  Maybe I had it wired wrong and fried that pin?  Hmm.

So I’ve moved to using pin 3 instead.  And I’m being more careful.

The tones that can be generated are limited to an array I filled with the frequencies of all of the piano keys from G2 to C8.  It felt like a reasonable range to start with, but I’m noticing that the sheer number of frequencies makes it tough to dial-in to an intended note easily!  I might add another pot to control octave, and then just reduce the tone pot to a single octave range.

The construction of the tones themselves is done using Pulse Width Modulation.  This is to say that for tone being created, the microprocessor is pulsing HIGH voltage for half of the frequency length and then LOW voltage for the other half.

For instance, the frequency of the note A4 is 440Hz.  Hz (or Hertz) is a measure of how many cycles of a wave occur per second.  A frequency of 440Hz means that there are 440 wave cycles for each second of sound; conversely this could be understood to mean that one entire wavelength lasts for 1/440th of a second.

Sound waves tend be split into two equal sections: a peak and a valley.  I am able to represent these to the speaker using HIGH and LOW voltage values.  Since each value represents half of the wave, I need to pulse HIGH at for 1/880th of a second (half of 1/440th of a second) and then LOW for another 1/880th of a second.

The processor goes back and forth between sending HIGH and LOW to the speaker for as long as I want the sound to last.

So that’s how the tones work!

Next I will be tuning up the duration, limiting it to quantities that will represent eighth, quarter, half, and whole notes and rests.  And dotted of the same, maybe.  Then I’ll use my last pot to control tempo.

Here is a brief summary describing how everything is set up:

• Rocker switch between digital pin #2 and GND, not currently in use.
• Momentary pushbutton between digital pin #3 and GND, with the pin’s built-in pull-up resistor activated in code.
• 100K Ohm audio taper potentiometer: first lead on digital pin 11 (PWM speaker out), middle lead to speaker, third lead to GND.
• 100K Ohm linear taper potentiometer: first lead on 5V, middle lead to analog pin 0 (tone control), third lead to GND.
• 100K Ohm linear taper potentiometer: first lead on 5V, middle lead to analog pin 1 (duration control), third lead to GND.
• 8 Ohm mini speaker between audio taper potentiometer and GND.

And here’s the code that is currently used to drive it all… Tone_Generator_v1.pde.txt

Enjoy!

As the dinner wound to a close, Sean told us that some of his friends had recommended visiting the Whirlyball place that was (sorta) nearby. It took him awhile to describe it (since he had never been there himself) and we decided that it sounded darn cool enough that we should at least check it out.

Oh man.

It’s basically like basketball-flavoured lacrosse, played in souped-up bumper cars.

I heartily recommend that you go. And call me before you do, so I can come along!

On the plane trip down I saw three laptops open (including my own), and all three were Macs. Times: are they a-changin’?

I spent the weekend in beautiful Palo Alto, California attending Startup School hosted by Y-Combinator and Stanford BASES. It was great! We (all 600+ of us) filled up Stanford’s Kresge Auditorium and listened to a day full of speakers talking about tech startups from a variety of perspectives.

Meeting up with the other attendees outside of the conference was the best part of the trip. I talked with a bunch of people from all over the country (and even from up in Canada), and came away feeling energized to work on my own projects again.

There was a neat hacker party on Saturday night called Super Happy Dev House. I had never been to something like that before, and had a good time alternating between meeting more tech people and working my projects. A++ NERD PARTY. WOULD ATTEND AGAIN.

I didn’t get to sleep before 2:30 though, and had to get up at 7:30 this morning. Woe is me! I’m getting so old.

For those of you for whom this doesn’t work, try this.

NOTE: I actually wrote and recorded this last night right after the power went out. I got the video uploaded via an insecure “linksys” connection, and and just before I hit the “Publish” button (on this fantastic ecto blogging client) I saw a couple of flashes outside my window. I went to investigate, and suddenly the insecure wireless networks (as well as the two secured networks keeping it company) had disappeared!

Either they were all on UPSes with the same discharge time, or those flashes were more people losing juice!

Let me know if you sign up — I would love to hear about where you get cards from.

(For those of your for whom this method doesn’t work, try this link)

If I wasn’t already quitting, I would probably be thinking hard about it right now.

In other news, I bought an ice-cream maker this weekend. My first batch (Vanilla) has turned out awesome. Stay tuned for more coverage!

Here is the box, that held the box that held the box

And here is the box that held the box

Open the lid…

On the streets of Compton, no doubt

Mmmm, shiny

Mmmm, tiny

Looks great on the table

Front Row rocks the blocks

This puppy is quiet as a whisper. It isn’t as pow-pow-powerful as my main PC, but it takes care of most of my computing need pretty well so far.

A++ WOULD BUY AGAIN!

So exciting!  Woo!

Package 1 better hope to make it up in delivery time bonus, else they are out of the game!