[Lancaster] Maybe help others and maybe expand the Linux network ...discuss ? maybe logic ?

[Andy Baxter]

On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 19:51 +0100, sam wrote:

> I have been asked by Beaumont college to see what i can do or improve
> creativity to make some Decent, Proper Music they said ?, I am a
> musician and more recently a computer addict and my ideas so far are
> to enable the production of creative products wheather they be
> programmed products or manually made - I first worked with a piece of
> hardware called Sound beam which enables the triggering of sound via
> midi, this has some possibilities though it is limited too. There are
> other devices that i know of ( and i wonder what you know)  to enable
> disabled  access to computers so programming is totally possible,
> certainly cognitively only some students, just like any group of
> students,  will have the aptitude with assistance and technology
> development to improve on that aptidue.
> 
> It has been remarked, By Tech Sean Sanderson, that many of the
> students have very accurate control of their wheel chair control stick
> mcuh like the old games machine joy stick, it was also pointed out
> that a piece of conversion code had been made, named 'Midi Yoke', to
> use the Joy stick as a Midi controller , we wondered if there was a
> way to make the stick the instrument ,so that it's movements are
> assigned to musical note attributes ?  

For stuff like this, try asking at Lancaster Uni music department - I
know there are people there looking into stuff like this. 

> So in the long run this is why i am writing to you guys, for lots of
> reasons, mostly because you know how to make things work, and there
> are lots of ways you can help us, i also hoped that there was some
> value in te project for you guys to expand the open source network.
> 
> 
> I guess software, but also calling any technicians for ideas  ?
> 
> 0, I just wanted to put these ideas to the open source network to see
> what the collective conciousness said ?

Sounds like good stuff to be doing, but it's not my thing so I don't
know how much I can help beyond basic tech info.

> 1, Training a student to be the Beaumont College Linux Tech to do our
> Webste stuff ?

Could help with this.

> 2, Is there an open source version of myspace - except downloadable -
> abit like limewire but with an ID and instantl messaging ? No it's an
> idea i just have no idea how to make it, though i think there is
> worthy millage there,   why myspace.com ? - could any other network ?

I've never used myspace, so don't know much about it.

On flash, my personal thoughts are:

- there are some really cool things you can do with it that can't be
done with standard web techniques. E.g. online games, animations, etc.

- but firstly it's not an open standard which is bad for the future of
the web.

- also it gets over-used - people sometimes pay loads of money for a
flash site when all they really need is something simple that conveys
basic information.

- a lot of the things flash used to be used for can now be done using
dhtml and javascript. More now that svg (scalable vector graphics) is
becoming a standard. dhtml/javascript runs a bit slower than flash I
think, but it fits better with html - you have complete control over the
whole page layout, rather than just running something in a box. If you
want to see an example of what can be done with javascript, have a look
at the site I'm working on at:
http://lofty.dyndns.info/pano/pano-test.html

andy.