Metsonet

Welcome!

Welcome to my corner of the web. A bit of a mix of ephemera, ideas, music and other oddities.

  • Verifying signatures on the XRPL with Python

    Writing this more because I spent a while bouncing around the internet trying to find an example. There’s a nice library for Javascript from the good people at XRP Labs but I couldn’t find similar in Python, and needed to verify a signature for a XUMM login. There is a comprehensive Python SDK so I figured rolling my own wouldn’t be a hardship. In fact it was super easy, the whole thing is just two functions, it was just a bit hidden away in the docs.
    Posted Oct 23, 2021 §
    • tagged
    • coding
    • python]
    • xrpl
    • xrp

  • Some nice music from Audiotarky

    Just testing something for Audiotarky.
    Posted Feb 27, 2021 §
    • tagged
    • geeky
    • testing
    • audiotarky

  • Some more nice music from Audiotarky

    Just testing something else for Audiotarky.
    Posted Feb 27, 2021 §
    • tagged
    • geeky
    • testing
    • audiotarky

  • These are my racks

    Partly due to recording with Anechoics and partly due to lockdown boredoms I’ve been updating my modular grid entries. I’m starting to admit that I possibly have a problem… It’s so bad that I’ve added a Jekyll include especially for modular grid images. Winning!
    Posted Jan 12, 2021 §
    • tagged
    • synths
    • diy

  • Office music with Mopidy

    Since lockdown began in March (it was March, wasn’t it?) I’ve been working from home. This took a while to get used to - my short drive to/from the office put my brain in gear - but is now “the new normal”.
    Posted Nov 6, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • geeky
    • mopidy
    • python
    • lockdown

  • Audiotarky announced!

    Hugely chuffed to be awarded a grant for the web to build on some of the web monetisation/music streaming I’ve been doing over the summar. More info on the new Audiotarky blog.
    Posted Oct 6, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • micropayments
    • grant for the web
    • web monetisation
    • streaming
    • open source

  • Tekton aide-mémoire

    I’ve been doing some work on Tekton this morning, dusting off somethings I did back in April. One thing that I wrote down at the time but now can’t find (grumble) is how I got a local instance running on minikube, so I thought I’d put it here for posterity.
    Posted Oct 2, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • kubernetes
    • tekton
    • cloud

  • Panel template helper

    Inspired by the Music Thing Modular workshop notebook and an Ikea notebook I’ve started a simple SDIY template, that folds into three panes. At the moment it has:
    Posted Sep 23, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • synths
    • diy
    • sdiy
    • electronics

  • Feeling twitchy

    This week I’ve made not one but two Twitch appearances with Matt. The first was starting to code up a ML/AI to identify synth modules. The idea for this came to me when I thought about updating my modulargrid page & realised I’ve got enough bits & pieces that it would be a chore. I’m lazy & we live in the future, so surely a robot could do it for me!
    Posted Sep 17, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • coding
    • python
    • synths
    • experiment
    • ai
    • ml
    • twitch

  • Embeddable playlists & the ILP jailbreak

    I’ve been building a web monetized music platform, in my copious spare time. You may have even heard some of it. One thing I added a while back to this site is a playlist, built from all the posts that have direct link to a track, as opposed to one hosted on Bandcamp, Soundcloud or Spotify. That was nice, and it does a couple of cute things:
    Posted Sep 7, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • javascript
    • micropayments
    • xrp
    • web monetisation
    • streaming
    • embedding

  • Some new old stuff - Hot Snakes

    Somehow Hot Snakes passed me by in the early oughts, but Spotify popped them up in a daily playlist, and I’ve been really digging them for the past few days. Check em out!
    Posted Sep 3, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • rock & roll music
    • tunes
    • spotify
    • artist

  • Some wicked drum & bass from Metalheadz

    I’ve found myself listening to a bit more drum & bass lately, and this playlist of new releases from Metalheadz has been getting a fair rinsing.
    Posted Sep 2, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • drum & bass
    • tunes
    • spotify
    • playlist

  • Live at the Greenbank - EMOM volume 1 by Anechoics

    I think this was our first gig at EMOM, but I might be misremembering - if not it’s the second. I do remember it was hot, but not as hot as now. Recorded off the desk, then put through a mastering plugin I like to bring out some of the parts a bit better.
    Posted Aug 11, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • improvised
    • tunes
    • modular
    • synth
    • emom
    • archives

  • Spring Song

    This is a song of many firsts. Its the first song my dad has written (he normally performs/records arrangements of traditional English folk songs, and lots of Leon Rosselson). It’s the first time I’ve sung on one of his records. Its the first time Lib has ever been on record.
    Posted Aug 10, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • folk
    • tunes
    • acoustic
    • archives

  • Better

    Last year I won a competition as part of Machina Bristronica. The prize was to have a few tracks mastered & lathe cut to vinyl by Bladud Flies! - definitely very cool having them on (clear!) vinyl. Limited to only 5 copies, given to friends & family for Christmas/birthdays.
    Posted Aug 10, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • drum & bass
    • tunes
    • wubwubwub
    • machina ep
    • archives

  • Absolutely shocking and lacking in taste

    Last year I won a competition as part of Machina Bristronica. The prize was to have a few tracks mastered & lathe cut to vinyl by Bladud Flies! - definitely very cool having them on (clear!) vinyl. Limited to only 5 copies, given to friends & family for Christmas/birthdays.
    Posted Aug 10, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • minimal
    • modular
    • repetitive
    • tunes
    • machina ep
    • archives

  • 5Pianos

    Last year I won a competition as part of Machina Bristronica. The prize was to have a few tracks mastered & lathe cut to vinyl by Bladud Flies! - definitely very cool having them on (clear!) vinyl. Limited to only 5 copies, given to friends & family for Christmas/birthdays.
    Posted Aug 10, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • minimal
    • piano
    • repetitive
    • rules based
    • tunes
    • machina ep
    • archives

  • WebMonetization 10 second test

    Talking to my friend Ross about WebMonetization for musicians the obvious question came up - how does $5 cover all the payments, so I thought I’d do a little experiment.
    Posted Aug 2, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • micropayments
    • xrp
    • web monetisation
    • coil

  • Auditree - an open source compliance automation framework

    I don’t often blog about work stuff here (or anywhere else…), but yesterday my team & I did something I’m quite pleased about: we open sourced a compliance automation framework we’ve been building for the past three years. You can read more about it on the Cloudant blog or check out the project website direct.
    Posted Jul 31, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • compliance
    • automation
    • cloud

  • Debugging GitHub Actions

    I’ve built a few github actions recently. They’re a nice & powerful feature, but debugging them is a bit awkward, because they’re running on someone elses computer. I thought I’d write down a few notes while the experience was fresh in my mind.
    Posted Jul 29, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • github

  • WebMonetization for musicians

    It’s no secret that streaming platforms are kind of broken today when it comes to paying artists for their plays. While they know exactly who has listened to what, the way pay is allocated favours established artists, especially those signed to major labels. It’s got to the point that people recommend being on streaming platforms solely to raise awareness, and use those platforms to drive sales or merchandise and physical media.
    Posted Jul 21, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • musicians
    • micropayments
    • xrp
    • web monetisation
    • streaming

  • Canada album

    More from the archives…
    Posted Jul 20, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • bitwig
    • tunes
    • archives

  • Chorizo Hash

    This is actually a couple of years old (March 2018), made with my friend Ben & named after what he’d had for lunch that fateful day.
    Posted Jul 13, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • drum & bass
    • tunes
    • massive
    • amen
    • archives

  • Jekyll & web monetisation

    As you may have noticed, I’ve been playing with WebMonetisation a bit recently. It’s an interesting idea, and the kind of thing I’d like to see take off. I’ve updated this site to be “web monetised” and thought I’d explain how I’d done it.
    Posted Jul 11, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • coding
    • jekyll
    • payid
    • blogging
    • micropayments
    • xrp
    • web monetisation

  • Commissioned build: a Sampleslicer for Ian

    Ian asked me to build him a Sampleslicer. They’re great modules (I have one already) and let you do some really nice things like recording loops back on themselves and slide/slice through whats been recored. They also have a really nice, open UI which I like and I think makes them good for performance.
    Posted Jul 8, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • synths
    • diy
    • sdiy
    • electronics
    • commissions

  • Departures & beginnings

    Wrote this for friends leaving town. It’s a bit sad, but has a splash of hope & anticipation.
    Posted Jul 3, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • lofi hiphop
    • brass band
    • tunes

  • PayID & Cloud Functions live coding Twitch, part 2

    Part two pulled together all the things into a working demo, Matt is indeed a big spender! Even the docker gods smiled on us…
    Posted Jul 3, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • coding
    • python
    • payid
    • experiment
    • micropayments
    • serverless
    • twitch
    • xrp
    • web monetisation

  • TriADADAD

    By accident I ended up with three PCB’s for the Non-Linear Circuits Triad module. So I decided to put them into one mega TriADADAD module.
    Posted Jul 2, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • synths
    • diy
    • sdiy
    • electronics

  • PayID & Cloud Functions live coding Twitch

    Yesterday I got on a Twitch video stream with my friend & colleague Matt Hamilton. He’s been talking about micropayments, interledger, XRP etc. for some time, and with lockdown I’ve been thinking about it a bit more. It seems like a nice way to address “the original sin” of the web, and let people pay for what they consume without giving away their entire online selves (and that of the rest of their social network, too…).
    Posted Jul 1, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • coding
    • python
    • payid
    • micropayments
    • serverless
    • twitch
    • xrp

  • Mini gig rig

    I wrote up how I made a “mini gig rig” over on the Anechoics site.
    Posted May 17, 2020 §
    • tagged
    • synths
    • diy
    • sdiy
    • electronics

  • BOM Hub

    Early days yet, but over Christmas I started https://bomhub.github.io with someone in France. The idea is that it becomes a collection of sdiy BOM’s and some “crowd sourced” build guides. Very early stages yet, but I think it could be useful. I’d like to get to a point where it rendered actual BOMs, as opposed to linking out to them, and was able to search over them to identify common components between projects (“I’m building a Rot8, what could I over order to build a Jove?”). It would also be really neat if it could fire those into Octopart or similar, such that you can buy a nice load of electronics in one easy step.
    Posted Jan 22, 2018 §
    • tagged
    • synths
    • diy
    • sdiy
    • electronics

  • Sports team vs rock band

    A friend posted a link to a New York Times article about start up culture, how increasingly folk in “unicorn” roles are disposable and how this fosters an unpleasant environment to work in. The article points to Netflix’s culture of “We’re a team, not a family.”, and how they’ve taken the analogy into performance culture of the company. In the author of the articles experience this translated into being measured against VORP; “value over replacement player”, a concept taken from the world of baseball.
    Posted Apr 20, 2016 §
    • tagged
    • devculture

  • Visualising graphs

    with Python and IBM Graph Data Store
    Posted Mar 24, 2016 §
    • tagged
    • graphdb
    • visualisation

  • On blockquote

    Someone tweeted about how responsive designs should include different sized images for different devices the other day. For some reason this made me think about Blockquotes this morning.
    Posted Mar 18, 2016 §
    • tagged
    • random-thought
    • responsive

  • These are my synths

    A while back I saw a video of Adrian Utley playing an Arturia MiniBrute. For some reason it really resonated with me, and I ended up buying one. I have to admit, that was the start of an addiction. I now have a small (but growing) army of synths.
    Posted Feb 13, 2016 §
    • tagged
    • synths
    • diy

  • New site layout

    I decided to tweak metsonet a bit, and so have switched to Jekyll for the site (it’s already running as a github “page” so it makes sense). Hopefully this means its easier for me to post & keep it updated. Bare with me as I tweak the styling a bit…
    Posted Feb 13, 2016
    • tagged

  • iFree

    I’ve been thinking, off and on, about doing less stuff online, or rather, online activities being a part of something larger, rather than an end in themselves. I like twitter, facebook etc. but I also like listening to records, playing music, making marble runs and riding my bike. One set of things I’m putting a lot of time into, the others not so much. So, the plan is to use January as a time to go offline a bit more.
    Posted Dec 30, 2015 §
    • tagged
    • connected living
    • life

  • Hairy

    First of all, thank you everyone who donated!
    Posted Aug 31, 2015 §
    • tagged
    • hair
    • macmillan

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