I've been working for a few weeks on a new generative music algorithm: Kepler's Orrery.
It starts with a gravity simulator, and makes bodies whir around the screen with mutual attraction.
Then whenever they collide, they play music.

You start with a world, with bodies that have mass, position, and velocity
(or rocks), add instruments and melodies, and let them go.

So I took one of the worlds and made a video and posted it. Check it out:

www.youtube.com/watch read more

backdate: sevennineteenohsix. Sakye monastery, south.

My habit of plonking everything I pass to perceive its idiophonic potential seems to have paid off. In the center courtyard of the Sakye monastery stands a small chorten-shaped object made of sheet metal (I learn later that it's an incense burner not a chorten). By small I mean a box 8 feet wide, 3 feet tall, with a six foot egg on the top. These things show up in the middle of courtyards, next to stupas, etc. Often made of stone, they... read more

After five days walking, landroverring, gawking, and gasping for breath in incredible remote rural areas --

the villages in Tibet have been what has made the biggest impression on me, with their rock and cement, or rock and mud, or herringbone-patterned dried yak dung patty walls. Every house has prayer flags flying on flagpoles from the corners. Baby yaks run everywhere; tibetan pigs have straight tails that look like they wag -- though they're probably just switching off flies. Motorcyc... read more

yak butter lamps
yak butter tea
yak curry
boiled yak heart (very tasty!)
yak hair wool.
yak dung stoves (not as smelly as you might suppose).
the sound of yaks chewing grass & mooing (in stereo, from inside a small group).
the sight of young yaks gamboling down the hill.
yak jerky, wrapped in candy-sized pieces. (to be snuck into the proverbial candy jar?)

Just back from a trek that was aborted because we would have had to camp in the snow where the yak's couldn't eat. (Not to me... read more

Up early for an 8am entrance to the potala. Taxi took us to the wrong entrance. So we ran down the road to get there in time (well, I skipped, following the old adage that if you gotta get somewhere fast, but don't wanna look like you're in a hurry, skip. And at 12 thousand feet. pant. pant)

So we've climbed a zillion stairs, had our ids and tickets checked for the nth time, read the NO PHOTOS! EVER! signs. saw a cute little cat in a room full of old scriptures. Stare at it and it miaows &... read more