Getting started with Wanderlust

In my ever-growing use of Emacs, I decided it would be useful to try one of the Emacs mail clients. I've been used to mutt for a very long time so I tried running it in Emacs. It's an ncurses interface and doesn't work very well under Emacs. I tried the Emacs client to write emails, but it's too much of a disconnect. I finally decided to try Wanderlust.

The installation is pretty simple. Here are a number of useful links:

• A three part series on configuring Wanderlust on the Emacs-fu blog: 1 2 3
• A guide to using BBDB for address completion, also on Emacs-fu
• Some configuration tips from another Emacs user and mutt-convert: 1 2
• Saving passwords with Wanderlust
• Wanderlust user's manual
• There's lots of good material here. I found it fruitful to pick and choose sections that I wasn't completely familiar with.

A few things I discovered while setting it up:

1. SMTP auth issues can be debugged by setting smtpmail-debug-info and/or smtpmail-debug-verb. (c.f. docs)

The very basics:

Starting Wanderlust

Upon calling wl, you will see a list of your folders. This is called Folder mode and the buffer is called Folder. It's a list of your configured mail folders and should look familiar. It's operation is pretty intuitive. Pressing RET will open the folder with point at the oldest unread message.

Reading Messages

Once your folder is open and you see a list of your messages, you'll need a few things to navigate them. This buffer is called Summary and is in Summary mode. Again, nothing too revelatory: a list of messages.The basic C-n/C-p keys work here, but the preferred navigation keys are n and p. Press RET to view a message. Once your message is open, you can continue to use n and p to navigate the list. A few helpful keys:

• v - Close message window and return to Summary view.
• RET - Show the next line in the current message.
• SPC - Show the next page in the current message.
• DEL - Show the previous page in the current message.
• A - Reply to the current message. (c.f. Writing Messages)

Writing Messages

Pressing w in any view will start a new message. This is called Draft mode. A few helpful keys for draft mode:

• C-c C-k - Kill current draft.
• C-c C-c - Send message and close draft.

Check the out docs for more information. There are a lot of resources available to continually mine benefit from these tools.

Enjoy!

Jess

Sudoku Technique

Sudoku technique, as of yet unnamed. This puzzle felt like a study on this idea. Here's the puzzle:

The technique involves using knowledge that a number must be in one area to infer that it will not be in another. Consider the diagram below.

1. The tan arrows show that the top right box must place a "1" in one of the two cells above 3 and 7.
2. The green arrow shows that we can exclude "1" from being in any other cell of that row. This leaves us with "1" being in the bottom row of the top center box.
3. The blue arrow shows where the lower "1" excludes that cell.
4. We can place the "1" (shown in green).

 If you play through this puzzle you will see this technique can be applied many times.

Tony Scott - Music for Zen Meditation

In the late 1950's, Tony Scott was one of the top (and few) bebop clarinetists. Scott made some musical connections in Japan and in 1964 joined with two classical Japanese musicians for a recording. Although Scott was already a seasoned improviser, his collaborators, Shinichi Yuize and Hozan Yamamoto, were not. Inspired by Zen meditation, the group recorded a number of duet improvisations, a solo by Yamamoto and collective piece by all three members.

Featuring Tony Scott on clarinet, Shinichi Yuize on koto, and Hozan Yamamoto on shakuhachi, this is a timeless album. The improvisations are genuine and introspective. Each careful pluck and bend of the koto strings on "The Murmuring Sound of the Mountain Stream" sounds like a rain drop hitting the water. Scott's subtle attack and dark, smooth tone make his instrument sound more like the bamboo shakuhachi than a clarinet. This album is recognized as the first ever New Age music.

Jazz this week[end]!

Tonight in Milwaukee is Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark as part of the Parasol Fest. Details about Parasol Fest at IMprovised SOund and Sugar Maple Bar. I found this great video of one of Vandermark's groups called the Vandermark 5. Check it out!

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The Umbrella Festival is going on in Chicago through this Sunday. I'm hoping to at least get out there on Friday to see Ernest Dawkin's New Horizons Quartet, Matthew Shipp, and The Roscoe Mitchell Quartet. Saturday's lineup looks great too. Check out the flyer and program.

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It doesn't stop there! Thursday in Madison is the new first Thursday gathering at the Project Lodge. This month featuring Caroline Davis (saxophone) and Dave Miller (guitar), two established Chicago musicians along with regulars Patrick Breiner (tenor sax) and Luke Polipnick (guitar).

New Way to Bend Guitar Strings

ok, i guess this isn't so "new" anymore, but i just came across it. a neat modification to a guitar to allow pulling down the guitar to bend a string. ingeniously called the "string bender". you tube video here: Invention of the StringBender (B-Bender) guitar

Sudoku

See if you can derive the number for this spot:



I've already determined that only 3 or 7 can fill this spot. I've highlighted in yellow the lines that already contain 7. Now one of the green boxes must be 7 which eliminates the possibility of 7 in the original square. So... I know it's 3!

Modern Music in 3D: Nathaniel Bartlett's Marimba + Computer

Last night, I saw Nathaniel Bartlett perform at the Overture Center in Madison, WI. Armed with a marimba and a computer full of custom PD programs, Bartlett explores a free form style of music through sounds moving around a 3D space. The performance was an extended work called "Blueshift". Bartlett introduced the piece by asking the audience to listen more for the timbral and spatial aspects of the music rather than traditional pitch and rhythm. The room was shortly filled with sparse marimba notes and the splashes of reverb laden cymbals. The cymbal tones appeared to "move" around the room, an element that Bartlett seems to concentrate heavily on.

The 3D listening space is provided by a so-called "cuboid" arrangement of speakers. It consists of eight pieces, four on the floor laid out in a square around the audience and four twelve feet off the ground. A bass speaker off to the side provides the low frequencies whose location are more difficult to detect.

The role of the computer in this work is to play samples and move the perceived source of the sound around the listening space. The marimba controls this via floor mics and serves to trigger the samples as well as alter their movement trajectory within the listening space. Bartlett has integrated a few MIDI pedals to enhance control of the computer generated sounds. Many qualities of the samples were being modulated, from pitch shifting of rain sticks to short echoes and delays akin to modern experimental electronic music.

I spoke with Bartlett after the performance and he elaborated on some details of how the sounds are controlled. The marimba notes are analyzed by the computer for both pitch and loudness. The interesting part is that these not only control one possible change in the sound, but a set of possible changes. How the choice is made wasn't exactly clear; whether it is random or not. He also mentioned that neural networks were involved in some of these decisions, but again, the details were not clear. This is an interesting style of music aided by a unique use of computers. I'm looking forward to hearing more of Bartlett's music as well as checking out some of the capabilities of PD.

Also see "Nathaniel Bartlett: Solo Marimba + Computer-Generated Sound Projection" published in Percussive Notes Aug/Sept 2009.