computers-R-stupid

In a previous post regarding my new, javascript-heavy, mobile-responsive WordPress theme I groused:

Would... like to remove the phrase "comments off" that appears in each post; that seems like a needless provocation for the "no comments means intellectual fascism" contingent.

Believe or not, yrs truly was once frequently smeared for having comments turned off. One hater actually created a mirror site of tommoody.us with a comment feature added. Those were the days when blogs mattered!
OK, so the words "Comments Off" are now gone, after some, uh, internet research. The WordPress Theme Editor was no help, the php file had to be edited as described in a Google-cached post from a site that is now a fake blog. (Nazgoz: How To Remove Comments Off Text From WordPress Post Title).
To edit the php file gedit was added as the default editor for php files in Filezilla.
Now there is a dangling hyphen after the date (or my name on a page with a single post) under each post title. Will nail this eventually. [Update: hat tip to Rene Abythe for a CSS suggestion that got rid of the hyphen.)

The current mobile-friendly theme I am using is called TotalPress.
I like it OK -- it still needs a few tweaks.

My issues with it are:

--not crazy about the light-grey text in blockquotes --

I need to figure out a way to darken it

[Update: I changed the font color from #8a8a8a to a darker shade of that, #656565. Still thinking about this.]

--it's not as easy to "poke" the CSS as it was with my previous theme. I would like to "comment out" the theme branding in the footer but haven't figured out how to do it yet. [Update: Done, thanks to Rene Abythe for the CSS] Would also like to remove the phrase "comments off" that appears in each post; that seems like a needless provocation for the "no comments means intellectual fascism" contingent. [Update: Done]

--I tested the site on MobiReady and it got a low score. The reasons have to do with exotic web developer considerations that make an OG, HTML-era blogger such as myself want to f*ing hurl. It's painful to read that, in the course of making my site "better" on phones, I've adopted a theme that has the following negatives:

1. DOM element count is high at 938. [Update: I think I reduced these deadly DOMs to under 700, the acceptable range, by switching my Archives on the sidebar to a dropdown. That list was too long anyway.]
2. All page assets should use appropriate Etag headers to enable client-side caching and speed up future page loads -- No Etag header found.
3. JavaScript includes should always be included at the end of the document to avoid blocking the page loading -- Found JavaScript inside head.
4. HTTP response should be compressed using server-side configuration of GZIP or similar compression technology -- Gzip transport encoding not detected.
etc
etc

For what it's worth, a nearly pure HTML page such as this one also scores poorly on MobiReady.
They are freaked out because it's all images, even though most are in the 100KB range. I'm sure there is some low-res art that would be appropriate for your precious phone but I'm seriously not interested in making it.

Am going to be fooling around with WordPress themes in case you're wondering why the site looks different, at any given moment.

The purpose is to install a so-called responsive theme, one that changes the look of the blog depending on the size or configuration of the screen. Obviously this is motivated by the pressure of mass humanity's move from PCs to phones. Arguably blogs are a creature of PCs and if they were truly going to be mobile-friendly, each post would be 240 characters or feature a snappy video (plus lots of advertising plugs).

My dilemma is how to preserve some of the site's current customization using an off-the-shelf design. Problem #1 is where to put the sidebar links. The first theme I tried, Galaxia, moved the top group of links, called "Pages" here, to a menu at the top, below my name. I guess that's OK but then the links called "Links," "Archives," and "Categories" just disappeared. Adding a widget called "Sidebar" moved "Links" to the bottom of the page when the blog was in mobile mode. It's basically too much information to shove to the bottom of a phone screen.

Galaxia had a nice minimal design but it ignored blockquotes. All indented text was just shoved over the left. Not acceptable.

Next...

These are the Eurorack modules described in a previous post, which make possible a fascinating hybrid of computer and voltage-based music synthesis at relatively low cost, if you have the patience and fortitude to get them to work.
The concept is that pitch, gate, clock, LFOs, and MIDI data can all be transmitted to a modular synth through a single SP/DIF (digital audio) cable coming from your sound card. Audio is itself a form of voltage and can be sliced and diced into smaller amounts to drive hardware; Expert Sleepers inventor Andrew Ostler has quite cleverly made all these signal distributions. As he points out, audio-based signals are "sample accurate," as opposed to USB or 5-pin MIDI, which are subject to micro-delays and "jitter," thus making it possible to keep several instruments in tighter sync than with normal MIDI outputs from your Digital Audio Workstation.

In practice, the routing of the audio to maximize efficiency in all these channels is perversely complicated, and changes constantly with new revisions to operating systems, DAWs, the equipment, and the "Silent Way" plugin software that makes all this work.

One source of confusion is a design problem: the varied use of the sequence 1-2-3-4-5-etc:

You have expansion headers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (or more), depending on the unit. These headers are sometimes called slots and refer to physical (10 pin) connectors on the back of a module.

There are also output ports on the front of a module, numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

Within the DAW, you have stereo channel pairs 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, with channels sometimes referred to by a single number.

The soundcard also has analog and digital channels, numbered 1, 2, 3, etc. Stereo pairs 7/8 correspond to the soundcard's ADAT channels 7/8 (which may be identified in Ableton as channels 17-18).

You have Gates 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 on an expansion unit. A "gate" could refer to a synthesizer gate signal or it could refer to the port number on the expander.

You have Inputs 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 on the ES-4 Controller software. I think these refer to the above-mentioned stereo channels but within the Input section you have menus for each Input with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

You have Inputs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 on the ESX-8CV Combiner software and menus giving you a choice for each input of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

You have Output controls 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 on ES-4 Controller software. I forget what these are for, and why there are five if a module has 5-8 output ports and 5-6 expansion slots.

The Silent Way Voice Controller has controls on its interface that correspond to output ports 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on the old, discontinued ES-4 hardware, and "hidden" output controls numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

And of course you have MIDI channels 1, 2, 3, etc (up to 16)

Small wonder constant confusion occurs on the forum threads regarding which of the above 1s, 2s, 3s, etc people are talking about and what they think they mean. (Couldn't something have been called A, B, C, etc?) Or whether they are speaking of an output, slot, header, or port. Some users are helpful and patient, others adopt a "of course, you don't know this?" tone. Which is insane.

I made some revisions to my PDF of Expert Sleepers Ableton Setup Notes.

Expert Sleepers (brainchild of UK inventor Andrew Ostler aka "OS") makes Eurorack modules that allow a computer to talk to other Eurorack modules, converting MIDI and audio events in a Digital Audio Workstation into control voltages that can drive modules in a rack.

At least, theoretically. The problem is making sense of a cloud of tutorials, demos, and user forum threads in an environment where the relevant products, DAWs, and operating systems undergo constant revision. Worse, OS assumes you can fill in gaps in your knowledge easily, and you can't.

For example, in a video showing how you can control several hardware synths and sequencers using pitch and gate cvs coming out of the ES-40, ESX-8CV, and ESX-8GT modules, OS shows a tantalizing glimpse of his setup in Ableton. You can see a series of "aux" channels that he doesn't explain or show the routing for. These are necessary to drive gates separately from cvs. The curious consumer must delve into forum threads to find answers, separating the wheat of Ableton/Windows solutions from the chaff of Logic/Apple solutions. Eventually I got it, and now need to add a new "Section C" to my notes.

These notes are a quixotic endeavour specific to Windows 7, Ableton 9[x], and a handful of modules at a certain stage of development, which means the instructions also need to be revised constantly -- the sand castle constantly threatens to collapse. Resounding silence followed my posting of the notes on the ES forum; the reason could be simple boredom, or that forum users have already moved on to next in a constant stream of shiny new objects emerging from OS's workshop.

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