So! The FCC decided last week that the white spaces between frequencies used by TV broadcasters should be open for public use.

What are White Spaces, you ask? Basically, it's the frequencies between the ones used on TV. When you see a snowy image on an unused channel -- that's the unused "white space" in the frequency range that was previously reserved only for the big broadcasters to use.

So what's the big deal? Well, those frequencies are really good at going through walls and plants and stuff, unlike the frequencies used for the wifi we all know and love. That means that if those frequencies were used for something like the internet connectivity, you'd rarely run into problems with weak signal. Plus, it has a nice social justice/leveling bent, as places less served by large numbers of TV channels (like rural areas) would have a greater range of frequencies to play with for other connected devices.

Basically, the FCC making these frequencies open for use is a big win for everyone who isn't Comcast or Verizon. We can do more and faster, in more places, for much less money.

It should be noted that Free Press, one of our clients, was a big proponent of opening up these frequencies. This is a huge win for them, and we're pretty darn thrilled.

An excellent and understandable breakdown of this stuff is on this week's episode of Search Engine. It used to be a regular broadcast show on the CBC, but now it's podcast-only. Still rules. You can download the show here. Better yet, subscribe to the podcast.

Art in DC is excellent, although not typically fodder for tech-focused blogs. Hooray for exceptions.

Leo Villareal's installations are really something to behold. He makes big LED-based works whose lighting patterns are based on rule sets of his design. He claims Conway's Game of Life as a major inspiration. And goodness, does video make his stuff look cool. Lucky for us, he's currently working on his largest installation yet, and in DC! At the National Gallery of Art! The concourse between the NGA's East and West wings will be lit by somewhere around 40,000 LEDs for the next year. Installation is going on now. I've never had a chance to see the artist's work in person, and I'm really, really excited to walk through it.

He's also going to be showing at the soon-to-reopen (and historically awesome) Conner Contemporary gallery, starting on September 27th until November 9th. The gallery plans to have an opening reception on the first day, but the press release says it's invite only. Something tells me that nerdy programmers won't have an easy time making the list. Still, I'm excited to get over to their new spot in NE. Bigger is always better.

Art!

Mercury-bound space craft, adding MIDI to everyday objects, and the software running ludicrously-complicated automated painting machines. Dorkbot DC doesn't fail to bring interesting stuff. Tom and I had a great time seeing these projects.

It started off with a talk about the MESSENGER probe. Katie Bechtold is a software developer who works on the X-Ray Spectrometer, some other sensors I can't remember the name of, and some day to day behind-the-wheel space probe driving. She brought along a 1/10 scale model of the probe and did her best to point out where the various sensors and crucial parts are. The model was probably two feet tall, if you want an idea of how big it is.

Her explanation of everything was great for those lacking a background in astrophysics (hint: me). I won't say much about the actual workings of the probe, as I don't think it's appropriate to do so until Echoditto is in the business of slinging extremely complicated computers off to distant planets. Here's what was really neat to me:

I really liked that movie Sunshine. Mercury is pretty darn close to the sun, and MESSENGER has to be protected from it at all times. That means there's a big sunshade the majority of the craft lives behind. It isn't even to Mercury yet and it already hits 700 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface of the shade! Bonkers.

I've had a couple projects that needed the menu system to stay open when a full node was being displayed. The Drupal menu system, while dynamic and mostly awesome, didn't seem to allow for that, at least not in the way that I needed it to. So, I wrote Automenu.

For each content type, Automenu allows an administrator to set a default parent in the menu system. If a node is given an entry in the menu system, that default parent is ignored. Relatively simple.

To illustrate, let's say you'd like all nodes of type 'news' to show up under an entry in Primary links called 'Newsroom,' but you don't want to actually create an entry in the menu system for each one. Automenu will do that for you, specifically without creating additional entries in the menu system. If you want to give an individual news node its own special place in the menu system, you can still do that the standard way.

Give it a shot!

Thanks to merlinofchaos and the folks in the #drupal IRC channel for steering me in the right direction on this. They're a bunch of great and helpful folks.

I went to Dorkbot DC yesterday. Goodness, there were some great presentations. Before I gush, here's a description of the group for those of you who may be unfamiliar with them:

Dorkbot DC is a monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/etc.), designers, engineers, students and others in the DC area who are interested in electronic art (in the broadest sense of the term.)

Basically, people have goofy ideas, mock some stuff up, and come in and show it. Some projects are great, some less so. I've seen a guy presenting on how to build a megawatt laser at home for under $1000, someone else who made a USB voodoo doll that reacts differently depending on where you needle it, a guy who made techno out of the human genome, and another guy whose art is making quilts out of circuit boards. Some of it has been incredible, some hilarious, and some completely confusing.

Yesterday's was pretty much 100% excellent.

Hi, everyone. I'm Chris, and I'm likely going to be talking about whatever I'm psyched about at the moment. It's going to be all over the map.

Today's topic: music. Specifically, interesting music tools I've seen pop up around the internets in the past few years.

I really enjoy playing with sound environments like Pure Data and sequencers like Renoise. They're excellent for experimentation and for generating interesting sounds and beats. Still, writing music with a computer is sort of a pain in the ass. I wish I could quickly bang my ideas out in real time, but a QWERTY keyboard and a mouse aren't specialized for the task. Real instruments are limiting in their own ways, but at least when your hands go on them, sound comes out.

A few years ago, I saw the first project that really blew my mind when it came to composing music quickly with a computer. It was Audiopad. Using a projector and some pucks, those smart kids at the MIT Media Lab (where all neato things are born, it seems) built a music mixing/composing system (think turntables) based on software, but was extremely tactile. Here's a video of Audiopad in use. Holy moly, right?

Last year, some bright folks in Barcelona showed everyone Reactable. It's essentially Audiopad evolved. If Audiopad's best analog is a set of turntables, Reactable is a synthesizer/sampler instrument. Here are some demos.