[HN Gopher] Notepat - Aesthetic Computer
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       Notepat - Aesthetic Computer
        
       Author : justanothersys
       Score  : 158 points
       Date   : 2024-09-12 23:31 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (aesthetic.computer)
 (TXT) w3m dump (aesthetic.computer)
        
       | sorrythanks wrote:
       | I love it!
       | 
       | I'd be fascinated to learn what inspired this absurd keyboard
       | layout!
        
         | swayvil wrote:
         | The notes go together by color and location. There's some scale
         | logic there
        
         | actuallyalys wrote:
         | I'm sure there's more logic to it, but there are twelve notes
         | in the chromatic scale, so six rows of four gets you two
         | octaves. Also putting them in rows of four means you get a nice
         | interval (a fifth?) if you go down vertically.
        
           | thrtythreeforty wrote:
           | Thirds vertically. Semitones go horizontally.
           | 
           | The fifth is a knight's move away down, or up and to the
           | left. Like other isomorphic layouts, it conceptually tiles
           | infinitely in all directions.
        
           | justanothersys wrote:
           | if you tap the '-' key on ur keyboard it shows an overlay in
           | red and green with the steps down and up which i've been
           | using as a transposition aid
        
             | kragen wrote:
             | this still requires that you know how many semitones of
             | interval you want
        
       | pooriar wrote:
       | I played twinkle twinkle little star
        
         | justanothersys wrote:
         | u can enter 'notepat twinkle' after tapping notepat in the
         | corner to actually run through that melody
        
           | BossingAround wrote:
           | Nice. If only there was a mario theme song.
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | I dig it. Made music for 10 minutes. Needs effects boxes. Like
       | one on those looper echo things
        
         | fitsumbelay wrote:
         | I wouldn't mind being able to save patterns to play back and
         | manipulate
        
       | DriftRegion wrote:
       | this is nice. I love the scale layout
        
       | airstrike wrote:
       | Ok, this is incredible in an infinite number of ways.
        
       | katdork wrote:
       | doesn't seem to work at all on firefox, but works fine on a
       | chromium-derivative.
       | 
       | a warning would've been nice about a lack of support? ^^
        
         | wormius wrote:
         | Windows 10 w/Firefox 130.0, ublock, privacy badger, and works
         | ok for me?
         | 
         | I'm not the dev, but figured it might help them if they know
         | more details. You on Linux, Win11, Mac, BSD, Mobile?
        
           | josephg wrote:
           | Linux + Firefox 129.0 here. Works fine for me too!
        
         | tangus wrote:
         | Android + Firefox, works ok.
        
         | fitsumbelay wrote:
         | works for me on MacOS 14.6 FF
        
         | mscdex wrote:
         | It didn't work for me either, but apparently one of the issues
         | is that it assumes window.speechSynthesis is available which
         | may be disabled via about:config >
         | media.webspeech.synth.enabled.
        
       | fitsumbelay wrote:
       | Love this site. I know I've seen it before but all my histories
       | are drawing a bl nk
        
       | fussylogic wrote:
       | love the project. made a blog post about it. why? so the seo gods
       | give this project more eyeballs it deserves
       | https://oransblog.com/aesthetic-computer/
        
       | tony-allan wrote:
       | Some more info
       | https://github.com/whistlegraph/aesthetic-computer
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-7UszmI1K4
       | https://aesthetic.computer/handtime       https://digitpain.com/
        
         | a1o wrote:
         | I wasn't expecting that README
        
           | seanthemon wrote:
           | Refreshingly sadistic way of handling a project checklist, I
           | love it
        
           | linux2647 wrote:
           | 2600 lines long, and an additional 1700 lines of completed
           | items moved to a different file:
           | https://github.com/whistlegraph/aesthetic-
           | computer/blob/main...
        
       | BossingAround wrote:
       | Love the chat functionality :)) Very cool.
        
       | greentext wrote:
       | freaky-flowers was cool. How does it work?
        
         | justanothersys wrote:
         | they are sculptures i made in the oculus browser using a webvr
         | tool on the site
        
       | tempodox wrote:
       | How are the wave forms generated?
        
         | justanothersys wrote:
         | they are generated in a web AudioWorklet on a per sample basis
         | https://github.com/whistlegraph/aesthetic-computer/blob/main...
         | 
         | you can use the up and down arrow keys in 'notepat' and press
         | the '/' key to see the waveform output and increase or decrease
         | the sample size to better visualize them
        
       | wkat4242 wrote:
       | Uhm what is this?
       | 
       | It just dumps you into a retro-ish environment but it's not
       | really clear what it's for.
        
         | drivers99 wrote:
         | I was confused too, but another comment here links to a video
         | demo. That gave me enough clues to realize that you start off
         | in a "notepat" app in this "computer." You can click "notepat"
         | to go back to a prompt. At the prompt, you can type "list" to
         | list all the commands. (I noticed there are aliases as well,
         | like if you type "help" you actually go to "chat".) The demo
         | shows a few things you can do, and probably you're meant to
         | explore the other apps to see how things work.
        
       | CyberDildonics wrote:
       | Calling something 'aesthetic' as a direct adjective is not the
       | correct use of 'aesthetic'.
        
         | emchammer wrote:
         | Thank you for clarifying, CyberDildonics.
        
         | alwa wrote:
         | Isn't the function of the application to compute aesthetic
         | variations on inputs?
         | 
         | To be fair the video linked upthread clarified things for me by
         | showing me the app's full ambition. Like you, I at first
         | thought the whole thing was the keypad app, and that they meant
         | the name in the clunky sense of "it's a computer, but it's
         | 'aesthetic' because of its glitch-retro style."
        
       | busymichael wrote:
       | I'm a big fan of digitpain (Jeffrey Scudder) and it is great to
       | see him get airtime here. The tl/dr for Jeffrey is he make
       | digital art, but first he makes his own digital tools to make
       | that artwork.
       | 
       | For those that are new to him, be sure to browse to the top level
       | (https://aesthetic.computer) and play around in the 'terminal'.
       | 
       | If you have a VR device, view Freaky Flowers in it.
        
       | kragen wrote:
       | this is a cool thing
       | 
       | it doesn't work as well as you'd hope with a usb keyboard without
       | n-key rollover (nkro), and because it doesn't eat control
       | characters (but uses the control and shift keys for percussion),
       | it has a tendency to tempt you to run unexpected browser commands
       | by accident. did you know what ctrl-shift-a does in firefox?
       | well, you do now
       | 
       | from the name i was expecting it to have some kind of pattern-
       | recording and playback ability, which would make it possible to
       | play music even on such limited input devices
       | 
       | the _keyboard_ keyboard layout is not isomorphic the way the
       | screen layout is; a purely horizontal keyboard layout for a whole
       | octave (either a whole chromatic octave, maybe on the qwer tyui
       | op() row, or just a whole octave of naturals like on a piano 's
       | white keys) would greatly diminish the problem with keyboard
       | rollover
       | 
       | i think that, if you're doing an ortholinear isomorphic keyboard
       | layout of 12-tet, especially for people to just mess around with
       | rather than playing seriously, you might be better off with six
       | notes per row rather than four. that way, perfect fifths like c/g
       | are vertically aligned. on this four-notes-per-row layout, you
       | instead have major thirds, which are not quite as desirable for
       | people to stumble across as they're messing around. and fifths
       | are kind of in the worst possible location, a knight's move.
       | major thirds are still probably the second-best thing after
       | fifths though
       | 
       | there are more interesting isomorphic keyboard programs out
       | there;
       | https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gitorious.jamesjrh.isoke...
       | (https://github.com/lrq3000/hexiano) is one free-software
       | implementation for android
       | 
       | i suspect the paucity of waveforms in notepat is due to the fact
       | that the web audio api only has a few builtin waveforms, all of
       | which suck. but with software synthesis it's easy to get really
       | interesting musical timbres.
       | https://za3k.github.io/ha3k-14-synth/ is a demo i did with za3k
       | which generates a series of samples in js (using an html5 api
       | that is unfortunately deprecated without any adequate
       | replacement). i have more notes on bytebeat at
       | http://canonical.org/~kragen/bytebeat/, but it can be hard to get
       | it to sound the way you want; other more tractable but simple
       | ways of getting nicer sounds include karplus-strong synthesis
       | http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/ks-string.c (one-line
       | version in http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/ks1.c), flanging
       | http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/sweetdreams.html, and fm
       | synthesis http://www.codemist.co.uk/AmsterdamCatalog/
       | 
       | (disclaimer: i know nothing about music)
        
       | AstroJetson wrote:
       | Angel helped make a kite. It was a huge surprise. Very cool
       | program, not helpful to today's billable hours.
        
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       (page generated 2024-09-13 23:01 UTC)