Aug 25, 2011
The past week and a half I have been having a bit of fun. I've been planning a party with music and guests. It isn't easy but it isn't exactly rocket science. Getting musicians to play requires advance notice usually and as time goes on fewer and fewer people are available. Fans as well require advance notice and getting the word out is not a trivial task. I mean, if a person wants me to go to their show they practically have to e-mail me on a day when I want to go. Alas that doesn't always work either. NWTekno was a great place to find events and sometimes still is but lacks tons of shows that simply don't post their show. In fact the show linked above simply will not be posted there.
Moreover, sound is an important element to any party. Going to Guitar Center and buying $700 of sound gear will give you decent sound but have you heard of their 15% return policy? If you play 2 shows before you return the gear, $700 * %15 / 2 = $52.5 per show. Of course Guitar Center probably doesn't want you to do that. Don't let anyone spill any beer or blow your speaker.
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Nov 2, 2010
You may be aware of my work on RockBand 2 Drum "drivers". If I had written my code as a kernel module (and it would likely be accepted into the mainline), it would be easy to call it a driver. However, I wrote it using libusb and ALSA, which makes it a userland program. I feel that I made the right design choice. ALSA libraries are low enough latency and libusb allows efficient use of interrupts, so it works quite well. Also, adding any complex code to the kernel that isn't totally necessary seems like a risky endeavor.
Anyway, that code is here: RockBand 2 Drum Instrument for Linux
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