End of the year project list for 2021

Here’s a big list of stuff I’ve done this year. It’s not everything since I do a lot of smaller projects that I start on and never finish, or end up changing what i need out of them, but these are most of my completed projects.

left image uses middle image’s style to make the third image. I used some random generative pen plotter drawings for the first set, and some watercolor paintings in a colorfield style for the second set. I realize I need to align *everything* perfectly to get good results though.

Machine Learning and AI Art – experimented with StyleGan and style transfer scripts, I wrote a script to process lots of images in batch. I threw my art into StyleGan and got interesting results – see above. Better alignment and upgrading to StyleGan2 would probably get better results, but I need to make a good camera stand to make alignment easy

newoldmusic.com & discover.newoldmusic.com – my biggest projects for the year, my music discovery tool and a music blog that goes with it. I did a write up on my scrapers & server I wrote for the discovery site in this post: https://www.jasonrparadis.xyz/playlist-maker-random-song-recommendation-site/
I’ve found a lot of music I like with it so far.

Rhyming markov chain experiments, using social media posts as data to generate random sentences, then match those with other sentences that rhyme together

Migrated VPS from Windows server 2016 to Linux/Debian – first of 3 server setups this year. I use this one for most of my projects that need internet access, the other is for home/local stuff that doesn’t need internet access. Also migrated http://music.jasonrparadis.xyz to a docker container (It running slow was my main reason for upgrading)

Pigeon rescue site – bought http://www.pdxbirds.com after seeing a social media post about people not sure what to do with a hurt pigeon they found, I figure I should probably put my knowledge of the bird to use somehow. I need to do more work on it and figure out how to show it in search results for combinations of Portland / Vancouver + Pigeon.

home server rebuilt #1, Linux/Debian on a raspberry Pi: my old server was having overheating issues so I switched to a Pi, since I was also interested in dropping electricity costs. Didn’t quite work out as I like using GUIs for little idle games and I quickly ran out of CPU/RAM

I built up my collection of electronics supplies after getting my old box of electronics components out of the shed and realizing the container had leaked and ruined everything. I’ve got pretty much everything needed for synth & audio DIY other than niche parts for specific circuits.

Bytebeat generator – found an old python script I had wrote years ago about trying to make bytebeat (generative music using bitwise operators) work with Python, I always had issues with generating the audio properly, but it was just an issue with duck typing. I got it to work, but I don’t really have a use for it at the moment, but when I buy a Eurorack synthesizer case eventually, I’d like to use it in a module.

server rebuilt #2 – my old pc, I bought new thermal paste and cooler for it since it was overheating last time I used it. Power costs aren’t that big of a deal I guess, considering my hobbies.

Belgian Popcorn – a script to slowdown music like the Belgian music genre “Popcorn”. I’ve written up a big blog post about it, I just need to post examples, but I’m kind of afraid of copyright strikes if I don’t pick the right music.

Youtube history scanner – Makes a list of most played youtube videos, used for https://www.newoldmusic.com/2021/10/28/my-most-listened-tracks-over-the-years/

Youtube playlist creator – a tool to add items to a youtube playlist, I find it useful for creating playlists. Here are a few – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdVylbnspmm-1z46X2FtCSw/playlists – I’m currently using it to add lots of songs but I’m rate limited at 300 a day, it’s gonna take months until I’m done.

WS2811 leds controlled by ESP32 chips. I wired up my living room with RGB LEDs and used an ESP32 chip as a web server to control them, I also 3d printed a case. I’ve since switched this to my Raspberry PI since having to disconnect everything update got annoying quick. I need to do a write up of this and post my script, it uses lots of bitwise operator math to randomize patterns

Electronics:

Matrix mixer
3 input mixer
Lots of 40106 based oscillators
Multiple 4051 sequencers
386 amp
PAM3804 hooked up to some cheap speakers from goodwill –

I did a write up about most of these here:
https://www.jasonrparadis.xyz/recent-synth-audio-diy-circuits/

Schematic for a flashy LED circuit – also works as an audio circuit. 40106 is an inverter, it flips a high voltage to ground, and ground to high at a rate related to r1 and c1. the 4040 takes the 40106 output and divides it, each output is a different division. I like to make r1 a variable resistor and a light variable resistor so you can manually adjust the rate, and have it related to how much light is in the room.

Lots of oscillators connected to frequency dividers, used for audio generation, sequencing, and to drive LEDs – I like to put them in mason jars with light variable resistors, they are a nice little decoration and if you put a few of them near each other, they flash in sequence.

Electronics kits:
function generator (can’t find link, I think I’ve had it for years but just never built it)
resistor/capacitor/transistor tester (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WT9VVZB) – I really like this, no need to read resistors by color code

I think that’s most of everything! Maybe my goal for this year should be to document my personal projects more.

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