Been writing image processing program in Ruby. I haven't had time to try any image processing libraries/modules/whatever. Haven't gotten far at all. At CICLOPS, i tried writing a Ruby script to automated fetching a variety of information about an image from our databases. That turned out to be easy. At first, i used the Mysql class directly, but as i discovered certain repetitive patterns of coding, i made my own CiclopsDatabase class. No, it's not open source! We're pretty tight about security. At home, i'd be writing my own image processing module in C++ with a Ruby class API, but i haven't had sufficient number and size of blocks of time to grind away on it. But now, it's Thanksgiving, a four day weekend. Such times are about the only times i get much creative work done. Need more.

Besides learning Ruby, i'm also toying around with ActionScript, the programming language used in Flash. Almost all tutorials, references, how-tos, etc assume you have the full-blown Flash-making app which runs in Windows or Mac. I tried downloading it to run in but it's a huge file and my router is flaky. Maybe some other time. For now, i run the excellent command line compiler mtasc. (did i blog about this already?) i've been distracted by other things since last time i toyed with mtasc, so i'm re-warming up my feeble skills at ActionScript.

Got some raw duck canvas from the art supply store to make some paintings. A nice change from sitting at a keyboard and screen!

Helping TJ with audio recording, locating sources of noise - electrical and acoustical. Found a badly microphonic cable. Never encountered one *so* microphonic! Without even having to crank up the gain all the way, handling the cable, tappping on it, made all kinds of distorted scrapy shuffly noises in the headphones. Substituted my expensive keyboard cable from a music store in Ann Arbor - one with serious professional equipment - and microphonism is gone. Biggest problem is when the Alesis MultiMix is connected by firewire to the computer, we get several kinds of noise out of the mixer, including a pulsating noise sounding like a dot matrix printer. Today all the stores are closed 'cept groceries. Tomorrow, to Circuit City and Robb's Music and wherever else for isolation transformers, whatever gadgets. Robb's is a fine music store, but i miss the really cool things i found at Herb David in Ann Arbor. One of the few reasons to move back -that and the great restaurants, but not the winter weather! I'll stay with the Boulder winters.

Well, back to