The Soulpass Project

This is for all of you who figured the Acer Aspire 5315-2153 (which comes packaged with Vista) would make a great Windows XP Professional notebook, for only $348 + the cost of windows… and then realized you had problems.

We have been receiving a large number of visits from folks with non-English-speaking configurations. As a convenience to visitors, we are offering a machine translation of this tutorial powered by N2H and Google Language Tools:  

There are two methods for getting this to work, one only requires the internet, a few minutes, and a CD burner. The other requires a USB floppy drive.

UPDATE: We’ve got a working modem driver now. Check out the tutorial on getting it up and running (should be installed last).

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This is actually a combination of a couple of the original verses, and it turned out to be more than a bit muddy/overdone. The chords and lyrics used, for the curious:

C          F           C
Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree.
C            F           C
merry, merry king of the bush is he.
C      F           C
Laugh, kookaburra, laugh kookaburra,
C         F         C
Save some there for me.

Background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra_(song)

As far as I know this is the only place on the net you’ll find this. It was transcribed by me, so it’s far from perfect. However, I think it’s reasonably accurate. You should experiment with different chord inversions to find out which sounds best where. Later on I might add to this the inversions I use, and I also plan on redoing my recording of this song since I wasn’t particularly pleased with it.

C / /

      C
My Avaline
              C
Say you'll be mine
          C               G7              C
Won't you come and let me whisper in your ear
F                      C
Way down yonder in the old corn field
    Dm7
For you
     G7
I've pined
G7
Sweeter than the honey
C      F7    C
To the honey bee
G7
I love you
    C   F7   C
Say you love me
F
Meet me in the shade
       C       Cadd9 C     Dm7/C F7/C
Of the old apple     tree- ee-   eee
C       G7     C   (Cadd9 C)
Eva-Iva-Ova-Avaline

UPDATE: Changed Am7 to F7 in “To the honey bee” and “Say you love me.” I think it sounds closer. Also I forgot to mention that this is not the same key as the original recording; it’s transposed. I can’t remember the key they used, in fact I think it’s recorded a few cents off from standard tuning.

I think the least accurate part is “Of the old apple tree- ee- eee,” so I would really like to know if anyone figures out a better way to play it.

New recording:

Lyrics: http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/obrotherwhereartthou/illflyaway.htm

This is another multi-track recording, mixed down with Audacity.

Dealing with timezone offsets can be frustrating in any coding environment. It’s pretty easy to get the server time into the client side JavaScript using PHP. The following code will create a JavaScript Date object that holds the current server date/time:

<script type="text/javascript">
var dateServer = new Date('<?= date('F d, Y H:i:s') ?>');
<script type="text/javascript">

Once that’s done you can work with the dateServer Date object and it will reflect the server’s local date/time. However, what if I need to calculate the date multiple times on-the-fly (e.g. - from within in a loop)? That might come in handy for things like timer scripts. We’ll first need to know the offset between the server time and local time:

<script type="text/javascript">
var dateLocal  = new Date();
var dateServer = new Date('<?= date('F d, Y H:i:s') ?>');
var dateOffset = dateServer - dateLocal;
<script type="text/javascript">

dateOffset now holds the offset in milliseconds. Here’s how to make use of the offset for future JavaScript Date object instances:

<script type="text/javascript">
var dateLocal  = new Date();
var dateServer = new Date('<?= date('F d, Y H:i:s') ?>');
var dateOffset = dateServer - dateLocal;

var newDate = new Date();
newDate.setTime(newDate.getTime() + dateOffset);
<script type="text/javascript">

That’s it! The newDate variable now holds the server time using the calculated offset from the previous PHP date() call.

UPDATE: I have created an example script that illustrates its use in a recursive clock function. As a side note, the setTimeout() JavaScript function produced much better results than setInterval() for this particular application. setInterval() was causing it to skip seconds for some reason, possibly something to do with this computer being bogged down with processes. At any rate, while setInterval() looks cleaner and more elegant, it looks like setTimeout() is the ideal route for a live timer or clock script.

This was originally a rough cut (I wanted to redo the end part) but has graduated to a final cut because I don’t feel like working on it anymore. Traditional gospel.

This is a fusion of two different songs:

1. There’s a Hole in My Bucket - Traditional children’s song
2. My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It - Hank Williams

I was trying to UNION two SELECT queries but for some reason it seemed to be omitting duplicate results (the primary key wasn’t included in the SELECTed columns so some had everything but that in common) as if they were SELECT DISTINCT queries. To work around that I added rand() as the last SELECTed item and it worked. This is probably an ugly hack, but it did what it was supposed to do. One could probably just as easily include the primary key. I still don’t know why it was omitting duplicates and now that it works I probably won’t look into it for a while.

New recording… cover of Tell It To Me by Old Crow Medicine Show.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I do not in any way condone the use of cocaine. I happen to like bluegrass, I happen to be a fan of Old Crow Medicine Show, and I happen to like the song “Tell It To Me.” I happened to record it and it was fun.

I’ve always wanted to be in a barbershop quartet. Unfortunately I don’t know anyone else who does, plus I don’t always hit the right notes. So I tried recording a song with a few of myself, mixed down with Audacity.

DOWNLOAD

It’s an old-timey song, but Weezer does a cool cover.

My Evaline (my Evaline)
Say you’ll be mine (say you’ll be mine)
Won’t you come and let me whisper in your ear
Way down yonder in the old corn field
For you (for you)
I’ve pined
Sweeter than the honey
To the honey bee
I love you
Say you love me
Meet me in the shade
Of the old apple tree
Eva-Iva-Ova-Evaline