My youtube #10.

Time What is Time - Blind Guardian.

Audacity slow-down calculator

*Note: this article is out-dated.  Or, no-worth.  I found that audacity fixed noise problem with tempo change.

If you play music, audacity is an essential tool for many useful things.  Copying music, Ear training, etc.  When slowing down original source using "change tempo", annoying noise mixes with proper output.   I walk two step to avoid noise.  "change speed" and "change pitch".

How much parameter to give to slowdown but no noise, no pitch change is calculated.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os

import sys

a = raw_input("slow down percent (50% half speed): ")

target_speed = float(a)

target_pitch = ( 100.0 - target_speed ) / target_speed * 100

print "target pitch change: %2.2f" % target_pitch

About Enthusiasm

I read a Korean article (http://wangsy.com/blog/2012/10/passion/), and One made me think for a while is this:

요즘 드는 또 다른 생각이 열정이란 만들어 내는 것도, 지켜내는 것도 아닌 주어지는 것 같습니다. 마치 천부적 재능이, 말 그대로 주어진 것이듯 ,열정도 주어지는 것인 것 같습니다. 뭔가 매우 비관적이고 운명론적 사고관이지만, 요즘 드는 생각이 그렇습니다. 열정을 가져 보아라, 열정이 꺼지지 않도록 잘 지켜라는 조언은 천부적 재능을 받아 보아라, 왜 예쁘게 태어나지 않았니 라고 하는 것과 같은 부질없는 이야기 인 것 같습니다.

It's very difficult to argue or practically apply this sentence.  But, I want to say that the author is so brave to tell this, because this is hard to say or hard to find an answer in practical world.  After a while, I somewhat agreed.

Software Design, or not?

During my career, I saw many people who write good pieces of software.  My goal has always been pursuing this.  To write a good software like these people.  But, here is an interesting thing to bring up.

So many of great software developers don't prepare separate time for designing!

In my case, I need time to design what I will write.  My design process is roughly like this:

1. Gather requirements.  And list what should happen.

2. Divide out inputs and outputs.  This eventually determines "interface".

3. Organize internal or intermediate data that I will handle in my system.  And see if I have to store anything.  (Store in memory for session, or store in DB for persistence).  These will contribute a lot to concrete functions or classes.  And key to the solutions.

Yep.. No UML, but my own way of listing and diagrams to represent. And this takes time.  So much time, actually.

I saw, and I am working with many great and smart developers.  And I know they write close to flawless codes in a shot.  My conclusion is "They also design, but they all do in their brain.  Therefore, design process is fast, and sometimes it looks missing from outside."  To be thorough, I need to check one by one through paper.  So, I am solving problem case by case.  This is inefficient, but so far this brings out my best quality.  I wish I could do these check step in brain so that I can produce software faster.
The key skill here is "memory", which is very hard to improve.

Passing by a bird

On the way to work this morning, I was driving my truck on 400 south at 60 mph.  I saw a bird from a distance.  He was flying -- entering low to cross the road from the right.  This bird, interestingly, tried to turn the direction, right in front of my lane.  While approaching to him(or her?), I recognized that it was an eagle by his slow but strong wing flap.  Since he just began to take off, he couldn’t fly high enough to clear height of my truck.  Initially, I wasn’t bothered slowing down because birds are quick to fly away.  But, the eagle seemed to stay still in front of me trying to turn around.  I put on a break a little bit and paid big attention to the distance to him.  After my second slow down for the elevated alerting level, the eagle finally finished turning.
When we were close, the eagle made a big wing-flap.  I saw him very close through the top right corner of my front windshield.  He missed me.  Although, it was an alerting situation, his final wing flap (flying away) looked beautiful.  He made total of 4 or 5 strong flaps during this incident, but 60 mph was a fast speed for natural creatures.  I felt so relieved that I didn’t harm this beautiful bird.

Several drafts...

I decided to use blog more to improve my writing skill.
Still writing a blog post is a hard thing.  I read somewhere to encourage blog posting saying "Invest a little more time writing facebook/twitter to write a blog post." (translated from Korean)

So, here I am.
My method to accomplish this was to use draft.  I write freely and save as draft.
I review my drafts and edits until I am satisfied to publish one.

The reality is only having several drafts so far.  Not one makes me happy to publish.
The trend will be only having more drafts, but very few will be published.  :)
I really envy people who write fluently and describe one's thought on writing.

my youtube #7