Designed Data Solutions & Integrations - NY, Inc.
Open Source Technologies This has become a way of life in our social surroundings and leisures in life.
We've come full circle in this industry and still continue to grow and evolve with technology as the community continues to progress at full force with astonishing rates of change and development in information technology. It has become a vital instrument in how we conduct business and will continue to do so well over and beyond our lifetime. We've embraced technology and now evolve alongside with
Open Stage Control (OSC)
A framework / front-end GUI that includes a Server / Web Server to present a custom GUI made up of widget objects similar to VB.
It’s primary use is for sending and receiving MIDI messages triggered by the widget as part of the widgets properties.
Currently I am using it in a Client / Server topology to control a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) specifically speaking Steinberg’s Cubase Pro 12.
In this Client / Server setup, it requires RTPMIDI to provide MIDI communication over an IP network. So it needs to be installed on the Server and the Client host machines. In my setup, I’m using Ubuntu LTS 22.04 as my Server and a Windows 10 Pro Workstation which is also hosting the DAW software (Cubase Pro 12).
To date, Client / Sever installation of RTPMIDI has been completed and tested. A test GUI Interface with a single programmed button has been created and is accessible on the Client machine via Web Browser (FireFox). The presents of the RTPMIDI Service (network MIDI Communication: IP:Port or midi:midi_instance_name) is discoverable and has also been verified/tested from within DAW application to work and trigger MIDI commands to operate DAW configurable controls via MIDI.
I have just received a 15.6” touchscreen monitor that I will soon attach to the Client machine running Cubase Pro 12 to further develop a custom control to control the DAW via MIDI Touchscreen custom controls.
All software required to do this is FREE except for the Windows OS, the DAW (although you would be able to run other FREE DAWs), and the Linux RTPMIDI Software which cost me $8.00 for Ubuntu 22.04. RTPMIDI for Windows could be found for FREE.
BTW, OSC Widgets has a property for CSS and the use of JavaScripts for custom modules. Also utilizes JSON.
Linux / Opensource Rocks!!! 🙂
Happy Coding. :)
Back on the horse and riding it all the way back to the future (GnuCobol v3.1.2 + ESQLOC v3.0 + MySQL v8.028 (using ODBC) on Ubuntu 20.04/22.04.
Just completed building this environment to begin and sharpen up my old Cobol programming know-hows. I'm running this on a Win11 Laptop with WSL2 Ubuntu Server 20.04 with MySQL Workbench 8 on Windows to manage the database that the Cobol code will connect to via ODBC. I have this environment built on a Laptop with the Ubuntu Server replicated on a physical dedicated server which will also house all source code. I'll be utilizing a ODBC driver to connect to the RDBMS .
I am hoping this adventure back to the good old days of Cobol Programming will be fruitful with the advancement, support, and features now available on GnuCobol,
And as always...... Linux Rocks!!! :)
AV-over-IP
Just got introduced to AV-over-IP this past weekend. I have to thank my Cousin that have consulted me on the topic and asked me to review some documents and specifications for an install. Mind you that AV-over-IP was still foreign to me, but it didn't take long as the infrastructure, topologies, etc. was no different from a regular IP network as it did run over IP. The only difference is you now have devices, much like your regular cable-box that house the codex to decode. In this system there is also a box that can encode and a box that can do both decode and encode to change and transmit AV to acceptable traffic on a Gigabit Network.
Yes, Gigabit Network not GigE or anything more than a Gigabyte! :)
This was a really good introduction as it not only forces me to look at hardware, topologies, and capabilities, and is not limited to just Video, but is now also required to allow Digital Audio to run on the network. Again, this is a IP Network, so all the data (video with embedded audio, and audio) will have to be broken down and converted into packets (encode), passed through an IP Network and re-assembled back (decode) into its former form onto the endpoint.
For Audio, we have Dante, and for video, well there's a couple of capable vendors, but we've looked at Crestron.
This type of infrastructure (AV-over-IP)(large scale roll-outs), seems to be catered more for Universities and Campuses, Corporate multi-site Conferences, or even Advertising. They are secured by the underlying network, but some end-to-end encode/decode devices also implement some sort encryption for security. Its Layer 2 and Layer 3, so it does have a MAC Address and a IP Address.
It is not only limited to the large-scale user, but also feasible and used in some high-tech homes that implement remote control on devices attached to these encoder/decoder endpoints that include an assortment of media interfaces like USB3/HDMI/AES67/CAT5/6 Interfaces/Display Ports and some also an RS232.
Exciting, pretty amazing of what we can now do over IP, and did I say Exciting! :)
AV-over-IP, I should have gotten on this band-wagon a long time ago! But like they say..... It's never too late! :)
15/04/2020
09/04/2019
Blast from the Past! :)
Believe it not, this is how I started building racked servers back in day when we still used SCSI Drives and 10Mb/sec network cards were phasing out to be 100Mb/sec. I used a lot of aluminum bars back then cuz it was easier to work with as mounts and support for the 3/8" plywood I used back then. :)
This is "Google"'s rack 2 decades ago!
VBA!!! We still do and maintain VBA code for off-the-shelf and quck&dirty M$ Office Excel applications! :)
This is something that will always be around in your office. Visual Basic Code/Scripts running in Excel. Its actually one the most used tool on the desktop since it already comes with M$ Office.
And for the small business entities that do not want to be locked-in with a specific firm or hire a full-time programmer, doing custom programming and applications, VBA is always available.
Remember Lotus-123, QuatroPro, and all the others back in the day when SPREADSHEETS was King and doing a lot of the heavy lifting! (Well COBOL was the REAL KING! back then! :) ) Well, its still around in small units in your office/company! :)
MAINTENANCE TIME!
Finally doing some maintenance / upkeep on Servers today after a really nice 3 week break spending time in the beautiful islands of the Philippines.
This coming Month (March 1, 2019) will be the first time running a Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, and a Full Backup on our Email Server for 2018 (since I was out of the country 12/31/2018). This will be a very long running process since this server has data from 2007 to present.
Also, recreating/resyncing our remote repository server to our File Server. Seems like the file-list got corrupted and the syncing fails at every attempt. We'll see! If this new sync completes without errors, we'll delete the old sync directory and continue using this new directory for syncing for 2019 on.
We've also implemented Web/Video conference in the conference room with a 60-Inch screen, which was a long overdue item on my things to do.
LINUX ------ Always Exciting! :)
23/10/2018
Linux is 25. Yay! Let’s celebrate with 25 stunning facts about Linux. 25 years ago this week, a college student in Finland shared his project on an email list:
04/10/2018
Open Source Really Rocks!
One of the most used/utilized Public IP Service prone to all sorts of attacks and is mostly unappreciated is the Mail Services that SMTP provides.
We use Open Source Zimbra Mail Servers and have now refined our Back-Up strategy and scripts from full blown complete Mailbox backups which takes up hundreds of Gigabytes and Hours to transfer from local to remote backup facilities to a more refined and granular approach of just backup up daily mailboxes everyday which bring the byte count down to less than a 100 Mb and transfers in less than a minute.
We've finally got scripts running to automate Daily/Weekly/Monthly and Yearly archives scheduled to run, and not hurt our bandwidth requirements for other processes and especially Road-warriors that find difficulty remoting in on off-hours when backups are transferring 100+Gigs of mail data to offsite remote backup facilities.
Hurray.... It took awhile, but now we've got it, and it works well!
ZIMBRA Collaboration Mail Server is a jewel! https://www.zimbra.com/
Programming for Digital submission of Certified Payrolls
We've been busy writing programs to extract, reformat, re-validate and submit Payroll data to different NY Agencies that now require electronically formatted and digitally signed Certified Payrolls. I guess this is where all is leading to within 2018 and should be fully implemented in 2019.
This is such a huge pain in the as aside from submitting hard copies for the next 5-6 months, digital data corresponding to those payrolls also has to be submitted. We've discovered that not all required data-fields for a totally no-user intervention submission are NOT available at this time and requires a user to log into a portal and supply data manually. We've requested this be addressed, but I wouldn't hold my breath!
This is totally unfair to some businesses that do not have internal programmers capable of handling such a task of this type of electronic data submission. Even with the assistance of Payroll companies that can provide the bulk of payroll data, the data still has to be reprocessed/reformatted and validated to conform to the different agency's systems requiring the data.
The current policy is: If YOU don't comply, YOU don't get paid! (for the work you've done and the moneies you've expended on a particular project).
So far, we've got all our beans together and have been running tests on data we've processed from different companies that have data coming from Payroll Companies, and from companies that require data-extraction from their Excel Payroll forms. Everything has to be analyzed (Unions/Trades/Rates/Benefits/Deductions&Taxes,etc..), processed, validated, and submitted for tests.
This brings out the programmer in you. I haven't done this for a long.... long time. Last time I did something like this was in my COBOL days! :) ------------- COMPUTING IS ALWAYS EXCITING! :)
16/03/2018
Just Fantastic! :)
Intel's New 49-qubit Quantum Chip & Neuromorphic Chip Intel's CES 2018 keynote focused on its 49-qubit quantum computing chip, VR applications for content, its AI self-learning chip, and an autonomous vehicles p...
It's all coming together! Hopefully, in my lifetime! 🙂
16/03/2018
Exciting! 🙂
Quantum Computing Meets Intel Engineering Intel delivered a 17-qubit superconducting test chip for quantum computing to QuTech, Intel’s quantum research partner in the Netherlands. The new chip was f...
05/03/2018
A documentary (Quantum Computer in a Nutshell)
Quantum Computer in a Nutshell (Documentary) The reservoir of possibilities offered by the fundamental laws of Nature, is the key point in the development of science and technology. Quantum computing is...
05/03/2018
How to comprehend Quantum Computing. The move from classic binary (bits) computing to quantum (Q-bits/qubits) computing.
Quantum Computing for Dummies : A Simple Explanation for Normal People Quantum Computers Explained ! In this video, I provide a simple explanation and overview and also discuss the implications for artificial intelligence, self-...
05/03/2018
Just wanted to share! Quantum Computing
A Beginner’s Guide to Quantum Computing Dr. Talia Gershon, a materials scientist by training, came to IBM Research in 2012. After 4.5 years of developing next-generation solar cell materials, she g...