Category: Uncategorized

It’s easy to forget just how shambolic lots of scientific software is. Companies like Google and Microsoft pour billions into favoured mainstream topics, sometimes producing vaguely coherent and well maintained libraries — though even those can be unstable, prone to being broken at the most inopportune moment. But step even slightly off the beaten path and you’re plunged into a steampunk wilderness of mismatched decaying Heath Robinson contraptions lashed together with fish guts and twine. And you have to catch and gut your own fish.

I mostly understand the reasons for this, but it’s still incredibly frustrating. It’s a miracle anything ever gets done, and a lot of the time it just doesn’t.

It has definitely been one of those weeks. I won’t bore you (myself) with the details, but it has included, inter alia, binaural recording with a wooden head and handwaving about aliasing and IIR filters. Also lunch with an old complexer I haven’t seen since before the pandemic, which was lovely but also evidence of the complete atrophy of my social skills.

I’m really not sure I know how to live in this world. (No, I have no intention of stopping.)

Sometimes it’s necessary to go back and look at — or listen to — stuff I’ve made or written or whatever in the past. Sometimes it’s not necessary but I do it anyway. It’s almost always a weird and disorienting experience. In two ways, sometimes both at once.

Of course there’s the “JFC I was so embarrassing” aspect. That’s just inevitable.

But all too often there’s also “how the hell did I do that?” Which is partly about knowledge and skills I’ve forgotten. But I think some of it is more about courage, or nerve, or just plain ignorance. Like, how did I dare attempt that, let alone pull it off?

I might be able to remember or relearn those skills. Ignorance and courage? Not so much.

Among the topics for tomorrow’s Auditory Computing tutorial: “Why are decibels so damned confusing?”

In case you’re wondering:

• Ratios
• Logarithms
• Tenths
• Power vs root power
• Weighting