Ask Justin Frankel

tinyurl.com/busm55h The hell is schwa doing not supporting his own synth?

Thu, 17 May 2012 22:58:00 +0000

I guess his devotion to REAPER has its cost?

experimenting with EEL to support decimal float, looks good. but still for storage uses the default binary float, is it safe?

Thu, 17 May 2012 22:58:00 +0000

Hmm really? I want to see!

Why someone use EEL instead of Lua? A chance to defend your baby.

Wed, 16 May 2012 19:50:00 +0000

Performance for signal processing... I don't think Lua would come close (which isn't to say Lua isn't awesome, just different design goals).

Good music? www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWIKQMBBTtk 4:46ish is badass with good headphones.

Wed, 16 May 2012 19:51:00 +0000

Yeah pretty decent! :)

Were you ever approached by Steve Jobs? Why would he pick Soundjam over Winamp?

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:50:00 +0000

Soundjam was for macs, Winamp was not. Winamp was owned by AOL by that point, too, I think. Never met the man...

Have you been exposed to asynchronous methods and continuation-style callback mechanisms? It's sweet.

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:51:00 +0000

Hmm give me an example of that so I can see?

... would it be nice to have at least hashes for us (slightly paranoid?) power-users ;) Btw. Reaper is awesome, thank you! :)

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:51:00 +0000

Yeah, OK I'll look into it, paying the cert cartels...

I was asking (signatures) because of Windows 8s new default-blocking of unsigned apps (called SmartScreen). Apart from that ...

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:51:00 +0000

Ah yeah, that will be seriously weak.

Assuming most of your income doesn't come from Reaper, why wouldn't you make it opensource/free?

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:44:00 +0000

Having REAPER be developed by a business has many advantages -- we can have employees, we can spend money to license other technologies, provide infrastructure, etc. In many ways, you get what you pay for.

Does the fact that Facebook has so much user data (and at such a granular level) on their hands ever bother you?

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:43:00 +0000

Yeah, I try to avoid giving them any...

bitblt slow for big windows, any solutions?

Sat, 12 May 2012 14:06:00 +0000

Using a 32bpp DIB? Do you really need update every pixel, or could you just update the parts that changed?

Why we have a limitation in NSEEL_RAM_BLOCKS + NSEEL_RAM_ITEMSPERBLOCK? if changed, will it break things or I'll have bad perf..

Sat, 12 May 2012 02:03:00 +0000

If you change it you will need to make some mods to asm-nseel-x86-gcc.c and/or asm-nseel-ppc-gcc.c. If modifying the x86 version, you would also need to run "php a2i.php" and "php a2x64.php", the latter multiple times with certain options too. The limit is so that the RAM-space is constrained by EEL, so a plug-in can't allocate too much RAM.

Are we going to see you in Diablo III or EEL2 is a better hell? by the way the updates work beautifully... :)

Sat, 12 May 2012 02:03:00 +0000

Hmm?

Justin!! Whats up man! How have you been? Anything new going on? Haven't posted in a while. Take care

Sat, 12 May 2012 02:03:00 +0000

Stuff's good, bike riding more lately, which I like.

Hey, you've probably been asked this before, but why don't you supply hashes for Reaper (or Setup-Signatures)?

Fri, 11 May 2012 02:09:00 +0000

You mean signing our installers? I guess we could, but then we get to cough up for a certificate... Most people don't seem to mind running unsigned installers, anyway.

Programming probably came easy, but was running a business natural or did you have to work at it?

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:04:00 +0000

If you decide to run it in the right way, it can be easy. Dealing with making compromises in product in the name of money, that's not easy.

Would you be open to being interviewed by Ars Technica? If so, email me: cyrus.farivar at arstechnica.com

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:04:00 +0000

Sure, emailed.

Are you in contact with the folks from Sound on Sound much? Do they ask for tips for their monthly Reaper blurb?

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:05:00 +0000

A bit, it seemed they mostly wanted people who knew REAPER and wanted to write the column, rather than just the tips themselves...

In what programming language is Reaper coded ?

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:05:00 +0000

C++, but not overly-C++'y.

Re: Nitpicker. Everything silk smooth. Now I have to fix the leaks. What's the avg time u spend 2 make a critical R decision? :)

Fri, 04 May 2012 15:40:00 +0000

Depends, sometimes I procrastinate for months, other times I'll impulsively do stuff. Version control is a good thing.

Have you ever met Sean Parker? Thoughts?

Fri, 04 May 2012 15:41:00 +0000

I think I did meet him once or twice way back when, but didn't really form an opinion.

Are you on Stackoverflow?

Tue, 01 May 2012 17:06:00 +0000

I have posted a few answers but have never gotten many points.

Re: VC6. The unofficial mentor uses it. So we do as well, it's a matter of trust. It also has native GUI & it's damn fast.

Tue, 01 May 2012 17:08:00 +0000

For your testing pleasure (at your own risk) : np.zip -- run build.bat or (via msys) build.sh, once that works, add the generated .lib to your project, add link options /nodefaultlib:"LIBCMT", for best results define in the preprocessor definitions DEBUG_TIGHT_ALLOC (when using WDL anyway), and that should do 'er.

Is this array class is correct? I'm going to expand it with more operations, but that's the idea: pastebin.com/Ff9US2vE

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:42:00 +0000

I'm not completely sure if the manual calling of constructors/destructors is reliable. I'd probably make it an array of allocated pointers instead, personally.

Also, maybe worth doing bounds checking on the array accesses? I'm not a big fan of overloading operators, I'd rather do array.Get(x) than use array[x], so I'm aware of what's actually happening when I look at the code.

Re: Nitpicker. Our toolchain is strongly Cockos based cause we love it SO much. It would be handy to have some extra power.

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:43:00 +0000

Are you using VC6, too?

Will the fresh EEL2 be as easy to use as the current one? Being very skeptical when I have to deal with people with tons of IQ..

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:20:00 +0000

Yeah, drop in replacement mostly.

hey, managed to make valgrind/WINE work under ubuntu to test our Win32 builds. It's slow but powerful. News, about Nitpicker?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:21:00 +0000

Nice! We should release Nitpicker I suppose, though Valgrind is probably the next level (or multiple levels up)...

Tell us honestly - you guys really don't like dealing with MIDI, right?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:21:00 +0000

Sure we do.

What do u think about Linus Torvalds' opinion about C++?

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 01:24:00 +0000

I think he says mostly very reasonable, sensible things, and occasionally says things that are really controversial in order to make a point. Generally I agree with him -- allowing the linux kernel to use C++ would be a Very Bad Thing -- not because C++ is inherently awful, but because it allows (some might even say encourages) people to do terrible things. There are many features of C++ which are absolutely dreadful, and if you avoid those, it can be a rather nice improvement over C.

What's your Twitter name?

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:27:00 +0000

JustinFrankel

Whats your phone number

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:27:00 +0000

707-7COCKOS

Ever fooled around with LMMS?

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:28:00 +0000

I don't think so.

Have you ever tried meditation?

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:28:00 +0000

I find exercise (such as bicycling) to be some of the most soothing for my mind. ...and you get free drugs.

What is each developer working on right now?

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:29:00 +0000

I'm optimizing JSFX stuff. I can't say what the others are doing... :)

Could you top Milkdrop 2 or is Geiss on another graphics level?

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 03:35:00 +0000

I have nearly zero 3d graphics hardware programming experience.

Re: REAPER_x64_Win. Don't you have big size overhead with all the EXEs & DLLs static linked?

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 03:35:00 +0000

There's a bit, but it's not so bad, and lzma does a pretty good job of making it less of an issue.

Haven't use REAPER x64 for windows. Do you redistribute any system DLLs (CRT, etc) with the installer?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 23:01:00 +0000

Nein, we static link our binaries for win64.

is java good at something? i check it out once per 3 years and it's the same abomination every single time. enlighten me, plz.

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:19:00 +0000

Probably worth separating the language from the whole runtime system in making those arguments. The language seems to be fine. The way you actually run Java, however, seems to be a pain in the ass. What's the point, then?

Do you remember Dolby NR? :) Does analog interest you in any way?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:19:00 +0000

Yeah, somewhat, but what's there to play with?

Are you satisfied from ubuntu server? I'm thinking to make the switch from FreeBSD for our database servers.

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:19:00 +0000

Yeah for our (low traffic) needs it works great.

which assembler do you use for eel?

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:00:00 +0000

msvc/gcc inline assembler for 32 bit/ppc, and nasm for 64 bit. EEL2 is part of WDL, if you want to check it out (though that version is a bit old compared to what I'm working with now).

Have there been any major rewrites of Reaper or has the original design held up?

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Nothing major, but a lot of little subsystems have been added. Originally all of the controls were separate HWNDs, and then they were not, etc.

do numbers have a special meaning?

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:01:00 +0000

Probably? They are not purely symbolic, I'd think...

The UFC is exciting & u would love the jujitsu aspect of the fights. Either way, Justin jr or Justina will force u to love it.

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:02:00 +0000

Il n'y aura pas...

Given that, v8's speed, and Canvas in HTML5, any interest in a web-based player with revised AVS in browser? That'd be so sweet

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:02:00 +0000

Do they have local file access yet? :) RAM use is a still an issue, too...

Is it even worthwhile these days for avg programmers to learn win32 style programming?

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 02:33:00 +0000

I think one would certainly get more bang for their buck out of learning PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and DOM.. You can do some very fun, cross platform things that way.

Do you write pseudocode (to sketch out an idea) before you start coding?

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:27:00 +0000

Usually I try to use English and some indentation, but a lot of it happens mentally (I often think about things for hours and days and weeks before writing anything, to make sure I have a good understanding. Having said that I'm often wrong when I start but that's the way it goes...)

from your point of view: is REAPER designed from the ground up or evolved through time? what you find useful in real life?

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:25:00 +0000

REAPER has absolutely evolved. If we had to make something of REAPER 4.x's complexity from the ground up, I wouldn't know where to begin. It started out super simple, and has grown by building all kinds of new technologies as they were needed, and adding functionality into the existing basic framework of an app.

permission problems with .org/music. are you going to fix it? :(

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:24:00 +0000

Fixed, and added this mp3 for good measure.

How do the three of you in Cockos resolve disagreements, does having a small group help?

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:24:00 +0000

*knocks on wood* It's rare that we have something of real importance that we have vastly different opinions about... In general I think we tend to be polite, and if we disagree it's usually "no please you can do it" "no I insist!" etc.

Have you started watching the UFC? You would like it.

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:22:00 +0000

Hmm, no. What would I like about it?

.. and did you steal 'burn from acid burn on "Hackers" :P

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:41:00 +0000

Hell no, it was more referencing the various awesome songs of the time with that title (The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, etc)...

Did you hangout on EFNET back in the 90's? if so what channels? =)

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:39:00 +0000

yeah, #c, #winprog, and #mpeg3 mostly...

if you have choice between big and small company which would you work for? with all things considered like salary and benefts?

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 21:37:00 +0000

Assuming the benefits were in the same ballpark, absolutely a small company... but of course it depends greatly on the company, too.

Have you ever met Schwa face to face?

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:29:00 +0000

Face to puppet? Yes of course!

sexuality is the developmental outcome of one's nature, socialization, and preference. true or false?

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:14:00 +0000

Who the fuck knows, but it does seem to be largely driven by genes.

The word on the street is you and Schwa are planning to implement MIDI groove quanitze & automation items VERY soon. Is it rue?

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:12:00 +0000

No REAPER scheduling questions here, see above.

Why are you on facebook?

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:12:00 +0000

For the cat pictures.

why were/are you called "the time compiler?"

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:13:00 +0000

I forget, probably because of how it would flow to have that as a middle name (without 'the')...

Are things like this ever going to be fixed: forum.cockos.com/showpost.php?p=935898&postcount=155...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:12:00 +0000

Yes, of course.

Re MM: yours is clearer but we get the exact same result. in my example I / with factorial of 6 which is 720 etc. boring? :p

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:55:00 +0000

Ah yeah, oops, I didn't notice the !, it blended in as punctuation...

I don't know about MM but if it were lotto it would be: 1/49 * 1/48 * 1/47 * 1/46 * 1/45 * 1/44 = 10,068,347,520 / 6! correct?

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 15:14:00 +0000

I think I made the same mistake when initially calculating the odds of MM, but the order doesn't matter (except for the last number here), so your odds would be 1 in 49/6 * 48/5 * 47/4 * 46/3 * 45/2 * 44, or 1 in about 13 million. For the first number, you have 6 chances in 49, the second number has 5 chances in 48, etc.

are you going to play MegaMillions for a chance to win 1/2 billion dolla'

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:28:00 +0000

Sure, $1's worth, anyway. I originally replied with some odds calculations which were a bit off -- by my (fixed) math the odds seem to be (5/56 * 4/55 * 3/54 * 2/53 * 1/52 * 1/46), or about 1 in 175 million. Not too shabby!

Why do so many developers use Macs? Writing web code and browsing are basically the same despite OS, so why pay the extra?

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:01:00 +0000

It comes preinstalled with apache, php, perl, vim, etc?

what's the best organization for header includes in order to increase compilation speed?

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:37:00 +0000

Dunno, I've usually tried to speed up rebuilds via hardware... The pair of mac minis do a pretty good job of it now.

what do you think of this? www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSKQ3ZNQ_O8

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:38:00 +0000

Errm.

where [do] you live NY or SF ?

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 14:23:00 +0000

NYC! =)

Have you used XML in any of your projects?

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:00:00 +0000

I find it a pain to parse.

is wdl_fft fast enough for all Reaper's FFT needs or do you use other libraries too?

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:42:00 +0000

Yes, though compiling it with ICC probably doesn't hurt, too.

who is the boss of twitter?

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 04:39:00 +0000

royugo?

Ever used Lisp? Any thoughts on it?

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:42:00 +0000

I've looked at it but never done anything meaningful with it. I've spent more time with javascript, which syntax aside reminds me of it.

Thoughts? www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UvEiSa6_EPA...

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:43:00 +0000

Err, meh. I've been playing with eyewire, it's really cool.

How many space is your tab space on your code editor? Or do you use the default (4 spaces)?

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:44:00 +0000

2, inserted as spaces. Probably leads to bad habits (too large of functions), though.

Re: prioritizing. I assume then MIDI is not high on your list, unfortunately. But it's something that needs to be improved a lot

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:35:00 +0000

It's on the list, and we'll probably address it at some point. It is all relative, though, and while you say it needs to be improved a lot, it is also quite functional.

Do you use _CrtDumpMemoryLeaks()?

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:34:00 +0000

No, but we do have our own tool called Nitpicker which can detect leaks but more importantly other errors. Having said that, checking for leaks is sort of difficult as there are many many false positives; we normally would just detect them by real world testing and if we find patterns that result in increasing ram use we would be able to narrow those down and address them.

Do you do any automated testing on REAPER builds?

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:32:00 +0000

Not at the moment, but it has been considered, somewhat.

hmm, really enjoyed {company picnic}, long & tasty! So, what have you been doing lately mate, are you up to something?

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:32:00 +0000

Some travel, visiting friends and family, and stuff. Here's a pic:

The day you got the AOL offer, what thoughts went through your mind? Did you consider you were set for life? Did you celebrate

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:31:00 +0000

Didn't seem real at the time... I remember having dinner with some friends a short time after, and it felt normal (maybe like Christmas eve, slightly).

What's your opinion on C++ conversion operators, like "operator HWND() { return m_hWnd; }"? Do you use these on your code?

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:30:00 +0000

I don't like them, because I feel it's better to explicitly cast things, and even better for you (as the programmer) to be aware you're calling a function.

Why is exploiting ads for profit a bad thing? Should marketing not charge for its service?

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:13:00 +0000

Sounds an awful lot like spam to me.

cargocollective.com/jeffreyjames/Listen-Listen -what do you think of my music?

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:13:00 +0000

I will listen, when I get a chance...

What do you think about some opinions said in this thread (posts 3-5)? forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=98603

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:42:00 +0000

It's easy to point at something that you think is easy to fix but have it actually be more complicated than you think. Also, while we do listen to users a lot, we also end up prioritizing the things that are the most important to us.

goo.gl/KoEz6 - for my irc question, I just meant for the users, not the devs.

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:14:00 +0000

Ah yeah, could do that too. IRC often degenerates into chaos, though.

i made zero dollars...was more a proof of concept..didn't you disable ads in AIM messenger? following your footsteps ;)

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:15:00 +0000

Just replaced them with fancy visuals -- but that was a different point.

I read CreateThread leaks C-runtime memory, and should be used only when no C-runtime calls. Otherwise, _beginthreadex. Right?

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:18:00 +0000

You mean calls that are generally not threadsafe anyway, and require use of TLS to be thread safe (like strtok())? Probably, but we don't use those runtimes. Also, if you link with the DLL CRT, it appears that it shouldn't leak anyway (since it gets DllMain calls on each new thread creation, etc).

i got banned from google adsense how can i get back...i will be a good boy going forth...you think they give 2nd chances?

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 03:47:00 +0000

I have no idea, but people who exploit ads for profit, meh, I have little sympathy..

Did you read many programming books, or just learn by playing around / online snippets & tutorials?

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:36:00 +0000

Yeah, I read a couple of MS books about win32 (both the Petzold one and another, Advanced Windows or similar, by Richters I think, which had all kinds of info on some of the more useful OS features), some Abrash books, a lot of books in the category of Graphics Gems, some stuff by Knuth, etc. Not sure if I would bother these days, the internet has so much good stuff on it.

Any tips on how to implement a "recently opened files" menu entry without making a real mess?

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:37:00 +0000

Populating a menu in WM_INITMENUPOPUP usually works pretty well.

is reastream proprietary? or would you consider publishing info about creating clients/servers (time permitting)?

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:37:00 +0000

I started documenting it for you, but it's sort of a mess; I should probably fix some real problems with it and then post the spec, sure... It is simple UDP, you could probably sniff it easily enough for audio (the MIDI side is ugly, though).

Legal BS. In R's license R is written w/ TM which means unregistered trademark. In .exe is mentioned registered.. Which is true?

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:23:00 +0000

It is registered now, but at one point it was not.

I start to love STL. Am I doomed?

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:22:00 +0000

I don't think you are necessarily doomed, however one can easily do themselves in if they are not careful.

Which particular functions do you use to deal with threads on Win32?

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:48:00 +0000

CreateThread(), WaitForSingleObject(), CloseHandle(), Enter/Leave/InitializeCriticalSection(), etc, and sometimes CreateEvent() too..

have you ever considered running a web-based IRC channel for cockos stuff? take a look at this beauty: https://github.com/thedjp

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:48:00 +0000

Nah, we're often too accessible as it is :)

Why do smart/hip programmers these days (especially SF) answer every question by beginning with "So, ... "

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:49:00 +0000

So no shit is the prefix I prefer. Honestly I don't really know what you're talking about, though.

If you HAD to use a managed VM platform, would you go with Java or .NET and why?

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 19:01:00 +0000

Argh, hell if I know... I guess .NET, but I have little experience with either. Does PHP count?

How will having X amount of people following you on twitter affect your ego? :) Welcome to the dark side.

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 05:16:00 +0000

Either validate how important I thought I was, or crush me, time will tell.

www.neveroccurs.com/lab/three.js/gpu_particles/index.html?partic... Look what browsers can do now! Wee!

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 04:52:00 +0000

It is getting pretty awesome, I agree. I've been playing with javascript stuff for fun, too. Nothing that fancy, though.

What is your opinion on the huge trend away from software efficiency (.NET, iTunes, Windows 7 using 1GB RAM baseline, etc.)?

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 01:40:00 +0000

It's generally awful, though to be honest Windows 7 I rather like, you do get some bang for your buck. The real problem, as I see it, is that people get lazy. People make stuff and don't think too much about code size or overhead or memory use, they just go "whatever, that's good enough". .NET is particularly awful because it lets the user put that blame onto someone else. You can write a nice little tight piece of .NET code, and turn it into a big pile of bloat, but it has a nice SEP field to it.

I've a fresh app with child dialogs & vwnd controls. i get R6025 error while i do .PaintVirtWnd(&g_vwnd). any idea what's wrong?

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:23:00 +0000

I'd have to see more code, but that might be where you do NULLpointer->method(), where method() is a virtual function...

Have you ever listened to any of Nina Simone songs ? If yes, which is your fav.?

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:23:00 +0000

Can't say that I have.

Have you played around with mobile device (IOS/Android) programming at all? Thoughts?

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:24:00 +0000

Yeah, I've done some iOS stuff.. it's not bad, just pretty tedious. The main thing keeping me from it now is that to target iOS5 you seem to have to use Xcode4, which is probably the most frustrating experience I've had lately.

is justin bieber actually real

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:26:00 +0000

Youtube seems to think he exists...

les paul or strat

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:26:00 +0000

Strat, but there are always things to appreciate about all guitars, really.

Hi Justin! I have a wav file with Note C (guitar sample) and I want to change it to C#. How to implement it in code?

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:28:00 +0000

If you don't mind changing the length, you could use WDL_Resampler to adjust the rate, i.e. rs.SetRates(srate,srate*pow(2.0,-1.0/12.0)).. There would be a lot of code to read/write .wav files, etc, though. If you want to keep the length the same, you could use SoundTouch and use a pitch adjustment of a similar amount.

Have you ever listened to any Humble Pie? If not you have to check out the Eat It Album!!

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:28:00 +0000

I haven't, but I will.

Have you ever, for any reason, wish you wouldn't have sold Nullsoft to AOL?

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:15:00 +0000

I'm sure at some point, probably in a stupor, I have thought that, but the vast majority of the time I am thankful for the events that occurred.

Did Tag actually rewrite shoutcast, or just make minor mods on your code?

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:20:00 +0000

I believe there were very extensive mods.. Shoutcast was probably my first real network server thingy... and thus was pretty lousy (albeit functional) initially.

I have to ask... Whats the perception you have of Portugal and the Portuguese. No need being polited!

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:31:00 +0000

I don't have any real perception, I've never been, but would like to go, though I suppose I should learn some Portuguese first...

As an old Win32-head, how did you approach OSX programming? What did you try to learn first?

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:40:00 +0000

Probably the biggest help would be getting comfortable with objective C's syntax, and getting used to things like [obj isKindOfClass:[NSWhatever class]] and [obj respondsToSelector:@selector(doesSomething:)] and so on. Then you learn some basic cocoa stuff, and spend ages digging through the awful documentation to figure out how to do what you want to do. I liked it so little, I made sure that I'd never have to do it again (hence SWELL wrapping the cocoa).

When dealing with large changes in a system, do you prefer a gradual change or a hard switchover? (postgres > mongodb for me)

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:11:00 +0000

Gradual when possible, for sure...

I run out of cool names for servers. Would you help with a few suggestions? make it geeky and/or cocky :)

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:11:00 +0000

Characters from your favorite movies are always good.

Do you ever get annoyed with comentaries in Reaper forums with critics to options you make with the software?

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:12:00 +0000

Yeah, hearing criticism from other people can be tough; sometimes you get good stuff from it though, and the rest you mostly need to brush off...

sorry.. another q... how do you resize a window in swell?

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000

SetWindowPos()?

any tips for compiling eel2 on OSX? forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=96874 thanks

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Answered (don't include asm-*.c in your project). :)

I would like to ask you several questions about your participation to Gnutella, for my ending studies project. Tks

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:34:00 +0000

Sure, you can post here or email.

Hi Justin, have you ever been to Romania? If not, do you have any intentions to visit it?

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:35:00 +0000

I haven't.. I wouldn't mind, I believe I am descended partly from there...

imgur.com/bG6iq nice shadow to emphasize the Z order relationship... Where should I look for similar functionality?

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 02:16:00 +0000

That is done using LICE_GradientRect().. Or maybe it's an overlayed image, I forget (it can be either depending on the theme)

default value of pointer to struct is always zero! why?

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:38:00 +0000

Hmm, it is?

linked loader implementation for images of LICE is cool! Is it your idea?

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:38:00 +0000

Yeah, though I doubt it is original... also, sometimes depending on how things are build the linker fails to call the constructor for the registration objects, sadly...

Do you ever get annoyed with sexism towards men, or do you think men's rights groups are all just whiny misogynists

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:17:00 +0000

No, I don't think we can really complain, we've had it so good...

Did you write any Windows desktop programs with C# and .NET? Would you recommend it instead of C++ in any particular situation?

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:19:00 +0000

I haven't had any real experience using C# or .NET, so it would be hard for me to recommend. I'd imagine it is easier to get started with, though, as win32/C++ is a complete roll-your-entire-environment mess.

do you think your skill/technology would be out of date if you had to find a job like the rest of us?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:15:00 +0000

Depends on the job, I'd think!

UpdateLayeredWindow: should i multiply each pixel rgb values with its alpha? how? value

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:05:00 +0000

Ah yeah, it wants premultiplied alpha, I forgot about that:


void pf(LICE_pixel *p, void *parm)
{
  int a = LICE_GETA(*p) + 1;

  // not technically correct, removing the +1/-1 and changing /256 to /255
  // would be more correct (and also quite a bit slower).
  *p  = LICE_RGBA(
           (LICE_GETR(*p)*a)/256,
           (LICE_GETG(*p)*a)/256,
           (LICE_GETB(*p)*a)/256,
           a-1);
}

LICE_ProcessRect(&a,0,0,a.getWidth(),a.getHeight(),pf,NULL);

(This would also mangle the buffer, so you'd want to do it in a temporary buffer if you don't redraw every frame completely)

I'm sure the answer is some deep math, but why does the frequency response of graphical equalizers bubble up all the time?

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:03:00 +0000

Bubble up?

Playing 2 identical waveforms at the exact same time will not yield a natural mix. How does that work in nature? Implausible?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:05:00 +0000

What does "natural mix" mean? And in nature, do you mean having two trumpets playing identically infinitely close to each other, or with two analog signals being combined on a copper wire?

Do you hate when people ask for features from other DAWs? Is it really hard to do proper area selection (PT-style) for Reaper?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:55:00 +0000

You have to make it make sense within the context of REAPER, vs. making it be-like-some-other-app, yeah.

how to use UpdateLayeredWindow function with LICE?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:01:00 +0000

Probably something like:


  LICE_SysBitmap a; // draw there
  int alpha=255;

  HDC dc = a.getDC();
  RECT r;
  GetWindowRect(hwnd, &r);
  SIZE rs = {r.right-r.left, r.bottom-r.top};
  BLENDFUNCTION blendPixelFunction= { AC_SRC_OVER, 0, alpha, AC_SRC_ALPHA };
  POINT psrc ={0,0};
  UpdateLayeredWindow(hwnd, GetDC(NULL), (LPPOINT)&r, &rs, dc, &psrc, 0, &blendPixelFunction, ULW_ALPHA);

(this assumes you have a window with no titlebar etc, like our splash screen...)

Do you install and run competing software to get ideas for Reaper?

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:12:00 +0000

Before I starting working on REAPER I did use other software, but since then no, I've only installed competing software for purposes of compatibility testing etc (mostly via ReWire -- I think I still have the Live 7.x demo installed for this purpose, but also for ReaPlugs).

The thought of using other software enough to glean any kind of idea from them is a horrid one, honestly. REAPER works just so very well for me.

IPA, Wheat or Amber

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:32:00 +0000

I prefer a nice mild lager, or a stout, personally... Also, Newcastle, mmm. Having said that, they all mess with my stomach so I generally avoid them.

Don't you need to clip post sum?

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:13:00 +0000

Only if you're going to convert back to fixed range PCM... you definitely wouldn't want to clip until you absolutely must...

Re: Mixing WAV files: I meant code, but I've got it now. What are your favorite (most used) effects for guitar/voice processing?

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:30:00 +0000

Ah yeah, simply summing is the way to go. I like using the JS delays, auto panners, phaser, and autopeakfilter too.. all fun stuff. Also I use ReaComp and ReaEQ a lot but for more technical purposes rather than purely creative...

How to mix 2 wav files into one (drum section and guitar). Could you please give some explanation or the starting point?

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:29:00 +0000

In REAPER, or in code? :)

very active the music section in 2012, are you preparing a new album soon?

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:28:00 +0000

No, but I plan to record more this year than last.

Old school guy here, big producer, engineer back in the day...thanks for Reaper, just want to record real music and now can do.

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:04:00 +0000

Awesome! Glad we can make a nice modern tape deck :)

Have you tried Winamp for Android yet? I'm reading about it in February's PC World (available at a torrent site near you)

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:04:00 +0000

I haven't, I am iPhone scum.

What's your naming convention on C++ private/protected/public variables & methods?

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:05:00 +0000

Methods can be named whatever, but we always make member variables prefixed with m_, unless it is a trivial class/struct with not more than a few tiny methods. Global variables tend to be g_*, or s_* if they are local to a particular file (i.e. static).

What do you think of embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder ?

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:05:00 +0000

No experience with it, probably will never try it.

Does the corporate angst go away when you quit working for a big company and start working for yourself?

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:07:00 +0000

Yeah, once you have new things to obsess over, anyway.

should my prototyped functions have variable names associated with the types?

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:07:00 +0000

Usually a good idea, and an even better idea to have them be labelled somewhat accurately.

How in the hell does the USA have the rights to Police the INTERNETS!? bit.ly/xEzktQ - is this just the beginning?

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:07:00 +0000

We gave birth to you, so we can destroy you.

Is this what happened with WinAMP 3? www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:08:00 +0000

More or less, yeah. It is good advice.

myspace.com/gps/music/songs?filter=featured - great band, just sharing.

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:08:00 +0000

Will look.

Are you impressed with the iTunes vis, or is it lame compared to what you did in 2000?

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:08:00 +0000

I find that it meets the requirements ([x] visualization support, next!) but is totally uninteresting.

Thoughts on what happened to Megaupload? Man, regardless of the money. I still wouldn't want to be in their situation.

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:37:00 +0000

Goes to show you, we don't need SOPA/etc... The govt has plenty of tools.

Any plans to add elastic audio to Reaper?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:37:00 +0000

I.e. warp markers? Maybe someday.

When you find a new band that you like. Does it help motivate/inspire you to keep working on reaper & do new things with it etc?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:38:00 +0000

Sometimes, but indirectly.

Have you read "Coders At Work"? www.codersatwork.com/ I found it quite interesting.

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:38:00 +0000

Ah no, but interesting.

I've read that you dropped out of college. What did you dislike about school?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:39:00 +0000

My experiences were not fantastic. The biggest problem was that I injured myself the summer before school, the consequence of which was missing the chance to test out of all of the intro CS classes. Extreme boredom followed.

what is your opinion on how to stop digital music piracy

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:39:00 +0000

Step one would be to acknowledge that not all acts of piracy are lost sales -- once you do that, the problem is more manageable.

Dam Jan 20 last day for Portugal to play in NY. Now they are going Europe. Have u seen the current/past tour dates? Must be hard

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:40:00 +0000

Sadly I missed it :(

How quick will this make it to REAPER? science.slashdot.org/story/12/01/20/037236/faster-than-fast-four...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:26:00 +0000

Hard to say, it essentially appears to be a lossy FFT, where it picks the frequencies that matter... So not sure if that'll be terribly applicable for things like convolution, though maybe.

Hmmm... I can use the urlbar to search in FF too. :P Kinda don't like Google's policy of tracking your surfing habits though.

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:27:00 +0000

I figure they know everything about me anyway...

Heheh, like you couldn't disable automatic updates in Firefox :P

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 02:01:00 +0000

True. I like using the url bar to search, too, in Chrome. And I also like not having to install/constantly update Flash.

This is the longest time you've stayed focused on one big project. Do you see an endpoint? Do you miss the transition to new?

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 02:01:00 +0000

Well, REAPER started as a music making tool for me, so it'll continue that way. Maybe someday I'll make some good music and that'll take more of my time...

might we ever see reaplugs on osx? reajs especially

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 02:00:00 +0000

Maybe someday, I agree reajs in particular is quite interesting. It would have to be for Cocoa hosts only, I suppose... or I guess there's an api to host Cocoa in Carbon stuff for 10.5+..

what web browser do you use/would you recommend (pc)?

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:14:00 +0000

I personally like Chrome, from a UI and experience perspective. I got so tired of Firefox always prompting me to update, too...

Nice find - Portugal. The Man - They must smoke some good shit in Portland. Doesn't the whole album make you want to take a toke

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:15:00 +0000

Not really, but I know what you mean. The albums "American Ghetto" and "The Satantic Satanist" are also good.

What is the best/easiest way to get a total and free memory info in osx. Using C++ and QT.

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:15:00 +0000

malloc_zone_statistics()

can I buy stocks in COCKOs or will they be available in the future

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:16:00 +0000

No, we are intending to remain private and closely held. Thank you for the interest, though!

Thoughts? www.youtube.com/watch?v=6laGvKtPZYQ

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:16:00 +0000

I can't watch that.

I couldn't find any tutorial on how to install Intel Compiler on Visual Studio. Do you have any link?

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:17:00 +0000

I think they've dropped support for VC6 in the newer versions, but in 10.x you can just choose VC6 or VC2005 integration as a component when installing ICC. Then, once you open VC6, you can choose which compiler you want. I imagine it's still the same in the newer versions, except it'd be VC2005/2008/2010 only etc...

How do you all keep track of why complex development decisions were made, when the same issue comes up again?

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 23:57:00 +0000

That would be a good thing, no doubt. Git blame sometimes works...

what is pentium's dual pipe line and how it effects on programming..?

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 23:58:00 +0000

Probably of no use today, but if you were programming assembly for it you could in theory get up to 100% performance improvements by ordering things correctly. These days it's moot, though.

No. Do you agree with Linus at 2:50 when he says source code is extremely hard to read and understand?

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:32:00 +0000

I don't think he's saying that -- I think he's saying that even a simple program is so complex that it is difficult for anybody to understand the FULL IMPLICATIONS of the code; obviously, you can often understand what the basic function of some code is, and how it is implemented, but the actual complexity of the system will exceed your understanding (your understanding will be correct most of the time, except when it's not). Proof of this point: pretty much all code has bugs. If you could read code and fully understand every aspect of it, you would spot all bugs and produce perfect code.

re: catch 22. got the book yesterday, started reading it; it looks good. thanks. is it a good habit to want to const everything?

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:45:00 +0000

Awesome, I enjoyed that one a lot. Using const when appropriate is definitely a helpful habit to be in, yeah... but if you overuse it it can be a bit tedious.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt_Y4pSdsHw How are you at reading code? Do you agree with Linus at 2:50?

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:44:00 +0000

Do I agree that for the science of it, open source is superior? Yes. Do I think it makes for better products? In itself, yes. There are other factors, though. I'd happily open source REAPER if we could still run it as a business similar to the way we do now, but unfortunately I can't come up with any models to make that happen.

Are you trying to limit our sexual activity? WDL is so powerful that my d*ck looks insignificant.

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:43:00 +0000

Reducing overpopulation one line of code at a time... Seriously though, thank you, but you exaggerate a bit. :)

Please publish your cd-key/licensing module.. that would be great! Maybe a side project for you? Pretty-please!

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:42:00 +0000

Erm, maybe someday, but I've got a billion other things to do first.

Was it difficult to deal with being forced to stop developing W.A.S.T.E.?

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:42:00 +0000

It was a bit sad to see it go, yeah.

{programming} when good enough is good enough?

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:26:00 +0000

When there's something else that needs to be done.

am I right?

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:26:00 +0000

Sometimes.

Can you write an open-sauce cd-key/licensing application and release it to the world?

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:28:00 +0000

Hmm, just grab libtomcrypt, and do some basic signed keys using RSA or EC, and base64 or base16 encode the data, and include some smart parsing and whatnot... I'd publish ours, but it's a bit crap, tbh.

Would you be willing to write a blog post about your work ethic, from the early days until now?

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:29:00 +0000

Not sure how interesting that'd be.. it would be summarized as "if you want to use the thing you're making, and have friends who use it and complain when you break shit, and obsess about enjoying the process, you'll work your ass of making it something good."

want to buy a book at around 300-400p. Any recommendations? the topic can be anything, but I would prefer something light&funny.

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:41:00 +0000

How about Catch 22?

I know an army of addicted whittle users waiting silently for an update. Any statement for what 2012 holds? happy new year m8!

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:42:00 +0000

Ah, I should push an update, yeah...

Have you ever been to a concert at The Stone thestonenyc.com/ ?

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:40:00 +0000

No, but that sounds like a nice place!

Not being a money centred person, how do you feel receiving a large amount of money (i.e >$26k/yr) has benefited you/society?

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:43:00 +0000

How has it benefited me? Well, I've had plenty of experiences I wouldn't have had otherwise (though who knows what experiences I gave up as a result...). Having flexibility in my work schedule has allowed me to make software that people enjoy using, which I enjoy and society may arguably benefit from.. so there's that sort of thing. Generally, though, I don't think I'm any happier than if I was making $26k/year, I just have very different things to complain about.

Which side would you rather race and why? www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFCNVvvmxNw

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:43:00 +0000

Bahahah that is awesome and stupid and awesome.

IMO, Winamp 2.91 remains the epitome of tight, efficient Win32 C programming. What do you use to play your MP3s nowadays?

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:43:00 +0000

Winamp 5.08e, usually... or my iphone, or sometimes *shudder* iTunes.

When reading the DSP guide, did you understand all of the math in your first pass? The math seems hard.

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:43:00 +0000

Hell no, some of the 3D stuff for the recursive filters I still don't grasp.

If I pay for winamp these days, will you get any money?

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:43:00 +0000

No.

If I wanted to learn how to create network/p2p systems, where exactly should I start? Thanks!

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:43:00 +0000

No idea, look at all of the open source stuff maybe?

Do you write your Win32 programs as Unicode (always)?

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:13:00 +0000

I do everything in multibyte character set, but use UTF-8 (via WDL's win32_utf8.h wrapper) for character encodings (so our stuff will work on win9x etc).

How'd you spend Christmas? :-)

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:12:00 +0000

Visiting my wife's parents, and eating, mostly.

I use icc (big deal) but lately I'm very skeptical about performance on non-intel cpus. cpu dispatcher, Is it fair for the user?

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:49:00 +0000

I haven't done exhaustive tests, but I believe the following to be the case:

ICC produces code that is a lot faster on Intel CPUs, when compared to both VC6 and VC2005, though the gains are a bit less when VC2005 has SSE2 enabled (but that of course requires a non-ancient CPU).
ICC produces code that is a lot faster on AMD CPUs, when compared to VC6 or VC2005 (when the latter has SSE2 disabled).
ICC vs VC2005/SSE2 on AMD CPUs, that I'm not so sure about.

My experiences are based on ICC 10.x, I should mention, which is old.

What cell phone u use?

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:49:00 +0000

iPhone 4S, at the moment.

PlayPreviewEx "family": what do mean the parameters "bufflags" and "msi" ?

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:31:00 +0000

If 1 is set in bufflags, it will buffer-ahead (in case your source needs to do some cpu intensive processing, a good idea -- if it needs to be low latency, then don't set the 1 bit).

MSI is the measure start interval, which if set to n greater than 0, means start synchronized to playback synchronized to a multiple of n measures..

Do you have any kind of IRA?

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:29:00 +0000

Yes, which reminds me I need I need another.

How you measure cpu & memory consumption in REAPER? asking cause I can't find the regular win32 calls in swell etc.

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:08:00 +0000

For Win32 it's non-obvious and not a standard API, unfortunately, it involves reading a bunch of undocumented registry keys. For OSX we use malloc_zone_statistics() and getrusage().

C has very few fancy language constructs, yet you can do anything with it. Are new language features really worth anything?

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 21:01:00 +0000

Sure, for example, having member functions that have an implicit "this" pointer takes a great deal of pain-in-the-ass away (I'll admit this is at the expense of scope clarity -- hence, it makes sense to prefix member variables with m_ or similar so you never have to worry about "is this local or is this a member?" -- but this is not hugely different from local vs global data anyway). Also templates can be very handy, too, otherwise in C you use other kludges like big nasty #define based macros, or #define + #include, etc. Having said that, I do end up doing those as well, at times.

Is it safe to leave my girlfriend alone for some quality programming on a Saturday night?

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 01:43:00 +0000

Depends on how good of a programmer she is, I suppose?

...approaching Christmas, have you got a wish list for Santa? :O

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 01:44:00 +0000

Not really, I'm sure I'm on his naughty list anyway.

Have you got any clue why many people avoid GPLv3 like plague?

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 01:46:00 +0000

I suppose one could say GPL3::GPL2::::GPL2::BSD or something, and GPL2 is nice and in the middle? I end up preferring LGPL or BSD myself.

Re:(functional) human error man.. Do you take advantage of intrinsic functions for MMX, SSE etc in REAPER for speed improvement?

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 01:46:00 +0000

Functional programming being a way around human error? Or human error to repost (if so, no worries). I never bother with intrinsic functions anymore, and even then I'd probably use inline assembly (though we use little of it now).

What's your thoughts about functional programming languages?

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 02:54:00 +0000

Asked and answered. :)

Do you feel you owe gratitude for your current position in life to Dieter Seitzer?

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:45:00 +0000

Hmm not really, but respek.

developers.slashdot.org/story/11/12/14/1725205/firefox-too-big-t... Layman translation? :(

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:45:00 +0000

In short: it takes a huge amount of memory to do a very specialized sort of optimized compiling of FireFox, a type that many/most people don't bother with anyway.

Do you ever check out recent builds of WinAMP to see what they're doing with it, or do you not care?

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:46:00 +0000

Not so much as of late, but perhaps I should.

Do you still keep in touch with Dmitry Boldyrev? I google imaged his ass & I couldn't find anything. How is this even possible!?

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:58:00 +0000

I don't, and haven't for a very long time.

whos responsible for introducing you to such great music? For you to listen while looking out your window bit.ly/ca0vPs

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:58:00 +0000

Friends often recommend albums...

"Oh my God! Oh my God! My twin brother has been SHOT!" haha what kind of bands do you like from the 60's-70's? Floyd? Beatles?

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:41:00 +0000

Yeah, also Television and Can come to mind.

Re: watermelon. I simply think it's one of the tastiest fruits on the world. Only rivalled by pineapple and apricot. :P

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:41:00 +0000

It's pretty good, I'd agree, but not in my top 5.

If you were to design a new p2p file sharing system today, would you use distributed hash tables?

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 15:24:00 +0000

Probably.

Which games did you enjoy the most on the original xbox?

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 15:25:00 +0000

Hmm MAME I think. :)

What is better for programming? Caffeine or Provigil?

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 15:25:00 +0000

I only know the first one, and I am having some right now.

Watermelon? :)

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 15:25:00 +0000

Yes?

I'm a simple programmer and spot all kinds of issues with Google Music. How do those huge brains at google miss obvious probs!?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:11:00 +0000

The issues they did have to fix were probably really complex...

do i like pizza?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:11:00 +0000

Who doesn't like pizza?

How do you deal with massive WM_PAINT code? Separated functions? Dedicated classes?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:15:00 +0000

Normal functions and stuff, yeah.

Why did you decide to start this site, and begin answering questions in this manner?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:11:00 +0000

I figured it was easier than coming up with things to write in blog form.

run-time or load-time dynamic linking?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:15:00 +0000

Depends, but run-time generally if it's something that might not always be present.

Hey Justin, I like my handle. But i'm thinking of changing it to "Sam Sweet" what do you think? bit.ly/4ZyRn0

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:14:00 +0000

Haha I had no idea he was in that.

If Pinnochio said "My nose is about to grow", what would happen?

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:42:00 +0000

The real question is, in my mind, did Pinnochio's nose grow because of the intent of lying or the actual lie? I.e. if he believed something to be true, and said it, and it turned out to be false, would his nose grow? If so, he would have an extremely valuable tool for testing the truth of things.

VMWare Workstation or VirtualBox? (and why?)

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:39:00 +0000

VirtualBox, because it is free and in theory one could go hack the source (though compiling it is apparently a huge task).

Do you think Linux will ever compete with OSX or Windows as a desktop OS?

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:40:00 +0000

I would say that it does now, but if you mean "with a significant share of the desktop OS market", I don't know. Both Windows and OSX are pretty compelling, largely due to the wide variety of software...

Would it make you happy if one of these online music stores ported AVS to Javascript/Canvas to add your tech? That'd be rad.

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:55:00 +0000

That would be rad. I.e. this...

What are your thoughts on Google's Music service? Any point to uploading your library?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:53:00 +0000

I tried out iTunes match, it works pretty well. Not having to use iTunes would be a big plus, though.

The Amazon service is pretty good too; the big thing that was nice about iTunes match, though, is I only had to upload about 10% of my stuff, the other 90% it already had. I have a decent amount of upstream at home, but that 10% still took a while... had I had to do all of it, I would've been waiting around a while.

Do you think you could solve skeletal tracking (or get a decent solution) like Kinect?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:53:00 +0000

Probably not, but I know someone who can/did...

I have been trying to decompile it but I have not been able, can you help?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:54:00 +0000

You could also just transcribe them, no?

Do you use Pandora? What are your thoughts on it?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:04:00 +0000

I have used it, and it's interesting, though I think I listen to about the same 10 or 20 albums most of the time. I really like the album format, vs songs.

Where can I find a text of the old scrolling credits in WinAmp 2.0 and where did you come with the idea for that?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:03:00 +0000

Probably embedded in the exe.. not sure what the idea came from, just standard movie style stuff...

What do you think of this question?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:03:00 +0000

It is very simple to answer.

Did you ever experience any wrist pain due to long hours of coding?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:02:00 +0000

At times, though I think bowling was a bigger culprit.

Which open source license to prefer to release your code under and why?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:02:00 +0000

If it's code that I think everybody would benefit from, and I wouldn't imagine any secret-sauce updates being important, then a BSD style license (example: most of WDL). If it's something specific where if someone took it and improved on it, I'd likely want access to their improvements (example, WDL's resampler lib), then I'd do LGPL.

what's top of your list of things you'd love to do but haven't quite found the time yet?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:01:00 +0000

Hmm getting a pilots license would be sweet... just can't commit to devoting enough time to it, and it's something I'd want to do well, not just half assed.

How do you decide when something is done and ready to ship?

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 15:49:00 +0000

That question can be applied to so much in life! You never really feel anything is done, but "good enough" or "better than the last version" are feelings you do get.

www.reaper.fm/download.php doesn't work! :)

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 15:50:00 +0000

Hmm, was it down or something? It works fine here.

Do you use standard VC6 timers for anything in Reaper?

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 15:50:00 +0000

Do you mean standard Win32 timers, i.e. SetTimer()? If so, then yes, but only really tasks that are the lowest priority.

EuCon support! Please?!! Anything that the community can do to support?

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 15:50:00 +0000

Get Avid to publish specs for it?

Not that we are old. But do you ever look back to the 90s & think damm that was a good/fun time? winamp, id soft, napster etc

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 15:50:00 +0000

It was, though I've had more fun since then.

Any thoughts on the C++11?

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 15:52:00 +0000

Doesn't really interest me much; once it gets wide compiler support that may change, but much of the additions are to things/styles which I make little use of currently.

sedona.net haha awesome! What year did you get on? Looks like you didn't wait for those AOL Floppy disks to show up in the mail

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 06:12:00 +0000

It was 1994 I think. AOL didn't have a local access number, even.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnR3ZMiYczw does that make you laugh, or is it cheezy?

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 06:12:00 +0000

Hah. Not really my style.

(speaking of production) you like your servers up to date or if they are rock solid you run them for as long as possible?

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 06:11:00 +0000

the stuff that can't go down often doesn't get updated often.. if it's a dev server, it'll be more up to date...

There's a nice balance to be had, though.. if you never reboot, you never know what'll happen when you do finally need to reboot.

Who was your first ISP? Netcom? Aol?

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:15:00 +0000

sedona.net, booya.

You ever dream and have a Codemare? I had one recently where my app only worked fine for me & when people used it, it had errors

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:15:00 +0000

Nah, I have good music dreams where I've just played some really awesome riff, and I'm afraid I'll forget it tho. Which I of course do.

Do you ever want to quit Reaper then and do music only? (I'm assuming your WinAmp payday was big enough to retire.)

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:14:00 +0000

No, because then I'd use REAPER and want it to do X Y or Z and thus the cycle would continue.

Why don't consumers naturally work backwards to what's "good" then? Is marketing control that powerful?

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:14:00 +0000

A lot of it comes down to availability -- you can only (easily) buy the new stuff.

Look, a lot of new versions can be great, but when you've been using the old version, especially in a production environment, upgrading is not something that can be taken lightly. Even if we could migrate our VC2005 win64 projects to VC2010, and have them easily compile, we would want to have those builds tested for extended periods before we released them. Too much can change.

I sent you an email maybe 2 weeks ago. about an idea i've been working on, i'm just curious if you got it.

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 04:10:00 +0000

Yeah those sorts of emails are a bit pointless imo.

Word 2000, old HTML, VS6 ... would you say you may be an"old dog" who doesn't want new tricks? Do you still learn new tech?

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:24:00 +0000

Edit: when new things are good, I'll switch to them. VC2010 can't compile my code without crashing. Xcode 4 is awful. I've only been using Git for a year, but I can't imagine going back to SVN. So much new is terrible, though. Newer versions of Word? no point, really.

Thoughts & Opinions? americancensorship.org/

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 04:11:00 +0000

I think censorship is bad, but I'm not too worried.

Why do you still use transitional HTML presentation attributes instead of CSS? Never bothered learning it?

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:13:00 +0000

I do know some CSS, but not enough. Every time I make anything using it there's a ton of fiddling trying to get things to look right and/or work as I expect. :( So I'm lazy and just whip out a table.

Ever feel like Reaper is in maintenance mode and you want to start something totally new?

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:14:00 +0000

I often wish I would spend more time writing music in REAPER than programming... It doesn't feel like maintenance mode though, overall, constantly big things needing to be done. I'm reminded of a great quote:

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance." (Vonnegut, from Hocus Pocus)

is victor gay?

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:15:00 +0000

The internet doesn't allow you to know these things, ever...

Is there a good solution to reducing spam on decentralized networks?

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:15:00 +0000

None that I know of, other than making good filters on the receiving ends. If everybody has good enough filters, who would bother with spam?

Have you ever done an audio course in mixing? If so, do recommend it as being helpful?

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:15:00 +0000

I haven't.

What WAS the reasonable question you didn't answer back in 2009?

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:16:00 +0000

That's when the site began, the idea being that I wouldn't not answer any reasonable question... now with the added restriction of no REAPER FR/BR/etc type things.

Have you ever studied the academic side of algorithms, or do you just use raw brain power/logic to do what works?

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:16:00 +0000

What does "the academic side of algorithms" mean, exactly?

I beleive that there are three people developing REAPER. In % how much of the three are involved in the amount of total coding?

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:40:00 +0000

The three of us do all of the coding, except for the licensing of certain technologies (such as Elastique). I would guess that about 40% of our time is spent coding, and the rest dealing with everything else.

man to man here-Do you ever spend days on code & not go anywhere. And then when you go somewhere you feel anxious around people?

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 04:32:00 +0000

Not to that extent.. I might spend an afternoon debugging something then be in a strange mood following that, as my brain adapts back to normal life.

Protoss, Terran or Zerg?

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 04:33:00 +0000

Never really got into starcraft, the few times I've played it anwyay.

Are uou gay?

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 01:16:00 +0000

No.

Thoughts on social business models and this guy: bit.ly/TaaGo ? Is this a viable alternative to current western system?

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 01:24:00 +0000

Seems like a good idea to me.

is it true that you work at a gay stripper bar

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:27:00 +0000

Haha no.

Have you ever met or talked to Bram Cohen?

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:27:00 +0000

I think I met him once or twice... though I only remember it fuzzily.

are you going to do any disruptive technology again.... it's been a long time!

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:28:00 +0000

If something presents itself, sure.. It's quite a different world we live in these days (as it relates to previous DT mentioned).

WTF! I just saw this in Twitter Spain's Trending Topics! Are you coming to Spain? cl.ly/0G1m3u2l1F0m461D2g0T

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:28:00 +0000

No, probably Bieber?

Would Reaper recognize G-buttons and macro keys from Logitech G110 keyboard? Thanks!

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:28:00 +0000

See the request at the top of this page, too.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_x79LCdecc - Thoughts on getting track based midi editing like that in Reaper? :)

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:28:00 +0000

Erm. See the request at the top of this page, thanks.

you seem to be more reachable from here. any comments on these mods?: showpost.php?p=843650&postcount=2

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:12:00 +0000

Should email me instead :) I diffed the mods, some things looked like debug stuff was left in there. Try git diff --ignore-all-space and then send me comments on some of the less obvious changes?

how do you think C74's gen~ bit.ly/tdNy38 compares to JS - similar technologies?

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:04:00 +0000

I haven't used it, but looking at it it seems they have a big hugely powerful complex system for building things, whereas JS is like having an assembler...

What is a WDL_FastString, i.e. why should/shouldn't one use it instead of a regular WDL_String?

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:37:00 +0000

If you need to be able to do things like:

string.Get()[3]=x;

Then you must use WDL_String. WDL_FastString makes Get() return const char *, which means all modifications have to be done through its methods. The advantage of this is that it can track the string's length, so a) string.GetLength() is constant-time, and b) appends and many other operations are faster (not needing to calculate the string's length each time).

Do you use any of the office suites or something else for documents?

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:38:00 +0000

I use my old copy of Word 2000, mostly. I suppose I should move to OpenOffice...

Do you live in NY? If so, can I meet you?

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:38:00 +0000

I do, but I don't randomly meet people from the internet, sorry.

Describe a programming goal you eventually abandoned because you couldn't figure it out?

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:40:00 +0000

The back burner is often full... I haven't solved P=NP yet, if that would count... Anyway if something is difficult I sit on it and think about it more, and if I lose interest then I guess it would be abandoned. I'll think about this more to see if I can come up with any specifics.

Hey, have you ever met these people or heard of em? bit.ly/4zlah and bit.ly/uiJzct Re: ego - am I funny to you? ha

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:40:00 +0000

Names sound familiar but don't know 'em.

lastest WDL/SWELL: cool things like ListView_SetSelColors() but I don't have these defined in Win SDK! where do they come from?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:17:00 +0000

On win32 we set those colors by responding to NM_CUSTOMDRAW, unsetting the "selected" bits in the struct passed, and overriding the colors there. See this code for an example...

www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=333115 Opinion?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:18:00 +0000

None really; I do generally think that hobbyists should have access to the same stuff as pros, so that someday they might be able to go pro..

Who is the smartest person you know / look up to in your personal life?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:18:00 +0000

I can't say here, the egos of others are sensitive things =)

I agree. They don't get taxed for high frequency trading & causes volatility for the legit investor. Where do we draw the line?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:18:00 +0000

Tobin tax ftw, maybe.

Re: money from money. Are you referring to socialite types of people & brokers who collect interest doing jack shit?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 02:33:00 +0000

I meant more the arbitrage/high volume trading stuff... At least if you have money and you invest it, say, in municipal bonds, you're providing value to those municipalities that need the working capital to get shit done. If you have a computer that buys and sells stocks thousands of times a day to make money, what's the value (for society) in that?

have you wrote software/script for stock market? are you interested?

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:59:00 +0000

I think that making money from money without contributing anything to society is a bit soulless and awful.

Classic skinner yo! Reading up on REAPER, sounds really cool. Just saying hi, and that some of us still skin the cool way.

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:59:00 +0000

Hi!

Hey Buddy how are you? I noticed you did the interview for that doc. How'd it go? Were you pleased or sadly a waste of time? :)

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:59:00 +0000

It was fine, looking forward to the movie.

Why no new pics on 1014?

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 20:46:00 +0000

so lazy... and shy.

If you were to start as a programmer TODAY, which languages / platforms would pique your interest?

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 20:48:00 +0000

I think web based stuff (html/css/php/javascript/ajax) gets you the most bang for the buck, but I really prefer end user software as you can scale it cheaply.

Is it possible to link mingw LIBs/DLLs with vc2005?

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 20:49:00 +0000

LIBs would probably not trivially link, no. DLL loading I'm sure you can do, though the C++ calling conventions probably differ, so if you use classes/interfaces across modules/compilers it would be a world of pain.

What hardware do you use to backup source code? In addition, what's the new build environment? (Ref: changelog v4.11pre3)

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 20:50:00 +0000

We use git, and the hardware doesn't really matter (it's all online storage, really, just in many locations).

how old are you?

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 20:50:00 +0000

REAPER media items lane painting (WM_PAINT) is really smooth... do you use double buffer? Hardware accelerated (DirectX)?

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:25:00 +0000

It just renders to a DIB using LICE, and then BitBlt()s it to screen. Nothing fancy.

Is signal theory that complicated once you have a firm understanding of it?

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:26:00 +0000

Depends on what "signal theory" means, I suppose... I never quite get my head around the multidimensional math of recursive filters, but other things end up pretty simple to me.

How did you determine what to optimize to make Nitrane so fast? Did you just "borrow" others optimizations or were they yours?

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:20:00 +0000

I had spent a lot of time optimizing other decoders.. and Intel was nice enough to give us VTune early on, and we also got MMX and 3DNow! supporting CPUs, which were optimized for.. other than that, it was a lot of trial and error, and yes, learning from how other people optimized.

Check out Anvil Studio: www.anvilstudio.com/ Any ideas of score editor in R4?

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:19:00 +0000

Maybe someday but not terribly soon.

vpn: I totally agree. Are you a fan of paying in cash and prepaid credit cards? To stay out of Databases. Stay cozy my friend.

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:19:00 +0000

I don't go that far, I'm not really that interesting to the big businesses, I don't think. I'd rather get frequent flier miles, too (even though it ends up being at the expense of the merchants, oh well).

Do you and Schwa ever look at other DAWs to get ideas? Are you afraid of the competition?

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:18:00 +0000

Not often, and not really; we don't compete in the traditional sense.. we just make something nice that we'd like to use.

If you were seeking some form of anonymous would you simply recommend a VPN for browsing etc?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 17:42:00 +0000

It depends on who you are hiding from. The website owners will always be able to track you, unfortunately, and if you're worried about your ISP or other man in the middle, then yeah, any VPN should work, I'd think.

Is it just me, or this a Nullsoft shirt? www.flickr.com/photos/joeholmes/6266790295/in/set-72157627821754...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:18:00 +0000

I'm guessing not, I think the NS llama had one back leg, if I remember right..

Is Cocoa anything like win32, or is it an entirely different animal?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:20:00 +0000

It is similar in many respects, but different in others. You have NSWindow and NSView which are roughly equivalent to HWND, where NSWindow is top level HWND and NSView are child windows, and so on... but the way they are accessed is quite different (HWNDs are handles with API functions that use them, vs objective C objects, etc)... but there are plenty of common underlying ideas, sure.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8ceHzA5hSE (just to let you know) Any nostalgia or each just past and better things are to come?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:20:00 +0000

Haha nostalgia is cool. I like old PC demos for that.

sure you aint tolec?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:20:00 +0000

yeah.

Did you receive a paycheck while working for AOL?

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:12:00 +0000

Mostly direct deposit...

are you tolec from andromeda council?

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:12:00 +0000

Guessing not.

Reaper: There are many major bugs regarding time and time-sigs. Could you look into it?

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:12:00 +0000

That depends on how you define major.

Do you watch sons of anarchy? Man, I am so crushing on Peggy Bundy. Shes an older women that I can get behind (pun intended!) :)

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:13:00 +0000

Nay.

What do you think the weaknesses of Reaper are compared to other similar products on the market?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:21:00 +0000

I think you can find strengths in other DAWs that may or may not be valid depending on what you do.. but I wouldn't say there's anything that most other DAWs do a lot better, but of course that's subjective to how you use things.

already prototyped several groundbreaking/breathtaking psychoacoustic applications suitable for software installation (in

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:22:00 +0000

(there's no real question in these)

I was going to ask the same question as Will. Is TOR pointless because when you connect to it, it's like being on dial-up ?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:22:00 +0000

See below I guess.

Why is TOR pointless?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:24:00 +0000

Because anybody who wants to control your internet can also block TOR, and who really wants to exchange speed and privacy to be anonymous these days anyway?

Can you just recommend the awesome but hard libraries you use, please?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:25:00 +0000

Cockos WDL! :) And win32 API, which is a pain if you were to start there.

Do you have a favor between heap & stack? Does REAPER use the 1MB limit for stack or you have increase it to give it more air?

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 03:07:00 +0000

We use the stack for small temporary chunks but the heap for bigger stuff. We don't override the thread default stack sizes; it's worth noting that the stack can usually be expanded past 1MB anyway, it is just not necessarily reserved.

Reaper: Could we have a little more focus on bug-fixes?