Rick's b.log - entry 2023/09/18

SimpleSeq is finished!

Don't get too excited. There are always features to add (<cough>and bugs to squish</cough>).
However, when I set out to create SimpleSeq, I had in mind a core set of features that it would offer.

Well, today, with version 0.07, I have added Copy-Paste and Replicate, which means that the stupidly big wall of text that is the keypress map is now full and complete...

So many keypresses, it's practically a flight sim! ☺

Of course, there's also the equally tricked out menu at your disposal...

Needs submenus now, but I ain't codin' that.

The project was started at the end of July, with most of the coding happening in August and September. The first public release (in a very early state) was a little under a month ago, on the 21^st of August. So it's taken about a month and a half to get to this point; though most of the work prior to my holiday was done over the weekends (<cough>when I should have been wrestling brambles</cough>).

Now let's look at what's new.

The first thing that we can whip through quickly is copy-paste. This works exactly as you would expect. It'll take a copy of the bar that contains the highlight point, and paste that copy into the bar that contains the highlight point.

By way of example, let's assume we have this.

Copy this bar...

It's a bar of music. The highlight point is in bar 1 (at the bottom left). If we press ^C, the screen will flicker.
Actually, that started as a mistake, the screen doesn't need to be redrawn as nothing has changed, but I decided not to fix it as it's a subtle indication that something did actually happen.

Now, we put the highlight into the second bar over, and press ^V to paste the copied bar, resulting in this.

...over to here.

There are two potential limitations and two possibly useful tricks.
The first potential limitation is that Copy will only copy what you see, it doesn't copy each channel.
Secondly, it only copies a bar at a time.
As for the useful tricks, well the first is that there is no reference to any channel in the copy buffer. As long as something has been copied, you can hit ^V wherever. Different bars, different channels, whatever.
The second possibly useful trick is that you can slightly abuse this to be a quick way to delete entire bars. Just press End to go to the end of the piece of music, copy a blank bar afterwards, then paste that over the bar you want to erase (though, note, only the current channel).

How long is a bar? That depends upon your time signature.

I'm sure you'll agree that Copy-Paste is useful, but it does have some limitations.
Well, Replicate is an answer to those limitations.

Here's the Replicate dialogue.

A what now?

It looks confusing, but it isn't really. Let's work through it.

Replicate allows you to copy an arbitrary number of bars an arbitrary number of times to an arbitrary location; and you can copy only the current channel or everything.

So you tell it what bar you wish to begin with.
Then you tell it how many bars you want to copy (must be at least one to copy the starting bar!).
Then you tell it how many times you want to perform this copy. By default, the destination offset is zero which means the music to be copied will be placed immediately following the bars to be copied. However this won't be what you want if you're copying, say, the verse from a song to be the second verse. You'll want to skip over the chorus. This is where Offset comes in. If it's not zero, then it specifies a bar to use as the initial destination for the copy/copies. And, finally, you can say whether you want to copy the entire chunk of music (default) or only that shown in the current channel.

It will perform some checks (ensuring your selection isn't more than available music, ensuring that the copy-to bar is after the selection, etc) and it will ask for confirmation if you'd be overwriting existing music...

Still a little confusing? Okay, we can do it with examples.

Here is some music. I've switched to 2/4 time in order to get more bars on the screen.

Some example music.

Now we want to replicate the first two bars twice (to fill bars three to six). So we tell Replicate to start at bar 1, copy 2 bars, 2 times, and to start at the end of the section we're copying (offset = 0).
Oh, and notice that it has inserted a warning that you have unsaved data. It is recommended to save your music prior to doing anything 'major' like copying chunks of it around.

First example parameters.

This gives the following result.

Two bars copied twice.

For our second example, we'll use offsets. We'll begin with the same two bars as before, however this time our parameters will be as follows.

What we want this time.

As shown, we only want to copy the first bar. We want it copied three times, starting from the fourth bar.

Which means this.

The first bar copied thrice as of bar four...

I hope these examples have helped to explain how Replicate works. Don't be afraid to play around with it yourself. What's the worst that could happen?

...no, not Global Thermonuclear War, I haven't saddled my software with annoying-but-trendy "AI" crap. But, should such a thing occur, just remember that one must play noughts and crosses before playing chess. Oh, and Americans call it "tic tac toe" for some reason.

Here's the good stuff!

And in case you need it given the continued, enduring, persistent, and interminable lack of anything that resembles a user guide...

• An introduction to my Simple Sequencer (v0.01)
• Updates for version 0.02
• Updates for version 0.03
• Updates for version 0.04
• Updates for version 0.05
• Updates for version 0.06

Liz Truss

Of course, if that was the case, one might wonder why she stepped down so quickly. Maybe she's hoping it's all calmed down in a year. Or maybe it's a hit&run, wreck the economy, bugger off, and coin it on the generous benefits for former-serving PMs. What...a...dis...grace...

Of course, now she's admitting that she didn't know about pension liability-driven investments until days after the economic crash (because, yeah, the pooch got thoroughly screwed).
You'd have thought that the person in charge might have done some sort of coherent risk assessment rather than ploughing ahead with a not-budget that raised more warning flags than questions. Oh, but wait, she said she wasn't the Chancellor, she didn't talk to the banks. How sweet, she's gone and thrown what's-his-name under the bus.
Again.

Let's hope the people of South West Norfolk give her the appropriate message in the next election.

Your comments:

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Anon, 19th September 2023, 12:19

The problem back in 2010 was that Tony B Liar and Gordon Brown had, between them, destroyed the country. They had to be voted out, whatever the cost.    I recall scenes of Brown refusing to leave Number 10, there was talk of getting the military in to forcibly remove him. Eventually he saw sense and left.    But basically, in 2010, 'New Labour' NEEDED to go, before they wrecked the country beyond repair.    Now, in 2023, the Tories NEED to go, whatever the cost, even if that means a Labour government for the next 5 years.    Personally I'd rather see the Monster Raving Loony party voted into office for one term than see the Tories re-elected next year. And for the record, I'm the exact demographic that the Tories claim to stand for and would traditionally vote Tory (middle-class, self-employed, doing very nicely thank you). I won't be voting for them at the next election.    I notice that the current bunch of reprobates in office are still blaming the mess on what New Labour did between 1997 and 2010. That might have worked for the first couple of years, but they've had nearly a decade and a half to sort it out. You can't keep blaming Blair and Brown for screwing up the country when you've had every opportunity to fix it.    The Brexit referendum only goes to illustrate the old saying - "never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups". The Leave vote was sold to us through a pack of lies - immigration, the 'money that could go to the NHS' emblazoned on the side of Boris's bus, etc etc. (I saw through it and voted Remain.)    Covid? Well I don't think Covid itself was a conspiracy. The virus was real (I know, I had it at the beginning of the year, fortunately mild and no worse than man-flu). But this whole "you're going to die if you catch it so let's put the entire country into lockdown" was ridiculous. And, as it turns out, completely unnecessary.    On the other hand, a few select Tory ministers made a whole heap of money out of Covid with kick-backs on PPE suppliers etc. Whilst the rest of us were enduring the misery of lockdown. (And Boris and his cronies were partying at Number 10, in breach of the same rules they'd enforced on everyone else.)    Nope, it seems that Covid was a golden opportunity for a police state to be imposed, with the elite at the top relishing every moment of controlling every single thing that the general population did. We used to joke that Blair read '1984' and thought it was a training manual; now it seems that the Tories are trying to make Orwell's dystopia into a reality.    Fingers crossed, at the next election, they're gone. Even a traditional Labour government can't be as bad as this.

Rick, 19th September 2023, 12:51

Should just point out that people *were* dying of Covid, and hospitals were out of resources. That's why the lockdowns were implemented. Consider, for example, the death toll between UK and France (that did harsh lockdowns) as compared to America.  (you can't compare places like Bulgaria and Peru that top the leader board as their medical capabilities aren't the same as ours)    I think the first lockdown was necessary. The following ones, not sure.  Covid now, after a few years of mutations, is only really detectable with the antigen test as the symptoms aren't that much different from seasonal flu (which is just another mutating virus, but one we're all used to).    As for the Tories, yes. Kick them out, burn the place down, salt the ground, never go back.    As much as I'd like to suggest it would be crazy to have the raving loonies in power, I think even they would struggle to be as bad as Truss. Plus, bonus, they aren't likely to pull sweet deals for India because of their Indian heritage and bring married to a nearly billionaire of Indian origin that would do quite nicely out of the deals made.  To me, it smacks of corruption at an audacious level.    And, yes, the whole PPE debacle was just another symptom of the corruption.  Bastards.

David Pilling, 19th September 2023, 13:55

The problem with the politics is that it is "bugins turn" defn. "a system by which appointments or awards are made in rotation rather than by merit".  The worst thing about the Tories spell in opposition from 1997 is that they had no ideas and were simply waiting for their turn, which eventually came with the great financial crisis.    As for Covid, my first experience was visiting a small village in early 2020, someone had been on holiday to Italy (did he have to go in the situation), anyway he came back and went to a quiz night. The result was several deaths (including his own) and hospitalisations - documented in the local newspapers as well as by personal contact.    That is why I took it seriously, not just the hype on the TV.

Anon, 19th September 2023, 17:09

I know that traditionally the saying goes that "prevention is better than cure", but in the case of Covid, the prevention may well have been worse than the disease, in the grand scheme of things. And under particular circumstances, far worse.    A close friend had been charged with a criminal offence (I won't go into detail save to say he was completely innocent) and had been remanded shortly before the pandemic hit. As soon as the country went into lockdown, he tells me that prisons went into a state not seen since the Middle Ages. Locked in a double cell for the entire day, allowed out every other day for 10-15 minutes just to take a shower (then straight back), food brought to the door, etc etc. The only thing that kept him sane was that the HMP Hotel he was being held at had recently installed phones in all the cells, and the prison authorities began providing free phone credit when the lockdown started. I'd get a weekly phone call with an update (yeah, just sat inside, couldn't do anything, argued with cell mate, made up with cell mate, etc etc, what's happening outside?) and I could hear his mental health deteriorate week by week.    He endured this for several months. Because of Covid, his trial was put back 3 times. Apparently there was a limit of 6 months on how long you could be held unconvicted, but the Government extended this to 8 months due to Covid.    Eventually he got his day in court and was found innocent of all the allegations. More than two years on, he's still suffering with severe mental health issues and PTSD due to the conditions in which he was being kept.    Catching up with him this week so hopefully he's doing ok. Slow but steady recovery.    Like I said in my first comment above, I had Covid at the end of February. Honestly, I felt worse after I'd had the jabs than I did when I eventually got Covid. Whilst I'm not denying that Covid could have been life-threatening to people who were vulnerable because of certain health conditions, for the majority of us it really was no worse than a dose of man-flu (aka a cold).    Ah well. I suppose hindsight is a wonderful thing.

J.G.Harston, 20th September 2023, 23:55

Gordon Brown didn't refuse to leave Number 10, he *COULDN'T* leave number 10 until he had a name he could give to the Queen to invite to form a government.

Anon, 21st September 2023, 16:58

The story given by the BBC (at the time) was that he'd refused to leave and wouldn't concede that he'd been defeated. Generally, although the BBC itself is a bit left-wing with its own agenda, the BBC News service is probably the most impartial [1] one in the UK.    As opposed to 'that bastion of truth and honesty' known as the Daily Mail.    [1] Not that it's totally impartial. Just that it's more impartial than most other UK sources - eg the Daily Hate-Mail.

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