I was reading a book about woodworking, where it was stated that it is very important to keep your tools sharp. Nothing new really: it makes sense that your sharp cutting tools have to be sharp. What I did not really realize was how sharp is sharp – Apparently, a chisel should be sharp enough to shave the hair off the back of your arm.

I found several videos on Youtube that show different methods for sharpening your chisels (and plane!). Some use sharpening stones, others use sandpaper, but the technique is mostly the same. I was lucky to already have sandpaper of different grits, from 120 up to 1600 – so this was what I used.

I was not dedicated enough to the sharpening process, and did not get to the mirror-edge razor-sharp shave-your-hair grade – but my efforts did improve the usability of my chisels and plane significantly.

I continued the work on the headstock, chiseling and shaving it straight. Also seen in this picture is the beginning of the truss rod route. I have found it quite difficult to route a 5mm wide route with a 6mm chisel, so I will get a new chisel before I continue with the route.

Here are some examples:

What drew me into researching this topic, and writing this post, is not the visual presentation (which can sometimes include stunning effects), but rather the great music that accompanies many keygens.

It seems like keygen music dates back to Cracktros ( Wikipedia ) which were audio-visual intro, added to cracked software by release groups. This, in time, have spawned the Demoscene( Wikipedia ) whose members are focused on pushing the envelope of real-time computer generated “demos” ( = audio-visual presentations ) , many times within a tight code size limit. There are really impressive demos out there, and it seems like an area I’d like to explore more in the future.

Back to keygens. So, as a relic of those Cracktros, modern keygens feature great tunes, many reminiscent of old game console. There’s actually a website dedicated to ripping and archiving keygen music – KEYGENMUSiC. I have decided to find out how those tunes are created and embedded in the EXEs.

My research has brought me to MadTracker a modern music composition (or rather “Tracking”) tool, based on an older DOS application called FastTracker(Wikipedia). It seems like the most common format for Tracker music is XM, so I decided to use that format too. This format contains both samples (of the instruments you use for your track) and note information (how to sequence those samples). There’s also support for some effects, but I didn’t get to those.

Here’s my very first XM track, composed in MadTracker using the bundled samples – first

The next step was embedding it in a small application. For this purpose, I had found the uFMOD library, which is a tiny library for playing XM and other formats. uFMOD comes bundled with many helpful code samples for different programming languages. I chose to use C.

Rather then try to explain how to use uFMOD, I refer you to those samples, as you can learn off them to a greater extent than my knowledge. I will, however, provide you with a minimal example of uFMOD usage, with first.xm embedded in it.

The method that I had chosen for embedding the track was as a resource ( defined in a .rc file ). uFMOD comes with an utility called Eff, which can create an rc formatted hex dump of your XM file, when passed /Ds as an argument.

Here’s my sample, with a Visual Studio 2005 Express solution – minimal

I hope you enjoyed this quick intro. It really is very simple to create and embed keygen music. If you happen to compose any tracks, please post them in the comments section!

I may post a follow-up in the future about how to create the custom shaped forms seen in the above examples.

I had downloaded the maxima installer from sourceforge, and it already contained the wxMaxima frontend.
After installing to “C:\Program Files\Maxima-5.14.0″ I tried to run wxMaxima but it failed to connect to maxima, while displaying the message “maxima process terminated” in the status bar.

Re-installing maxima and wxMaxima (using the same installer) in a directory that did not contain a space character (e.g. “C:\Maxima-5.14.0″) solved the problem for me.

I hope this sovles that problem for other users too.

I have several Simpsons and Family Guy ones that I wear quite regularly. I also like seeing people wear humorous t-shirts, but what I really enjoy is MAKING shirts.
Here’s my first design, created as friend’s birthday present. It contains an image of a kind of treat, (whose name in English I do not know) that is made up of two cookies with ice-cream in between. He really loves this thing, so he also liked the shirt.

My second design was created for myself, and have put much more time drawing it. I really liked the result so it was worth it:

Next, I created two more designs, along with another shirt designed by a friend, for my cousin’s birthday. He’s an aviation freak, so that was the theme:

Last, but not least, a design that I had printed on an apron for another friend’s birthday present:

And that’s it for now. I had some other ideas, but nothing good enough to print. I guess I can post here when I print more, so that my single reader could enjoy it

I hope that writing more random, non-tech posts such as this will help me write more in general.