Mats Peterson’s Weblog

An eBook of quotes in EPUB format .

A collection of computer game and arcade game artwork .

I’ve collected a bunch of Atari ST , Commodore Amiga and Commodore 64 pictures that I’ve converted to TIFF format. Many of the pictures were created in display modes with non‐​square pixels. I have en­tered XRes­o­lu­tion and YRes­o­lu­tion val­ues in­to the TIFF im­ages that re­flect the pixel aspect ratio . Please note that this is not an ex­act sci­ence, since the mon­i­tor used when the artist cre­at­ed the im­age may not have been prop­er­ly ad­just­ed. For online viewing, the image will be scaled so that it displays correctly on a modern display with square pixels. For offline viewing, my ImgView image viewer is one of the few programs that can do this scaling automatically. Notes on the Commodore 64 Pictures These pictures have been pro­duced by first mak­ing a screen­shot in VICE, then crop­ping it to 320 × 200 pix­els, and fi­nal­ly con­vert­ing it to TIFF. The palette file used in VICE is win­vice.vpl, that you will find in this directory . If you’re not hap­py with...

v2strip is a simple command‐line utility that lets you remove the ID3 v2 tag from an MP3 file. The ID3v2 format is nice in many ways, but it can cause problems when being parsed by MP3 players and utilities that don’t support ID3v2 tags. The program should be able to compile without problems on most common Unix / POSIX platforms. It can also be compiled in Cygwin , but it’s up to you to find out how.

Various helper programs for the Sequencer Plus Gold MIDI sequencer from Voyetra . C30CNV is a utility for converting Generic instrument bank files used by Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold to raw System Exclusive format (MIDIEX), and vice versa. It is guaranteed to work with version 4.11 of Sequencer Plus, not sure about older versions. Give it a try 🙂 MIDEXT is a utility that lets you extract text or System Exclusive data from a standard MIDI file. The System Exclusive data can be saved in either raw MIDIEX format, or to a Generic instrument bank file (for Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold). SPTSR is a little resident program that provides a system time display and screen saver from within Sequencer Plus. SYXINS is the exact opposite of MIDEXT. It lets you insert System Exclusive data in MIDIEX or SP Gold Generic instrument bank format into a standard MIDI file.

Various links pertaining to the phenomenon called “ the loudness war ”. The Guardian: How CDs Are Remastering the Art of Noise Chicago Mastering Service: Loudness Elliott Sound Products: Compression in Audio Recordings Artist’s House Music: Mastering Engineer Greg Calbi on Compression and the Loudness War in Mastering

MORSE is a little Morse code training program for MS-DOS . It is primarily written for the Creative Sound Blaster Pro sound card, but it will probably work with other Creative cards (such as Sound Blaster 16 and Sound Blaster AWE32 ) as well. There is also a version of the program for Unix-like systems (including Cygwin) .

A collection of audio clips in WAVE and 8SVX formats.

A collection of SoundFont banks .

Selected transcripts from Monty Python TV, movies and records. I have also made an eBook in EPUB format of all the files.

I have updated some links in the following posts: Saga’s “Heads or Tales”: Is It Flawed? Standard MIDI Files

These eBooks were originally from Project Gutenberg . I have made various typographical and other improvements to them.

A collection of Unix related text files .

A collection of computer programming relted text files .

A collection of Internet related text files .

A collection of graphics related text files .

A collection of DTP (desktop publishing) related text files .

InfoList is a simple Perl application that lets you edit the INFO list chunk in a RIFF (Resource Interchange File Format) file, such as WAVE, RMID, AVI and sfbk (SoundFont).

MkTags is a simple Perl application that lets you edit the tags in a Matroska file. It can be used with WebM files as well, since this format is based on a profile of Matroska. It supports most of what’s in the official tag specifications. There is no fancy GUI; it simply launches a text editor. It could be viewed as a simplification of the XML that MKVToolNix uses, hence it is relatively open‐ended.

A collection of music related text files .

A collection of radio related text files .

ImgView is a simple image viewer for Unix / POSIX compatible systems. It is free from menus and other GUI gadgets, and controlled primarily by the keyboard. It supports the following image file formats: GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, PNM (PBM/PGM/PPM), TIFF and XBM. It is able to scale images with non‐square pixels so that they display correctly on a display with square pixels. It supports RGB, Gray and CMYK ICC profiles in TIFF and JPEG, RGB and Gray ICC profiles in PNG, and RGB ICC profiles in GIF. Display of Exif, XMP and other metadata is realized through the use of ExifTool . Apart from the usual X11 development files, you will also need the following libraries and their respective development files: • libfreeimage • libjpeg • liblcms2 • libpng (see below) • libtiff (see below) • libungif (see below) • libstrutil • libxsimple I have modified libpng, libtiff and libungif slightly for ImgView. They are in the lib directory. Install them into $HOME/imgview (by giving ‘--prefix...

VTags is a simple Perl application that lets you edit the Vorbis tags in an Ogg or FLAC file. I have been using this program “in‐house” for many years, so I know that it works well. There is no fancy GUI; it simply launches a text editor.

A collection of logos .

A collection of test images .

A collection of UI-View maps that have been con­vert­ed from oth­er for­mats to TIFF. The XMP ‘dc:de­scrip­tion’ and TIFF ‘Im­ageDescrip­tion’ tags con­tain the INF file da­ta (UTF‐​8 en­cod­ed). In this directory you will find a sim­ple  Perl script called ‘convmap.pl’ that you can use to batch con­vert from this “cus­tom” TIFF for­mat to GIF with INF file. It re­quires Image::ExifTool  and  GraphicsMagick .

Levin-bladet is a magazine issued by the Swedish musical instrument manufacturer AB Herman Carlson Levin . I have also extracted guitar related articles from it.

ID3Tag is a simple Perl application that lets you edit the ID3v1 and/or ID3v2 tag in an MP3 file. I have been using this program “in‐house” for many years, so I know that it works well. There is no fancy GUI; it simply launches a text editor. The program also supports editing of the ID3v2 tag in a DSD stream file (DSF). Please note that ID3v2.4 is not supported.

mf2t is a port of the mf2t/t2mf standard MIDI file manipulation utilities by Piet van Oostrum. One notable enhancement over the original software is the support of 8‐bit textual data. The programs should be able to compile without problems on most common Unix / POSIX platforms. They can also be compiled in Cygwin , but it’s up to you to find out how.

MP4Tags is a simple Perl application that lets you edit the iTunes tags in an MPEG-4 file. I have been using this program “in‐house” for many years, so I know that it works well. There is no fancy GUI; it simply launches a text editor.

MORSE is a Morse code training program for Unix ‐like systems. It is based on MORSE for MS-DOS . This Unix incarnation is not quite as featureful as the DOS one, but it’s still useful. It’s possible to build the program in Cygwin , but it’s up to you to find out how. You will also need the libstrutil , libttyinput and libansicon libraries.

The U+2212 MINUS SIGN has the same width as the U+002B PLUS SIGN. Compare this: −35 +35 with this, using the common U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS: -35 +35

mfcheck is a command line utility that lets you check a standard MIDI file for errors. The program should be able to compile without problems on most common Unix / POSIX platforms. It can also be compiled in Cygwin , but it’s up to you to find out how.

A collection of audio and video related pictures .

A collection of music related pictures .

A collection of images of cover art , mostly in 320 × 320 pixels resolution. An approximate indication of what I like to listen to.

A collection of images of illustrations by Sir John Tenniel , that were used in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland .

Pictures from the The Best of Media Clips™ CD by Aris Entertainment .