Persual

We were riding home when he told me about his latest theft. He'd managed to make a clean getaway, and wanted to look at what he'd stolen. He took it out and carefully unwrapped it to reveal six peg shaped objects. We both recognised them immediately, and he began to align them when I stopped him, frantically pointing out to align them meant they'd be "pulled" towards the source of mystic energy here. Sure enough, our craft started to diverge, as he argued they should be aligned, then realised what was happening and began to unalign them.

"You know we're doomed, don't you?", I stated.

He looked up puzzled. "Why?"

"Once they realize they've been robbed, they'll track you down and kill you".

Alien among us

It looked like a scam. It smelled like a scam. But, what was it?

They put on a wonderful show. "Come and work for us", they said. "Salaries with us are generous, comparable to the market rate", they said. The building was a vast warehouse showing off all the wonderful technology they worked on.

Then came the clincher. Our host walked up the wall and stood on the ceiling peering down at us. "We are the Markum", he intoned.

The numbers of people that sat down at the invitation desk were impressive. I wondered around aimlessly for a while. Then I came back, and found the desk was deserted with two female Markum staring at me, with friendly smiles. I sifted through the paperwork on the desk, and saw "Mayor of New York" appearing as one name. Again, impressive, but a scam?

I looked up, into their deep brown eyes and indicated I wished to hear more.

Goodbye Virgin Media

I got rid of my V+ box from Virgin Media last year. Finally got the cancellation sorted out. I got fed up with the bugs and awful quality of the V+ box. Instead, I've gone completely Freeview! The picture quality is so much better, although the content is not so varied. And it's free!!!

...finally got shot of the dreaded cold this year. Despite having flu jabs etc.

Audio Units

Trying to get around the Apple developer documents is a nightmare. There aren't hyperlinks to keywords so you have to switch back to the index; subjects aren't discussed in great detail - how to use AudioUnitGetProperty etc. Even Microsoft's documentation is more complete than that! Wow! Way to go Apple!

Parallels and MSVCR80.DLL

I'm toying around with Parallels on my Mac. I'd like to try VMWare Fusion but no key (probably on my mail elsewhere). As an experiment, I tried my Windows version of Melody Mine and found it doesn't work!

Turns out it's a MSVCR80.DLL dependancy. And a bug in my manifest file supplied with Melody Mine - it refers to V9 of the runtime (as I've got VS 2008 Express). Remove the reference, it works fine.

VSTi and AU

Last time I tried to create a VST host, then bolt Melody Mine on the front of it... well, it didn't really work. That may have been due to using Delphi to create everything (Delphi doesn't do so well with floating point exceptions). Now that I'm using C++ with wxWidgets, maybe it's time to try again.

Meanwhile, playing around with Audio Units on my MacBook seems so much easier that VST + ASIO on Windows! I've modified my keys application to use the Apple Synthesiser, so I may try the same with Melody Mine (which uses Port MIDI - this requires an external synthesiser to make any sounds). That may mean I drop PortMIDI and use my own classes to talk directly to the MIDI API on Windows and AU on MAC.

Facelift

A facelift for Melody Mine - replaced the song grid with a custom grid of my own. Editing with it is much easier.

Meow!

From TheRegister:

"CodeGear - the unwanted Borland Software subsidiary its parent pimped on the market for about year but failed to find a buyer for - is trying to give JBuilder a lift in a commoditized market, but risks sapping energy that could go into less visionary but more immediately useful coding tools.®"

Read the full article here.

Exporting MIDI

Ported the Windows only code that writes out MIDI to a cross platform version for the Mac. Seems to work on the PC.

Switched to PortMIDI

I switched my midi output to PortMIDI - got it working on the PC and fixed an annoying bug. Took a while to get past build issues on the Mac but got that working too, though the setup is not as simple as the PC.

Melody Mine now has Lua scripting...

Here's a short Lua script that truncates notes in a pattern in my MIDI editor, Melody Mine.

function TruncateDuration(duration)

local i, index, note, dur
local pattern = GetCurrentPattern()
local count = GetNoteCount(pattern)

for i = 0, count - 1 do
note = GetNote(pattern, i)
dur = GetNoteDuration(note)
if dur > duration then
dur = duration
end
SetNoteDuration(note, dur)
end
end

TruncateDuration(24)

Melody Mine

It's getting there... the PC version can play music and export to MIDI files. The Mac version won't have that for a while.

Sonaptic too!

"We are pleased to inform you that the Board of Directors for Sonaptic Ltd have agreed to the acquisition of the company by Wolfson Microelectronics plc."

http://www.wolfsonmicro.com/sonaptic.do

Melody Mine V0.53

Melody Mine (Windows and Mac versions)

(images copyright © 2007 Pete Goodwin)

Melody Mine V0.52

The new Melody Mine...

(all the images here are © 2007 Pete Goodwin)















Yet another version of my music sequencing tool - I'm still working on it.

I've gone back to MIDI output (file and device) as that's the easiest way to get it to work without diving into the murky world of VST hosting.

The pattern editor is like a piano roll but with only seven notes, instead of the usual twelve. Why seven and not twelve? Well, written music uses seven notes from a scale (quoted at the start), so why shouldn't a pianoroll?

I didn't know I was German?

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Need to change it?

Sensaura and GameCODA... no more

I see both websites for Sensaura and GameCODA have finally gone.

Sigh.

The future rushes forwards...

This week is the week I get my house decorated - just a few minor operations - repainting the front, the garage door and revarnish the front door. The porch has been repainted as well as one intrernal wall.

Things are moving forwards on renting a flat near where I'll be working; never rented a flat before. This should be interesting!

Sensaura Memorial

Last night a group of Sensaurians got together to remember Sensaura. We started in a pub in Windsor, then some of us moved to a restaurant for a meal. It was strange seeing old faces again...

It seems we're disappearing off to different places all around the UK. I'm off up north shortly, some maybe headed down south.

In the past, when I've moved on, I've lost contact with most of the people I knew. I have two or three left who I still hear from on occaison.

Changes...

The changes are here.

I've been made redundant.

Sensaura as a group no longer exists...

I was there for eight years, and now it's over. Some parts live on - Sonaptic is going strong. Also, while the name Sensaura is gone, there are five people left from the group of about twenty. The rest of us are going our seperate ways.

I start my new job shortly...