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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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...

Employment Agencies

I got my job at Digital through an agency; my current job through another... ten years on, there are too many agencies out there, and the quality of them seems to have fallen. You apply for a job, you get an initial contact and... that's it. Nowt. Nada. Zip. If you pester them, they don't bother to respond.

More on this later...

Delphi 2007 for Win32

CodeGear (who? They're part of Borland) have released Delphi 2007 for Win32. They fixed a few bugs and added support for Vista - but not much else. A very expensive upgrade with little goodness in it. No thanks, after Delphi 2005/2006, they've have to pull some really big rabbits out of their hat before I burn my fingers again!

MacBook

My laptop was getting old - a 700MHz Celeron. It wouldn't run Windows XP but did run Ubuntu. Never could get WPA wireless to work on it though.

I thought about getting an Apple MacBook, even more so since they had an Intel version out. So, I bought one before Christmas. It's like Linux but with a desktop and decent applications.

The "finder" application seems to be the worst part of it - a bit of a mess, I think. The Wireless network seems to have issues too but I think I've got that working now.

Firefox and Thunderbird all work on Windows, Linux and Apple - why use anything else?

(Today I'm using IE7 due to an issue with Firefox and Blogger)

Buying a new car

Just before Christmas, my Peugeot 206 let me down - it started misfiring or randomly stalling. It took a few weeks and several hundred pounds to fix it - a stuck injector. I was already disappointed with this car - it went well enough but seemed to have a few electrical issues: central locking failed after two years (I had to fight to get it fixed under warranty), A/C made the engine almost stall in stop/start traffic, A/C + fan switch would stop working one day and work fine the next, and finally the alarm system kept going off, waking me once in the night.

So I traded it in, and bought a Honda Jazz, with a 1.4 CVT engine. It's my first automatic, and my first five door car. I was a little concerned that it might not perform too well - was 1.4 too underpowered? That doesn't seem to be the case - its a quiet efficient engine, and a real pleasure to drive.

The salesman did tell me a few wrong facts about the Jazz: I asked if when the immobiliser was switched if there was a red light flashing on the console - there isn't, the salesman said he thought there was. Also, on the day I picked up my car, he said it had an electric heater to help clear the windows in cold weather - this simply isn't true.

Some options on the Jazz puzzle me - why the continuous rear wash wipe unless you buy a sport model? Why not offer it as an option?

I had planned on buying a second hand car perhaps a year old or younger... the Jazz brand new was more or less the same price as a year old model, so I went for a new one.

Spread

Since SynthMaker V1.0 has been released, I revisited the 'spread' synth I'd tried to create before. Here's the result.

The Quest

"Ok, we're nearly there", whispered Luke.
"Are you sure?", said Simon.
"Yeah".
"I mean... is this the right place and all?"
"C'mon, we've been searching for days!"
Luke and Simon ducked into the room. Above the door the words, "The Oracle" were engraved on a brass plaque.
"WELCOME STRANGER", a deep voice intoned.
"Ooo-er!"
"WHAT IS YOUR QUEST?"
"Umm...",
"Go on, ask it!"
"Oh... OK. Hey dude have you seen my car?"
"WHAT?"
"Have you seen my car?"
Long pause...
"Luke... why did you take your shirt off?"
"I dunno... seemed like the right thing to do..."

Doing a tech demo

I need to add the "fire" particle generator inside the fireplace to complete this one... I recently bought a copy of Dark Basic Pro along with Dark Physics. Kinda strange wandering around a room and making boxes fly around...

The artist in me...

It's been a while. I dabbled with raytraying with POVray and had a go at creating an editor to create the scenes with it. I've used 3DS Max and Maya - too expensive and too confusing to use.

After my musical interlude, I came across Bryce again. I've seen it before, but hadn't realised it had changed hands a few times. This time I bought a copy, taking me back to photo-realistic imagery again. Then I descovered Hexagon, a modelling tool, followed by Carrara and Poser.

Here's a scene I created in Poser then rendered in Carrara:


I just love camera effects!

Dark Matter

Something I'm working on in SynthMaker...

MSN should get with the program...

Now I remember why I never use MSN.

Tons of ideas but...

I sit at my PC and I have a lot of ideas but I go blank staring at the screen. "Writers block", programmer style?

Delphi 2006 trial version

So Borland have released a trial version of Delphi 2006 - an Architect trial version that lasts 30 days.

Pity they didn't release a personal version that costs $99 instead.