I use a heavily customised setup for vIM, the text editor that annoys me the least in ~30 years of using a computer. You can see my exact setup in my dotfiles repo on github, https://github.com/wordswords/- . Here are the plugins I use: ConqueTerm - Opens a shell window inside vIM, allowing you to have a REPL environment within vIM. NERDTree - A filetree plugin that you can see on the left of the window above. It replicates the Sublime text editor’s filetree. vim-airline - This is a statusline plugin for vIM that allows for a nicer status view for windows and buffers. vim-devicons - Allows for UTF-8 icons to make vIM editing slightly more graphical. Used by airline to display more info in less space, and by NERDTree to show filetype information. vim-fish - Syntax highlighting for fish shell script editing. vim-rails - Syntax highlighting and more for rails. vim-ruby - Syntax highlighting for Ruby.

More adventures with Fish shell. I have scripted the generation of a bunch of test asset audio files in mp4 format suitable for dash streaming. I have used the audio file commandline tools ffmepg MP4Box and sox in this script, they are pretty powerful and worth installing via homebrew on OSX. Thoughts: I think that instead of quoting you can just output $variable, which is probably better coding style. I’m still working out good way to return variables from functions, it seems that you need to echo out the output and that gets picked up by the calling function, which is a bit messy. [code lang=“bash”] #!/usr/bin/env fish # move to the asset output directory.. cd .. ...

For my own benefit as much as anyone elses, I thought I’d document my PC audio setup. I have two soundcards and two sets of speakers, one surround soundcard and speaker set for gaming and watching surround sound movies, and one audio interface linked up to my studio monitor speakers for music production. I also have a Digi 002 mixer which I use to mix in the outputs from my synthesisers to my recording interface. When I want to record, I usually record one track at a time from a synthesier to the audio input of the audio interface, via the Digi 002 mixer: ...

A few months ago I switched across from Bash onto the Fish shell , on my main development machine. I can’t get enough of its fast autosuggestions and its sane scripting language. Compared to Bash it is very fun to use. Today I wrote a script to automate the backup of my development workspace onto a private bitbucket account. Bitbucket is good because it allows unlimited private repositories, but it caps the size of these repos at 2GB max, with some features disabled after 1GB. This means that I want to find out the size of my repo before automatically backing it up. This script does this: ...

So I got given a Digi 002 console version, which looks like this: A fairly old style digital audio interface and mixer, which was all the rage back in 2002 when it first came out, but now is often found sitting in the skip. Why? Because it is a Pro-Tools inteface, and Avid stopped supporting it about 5 years ago, so it won’t actually work under Pro Tools and Windows 10 (believe me, I’ve tried!). It only works as a recording interface through Pro Tools, so you can’t just connect it via firewire to your PC and expect it to work. ...

I thought it might be of some interest to describe how I use my Eurorack, at lot of the time, in making tracks. I have a 3 oscilator - 3 VCA - 3 filter Eurorack which I use primarily so that the oscilators initially work in unison mode with some slight detuning. I typically use a single loop, arpeggio or pattern that I repeat over the song. Then, partway through a track, I will transpose the octaves of the oscilators and vary the sustain of the envelopes, along with the filters and pulse-width modulation amount, to make a morphing yet harmonious sound texture progression. ...

At the start of 2015, I wrote down some goals for 2015 . Around half-way through the year, I revisited these goals with some thoughts on how well I’d done . Now 2015 is over, I want to reflect on what has been achieved and what hasn’t. I also want to comment on the fact that I am discussing personal things here. A few years ago I was decided that I was going to keep this blog professional and pretty much dry of any thoughts or feelings on my personal life. I have moved away from that though, inspired by blogs such as Iain’s , where personal thoughts and feelings are mixed with technical observations. I would like to think that this isn’t a bad move; after all if potential employers come to look at this 5 years from now, and don’t like what I’ve done here, then I probably don’t want to work for them anyway. There is the argument that blogs should be ’themed’ or targetted towards a particular subject to garner followers, and that too much sharing is possibly a bad thing. However, my current thoughts are that dry techncial info is boring, and I’d rather mix it with other things that are important to me. ...

I have made a lot of different upgrades and modifications to my PC, as you can see here . Some of the upgrades have made more of a difference than others though. Here is what I think you should be concentrating on, if you’re looking to upgrade. Solid State Hardisk (SSD) - Solid State hard drives use flash memory instead of the moving disk platters of traditional hard disks. It is the same type of storage as your USB stick. This type of storage is a lot faster to access compared to magnetic storage. Upgrading will result in a huge performance increase for most systems if you are changing from a traditional hard disk. Get as big a size as you can afford. If you play computer games or do a lot of media production work, then the added space will be useful. They have reduced in price over the years, the first SSD I bought was £120 for 120GB SSD back in 2012, in 2015 I just bought a 250GB SSD for £50. So it’s definitely affordable now. Large Monitor - If you can get a 27"-32" monitor then do so. It has made so much difference to the day to day usage of my PC. I would recommend 1440p if you can. 1440p is half the resolution of 4K. I wouldn’t recommend a 4K monitor yet in 2015 as I don’t think they have enough software support, and the cost is considerable for a decent screen. If you’re a gamer, then you might want to aim for a higher refresh speed, but I’d say this should be a secondary consideration to the screen space. Look on TFTCentral for reviews and guides to the different screen types available. Good Soundcard and Surround Sound Speaker System - Headphones are OK, but even a basic surround sound soundcard and speaker system is going to be so much better. I have a Asus Xonar Phoebus Solo which I recommend, it’s a 7.1 surround sound card. I have a cheap £60 set of surround sound speakers, Logitech Z506 Surround Sound Speakers . Surround sound really makes a difference in gaming and movies. I think it’s the seperate subwoofer that has the most effect, so if you are not that convinced by surround sound, you could get a 2.1 (two speakers and a subwoofer) setup for a bit less. Ergonomic Mouse and good mousemat - Chances are, most of the time you’re at your PC, you will be using the mouse. It is therefore really important you have a good mouse that won’t damange your hand after a few years use and is comfortable to use. Modern mice use laser scanners to track the position of the mouse on a flat surface. A higher resolution laser (measured in DPI - dots per inch) means that you can get more accurate tracking. Therefore look for high DPI mice for gaming or fine detail work as well as an ergonomic fit and lots of buttons. I recommend Logitech mice, after having had several Razer mice that didn’t last very long. I would also pick up a steel mousemat, as they never get tangled up in your mouse like the fibre mousemats do. Recent Graphics Card - If you are into gaming or 3D modelling work, you would often prioritise this over any other upgrade. A new graphics card means that your existing games will run faster on higher detail settings, and you can play new games on higher settings with better framerate. I don’t think it matters too much whether you go for Nvidea or AMD as long as you can run the games you want to run. If you are not interested in running the latest games, then perhaps you don’t need this, but you may be missing out in the future.

Recently I had noticed I’d been having quite bad problems with my fingers based on the fact that I had been scrolling the mouse wheel too much when scrolling through web pages. Here are a number of options you can take if you are in a similar situation as me: Change OS’s scrolling speed to its maximum This is the easiest change on most modern OSs, and will result in less scroll movements made by your fingers, because each scroll movement will move the screen down by a full screen height, (equivalent to a page down). This can be a bit annoying though as you lose accuracy when you want to just scroll down a small amount, it takes a bit of getting used to. Also you are still using the same muscles, just not as often. ...

As you can see , I buy a lot of bits and pieces for my PC. Occasionally though, I buy something that I feel was a disappointment, or not worth the investment. This post is meant to caution against other people making the same mistake. Razer Tiamat - 7.1 Surround Sound Gaming Headset, with microphone (http://www.razerzone.com) This was a big dissapointment in a couple of ways. The first, and most obvious in hindsight now I’m actually working on spatial audio for a living at BBC R&D, is that 7.1 surround sound headsets are a joke. There is no way you can get enough seperation between the different speaker drivers when your ears are so close to the speakers. If you have a soundcard or motherboard that supports surround sound, do yourself a favour and get a surround sound speaker set. ...