I’ve finished my 6U Eurorack case. It took me 9 months to build, buying a couple of modules a month. Goals I wanted to make a self-contained dual voice synthesizer that would interface with my 2x Doepfer Dark Energy MK1s and my Microbrute, on a budget. I also wanted to add some random sound generation features. I chose to make the synthesizer out of Doepfer modules because they are easy to find cheap second-hand, and also because they are well-engineered. (If they’re good enough for Kraftwerk, who am I to complain?) ...

Some things I have been meaning to investigate in my own time, but haven’t, because life just gets in the way. Maths - It might surprise a few people that, as a software developer, I never took maths to A-level. I picked up a bit of maths in my CS degree, but I never really got a firm grounding in it. This has prevented me from understanding and coding advanced stuff in game development, understanding audio to a decent level, and generally doing things in which I consider the more interesting fields of computing. Music Theory - I have been getting better at playing the piano/keyboard by ear, but I have never fully learned to read music, and I would like to. Electronics - I would love to be able to build simple DIY synthesiser module kits for my Eurorack setup. I imagine I’d have to start on something small though. It would be great if I could take courses in these subjects, via the OU or something similar. I just have to find the time.

Now that I am midway through the year, I thought I’d revisit the goals I set myself at the start of the year , to see what has changed. Career Goals Settle into my new role at the BBC as Test Manager - I suppose this has not been achieved. I will have more updates soon (hopefully) but a change of direction is likely to happen. Pushing for a place to be opened up in Platform Test to employ someone from the Extend Scheme - This has been achieved, and someone will be joining Platform Test from the Extend scheme in October, I’m happy to say. Creative Goals Get better at music production - This has been achieved. I have been working with my friend I will call ‘G’, which has massively improved my production skills. I have posted music that I see as much better to Soundcloud. Social Goals Getting married - Well.. things didn’t work out with that. But I have a new girlfriend who will hopefully be moving to live with me, so things seem to be recovering there. Making friends with more people that share the same interests - Partly achieved. G is a good example of someone that I have met through looking for friends with the same interest. Financial Goals Saving more over the course of the year - Partly achieved. I have bought a house, so now I am in a quite a bit of debt, but the money I will be putting towards my mortgage will be money I am effectively ‘saving’ because it will be put into the value of the house. Joining a pension scheme - Achieved. Health Goals Adopt a regular form of keeping fit - Not achieved. I have a gym even closer to where I live, 5 minutes walk, so hopefully I will use it more soon. It is difficult for me, as the medication I’m on makes me feel tired all the time, but they do say that exercise improves energy levels. Conclusion Although I’ve achieved the majority of my goals, I haven’t achieved two of the major goals - around my job and around exercise, which are both things I need to work on. There is still time left this year to make a difference in these areas.

This requires you to have a subscription to Apple Music and a 3G/4G/wireless data connection, but it is so useful! Using this tip, you can be walking along with your iPhone in your pocket and your Apple earphones in, and then change music just by pressing a button on the earphones remote control and saying ‘Play (your favourite band)’. 1. Activate Siri and subscribe to Apple Music. I used to subscribe to Spotify so I switched to Apple Music when I realised the advantages of the integration on my phone, and the wider selection of music. You will also need to set Siri to stream music over your cellular network, this can be done in the ‘Music’ section of iOS settings. ...

My Eurorack modular has been progressing. I’ve added several low-cost modules, a Doepfer A-138b audio mixer module so I can mix the audio outputs of the oscilators, the noise output, and my Doepfer Dark Energy modules. I found this so useful with the Dark Energys that I have ordered another mixer. This I can use to mix audio before sending it to the filter, for example, or mix audio before sending it to a VCA to be amplified. I also added another envelope generator, Doepfer A-140, a sturdy workhorse and also useful for triggering the filter independently of the VCA envelope. Then I added a syncable LFO.. I already have 4 LFOs from the quad-LFO module in the top right, but I wanted a LFO with a reset option that I can use for MIDI syncing. On order is also a A-148 S&H (sample and hold) module which I will use for generating interesting random tones once I have expanded the ‘generative music’ theme of my setup a bit more. ...

If you have two soundcards - maybe a normal soundcard for your speakers and maybe a headset with its own audio interface - you will want some way of switching all audio between the two. This is an great little open-source tool to do just that. It works on Mac, and Windows 7 up to 10: https://soundswitch.codeplex.com/

Not that I particularly look at anything weird, but when I’m showing someone my computer I don’t want to have my ‘most visited sites’ pop up when I fire up Chrome. The following Chrome extension will get rid of the default loading page, and just display a blank page: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-new-tab-page/dpjamkmjmigaoobjbekmfgabipmfilij

Two Ruby gems that I contributed to from my days in the BBC’s TITAN (Test Tools and Infrastructure) team, have been open-sourced. So finally I can say that I have made proper open-source contributions. The gems are for making automating of Android phones via Android Calabash easier, and are used in a lot of the mobile testing we do at the BBC. Here they are: https://github.com/bbc/device_api https://github.com/bbc/device_api-android Here is my Github profile , which doesn’t look very active on the surface, but I have been contributing to repositories which remain private at the moment, so my history is not visible.

I have a lot of different instruments, both hardware and software, for making music, but here is what I use the most at the moment: Piano I have an actual electric piano but I don’t use the onboard sound engine, preferring to use it as a midi controller for a software piano sound. Recently I bought Ableton Live Full Suite, before I was using the ‘Grand Piano’ sound from the default install. Now there is a whole ‘Piano’ Ableton Live pack, and that seems to offer much more realistic piano sounds. ...

I’ve always liked writing and have been doing it for a long time. I write a lot for work, and also have written a lot of creative writing. Work Essays and Articles I’m working on a way to format and structure these properly within Hugo. For now though, the following will have to do.Alternatively, you can always view them in markdown in the Github repository at the link here: ...