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: ...

Specs I have finished filling the top half of my Eurorack case, see above. Here is a list of modules: Dual VCA - A-132-3 Buffered Multiples - Intellij Buff Mult VCO #1 - A-110-1 VCO VCO #2 - A-110-1 VCO Low Pass Filter - A-120 Multiples #1 - A-180-1 Multiples #2 - A-180-1 Quantizer - A-156 Dual Quantizer Envelope Generator - A-140 ADSR Noise Generator/Random - A-118 Quad LFO - A-143-3 Quad LFO Next Moves: ...

I am putting together a small modular synthesiser setup. Modular synthesizers are synthesizers composed of small individual modules, which are wired up to create a circuit for producing sound. They were very popular in the 1970s, with big bands such as Emmerson, Lake and Palmer, Kraftwerk and Jean Michael Jarre all owning big modular setups: Modular synthesisers have had a resurgence in recent years with modern versions becoming available. One producer of modular synthesiser modules is Doepfer , a German company who’s modular synthesizer standard ‘Eurorack’ has become very popular recently. I have decided to build a small Eurorack modular, here it is so far: ...

NOTE: I have an update on my progress as of 9/1/2015 here Motivated by my good friend CheerUpLove.com ’s reflective style of blogging, and Ian Forrester ’s many interesting posts, I thought it would be interesting to post something a bit more personal and less technical on this blog. Now that 2015 is upon us, I am going to take some time to publicly outline my goals for the year, so I can hold myself more accountable to them, and so I can look back on them this time next year. ...

I picked up a rather ugly (but very cheap!) customised microKORG, and also the excellent Novation Impulse 61 USB/Midi keyboard controller. The microKORG I like a lot. It was my first synth, and at first I couldn’t make any sense of it. I do agree with the Reddit /r/synthesizers view that it is not the best synth to learn on. Their view is that the best synth to learn on is one with a one-to-one mapping between controls and sound engine parameters. To put another way, the best beginners synth is one which has lots of knobs and buttons on it that you can tweak and hear actual results in the sound. It makes it more difficult if the sound engine is hidden away behind a large menu system with lots of daunting menus, like the microKORG has. ...

I decided to buy the DDJ-SR controller because it was cheaper than even the cheapest pair of Pioneer CDJs. I’m no stranger to using a laptop and controller, before the DDJ-SR I used my trusty Faderfox DJ2 controller, which is a basic no-frills ‘play buttons, 3 EQs, crossfader and volume faders’ unit. I was considering getting the Native Instruments Traktor S4 DJ controller, which is one of the most popular full-size controllers for Traktor. However, after borrowing one from a friend, I compared the build quality of the DDJ-SR versus the S4, and there was no contest! The Pioneer DDJ-SR has the same buttons and jog wheel as the Pioneer CDJ units, which are rock solid and industry standard. For anyone wanting to use CDJs in the club after using the DDJ-SR at home, you will find the feel very familiar. ...