English thunderstorms (at least near London) tend to be pretty pathetic single-cell rumblers that last for 10 minutes before petering out. That changed last night with the arrival of an almost tropical display. I decided to get the digital recorder out and get some audio. Continue reading “Accidental HDR recording”
Git with the flow, dude!
This evening I received an e-mail from one of my developers:
Found this interesting article on git model. What do you think?
My heart sank. Did yours? Maybe you’re lucky enough not to know exactly where that link leads.
S/PDIF and TOSlink on the Propeller
I learned some time ago that my Roland D-70 (a keyboard synthesiser from the early ’90s that showed up on a lot of classic dance tunes during that decade) is a completely digital machine that outputs two stereo audio streams at 32 kHz and 16 bits. The schematics in the service manual also make it clear that these are output by time-multiplexing a single Burr-Brown PCM56 DAC at 128 kHz, resulting in a spurious quarter-sample delay between the left and right channel of each stereo pair. Continue reading “S/PDIF and TOSlink on the Propeller”
Build backups – an unexpected journey
As time goes by, I’ve become more picky about my Windows setup, and it’s important to me to avoid spending days reconstructing Windows builds on anything like a regular basis. Continue reading “Build backups – an unexpected journey”
MIDI controller review: Alesis Q49
After years of using combined keyboard synthesisers like the Roland D-70 and Yamaha S90ES, I bought a Q49 to go with my external MIDI synth module. The aim was to retain most of my musical options while travelling. Continue reading “MIDI controller review: Alesis Q49”
Headphone review: Sennheiser HD280 Pro
After about 15 years of loving Sennheiser’s open-backed headphones (HD590, HD650, and HD600), and using first EH150 and then HD201 closed-backed headphones for tracking acoustic guitar and vocals, I got tired of dealing with their excessively-hyped low end and decided to spend a bit more for something vaguely neutral-sounding. Continue reading “Headphone review: Sennheiser HD280 Pro”
Farewell, CyanogenMod installer
While I’m an expert in one or two areas, I know next to nothing about the pointlessly complex rituals of installing smartphone ROMs, and I’m not eager to spend days of my life trying to shave that particular yak. Continue reading “Farewell, CyanogenMod installer”
Potholes in Memory Lane
When you’ve been using computers as a serious tool for as long as I have, it’s important that they’re reliable. Continue reading “Potholes in Memory Lane”
DSP sleuthing, part 1
This post is the first in an occasional series in which I analyse the performance of DSP code in the wild to identify common quality problems. Continue reading “DSP sleuthing, part 1”
Hard-drive failure
After a couple of weeks of clacking noises from my media machine, and having had more pressing things to do than try to narrow down which of its three mass-storage drives has the problem, I finally got around to removing the failing drive (a 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda) in the hope of rescuing its data. Continue reading “Hard-drive failure”