In 2001, I bought myself a shiny new Yamaha synthesizer and to go with it a program called Cakewalk Pro Audio 9. That and its successor versions, including SONAR, was to be my DAW for many years until one day Gibson Brands spectacularly went bust. The company had been passed from pillar to post first being sold to Roland and then finally on to guitar manufacturer Gibson, but at this point no-one actually knew whether we’d ever see Cakewalk/SONAR available again.
Continue readingSome thoughts on music engraving/scorewriter programs
NB: This is not a particularly scientific or forensic review. It’s mainly my subjective view, but then again, it’s me that’s got to use it, so for the purposes of this, that’s probably fair enough. Had you have done this review, you might well have come to a completely different conclusion, that’s the way it is.
So, just after Christmas, I had a few days spare and, because the open source MuseScore 4.0 had been released just before Christmas (which was a major rewrite of the program), I thought it was time to download it and have a play with it, but also to compare it against the commercial competition, which mainly costs a lot of money, but handily also had 30-day trial versions.
Continue readingBluetooth woes on Windows
So I learned something today. I’ve just bitten the bullet and bought a no-name generic Bluetooth 5.0 USB dongle off the Internet which arrived this afternoon. What I wanted it for was to be able to transfer files between mobile phone and PC without having to scrabble around for a USB A-to-C cable I can never seem to find when I want it. So I plugged the dongle in, Windows auto-installed drivers, the Bluetooth icon appeared in the system tray and I was able to pair my phone with it.
Continue readingRIPEwatch: We’re out!
Today RIPE NCC, the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, announced via their mailing list that there are no IPv4 addresses left in the Europe region.
Continue readingReview: Colmans Bread Sauce vs Schwartz Luxury Bread Sauce
If there’s one thing you get to eat a fair bit of at Christmas, it’s bread sauce. As bread sauce reviews (and some of the bread sauces themselves) are fairly bland, I thought I’d spice it up a bit this time and turn it into to a contest. So, in the red corner we have Colman’s Bread Sauce and in the blue corner we have Schwartz Luxury Bread Sauce. Which one tastes the best? There’s only one way to find out! Er, no … not like that.
Continue readingEngland… no, Wales… no, England…
Want to know something completely useless? There is a road in the United Kingdom which has a property that no other road in the UK has, and that is that it straddles two countries along its length. Its name is Boundary Lane and it’s in Saltney just outside of Chester. Continue reading
Meltdown and Spectre
This has so far got to be the best explanation I’ve seen for the Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities…
The IPv4 Report
So, it’s the end of another year and time to have a look at where we are with IPv4 address exhaustion as of now.
Goodbye To All That
The end of today marks the 25th anniversary of the ITV 1993 franchise round as required by the Broadcasting Act 1990. As a result of the decisions of the Indepdent Television Commission (the regulator of ITV at the time), at the beginning of New Year’s Day 1993 three ITV contractors, the breakfast television franchise and the teletext franchise were replaced with new companies.
Chipsteaks!
I discovered this advert on YouTube recently – it’s one of a series of local adverts produced in-house by Channel Television, the ITV company for the Channel Islands, for Benest’s of Millbrook (prounounced Ben-ays) and Fineprice (St Clements Coast Road) a chain of two family-owned supermarkets based in Jersey back in the 1970s and 1980s.