I doubt that this stuff will be available for a few years, but check out what Jeff Han is doing. Whatever you do, watch the video, it is kick-ass (arse!) Anybody who has seen Minority Report will recognise this at once. That was a Sci-Fi movie whereas this is for real.
I want one, I want one, I want one, I want one!
Wiggle your fingers!Today Propellerhead software announced that their ground breaking but now aged software synth, ReBirth RB-388 is not to be developed any more. No real surprise there, but all is not lost. They have fired up The ReBirth Museum and the program is now available as a disc image for free download without any support. The FAQs and documentation cover just about everything though, so if you would like to play with a classic piece of audio software, you now can for free.
ReSpond!My old 32X CDROM drive finally gave up the ghost this week and I can hardly blame it. It has been in almost constant use for nigh on eight years. The timing was perfect in that, for once, I could spare a few bucks to replace it.
Now sitting in the slot is Memorex Dual format Recorder. It reads and writes both DVDs and CDs, writable and rewritable at a variety of speeds, maxing out at 48X. Not only that but the little blue light nicely matches those on my case.
At last I can get round to burning all those discs I have planned to do for ever. For example, duplicating some choice albums from my collection to keep in the car for long solo journeys.
Pirate, me? Nah! W'about you?I currently run a computer that I built some years back. At the time it was cutting-edge but it is somewhat antiquated these days. Here are it’s basic specs:
Motherboard running at 100MHz
Pentium II 450MHz
384MB of RAM
Matrox Marvel G400 AGP graphics card
TerraTec EWS64 XL sound card with a 64MB memory card
32xCD
4×8x32 CDRW
Floppy
802.11b Wireless network card
Basic full tower case
40GB and 17GB ATA hard drives
Running Windows Millenium Edition
17” CRT monitor
As I type the components for my new system are in transit to this location thanks to the great prices and swift service of the fine folks at newegg.com. I am a little excited. The 2 CD drives and the floppy drive will be swapped over but in the near future they will be upgraded. Here are the specs for the new machine:
Motherboard running at 800MHz with built in 802.11g wireless networking
Pentium 4 3.4GHz LGA775 Prescott
2GB of RAM
ATI FireGL V3200 PCI-Express graphics card the dual monitor support
M-Audio Delta 1010T sound card
Aspire X-Navigator Case with 500W power, side window and a whole bunch of fans and LEDs
250GB SATA hard drive
With Windows XP
2 17” CRT monitors
I am inclined to believe that this might be a little faster than the old unit. The old box will not be wasted. It is going to be combined with Robin’s old unit to create a file server for our network.
We have also taken advantage of a superb offer for lifetime hosting at Textdrive that will allow us to host our various websites in one exceptionally cool hosting environment.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I am finally able to join y’all with the technology of the 21st Century! Woohoo!
Beam me up, Scotty!Thanks to a bunch of most excellent Germans, I now have Apache, PHP5 and MySQL running on my old WinME machine. XAMP allows you to run a complete duplicate of your web server right at home. For fiddling with code and learning stuff it is quite something.
I have tried a number of times to get this kind of thing running but always failed spectacularly. XAMPP comes with it’s own installer which never even makes an entry in the registry. To get rid of it I only need to delete the directory!
Why have I done this? It is so I can play with modifications to scripts without running the risk of crashing the web server and every site on it. I haven’t done that but others have, much to their regret and others annoyance.
More importantly, I am able to work on files whilst having them open in my browser. No need to go through all the uploading, changing file permissions, renaming and .htaccess bollocks that is normal. It is excellent for developing and learning and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
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