MI7®

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up. ...The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?)

I haven't been posting much in the past couple of months, mainly because I've been taking time to work on a new book and get some personal business stuff out of the way.

Things are looking interesting though... we've been approached about a new record deal, and asked to play some more festivals at the end of the year / beginning of next year. So the plan is to spend as much time as possible in the studio over the next few months and finally finish off all of the things that have been sitting on the hard drive for ages in a half-finished state.

So someday soon I might even get round to putting some new songs on the music player! :-)

Well, April is nearly over now, and I can't wait to see the back of it. It's been a horrible month. My home office got burgled twice - and the second time while I was still at home! I lost a ton of my gear, computers, phones, passport, credit cards etc.

Luckily all my data was backed up and I'm slowly getting back to normal, but it's taken some time. So if you've been trying to get hold of me and didn't get an answer, now you know why...

Been up in Manchester at the studio last couple of days, and it's been fun so far. Managed to recreate the lost backing track of a fabulous Cassandra Complex song that we've never been able to play live before, so I think we'll be premiering that at the Bath gig on Friday. Also I think we may have finalised work on a cover song that we'll be playing there too. So far everything sounds fantastic... let's see what the gig itself brings... 

Since its launch in October 2007, Eee PCs have shipped more than 1 million units, as of the end of March, and Asustek is optimistic that it will reach its goal of shipping 5 million units of the low-cost notebooks in 2008, the sources said.

For any UK members in the South West, we're playing in Bath next Friday...

I think we just took another step closer to SkyNet:

Open source 3D printer copies itself

Seriously though, this is really quite remarkable.

Nasa scientist warns the world must urgently make huge CO2 reductions

One of the world's leading climate scientists warns today that the EU and its international partners must urgently rethink targets for cutting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of fears they have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem.

In a startling reappraisal of the threat, James Hansen, head of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, calls for a sharp reduction in C02 limits.

More at The Guardian. It's pretty scary.

Spent much of the past couple of days playing with my girlfirend's new EeePC 701. It's a wonderful device, a typically solid, well thought out Asus design. And it's so small! Though admittedly that just makes it look exactly the right size when I see it perched on her lap, since she's a teeny speck herself.

The screen is super small too, but very clear, so the fact that it's only 800x480 isn't too big a problem. And you can connect an external monitor and get more screen space that way, which is nice. It's also incredibly light, which is great, since I'm getting increasingly tired of lugging huge laptops around. There's no Hard Drive, instead using a 4GB Solid State Drive, so you can shake it around as much as you want without fear of problems. Very nice in a portable device.

The Xandros Linux OS is almost brilliant, though it has a couple of very annoying niggles:

1. When you update the installed software, there's a bug that makes the icons for some programs disappear, thus making it near-impossible to run them
2. The Xandros software repositiories don't have some very common and necessary Linux programs in them (e.g. GIMP, GnuCash), so installing them means adding new non-Asus repositories, and possibly ending up in dependency hell. Yes, this has happened to me already - I'll probably have to wipe everything I've installed and start again from scratch later this week. Ho hum.
   

So basically if you want to use it as a real computer, rather than just a Web and media appliance, that means installing another version of Linux. And without a DVD drive, that looks like a bit of a bitch. So I reckon getting an external USB DVD drive is the way to go, then putting Xubuntu on it. Or maybe Mandriva, since the new version of that is specifically tuned for the EeePC.

Would I recommend it? Right now, probably not for most people, unless you spend a lot of time walking, or on trains and planes, and/or are a Linux geek. However once Asus fix the OS bugs, and the whole thing generally gets a little more mature, it'll be a killer A1 purchase.

There's a new version coming in a few months, the EeePC 900, with a bigger screen, bigger Solid State Drive, and also available with Windows XP. Might be a useful box for portable music applications, like DJing...

Barley your matrix!

After a few weeks of travel and other work stuff I finally managed to get back to the studio yesterday. We just sold our old, huge Soundcraft desk, so we have been playing around with other desks checking out where we want to go.

We've got a lovely, but ancient, Amek DMS digital console that we picked up in a studio sale, but never actually used until now. It's an amazing piece of technology, looks like something out of Star Trek. One of those things that probably looked really futuristic when it first came out but now actually looks retro :-)

Although it's a great desk I don't think we're going to keep it - it just doesn't suit our way of working really. Anyone want to buy an Amek? :-)

Then we tried the new Yamaha n8 desk. We have one of these on loan to test, and it's amazing for such a small desk. I'd played with it a bit before, but this was really the first time I'd had some serious hands on work with it. It's everything it's supposed to be, and then some. We're definitely going to buy it's big brother, the Yamaha n12, within the next days. 

It's not just a desk really - it's a FireWire interface for Cubase, a set of Class A mic preamps, compressors on every channel, a Yamaha REV-X reverb onboard - and even full surround monitoring on the n12. And the price is really cheap...

Most importantly for my mind is that it's not like any other Yamaha desk - there's no LCD screen, no SHIFT key, no cursor keys, no multifunction switches, none of that shit. It looks and feels like a classic analog console.  It's so simple to use, and so flexible. And because it has a 16 channel bus in and out of Cubase via FireWire, no messy cabling either.

Honestly if you use Cubase and have a small studio I can't see why you would not want this desk. It's as close to perfection as I've seen in a long time...

Right, back to work. Got to take some pics and video of the Vicoustic sound treatment we did a while back. The room sounds so good now!

View from the front of the show.

You can't really miss what's going on.

Me presenting the Steinberg VST3 press conference...

...assisted by Cubase genius user, Greg Ondo.

Another one of me presenting. As well as this press conference we did a few of these shows for the public each day.

We ran the whole show via the amazing new Yamaha n12 digital mixer. Its tight integration with Cubase really works well.

Daryl Pearson, successful producer, stopped by to show us some stuff he does.

'Nuff said.

Teddy Riley, the New Jack Swing guy himself, doing the best Cubase demo I've ever seen.

Even Stevie Wonder was in the audience!

Stevie having a chat with Rob Arbittier, one of the best musicians I know. He's been on every record ever.

Then Stevie decided to just get on our stage and jam!

...and he was playing the HALion One Dyna Piano sound too!

Thanks to Ed Doll for taking the photos! 

In a few hours time I'll be jumping on a plane to LA and the annual NAMM show. It's always a lot of fun, and it's great meeting people in the industry - though I could live without the jet-lag :-(

Hopefully I'll have some reports for you all in the next days!