I received my Arduino today, and in preparation I’ve been saving up some Arduino/Wiring/Processing links of interest to a newbie physical-computerer. If you haven’t Arduino’d before, here’s Todbot on why it’s a rocking little microcontroller. Tod also tells us how to make an Arduino Breadboard Shield, for quick circuit prototyping. You should probably familiarise yourself […]

DVGuru have reminded me about something on my projects list which really should be assigned a higher priority: Networked storage. Australian Tech Blogger of Uberness Dan has touched on this in the past and a more recent article which includes a magic list of NAS devices which allow drive spin-down. This is critical; a consumer […]

I’ve had a bit of a personal technological apocalypse over the weekend. There’s a post coming, but in the meantime here’s a couple of things which have caught my eye while catching up on my RSS subscriptions: Cinematical has a great collection of resources titled: How to make a Short Film. DVGuru points us to […]

Rivalries are good: they keep software developers competitive, leapfrogging each other in features. They keep the pressure on, and having seen what happens when one company gets a monopoly (Microsoft Office, I’m looking at you), progress generally slows. Notation users have benefited from the Finale/Sibelius rivalry, and that competition continues to produce better and better […]

Kevin says it all: Haven’t you always wanted to be a sexy Japanese lead keyboard virtuoso heading her own fusion power trio? Haven’t you always wanted to be Hiromi? I expect some of you would settle for being the bass player. Watch as Hiromi tears away a grand and a Nord synth, simultaneously: For more […]

Missing in action: The PSmaX Max patch / standalone app for translating PlayStation controls into MIDI. I’m investigating what’s happened to this file; stay tuned. If you have any information about the whereabouts of this terrific tool, please drop me a line.

Here’s the latest of the must-read links online: Earbuds = ear damage? Portable player use could cause rise in hearing loss [Times Online via Coolfer] Digidesign seal of approval. Digidesign qualifies new Windows XP setups with Mbox and 002 — `bout time. [Sweetwater inSync] Budget Mac audio editor. Sound Studio 3.0 beta now available: “Felt […]

The music blogosphere is starting to really pick up here, so I’m going to have to start to just link instead of ramble about every single item. (Anyone got a suggestion for a better name? Wait, maybe significant others?) Here’s what’s hot: Many cool and bizarre circuit-bent creations on eBay, including a whacked-out video synth […]

If you're on Windows, you can build your own instruments and effects for $20 or even free, and you have an incredibly broad range of free plugins. (Mac users, don't despair: some of the instrument and effect links are Mac-VST or AU, too.) Check out SynthEdit, the US$20 shareware for building your own VST instruments […]

OS X users intrigued by the possibility of controlling sound with a Wacom graphics tablet, here are more resources for you, helpfully offered by a guest comment: Music Unfolding's µMIDI Controller, US$15 shareware (which also works with your mouse, if you prefer) works with the Wacom tablet, though looks like it hasn't been updated since […]