Peehole Vortex

Right, well as one of my earlier posts said, I had issues with composing tracks in Vortex tracker and having them replayed faithfully at raww.orgy. I've now got to the bottom of what's been going on.

Basically, Vortex Tracker uses it's own implementation of the 3xxx command (a kinda slide from one note to another command). Now if a tune is made with the vortex version of 3xxx and replayed with a standard PT3 replayer, it just don't sound right. From what I can tell, the slide you get from the PT3 replayer isn't as quick. So I decided to make an MP3 of what it should sound like... Enjoy :)

100Hz Music?

I played about with this a little while ago and thought you might like to see what it sounds like.

So I made a quick demo track using some of my old ZX samples and here are the results.

First up 50Hz...



Then the same track, but made to play at 100Hz...



I'm sure you'll agree, the drums certainly sound finer. As for the bass, etc. I'm not sure if it's improved or not. Make up your own mind ;)

New Toy

Here's a pic of my new toy ;) A Samsung SM206BW. It's really nice. No, hold. It's really really nice. Actually, it's really really really nice! Ok, you get the picture. One thing that hit me (literally) is the brightness of the monitor. I switched it on and was almost blinded! You have been warned ;) The pic really doesn't do this justice at all.

Vista likes to track...

I recently installed Vista on my home laptop and after a bit of a fight I got it to recognise all my devices (the sound was the main problem). I must say it's quite nice, visually. It's quite usable, but the added security can get a bit annoying, but that can be disabled.

Anyhow, I just thought I'd share a little video with you to show just why you need a high end machine to use that yummy GUI.


So what's this video of? Basically it's Sk@le Tracker running on Vista. Then you can see the realtime preview of the tracker window, it's a little tricky to see with the YouTube recoding of the video, but the notes are all scrolling in the little preview window too - all in realtime. Then you get the alt+tab window, which is also scrolling away. Then finally, the windows+tab 3d application switcher, that really made me laugh and think, 'kewl!'.

Just as a minor update, I've played around with more realtime apps, eg. Google Earth, and it's still equally as kewl :) Just get Google Earth to wizz around the world to a destination and try the windows+tab app switcher. You can even watch YouTube videos in multiple windows like this. I know it's all cosmetic, but it's just so kewl :)

Another compo, another entry...

Well, I recently entered the graphics compo at Forever 8 and came third. Not bad considering the competition. Anyway, here's my entry for all to see, it's titled 'Love Lust Sex' of course :)

Keep your eyes on the prize...

Just so you can see one of the prizes I got for winning the gfx compo :) Taken with my shiny new Fuji FinePix S6500fd camera. Hoorah!

I WON, I WON!!!

... and I also came 4th! What am I on about? raww.orgy 3 of course!

I entered the music compo with a track called 'Peehole' which I submitted the STeM Mix of. I wrote this track in Vortex Tracker II only, and it seems this was a big mistake. I managed to use combinations of effects and pitches of notes that Vortex doesn't faithfully reproduce. So the track sounds better in Vortex tracker than it does on a real Speccy. Despite all of this, my track still came 4th.

So what did I win, well, my graphics alter ego K-0S entered the graphics compo with this picture of D0k...

The graphic is actually a heavily edited version of a real picture, but not of D0k. Just a D0k-a-like. The original was a 16M colour JPEG, and as you can image, it takes a lot of messing, pixel editing, etc. to get it this good in two colours.

So all my hard work paid off. Hoorah! :)