MarbleMice.com

After a flurry of quick updates to the Synthesiser program I go quiet for 10 days. Well I have been busy partly with a trip away over a weekend and busy stuff at work, but also with the Synth program.

About 2 weeks ago I sort of decided the program was actually getting into quite a good state, by that I mean it could actually prove useful to some people. This meant I am starting to think I should attempt to promote it a bit in various circles to garner some feedback. Before doing this I wanted to move the synth program away from this blog as this is meant to be a personal blog not a web site about a synthesiser program.

So I registered a new domain a few days ago and hacked together a really minimal wordpress template for it. The site is not a blog so wordpress is really just serving some static pages, I only really wanted wordpress as the admin system is pretty nice and I may add a blog sometime in the future, but it won’t be anytime soon as I have way too many things on the TODO list.

I eventually decided on the name SpiderFlock.com as the name. Yep it is pretty weird name :) With a domain like that I really had to start calling the synth program SpiderSynth. The website is not yet complete I need to add some text and pictures! You can get the latest version from there but I will continue to post about updates here. Sometime over the next week or so the SoundSynth page on this site will disappear, but not until I get spiderflock fleshed out with some information.

That is it with regards to loading and saving, I am not changing it again. For starters I am finally happy with it. It is an XML format that is read in using a sax parser. I don’t want to think about file formats again for a long time and you definitely don’t want me changing them under you feet.

Version 0.09 is out and that is the only change, now to do some more interesting stuff.

Once, this blog used to have post about interesting things like Graph Theory and C++ but now it has turned into just a series of posts about the latest release of the retro sound effects generator that seems to consume this blog at the moment, perhaps one day the author can remove his addiction to annoying every one around with strange sound effects and get on with this life. Until then another little release has been posted.

Ok a slightly bad attempt at some humour to try to brighten the day, surely it is better then Version 0.08 of the sound synthesiser program has been posted? As with all then quick updates only one small feature has been added. This time I give you the ability to control the bit quality of the sample both in play back and exporting to wav files.

Next on the list is looking again at the loading and saving so please do not create too many files as you might not be able to load them in the next version. I am also pondering whether to remove the tool bar, it does not contain much looks a bit naff and would free up some real estate as they call screen space these days.

These quick small release certainly let the time spent with ant to automating the release process pay back with dividends. For me this type of automation is going to feature in any large project I do from now on no matter what language I use to code it.

The link at the top of the page called Sound Synth will take you to the page with the latest version of the Sound Synthesiser. Enjoy

Spent the day visiting friends and did not return until late this evening. So decide to do a quick 20 minutes bit of coding before bed and added the ability to change the Sample quality between 8 and 16 bits. This works for both play back and exporting. Did not quite find time to upload the latest version.

While driving back from visiting our friends I pondered again the load and save. Everyone else was asleep so a good time for thinks. I sort of come to the conclusion that I would really like an XML based solution instead of the serialisation implementation I currently have. I am not entirely sure why it is just one of those instinct things. So perhaps I am going to hack at the load and save routines again. You have been warned.

I should add I don’t feel to guilty with constant change as the Sound synth program does not have many users, probably because I have made no attempt to promote it yet. When/if (preferable when) it start to gain more users I will not be so free to keep chopping and changing so I really need to feel happy with the core things like file formats and get it right from an early stage.

Yep I had released yet another version of the sound synth program. Again only a tiny feature increment, you can now set the number of repeats for the sample. That is when you play or export the file it repeats the sample a user specified time. Get it via the link above. This program is starting to actually feel like it could be useful to people soon.

What else have I been up to. I have felt the urge to do some C++ coding at home. I spend all day with C++ so usually want a change for programming at home. The past week or so I have felt the urge to learn some more of the higher level C++ so started hacking at the boost graph\spirit calculator sources I published here quite a while ago. It is really just for fun hacking of C++ no specific goals.