The Soundworks.uk.com space

Due to issues with the domain registra, and the fact I don't want to pay them any money and also they are being difficult, I am having to change domain name.  As a result, from Wednesday 3rd December, http://soundworks.uk.com will be no more, though I have renewed the space and it will carry on under a different name, so watch this space...

As yet there is nothing new that I'm ready to throw onto the internet, though I have updated the teaser file posted a few entries down from this.  If you can't find it or just don't want to leave this particularly rare entry, click here and the file will magically load into your preferred media player.

Changes are afoot over at the Soundworks.uk.com website, and it is now live!

There are some known issues, which are limited to Safari and all browsers based on the Safari rendering engine.  These are that some websites based on Frames have a white border around the frames.  This has always been the case since Safari first came out, though all other browsers based on different rendering engines (Such as Internet Explorer and Firefox) do not have this problem.

To try the new site out, please click here and send any comments via the contact page on that site rather than here (Don't worry if you don;t want to put your own email address in the form, so long as it is a proper email format it will allow it.  So hello@there.com will work).

While I tolerate many things in general, I have a line and if it is crossed. you lose the right to ask anything of me.

As an example, 2 people I know recently had a fall out.  Fair enough this happens, though a number of insults were sent via mobile text message, one of which crossed the line, and as far as I am concerned, crossed it by a mile.

So when said person who sent the text asked me to pass on a message, my response was to the point on 2 counts, the first was if you have a message to pass on, have the guts to do it yourself, the second pointed out that the text message in question here,  was as I put it "The height of stupidity and immaturity".

And as for something than effectively condoned violence and abuse against another (Which this text message did), well I generally have 2 words, and the last one is off.

So to sum up, cross the line and you lose the right to talk to me, never mind ask anything of me.  You want that back then either earn it or don't bother, I don't care either way.

It takes a lot to make me livid, but on occasion, a single text message can do it.

Well, that went down well...

With the posting of the teaser track (In the entry below this one (Hint, hint)), traffic to the main website has increased, with an increase on the number of people listening to other tracks available on the site too.  While I don't mind this, I do want to avoid a repeat of the incident in February this year where tracks were effectively being stolen (And in some cases sold as ringtones!).  For that reason, the only way to get access to and listen to main finished tracks is to use the player on the website.

Still, it is nice to get the attention.

So, what else has been going on?  Well I have spent the week on a training course in Leeds and to make sure I could get both myself and my colleagues to Leeds, I was given a hire car by the company I work for.  Now I was expecting something like a Ford Fiesta or Focus, something along those lines, so imagine my shock when I got an email saying my black Mercedes was waiting for me in the company car park.  Well, as if I was nervous enough at the thought of being responsible for a Mercedes, when I went to collect it, it was an automatic gearbox and I had never driven an automatic before...

So, after 5 minutes or so, I finally figured how to get it out of the Park setting on the gear selector and tried driving a short distance...

After a few minutes I got the hag of it and gingerly drove up to my Dad's house.  Well, it was a bit of an adventure, but I got it there in one piece and with a littel more driving it was almost like I had never driven any other type of car, though I did accidentally activate the manual gear select and could not figure out for a while why it was not working as an automatic should.

Still. it was not too difficult to figure out what was going on once I saw and understood the display.

I got quite fond of that car, and was sad to see it go back, but one thing I will not miss is the fuel consumption, it was slow off the lights and getting out of junctions quickly (Which you MUST do in Leeds) was a challenge, even with the gearbox in Sports mode (Which only burned through fuel faster as far as I could tell) it was foot flat to the floor and time the car from 0 to 60 with a calender.

So that's pretty much it, though we did take the car through Blackpool illuminations last night, with a quick stop off to dance under the worlds largest glitter ball, strictly come dancing, eat your heart out!

I'm not online much these days, I guess I have got a little bored of this whole internet malarkey.  That does not mean I've been sitting around doing nothing, oh no not very likely with new(ish) baby, work (To pay the bills) and lots of other things going on around me.

One of the things I'm finally getting back into is music, so after a while getting my head around a completely new setup (Quite literally everything has changed so it is like starting again from scratch), I'm finally starting to get into a writing frame of mind.

So is it more orchestral stuff?  Some pseudo 80's electro stuff?  Some Rave?  More underwatery stuff?

Well, no.  It's a bit different (What else would you expect these days?).

One of the things I'm working on right now is in a sort of 'Teasable' state, which for the uninitiated, means I'm happy to throw a little hint about it online should you want to listen.  The usual points apply in that this is not a finished composition (And may well never be), also it has not been mixed or produced on any proper or considered way, it is simply something I'm playing around with while I decide what to do with it.  With that in mind, don't expect a long preview, or even one that sounds perfect because it is neither of those.

Now with the formalities out of the way (As it has been a long time since I did anything like this), the track, should you still want to listen, can be heard by clicking here.

Enjoy.

A few weeks ago I put the finishing touches to a sound effects track I'd been asked to do for one of the local church kids activity groups.  The brief was simple, about 5 minutes of underwater sounds, along with some whale song.

The underwater sounds were pretty easy to get hold of, I still have quite a large library of sounds from the Lob Story days, so putting the base sounds together was done quite quickly.  The whale song though was another matter entirely.  As this was not going to be a large budget sound effects commission for film or TV, there was no budget to play around with, so the libraries I did find were out of the question as they were part of an effects package, with a price more akin to an international telephone number, so something else had to be found.  What I remembered though was that I had a remix CD which had the sound of whale song on it, intertwined with a rather overpowering dance music track.  Time for some careful and skilled audio editing...

After a few hours of trimming whale noises and careful positioning, it was ready to burn to CD and hand over.  To be honest, I expected that to be the end of it, as usually you don't hear much back with what was really a basic background sound assignment, though in a conversation with Rob yesterday (Who was the guy who was in contact with this particular church), he said that he'd received a letter of thanks from the church, expressing what a difference the track made to what they were doing.

While the letter of thanks is a really nice gesture, what made it better was hearing what a difference such a simple piece of work made.

Which just goes to show, with the track and letter, it's the little things that count and make all the difference.

With the imminent arrival of Windows 7 for the general public (And general availability to MicroSoft's business partners), the era of Windows Vista is coming to a close.  However I cannot let this pass by without commenting and saying thank you.

Without Windows Vista, I would not have found an IT world where networking is as easy as clicking on a few checkboxes, where sharing files from one computer to another was simple, effective and painless.  Where everything works as it should and everything is in a place where you would expect it to be, and doing your day to day work is as simple as it could ever be.  Where your music can be held in one place for all your additional systems and securely shared with the click of a mouse, and everything works smoothly, even if you only have 512MB RAM in your system.

Thank you MicroSoft for releasing Windows Vista, for without it, I may never have started using Apple computers.

Well, we're back online with a proper internet connection at home.  I would have posted it earlier, though to be honest I have not had much of an inkling to blog.

It's not that I don't have anything to put, I've just lost interest to an extent.

Still, it's not like it's the first time and probably won't be the last, though I am still updating the main website, which is also more than overdue for a facelift and complete re-vamp.  This is somethinig that for the first time, I am placing in the hands of someone else, though I have outlined and sketched the initial design.  I'm hoping to make the whole thing accessible from mobile phones too, like this bit is, so that the site can be updated and viewed anywhere.

The thing is, with the new site update, I'll have to either change this blog to fit with the new layout, or sever the link between the two.  I'll decide on that later, though if the link is severed, there is a chance that this place may well end up being deserted altogether.

Still. we shall see how it all goes.  I have a new commission to work on and should soon have a space to set up and work in.  It's all falling into place piece by piece.

Until next time, take care out there.

Currently we have no internet at home, as our current internet provider, namely 3, have failed to provide us with the stuff we need to send our faulty modem back to them.  As we can't send the faulty unit back, they will not ship us a replacement.

How's that for customer service.

Spend 30 minutes on the phone to 'Steve' in Bangalor to be cut off by an automated recording telling us what the next step is, then fail to deliver on that next step.  In the meantime as a customer, I still have to pay for a connection I can not use, at least I do until the direct debit is canceled.

Roll on the end of this contract so I can be rid of this shoddy company forever.