I see TIME has a breath-takingly stupid list that pupports to be "the greatest and most influential records ever." Not one non-English-language record. Not one record from continental Europe. Not one from Africa. Not one from South America. Not one from Asia (I don't think the Plastic Ono Band counts). Australia/Pacific gets one for AC/DC. Only four non-US artists in...

I spent the last month making my own home-made USB control surface: a Velleman USB IO board, a multiplexor board of my own, some home-made pressure pads/ribbon controllers, and various pots, switches and plugs for external pedals and controllers. Looks good in a brown leatherette upholstered box. I'm working on programing the USB to MIDI software so that it can...

Here's a couple of images from the CD my dear old Dad is making of the plants in the Coffs Harbour Botanical garden, for release next month. The Wombat Berry is the sole member of the genus. Also, here is perhaps the only photo on the internet of the fruit of the Grease Nut Tree, which rejoices in the name...

After a couple of decades of stagnation, analog DIY synth making is showing a lot of life again. A lot of the classic cicruit designs are no longer encumbered by patents, and many designers who have moved out from commercial production are happy that their designs still attract interest and fans. The late baby-boomers who grew up with synth envy...

Macs are now as inconvenient as PCs are. I've just been going through a tedious multimedia job. My Dear Old Dad makes image collection CD as his hobby: his first one, Aircraft Spotter, is of scans of WWII vintage aircraft schematics (you can get it on E-Bay, I believe). The new one is a complete catalog of the flowers at...

I've just released a new SynthEdit module with about 80 different low pass filter configurations, plus some high pass as well. RJ_FILTER3 is available from the syntheditusers group at the YAHOO groups site, under the files/modules. Other recent module news: Chris Kelly has released a whole new module library (good luck on getting any info anywhere): some info on the...

For fans of analog synths, especially of vintage EMS synths, here's a few clips I've found. (No guarantees the links won't disappear, sorry!)...

In Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago, and the media and volk seemed obsessed by the "Bus Uncle" incident. The Wikipedia entry is pretty good on it. A phone video of a probably drunken exchange on a bus was downloaded onto YouTube, a video file sharing site very popular in Asia, and had over 2 million hits, and found...

Wow, nail my hat to the ceiling! I'd never heard of the ANS synthesizer before. Its a 50's synth from Russia with 800 oscillators controlled by marks on a sheet of glass! I'm a fan of non-Moog music synthesis: any fan of Dr Who (BBC Radiophonic Workshop) would be, and I've released an emulation of the Mixturtrautonium, but the ANS...

Fun software at http://www.faceresearch.com/ allows you to age or youth-ify your face, turn it into an El Greco painting, or morph it into a Manga hero. I had a go....