A few days ago I suddenly found myself unable to log in to the admin section of this Web site. That's understandably a problem when I'm running a business through the site. Upon investigation, it turns out that my e-commerce provider had made some kind of internal change which rendered the site no longer compatible with my preferred browser, and the best they could offer me was to say I should switch browsers. For this to happen at all is a dealbreaker, let alone with no advance notice, and so I will be migrating the North Coast Synthesis Web storefront elsewhere and ending my relationship with these people as soon as possible. This is the kind of behind-the-scenes issue that sometimes comes up when running a business online. The Web pages you see as a member of the general public are the proverbial tip of the patch cable; there's always a lot of unseen work and a lot of unseen business going on to support the part you see. READ MORE

The Solstice is rapidly approaching and I'm doing my usual routine of putting off making any plans until the very last moment, then panicking, buying a bunch of random gifts, and handing them out with little regard to who's receiving what. I've come close to the point of That's it, everybody's getting Sine Bank kits! Whether they are into SDIY or not! already a couple of times and it's only December 3rd. If, however, you would like to do things in a more careful way than I do, and if you have a modular synthesist on your list, then you may appreciate these gift suggestions. READ MORE

Modular synthesis involves a lot of on-the-fly experimentation with the hardware, but if you're going to make music in a preplanned way, there's a good chance you will end up involving a computer and connecting it to your modular via MIDI. Here are notes on some of the software I like to use for that and related tasks. I'm focusing on stuff that will run under Linux, but many of these packages are cross-platform. READ MORE

The MSK 008 Octave Switch is planned to launch tomorrow and I've already posted the manual; so I thought it would be fun for this week's Web log entry to introduce some of the software tools I use for producing, and especially for documenting, module designs. My designs are free, my roots are in the free software community and my values emphasize all aspects of free speech, and so I try to stick to free software in running my operation. The title says EDA software ("Electronic Design Automation") but in fact this list covers some other engineering functions too, that people don't usually think of as EDA. READ MORE