Microsoft should be fined half their earnings for every year that IE6 is on the web in non-negligible numbers (over 5%). After all, we developers have to do everything twice – once according to standards, and then again with lots of weird hacks to make it work on IE6. Latest nightmare is a javascript popover progress indicator for long running form posts. The well known issues with absolute positioning and z-index conspired to make the strategy that works on every other browser fail on IE6. So a feature I built in about 4 hours required an additional 8 hours to get mostly working on IE6 (there are small issues remaining – but nothing worth fixing).
I’ve been doing some e-commerce integration for various clients – all of whom are using PHP. The integration has been using SOAP calls to billing service and shopping cart service providers.
Last week every steady stream of income I have evaporated. So I am actively seeking work. Either contract/remote, or possibly would consider joining an innovative startup with a great idea. I’m not too interested in conventional employment with a big company. People wondering about my skillz can check out my Linked In profile.
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of PHP, AJAX, and SOAP stuff, Smalltalk web programming with Seaside, and Mac application programming with CoreAudio (JambaLaya).
Last spring and summer, I decided to stop dragging a bunch of hardware synthesizers back and forth to band practice and start using a laptop as an all-in-one solution. This is more or less possible thanks to the availability of a variety of virtual instruments in Audio Units format that rival (and in some cases faithfully reproduce) the hardware synths of olde.
Seems simple. I need a MIDI controller keyboard – I chose an 88 key model and figured I’d map various instruments to different ranges of keys. So I started looking for an Audio Units host oriented towards live performance.
I came up empty. Nearly all of them are oriented towards sequencing and multi-track recording. They could kind of do what I wanted, but the user interface wasn’t oriented towards what I needed. There was one product – an independent program called RAX – that seemed right – only its author had just withdrawn it from the market. I managed to get an evaluation license from the developer but I disqualified it because it had a problem handling sustain pedal events and its future was uncertain.
So I set out to build my own and I’ve succeeded. It works well enough, is pretty bare bones, but allows the user to do complex splits and layers very quickly. I call it JambaLaya and I use it all the time. It isn’t quite production quality and there are missing feature I’d like to add. But it is a great feeling to control your own destiny and not have to worry about a critical piece of software disappearing from the market.
Now I’m trying to decide what to do with it. I could polish it up and offer it for sale, but since I wrote it two things have happened. RAX was acquired by a new publisher who is once again selling and supporting it and Apple has released a Logic 8 update with a program called Mainstage that is also oriented towards live performance. In both cases, I prefer the way the JambaLaya works, the UI is much more feature dense and it works the way I expect (little wonder, since I wrote it). I think in the short term, the best thing is to start a community website for it and give it away. So I think that’s the plan unless somebody has a better idea. I just need more time to configure the Drupal site and get that going.
A couple lifetimes ago, I was a full time professional musician. I played the Albuquerque club circuit in the 80’s and the scene was such that a good top-40 cover band could make a good living and have a lot of fun. Playing helped fund college. Eventually I graduated and set out to have a “career” in engineering which somehow ended with programming computers. I boxed up my guitars, keyboards, amps, and floppy disks with songs I had written and pretty much didn’t dig them out until last summer.
Last summer I bought a Mac dual quad, a Digital Performer upgrade, and some Audio Unit virtual instruments, dug out my old material, and began transferring the stuff to DP through a fairly laborious process. The goal? Make that great album I’ve always been meaning to do. Heck, I’m over 40 now. If not now, when?
I also hooked up with a bunch of geezers with a similar history and we’ve started a cover band (average age in the band is something like 48). So I’m splitting my time between learning current songs (and lots of oldies) and polishing my live chops, and getting up to speed on modern recording technology. Lots to learn. It used to be all about the hardware. Now allthatgear I used to use in the 80s is available in software for about one tenth the price. Cool. No more tape machines either. All digital. Unlimited tracks and takes.
But it all takes time to learn so I think I’ll start blogging about that a bit.
