I just got back from a short tour with Elephant Train. It was ridiculous. Joe tied himself up in a tree while wearing a chicken suit, because he thought it would be a good place to sleep. Rope Swings, cliff diving and all manner of swimming. Beer. So many boobs. Skulls. Cigarettes. Booze. Hammocks. Stuff. Cops. Bubbles. Double-decker guitar mayhem. Smells. Oh thank goodness the smells are gone. Thanks to our friends on the road: Ari, Jimmy, Todd and Kim for making it extra awesome.

I gave in and got one of those new-fangled iPhones before the tour. The screen is amazing, and it definitely beats the snot out of the MintPad I was using for mobile doodling and composing. Fuck you, Windows CE. SunVox runs really nice on the iPhone, but the new music hotness is definitely NanoStudio. So rad. I sat in a hammock jamming out space jazz for hours last night. The workflow is definitely a step in the right direction. Two other music must-haves: BeBot - a great little synth, with some smart input design, and Baby Scratch is a great little turntable emulator, which I like scratching on at least as much as it’s fuller-featured big brother, Flare.

I also am infatuated with Brushes for doodling, especially with a stylus. It’s amazing, it’s like the MintPad memo, but much nicer. iThoughts is the best mindmapping tool I have found for planning, and Awesome Note is a great place to dump my thoughts. If only it worked with my google calendar, I would be the most organized man alive.

Anyone want to buy a MintPad?

I’ve been real busy as usual. We got Mod Nation Racers out the door, and it came out awesome. I’m proud of it.

I went on an amazing trip to Peru and posted a bunch of photographs. It was such a great trip, I loved everything about it.

Been playing lots of live shows with Booby Trap and Elephant Train. Gotta make them asses wiggle…

I’ve been asked:  Am I ok?  What have I been up to?

I’m awesome, of course.

My friends Phil and Stephen taught me to fly this summer.  Here’s a sweet video of my first solo flight that James shot in August.  And here’s a helmet cam video of my relaxing seventh flight from late September.  Awesome.

I’ve also been making music.  As usual, I have dozens of of bad ideas.  Here are a few sketches: blues in a  dance suckers3 (with darkmatter)  hating your job  heavy shit  now we are getting somewhere  one  solo too long

I played bass for Elephant Train at a super fun show last weekend.  Jessi Nicholson played a sweet set, too.  So good.  Looking forward to more rock and roll mayhem, that is for sure.  Elephant Train has more shows in January and March.

Booby Trap and the Tiger-Skin Thursdays, are you ready?

Throughout that reckless frenzy Big Brother was working on what is easily their best record to date.  Recorded over a decade in Caledonia, Chicago, Hamilton, and Turkey Point, it’s a beautiful cross-section of crap.

Listen to Sunday is My Birthday and I don’t want to spend it in a mental hospital on the internet, for free, right now.

And thanks for all the birthday wishes.

Ahh summer.  I’ve put a beer holder on the front of my bike, and a rack for my sonofhibachi on the back.  It’s been hot, and I’ve been in the ocean a lot.  I’ve now been kicked out of 4 bodies of water in this town for inflatables- but last night security was unable to detect the water wings on my ankles.

Limeflavour made some sweet skins for Atlantis. I’ve added them to my skin pack, which you can download here.

You also want to get Altantis 0.9p again, as I fixed a tiny little PNG render bug.  You can get it here.

Enjoy!

SunVox is rad, the best portable tracker I know of.

So, hat on, fueled up, tuned out- and we have a new Atlantis build for you.

Here’s what’s new:

• PNG support

You can download Atlantis 0.9p here.  And you should read the documents, even if they are a little outdated.

Rich Orth

I haven’t got any more donations in a while, so I sponsored a new build of Atlantis myself.  It’s serious sunset season at my beach, so I bought a cheap radical flyer to throw around with my friends.  On top of that, I have joined a fierce bicycle gang.  Summer rules.

Here’s what you get in Atlantis 0.9o:

• mousewheel support is back in
• delay module display is back to the old box style.  flashing made people twitch.  you may need to tweak your skins.

You can download it here. Enjoy!

Before I get to what is new, I need to mention an old feature that lots of people ask about.  On any selection button (waveform, modulator, algorithm, file, program, etc.), you can right click to bring up a context menu.  If you right drag vertically, you can scrub settings.  This is much nicer than the prev/next buttons a lot of people ask for.  Try it.

This build is all about bugfixes.  Seems like 0.9l and 0.9m had some serious issues.

• fixed sample-and-hold mode for noise lfo
• fixed old presets loading with wrong shapers
• fixed number of voices selection
• fixed polyphony cut-out bug
• potential fix for keyjazz mode in buze, although it damages mousewheel support
• now double-buffering all renders

Special thanks to the hard working testers, especially Joseph Drushal who really gives a shit about having his old presets work correctly, and Hiroto Sakahara who wants the number of voices specified correctly.

So, go download Atlantis 0.9n.  And read the documentation here.  Check out Limeflavour’s skin, too.

–>

So, here’s what’s new in Atlantis 0.9m:

• fixed repeatverb limiter distortion
• added phase offset slider
  • works great with saw lfo
• updated file format
  • waveforms now store path
• made ui skinnable
  • and improved every module
• updated button mouse controls
  • power: left click entire area
  • context menu: right click
  • selection: right drag or mousewheel
  • wave window phase: left drag
• extened delay length 4x
• rescaled global volume
• fxp & fxb support
• single preset files (ass, asf)
• improved stability on startup (constructor race conditions and buffers)
• better anti-denormal code for phaser, filters, octaver, chorus and flanger.
• new FM preset waveforms with less harmonic content
• preset browsing
• mousewheel support for
  • sliders
  • selection buttons
  • delay input
• help link button
• a way to name programs!
  • left click for a dialog with patch name and comments
• added author and category fields to programs.

You can download Atlantis 0.9m here and an example skin here.  Extract skins.zip into a your Data Folder/skins.  Eg: My Documents\Atlantis\skins .

Time Pilot is the best single-player arcade game ever.  My personal best is 386600 on the cocktail machine at work.  I’ve seen Will Ho score 329000 and Rich Orth get over 263000.  And that thing only has a 4-way stick.