Author: John

The Withering of all Woods

  Technically simple but harmonically complex ambient track. Waldorf Streichfett and Moog Mother-32 sequenced by Korg SQ-1. Live recording. Inspired by Treebeard’s conversation with Merry and Pippin.

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Another platform upgrade

It seems platform upgrades are the only time I post here now! Anyhoo – the Raspberry Pi 3B+, grand though it was, was struggling a bit with running MariaDB, so I’ve upgraded to a Raspberry Pi 4. Quad core, 4Gb of RAM and a wee fan to keep it cool – it’s a compact wee

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What the actual…

So I was wondering how Eventide could possibly get away with charging $200 for their Blackhole reverb VST plugin. I downloaded the demo, fired up the Toraiz AS-1 and played the Bladerunner intro. Oh. That’s why it’s $200.

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The Lonely Death of Lizal Anders.

I’m a big fan of storytelling in video games. The scripted stories in big RPGs can vary dramatically between the purely functional setups of things like Diablo to the heartbreaking sagas of Final Fantasy VII or X. The silly procedural stories that drop out of the bottom of Dwarf Fortress are, for me, one of

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A change of platform

It’s been a while since The Temple had some maintenance. It’s been hosted on a variety of machines over the years; an SGI Indy, a Sun ELC, various FreeBSD, Linux, NetBSD and Solaris PCs, and a couple of Virtual Machines running Ubuntu. With home broadband running at perfectly acceptable speeds and the increasing availability of

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Autumn has arrived

And by God, has it arrived with style. After a very active outdoor Spring and Summer, I’m enjoying the delights of keeping warm on cold days. Lots of gigs in pubs, lots of reading on the sofa, even a whistle-stop dash to Wales and back, just for the lols.  In addition to the joys of

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Fife Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, 2018

On the 30th of September, 2018, a bunch of hairy and disreputable Fife biker types donned their least scruffy clothes and thundered up the coastal road from Kirkcaldy to St Andrews as part of a fundraiser for men’s mental health and prostate cancer.  Waves were given, dogs were frightened, and a stupendous amount of money

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Caledonia Dreaming

Oh man, what a summer it’s been. As well as doing a bit of sailing, it’s seen my long overdue return to motorcycling – my first love. Having covered some two thousand miles in a little over six weeks it’s safe to say that there’s some life in the old dog yet. I’ve actually been

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