Friday, January 16, 2009 at 09:36PM Ian, number one son and myself have managed to get through the first round of the "Dare to Dream Different" contest. We should be getting our hardware fairly soon and beginning work on our top secret device.
We have decided to call ourselves "Team Building" and this is our team picture, with a bit of help from http://simpsonizeme.com/#
Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 03:09PM The people behind SongSmith reckon that "Everybody has a song inside". I just hope that in my case it isn't "Shaddap You Face".
Anyhoo, the program itself is rather clever (as it might be, coming from Microsoft Research). It will orchestrate a tune that you sing, adding accompaniment in one of 30 styles. It does this by analysing the notes that it hears and then using some clever algorithms to pick chords that would sound the best alongside.
It is a free download, and looks like fun. Perhaps it might be useful for some cheap and copyright free game soundtracks....
Link Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 08:59PM 
If you want to create reports out of lots of small passages that you would like to combine together (say if you were doing some marking of student reports) then PasteMaster is for you. It has been around for a while, and is now up to version 3.0 which adds message save and load and a host of other features. Find out more, and download the program, here.
Software Monday, January 12, 2009 at 10:50PM Bought some new boots on Saturday. They are proper ones, with heels and soles that can be replaced. I was getting cold feet and so I got myself some thick socks as well to keep my toes toasty warm.
They are great, but very noisy in the corridors at work. If I ever need to sneak up on someone I won't be wearing these boots. I was trying to think of some kind of CSI plot twist, where the murderer invents boot silencers so that he can stalk his victims on the mean street of Las Vegas, but I'm not sure how it would work.
Actually, this is not the daftest thing I ever heard about sneaky boots. In the Sherlock Holmes episode where he is brought back from his untimely death at the hands of Professor Morriarty the great detective says that he managed to put off his pursuers and leave misleading tracks by simply "Reversing his boots and walking home". I had a quick go at this with my new boots and it is nigh on impossible. Mind you, I'm no Sherlock Holmes. And I wonder which university Professor Morriarty used to work at?
Life 