I got an invite to the beta of Google+ (social network) which is funny 'cause I don't like social networks. Anyway, if you want an invite send me your gmail address and I'll send you an invite too.

Bioshock for $5? Done!

I had a ton of trouble getting it working though. There was a great guide here, but at the end of the day I had to disable Avast and reinstall. It's way cooler with sound!

I wonder what Steam will have on sale today?

Image-Line just released the FL Studio Mobile app for the iPod, iPhone, and iPad but it's NOT AVAILABLE IN CANADA! I'm not too happy about that last part, but here's a link anyway.

http://www.image-line.com/documents/flstudiomobile.html

Night Vision (Hopes and Dreams RMX)

I just put the finishing touches on my first ever remix and I've uploaded it all over the place:

NewGrounds - http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/422239

SoundCloud - http://soundcloud.com/dmgpunk/night-vision-hopes-and-dreams

YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjx6IIY7L4Q

And of course Image-Line - http://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=73988&p=548117#p548117 who was hosting the competition - http://www.image-line.com/documents/news.php?entry_id=1303101802

I've discovered that remixes are fun, and it's great to challenge yourself to work on a project that you wouldn't typically take on, but listening to the same song over and over for a month does get tiresome. I don't think I came up with an award winner, but I like it, and I'm pleased with my work; I make music for me so I want to improve more than I want to be popular.

FL Studio induced issues

Reader,

My computer is great! It's not perfect and it's not new, but it is the product of investment (time and money) and it shows. As such my expectation is that it will do what I want when I want. With my resent purchase of FL Studio, two compliance issues have been brought to light; I was able to find solutions on both fronts.

Firstly: I wanted to record a sound clip from a movie that I own in 3 formats and I couldn't. I have a SoundMAX Integrated HD Audio device that I use for optical output. In the sound settings there should have been an option to record "what you hear" or something similar (stereo mix) but it wasn't there. It took me a while, but I eventually found this website with simple instructions on how to rewrite one of the driver initialisation files and fix the issue. Software fix, go figure.

Second: This one has been plaguing me for ages, the media keys on both my keyboards (yes I have two) stopped controlling iTunes properly. The button press would trigger a signal and the button unpress would trigger the same signal unless iTunes was focused. I would pause AND unpause the song, or skip ahead/back two tracks at once. Irritating to be sure! Solution? The first part was all over the internet, the MMKeys.dll is a well know requirement for iTunes on a Windows computer. The other piece of the puzzle came from a Zune forum (yes I use both). it turns out that the Intellitype software hooks the media key when pressed, and iTunes hooks it when unpressed. I uninstalled Intellitype and now everything works as good as ever. Software again, go figure.

I don't care who's "fault" either of the issues were, I just hope someone out there can enjoy the solutions. If you're in a different boat with different troubles, don't give up, there's a solution out there if you look long enough.

- Derek (dmgpunk)

Futile!!!

Why Google took away the ability to publish to Blogger I'll probably never understand... Enjoy the embedded file.