The Blog That Goes Ping

So I’ve been checking out LMMS, and it pretty much delivers as promised: “easy music production for everyone.”

Imagine something with capabilities somewhere between a classic “soundtracker” application and something like GarageBand, but super easy to use, and preinstalled with a big pile of useful samples.

It’s quite awesome.

It took me a bit to figure out how to use it because there’s basically zero documentation, but the complexity is miles less than that of comparable programs designed for high end/professional type users.

I threw together a silly little beat demo song in no time. (Warning: it’s a tuneless little electrobeat thingy.)

It can’t do everything in the world but what it can do is easy and fun and accessible.

Kudos!

I would like to insert here an “I hate linux sound” rant — I wanted to use a LMMS beat and record a ukulele tune with it, with Audacity, say — but I couldn’t figure out how to record anything in Audacity on Linux without adding an ugly, nasty burbling effect, presumably because Audacity on Linux isn’t yet hip to ALSA, the advanced linux sound architecture, “advanced” in this context meaning “not horribly sucky and broken.”

Guess I’ll be doing all my recording on OS X.

LookLater A commenter on my and Joe’s gaming blog pointed me at a neat service he created, “Looklater,” intended for quickly oookmarking things you want to go back and read later. Kind of a private del.icio.us but without tags and with some other spiffy features. Very interesting little ajax bookmarklet interface! Not Safari compatible though.

But then these days I’m even using Firefox on the mac.

Firefox 1.5 has been released! Well worth grabbing. It seems very fast and responsive even compared to its predecessor, version 1.0.7.

If you want to install it on Ubuntu despite its not being in the packaging system yet, follow these instructions.

LMMS - easy music-production for everyone.

Neat! Must try. Always good to have free alternatives.

Via Digg.

Amazingly, there’s an open source RSS reader for the Mac which can compete with Ranchero’s NetNewsWire, at least if you’re not interested in all the most advanced bells and whistles thereof. It’s Vienna, and it’s simple and beautiful and does just what you need it to do.