I did an early upgrade to the iPhone 4, buying out the last 14 months of my contract.

Other updates are that my marantz cinema amp packed up so I got a gadgety new pioneer vsx-920-k which I can control with my iPhone.

However it is starting to feel dated. Yes, it’s great for emails… And a bit of Web Browsing whilst on the crapper. The problem is that other phones have caught up and in some ways took over. iPhones haven’t really changed significantly in the previous years.

The new iPhone 4 looks sleeker (although a bit more like other phones and less unique) but I’m not that impressed with the new features. I have 2 or 3 other devices which will record HD video and I don’t plan on using the front facing camera, as nobody else will either. Phones are designed to speak to people without having to see them, if you wanted to see someone… You’d meet them.
If you wanted to see somebody far away, you’d use Skype because it’s free.

I might venture to another handset soon as the iPhone 4 release hasn’t wowed me enough. So the iPhone 4 will not be my 4th smart phone it seems.

It’s a bit of a wet flannel.

I tried Ableton Live 6 and 7 when they were released as I’ve heard lots of hype about them. I wasn’t really happy with the feel of working with it, it felt like it took me 3x longer to do anything than I could do in fruity.

I tried Ableton Live 8 and I have to say it’s much improved. I love the warping engine, it makes auditioning samples over your existing project very simple as it matches the tempo and makes it fit. If it doesn’t sound right on Auditioning, it won’t sound right when you drag it in and it saves a lot of time when trying new sounds.

I’ve been using the drum racks and It’s very powerful, you can send individual drum instruments to FX so you can compress just a kick. When side-chaining you can choose the whole drum part to trigger a ‘pump’ or you can choose individual instrument, e.g. Kick to pump the compressor on another track (for example a bassline) this is something I love about FL studio and a technique I used frequently. Now I’ve discovered the way to do this with Ableton, I am happy to say it’s even more intuitive than FL Studio.

You could probably do these things with previous incarnations of Ableton Live but I have never got that before without sacking it off and going back to Fruity.

The only problem now Is I now have a windows PC and sold my Mac Pro and kind of wish I still had it so I could of use the Mac Version of Ableton Live with that. It supposedly supports VST instruments on Mac, which (if I haven’t misread) means I could of used my favourite VST plugins with the Mac. I could always use my Macbook but my Windows PC is more powerful than this so I guess I’ll stick with Windows.

I have a BCF-2000 and Axiom 49 so I have plenty of Knobs and Faders to experiment with some live playback, who knows I might be able to get a grips with that and do some live stuff instead of just DJing and Studio Production. That could be good Fun.

It’s old news but Orbital have got back together after doing their own side projects and now use Ableton Live for the heart of their live Rigs. It is designed at heart to be a live tool but it’s just so clean and manageable that it’s an extremely powerful DAW for using for production as well, this is what I love about it.

I used Sonar for a bit and I probably still will for somethings but I don’t know If I will go back to Fruity. I just feel the sound I get from Sonar and Ableton is like the difference between a Sportscar and a Supercar. I’m using 192khz/24bit on my Edirol FA-66 interface and It sounds so much warmer than 44.1khz/16bit I used to use with Fruity, I know it will do 192khz/24bit but I never noticed a difference so I didn’t bother.

Ableton is more intuitive than Sonar so I’l stick with this for a bit, learn the software so I can use it as well as I can use FL Studio, that way it’ll be the ultimate tool to sit at the hart of my studio.

However this weekend I’ve been recovering broken Cisco Compact Flash Cards, needing new Cisco Activation Keys and having to setup VPN tunnels again with a Monday morning deadline.

On that Note… Sisqo to Cisco in one Week. Awesome observation!

What is the point in continual spending on having the next biggest, best gadget? Or having the fastest computer and the biggest television? It’s just like having a fast car, there is always a faster car. Or if you get a big house, there is always a bigger house.

The problem is, if you have the slowest computer, the oldest phone, the smallest television and a Dial up Modem then you will spontaneously combust. This is what we are conditioned into thinking by the Marketing. What’s more it’s true, If you haven’t got an iPhone or a Blackberry then I would recommend staying away from petrol.

So it’s quite clear i’m a believer in trying to stay current. I must confess my television is a couple of years old, I haven’t upgraded this because I’m very bitter. I bought this 40” Samsung television for about £1200, roughly 1 month later it was £1000, 4 months later it was £600 and obsolete because it’ll only do 720p. Watching 720p is like driving a fast car with cataracts, enjoyable but ultimately life threatening.

So people are popping up around with 1080p 50” TVs they swapped for a Mars Bar and they love to show it. However if somebody comes along with a DLP projector and a 102” projection screen in their front room, 50” TV man is going to feel pretty bad. They’ve always got the excuse of “I don’t need one that big for my front room” which actually means, “I can’t afford or justify one.” I am that person, except I’m worse because I only have a little 40” Television and it’s can’t even do 1080p.

I got a Macbook last year, the one Apple took the Firewire Ports off and replaced a year later with a Unibody plastic one. So on one hand, I feel bad because Apple want me to buy a MacBook pro to use a Firewire device. On the other hand I feel good because they’ve turned the MacBook into more of a freak show now. Mine is a great looking aluminum specimen, if you buy a MacBook now then it’ll be white again, and plastic.

This isn’t me doing this to you or even you doing this to you, this is Apple doing this to you. Apple hate you like Samsung Hate Me. I can at least put my Televisual Bitterness down to advances in technology. Apple took away my Firewire Ports because they hate me, they gave you a plastic Laptop because they hate you.

In the early Naughties, Microsoft gave us Windows XP. After about 4 years it started getting good. Then they brought out Vista and stopped you being able to get a PC with Windows XP. Vista was a mistake, Microsoft were forced to give you a choice again because Vista just wasn’t practical for businesses.

To run Windows Vista smoothly you need a PC with 32 Cores, 4 Billion Terabytes of Ram and an Array of Solid State Hard Disks. To run Windows XP smoothly you needed a Pentium 4, 1GB of Ram and a Mouse. Then there is all the different editions. Microsoft basically make you feel like Oliver Twist if you don’t get Ultimate Edition. You will feel poor and left wanting more. To be fair they’ve done the same with Windows 7 but at least that works.

With Windows Vista there was Poverty Edition, Poor Edition, Business Poor Poverty Edition, Business Poor Edition and Mans Only Option Edition. This is all because Microsoft Hate you. So you keep Microsoft happy by buying Mans Only Option Edition, they then punish you for trying to make them happy by giving you an Operating system that is unusable. They slowly put it right (better) over two years, leaving you feeling like you’ve had a two year bout of PIles.

You might think advances in technology have brought down the prices of Computer hardware. You can get a computer now, with and Microsoft Operating system for less than £250. I don’t believe it’s due to advances in technology, I believe it’s because of Windows Vista. Hardware had to get cheaper to make Personal computers affordable again.

It’s either that or consumers stick with what they’ve got and don’t put any money into the industry. This would in-turn stop money going into the Technology industry and we wouldn’t get any new gadgets to play with. Even that makes me feel like the entire industry hate me, they’ve got me up against a wall, they are telling me that if I don’t spend money with them, they’ll stop making me new toys.

Without a doubt the prize for the manufacturer who hate you the most, has to go to Cisco. Cisco are a manufacturer of Networking hardware for Business. They make routers with bugs. Most routers come with bugs as not every eventuality is covered in testing. This is usually not a problem, you go to the manufacturer’s support website and download a new firmware.

With Cisco, you go to the manufacturer’s support website, add a download to your basket and then are told you need to Pay, in one way or another, for this update. You can’t just buy it either, like an online shop. You need to pay for a Support Contract to get an upgrade.

Imagine if you bought a brand new BMW 5-series, a nice business class car. Imagine if it came with a time bomb and you didn’t know the time it was set to. BMW tell you they know how to deactivate it but you need to pay them.

Imagine if you were doing a sky dive and your shoot didn’t come out, this was an extra you had to pay for. The bag for the parachute was all you got and you had to pay if you wanted your chute to come out.

Both these examples involve certain death and so does not upgrading the firmware on our Cisco. If left in it’s factory state it would stop the internet working randomly, when it wanted. This would certainly cause a similar type of spontaneous combustion I talked about earlier.

I like buying gadgets but moan when I can’t afford better ones and I am a firm believer in Retail Therapy. I groan about certain ‘advancements’ in technology and I hate standing still. So where am on all this? I’m confused like everybody else, I feel loved by the money which buys me the gadgets and hated by the companies who make them.

I’m always left wishing I’d waited a few more months or given somebody else my business.
Consumers are left hating the Technology Industry because, like all industries, they want your money. Consumers having obsolete technology is just collateral damage. If this didn’t happen then the Economy would be in an even worse state and we’d all still be cave men.

On the A614 Police, Gritters and a JCB cleared the left lane and freed some stuck lorries. They did a good job, it’s just unfortunate the backlog had made all the roads gridlocked.

I took a photo just before I embarked up a hill. I had to stop at the top of the hill and almost burned my clutch out to avoid becoming stuck.

I also took a photo of the snow falling on my back Garden.

I moved out of my parents house and in with my girlfriend, our house is now a home. I’ve had a studio in the house, then in the Garage and now back in the house again.

I’m still working for Custard and still enjoying it. I’ve almost had my Honda Civic Type-R for 2 years!

I’ve had my Macbook a year and I’ve just sold my Mac Pro on eBay.

So what would I do differently in 2010? I can’t think of much, this year has been perfect in my eyes. The only thing I’ll change is that I’m hoping to go into 2010 with a cleared credit card.

But there is a few weeks before the new year and what has happened in the past few weeks/ will be happening before 2010?

We went to the Lodges last weekend for the Annual Custard Christmas Bash! Like before there was lots of cracking prizes. I won an Olympus FL-36R Flash which nicely compliments my Olympus E-500 dSLR. I also Won a Casio Digital camera which does 1000fps slow motion videos. I won a trip to Tattershall Park for me and Sarah plus booze and chocolate. All in all a very generous load of pressies. Chris wanted us to win it so we could video the reptiles eating their dinner. I’ve put a few videos on youtube so Chris could see what the Camera did.

We moved the rogue squadron of reptiles from “My Studio” back into “The Reptile Room” and the consolidation process has rendered it and empty room which I’ve now filled with all my Music Production equipment. I’ve got a pair of M-Audio Studiophile BX5a Deluxe monitors coming this week. They are smaller than my KRK R8s. I will be using the KRK for final mastering and the BX5a for the main music making process. They seem to get a good write up, they are smaller and should have a less Room shaking effect which is great in a small end bedroom.

It’s been snowing for the past few days (on and off) but it’s really come down today! It’s topped up the existing snow and covered the road in our street, all the gardens, roof tops and cars.

I went out with the dSLR and tried to catch some snow flakes!

View photos at SmugMug

I did get myself an dSLR, I bought it off Chris as he’d upgraded to a Canon 5D Mk2. I got his old Olympus e-500, 2x Lenses, a Bag and a 16GB compact flash for a very good price indeed. I’ve got into that a bit and I’ve got aperture on my Macbook.

I still have the studio although I thought it looked like a grotty den so I’ve had this week to sort things out. First things first, I didn’t feel the need for the Mac Pro to be in there. There is now a Quad Core PC in there with 4GB of Ram. I used to bootcamp the Mac Pro anyway and the PC which has bigger hard disks seems to render tunes quicker and still lets me layer up as many synths as I want. (The tune me and Jo Deviant are currently working on has 74 patterns and about 24 different instruments, it handles this fine)

So the Mac Pro is back in the house and wired to the router so I can sync to my Apple TV again. The problem is the Mac Pro was bare, but my Apple TV is hacked and has SSH on so I SCP’d all of my Music and films off my Apple TV (in their 4 character file name format) and then imported them to my fresh iTunes library and synced them back. I’m going transfer the Photos from Aperture on my MacBook to Light Room on my Mac Pro and start using that for Photos.

So the studio, I’ve covered the nasty felt desk with Hardboard using Builders adhesive, screws and countersunk washers. I’ve then trimmed off the felt round the edges and build in some extra structure to the desk to make it more sturdy and give me more space.

I have also sealed all the gaps in my Garage with strips of Pipe Insulation.

I’m just sat on our Decking on my macbook, I’m just about to have a Mince Stew before more games… mMmmm Stew!

I will be releasing it on iTunes and Amazon soon!

Not to mention it’s disconnected from the house and backs on to an industrial unit so it’s good for neighbors. The acoustics are good in there as well although I’m gradually going to sort out some absorbent materials around the desk area.

One of my tunes “Rhythm is Love” is now available to buy on iTunes, Amazon and much more.

I’m going to put some more on soon but I’ve got to finish them. I’ll be putting “Drop it” on though.

I used to have a personal myspace years ago then moved to facebook. After analysing other artists though it’s very lucrative to have an uptodate band myspace with music and events. I’ve also signed up on twitter. You can find me on there as BanzaiReef.

You can check out my myspace here, two of my tunes are on there to listen to… I’ll get some pictures of the new studio online soon.

As for home… Big news, Sarah and I have moved into a house in Mansfield, near Mansfield Woodhouse. It’s very hand for work and it’s a really smashing house. It’s a 3-bed semi with a lovely garden, brilliant garage and tasteful interior.

We have a few more reptiles now as they have their own room (it’s the biggest of the bedrooms) you can find pictures and articles about them on Our Reptiles

We bought a Rabbit aswell, originally, she is named Thumper. She’s white and she Thumps alot. She’s really full of character and acts a bit like a Cat.

She started off in the house but Rabbits smell a bit and me and Sarah are a bit allergic so I built her a hutch. It’s about 4ft wide and it cost the grand total of £30 to build. That was because felt is over priced now, plus we needed some chicken wire and decent screws/ felt tacks. All the wood was free courtesy of my Parents and Sarah’s parents. I used square decking from my mum and dad’s, I took 8 peices and that covered the top, bottom and sides.

The frame was made from hardwood and the decking was screwed to it. On the outside of the decking there is fencing on the sides and pine wood on the top which is covered by felt.

The back is made from 5 tongue & groove floorboards. The whole thing is treated with Green Fence all weather paint and it matches our fences.

On a less geeky and more housey note… Me and Sarah have a house. We move in next weekend. The Broadband is sorted to come first thing, on our first morning there (very important). The washer, cooker and freezer are also coming. We both have the day off work to sort everything out (a long weekend)

I’ve still got all my gadgets to take. There is all my AV equipment to take, for the living room and all my studio stuff for my studio. It’s a small room but it’s not going to disturb any neighbors and it will be big enough to fit everything in. It’s going to have a wrap around worktop going round 3 of the walls. And I’ll just leave enough space to open the door/ move my chair.

We are really looking forward ot the move. We’ve got a nice garden and patio and the house is excellent. The garage is big and we have a nice block paved drive.

Grand Central appears to have made things open and process quicker, it could just be a placebo but my cores are being used properly now, even in free apps which aren’t designed with multicore processing in mind, they now get to use the multiple cores in my Mac Book.

I’m looking forward to upgrading the Mac Pro to see what happens with some of my apps which are really useful but don’t make use of my 8-cores.

I installed Windows 7 because people said they had it working just fine… The only difference this time was I used the OS X disk which came with my macbook to install the Boot Camp drivers rather than a retail copy. Everything works fine.

I’ve installed FL Studio and my VSTs such as Nexus and Vanguard but I can’t use more than one at any one time or everything grinds to a halt (even with latency slider to the far right) I think it’s a Windows 7 issue although to be fair the onboard audio is only Realtek HiDef so it’s not a hardware solution, it’s all software driven.

I wish I’d got the USB2 version of my Edirol FA-66 but then again, I’m hardly going to be using my macbook for music as I use my Mac Pro for that due to it being hooked up to 2x large screens and my Rokit 8 speakers.

Everything else other than trying to do things the laptop isn’t designed for… Is absolutely fine. Now I can go to work and use Windows which is better with Kaseya as I can VNC, etc from the browser, I can switch off from work and use OS X when I get home.

We went to the Timanfya national Park on Tuesday for Sarah´s Birthday and we rode on Camels which was fun but bumpy.

We took a bus to Puerto Del Carmen on Wednesday as we lost our ticket for a free excursion. It was great there though, we walked right from one end to the other occasionally stopping in souvenier shops.

We had a nice Sit down with a San Miguel before catching a bus back to Costa Teguise.

Yesterday was a day of Relaxation, we had breakfast then lay by the pool for about 4 hours. Then we had a bit of a swim and chilled on our Balcony.

It´s going to be similar today but we are going to have a walk across the sea front a little later on.

I bought a Samsung HD Video Camera at the airport, it was right bargain (cheaper than you will think Dad!) as it just does 720p (which is all my Tele does and looks awesome enough on Rambo). We´ve taken lots of videos of our travels and lots of photos on my Digital Camera so, combined, should make a good Hi-Def holiday video.´

We´re missing our little reptile dudes and dudettes but know they are in capable, caring hands. My mum says Tilly really enjoys coming out for cuddles but scratched her chest (she does get excitable and flail her arms about… Tilly that is, not my mum)

We fly back on Sunday and I have the monday off work so it should be nice, to just unwind and catchup with English life again.

It´ll be a shame to leave the island though as we are both really enjoying it.

Hopefully I’ll know, shortly, if it’s been shortlisted.