I used this Christmas as an excuse to get a few things relating to the various software tools I’m writing at the moment.
The C++ Programming Language 4th Edition by Bjarne Stroustrup replaces my well loved, dog-eared 2nd Edition that I’ve had for many years. I haven’t felt like I’ve fully got my head around the new language features of C++ 11 and I enjoy Bjarne’s non-nonsense description of them. He did create C++ after all… It’s probably not a book for the absolute beginner but it’s one that I refer to often, always picking up new tricks or refreshing some of the less used techniques.
I’ve been working on my new software called Fugio (pictured above) for over a year now and I want to make it support a variety of hardware, so I got a couple of new things to try it with:
The last game controller I had was an ancient Logitech one that was quite nice until batteries kept leaking inside of it. I upgraded to the Xbox 360 controller for Windows and wrote a node for Fugio to read all the various parameters from it. It’s very simple to do with the Microsoft XInput API, although obviously Windows only.
While I love my original Korg nanoKontrol for MIDI control, I felt like I needed something a bit more ‘hitty’ so I plumbed for the Akai MPD18 Compact Pad Controller so I can experiment with triggering off events within Fugio. I’ve got most of the controls mapped in using PortMidi and am just sorting out a small bug in the MIDI clock code so I’ll be able to use the note repeat controls on the MPD18 in sync with the Fugio playback.
And while not related to software development and much more related to the process of creating visuals and art, I’m very much enjoying reading Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema by the late, great film director Andrei Tarkovsky. It’s a no-holds-barred personal rant about his views and experiences on making films and is full of inciteful comments that are giving me much food for thought.
And with that Amazon Affiliate link laiden post done, I will wish you all a very happy New Year and am looking forward to bringing you some new exciting tools in 2015.