This is one for the muso’s with a Mac and an MPC!
Just finished a little Mac application called REX2MPC to convert Recycle files (rex, rcy, rx2) into PGM files that you can use on your MPC1000/2500.
You can download a 14day trial over at Steamshift Apps. Registration is just ?Ǭ£11 which lets you use it after the trial is up.
Hope some of you find this useful 
Thanks
This program is a life saver! Can batch process a series of mp3 files and create short clips for you automatically. The length of the clips is adjustable and you can also set it to fade in and out. Whats better is that it doesn’t re-encode the mp3 for you so you’re not losing any quality either.
This guy will definately be getting my money, its a steal at only $10!
This is mostly for my own benefit but found this useful tip today:
On a Mac you can make a non-linear selection in a body of text by holding the alt (option) button and drawing a rectangle around the text you want to highlight…. this is useful if you wanted to select a column from a text file
Most text editors seem to support this feature
My iPod of late has decided to freeze on occasions, not too reguarly but just enough for it to be a little annoying… always at the eve of a long car journey. So instead of just letting the battery run down and then charging it from empty (which is what i have done and does work) I looked up how to reset it instantly. So if you have one of the newer ipod’s (i have a video, not sure what else this works for) and need your iPod back up in a hurry try this:
Hope this helps
Ok just picked up my laptop, lets hope that iSupport have managed to fix the problem. Bit annoyed that there are a few scratches on the supposed ‘brand new’ top panel that I had to have fitted, its obviously where they have put a screwdriver in to remove the old part but would have been nice if they could have been a bit more careful!!!
Gonna leave it running for a good few hours to make sure the problem doesn’t still exist, dont have that much faith in the guys who repaired the machine and to be honest dont think I would use them again. 3-5 days has turned into 2 weeks and I had to constantly call them to find out what was going on, including today… “is my laptop ready?”…. “oh yeah its just here, was just about to call you”… convienient and considering that was at 4 oclock I kinda doubt it.
Oh well I have the laptop back and it ‘appears’ to be working which is good!
Been working collaboratively on a project that Binnit aka Mr Steamshift dreamt up. Its basically a software emulator of the Behringer BCF2000 MIDI Controller which would let you test out stuff on the move.
There are a few caveats for usage so ill just copy in what Binnit wrote as there is no point repeating
There are a few things you need to know:-
- It requires MidiPipe or similar; this is because it doesn?¢¬Ä¬ôt act as a midi endpoint in and of itself – it requires an application to do that for it.
- Because of the origin of the application, it is designed to work in a very specific way; it is designed to mimic the way that the BCF2000 controller works once you have applied Steve Mokris?¢¬Ä¬ô Quartz Composer Sysex files. In short, this basically maps all of the buttons (barring the encoder group buttons) as midi controllers.
Usage
First launch MidiPipe and create a new pipe – with just a midi in element and a midi out element. Then launch the BCF2000 application; you can now select the MidiPipe midi input from the drop down list. For control of Garageband, for example, that?¢¬Ä¬ôs all you have to do.
Enjoy (and if you use it let us know how we can make it better). SteamSHIFT out.
Future versions *may* let you change the MIDI channel for each control and possibly (unlikely!) act as a standalone MIDI endpoint, thus removing the need for MidiPipe.
If you find it useful let us know
P.S. This uses the MIDI class I wrote for my AutoSampler application (Automatically creates EXS24 patches from hardware), that may now actually make it to completion!
Update:
This is not needed for Leopard!! The W300i will work natively out of the box with 10.5
So the latest version of iSync changed the way that plugins worked which meant that Miche was without the ability to sync her phone with her mac… this will be easy to fix says I…
After playing around for an hour trying to re-write the plugin myself and getting no-where fast I found this page which had a tutorial on creating iSync 2.3 plugins:
The site was incredibly helpful and with a bit of messing about I was able to get the correct settings for her phone and it all works again. Here is the fruits of my labours incase anyone else has a W300i that they would like to sync with their mac.
You need to extract this to:
/Library/PhonePlugins (then restart iSync)
The image is incorrect for the phone but is the nearest image I could find for the particular model (which turned out to be a SE Z520).
I had found websites selling their premade plugins but Im loathed to pay for something I think should be free, which is why Im sharing the above to hopefully save others the hassle!
As much as you love the products, Apple Customer/Technical support is the worst I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been a Mac user about a year now and have never had (or heard of) a positive convasation with their operators… Is this a run of bad luck or is this more of a ‘feature’?
To date…
1) Monkeying around with payment of Powerbook, canceling order for not getting payment after payment was made
2) Charging me twice for Logic 7 Pro, refusing to give money back… had to get bank to intervene on my behalf.
3) Same as point one for Miche trying to order a Photobook from iPhoto
4) 3 Hour convo (well 2hours 45mins on hold and 15min convo) after Hitch’s G5 tower didn’t come with the PCI slots it was sold as having
5) Si’s iPod delayed arrival due to the company purchasing it having problems like point 1
6) Chris having problems gettin Apple to aggree that his iPod is faulty (inspiration for this post!)
Anyone ever had a positive interaction with Apple staff??
If you have a mac, use iPhoto and wish you had an easy way to upload photos to your Wordpress blog then look no futher than WordpressExport. Its an iPhoto plugin that lets you easily select and upload photos.
This is a work in progress so may still contain a few bugs, if you do find any un-expected behaviour please let me know so I can fix/improve it. Registration will be available as soon as I get time to sort it out.
Just found out that you can send text messages direct from the Address Book (OSX) if you have a bluetooth phone… this is definately a nice feature . Also heard rumours that it logs all incoming texts as ‘notes’ for the contacts, although yet to see this occur.
Just got to find a nice Quicksilver plugin for this and ill never have to use the crappy phone keyboard again… woohoo!