Another update, this time to Frobulator. Just bugfixes, but notable by virtue of being prompted by a report from someone at A Tasty Pixel. They’re the makers of Loopy, but more importantly also of long-retired framework The Amazing Audio Engine, which is what encouraged me to make Frobulator in the first place. Long, long ago.
In other news: AAAAARGH! It’s almost October! Teaching starts on Monday! Winter is coming!
I should post more. If only to get that one off the front page before any students accidentally google their way here. JFC.
New version of Vagabond just dropped. Mac edition available now from the software page, iOS heading to the App Store sooner or later — this one will get submitted for App Review, since the main change was requested by an actual user, of all things. Said change is a preset browser in the AU itself, allowing presets to be loaded in host apps that don’t support this themselves. Case in point Koala Sampler, seen here modelling the new browser:
Also new to the software page is an alpha release of a new generative music app, Quarterjack. Here it is running standalone:
It’s fun. I like it. There’s a reasonable chance it might make it to the App Store too. In the fullness of time.
I like Lapidary and Persiflage and Auxotroph too, but the thought of submitting them all just makes me tired. All of these apps are basically me noodling to myself anyway, so it doesn’t really matter if nobody else gets to see them.
Sorry, imaginary interlocutors. And non-imaginary canine proxies. Software users. Old flames. Random drive-by students.
It’s nearly certain that no-one will read this — I’m confident the dogs won’t, anyway — but still. Not supposed to let it show. Not even to an audience of none.
Yet another one. Been up on the software page for a week or so. Inevitably not yet on the App Store, like predecessor Lapidary, for the usual reasons of bureaucratic exhaustion. I will get around to it, probably, but it’s hard to feel motivated.
Elsewhere, it’s that transitional time of year when current students are barreling towards their final essay crisis while a whole new batch are prowling toward their first. And their teachers are grappling with both. Another year looms and I am not fucking ready.
In yet other news, The Vampire Lestat is just fabulous. I am rationing it, currently on ep 4. I laugh out loud watching. That title sequence is a work of genius.
It’s back to the world of effects after recent detours. And hardly a radical stylistic departure, though with a granular veneer this time.
Does the world need this? Probably not. But I find grinding it out sort of soothing in trying times. And it’s a useful test of the capabilities of some AI tooling.
I have to grudgingly admit that Fable 5 is pretty remarkable. Not sure it’ll be enough to keep me on board when it goes to usage based pricing next week. Those tokens rack up fast. But I admit I’m tempted.
At the same time as trying out Fable in Claude Code, I’ve also reawakened piclaw to experiment with some other recent cheaper but still extremely capable models, including GLM 5.2 and MiniMax M3. These are also very good, and I do like pi a bit more than Claude Code. I’m pretty sure I’ll keep those around even if Fable also makes the cut.
As a dyed-in-the-wool AI curmudgeon, this is all very galling. It does not for one second excuse the swirling circular financed hype maelstrom that’s gearing up to immanentise the eschaton, nor does it mean I have any fucking time for the likes of desiccated scamlord Sam Altman, but there’s some fascinating tech wrapped up in this bubble.1
In totally unrelated news, I’ve lost count of which heatwave we’re in at this point.
I’m also running an app called Cotypist on my Mac, about which I am predictably ambivalent. But it does a pretty good job of guessing what I’m going to type, as evidenced by the fact that when I typed “nor does it mean I have any fucking time for” its suggestion was “Sam Altman”. (When I added “desiccated” the suggestion changed to “Elon Musk”, which, fair.) And when I just typed “about which I am predictably” it suggested “ambivalent”. I am really such a caricature of myself. ↩︎
