Blogging to Paradise

I’m putting the finishing touches on this latest version of SonicMood. Unless some new bug shows up, I will probably post the update by early next week.

Here’s a short list of improvements and bug fixes:

Each instrument can use its own note pattern.
Added a new Mood, called “Bells Knells.”
Improved the way pictures are added to the picture window.
Improved the “crash reporter” to make it easier to report bugs.
Improved some of the cosmetics.
Fixed some bugs related to deleting and undo.
Fixed some registration issues.

There are many more fixes and improvements, too numerous to list here. You’ll be able to “read all about it” on the history page of our web site once the new version is posted.

Cheers,
John

Finally! We managed to decide we’re done and finish the beta testing… <grin>

So v4.9.6 is posted on our web site now. Get it here:
http://www.sonicmood.com/SonicMoodDownloads.htm

If you want to know what’s changed, just look here:
http://www.sonicmood.com/SonicMoodHistory.htm

If you’re interested in additional Moods and seeing what others have done, check this page out:
http://www.sonicmood.com/MoodSharing.htm

If you’d like some beautiful scenery to add to SonicMood’s “Picture Window,” this is the place:
http://www.sonicmood.com/Scenes.htm

Read what others have said about SonicMood here:
http://www.sonicmood.com/SonicMoodReviews.htm

and enjoy!

John

Well, we’ve been hard at work readying the next version of SonicMood, and it’s nearly done! Beta testing is at the point where only small bugs are surfacing, and I feel like the “last bug” <grin> has been squished!

So with any luck we’ll be going live in the next day or two. As usual this has taken much longer than anticipated, but I believe the improvements and new features will be worth it! Here’s a few of the new/changed items:

Added three new Moods (”Rainy Day,” “Aurora,” “Inside”), and added a “Check for New Moods” Mood menu item. The new Moods should be added automatically so the check is there “just in case.”

Updated and changed the Help system to use a browser to display the Help files, instead of using the Apple Help system.

If the “Green + zooms SonicMood full-screen” is checked in Preferences, then clicking the green “+” causes the SonicMood window to zoom to full-screen while “Option clicking” causes the window to shrink to its small size.

Added a “drop picture folder” capability to the “Picture Window” (formerly the “Scene Window”). The new capability allows for nested folders so you can drop a folder containing picture files and folders containing more picture files. Picture files/folders/images can be dropped anywhere on the window. Added this “drop picture folder” ability to the list window, too. Generally cleaned up the code to make it more efficient and improve error trapping.

Fixed some bugs on the “Individual Note Properties” page of the Edit window:
Fixed a bug that caused the BPM/seconds conversions to be inaccurate.
Fixed a bug that caused the note time multiplier to be wrong and to display the wrong values next to the selection buttons.
Fixed a bug that caused some sliders to indicate zero instead of the correct settings.

And this is a very short list compared to the full list of changes!

Should be soon…

I’ve been working hard on the next SonicMood update. I have the undo/redo working and also “digital recording” is coming along well. With this version you should be able to record both the instrumental sounds and the nature sounds to an audio file that you can move to iTunes and then upload to an iPod, etc.

There’s still more work to be done as I’m not yet happy with everything on the recording side.

I’m shooting for an early June release, but that could change depending on how long testing takes (and how many bugs show up…)

Cheers,
John

We’re in the middle of beta testing SonicMood v4.8.9.

Here’s a list of some of the new features and bug fixes for this version:

• Made the edit window more compact to save screen space. In addition, the edit window is now resizable with vertical and horizontal scrollbars so the controls can be scrolled. The width and height of the edit window, along with the position of the scrollbars, is saved.
• Changed default starting size and position of windows. Made changes to the default locations of windows so they open over the main window.
• Tweaked the look of the various lists.
• Changed some of the toolbar buttons on the main window.
• Made a small tweak to the “color scheme” selection area of the Preferences window and changed the default color scheme to “mellow yellow”. Also put a “spiral galaxy” graphic background on the Register window.
• Made a few improvements (I hope) to the “version update” function, including adding a check to see if the SonicMood folder is read-only. If it is, SonicMood will tell the user to fix it before an update can happen.
• Came up with a way to trap the user’s pressing of the oval button at the right of the titlebar to know when the toolbar is hidden or shown.
• Changed the URL for the “Bit of Paradise Products” link on the “About SonicMood” window from the BitOfParadise home page to the SonicMood home page. Also changed the URL for downloading updates.
• Added more error checking in the “version update” code.
• Got the “Cancel” button on the “version update” DownLoad window to work even if the connection is interrupted.
• Changed the behavior if a network connection isn’t available. Now no user message is given (it “fails silently”) if the check is not requested explicitly by the user (auto check).
• Replaced the HTMLViewer with an EditField in the “version update” window to hold the version notes. This avoids the crashing problem on PPC with Tiger (don’t know about Leopard with PPC…) when scrolling with the mouse scrollwheel.
• Removed some unused “Help” variables.
• Fixed an “out of bounds” error that happened if a Mood was moved to the last row, and it was playing, when it was deleted.
• Fixed a bug that caused the wrong Mood to be removed from the “play times” schedule list if a scheduled Mood was deleted.
• Fixed a problem with the way user names were saved if the name was in a multi-byte character set like Kanji, etc.
• Fixed a bug that erased a good registration if the user started to re-register and then pressed Cancel. Also fixed a bug that caused a good registration to be erased if the user entered an invalid re-registration code and then pressed Cancel.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the horizontal scrollbar from appearing when listbox column sizes were increased.

We’re making great progress on the next update to SonicMood! Most of the new features are in and debugged. There are still one or two new features we’re thinking of adding. After that it’ll be beta time, followed shortly by its release.:) Here’s a partial list of changes so far: 

1. Combined all the edit controls that worked on individual instruments into one page called “Individual Note Properties.” That and a few other changes in the “Mood Info/Edit” window should make editing Moods easier.
2. Changed the timing and volume variation controls to work on each instrument individually.
3. Each instrument can set its own # of notes now, although the maximum number of notes playing at any time is still 16.
4. Changed the method of setting pause and sustain times from directly specifying a time in seconds to setting a “tempo” (in Beats Per Minute) and a note value (quarter note, eighth note, etc.)
5. Changed the “Mood Tempo” slider into a “Relative Tempo (%)” slider on the SonicMood window to be compatible with the idea of “tempo” and note values (quarter note, etc.)
6. Enabled the use of the mousewheel to adjust all sliders (volume, pan, etc.) and the time/date digits in the sleep/wake/TimeOfDay windows.
7. Tweaked the MIDI note generation to work more reliably with new features like the ability to adjust the number of notes for each instrument individually.
8. The “Instrument Groups” (pianos, strings, etc.) are saved and restored now.
9. Updated some of the Mood instrumental settings to make them more pleasing.
10. Moved the synthisizer list to the preferences window.
11. Made cosmetic changes to the “default” color scheme to make it more “mainstream”.
12. Changed the slider knobs to round and tweaked the location of slider elements a little to give more space.
13. Added background color to the “Mood Info/Edit” window. Fixed the text so its color would contrast properly with the background color.
14. Saved a little space at the top of the SonicMood window and now the “zoomed” height is 60, not 65.
15. Fixed a bug with the “Clear All” and “Restore” buttons/functions on the Keyboard Window. They weren’t working.
16. Fixed a bug the was causing fast notes to sometimes not continue after a few seconds.
17. Fixed a bug that kept buttons from darkening when pressed.

 

We’ve just released the latest version of SonicMood, v4.8.6. While it doesn’t look or sound too different from the last version, there are plenty of changes “under the hood”.

The biggest change is an re-factoring of the sound generation components. There is a lot of timing going on to handle note generation and synchronization. The way the many timers were handled before was fairly cumbersome and would have been difficult to expand upon. The change makes expansion of the MIDI section of the software much easier. I’m thinking a future version of SonicMood will allow for multiple sets of three instruments so it will be possible to add an accompaniment to the main theme of the Mood.

Other changes involve the handling of the soundfiles and the scenes. They are now kept in a location apart from the preferences and default Mood file. Addition of soundfiles and general soundfile maintenance should be easier with this new arrangement.Finally, we made some improvements to the sleep, wake, and time of day timer controls and the way the scale and pattern lists are displayed. Along with lots of little “tweaks” to get the interface easier to use.

Hope you like it!

John

OK, we’ve managed to squish a few more bugs and the result is v4.8.5.3. I hope we don’t find too many more before v4.8.6 cause I’ll run out of numbers! Check out the web site. We’ve added a few more Moods and another .mid file here:http://www.sonicmood.com/MoodSharing.htmAnd visit the forum here:http://sonicmood.com/forum/once in a while too, ok?☺Cheers,John

Or is it “features added and bugs fixed?” Try it and let us know! ;-)Yes, it’s true! We’ve managed to push out another update to SonicMood. This one fixes a few more bugs and add some features, including a few that are “under the hood.” For example, the way SonicMood handles Mood files that are added to an existing file is more logical. If a Mood in the added file has the same name as one in the current file, then that Mood’s settings will replace the settings of the Mood in the current file. Previously, the original Mood’s settings would be kept.This version of SonicMood adds some more “note patterns”, too, thanks to the work of one of our users, Patrick EL MELANIE. If you haven’t downloaded and played any of his Mood files, maybe you should. They’re here: http://www.sonicmood.com/MoodSharing.htm and they’re free! :)I’ve also posted a MIDI file I recorded using SonicMood that captures one of Patrick’s Moods, “Taiko Rhythms”. It’s a lively Mood with a real nice beat! Proof that SonicMood can do more than create slow, semi-random sounds! :)Enjoy!

Well, we got v4.8.5 out, then rushed out v4.8.5.1 to fix some rather annoying bugs. Now we’re working hard on another bug fix version (v4.8.5.2) that’ll squish even more bugs we’ve found!We’ve also made a new page on the web site (“Sharing”) at http://www.sonicmood.com/MoodSharing.htm that contains extra soundfiles and some Mood files users have contributed. Stop by and pick up some new Moods if you’d like.Well, it’s May already and the yard’s a mess. We are threatening to go out and start a cleanup (to be fair, Laura did a bit yesterday while I was pounding the keyboard). So it’s time to GTD (Get Things Done!) :)Hope you all have a great weekend!John