tremble and warp

Another VST plugin version of an effect I developed ages ago for my game engine. This time it's a pitch modulation effect. I usually use this to add a subtle pitch warble to a mix, similar to a worn out tape, but it can be used in more extreme fashion.

I'll include an update about my previous moaning about UI implementation. This month I did discover a way to make UI implementation in JUCE a lot less painful. Previously I was individually resizing and laying out components in a very convoluted fashion, because that was what the JUCE tutorials seemed to suggest was the best way to do things.

It turns out there is a far simpler way of implementing resizable interfaces, it's just hidden away in this tutorial about Android screen sizes, of all places.

All of which is to say: there may be more VST plugins on the way. I really want to port my cymbal synthesizer across, for instance.

Download tremble and warp

Controls: mouse

The Rules:

• The file at this link will be deleted 1 month from now (1/3/25).
• All downloads are zipfiles containing a ~Windows executable~ (in this case, a Windows VST3 plugin).
• All source code and assets are included, licensed under the GPL.
• As long as you abide by the license, you can do whatever you want with the download.

Further Reading

I was talking to a friend about A Silver Mt Zion, and it reminded me of the incredible liner notes to Born Into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward. I couldn't find a copy online, so here's a scan I did myself (a bit cropped as it didn't all fit in my scanner).

Starts off angry and despairing, ends up finding hope in crafting clumsy things and tiny futile gestures. Reading it again with my friend I realised that these notes form part of my model for how to survive in the 21st century, and not just collapse in despair at everything.

"But crafted clumsy things w/our hands, and those things were important to us, those clumsy abstracted towers and minurets we crafted w/our own worried hands? And built our own confused belief systems, which were endlessly and crucially beautiful in their small stubborn tangles of loss, worry, faith and need? And made small gestures w/our hands or eyes that were endlessly redeeming, and made us all sometimes almost believe in saints and/or angels?"

Still slowly working my way through the Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff podcast. The episodes on the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers New York's art activists who were punk before punk existed, and more activist than art, are great. Part 1; Part 2

Erin Kissane on platforms and governance:

"The evidence of the past decade and a half argues strongly that platform corporations are structurally incapable of good governance, primarily because most of their central aims (continuous growth, market dominance, profit via extraction) conflict with many basic human and societal needs."

Jason Koebler on the climate crisis and the LA wildfires.

"Thinking of Aaron Swartz today & I’m stuck on this photo - he & OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (both circled) each scraped 1000s of docs but one did it to make the knowledge free for all while the other did it to make $$$$ through probabilistic plagiarism. The US DOJ only came after one of them & the other is feted by tech bros and executives."

This recording of one of Kristin Hersh's solo gigs still gives me chills:

I broke me I can break you too
nobody tells me what to do
I saw hope in my backyard

...nobody told me this would be so hard

A speculative fiction over on Mastodon imagining an actually useful and positive social media.

Andrew Plotkin with a pitch for the sequel to Labyrinth.

A defence of cozy fiction and the way it offers an alternative conception of how change happens:

"You can tell our western storytelling practice is ill-fitted for big stakes because even when we talk about this history, we talk about it in terms of important individuals. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela. But none of those people could have achieved their goals, or even been able to have the reach they had, without the huge number of nameless, forgotten people who collectively supported them. All those people did important, vital work, and we barely even know what they did. They might’ve driven people to a protest. They might’ve let people meet in their homes. They might’ve put a hand on a shoulder when someone was feeling unsure. They might’ve just said “yes, this is worth doing.” But it couldn’t have happened without them."

It has been a busy month and I have spent more hours working at my day job than I will be paid for. This Wednesday I will discover whether a project I've been pushing for for 2 years works the way we need it to, or whether the next few months are going to be filled with emails and stress because of it. I hope you are looking after yourself. I am going to spend this weekend doing as little as possible.