What goes on at Castle Sonalksis?

Hello,

I feel I ought to give a quick update as to what's going on behind the scenes.

TBK3 finished its first beta phase.
A few minor things to tidy up... and a decision that it should go even nastier.
So, it's just ridiculous now. Totally ridiculous.
Set to extreme settings I can't make any sense of what's going on at all. :D
I think the testers like it. Audio perverts.
So, now it's just polishing and making sure all the bugs are closed and buried.
With luck and good weather (which we've been having a lot of in the UK recently!), it should be a few more weeks to release.

I guess it's time to read some books on writing about high-energy action adventures, so I can write the manual... ;)

In other news.
I finished the DSP and plugin-y-ness for another new plugin... a useful utility-type thing. It still needs a UI, so it hasn't gone to beta yet; so that'll be out after TBK3
Specs are confirmed for another two plugins, which I intend to start veeeerrry soon ;) NO DETAILS FOR YOU! :P

In other other news.
I bought a copy of FogBUGZ. I used to use it at Focusrite/Novation, and it was one of the best things ever. It still is one of the best things ever.
It's frankly astonishing that a piece of software can turn bug tracking into an enjoyable experience. I've no clue how it's done, but if you have bugs to track, throw out whatever you're using and get FogBUGZ now.

I bought a copy for my mac. It's all working now, but pheww... it took some time...
To get it to work I had to:
1) Install the latest PHP ('cause the one that ships with macos is lame)
2) FIGHT this thing called PEAR (which seems to be some kind of package manager); I say FIGHT because there were two versions installed that were fighting. If you get into the same trouble, the answer is: sudo pear config-set bin_dir /usr/bin, THEN do all the sudo pear upgrade PEAR stuff. and use sudo pear -V LOTS. You need it to say that the version number is 1.5ish, or better. 1.3.6 is right out.
3) Use PEAR to install some PHP modules (i think thats what it did)
4) Install MySQL off the 'net
5) Learn the bare minimum to get MySQL working (install all 3 things in the dmg, open system preferences, click start. know that by default db passwords are blank)
6) Poke around 3 or 4 setup screens for FogBUGZ
7) Configure my php.ini... but which one?!!? The one HIDDEN in /usr/local/php5/ of course!
8) Reboot apache lots. Thank goodness apple have a button for this in system prefs.
9) Configure my my.cnf file. It doesnt exist yet. It goes in /etc/. It needs to contain about 2 lines of text.
10) ENJOY!

Now, as you can see, had I installed it on a Linux machine, I could have skipped stages 1->9. Let this be a lesson to us all! :D :D :D

Now I've moved the buglist from Excel into FogBUGZ which is working just lovely on my machine. It's very exciting. Admittedly there aren't THAT many bugs to enter, but the joy is, I can assign myself new tasks as feature requests for building new things! YAY! :)
FogBUGZ is so wonderful because:
1) Things that live in databases that you can't see feel much more safe and secure than .xls files on your desktop
2) It forces you to work in a formal way, and this in turn makes you feel much better and safer about things
3) It remembers all these things for you! You can even leave messages to yourself! What more could you ask for?
4) It is so simple that anyone ever could learn to use it in less than 3 minutes, without a manual.
5) There is a strange and magical process inside my brain that works like this: if something is in a place where I know it is safe, and other people can see it, then I don't have to burn braincycles on worrying about it. In this way, FogBUGZ makes me feel better about my life in general. Weird huh? It just destresses me. I'm sure the same thing will work for you too if you have bugs to track, or features to implement :)

So, that's my exciting news. I have some bug tracking software which is so good I want to write pages of blog about it. Oh, and lots of new plugins on the way.

I'm planning to take a holiday at the start of next month. I'm considering Palma/Majorca or Barcelona... or maybe Paris. Any suggestions?
I'm just thinking that with the weather being this good over here at this time of year, it's nuts to go away, but a nice holiday away somewhere would be just the ticket.

Bye for now,

Dave.