My new EP, Normal Doubt, is now available to buy on Bandcamp Normal Doubt by Charlie Sorrel

New EP out. I’m very proud of this one. mistercharlie · Normal Doubt

Learning piano is easier than learning guitar: I’ve started to learn to play piano. I’ve been playing the guitar for years, and I’m pretty good at it, but the keyboard is way better for electronic music than trying to send MIDI from a guitar. Plus, there’s all that sweet stuff that you can’t do on a guitar, like …

Test Post for Mastodon comments You can reply to this and it should theoretically show up in my blog thread.

Why are no samplers or digital recorders as easy as the OP-1 Field?: 

There are a zillion samplers and recorders out there, so why do almost none of them work like we want them to?

Recently, I’ve been checking out the OP-1 Field, the new update to Teenage Engineering’s stone-cold classic OP-1, a sampler, synthesizer, sequencer, and digital tape recorder, all packed …

Writers, musicians, artists — stop calling your work ‘content,’ FFS: “Content” is what marketing folks, or platform builders, call video, music, text, and so on. For them, songs, movies, and stories are equal, interchangeable units, the purpose of which is to fill up their online stores. When an artist describes their work as “content,” they belittle the work itself. …

Cross-processed

Tri-X and Hyperspektiv

If I disconnect my own domain name from my microblog, what will break? Apart from my site?

iOS 14 is surprisingly stable on my iPad Pro. The best thing might be the new Scribble feature. It’s pretty good being able to write pretty much anywhere with the Apple Pencil, and it takes the notes app to a whole other level.

Song of the week 3: Penguin Telephone: I started this song during the lockdown. No surprise that it’s even darker than usual.

Is it possible to link to a category page from the top navigation on my microblog? In the screenshot, I’d like the Podcast link to point to /categories/podcast, for instance.

Uncanny Alley Episode 6: The Mall Cops' Dorkmobile: Possibly never previously published This bonus episiode was possibly never published. It doesn’t show up in the archived feeds of any of the usual podcast directories, and I can’t find my original episode captions. So, you can go in cold, and enjoy a discussion from the world as it was …

Uncanny Alley Episode 5: A Merry Band of Digital Criminals: First published 13-03-19 Andrea and Charlie talk about the utter lack of ethics at Facebook and their deceiving tactics, while managing to deliver what’s intimately known as “the most delayed episode ever”. It might be worth mentioning here that I have a couple of posts about how I record and edit …

Uncanny Alley Episode 4: Podcast Vérité: First published 27-01-2019 Charlie and Andrea talk about the content they consume, one infamous video that Charlie has no intention of ever consuming, and conspiracy theories worth appreciating at least for their narrative. This episode has a previously-unknown alternative title: A Thelma and …

Uncanny Alley Episode 3: Holding Gelato: First published 23-12-2018 Like every single person who gets paid for writing, Andrea and Charlie like to talk about keyboards. Quiet, or clicky? Long travel distance or short jumpy keys? Why would Italian put a vowel at the end of many Spanish words? And, most importantly: Chinese Democracy.

Uncanny Alley Episode 2: A Hipster Nordic Ø: First published 04-12-2018 Andrea and Charlie discuss talk about why phone cameras will always be different from regular cameras. Computational photography started out trying to fix the problems with tiny sensors, and now they let cameras like the iPhone do tricks that are …

Uncanny Alley Episode 1: A Doll’s Deadly Whisper: Back at the turn of 2018/2019, I recorded and published five episodes of The Uncanny Alley podcast with my friend and technology journalist Andrea Nepori. The domain has since lapsed, so I’m publishing all five episodes here. Here’s the first. First published 23-11.2018 Andrea and …

New Song: Elk Mountain: My second song-a-week release. This one was started on a trip to the Bavarian Alps late last year, but most of the work was done in Berlin. The photo shows the Königssee lake. All the drums are done on the OP-Z, guitar is a guitar, and the trumpet is a fake trumpet. Any more questions, ask!

New Song: Hipster or Homeless: I’m kicking off a song-a-week project with a song that has sat almost-finished for a few months now.

Just sent a Brydge keyboard for iPad Pro back after a day. It puts enough pressure on the screen to distort the glass, and that’s when you’re not actually using the screen as a lever to move the hinges. Also, for a portable device, it’s really big and heavy. The keyboard itself is …

Washing

Harmony Grinder: Music demo made with the OP-1

Just one tap

Uncanny Alley episode 4, Podcast Vérité: A new episode of my podcast Uncanny Alley is up!

_The Uncanny Alley_ Episode 3: Holding Gelato: Episode 3 of our podcast The Uncanny Alley is available: Holding Gelato. Like every single person who gets paid for writing, Andrea and Charlie like to talk about keyboards. Quiet, or clicky? Long travel distance or short jumpy keys? Why would Italian put a vowel at the end of many Spanish words? …

If I host a podcast on micro.blog, is there any way to get the download numbers? That’s the only stat I want!

Test Audio : A description

I’ve switched off multi-finger gestures for the first time since it was available. The new single-finger app switcher is easily good enough, maybe better.

It seems to me that almost none of the iPad Pro reviews were written by people use them regularly, or even at all. No wonder they have trouble using it.

iPhone XS Camera Test: Some more shots from my ongoing iPhone 7/iPhone XS camera comparison. The full review will be on Cult of Mac tomorrow.

Having fun testing the new iPhone XS portrait mode. You can dial in the depth of field after shooting.

No.1

Siri Shortcut to record guitar riff ideas, hands free: This is pretty rad: With Siri Shortcuts and Face ID, I can say “Hey Siri, record this,” and then look at my iPhone, and it’ll record a voice memo. Great for when I come up with an awesome guitar riff. You can do this without Face ID, but you need to unlock the iPhone to do the actual recording. With …

I used to complete any cube I found, but now I leave it almost done, to torture the owner.

2018 iPad Pro redesign is both brilliant and stupid: 2018 iPad Pro redesign is both brilliant and stupid – Cult of Mac The possibly-leaked pictures of the new 2018 iPad Pro look great. Somehow, though, some writers have gotten the idea that these pictures prove that Face ID will only work when the iPad is in portrait orientation. Cult of Mac’s …

Is anyone a using static blog software for longer posts, paired with their hosted micro.blog? I’d like to, but I don’t really want to pay again for hosting. How do you have it set up?

Fixing a friend’s iMac. Won’t reconnect to Wi-Fi after sleep, or other disconnection. I have set network service order; created new user; removed other Wi-Fi networks; deleted system network plists. Any other ideas?

Frame.

Should I stop auto-posting links to my Cult of Mac articles here? Is is spammy, or are people interested?

What iOS apps do you use for adding an audio track to a video? Must be controllable enough for voice syncing. I’m writing an article about improving sound when shooting iPhone videos.

Finished reading: Gnomon by Nick Harkaway 📚

If you install the Shortcuts beta in iOS 12, the Workflow folder gets renamed to Shortcuts. Workflows still work, though.

Tech writers: when you write “traditional,’ you almost certainly mean “conventional,” “customary,” or “established.”

What do you use for geotagging photos taken on a regular camera? I’d like to import photos to my iPad, and add location data. What’s the laziest way to do it?

White Lines

Never Work

Berlin church wall

Hello?

Somehow this happened…

Toto’s Africa might be one of the greatest pop songs ever made, but the lyrics are nutso, even by 1980s standards.

The iOS 12 beta is so stable (and so fast!) on iPad that it’s tempting to put it on the iPhone.

Don’t Touch

Love and Hate

Is there an iPad video app that uses the native Files browser, and just plays the videos from there?

Home Build: A few shots of my home-made Strat.

Test post direct from Drafts 5. If you can see this, then Drafts is doing its job.

I really don’t like circular avatars.

While I’m posting SoundCloud stuff, here’s some of my own music.

More M.RUX! soundcloud.com/mrux/sets…

Micro.blog and Tumblr: Any reason not to?: I have my Micro.blog hooked up to my Tumblr using RSS, and I’m wondering if there’s any downside to that? The Tumblr uses my own domain name, as I prefer to keep my site there because Tumblr’s design options are so deep. I guess there’s always a risk of Tumblr shutting down at some point, but …

I’ve only been here a few days, but already I’m getting much more/better conversations than Twitter. I was thrown by the lack of a follower count at first, but who needs it? I have lots of Twitter followers, but no-one ever replies. (They’re probably all PR bots anyway).

I wrote an article about micro blogging.

Looks like I spammed my own microblog by connecting a bunch of RSS feeds. Sorry.

My reply.

Icy window

Fixed

At the shoot