Emptying the Haunted Air

Uh… Some kind of a pun there. On Miller Puckette, whose achievements warrant more than the measly Wikipedia entry about him. Perhaps it is appropriate, for its humility mirrors that of the man himself, who named the Max programming environment after yet another amazing pioneer of computer music, Max Mathews.

Max for Live came out recently – as in, yesterday. It is bloody good value for people who already own Live 8 and Max/MSP 5, and includes a fairly nifty assortment of effects:

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(I will not put another track on this site that includes the amen break, I promise.)

‘Nifty effects’, in this case, just means stuff that tears the shit out of any signal you process. I’m eager to see the sort of patches the community starts to build, because I find these first bunch a little underwhelming. As for the second clause in my post title; there isn’t a thing I could say about the past week in Australian politics that hasn’t already been expressed by thousands of others. It has been truly astonishing, seeing the Coalition fracture so dramatically, and with such blatant disregard for the public’s perception of their conduct. Quite simply, it’s every man for himself, Tony Abbott being the most recent MP to reveal himself as an opportunistic turncoat, along with Nick Michin and Eric Abetz. It is a battle for the heart of the Liberal Party (forget the Coalition), and although a person like me fancies politics as the grand arena for ideological conflict, it really isn’t very flattering to actually see it take place. There’s just a lot of blood, and you’re not exactly sure of the purpose.

Suffice to say that the Coalition are giving the government the trigger for a double dissolution, and squandering their electoral chances at the same time. The road to renewal is going to be long and agonising.