03/23/99 - The newest news doesn't exactly concern THIS site, but rather a new project I've undertaken to get some of my music out of my computer and onto the net. I've always been leary of dumping my work in any MIDI format due to the lack of control I have over how it sounds on other peoples systems. My initial experiments with the MP3 format have been encouraging from an audio quality perspective but finding web space for them has been daunting. Many of the free webspace providers prohibit MP3's entirely and the few that don't seem to have extremely unreliable servers. My solution has been to put up a page on MP3.COM which seems well suited to handling the demands placed on a system by this type of bandwidth requirement. Please feel free to visit the new site at:

http://www.mp3.com/artists/13/steve_nolan.html

01/12/99 - It seemd time for another cosmetic face lift. This marks the first time that the site's code has not been completely hand written and, as such, I have questions about the code that has been generated by the compiler. It SHOULD be more accessible to more browser types now but I urge you to email me about any problems you may encounter. I have tested the site with Netscape versions 3 thru 4.5 and MSIE 4 and it seems to work fine on my end.

      I've added some new reviews to the Equipment page covering the E-mu Proteus 1 and the Roland M-GS64. The Files page is now more visible as well and contains, among other things, the result of my first adventure in Windows programming. It's a small utility which calculates checksums for short sysex strings for all Roland equipment. The FAQs page has been updated somewhat. I intend to back thru all the old emal (yep... I keep it all system crashes not withstanding) and compile a "real" FAQs list. The one that's up there now was pretty much written before the site ever went up and, hence, before there could have been any real questions.

12/15/98 - Wow... 7900 hits! I missed about 3000 of them but I should have known they were coming in from the volume of email I've been getting. I try to respond to all of it but some have slipped thru the cracks. My system is in a constant state of flux and seems to require full reinstalls of EVERYTHING after I change each little piece of hardware, which I'm prone to doing frequently. If I've missed YOU, try again!

      I've been watching the "Alliance" recently... the cooperative efforts between Roland, Fender and Cakewalk, for signs of new life in the guitar sequencing market. While there HAVE been signs, it appeared that GI-10 users had been forgotten. A recent communique from John Schmelzeis at Cakewalk has shed new light on that situation. He informed me that several new StudioWare panels for their Guitar Studio and Pro Audio software packages (including a GI-10 panel) are available for download FREE at their FTP site. He has also given me permission to post the GI-10 panel here which gives rise to a new section here on the Manifesto. I've recently written my first windows program. It's a small utility that calculates Roland sysex checksums for short command strings in both decimal and hex. It and the GI-10 StudioWare panel will comprise the beginning of our new Files section .