Blogs Posts by Nick McHardy

Welcome to my blog, where I cover tech, games and whatever else that’s interesting in the universe like vinyl, fusion jazz and side projects.

This website is inspired by the web of the late 90s - no, not just the style of the site - but also harking back to a time when people would set up websites (probably on Geocities or similar) and write about anything that interested them. Most of the websites looked terrible (my first few sites were no exception) but it was so liberating having your own site. So here’s my modern-day version of that late 90s vibe.

Not sure where to start? Here are some blogs to get you started:

Learning About Leadership Episode 1 (May ‘20)
The Humble Minidisc (Aug ‘18)
Why the Sega Dreamcast is the Best Console of All Time (Aug ‘18)
Common Website Vulnerability Scans Found in Logs (Apr ‘18)
On Being an Engineering Manager (Feb ‘19)

There’s also a 🍊 Garden Diary to check out. It’s sometimes updated as the seasons change.

Latest Posts

I'm on a mission to find out if software architecture can be lean and agile

📅 Posted 2015-05-22 (3 minute read)

So I’ve been toying with the idea of doing software architecture in an “agile” or “lean” way. Sounds like a great way to spend a week in mad ‘dicussions’ with various people about the semantics of architecture and solution design and how little of it you should really do in order to be “lean”.

What could it actually mean though? Digging past the jargon, I’ve found a few principles which I can list here without any evidence of them working what-so-ever. That is because this is the start of the journey. So expect a blog at some stage in the future which describes the outcomes of me trying to smash these principles that I found on the ’net (see end for references) into a government organisation.

In case you were listening

📅 Posted 2015-05-12 (2 minute read)

Excuse the puns for the moment, but I have come across a number of cases of differing case for differing purposes in the case of software development.

This, therefore, is a case study of the true meaning of the term. Just in case you needed to know. So why not write about it.

We are all used to the typical UPPERCASE and lowercase cases which are commonly found in the English language. But what about other cases that are used in the software development field? I guess I knew all of these existed but didn’t really know the official term for them. Until now!

Nathan's secret magic synth scale

📅 Posted 2015-04-25 (2 minute read)

Here’s some secret sauce for you. 26% of songs are in C-major (also bundled with A-minor) as per this article. As for the rest? Well some appear to be in Rap Man Key.

What is Rap Man Key I hear you ask?

Well it goes something like this:

Some may call this B flat major. For the hosts of the Fusion Delusion, it’s Rap Man Key.

OK a bit more info? The Casio Rap Man (also known as the Casio RAP-1) is a tiny battery-powered 32 key keyboard with a microphone input (for the vocoder, although it works best as a feedback effect when aimed at the built-in speaker), a bunch of prebaked rhythms (one of which is the best ever - known to the un-initiated as #16 “HIP HOP 1”), a small plastic disc slightly reminiscent of a turntable and a couple of drum buttons. The orchestra hit sound is fascinating.

The obsession with the letter 'X'

📅 Posted 2015-04-25 (8 minute read)

This is going to be another long one! Apologies for any typos, my cat was sitting on the keyboard for some period of time during the writing of this blog.

Today I will describe my obsession with the letter “X”. No other letter was just quite as awesome during my childhood. Was there anything the letter X could not do? Triple X Radio being probably the most inappropriately named station, for a 7 year old. Keen? Read on!

Renoise 3.0 and Focusrite Scarlett 18i8

📅 Posted 2015-04-25 (6 minute read)

So recently I picked up a usb-based magic box from Focusrite called Scarlett 18i8 that lets you record several channels of audio into your computer as well as midi in/out and so forth. Pretty standard stuff these days, so nothing amazing to report there. The reason for buying it is my PC doesn’t actually have a sound card (or a video card built-in, either, for that matter).

I’ve always been fascinated with the ‘music tracker’ style of writing, playing and generally larking about with music. Born out of the Amiga days in the 80s and going on to power the music behind some classic games such as Jazz Jackrabbit and Unreal Tournament, trackers are synonomous with the demo scene.

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