February 2005 Archives

I installed Mozilla's Firefox tonight - and I must say that this website doesnt look half as good in Firefox as it does in Internet Explorer.

At work today - someone either dropped a shit load of Cocaine on the floor of cubicle number 1 in the men's loos - or there is some guy at work who likes to talcum powder his butt..

Why do people who ride bicycles on the road think they are above the traffic rules and dont need to obey them?

And the award for best Valentines Day T-Shirt slogan goes to...

The lady I saw walking down the street in Stanmore for her shirt that said "Say it with flowers. Do it with Condoms."

After a start to the day like this - I dont know why I bothered to go to work..

Didnt get much sleep - too hot.. still have a head cold and generally wasnt enjoying being alone at night. After about 4 or 5 hours of sleep I woke up with that hang over feeling without having drunk the night before. Im running late for work! I could not not go into work after having the last 2 days off.

I check my organiser and find that its batteries have expired meaning I have lost all of my appointments and data. I check my mobile phone and that too is suffering from the same problem - Annabelle has taken the phone charger with her on her business trip - so I have a hard time ringing my boss to tell them that I am running late for work. I eventually manage to succeed and tell my boss I will be in but Im just running late.

I rush out of the front door.. forget to brush my teeth or put aftershave on - get in the car and then realise that the door didnt close properly. So I go back and make sure its secured. Off I drive to work. I miss my turn off (?!?!) and drive straight past it. I get to work and I realise that I have left my building pass at home. I have a head ache. I am tired. I should have stayed in bed.

Having settled into the new house I figured what better time to set up my Kawai K5000s that I purchased a few years back. Doing just that I thought I would go one step further and connect the midi up to my PC. Now the story begins.

Before I had my K5000s I had (and still have) a Yamaha RX7 drum machine. This too has midi. Many many years ago a mate of mine gave me a PC midi cable for my birthday :) - and I attempted to get the RX7 to connect to my PC via midi. I couldnt do it.

Fast forward to the present time. I again attempted to resolve the whole midi thing. Last night - I attempted to connect the K5000s to my PC via midi. It wouldnt work. I surfed the internet trying to work out why..

Today I emailed my friend (the same one who gave me the midi cable all of those years ago) and explained that I was attempting to set midi devices up with my PC - and asked him if he had any programs that you could run that would test the midi set up to see if it was talking to the PC and device. His reply was "you sent me an email asking me the same thing 8 years ago.".

Its true I did. Although it may not have been 8 years - but then again it more then likely was. He said he would look for the program and email it to me.

Whilst waiting - I thought - Im going to give this another try - it should work! So I checked my midi connections.. Midi cable marked IN connects to Keyboard Midi port marked IN, Midi cable marked Out connects to keyboard midi port marked.. wait a minute.

Does the Midi Cable marked IN mean it connects to the keyboard midi port marked In? Or does it mean that its the cable that takes the data Out from the keyboard and IN to the PC. Arhhh!!

Yes. 8 years of not being able to get my midi devices to connect to my PC because I had the cable marked IN connected to the IN port of the keyboard. And the OUT one connected to the OUT port. Thats logical isnt it? Obviously not in music industry or atleast the midi world its not. I swapped the cables around and of course it worked fine.

If anyone else out there is having any problems with getting their midi devices to talk - gimme a call - I have some good but simple advice for you. Heck, I could save you 8 years worth of stuffing around.