I made a middle C with SDL. It's very basic. I allocate a buffer which is 172 samples long - which happens to be the wavelength of middle C when playing at 44khz. Then I dump than buffer on to the sound card repeatedly.

I would have expected the result to be a nice crisp clear tone, but no, it's more like FM.

I don't understand how synthesisers are made.

I finally got around to going to Dorkbot, after only a year of meaning to. It was cool.

It was held at State 51, a new media company occupying a disused factory just at the top of Brick Lane, on the fringe of the Shoreditch New Media Mafia Zone. The factory was ace, practically derelict except for signs of workshop-like activities. I was assured that they have proper offices upstairs. If it were me I would be worried that the place was about to collapse.

Apparently they let several artists use the space, hence the workshoppiness. The best bit is that just inside the front door they had a seven-foot black security droid with a single cylon-like red eye. He was only wooden, but I still wanted to escape his gaze pretty sharpish.

I was late so I missed some of the talking, however I saw Ben Woodeson talking about some of his installation pieces, I saw Alex (of Slab and Slub) perform some really nice IDM with nowt but a bunch of console windows with Perl scripts in them and then I saw James Larsson frying things with old monitors and generally giving advice on handy stuff to do. Christ monitors are dangerous.

Afterwards I got talking to Alex about his sound software. I learned that he has a C synth module running underneath sending stuff straight to the DSP (intense) and a Perl server doing timing. He was also playing samples as well, so I guess his C module is pretty handy. It was written by the other guy in Slub, who I didn't meet. The music he made was excellent and he'd obviously spent a while putting it all together. It started sounding like a bunch of random FM synth tones, but it was obviously much more carefully orchestrated than that. I really enjoyed it. I think it's a really cool thing to be doing with your computer and it's yet another thing that I'm jealous of. I'm such a grass-is-always-greener person.

I saw Peter, a guy from the Dorkbot list who I had an interview with a few weeks ago. After the interview I decided I didn't want the job, but neglected to be polite enough to actually write to him and tell him. Then there he was at the bar, serving beer, so I had no chance of avoiding him. Turns out he didn't really mind. I think he twigged in the interview that I didn't really want to give up freelance that much.

Peter introduced me to Paul Makepeace, another coder (I only know that having been to his site though). We chatted for ages about open money, which he's involved in. Basically open money and similar systems seek to create small community currency systems where the emphasis is much more on using value to encourage co-operation rather than selection in a competitive environment. It's a fascinating subject and I agreed to do some hacking for the community site at some point. I kind of told him that I didn't have much free time, which I feel a bit bad about know, because having read his CV I'm quite interested in having a bit more of a chat with him. I may also try and get Charlie involved in some way.

So all in all it was a fascinating and stimulating evening and will definitely, definitely be going again. Next time I will try and take some other people from the gang, particularly Miles.

I've been having a few problems with an IT department lately. Being freelance, you wouldn't think this happens much, but sometimes my clients consist of a marketing/managerial person, who wants to do something interesting online, and the IT department, that wants to go home early.

I pitched for a job building a small site that had quite bit of content saying that I would deploy a simple CMS, written in PHP or something and with a little DB backend, to store the content. It will be really simple, I said. You'll be able to access any page and edit it, move it around or create new pages all through a nice simple web interface (I'm envisaging something kind of like Zope's interface). My client doesn't know HTML so it was cool. We agreed a price and a date for the work to start.

I got a bit nervous about IT, as I've had problems before. I said to my client that since we had a month before the project was to begin we should contact IT and get all the technology and access set up so that on the first day of the project I could FTP or telnet in and start running code. Oh boy.

IT don't like CMSs and they tell us so. They tell us about this great strategy they have of making all the web editors from the different departments train in an HTML edit and learn to FTP. Fine I say, but you could be saving a lot of time and keeping your pages more consistent and well structured if you had a CMS to help you.

This conversation has gone back and forth and has become religious in proportions. I think I said in one of my earliest emails to my client that I didn't want this to turn into a religious war with her stuck in the middle and this is exactly was has happened. I feel bad, she's getting close to just forgetting the whole thing.

Today it reached new levels, with the IT's lead agitator issuing the following statement:

[...] I can guarantee that a CMS will make things harder and more expensive for you in the long run. It's easier to just run a static website on [our] central webserver and learn how to make changes to it.

Which is just malicious IMHO. First of all the whole point of the CMS is to make the process of updating quicker and easier, thus cheaper. If it doesn't do that then I wouldn't be recommending that my client pay me to develop one. Contrary to any opinion you may have formed, I recommend what is good for my clients, not for myself. Sometimes I have bias, but I'm an expert and there are reasons for the things I tell them.

The second sentence just illustrates that this guy isn't thinking this through from the client's point of view. It's easier for him if she gives in and edits the pages by hand. It's not easier for her. How could it be, she's going to have to learn HTML. Sysadmins think HTML is easy, because to make a simple page is easy. Making a working site that has good design, good implentation (i.e. bug-free, no broken links), good usability and good information architecture is hard for anyone, even an expert. Somebody who is a) making their first site and b) supposed to be doing something else is going to find it an uphill struggle. In this situation they are most likely to just not do it, or to do the minimum. It's to alleviate this problem that they hire experts in the first place.

I understand where IT guy is coming from to a certain extent. When faced with the option of doing things themselves, IT people, very much including myself, will often opt to learn. That's a big big part of what makes computing interesting. Other people don't think like this, they just want it done without the hassle.

This issue still hasn't been resolved and with each passing email I worry that the argument grinds my client down more and more and that soon she will just throw her arms up the air and that will be the last of it.

IT people need to try and put themselves in the shoes of their customers more. First of all they need to treat them more like customers and not like a flock of sheep. Next they need to understand the business reasons behind why something has been requested. The people on the other side often don't make the original requirements known to IT, which is why IT people don't trust them in return. I recently had a project which would have gone a lot better if I'd gone down into the trenches to talk to the users, but instead somebody who knew less than me about UI design created a design and handed it over to me to implement. When I went to train the users, I got lots of "Why does it work like that?", "It would be better if it did this..."

So IT people, I know it's hard when you just want to write shell scripts/reboot servers/play god games, but please try and understand your customers needs more and, shock, put them before your own rather than passing the buck. Be brave enough to tell them the real costs and to suggest implementation techniques that differ from their own, but keep to the user's needs and people will hear you out.

For my part, this is the core of my job. When people contact me they've often been thinking about their new site for a while, but they will have got some things wrong. If I don't go back to first principles, I end up implementing their mistakes and then getting the blame when a system that does the wrong things is shipped. I can't work like that, I need to make sure people get what they need and to do that I need to be able to be honest with them and eager to help them.

Well it was a weekend of little sleep (I've caught up now :-), but much good stuff and some bad. Mostly to do with a certain large public transport provider here in the capital of the UK.

On Friday I went to see Mouse on Mars, Four Tet and others at The End with Miles and Fran (Lad and Squid of Hype fame). There was a derailment at Baron's Court on the Piccadilly line and it took me an extra hour to get into the city (not bad really, considering). It was OK though as the night didn't start until 10, we sat and drank in a little pub around the corner from Holborn tube, near both the End and the college where Louise is having lots of fun doing her photography course.

The End is smaller than I expected and it was packed. It wasn't death star loud either. Obviously it was wicked loud, but my ears didn't instantly start hurting (Miles's did though). When we got in the door somebody I should know was playing. I knew the track from a Tigerbeat compilation, which is odd, because it was a Domino Records birthday bash. Hmm. Still, they were cool, they finished with a Tigerbeat-esque rendition of So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music.

After a "quick" trip around the club to find ear plugs and to the bar to get booze (they take plastic! they do cashback!) Mouse on Mars started. They were ace, playing a really cool dubby bass-heavy set, which dipped in and out of mashing electronics. Some really energetic set pieces and loads of sequencers with flashing lights. At first I thought they didn't even have a computer. But then I realised that they did, but they weren't really using it. It was really good to see them. I recognised nothing that they played and they gave off a feeling of being really creative.

Next up was Four Tet. He was really good too. He played stuff from Rounds, the latest album, and some older tracks as well. He played a version of one of the tracks from Rounds (I forget which one), with a jungle break on it (Amen for the technically-minded) and it worked pretty well. About half way through the set he played Everything Is All Right and I just lost it, I was already dancing really hard, but I think I may have broken my wrists air-drumming along to that, one of my favourite tunes.

Four Tet's set was really good and people were really excited by it. The booth where he was playing was in the centre of the room and he was surrounded by a sea of happy faces. It was quite something to watch. He finished at about three and I swear half the people left there and then.

Afterwards we hung around to see Manitoba DJing for a bit, he played a crazy combination of tunes, a bit of Roni Size, some old funk, I saw Zep III at one point, but he obviously decided against playing any of it. We decided to go home about 4:30. That was when my real transport fun began.

We walked to Tottenham Court Road and split up, Fran and Miles having to get a bus from nearer Covent Garden and me from Oxford Street. I got a bus down Oxford Street to the right end. Then I spent half an hour finding a bus stop, then half an hour waiting for a bus, then asked a policeman when the tube opened, only to be told that the gates were already open. Then I found out that an open tube station is not necessarily one with trains. The first train wasn't for half an hour. I was trapped in the station. After walking around for a bit I finally settled on walking up the down escalators as the most interesting thing to do. It's hard work. Especially when you're so tired you're practically hallucinating. I finally got home just before seven.

On Saturday we went to Miles's housewarming party in Wimbledon, taking 24 beers (£7 for 12 bottles of Pilsner Urquell in Budgens - bargain) and bottles of Margherita, White Russian and Port between me and Charlie. Louise made some biscuits from the copy of How to be a Domestic Goddess that I bought her for her birthday. They were incredible, really really good. I think she's destined for goddesshood.

It was a good party, big enough that I didn't talk to everybody. Ben, Miles's housemate seemed pretty nice and the other people were cool. Kate was there and we chatted for a bit about family members and stuff, always funny. I also had a long discussion with Miles's friend Duncan who is a computer scientist as well. Much more successful than me, having ported GDB for Cray and worked for Sophos as well as beginning a Phd at Oxford. We chatted about languages mostly, a subject that he was quite knowledgeable about. He tried to convince me to learn Haskell. I may do so, but I think I'll wait until after I've learned Lisp.

Then yesterday I had to redesign one of the sites that I've been working on with Arena. It took me ages because a dynamic version of the site has already been built and any major changes to the HTML would just have been impossible to accommodate. Strangely enough, the customer was the same organisation who had such a hard time taking me out and bringing me home on Friday.

My weekend has been up and down. In that order. It's also been very busy, so I haven't told you about it yet. Will try to get on it later today. Now must sleep. Then bitch about clients. Sleep, then bitching...

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Last updated at 11:32, Wednesday June 18th, 2008. All times are shown in 24-hour clock format and are BST.

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