Author Archives: Gary Hawkins

Online Safety Act 2023

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I have disabled new comments on this blog, because I don’t want be fined up to £18 million by the UK communications regulator, Ofcom, for not complying with the virtually-impossible-to-comply-with rules of the Act and the soon-to-be-ratified Illegal Harms Codes, unless you happen to be one of the Big Tech companies. The Codes, if approved by Parliament, come into force on 17 March 2025.

For the same reasons, I may have to also soon decommission my Mastodon and Matrix servers, if I can’t find an easy way to comply, and at the present time I don’t expect to be able to do so.

For those interested, you can read Ofcom’s latest statement on this at https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/statement-protecting-people-from-illegal-harms-online/

Bye bye Cakewalk

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In 2001, I bought myself a shiny new Yamaha synthesizer and to go with it a program called Cakewalk Pro Audio 9. That and its successor versions, including SONAR, was to be my DAW for many years until one day Gibson Brands spectacularly went bust. The company had been passed from pillar to post first being sold to Roland and then finally on to guitar manufacturer Gibson, but at this point no-one actually knew whether we’d ever see Cakewalk/SONAR available again.

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Some thoughts on music engraving/scorewriter programs

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NB: This is not a particularly scientific or forensic review. It’s mainly my subjective view, but then again, it’s me that’s got to use it, so for the purposes of this, that’s probably fair enough. Had you have done this review, you might well have come to a completely different conclusion, that’s the way it is.

So, just after Christmas, I had a few days spare and, because the open source MuseScore 4.0 had been released just before Christmas (which was a major rewrite of the program), I thought it was time to download it and have a play with it, but also to compare it against the commercial competition, which mainly costs a lot of money, but handily also had 30-day trial versions.

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Bluetooth woes on Windows

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So I learned something today. I’ve just bitten the bullet and bought a no-name generic Bluetooth 5.0 USB dongle off the Internet which arrived this afternoon. What I wanted it for was to be able to transfer files between mobile phone and PC without having to scrabble around for a USB A-to-C cable I can never seem to find when I want it. So I plugged the dongle in, Windows auto-installed drivers, the Bluetooth icon appeared in the system tray and I was able to pair my phone with it.

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Review: Colmans Bread Sauce vs Schwartz Luxury Bread Sauce

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If there’s one thing you get to eat a fair bit of at Christmas, it’s bread sauce. As bread sauce reviews (and some of the bread sauces themselves) are fairly bland, I thought I’d spice it up a bit this time and turn it into to a contest. So, in the red corner we have Colman’s Bread Sauce and in the blue corner we have Schwartz Luxury Bread Sauce. Which one tastes the best? There’s only one way to find out! Er, no … not like that.

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Goodbye To All That

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The end of today marks the 25th anniversary of the ITV 1993 franchise round as required by the Broadcasting Act 1990.   As a result of the decisions of the Indepdent Television Commission (the regulator of ITV at the time), at the beginning of New Year’s Day 1993  three ITV contractors, the breakfast television franchise and the teletext franchise were replaced with new companies.

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