New Hope for Pretty MIDIs

Well, back in the mid-90s FM synthesis for MIDI playback on most soundcards was pretty standard. When we got our first Pentium with Windows 95, Microsoft thoughtfully included some nice bonus media to show off their new OS. This included the classic canyon.mid, as well as a nice version of In the Hall of the Mountain King, Fur Elise and some others. Anyway, this era of FM-synthesis GM was great, and when really shitty wavetable synthesis started to become dominant, I think everybody agrees that it was bad. So that makes me happy to announce that I've found a nice easy way to get something that sounds like the same ol' FM synth stuff, even if it probably isn't. That's right, foobar2000 version 0.9 now has a very nice MIDI decoder complete with synthesizer, and it sounds very nice. You can get the plugin here; it's foo_midi, of course.

And here's a nice MIDI I made for one of our old one hour MIDI compos we used to have. I was never good at MIDI sequencers.

SONAR KILLS DREAMS

In other news, reddit showed me this very interesting page about a man with a great idea: making infrared goggles that block out all light in the visible spectrum so that your eyes start to see what little infrared they can pick up. It sounds so cool walking around on a sunny day seeing things trees glowing pinkish white while the sky is black. Maybe I'll try making these pretty soon.
Note: there may be concern that this will damage your eyes; but I don't think UV leaks through the filters, as shown by the light spectra graphs he has up. It's possible that lots and lots of infrared radiation is getting through to your wide-open pupils, however, and I think that might be a concern.