Virused

Not my computer... me!  Last winter I contracted a viral infection that caused me problems for months afterwards.  It's called "pitiriasis rosea" and it gives you a skin condition like a very bad sunburn.  It makes it uncomfortable to wear clothes or lay on a bed.  It wasn't until March that I finally got rid of it, and then afterwards for several months I had Epstein-Barre-like symptoms.  It's only been since July that I've really been myself again.  That's why no posts in so long -- it was all I could do to go to work and do basic personal maintenance, and my synths went untouched for several months.  But I'm getting back to it now. 

As you can see, the format of Sequence 15 has changed drastically.  It was time for that green to go, and the old template was not working well with the latest Blogger software and had developed a lot of formatting bugs, which required a lot of hand-editing of the HTML for every post.  Plus, I never really liked how much screen real estate that template wasted.  I'm still tweaking on this template, so don't be surprised to see more changes over the next few weeks. 

I'm noticing that several of the modular manufacturers are asking customers to fund development of new modules, via the placing of deposits or through Kickstarter.  There's been a certain amount of resistance to this; customers are leery of long delivery times and seeing their money tied up in modules that they have not received.  However, the economy is bad and I understand the manufacturers not being able to take the risk of designing and producing a module that doesn't sell.  The Great Modular Revival has now been ongoing for nearly 15 years; users are getting more sophisticated and are asking for more complex and capable modules that require more up-front money for design and manufacturing setup.  And as this occurs, surface mount is becoming more popular in the modular world, which more or less eliminates the one guy slaving over his workbench cranking out modules via hand inserting and soldering; to go big time surface mount takes the facilities of a real assembly line with pick-and-place robots and reflow equipment.  The one-man-shop can contract for that service, but it takes a minimum order and setup money up front.  So let's have some patience with the designers and manufacturers who have been cranking out some great module designs.  On the other hand, the days when customers could be expected to pay up front and then wait two years for their order has passed.  Some of the culprits are realizing that they can't work this way anymore and are changing the way they operate, for the better.  The others (and they know who they are) will probably find themselves out of business before too much longer.