Once again and surpassing the least gloomy expectations, tradition has been kept alive and kicking. Even on these times of global economic turmoil, or so they say. One could blame it on the crysis if things would have gone less than regular. That was not the case however.

In spite of it all, I am proud to report that this years attendance and overall content and (in)formal exchange was not weaker that the previous events. In fact, it hasn't lost its spirit even though it's the first time ever that the international Linux Audio Developers meeting, officially known as the Linux Audio Conference has moved outside of Germany. No regrets, quite the contrary and as many of so unforgettable experiences.

All that to say that the Linux Audio Conference 2009 held on the La Casa della Musica (CdM) Parma, Italy, from April 16th to 19th, is now over and I'm already a little bit late to report about my attendance. So there it goes...

I must have been terribly busy to miss this one earlier. Or at least completely away from this Earth. It was only yesterday, more than two months later when doing some course browsing over some past magazines, that I've stumbled with joy over one of those, quite by chance though. Surprisingly enough, given that I've the magazine in matter since this late Summer,,my dearest project has been granted a very graceful review from, once again, the Linux Format UK's best-selling Linux magazine. Yes, just half a year later from being the Hottest Pick, Qtractor is now a Hot Pick Revisited on this late August 2008 issue (LXF108). Awe!

Saturday, September the 6th, I was once again pleased to attend the second National openSUSE Portuguese Meeting (ENOS), in a renewed invitation from Carlos Gonçalves. This time I had a chance to talk around the current Linux Audio/MIDI scenario and, of course, my brainchild Qtractor.

Simon W. Fielding writes that after quite some time, and reading between the lines of various posts on the linuxaudio-user mail list, he has finally understood how the QjackCtl Patchbay works and what it is for. Because of that, he has written a brief guide to using the patchbay and the document is here first released into the wild, hoping it will turn out to be useful to someone in the quest to make amusing noises at home.

Thanks Simon, for this excellent piece of work. You've done, in just a few paragraphs, what I've failed to do in all those four years QjackCtl's Patchbay has been around ;) Cheers.

After landing almost literally at my day-job work place, I still didn't had much time for a reflection on what happened during this last days, on my now already traditional trip to the international Linux Audio Conference. This years edition took the KHM-Köln as a venue and, well, I'm back safe and sound. But sad already, somewhat. Suffice to tell that I do really enjoy being there and I really wish it could take much longer, or at least until one's missing home and warm family touch doesn't get in the way of insanity nor terribly overwhelming.

Pawel Wolniewicz got me to know about one short tutorial on Qtractor, that was just made available here:

How to record a multitrack song using Qtractor.

Free-Your-Media is a weblog on open source multimedia technologies, developed for the purpose of: graphics design, web development, video editing, audio software, open source games, Creative Commons, Linux... please share the word. Many thanks for a great job, Pawel.

This last week-end has seen a major rewrite of the plug-in infrastructure (qtractor 0.1.0.838+), opening the way for more plug-in types, other than just LADSPA. So, effective today on CVS HEAD, you get native Linux VST support on Qtractor. Audio effects only however. This marks the way for the next working season, which is about having MIDI synth/instrument plug-ins, or DSSI and VSTi support for short.

This might be old news for some, but my pet project, Qtractor, has been awarded the Hottest Pick as seen on the Linux Format UK's best-selling Linux magazine, as of January 2008 issue (LXF101). It was just today that I've grabbed (bought) one copy from my usual news-stand and after a while browsing over to the LXF Hot Picks section (p.70), I've found it to my astonishing pleasure.

At last, the remaining of the Q-suite audio applications to reach the highest purity status is now a done deed. Qsampler migration to Qt4 has been completed. With lots of breadcrumbs laying in the ground, still...

Just arrived home after attending the Open Delta aLANtejo 07, an event ran by the Computer Science Students Association of the University of Évora, over the last three days (and for some, nights too:). The event had two parts: one fun part, a LANparty and the other a knowledge-oriented part, conferences specially and entirely dedicated to Open Source, with several luminaries on the schedule and, last but not least, also the final of the 1st Portuguese Zend Free Software Contest, the main reason this blog entry is being issued ;)