Tiction v0.3.0 adds support for OpenSoundControl (OSC). Now you can trigger and move nodes, start and stop the sequencer, and sync to an external source, all over a network with OSC. This lets you control Tiction with practically anything, including the iPhone/iPod Touch (using TouchOSC, Mrmr, or OSCemote, for example), Pd, Max/MSP, or pretty much anything else you can dream of. The ability to send OSC messages from Tiction is coming soon

The ability to save files and open them later means you can hang on to that amazing patch you set up.

You can now globally disable the physical actions. This prevents nodes from moving around when triggered.

The background now subtly pulses to indicate which pitch was triggered. You can turn this off by setting the “bar brightness” slider to 0.

The Tiction window is no longer inverted, meaning the top of the window corresponds to higher pitch/velocity/CC values.

A number of other bugs were fixed, including one that didn’t preserve the source of a node’s note velocity.

You can get it here.

I’ve updated Tiction to use the excellent RWMidi library. This fixes problems some people were having with Tiction not starting up correctly.

I also added the ability to copy a node’s MIDI channel to all other connected nodes.

Get it here!

Get it here!

Ancient Roman market:

The Colosseum:

The Vatican:

Palatino, the original Roman ruins:

Next up: Rome!

The city revolves around these waterways. Galata Bridge, the major link across the Golden Horn, is covered with fishermen. All along the bridge’s lower level are restaurants that buy the fresh catch and serve grilled fish sandwiches to pedestrians.

Imagine every amazing food you’ve ever smelled in your life, add it all together, and then double it. That’s something like the smell that hits you as soon as you enter the spice bazaar:

The Hagia Sofia: Built as a cathedral in the 6th century, converted to a mosque when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in the 15th century, and the largest religious building in the world for nearly 1000 years until the 16th century.

The original Orthodox mosaics and paintings on its vast ceiling were covered up by equally impressive Muslim art, some of which has been removed to reveal the layers underneath (the scaffolding is part of a renovation process that’s been going on for years):

Across a park from the Hagia Sofia is the Blue Mosque (the streaks are bats, which seem to cluster around anything with minarets):

Inside, the ceiling is covered in blue tiles which give the mosque its nickname:

I remember watching and listening to the news reports during the Balkan war as a little kid, before I had any sort of geographical understanding of the area. As the sound of gunfire cracked in the distance, reporters repeated one word more than any other: “Sarajevo this” and “Sarajevo that.” Without knowing anything about Bosnia and Herzegovina, let alone understanding what was happening all across former Yugoslavia, it became cemented in my mind that Sarajevo would be devastated for decades to come.

For the most part, I was wrong. Just thirteen years after the end of the siege, Sarajevo has been rebuilt, and it is again a peaceful home to beautiful buildings and incredible coffee:

But the city is filled with reminders of the recent conflict. Many buildings, including city hall, are still riddled with bullet holes (above). Cemeteries everywhere have an astonishing number of headstones with dates between 1992 and 1995:

Other reminders are deliberately kept visible. Here, part of the secret tunnel that was the city’s thin umbilical cord to the outside world:

On Friday we hiked through the surrounding mountains to the country’s highest altitude settlement, a village — still populated with people living and working as they have been for centuries — situated at the crossroads of ancient caravan routes. Our mountain goat of a guide (who was absolutely necessary; a few people die every year here of leftover land mines) also brought us to the largest canyon in Europe, situated near the invisible border between Bosnia and Herzegovina.

We switchbacked up a winding, 150-year old, single-lane mountain road, passing cows, mountain goats, and herds of sheep, and made our way to a little village nestled in a valley. This town was supposedly famous for its prosciutto, so we just walked up to a promising-looking house, knocked on the door, and asked, “Prsut?” We were in luck — the family’s daughter led us around back to a shed, the walls of which were lined with rows of salted and smoked ham. She fed us samples of homemade prosciutto, cheese, wine, mead, and rakia, a liquor distilled from plums. We ended up buying huge packages of prosciutto and cheese, as well as bottles of wine and mead.

Further into the mountains was the “monte negro” itself, the tallest peak in the area and supposedly the origin of the country’s (Westernized) name. At the top is a mausoleum, the burial place of Petar Petrovic Njegos, the poet-king of Montenegro responsible for secularizing the country. To describe it in a word: spooky.

Finally, as we worked back toward the coast, the mountains turned from mist-covered, rocky crags to rolling, lush, green bumps. We drove past spooky, derelict hotels, tiny vineyards, and sleepy towns.

That night, back in Budva, our hostel went out to the little mom-and-pop “Stari Ribar” (Old Fish), where we were served heaping plates of freshly caught prawns, squid, octopus, sole, and some fish that can only be caught off the Montenegran coast during May, all grilled and smothered in garlic. Total cost per person, including drinks, salads, and crepes for dessert: about 15 USD. Awesome.

That was the view from the terrace outside my hostel room in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Every day a new cruise ship would pull into that harbor and unload hundreds of (mostly German) tourists. So during the middle of the day the city, and the old town especially, teems with people:

Waiting until nighttime, though, when most people had boarded their ships and sailed away, gave me an opportunity to explore the old, walled city with few distractions:

Even during the day I enjoyed walking along the huge town walls, which have never been breached in the entire history of the city, even when under siege in the recent Balkan wars.

Welcome to Prague!

Where the beer is cheaper than water…

… with an eclectic mix of architecture, inside and out…

… where the streets are busy into the early morning…

… and with a history of people getting tossed from high windows.

(The First Defenestration of Prague was committed from one of those windows)