Alex Leonard's thoughts on life, technology, music, and the arts
I got a notification from my music distributor that the June sales report for my tiny record label Supple 9 had arrived. It's never very much, but I always log in to have a look and see (hope springs eternal..) -18.57 € Yes, that's a minus symbol in front of my sales. Not only did… Continue reading Spotify Fraud Fees – A New Low for the Company
Having lived in Ireland where there seems to be a very high ratio of unbelievable bullcrap performed by landlords to maximise the value of their properties (and in the process force people into accepting worse and worse living conditions), I was pretty pleasantly surprised by how things tend to be in Berlin when we arrived… Continue reading Landlords be landlords
We've been in Berlin now for seven whole years and that means that this year is our 7th Berlin Art Week. Every year they hold a huge art fair, and this year we finally attended!
I'm in the process of reorganising my studio a bit (given the fact that we are being evicted from our home of seven years in Berlin), and one task I've been meaning to sort out is selling my old Elektron Digitakt 1 which has been superseded by the superior Digitakt 2. I've dragged my feet… Continue reading Got to remember to finish things
I've said this before and on the rare occasions that it comes time for me to book long distance travel, whether by train (preferred) or by plane, I am instantly reminded of it again. The pricing fluctuations on long distance train and any plane ticket are just too extreme in my mind, and have some… Continue reading The Environmental Impact of Dynamic Pricing
This morning I read that US President Joe Biden had given a speech yesterday in which he stated: We can’t allow this violence to be normalized I'm sorry to report, but everything points to the fact that gun violence is already well and truly normalised in the USA. My younger brother is over in the… Continue reading Normalised Violence
I recently started watching a series on Curiosity Stream titled "Zenith: Advances in Space Exploration". Half way through watching it on Curiosity Stream, it disappeared from the service (I guess their rights agreement expired). Anyway I was delighted to find a full playlist with all the episodes on YouTube. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvSMB6PSf-o2vdwGrLMethTealnVilDED&si=rS0YzFvrc1fWBlEj I think it's probably a… Continue reading Recommended: Zenith – Advances in Space Exploration
I've continued using SwiftKey despite them having been acquired by Microsoft a good while back, because I'm so accustomed to this keyboard that I find it hard to switch.Recently they've added AI generated stickers to the app, which saddened me - to think of all the unnecessary energy use by people hitting up AI image… Continue reading Looking for a good SwiftKey alternative
After a disappointing few months back on Netflix I decided to sign up for a short Apple TV+ trial to give us something to watch yesterday evening.I signed up on my laptop, installed the app on our Sony (Android) TV, eventually signed in (quick method totally failed), and went to put something on.It failed to… Continue reading Apple TV+ First Impressions
Oh man. So a year ago or more I discovered a weird glitch with three UAD plugins by Softube whereby any non-realtime rendering in StudioOne resulted in latency being introduced. This glitch had not always been there, but I couldn't pinpoint when it started happening. After being turned away by UAD and PreSonus, I spent… Continue reading Hours of work out the window
I'm really excited to announce that my latest work under my "Exan" moniker is available on Bandcamp now! Buy Now I was so delighted when the Errorgrid label boss said this to me: "It's one part liquid, one part solid, one part insane - a sonic cocktail from a music barista with a bent mind"… Continue reading New music: Offset One EP by Exan
It's 2024. A completely arbitrary number signifying the number of times our planet has orbited the star in our solar system since a particular someone was possibly conceived or born, as decided by another person about 525 orbits later. Wahey! Whilst these sorts of delineations can absolutely be useful in allowing one to take stock… Continue reading Round and round we go
So this year I decided to reboot my long-since languished blogging and photoblogging efforts. Previously I had both sites in one at my alex.leonard.ie domain, but I decided to separate them out and migrate from a WordPress self-install to WordPress.com. The photoblog has been a great success - you can find it at eidetic.photos -… Continue reading Ending 2023
So we recently returned from a most wonderful trip to Sicily where we spent a week staying with friends of ours who split their time between there and Berlin. I can look back at it and laugh a bit now, but at the time it was somewhat frustrating - out of the 6 total legs… Continue reading Famed German Punctuality
Perhaps given that the majority of people use Chrome or some Chromium derivative, this news might not be hugely exciting, but for the health of the internet it's so important to have viable alternatives, especially when they're run by a non-profit organisation. I will admit that I left Firefox for a while about 10 years… Continue reading Firefox adds inline webpage translation
Huge congrats to Errorgrid label-mate Taet who has just published a dizzying array of no less than fourteen varied, unique, and compelling tracks created entirely with the Soma Pulsar-23. I've been watching these videos with absolute fascination and have to say, hats off, it's hugely inspiring to see. There are 14 videos in total, and… Continue reading TÆT – Pulsar-23 Mastery
On a Variety of Topics 