Young Mr. Gasman has just released a new utility as a result of a discussion about playing Tracker music on a real ZX - Tracker2AY v0.1 is a Ruby script that will convert a .SQT, .PT3, or .STC track (SQ-Tracker, Pro-Tracker, Sound-Tracker) into something playable on a ZX (.TAP, .TZX, .AY). I guess it's a handy tool if you have a bunch of SQT songs lying around waiting to be played (the compiled track format is a pain, believe me). And it would also remove the need to compile the players yourself (tho' aside from .SQT songs the players are fairly straightforward). Lovely.

I've just read a post on the WOS forums by Chris Smith, he of Harlequin fame, about a book he's been working on. During his analysis of the ZX Spectrum ULA, and his production of a replacement, he's been putting his findings into document form with an aim to produce a book all about it. His forum post is mostly asking for advice on the intended audience (hardware nuts, or people with a more general interest in the ZX). Sounds like it could be good "bathroom reading" for those of you who get turned on by the smell of solder.

I see that a new version of the DEMFIR ISO image has been released. If you don't already know, this is a pre-made ISO for use with the DEMFIR firmware for DivIDE. Because of the features of the recent DEMFIR versions it requires a kind of "boot system" to exist on the media (HDD, CF, ...) in order to work, and this ISO is pre-made to allow you to have a play. It's mentioned over on Darkbyte, and you can grab the ISO file at the bottom of z00m's page.

It's been over a year since the last release of Spectaculator, the really-rather-nice ZX emulator for Windows. And I now see that Jon Needle is making a new beta version available to registered users. There currently aren't any details as to what has changed in this pre-release of v7, perhaps one of the registered users (or Jon) could enlighten us?
Update: Thanks to Equinox for sending on a major changes list... it's below the break.

Over on Speccy Live they're pointing to a document written by Prof/4D all about how he goes about the making of logos. Thereof. Unto. The document is in Russian, and comes as a .doc file, but I'm sure some kind soul will soon pump it roughly through google-translate. Some nice pics until that time.

A little later than planned, here's some mention of the recent music releases over on ZiPlanet, in no particular order (actually, in the order they appear in my Firefox tabs). First up are two singles "n-mb flight" and "yer standing still on my shoulder", both by Scalesmann. Then there's the two-part album (containing 22 tracks) by Riskej entitled "Decorative Sex" - all of the tracks are available as .pt3 or .mp3.
Meanwhile over on Speccy-Live pulsar points us to "maytro", a zx-able demo featuring music from Riskej, Karbofos, and Scalesmann. Go grab.

A very quick pointer to the newest album release from Ubiktune - I would have rushed to mention it before, but it's Onomatopoeia by nq of Skrju, so you've surely already heard it :)

I apologise, I've been slacking. But you already know that. So by way of penance, I will point out that TommyGun, the rather nice development environment, has been updated to v0.9.28. About two weeks ago. Regarding the Mongo project, a collaborative work by the author of several ZX tools, I'm not sure what's happening with it - it looks like work may have stopped according to this WOS post, but I'll have a look around and see what I can find. I've been kinda out-of-the-loop lately.

If you're a user of CCZ80, the C-like Z80 Assembler (does that make sense?), then you may want to know that a bugfix version was released, ooh, a week or so ago. v2.0.2 features three noted fixes:

• Avoid specify as source file the value "".
• Avoid warning 'Constant not used' when it's used.
• Corrections in expressions evaluation.

Only a quick mention for these, as the only place I see 2008 information mentioned about either Bytefest or RockOn is over on ZX Magazin, so we'll just have to go by what information they have... Bytefest 2008 will be taking place in Prague from 5th to 7th of September, while RockOn is on the 31st of May. Somewhere.