My lovely girlfriend went over her year end review last month and what perked my attention up was a to do list for the entire year.  I never though about doing that, even though I’m clinging on to some form of GTD.  That moment inspired me to create my own year to do list and let me just tell you, I filled that sucker out.  I’ve already got a good head start on one of the items.  I’m well on my way to creating my very first VST plugin.

What’s VST?  It’s short for Virtual Studio Technology and it was the brainchild of pro audio software stalwart Steinberg.  It’s goal was to enable an interchangeable way for audio processing to be applied to different software hosts.  Think of a VST like what Java is to operating system platform.  VST and its SDK is a ubiquitous way for audio software developers to build applications and have them work across different pro audio software applications.

The SDK itself uses C++, but there are various language implementations out there across the web, including Java and Python.  But being the enterprising fella that I am, I decided that I needed to go over C++ again.  My first real exposure to C++ was in high school of all places.  After my short stint there I didn’t really touch it as college focused on Java instead.  It’s been fun, needless to say, re-learning C++.  Cplusplus.com has been fantastic in that respect.

So I’m in the midst of knocking out a VST and will hopefully have something turned out by the end of the month.  I haven’t decided yet how much coverage I’ll give on it here or over on my music blog, Helping Zero Knives Enter You.  The other conundrum so far is finding the right development environment for VST building.  There’s plenty of tutorials out there, although somewhat disjointed, that between them require at least 5 different IDEs as well as the good ole command line.  I’m going to pick the one that works with and go with it.

So that’s on my plate for now.  I’m really pumped about having a bigger, or 20,000 ft level for all you GTDers out there, in place.  There’s more coming down the pike and I’m definitely gonna talk about it here.  In the meantime, please check out some of the sites above, they are tons of fun.