Started in the mid-1970s to design and build a multi-track recording studio, record bands and write software, Dixie Unlimited has always been focused on sound and images, with a touch of computer code.

After several years of activity, the company took a hiatus when Richard was offered the opportunity to join a team at the heart of coming digitial transformation.

Returning to an active status for the last decade, Dixie Unlimited's primary focus has been developing media tools for the Mac OS X environemnt using Cocoa, OpenGL/GLSL, MIDI and DMX as appropriate. See the Products page and the Archives page for the available software resulting from these efforts.

In select projects work has included modern web design and development featuring strong media content and seasoned experience using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, Ajax and content management systems (CMS). From a custom designed lightweight CMS for performing artists to corporate strength Drupal, Dixie Unlimited has built solid, easily maintained multimedia publishing systems for the web.

While we often refer to our products as tools, we believe they are more. We believe our products are instruments. We hope you will feel the same. And, yes, we will likely call our products tools more often than not - it rolls off the tongue much better.

Looking forward, software tools for realtime media creation is the primary force motivating Dixie Unlimited. New media technologies (OpenCL, OSC, WebGL, social networking and more) offer excellent possibilities to develop exciting tools for media creation and distribution.

Starting his career as a photographer, an early opportunity led to a more interactive approach to images. Joining a team of artists and educators to create interactive multimedia had a strong influence on his future career. Before microcomputers (aka: micros, aka: personal computers) came to be, the team produced interactive audio visual tutorials for college courses - allowing students to "attend" lectures at their convenience.

Expanding on the multimedia development experience Richard designed and built an early personal studio using the latest analog technology of the time, a Tascam 1/2" 8-track recorder and an ARP2600 semi-modular synthesizer.

As the studio was being built the indicators of the digital media age began to appear. Soon a brand new (4 digit serial number) Apple ][ joined the studio's arsenal of tools. Initial programming centered on SubLogic's 3D framework, which provided a limited 3D wireframe capability on the 1 megahertz/64K Apple ][.

Soon the Apple ][ was connected to the ARP2600 in a limited fashion. However, the all digital alphaSyntauri joined the studio and became the center of computer-synth activities. The 2600 continued as primary tool, but analog only.

Early online bulletin board systems (BBS) were appearing. Finding current info concerning space exploration difficult to locate, Richard built a space exploration themed BBS which served a small, loyal group of space fans.

Although the capabilities of the time were limited, the foundation was in place. Computer graphics, computer audio, and online communication became the focus of the career.

This career foundation led to nearly two decades of service on the mothership. Throughout, the focus remained on multimedia, from defining digital media to developing digital media tools.

With the advent of the graphic processing units (GPU) to supplement the central processing units (CPU), the vision that had been primed by the early experience with SubLogic's tools was now within reach.

During the last decade, Richard has immersed himself in OpenGL, GLSL, MIDI, DMX and Cocoa to implement media tools with enough character to be viewed as instruments. The results are the products found here at Dixie Unlimited.

While the primary focus of Richard's work is to provide tools for image creation and manipulation, he continues to record, mix and master multitrack sessions for bands from time to time. Occasionally providing synth sounds for the recordings. The multimedia project, seeqor, is his solo creative effort to bring together all media elements.

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It is, after all, the second decade of the 21st century. Time to move on to the real web.

The pages on this site are built to the proposed HTML 5 spec.
They all pass the W3C's validation for HTML 5.
Currently video is served by QuickTime with a Flash fallback.

Site design, development and maintenance are in-house at Dixie Unlimited.

 

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