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Expensive, but kind of inescapable. By the time you’ve paid for all of the alternatives it adds up to about the same price.

The adobe software tool set is incredible and state of the art. There is also amazing generative AI built in.

There are like 50+ adobe apps as part of the adobe creative cloud subscription software. With the other second half contributed to 3d modelling and 3d creativity.

The tools set is industry standard and does pretty much everything and is used everywhere. From graphic design, photography, magazines, films, special effects, animations, comic books, print, business cards, merchandise, the list go on and on.

Its an incredible piece of kit. You can get started for free with either a trail or use the free version of adobe express. It is a powerhouse.

Some of the older tools like adobe XD are falling behind, for example if your just concentrating on websites, then the FIGMA product is a better value for money.

There are lots of free and open source alternatives, also, if you have an up to date NVidia gpu you can do a lot of similar creative production using the NVidia omniverse.

The adobe creative cloud is industry standard, its a heavy weight toolset that can seem overwhelming at first but its firepower in creative terms is second to none.

If you can afford its highly recommended. There really is that much to keep up with within the adobe creative cloud its always a struggle to keep up with the pace of development, but Adobe do a better job than most with social interaction and learning.

Alternatively, if you just want to concentrate on websites then FIGMA is THE go to development tool set.

This is the opposite pair to ‘the front end’ ( html, css, javascript).

Known as ‘the back end’.

PHP and MYSQL exist on the ubuntu server and perform all the tasks that are located at the website.

Remember the front end occurs inside of the end users web browser, whether that be a computer, laptop, mobile phone or even video game console or smart tv.

Therefor the back end occurs at the website. In the case of the basic materials project, via WordPress, the PHP and MYSQL do there thing and combine the results into HTML CSS and JAVASCRIPT which is then sent into the end users web browser.

Connections between the front end and the back end are sometimes called AJAX. The AJAX part combines both the front end and the back end.

So, a developer who does all three parts, both the ‘front end’, the ‘back end’, and the AJAX part which connects the two , is called a full stack developer. That’s a lot of work!

It can get very complicated ! this is traditionally known as a LAMP stack.

Basically, the web site code comes in these three flavours. Each works together to bring websites to the end user. This code triple arrives at the web browser and the web browser in turn creates the website for the end user. Commonly know as ‘the front end’.

An artform unto itself, front end development is built up out of a combination of html, CSS, and javascript.

Often times these three are extended out, for example with javascript libraries, such as REACT, BootStrap, Node,js, three.js , etc . Really is a fantastic area of development and there are plenty of tutorials out there to get more familiar and practice with.

Eventually, as communication occurs between the web browser, interactivity throughout the front end, bounces information and events back and forth to the back end.

We recently upgraded to Ubuntu Server 24.04.

This is the operating system, much like windows or Ios, wich serves the basic materials project website. Very widely used in industry supporting about half the websites out there. A little complicated and a bit archaic, with lots of linux commandlines and various configuration, firewall, and all sorts of crazy command line instructions. A bit more complicated and slightly cryptic way of going about things, but its free and open source, built up out of the famous Linux.

This Ubunut Server is the very foundational base layer which everything is built out on top of. SSl certificate, Apache, MySql, PHP , etc is added on top of this ubuntu server foundation to provide the basic materials project website.

Native Instruments make music software, instruments, plug ins, and a variety of keyboards, drum machines and DJ controllers. This is another great go to place to start making music with computers, software and midi controllers. We use the Traktor DJ software to record the drum and bass show over on Mixcloud.

Although more and more websites these days use a react.js frontend, for a lot of websites out there WordPress is the standard. Helps in making a website , making it easy to post , and keep things up to date. Lots of modules, very widely used in industry and well supported. Has been going a long time, and has been built up by a world wide community of developers. Has lots going for it. Relatively easy to bring up, and makes managing websites pretty easy.

This is another important everyday tool. Use windows powershell to ssl/ssh into a server to build up, upgrade and maintain and restart. This is a handy bit of kit, allowing you to fully remote control a web server.

This is an important process in provisioning a website. The security certificate is important in ensure website traffic is protected. Its quite a big job to get right. More detailed information to follow.

This is a file transfer tool, useful for sending source code into a live production environment. Simple to use. This is used to post source code onto a web server , making it available as a website to users via the web browser.

Used to keep track of source code. Helps coding development by keeping track of changes, and cool to see how work is progressing.

Useful in conjunction, together with visual studio code.

Industry standard lightweight developer tool. Use this software to program everything really, from websites all the way through all of the variety of languages.

Great tool to manage web development on a LAMP stack. Will be more to follow along this line.

High quality product manufacturer that has been around for all time. Ideal first audio interface, the Focusrite Solo product line comes with a great software bundle ideal to get started out in music creation using your computer.

LUNA is a a newer DAW. The sound quality on this is fantastic, really second to none. Originally only available on the apple platform but more lately available for windows. Made by Universal Audio, perhaps the best sound quality in the industry, usually matched with universal audio manufactured audio interfaces, with inbuilt DSP capabilities, second to none, however expensive.

Another Popular game development toolset. This is based around c# and is an incredibly versatile platform. Makes publishing games available over the web easy.

Popular game production tool. Makes all manner of games , live motion graphics, architecture and visualisations. Industry leading performance and capabilities, quite a lot of popular games are made and published using this tool set.

Izotope make the popular Izotope plug in bundle. Pretty much industry standard , really allows you to pull out the best sounds for audio production.

Akai is a company that has been around for a long time.

Famous workflow allows you to make precise beats. Popular in Hip Hop Culture

Ableton is a popular DAW. Digital Audio Workstation

https://thebasicmaterialsproject.bandcamp.com/album/1-retrogressive

This is a link to our latest album over on Bandcamp. Hopefully, well follow up with more releases in time.