Treasure Tower is just a brilliant freeware game I've been playing over the past week. Somehow, the random combination of time-factoring, old-skool medieval feel, sudden-death mechanism and the 80's-style "game" music just make it worthwhile.
It's a combination of platformer, time-trial, puzzle-solver and retro-goodness. Also, O part 25 is up (it's quite short).
You can read on the site itself, but partially in response to MusicXP starting to charge subscriptions for their amateur 'tweaking tips', and partially as a general update to my XP cleanup/speedup guide and other computer-related guides, I've launched XPfree.org -
Free advice for XP systems (and other operating systems).
The XP advice applies equally well to Vista in most scenarios, and there's other info on the site which may be of some use to people. Enjoy.
m@
WMP is a diabolical son of a b***h - steals associations from other programs without being used, screws up DVD autoplay settings, is a bloated, cpu-hogging piece of crap, and due to Microsoft's infernal mechanisms, is remarkably hard to remove.
It also is reinstalled as part of the Service Pack 3 upgrade...
No normal method will do the trick to remove this malware infestation, which is why I've put together the following simple steps to salvation:
Viola. Now install or re-configure whatever your favourite media player is (I like Media Player Classic, an excellent and fast open-source effort).
The Windows Media Codecs themselves can in fact be installed separately, without installing WMP, via Windows Media Lite.
p.s. I am also putting this in a permanent guide here.
Just a bit of intro about what CFS or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is and isn't, as I get sick of people really not getting it.
It's what I've had for four years to date-
m@t
The final owl section from O posted today: here.
After noticing that the firefox ImgLikeOpera version-fixed plugin I hacked together a while back is rejected by Firefox 3.01, I've updated it yet again.
As an alternative I can also recommend using ImagePref instead. It doesn't have half the features or usability that ImgLikeOpera does, it doesn't support cached images or per-page settings, but it doesn't have the annoying bugs that ImgLikeOpera has either.
Kick in the teeth for dialup users, but life sucks like that. Now let me lie down, I went to hospital today and I think I absorbed all of the floating bugs available.
Just added a guide for optimisation of performance in my favourite sequencer. Also added to "Links" section.
I felt I had to quote this:
"So who shall we blame for the whole mess? Do we stick two fingers up at the record companies who have sat around twiddling their thumbs, peddling overpriced re-issues for years while their A&R men bombard us with shallow, faceless pop idol, X factor boy bands? Is it fair to say '... well, you had it coming'...? Or do we accuse the casual 'non-listener' with the attention span of a three year old living in a disposable, homogenized, Paris Hilton-obsessed society, over stimulated with too much life choice? A society that places value in triviality and accepts mediocrity without much question? Or perhaps the devaluation has evolved from the cult of the DJ, where anyone can regurgitate the very essence of rock 'n' roll by lifting an entire 70's funk classic, adding some rap drivel over the top and calling it their own work? Is modern music regarded as an art form at all anymore? Or is it just another business now?"
- from Alan Wilder's essay "Music For The Masses - I think not.". For my money, I think the masses are more to blame than the Record companies.
m@
Wrote and finished this in four hours, it's been seeping in and out of my headspace for a while now: Goodbye Soulmobile (free MP3 download from mediafire, 5MB - click the link). Enjoy. If you're wondering why my output of recent is more inconsistent and unprocessed, the truth is, I just don't like you.
That and I do perfectionistic stuff a lot of the time now, for others, so can't be bothered doing it in my own time - it's my getaway. Damn. I miss that car.
Share it around, I don't care.
[EDIT: (lyrics) for overseas folk, trademe is our equivalent of ebay, but better, because NZ is quite small so we can find and kill each other if we have to. I'm, like, mostly joking there.]
m@
As you may have noticed, I've added a RSS feed to the site - useful if you don't want to keep coming back here to find out whether I've written anything new.
I'll only update it when I think I've written something worth reading or noting. To subscribe to my feed just click on the icon just under the 'news' heading - if your browser is capable of using RSS, it should allow you to subscribe to my 'feed' (what a terrible pseudonym for syndicated content - 'feed' - what are we, consumer horses?). IE6 doesn't support RSS.
m@
This is my perspective, and it's by no means the only perspective-
personally I think the music industry in NZ is pretty bland at the moment, with occasional exceptions.
It used to have a particular vibe, or 'New Zealand-ey' feel that thrived from the early 80's to the mid-late 90's.
It also got bugger-all airplay, and had it's fair share of detractors from those who got sick of the jangly, twangy 'NZ sound' - myself included, I have to say.
The very late nineties saw the introduction of a scheme to get more New Zealand music on the radio, which unfortunately involved the radio industry as judges of what was commercially viable.
What we got was a lot of New Zealand music on the radio that suddenly sounded like overseas stuff - initially that was great, as people were sick of New Zealand bands that sounded like they were perpetually stuck with a hunchback that forced them to be shoe-gazing.
The gimmick soon wore off, and now all NZ music sounds pretty much bland, americanised, lacking any originality-
there are a few exceptions, moreso in hip hop and established bands from the 90's e.g "Shihad" or "Pacifier" as those in the states know them ("Shihad was deemed to sound too close to "Jihad" so they changed the name...).
But, ironically, the New Zealand music which sounds like stuff overseas has pretty much buried the more unique stuff further underground than it was before the "NZ on air" scheme was developed.
As an obvious example, 'Conchords were ignored here, wouldn't receive funding and the state-owned TV stations wouldn't play their program, which didn't stop it from becoming a big hit overseas and here via viral internet spread. My brother played me a live tape of theirs back in '04, I loved the sticky tape song.
A less obvious example would be The Datsuns, who had to go to the UK to get anywhere - back here, they pretty much blurred into the haze as another waikato rock band. I did a film music course and Christain Datsun was in my class- he seemed nice enough. Pretty funny to see them in rock poses on posters later.
We are the worst country at supporting our own culture, simply many of the decisions for support are made almost exclusively by the commercial radio/tv stations, who only have an ear for what they already know from overseas.
Sound engineering-wise, at the higher levels there are some very good ears, but there are also a lot of colleges which will 'teach' people how to record and mix music (conveniently ignoring the fact that you develop a good ear for this kind of thing over the course of a long period of time).
So the sound output of a lot of studios is awful. One of the most successful studios in my town (doesn't exist now) had a reputation for having some of the worst ears available.
Most people record at home, on computers, which is a good thing and fits the DIY attitude which New Zealand has developed out of.
But it does result in much ignorance and friends-of-friends "audio wisdom".
Thank god for overseas internet forums, or I'd have noone to glean true information off-
Sad to see it go, but the Soulmobile (which I bought off my family and spraypainted, 4 years ago) is now SOLD, as it needs more repairs that I can comfortably justify. Plus, with petrol the way it is..
m@
I hope NiN will put out an instrumental album made of songs in the class of 'The four of us are dying' from The Slip (rather than the 3-week loose jam session that was Ghosts). Hell of a song. F'ing incredible.
Oh yeah, and don't use AVG 8. It's got a 'link scanning' (or as some people are calling it, 'link scraping') feature which is clogging up some network's servers with unintentional nigh-DDOS attacks. Replace with Avira Free, which I have found to be quite good, or Avast. Personally I'm sticking with AVG 7.5, for as long as possible.
More info here.
m@
A common misconception about spiritual advancement - or whatever you'd like to call it - getting happier, perhaps - is that you have, what they call "the experience", and "the experience" changes you. Either you go on a course, or do drugs, or meditate at the top of a temple on a mountaintop in frozen winter wearing nothing but polar-fleece and a kilt, but you have some sort of spiritual experience and then you're on your way to go out into the world and be an enlightened person. Horseshit.
Whole books have been written about the misconception, such as the amusingly titled "After the Esctasy, the laundry", and various others. From my experience, such initial ventures into the dull, sullen world of spiritual growth are only initial weeding and busy-making activities. Sometimes unblocking a stream may cause a small flash flood, but the tide of these things subsides fairly rapidly. Usually people come away from, say, a Vipassana retreat with something different in them, but really, all that they've planted is a seed.
And it's not without careful and continual weeding and watering that such seeds blossom into fruition. Otherwise the mind and heart soon become similar to the dense quagmires they used to be - inhospitable territory for adventive growth - as we say in botany. And it's in that day-to-day weeding, that real spiritual discipline and a lightness of heart develop. One hopes.
Personally I like a few weeds, but I think it's unnatural to have a garden that's too perfectly pristine - but each to his own.
Last of the Steal This Play videos, Please turn off your #$^&* Cellphones (actually the first song in show) has finally been uploaded and referenced on the Steal this play website.
Also, one of my better acoustic songs, "Full Moon", now has it's 'O' video online.
If anyone wants to try soldering a midi cable together, at any point, I suggest you buy a decent book on the subject, then beat yourself horribly with it, because that's a lot more fun than trying the soldering.
Also, 'O' part 20 (ie. "lol-than" the music video for acoustic song 'the waves' (originally a personal take on Sting's "Island of Souls", but it morphed outside of that mould)) is up for viewing.
Thought I'd do a brief shoutout for friend Wayne (Whizkid)'s cheesy pop video Fine Today, from the album 'Patches' (up on itunes, emusic, amazon etc)-
if you pay attention you'll spot me in a bit of it-
Also, me, Thomas & Ross's show Steal This Play is now online, for those of you who missed out. Multiple videos all over youtube etc, uploading more every night.
m@
My FF3-compatiblity-patched ImgLikeOpera plugin has received a bit of attention, so I made the instructions for installation clearer for those who use it: see below.
Amazing good - the latest version of Virtualdub is spot-on. Best linear video editing package on the planet, and free.
In case anybody wasn't aware, you can convert Quicktime files (.mov etc) to .AVI or other formats for free using RAD video tools. You need to have Quicktime or Quicktime alternative installed first, then all you have to do is:
It even does batch conversion. Pretty smooth.
m@
Final night of Steal this Play was uber-pimp. It blew away box office records in the koha/donation category. I think we might have made $5! Seriously though, it was an incredible night, much missed by those too silly to show up- Look forward to doing it again sometime in the distant future, hopefully-
m@t
The music video for this ie. 'O' part 19 is now online.
UPDATE: The original author of ImgLikeOpera has fixed and updated the plugin to work correctly with Firefox 3, the following is retained for educational purposes only:
Unfortunately the ImgLikeOpera plugin, which allows easy control over image display in firefox - particularly useful for those with dialup access - stopped being developed a couple of years back, and
by default will not install or be registered as being 'compatible' with Firefox 3 - even though it works fine within it!
So here's a modified version of ImglikeOpera which works with Firefox 3: click here to download [EDIT: xpi fixed 4-08-08]
To install it:
The firefox team are trying to set a world record by getting the most downloads in one day (17th USA, 18th here). I wouldn't care except I work with HTML/CSS/javascript on this website and others, and IE is just a nightmare to work with - simply put, it's blantantly non-standards-compliant -
so, the fewer people who use it, and use something like firefox or opera, the better life is for web developers-
so download it now, or don't. I don't mind, really.
[UPDATE: have to say: it's pretty cool. Nice one guys.]
m@
Who says the web universe has no soul?
Okay, so usually I do. But that's no excuse - Or is it? Anyhow:
Expecting honey
So I'm back up, after some downtime due to the general sh**iness of a given american domain host (who shall remain nameless & clueless). Hosted by 110mb.com now, who rock hardcore. Well, you know what I mean...
I now have to host my mp3's via mediafire, which is fine.
Cool stuff which is happening this week:
"Steal this play" is a music/comedy hour of skits/songs by myself, Ross Mcleod & Thomas Bullock, running from 18th of June (wednesday) to 20th of June (friday) in the New Place Theatre (Gate 8) at Waikato University, starting at 9pm.
There's about an hours worth of material, about 20 skits/songs total, including:
* A tongue-in-cheek DVD piracy warning
* A musical tribute to Macgyver
* An existential discussion of 'coolness' in regards to musicians
* An R&B number titled "Hey sexy ladies get the hell off my lawn"
Entry by donation.
PG13, some minor swearing and bad costumes.
Other cool stuff:
The third "owl bit" from 'O' is now online! WHoot!
The new weebls-stuff toon is great: On the Moon 14.
And finally, new Charlie the Unicorn! Cthulhu answered my prayer!!!
Website changing to www.mattbentley.net. My old provider, muzic.net.nz, is closing it's free server so all future visits will go to mattbentley.net as of 14th. Kind of a bummer as a lot of the web traffic I've been getting from various things goes directly here, but I have to thank muzic.net.nz for their many years of happy service.
Tonight was a good night, of course I can't tell you why. But it was, fact remains. Looking down from on high and wondering just how long it will take me to fall back down to earth-
And how painful it will be when I hit rock. Mmm rock.
Well, didn't win anything in the Prix ars electronica music competition this year - not that I expect to, the only reason I enter is to receive the absolutely awesome DVDs they send out to participants. My work's far too 'normal' or 'emotional' to ever win.
Suffice to say that I feel music competitions are served better by a more accurate description of what music is -
art devised to touch the emotions and soul, with not even a whimper of intellectual analysis.
It is my feeling that, over the years, the Prix Ars electronica has (at least on the audio side) become unlistenably (and, somewhat pretentiously)
fixated on the abstract scratchings of the intellectual, as opposed to an open and diverse mixture of aesthetic and
emotional intrigue.
Only so many 'new ideas' can be fitted into the music spectra - which is surely reaching capacity, in that regard at least-
what remains is the emotional appreciation of work devised with these new ideas as starting points, as opposed to destinations.
As subjective as this is, it's a damn sight more interesting than listening to yet another unrecognisably abstract recording
where the 'new'ness overshadows and dominates the 'good'ness.
It would be my desire that in future the aim of this competition would be transformed to eleviate the kind of jaded
audible responses I hear year after year, that the winner becomes judged not by how bored and experimental they are,
but by how moving and dark or beautiful their work becomes.
I'm not talking "pop". But there are ways in which the soul can move, which are unrestricted
by the conformities of the average and 'the standard'. Inside/outside the box IMHO, is a purely academic distinction with no actual application in real life or art. In my opinion,
the 3D aspect of this competition meets that criteria entirely, while the music section has a lot of growing up to do...
BTW, new 'O' section 17 online now.
I felt this post by Generalfuzz is a good summary of the online creative release process and response- if anyone is wondering how musicians feel about their releases, and react to criticism/praise, this article is quite accurate.
The petition
In 2007, the 'artist' Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, took a dog from the street, tied it to a rope in an art gallery, starving him to death.
The prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American decided that the 'installation' was actually art, so Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the biennial of 2008.
I've read the artist's justification for the project, stating that tens of thousands of street dogs die of hunger in the area every year, but I don't believe it. If he was genuinely wanting to draw attention or resources to the issue, this display was not a way to go.
Please consider signing the petition- let's stop the sick f**ker.
More info.
m@
Really enjoyed this article's interview with Doug from Valve software (makers of Half Life 2) - the guy seems to have a good handle on what makes PC gaming great.
m@
Because I am a tard, web entries were reading from april & may as still being march. You will now be pleased to know I finally know which month it is.
New 'O' music video out: part 15 - black winter. I always liked that one.
And, finally got around to making the site work with naughty naughty non-web-standards-friendly IE and opera browsers. Hooray to be me...
As some may know, I'm a mega fantard of the now ancient Star Control 2, and
the guys who made it have a new plan to convince the grand idiots at Activision to support a sequel.
Basically they want to make a world map with pictures of SC2 fans from around the world, playing SC2, stuck to it at their relevant countries. From the website:
"So if you've got the notion and a camera, can you send me a picture of your self either playing SCII or at least standing near something SCII-related? Just send it right to old alexness@toysforbob.com.
Or, if you really want the picture to get there really fast, use my new other email address: nutsack@toysforbob.com. Somehow just the word "nutsuck:" does make things faster and better!"
So what are you waiting for? The rapture?
The Slip, is very awesome. At 2496 it sounded very good on my system, though most people won't be able to use that high a res. Impressive. The fact that Alan Moulder's on board probably helps, sound-wise. I think it would work as a good starting point for non-NIN fans, given it's general bounciness and lack of angst. Couldn't stand most of Ghosts, which - after a while - just sounds like an extended jam session.
m@
Been gradually uploading more stuff to my deviantart webpage, this is one of the most recent ones:
Can't be bothered creating a separate art2 page yet, this is much easier for the moment.
Also, a couple of interesting articles on infrasonic sound which I stumbled across while doing an unrelated search: sub-audible frequencies can create sensations of 'spiritual presence', fear, nervousness and sorrow:
the BBC article.
This article details the infrasonic noises caused by natural disasters - possibly what animals react to hours before disasters occur (shifting tectonic plates and whatnot).
I did the music for this one-
Flash-based free game, a bit like Aquaria for those who've played it, but flash-based and you're swimming around the antarctic rescuing baby penguins. Kinda cute & addictive.
http://www.addictinggames.com/penguindefender.html
Talos (the designer's) rather silly description: "Oh noes! Baby penguins are lost! Use the radar to point the way. Find a baby, touch them and lead them to safety! FTW!"
Latest in the 'O' series is here (spot the pegasus), plus a short film by some student friends of mine (quite terrible, but quite funny) is here.
For anyone who grew up in the eighties, I think this is pretty funny.
Just thought I'd shout-out for Paranerd's marvellous "Slumber Lovers", which unfortunately is a lot better than the rest of the album - from the sound of it, it seems like it was recorded and mastered at another time entirely.
Not content with Ghosts, Trent Reznor's releasing yet another album for free - The Slip - this time, with vocals (you've all heard 'discipline' by this point), and not only that, but the HD (24bit 96 khz) version is ALSO FREE.
Looking forward to this one.
I'll add that this will - doubtless - be used by the pirates as a false proposition for how the internet is empowering artists - that musicians as a whole aren't suffering - when Trent got where he is on the back of the traditional marketing & manufacturing machine, he's got enough dough to not care whether he makes a profit and everybody already knows him, he's got legions of fans, and no longer needs the advertising and distribution that got him where he is today.
Ie. It's not so much an example of 'Powaa of teh interwubs!' as of an established artist adapting well to circumstances which favour those with an established presence and pretty much kill everything else.
The internet could've been the ultimate for independents. And for a while (riffage.com, iuma.com, original mp3.com RIP) it actually looked like it might turn out that way... Instead, it's become nigh-impossible to sell, or even give away, music or video from below-the-radar artists, due to the average bloke's ability to download well-established music illegally, resulting in increasing fickleness in consumers spoilt on a diet of high-volume and high-quality illegal content.
After all, why waste your bandwidth on unknowns when you can download the name-brand artists for 'free'?
For any fans of IDM/electronica music, I can heartily recommend Ochre's four web albums, which - at 2 quid per hour of music - are incredible quality & amazing value for money, from my perspective. I've been a fan for a few years, now I have the original flac (lossless) quality versions, which sound yet better.
m@
Got project for Native Flora of Aotearoa finished today - you can view it right here, if interested. Down until I update it post-review by lecturers.
Whole thing was a sort of trial-by-acid- done now, though. Back to real life and decent sleep.
Lesson 1 for the weekend: Social interaction is a mixed blessing.
Lesson 2: Never judge a man, just carry a big stick.
Lesson 3: No matter where you go, or how high you climb, there will always be some schmuck with a job or life that makes them sad who wants to make themselves feel better by talking down to you.
Having just had my first shower in over three weeks (I had to swim in the lake every day to keep clean, where I was), I feel like a whole new person. Or perhaps the same person, only somewhat cleaner.
This is a music video for Pressure Valve, and features cool dancing robots courtesy of the demoscene groups involved. View here or here (worse quality).
Hooray, I'm back. Catchups below. Plus, quotes from some media I've been perusing:
"Wait, I feel something... my hearts beating faster and I feel like I'm constantly on the verge of throwing up."
"... Oh... that's the way I've felt ever since I met you!"
"There is absolutely no way that we can... make a robot out of chocolate."
"I stared at the ceiling, wondering how I could be in love with someone who's name had no anagram."
"You think it's war? It's war like a war between humans and maggots. Or fire-breathing dragons fighting wolves. Or humans on the backs of wolves firing dragons at maggots."
Just discovered worstalbumcovers.org. My favourite so far below:
Rap's finest moment.
m@
There's one thing that pisses me off about modern left-wing cinema, and that's the unresolved threads at the end of a film. Sure, typically every thread gets resolved in a mainstream picture, but why not resolve the most central plot threads in a more left-of-center flick?
The avant garde film school of thought believes that plot resolution is unrealistic, but in fact, it is realistic, in the context of a film, where details that're irrelevant to the mood and focus of the film are omited.
In real life, conflicts and situations get resolved all the time, but what happens afterwards is that new conflicts and
situations arise. But that doesn't give credence to the idea that plot resolution in and of itself is unrealistic.
If you look at a mainstream or slightly arthouse movie, both, as aforementioned, leave out details and aspects of the character's lives which do not serve the film's focus.
Therefore, both are focusing on particular plots of the character's lives, particular sequences. It is only natural in the human instinct to want to follow these particular threads through to their very ends, see how they unfold, and the end result. Most of us who watch cinema are fully and functionally aware that this is not how real life operates, but not because things don't get resolved one way or another, but because in real life there are not a limited number of threads being focused on - our lives are more diverse. Thereby, why directors should choose to inflict involuntary penance on an unsuspecting movie-goer for - god forbid - wanting to see a singular plot unravel and find the ending of that thread, is merely pretension.
Faith no more - Angel dust - I don't know. Just great. Crazy, great. Patchier than King for a Day, but at the same time the hits on it surpass the hits on KfaD. It took me this long to click that the album cover and inside art are an ironic parody of man's relationship to animal life (bird in beautific pose on front cover, slaughterhouse photos on inserts).
Blind Melon - First album - Though Shanen Hoon couldn't sing better than a croaky bat in his live shows, his recorded voice at least comes across as aching, unbroken and palatable. The other guys in the band show their stuff on this, their first album.
Autechre - Incunabula - often overlooked in favour of Tri Repetae, personally I believe this to be their best work, though in later years they described it themselves as being 'cheesy'. Their later work being unpalatable to anybody but the most diehard fan's tastes, I'll take it as a compliment to the album.
Fantomas - Fantomas - Though later albums are more readily available, nothing comes close to approaching the orchestration of this album's diehard metal insanity.
Jose Gonzalez - Veneer - also known as 'that album with the song from the sony commercial on it', this is worth a quick listen if you've never come across Jose's unique style of singer-flamenco-songwriter blues.
Rammstein - Mutter - this work of grating angry keyboard metal surpasses their subsequent and previous work due to the sheer level of perfectionism involved in it's creation - it shows.
Cocteau Twins - Victorialand - somewhere directly in between the pair's later pop output and their earlier gothish angst, this largely drumless piece of silver translucently wafts it's way through shimmering towers of guitars, stacked layers of keyboards and halls of reverb that never quite seem to quite end. Monumentally strange, pretty and wonderful.
Decided that because I'm encountering, and have encountered, a lot of basically amazing freeware games over the past three years as a way to pass the time, I am putting together a page dedicated to these amazing games; and lo: Matt's amazingly-freaky freeware games list. Enjoy. Or don't. Gaming is such a personal thing, it's like cheese. Very personal.
Looking at the sky tonight, or about half an hour or so, had the sudden impactive revelation that all that space out there, is space, is infinite, the stars burn, burn, are superheated flaming MASSIVE things out there, absolutely in comprehensible, and the sheer, amazing vastness of space and time impressed itself down over and in me, on a subconscious and emotional level.
I mean, no, we all have some abstract idea that this stuff is happening, but we don't feel it. And when you do feel it, holy f*ck- quite terrifying. The daunting infinity of it all is kind of mind-crushing!
Had the same feeling once while looking at wellington CBD one time and suddenly experiencing a feeling for the sheer inordinate masses of beings crawling their ways through the corridors and hallways of all these massive buildings, a huge infinity of consciousness of which I am only partial to a small infinitesimile portion - the teeming multitudes of people, each with an individual mind, totally self-focused, going through every day like they're completely independent and separate from everyone and everything else, like they don't matter, so they have to matter to themselves.
And that is why I don't need drugs or alchohol. F*ck that, I got Reality.
What I find kinda fascinating about Blu-ray/HDTV/etc is the fact that it really is technology driving technology, in this case-
what I mean by that is that you have people buying HDTV's because otherwise they've got nothing to take advantage of the increased resolution of their Blu-ray players.
But also, the more people buy HDTV's, the more people realise DVD's look quite terrible - partially because
the HDTV is so clear, but mainly because HDTV's use technologies such as LCD, which DVD was never designed for.
DVD was designed to take advantage of the natural blurring of a CRT TV or monitor to smooth over the encoding artifacts of the MPEG2 standard that is used to encode the DVD video. However, when you view the same DVD on a high-res LCD monitor or TV, suddenly it's a whole new ballpark - colour-banding, graininess and encoding artifacts become apparent very quickly, and the desire to upgrade becomes more tangible. Unfortunately the same tail-chasing dilemma can be seen in the 3D gaming industry, where faster cards are required, usually only to support higher and higher monitor resolutions (though some would make mention of pixel shaders, these are fairly arbitrary and the same features can be encoded in software or lower shader levels, given a reasonable lower resolution). Some of us (me) are very happy to have a 17 inch CRT monitor.
The rule of thumb is: keep your expectations reasonable, and you'll seldom feel the need to upgrade. But if you're addicted to that upgrade path, might as well find a well-paying job soon.
Of course, I feel strongly about the need for improvement of consumer audio gear, for which, oddly enough, the opposite trend is true. Standard issue of crummy speakers with computers and the rise of online audio has given way to a severe drop in audio quality, and it's a wonder people value music as much as they do, when they listen to it through something that sounds like a strangled cat on crack.
This severe drop in consumer audio fidelity, which previously was at it's peak, has smoothed over the encoding artifacts of some of the lower quality encoding formats, such as 128kbps MP3's, or AAC, or in fact anything that comes out of iTunes (iTunes is the worst commonly-used MP3 encoder/decoder, in terms of audible artifacting).
Some of us, who have something more than a small strangled set of desktop speakers, and instead have something roughly akin to a 17" CRT monitor (in terms of speakers) appreciate the higher quality we can get from CD's and the like. Most people can't tell the difference because of the equipment they have. At a time when audio has not less but more potential for sonic clarity, flavour and punch than ever before, people are choosing shite. More than ever, we're a visual culture (unfortunately for musicians, who are often perceived to be pursuing a lesser art than something such as film-making).
Sometimes I wonder if I reach forward and try to rip the horizon up, shred it away like paper would there be something better left outside, like the framing of a painting holding the only thing you hold dear.
Reality (that which doesn't go away when you stop believing in it, as my friend says) intervenes.
Having spent two weeks having to spend time getting drinking water from the lake or collecting it in pots from the rain (watertank went sour - long story cut short, had to nuke it), I'm getting an understanding of just how fucked western society is going to be when we shortly run out of readily available drinking and cleaning water.
To clarify, I'm only washing dishes with it, cooking with it & drinking it - that takes about 7 litres a day for one person. Never mind water that would normally go into flushing the toilet or simply showering (we don't have those facilities here). And oh yeah - washing the car, watering the lawn that you regularly remove moisture and nutrients from by cutting too short and using a catcher?
Forget about it. Western society is going to have to do without a few things if it's going to get through the next century, let alone the next decade.
I have to say, 'The Marine' was the worst film I've seen in two years. The point is, it's not just -bad- - it's predictably bad - so predictably bad in fact that you find yourself saying, well, if this was truly disturbingly bland hollywood trash, this is what would be happening at this point here. And then it happens.
As such, The Marine stands as a glowing, erect example of just what is often fundamentally wrong with hollywood cinema. Similar trash-thinking can also be seen in the spiderman series, and in fact most of the crap that flows incessantly from the bowels of Los Angeles. Unimaginative plotting, lame, predictable dialogue, soundtrack which sounds exactly like what you'd get if a teacher was trying to show his students what the most typical, obvious, drab way of underscoring a scene was, ie. amazingly bad, and actors who, by and large, seem as wooden as the script (though, you know, that could just be the script).
The only impressive thing about it is the explosions, which of course would be better served in a good plot.
It would seem to me that one of the reasons behind a tendency towards dullness and stifling of the mind in western education is the concept of narrowing or specialisation, rather than the generalised knowledge that tends a subject towards palatability. For example, in studying an eruption, there are many factors involved - historical, sociological, geological, ecological and so on and such forth. When presented as a whole, these things form a story which is palatable to the intellect, but western discipline is to break each area down into it's fragments and study them in isolation, the dullness of which is immediately apparent, as it is a human tendency to find interest in context.
The same can be said for any scientific discipline. In computer science, for example, were students to study based on a project basis, with a given context, which in-and-of-itself taught certain things, rather than focusing on the individual fragments of concepts, they might learn more enthusiastically and more thoroughly, as the individual concepts would be shown to have immediate impact. Instead, they do projects for the sole purpose of learning specific techniques i.e the projects themselves had no meaning, no context other than these arbitrary techniques, thus forgettable, making the techniques themselves - also forgettable. Most people learn better by doing, in a situation where the meaning extends beyond the techniques themselves. But we break down each discipline into this and that - study them as one might with a piece of cheese under a microscope - it deprives the subject of context, meaning, and in the end, many forms of interest.
This is what destroyed programming for me as an enjoyment, moreso than the jobs I did after university - before that, I loved the things i could create with code, in the context and interests of my projects.
Now, I can't find much attraction in the subject.
Holy crap, stoats are cute!
Had one run not three meters away from me today, jumping around like a little tiny elongated sine-curve-
Noxious pest animal, sure, but cute. Who says we have a right to kill these cute animals?? The government? They do?
Cool.
m@
Though I put it off for a time, Y To Mama Tambien is one of the better films I've seen in a while.
Exploring sexuality and drama in an intimate, occasionally provoking manner, it also manages to work in touches of politics, comedy, and scenic beauty in latin america - without shoving it in your face as a typical american film would. It's also one of the few films I've seen where the description on the case accurately matches content.
I half expected something along the lines of Nine Songs, which was a terrible excuse for porn or cinema, or Sex and Lucia, which was nothing but arthouse crap with little in the way of human expression.
In fact it has more in common, while not being as highly produced, with french or italian cinema - in particular I think of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie, which employed a similar style of taking random aspects of the film outside the immediate storyline and expanding on them via voiceover monologue - but in Amelie this was incidental comedy rather than something which expanded and filled in the gaps in the story world. This is where the political side of the film occurs, though it's handled gently.
I didn't expect it to be quite as comedic as it was, and it's that which both elevates and separates it from arthouse cinema.
The film feels short, although it stretches for 1h20m, which is an indication of something enjoyable I believe. Possibly the only annoying point of the film is the supposition on the side of the script that within the most brazenly heterosexual friendships there are blatantly sexual underpinnings, which, while possibly true in some scenarios, is expressed as a generalisation, and a fairly idiotic one, at that.
It could've been played out as comment on the characters as individuals, if main character Lucia's dialogue hadn't shown it more clearly as general psychosocial suggestion on the part of the filmmakers or the scriptwriters.
With that aside however (though it doesn't give anything valuable away, it's reasonably a major plot point) it's a great film, relaxed and refreshingly blunt & honest in the context. Unlike the films previously mentioned, sex is part of the story, not an exclamation mark or something foreign and alien, to be spelled out in great, pretentious strokes of the pen. Rather, it is where it belongs, i.e in the context of our general humanity.
Also, Gesundheit - small freeware lateral-thinking puzzle game, where you play a green pig with a cold, pursued by mucus-eating monsters - it's freakin' awesome. Music, sound and art is incredible and unique. For a first-time achievement by Matt Hammil, it's great work.
Knytt Stories - can't say enough about this game - non-violent, atmospheric platformer with great music - some of the best music and atmosphere I've seen in a game to date.
'O' part 7 is up. Away for a few weeks. Parts 8 & 9 will come out on schedule, on metacafe & the rest.
m@
It's terrible poetry time! Enjoy: link
Hi everyone.
Recorded this while doing a little beta-testing for south korean company Infrasonic's new audio unit (got the unit in exchange for testing). Just a kickaround, bad-average mix + a more acousticy version of black winter, only 1-minute long. For reasons unknown to me I decided to have a go mixing in mono instead of usual stereo - and it feels like an addendum to the original main song:
Enjoy
Happy easter all-
m@t
You might want to sign the following petition, calling on an end to both Chinese and Tibetan aggression and a peaceful resolution of the current situation in Tibet:
click here.
Here's the basic gist of it:
"After nearly 50 years of Chinese rule, the Tibetans are sending out a global cry for change. But violence is spreading across Tibet and neighbouring regions, and the Chinese regime is right now considering a choice between increasing brutality or dialogue, that could determine the future of Tibet and China.
We can affect this historic choice. China does care about its international reputation. Its economy is totally dependent on "Made in China" exports that we all buy, and it is keen to make the Olympics in Beijing this summer a celebration of a new China that is a respected world power.
President Hu needs to hear that 'Brand China' and the Olympics can succeed only if he makes the right choice. But it will take an avalanche of global people power to get his attention. Click below to join me and sign a petition to President Hu calling for restraint in Tibet and dialogue with the Dalai Lama - and tell absolutely everyone you can right away. The petition is organized by Avaaz, and they are urgently aiming to reach 1 million signatures to deliver directly to Chinese officials:
Thank you so much for your help!"
Like any petition it has only a slim chance of ever achieving what it sets out to do, but we need to help regardless. 50 years of repression, torture, forced abortions and murder is too long.
My friend thomas lolcatted me. I can't even remember when the photo was took.
Super-sweet!
Also, this guide to the top ten firefox tweaks is actually very useful, particularly for people who liked firefox 1's settings.
[UPDATE:] Have just discovered an uncomfortable little feature of Firefox 2's, which essentially 'looks ahead' on any links on a website it thinks you might click on to cache them. Not only is this devastating for dialup internet, but broadband users are also unnecessarily losing bandwidth. Read the guide above to find out how to turn it off.
m@
Finding Ghosts or at least the first disc of it, interesting but not inspirational. I think I was expecting something more concrete, less minimal- will try the other discs...
certainly he seems to have made a killing in sales (> 1 mill & counting). Well done.
Meanwhile over here, part 4 of O's received a wide response on various sites, totally 10000 views. Course, I did very little work for that one, (almost all of the effort can be ascribed to Cocoon, who's latest effort sandbox punks, is great).
Well done guys.
And now, without further ado: O, part 6.
m@
I haven't used an optimised build of firefox/thunderbird/etc for a while as the advantages to doing so vs the amount of bugginess/incompatibility was slim, also most of the people who were doing builds have stopped.
However recently I came across this guy's builds, which are great - I really notice the difference on my internet box, which is beginning to show it's age (just barely).
Unlike some of the builders around, he puts up standard ('current' version) builds, as well as bleeding-edge releases (which I can't be bothered with). Recommended for firefox users.
Just realised that the shipping costs were screwed up on the purchase page, fixed now. Dumb thing was charging $5 shipping for digital downloads - doh.
In more interesting news, O part 5 now online - it's my favourite.
m@
You can watch them here and here on Metacafe.
I thought this was pretty cool/weird as well.
Well, I thought I would include news of Trent Reznor's decision to put his new instrumental album (thank f**k - I've been waiting for this for an age and a half - Nine Inch Nails without crummy lyrics - fantastic!!!) online
in a variety of formats - including one for free - for myself, I'm going to be going for the free version first- and if I like it I'll be buying the 24b96k DVD version for $75. Hold me to it.
Oh, and also, 'O' part 2 is now online for viewage on Google Video, Youtube, Veoh, Revver, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Crackle, Metacafe, and Viddler.
m@
[UPDATE:] Something occured to me after posting the paragraph below. All modern desktop CPU's past the AMD Athlon XP and the Intel Pentium 4 (ie. AMD A64 & Intel Core and upwards) have some kind of speed-stepping feature built into them, which is utilised via Windows XP's power management settings as per Orthogonal Thought's blog, and in Vista.
What does this mean?
Well, basically, if we all switch our desktop computer's power scheme to 'Laptop/Portable', our computers will drop the cpu voltage and frequency when idle (provided your motherboard supports it - most do), saving 30w (on average) - it's like switching to an energy-saver lightbulb, essentially - and has absolutely no performance impact when not running idle.
Please spread this, every little bit helps.
Here is a list of AMD Cpus which support Cool'n'Quiet (Powernow for desktop cpus - requires drivers from AMD installed in order to operate), if you have an Intel Core processor (or better) it supports Intel Enhanced Speedstepping technology.[UPDATE ends]
It's truly amazing what you still end up learning, after four or os years of using an OS -
up until today I had no idea that the power schemes in WinXP did anything beyond adjust timeout settings.
Of course, before I didn't have a laptop - that's the driving force behind this investigation. For reference, they adjust the CPU utilisation schemes - unmentioned by Microsoft - definitely do more than just the bog-standard power saving timeout settings (which can be changed anyway). For more control, you can use this freeware application, on your laptop.
They were always terrible, their plugins hardly ever worked and the service, as a whole, was a shambles - good on them for trying, by golly, but glad to see that they've shut down.
m@
Good News! As of today, sections of my film 'O' are going to be uploaded to Youtube, revver, veoh, metacafe and Google Video etc on a week-by-week basis.
See the downloads section of the O website for links to the videos.
This is going to seem a bit old hat at this point, however I'd actually planned on this august
last year- but I'm on dialup - so uploading the gig of hi-res copies to a server took for-ever...
So here's the deal: I'm making most of my music online for free, with an option of buying hi-res
copies (with EP art) for very very cheap, if you feel like making Me feel like making more music...
Download from the music page.
Also, for a limited time (next 3 weeks) I'm doing a promotional "review-drive" ie. the first twenty-five people
to submit 3 to 4 song reviews (positive or negative, I can take it - knock yourselves out) that aren't short sentences, or one decent EP
review, get a free hi-res EP download, of their choice. Just contact me.
Enjoy,
M@
Took long enough... here.
Paul Mcguinness's speech raised a few eyebrows, but I agree, even if his artists are fabulously wealthy, because at the day, we all know that pirates are lazy.
Not paying for music which is meant to be paid for, or any commodity which is meant to be paid for, socially devalues it, across a wide sector of society and not just for the pirates.
If people can't afford to pay for larger software packages, or just don't want to, they have three choices - pay for a package from a smaller company and support that, find something for free and learn that,
or pirate the bigger software package. Most people are too lazy or stupid to think about a smaller company getting hurt by their lack of sale, or to spend the time learning something new, so they pirate the bigger company.
This not only increases the market share of the larger company, as people never learn the smaller packages, and continue with the larger packages for life - taking them into the businesses they run or work for, and eventually paying for them,
but it also devalues and often destroys smaller software manufacturers, who can't take the hit like the larger companies can.
It makes a laughing stock of anarchist wannabes who think they're liberating the world by pirating from bigger companies [real anarchists write and/or use open source alternatives]. All they're doing is perpetuating the stranglehold the larger companies have on the market. Which benefits noone but selfish individuals.
The same applies to music - nobody hears about, say, Ulrich Schnauss or of the multitudes of transient artists on eMusic, because they're too busy downloading the bigger name artists for 'free'.
If you can't afford a justin timberlake album, you can easily find someone similar to him for cheaper (in the digital age, but not in the fast-dying age of physical media) or for free. The problem with pirates is that they're lazy, stupid consumer crackheads, who can't be bothered searching for stuff that they feel - for whatever reason - that they should be entitled to, for free, immediately. I guess they're more special than me.
These people should be penalised, if only to raise the overall standards of intelligence across the ballpark. But it's not enough to penalise idiots. As a society as a whole, we need to be considering all our actions in a moral light. The mental sloppiness of the average consumer equates to that of an animal - breaking the law whenever they know they won't get caught, rather than considering the bigger picture outcome of their actions.
m@
[UPDATE: Holy crap- on a decent pair of monitors the following album really comes alive- I'd heard that Boards of Canada sounds better on headphones (it does), but this seems to take advantage of a decent coincident stereo pair speaker pattern for a lot of it's stereo effects, which are unnoticable on headphones and cheap speakers. Pity they didn't test it more in car stereos etc before release.]
The opening track of Frou Frou's "details" would be 'Let go', which was also the closing track
for the Zack Braff's directorial debut, the film 'Garden State'. In that environment, it was embued with an emotional
context which added weight to the lyrics - and it is interesting the extent to which this occurs,
for like many other songs on this cd, while not entirely lacking in context, Imogen Heap mixes
up the metaphors in her lyrics so much that it is often quite impossible to figure
precisely what the f*ck she's trying to get at- don't get me wrong - lyrics don't have to explicitly mean something. But typically they point at a particular energy or emotion via metaphors and wording that illustrates the song somehow - and in this case, that illustration is at least partially missing...
Partially trance bassline, partially trip-pop-hop, the opening track definitely outshines the rest of the cd,
which by comparison is kindof naff. Runs the gamut between trashy euro-pop and synth-driven
hardware-pop - but unfortunately grasps no necks on either account, with the exception of a few songs - track 4 in particular.
I wouldn't call it a throttling experience - it's obvious a huge amount of work and love went
into Imogen and Guy's project, however asides from the opening track and a couple of others
(there are 11 songs in total), the synergy isn't very strong-
Or maybe it's just that I don't enjoy pop.
Which is why Lemon Jelly's second album, 'Lost horizons', is sheer joy (understand that I dislike the
term 'sheer joy', but no other phrase describes this album well).
Where Boards of Canada's dark melancholy mixed up with childhood innocence captures folk,
this album is sure to follow -
but while BoC's music tended to focus on the forlorn and wistful parts of nostalgic emotions,
Lemon Jelly's focus is more on the plainly, incomprehensibly happy side of childhood-
it's more oblique, more in your face, less passive or subtle, than BoC's work, and more australian,
if that makes any sense at all. Perhaps the yang to Boc's quieter yin.
There's flow and peaks, but the real joy simply lies in sitting back, putting this album on and drifting far, far away.
The whole album is recommended, in particular the first and third tracks as starting points.
Enjoyed.
Oh, and the Shin's (first) album is a wonderful wonderful spark of folk-pop.
It's not classic Ghibli, but it's not bad. Much balast and vim has been aimed at this, the first film by Miyazaki's son, without consideration that perhaps it should be viewed
for what it is, rather than being compared to other studio Ghibli classics, and Goro's father's work. In itself, it is a good film, though not incredible, and kicks the ass out of every minor kids epic out of Hollywood over the past five years (tragic wastes of time and money such as 'Eragon', 'The Lion the witch etc etc' and 'The Golden Compass').
Goro's style is more sparse and to-the-letter than his father's vision, and lends a breath of fresh air to Ghibli's somewhat repetitive device of lost pure-hearted girl/boy-and-girl-team in fantasy land with childhood nostalgia memories.
Some of the more annoying Ghibli devices are present, such as kooky bad-guy with side-mostachios, and girl-who-resents-the-hero-for-no-reason. Overall it's great, however.
Go see it. Get it out. If you stop for a second comparing it to Spirited Away, you'll find it a worthwhile fantasy epic, though doubtless Earthsea's book-fans will be enraged at such a short re-telling. Enjoyed.
m@
The strangest thing about Steamboy is not that it's amazing, but that so much of the original was missed by european audiences.
I saw the original uncut japanese edition at a film festival when it first came out - I was astounded to hear how much shorter it was-
to explain simply, the english version (hitherto released as the standard on DVD) cuts twenty (yes, that's right) minutes off of the end.
Twenty minutes which actually make it a decent ending, as opposed to a pathetically predictable one for persons so stupid they can't take an original twist on standard three-act structural narrative directions.
But, back to the film. In essense the film blends modern animation - both 3d and 2d - better than any previous film, making possibly the most visually
stunning animation picture ever produced, to date- you never stop to think, oh, that bit's 3D, because it never is obvious.
A skillfully developed storyline means that unlike other anime blockbusters such as Akira, it never feels that the action is forced into
too small a length of time, or that the storyline falls prey to a predictable and long setup, which seems to be the norm for
hollywood cartoon films (bar pixar's work).
The story is a parable of science, the pursuit of power, and why americans shouldn't have access to the world's latest technologies (I don't think Japan's quite over Hiroshima yet).
At the end of the day, don't listen to some fat manga-head who insists that the film isn't up to scratch in terms of their cultural preconceptions of what Japan is 'all about'.
Like any film, this should be appreciated in it's own right, and in that, it is splendid. One of the few watchable manga films in the world.
Best on the largest screen you have.
Now to the release itself. The 'Directors Cut' is, in fact, the original Japanese version, replete with original 20 minutes missing from the "standard edition".
If you watch it in english, be prepared for some of the worst voice-acting in the history of cinema, as americans laughably try to pass themselves off as cockney in typically terrible fashion.
It doesn't work, and makes the film utterly ingratiating to watch. Ignore this. Listen to it in Japanese, you'll be fine. Nothing wrong with the Japanese voiceovers, as is usually the case.
The quality of the sound is great, as it should be, and is one of the best aspects of this film, in my opinion. Image quality leaves a lot to be desired, but should be alright on a standard tv.
If you watch this on a lcd screen or computer monitor however, be prepared for a grainy, weak image quality. Why this should be is beyond me, but clearly the encoders haven't done their job particularly well. None of this matters during the later parts, which're usually fast-moving action sequences,
but it is fairly noticable in the earlier sections.
Buy it. Get a friend to buy it. This film deserves to go down in recent history as one of the great Japanese animes.
Flight of the Conchords is great-
"You've lost sight of the dream!"
"Yeah? Maybe I woke up."
"Alright.. well, I'll see you back at home then."
"'Kay. Hey - could you get some milk?"
"Sure." (walks)
Last night was amazing - went out to the Mormon Temple with some friends, checked out the crazy lights they have each year - and inadvertently saw the second-most amazing fireworks display of my whole life - it was all, WTF and sh*t. Truly incredible. Regardless, you obviously did have to be there, so to understand the immensity of it, go to the following page:
http://music.download.com/ulrichsch...-100571275.html
and download Ulrich Schnauss's 'On My Own' (free hi-quality download) to hear a similar experience in aural form.
Happy new year all.
m@
All bullshit opinions & writing (c) Copyright 2008 Matt Bentley except when quoting others
