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Visiting my blog, eh? Wise move. I think we should all try to understand other people, no matter how stupid their beliefs. |
Title: Moby Dick
Posted: March 10, 2010 (07:01 PM)
Posted: March 10, 2010 (07:01 PM)
I finished reading Herman Melville's Moby Dick today, after about a month of reading, or one and one third library loan periods, and I feel like trying to write something about it with the speech to text software I recently purchased, Mac Speech Dictate. As much for practice as for expression.
Writing anything of length this way is a new and somehow unusual experience, which takes me out of the transparent combination of inner world and unconscious typing I normally associate with writing. I had been worried before I tried this that it would be really difficult or unsatisfying, but as with any new task, it is foolish to expect that you can master it instantly. The effectiveness of the software in understanding my dictation has already far exceeded my expectations. So the challenge really lies in just adapting to this new way of thinking and performing writing. My goal is not to completely replace all typing, but certainly to replace large blocks of typing, like this one, to free up some of the RSI-depleted resources of my hands and arms so they can be better distributed amongst all the tasks I need and want to perform. While I can do a lot of editing by voice (which is already pretty impressive), for finer points, I tap a key here or there or reach for the mouse, because it's easier. For overall, final or macroscopic editing, I still do it by typing/mousing, which is fine. I just want to reduce initial typing workloads.
Of various renowned books I've read over the past few months, including Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar', Hermann Hesse's 'Steppenwolf' and Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment', I found Moby Dick to be the most conspicuously great. Or perhaps just the one I enjoyed most. Or a bit of both.
This is not to say it was an easy read. The vocabulary is endlessly testing, the structure unlike that of any modern novel I would typically read, and the whizzing-over-my-head biblical references come thick and fast. I quickly grew weary of ducking down to the explanatory footnotes in this critical edition (not that they are anywhere near as painful to read as those accompanying a Shakespearean text) and so dispensed with them, choosing to gather broad, intuitive meanings from the context instead of picking over individual words.
The plot and action of the novel concerning the obsessed captain Ahab's hunt for the great white whale, Moby Dick, as frequently seen through the eyes of the newcomer aboard his vessel, Ishmael, makes up probably less than half the novel's length. And that half is not delivered consecutively. After a meandering introduction which gets Ishmael onto the boat, the book becomes a lusty treatise on all aspects of the operation of whaling, whether technical, aesthetic or spiritual. During the treatise, there occurs no progression of the here-and-now plot, but the details and observations are marvellous. Many of the anecdotes are bizarre and surprising, like the one about the whaler who falls overboard into the bloody, open-topped corpse of a whale, almost drowning in its silky interior.
The crush of details almost wearied me as I thought of the amount of research which must have gone into creating them. It reminded me again of my broad feeling that I would rather make stuff up than have to do research. But this isn't entirely true – in retrospect, I'm aware that I've done tons of research to verify tiny details in fiction or games or comics that I've created in the past. I think this feeling has more to do with an initial position. That is, I would not consciously choose to make a fiction about a topic if I had the impression that the research required would be boring or too much work. Yet having started on some topic I have assessed as being 'safe' in this regard, I usually find that my obsessive or perfectionist tendencies will drive me to over-research things I probably know enough about already, anyway, on top of the ones I don't. I can see recent evidence of this behaviour just by glancing at my computer desktop, where the presence of some online chap's PDF thesis on uniform design for young people, which I came across during a research episode, reminds me that I went above and beyond the call of duty while settling upon a few details in the school-set horror game I'm programming.
But back to Moby Dick... the book's portrayal of the damage wrought by hubris and obsession is impressive. And a cool surprise is that the final action sequence extends right up until the second last page. I can tell that I will remember much of the experience of reading this novel, whereas details of the recently read Crime and Punishment are already sketchy in my mind. What I like most about jumping around different periods of books in my reading are the demonstrations of ways to write and to do things which would never have come to me if I only read in one place.
Writing anything of length this way is a new and somehow unusual experience, which takes me out of the transparent combination of inner world and unconscious typing I normally associate with writing. I had been worried before I tried this that it would be really difficult or unsatisfying, but as with any new task, it is foolish to expect that you can master it instantly. The effectiveness of the software in understanding my dictation has already far exceeded my expectations. So the challenge really lies in just adapting to this new way of thinking and performing writing. My goal is not to completely replace all typing, but certainly to replace large blocks of typing, like this one, to free up some of the RSI-depleted resources of my hands and arms so they can be better distributed amongst all the tasks I need and want to perform. While I can do a lot of editing by voice (which is already pretty impressive), for finer points, I tap a key here or there or reach for the mouse, because it's easier. For overall, final or macroscopic editing, I still do it by typing/mousing, which is fine. I just want to reduce initial typing workloads.
Of various renowned books I've read over the past few months, including Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar', Hermann Hesse's 'Steppenwolf' and Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment', I found Moby Dick to be the most conspicuously great. Or perhaps just the one I enjoyed most. Or a bit of both.
This is not to say it was an easy read. The vocabulary is endlessly testing, the structure unlike that of any modern novel I would typically read, and the whizzing-over-my-head biblical references come thick and fast. I quickly grew weary of ducking down to the explanatory footnotes in this critical edition (not that they are anywhere near as painful to read as those accompanying a Shakespearean text) and so dispensed with them, choosing to gather broad, intuitive meanings from the context instead of picking over individual words.
The plot and action of the novel concerning the obsessed captain Ahab's hunt for the great white whale, Moby Dick, as frequently seen through the eyes of the newcomer aboard his vessel, Ishmael, makes up probably less than half the novel's length. And that half is not delivered consecutively. After a meandering introduction which gets Ishmael onto the boat, the book becomes a lusty treatise on all aspects of the operation of whaling, whether technical, aesthetic or spiritual. During the treatise, there occurs no progression of the here-and-now plot, but the details and observations are marvellous. Many of the anecdotes are bizarre and surprising, like the one about the whaler who falls overboard into the bloody, open-topped corpse of a whale, almost drowning in its silky interior.
The crush of details almost wearied me as I thought of the amount of research which must have gone into creating them. It reminded me again of my broad feeling that I would rather make stuff up than have to do research. But this isn't entirely true – in retrospect, I'm aware that I've done tons of research to verify tiny details in fiction or games or comics that I've created in the past. I think this feeling has more to do with an initial position. That is, I would not consciously choose to make a fiction about a topic if I had the impression that the research required would be boring or too much work. Yet having started on some topic I have assessed as being 'safe' in this regard, I usually find that my obsessive or perfectionist tendencies will drive me to over-research things I probably know enough about already, anyway, on top of the ones I don't. I can see recent evidence of this behaviour just by glancing at my computer desktop, where the presence of some online chap's PDF thesis on uniform design for young people, which I came across during a research episode, reminds me that I went above and beyond the call of duty while settling upon a few details in the school-set horror game I'm programming.
But back to Moby Dick... the book's portrayal of the damage wrought by hubris and obsession is impressive. And a cool surprise is that the final action sequence extends right up until the second last page. I can tell that I will remember much of the experience of reading this novel, whereas details of the recently read Crime and Punishment are already sketchy in my mind. What I like most about jumping around different periods of books in my reading are the demonstrations of ways to write and to do things which would never have come to me if I only read in one place.
[reply][view replies (5)]
Title: Listening post: Angel Team (mono)
Posted: February 23, 2010 (07:28 PM)
Posted: February 23, 2010 (07:28 PM)
Today I offer a sneak peak of a 3rd track from my 2nd Aeriae album, which will be out later this year.
The track's called Angel Team. It's mixed in glorious mono... there are gonna be a couple of mono tracks on the CD, as I like the different sound and discipline involved.
For any music sequencer knowledgables, there's no generative or Max-like systems involved in making this, it was 100% moused by hand. There are 80 tracks involved, which gives some idea of the detail levels you can expect to hear, especially in the latter part.
I've noticed mostly nobody replies when I post my music here. I don't know if that's because everyone can't stand it, nobody likes this genre, or the reaction is just 'what the hell?' (I noticed Zippdementia said my AMay track drove him batshit, and to me, that's my poppiest track :)
So just out of curiosity as to who has listened, I'd like you to reply if you do listen, no matter what your reaction:
aeriae.com
On the front page, Angel Team is the first track in the juke. Just hit play.
My feeling about my music is - at the broadest level, it's gotta be emotional and involving, and show my aesthetic and musical beliefs, and sound amazing, but it doesn't have to be transparent at all. Like Autechre, I like for it to be dense enough that some designs that are going on may not come clear for a lot of listens. This may knock out a lot of listeners, but this is my favourite kind of electronic music. A lot of people may never get it. And that's fine too.
The track's called Angel Team. It's mixed in glorious mono... there are gonna be a couple of mono tracks on the CD, as I like the different sound and discipline involved.
For any music sequencer knowledgables, there's no generative or Max-like systems involved in making this, it was 100% moused by hand. There are 80 tracks involved, which gives some idea of the detail levels you can expect to hear, especially in the latter part.
I've noticed mostly nobody replies when I post my music here. I don't know if that's because everyone can't stand it, nobody likes this genre, or the reaction is just 'what the hell?' (I noticed Zippdementia said my AMay track drove him batshit, and to me, that's my poppiest track :)
So just out of curiosity as to who has listened, I'd like you to reply if you do listen, no matter what your reaction:
aeriae.com
On the front page, Angel Team is the first track in the juke. Just hit play.
My feeling about my music is - at the broadest level, it's gotta be emotional and involving, and show my aesthetic and musical beliefs, and sound amazing, but it doesn't have to be transparent at all. Like Autechre, I like for it to be dense enough that some designs that are going on may not come clear for a lot of listens. This may knock out a lot of listeners, but this is my favourite kind of electronic music. A lot of people may never get it. And that's fine too.
[reply][view replies (5)]
Title: The Twin Evil Guardian Servant Birds Who Guard My Trampoline At Dusk
Posted: February 21, 2010 (08:06 PM)
Posted: February 21, 2010 (08:06 PM)
Lo! Two of my backyard nature photos:
I call this photo 'The Twin Evil Guardian Servant Birds Who Guard My Trampoline At Dusk'
but this second photo I just call
a closeup of a Tawny Frogmouth
I call this photo 'The Twin Evil Guardian Servant Birds Who Guard My Trampoline At Dusk'
but this second photo I just call
a closeup of a Tawny Frogmouth
[reply][view replies (1)]
Title: Help me by responding to this OS poll
Posted: February 14, 2010 (05:07 PM)
Posted: February 14, 2010 (05:07 PM)
Hey, you can help me out by responding to this poll about your computer's OS in the 'chit chat' section of the website. Many thanks.
http://www.honestgamers.com/forums/threads/2065/view/0.html
http://www.honestgamers.com/forums/threads/2065/view/0.html
[reply][view replies (0)]
Title: Bandwagon Joinup: (2005-)2009: The Year(s) in Review
Posted: February 03, 2010 (05:15 PM)
Posted: February 03, 2010 (05:15 PM)
2005-2006: Wrote no reviews.
2007: Staggered back with 3 reviews.
2008: 10 reviews!
2009: Hands and arms wrecked, back to 3 reviews
April: Aztec - Apple II
I was extremely pleased with this and suggested in the RoT(day? week?) topic it was RoT worthy. In retrospect this seems charmless and gauche of me, but also true to my bloodyminded willpower and ego when I think I've done good work. I think I'm in a healthier place re: this stuff than I was back at gamefaqs (well, not surprising, I've aged 9 years, I'd hope my resolution of my self-insight has only improved, since I work on it), where I probably displayed blobs of weird passive aggression and false modesty.
May: Resident Evil - GameCube
One of my best ever I think, as I expressed a lot that I had been thinking about for a long time, and I spent more time writing this, revisiting it and carefully moving individual words around than for any other review I've ever written. It is very precise. It won 'Pretentious Bastards', and in truth of course I don't think it is pretentious, but it is not a traditional review.
June: Kukulcan - Apple II
After all the gnashing of teeth, a peaceful retreat to practical reviewing with an adventure game from my youth. I'd tweak this review a little right now but this is the end of the typing for today.
2007: Staggered back with 3 reviews.
2008: 10 reviews!
2009: Hands and arms wrecked, back to 3 reviews
April: Aztec - Apple II
I was extremely pleased with this and suggested in the RoT(day? week?) topic it was RoT worthy. In retrospect this seems charmless and gauche of me, but also true to my bloodyminded willpower and ego when I think I've done good work. I think I'm in a healthier place re: this stuff than I was back at gamefaqs (well, not surprising, I've aged 9 years, I'd hope my resolution of my self-insight has only improved, since I work on it), where I probably displayed blobs of weird passive aggression and false modesty.
May: Resident Evil - GameCube
One of my best ever I think, as I expressed a lot that I had been thinking about for a long time, and I spent more time writing this, revisiting it and carefully moving individual words around than for any other review I've ever written. It is very precise. It won 'Pretentious Bastards', and in truth of course I don't think it is pretentious, but it is not a traditional review.
June: Kukulcan - Apple II
After all the gnashing of teeth, a peaceful retreat to practical reviewing with an adventure game from my youth. I'd tweak this review a little right now but this is the end of the typing for today.
[reply][view replies (5)]
Title: A poll on buying digital music - please reply
Posted: December 20, 2009 (06:01 AM)
Posted: December 20, 2009 (06:01 AM)
I need to renew my album's commercial digital distribution arrangements for the first time in a couple of years. Originally I just went with a bunch of itunes stores.
My anecdotal sense has always been - that amongst people who will buy digital files, they're all on itunes, even if they are on other services as well. I'm just looking for any strongly contrary evidence.
To help me out with a handful more samples, could you please reply to this topic what your online music buying situation is? This could be 'I never buy any music online' to saying which services you use and like, or dislike, if you do. This includes things where you pay for any kind of streaming, or where listening to streaming music results in renumeration to the artists at some point. Thanks.
My anecdotal sense has always been - that amongst people who will buy digital files, they're all on itunes, even if they are on other services as well. I'm just looking for any strongly contrary evidence.
To help me out with a handful more samples, could you please reply to this topic what your online music buying situation is? This could be 'I never buy any music online' to saying which services you use and like, or dislike, if you do. This includes things where you pay for any kind of streaming, or where listening to streaming music results in renumeration to the artists at some point. Thanks.
[reply][view replies (9)]
Title: Photo of aforementioned POSSUM and magpies
Posted: December 16, 2009 (03:33 PM)
Posted: December 16, 2009 (03:33 PM)
Night photo facing up into trees - (EDIT) possum discernible by glowing eyes. When I took this, I thought I was photographing the fruitbat (I was shooting in darkness blindly pointing camera up after turning off torch), but when I looked at the photo and zoomed in, I saw the tail and realised it was a possum.
A zoom of the possum:
Day photo of magpies socialising in back yard:
A zoom of the possum:
Day photo of magpies socialising in back yard:
[reply][view replies (4)]
Title: "Some of my best friends are American." - An Australian
Posted: November 26, 2009 (08:39 PM)
Posted: November 26, 2009 (08:39 PM)
I subtley but consistently complain a lot about America - the country, society, influence and variety of stupidity. Americans I know always seem to put up with this kindly. So today I feel like karmically repaying these kind people by talking about how I eat kangaroos.
We're blessed with lots of splendid and unique flora and fauna here in Australia, due to our continent-ness and position on the globe. And this wildlife is very accessible, even in the city. For instance, I have two possums, a tawny frogmouth and a fruitbat all just living in my backyard tree. I can go see all of them of a night with my torch (WHAT AMERICANS CALL A FLASHLIGHT), except for the frogmouths, who are blinded by light and immediately leave if they see it coming.
I also have a pet magpie called 'hoppy' (due to her damaged foot, she hops around), who will sit on the back steps or windowsill when she's hungry, and even hop into the house if the door's open, as her way of telling me she wants some bread or meat. I have some other magpie visitors, but they're less charming and I don't have names for them. Magpies are big black and white birds famous for divebombing humans and pecking them on the head during mating season (it's never happened to me, I've only been pecked by Australian Myna birds), but who are also blessed with good intelligence, evinced by their ability to recognise particular human faces, or to store / hide food or other objects.
Some of our more famous wildlife is a lot less cool than any of these characters I mentioned. Koalas are fantastically boring, grey narcoleptic furballs who sleep nearly all the time and are close to extinction because of it. A big adult kangaroo might punch and kick you if you absolutely went out of your way to piss it off in the wild, but there are a ton of roos in the outback, and we cull them variously for population control and meat acquiring purposes.
Two thirds of our kangaroo meat goes to Russia. I guess they like it. Most of the rest probably goes to our own supermarkets, where you can buy kangaroo steaks or kebabs. I don't mind the kebabs. They're inexpensive and the meat's alright.
We're blessed with lots of splendid and unique flora and fauna here in Australia, due to our continent-ness and position on the globe. And this wildlife is very accessible, even in the city. For instance, I have two possums, a tawny frogmouth and a fruitbat all just living in my backyard tree. I can go see all of them of a night with my torch (WHAT AMERICANS CALL A FLASHLIGHT), except for the frogmouths, who are blinded by light and immediately leave if they see it coming.
I also have a pet magpie called 'hoppy' (due to her damaged foot, she hops around), who will sit on the back steps or windowsill when she's hungry, and even hop into the house if the door's open, as her way of telling me she wants some bread or meat. I have some other magpie visitors, but they're less charming and I don't have names for them. Magpies are big black and white birds famous for divebombing humans and pecking them on the head during mating season (it's never happened to me, I've only been pecked by Australian Myna birds), but who are also blessed with good intelligence, evinced by their ability to recognise particular human faces, or to store / hide food or other objects.
Some of our more famous wildlife is a lot less cool than any of these characters I mentioned. Koalas are fantastically boring, grey narcoleptic furballs who sleep nearly all the time and are close to extinction because of it. A big adult kangaroo might punch and kick you if you absolutely went out of your way to piss it off in the wild, but there are a ton of roos in the outback, and we cull them variously for population control and meat acquiring purposes.
Two thirds of our kangaroo meat goes to Russia. I guess they like it. Most of the rest probably goes to our own supermarkets, where you can buy kangaroo steaks or kebabs. I don't mind the kebabs. They're inexpensive and the meat's alright.
[reply][view replies (3)]
Title: 2 new videogamey Aeriae tracks out today as 4-4-2's e-single of the month
Posted: November 21, 2009 (01:30 AM)
Posted: November 21, 2009 (01:30 AM)
To keep the fires burning between records, I'm putting out a couple of tracks that don't belong on either the last record or the upcoming one, and which are specifically videogamey. (This means they might be of greater interest to people who read this blog.) They're freely downloadable through the 4-4-2 netlabel:
Aeriae - 4-4-2 Music e-Single of the Month Club - Nov 2009
The A-side 'Passage 9' I composed specifically for a videogame soundtrack. It was intended for the remake of Macintosh 'Netrikulator', but wasn't chosen... then the game never came out anyway. So this track is available for another such opportunity in future.
The B-side 'Path 9' is in the tradition of dark string music, and things like the score from the original Resident Evil.
I hope you like one, or both.
Aeriae - 4-4-2 Music e-Single of the Month Club - Nov 2009
The A-side 'Passage 9' I composed specifically for a videogame soundtrack. It was intended for the remake of Macintosh 'Netrikulator', but wasn't chosen... then the game never came out anyway. So this track is available for another such opportunity in future.
The B-side 'Path 9' is in the tradition of dark string music, and things like the score from the original Resident Evil.
I hope you like one, or both.
[reply][view replies (0)]
Title: Gonna be in Bucharest on the 23rd??
Posted: October 18, 2009 (05:27 PM)
Posted: October 18, 2009 (05:27 PM)
Me neither! But I was informed yesterday my film was accepted to compete in Kinofest in Romania, which is another thing I submitted to back near the start of this year. So it's showing at Lightcinema in Bucharest this Friday. Lightcinema is in Liberty Centre, described by wikipedia as 'the fifth shopping mall in Bucharest, Romania. It features a 3D Cinema and an indoor ice rink.' Liberty Centre's website is currently promoting the Liberty Of Ice Cream Festival and 6D Cinema
Song of the Day: Josie and the Pussy Cats
Song of the Day: Josie and the Pussy Cats
[reply][view replies (0)]
Title: Vintage ToTD site chop
Posted: October 06, 2009 (07:16 PM)
Posted: October 06, 2009 (07:16 PM)
Myself, Zigfried and NickEvil used to run Taglines of the Day topics at gamefaqs back in the early noughties (2001-2002?). When this saga was well and truly over, I put a downloadable archive up on geocities containing all the topics:
http://www.geocities.com/bloomer_au/totd/
Geocities closes on Oct 28. I have the site backed up and will re-up it somewhere at some point, but it's low priority for me now with my health. So if you wanna have a look at it or download files, go for it now. I hope I didn't write anything too embarrassing in there, it was maybe 8 years ago.
http://www.geocities.com/bloomer_au/totd/
Geocities closes on Oct 28. I have the site backed up and will re-up it somewhere at some point, but it's low priority for me now with my health. So if you wanna have a look at it or download files, go for it now. I hope I didn't write anything too embarrassing in there, it was maybe 8 years ago.
[reply][view replies (7)]
Title: Gonna be in Newcastle tomorrow??
Posted: October 01, 2009 (05:36 AM)
Posted: October 01, 2009 (05:36 AM)
Probably not! But if you are - and I mean in NSW Australia, you can meet me. I'll be at the screenings at the Electrofringe Festival where they're playing my video for AMay on Friday evening, between 6 and 7 pm. This is pretty exciting as it's an international program:
http://www.electrofringe.net
I will also have on me one of Moldover's 'light theremins' -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8UzSVFUIc0
as I'm showing it to the guy doing the art for my next album, whom I'm meeting at the festival. Apparently there's also some kind of famous local milkshake or custard that I'm going to drink/eat in the afternoon.
If you haven't seen the video yet at some point, I'm going to link whore it again now.
Hi-res version for people with trouble free internet:
http://portablefilmfestival.com/video.php?video=405
Youtube version for anyone (else)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PAkjzZQvOY&feature=channel_page
http://www.electrofringe.net
I will also have on me one of Moldover's 'light theremins' -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8UzSVFUIc0
as I'm showing it to the guy doing the art for my next album, whom I'm meeting at the festival. Apparently there's also some kind of famous local milkshake or custard that I'm going to drink/eat in the afternoon.
If you haven't seen the video yet at some point, I'm going to link whore it again now.
Hi-res version for people with trouble free internet:
http://portablefilmfestival.com/video.php?video=405
Youtube version for anyone (else)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PAkjzZQvOY&feature=channel_page
[reply][view replies (2)]
Title: Sydney sky turns red
Posted: September 22, 2009 (09:42 PM)
Posted: September 22, 2009 (09:42 PM)
I woke at 6:30 am today to a faint but weird smell in my bedroom. A sort of earthy smell. I needed to go to the bathroom, which was presumably what woke me up, so I clambered out of bed and went into the back room. There, where the venetian blind was raised on the widest window on the house, I was presented with a vista of a blood orange-coloured outside world. All detail in the sky was gone, there was no depth or texture, and all the trees, houses and fences were glowing in warm colours. The air smelled weird, even in the house.
This is not my own photo, but one I found taken by someone else which most accurately reflects what I saw at 6:30.
My own guess about what was going on was that a chemical factory had exploded somewhere in the city. Though it looked armageddony, I note that I did not consider armageddon of any kind as an explanation. When I turned on the radio, I learned Sydney was experiencing a freak dust storm and gale warnings. The colour came from the red topsoil of drought-stricken areas inland that was saturating us.
By midday it had mostly cleared, but it was one of the most extraordinary things I've seen. There are already some cool photo galleries of the event popping up online if anyone's interested in more vision.
This is not my own photo, but one I found taken by someone else which most accurately reflects what I saw at 6:30.
My own guess about what was going on was that a chemical factory had exploded somewhere in the city. Though it looked armageddony, I note that I did not consider armageddon of any kind as an explanation. When I turned on the radio, I learned Sydney was experiencing a freak dust storm and gale warnings. The colour came from the red topsoil of drought-stricken areas inland that was saturating us.
By midday it had mostly cleared, but it was one of the most extraordinary things I've seen. There are already some cool photo galleries of the event popping up online if anyone's interested in more vision.
[reply][view replies (5)]
Title: Stopped
Posted: July 29, 2009 (07:07 PM)
Posted: July 29, 2009 (07:07 PM)
My game was cracking along but my hand+arm RSI came back, so I've stopped everything for now. i will only type about 2 paras a day tops for awhile if that. Otherwise i'd be commenting on many interesting reviews and things I'm seeing here.
[reply][view replies (1)]
Title: Wanna help judge music an online music comp like I did? Read on (promptly)
Posted: July 25, 2009 (07:45 PM)
Posted: July 25, 2009 (07:45 PM)
Earlier in my blog somewhere is my entry about helping judge the JPF (Just Plain Folks) music awards. You can sign on to do this as a music fan - IE not in the industry, or even in JPF. The awards are in very late stage now and they are looking for more judges. If the idea appeals (or you don't know what I'm talking about) please re-read my earlier blog entry on my experience so you get an idea of what's involved. You will probably be able to choose some or all of the genres you want to vote on. I don't know when the cut off is, so if you're interested, you should check it out soon.
Starting at this late stage, you may have less music to vet than I did, but I couldn't guarantee it. All I would say is - don't enter into this lightly. It's a very big task with a ton of instructions to follow, that you need to read and absorb first, then a looooooooot of music to listen to and sort in an online juke. It's a big time commitment and I found making decisions quite challenging. But if you're up for it, you should find it rewarding.
Pasted below is the email I received the other day with initial links and info:
----------
Hi JPF Members,
We are now in the final stretch of judging to choose the winners for the 2009 Just Plain Folks Music Awards. Last time around we had over 8000 judges involved and we'd love to pass that number with your help this year. We use 3 distinct groups of judges: Music Industry Professionals, Musician and Songwriter Peers and Music Fans who are impartial and not connected to a nominee in the categories they judge.
This is OUR collective awards and they are the largest in the history of the world this year. Help us by choosing your favorite music. Our only criteria for judging is: Does the music move you? If you'd like to be part of the judging process, we'd really appreciate your participation!
Here’s the link to register:
http://wilshiremedia.com/jpf/signup.aspx
Want to come to the awards show?
August 29th, 2009, Wildhorse Saloon, Nashville, TN, 5PM-11PM
Nominees scheduled to perform include: Gretchen Peters, Jeff Oster & Michael Manring, Sekou (tha Misfit), Kou Chou Ching, Rebecca Zapen, Lafayette’s Bayou Boys, Russell Smith & The Amazing Rhythm Aces, Eric Schwartz, Gravity 180, Jasmine Cain, Stephen Bennett, Bob Malone and 18 more to be announced soon! We also have a Pre-Awards Showcase on Friday, August 28th at BB Kings in Nashville featuring even more great nominees live!
Want to join us in Nashville? Here’s a link to all the info you need:
http://www.jpfolks.com/MusicAwards/2009/Nominees/reservations.html
Did you miss the nominations? Find both Album and Song nominees here:
http://www.jpfolks.com/default.php?page=awards
Thanks also to our sponsors: TAXI, Ourstage, CD Baby and Disc Makers!
Thanks in advance for being a part of OUR awards and for helping prove "We're All In This Together!"
Brian
Brian Austin Whitney
Founder
Just Plain Folks Music Organization
www.jpfolks.com
Starting at this late stage, you may have less music to vet than I did, but I couldn't guarantee it. All I would say is - don't enter into this lightly. It's a very big task with a ton of instructions to follow, that you need to read and absorb first, then a looooooooot of music to listen to and sort in an online juke. It's a big time commitment and I found making decisions quite challenging. But if you're up for it, you should find it rewarding.
Pasted below is the email I received the other day with initial links and info:
----------
Hi JPF Members,
We are now in the final stretch of judging to choose the winners for the 2009 Just Plain Folks Music Awards. Last time around we had over 8000 judges involved and we'd love to pass that number with your help this year. We use 3 distinct groups of judges: Music Industry Professionals, Musician and Songwriter Peers and Music Fans who are impartial and not connected to a nominee in the categories they judge.
This is OUR collective awards and they are the largest in the history of the world this year. Help us by choosing your favorite music. Our only criteria for judging is: Does the music move you? If you'd like to be part of the judging process, we'd really appreciate your participation!
Here’s the link to register:
http://wilshiremedia.com/jpf/signup.aspx
Want to come to the awards show?
August 29th, 2009, Wildhorse Saloon, Nashville, TN, 5PM-11PM
Nominees scheduled to perform include: Gretchen Peters, Jeff Oster & Michael Manring, Sekou (tha Misfit), Kou Chou Ching, Rebecca Zapen, Lafayette’s Bayou Boys, Russell Smith & The Amazing Rhythm Aces, Eric Schwartz, Gravity 180, Jasmine Cain, Stephen Bennett, Bob Malone and 18 more to be announced soon! We also have a Pre-Awards Showcase on Friday, August 28th at BB Kings in Nashville featuring even more great nominees live!
Want to join us in Nashville? Here’s a link to all the info you need:
http://www.jpfolks.com/MusicAwards/2009/Nominees/reservations.html
Did you miss the nominations? Find both Album and Song nominees here:
http://www.jpfolks.com/default.php?page=awards
Thanks also to our sponsors: TAXI, Ourstage, CD Baby and Disc Makers!
Thanks in advance for being a part of OUR awards and for helping prove "We're All In This Together!"
Brian
Brian Austin Whitney
Founder
Just Plain Folks Music Organization
www.jpfolks.com
[reply][view replies (1)]
Title: Adventure game development progress (contains detail that may be too much for the passerby)
Posted: July 21, 2009 (10:17 PM)
Posted: July 21, 2009 (10:17 PM)
In the way that cars immediately fill any new road you build, any resources you add to a computer tend to be immediately drained by any new game. Still, the resources were drained a lot faster in the old days, and sometimes there was no roadwork for years. The Commodore 64 came with 64kb of RAM, and that's what it shipped with for about a decade. The Apple IIe had 64kb as well, later 128kb, and had a production run of eleven years, which I think is the world record for any PC.
If I had even the 64kb available for programming my Apple II adventure (let alone a mouth-watering 128kb), I'd be totally sorted. But if you use BASIC at all, as I am, the BASIC code can't access the second bank of 64kb. Then, after the OS and BASIC interpreter are in memory, what you've really got is about 35kb tops. Even if I run this thing on an emulated IIGS with several meg of RAM, I'm still stuck with 35kb of working space. Even when the game data and code take up almost two 140k floppy disks, only 35kb can be in memory at any one time.
If you're wondering, 'Why are you using BASIC?', it's because this is an EAMON, so I'm using the EAMON engine as a base, and it's in BASIC, so this is how its gotta be.
I realised a few days ago that the game was in jeopardy of running out of working memory before being completed. Compared to most EAMONs, it has a massive item inventory, and I've also developed some nice synonym and disambiguation code for the parser that I think modern gamers would not tolerate the game without. The synonyms and item/enemy data loaded on their own take up about 60% as much memory as the entire game code.
EAMON's main trick to be able to do what it does in the first place is to keep all static text content in random access text files on the disk. You can pluck one paragraph at a time out of these, print it and then forget about it. So if I have scores of room descriptions taking up 6kb, I can 'get' the whole lot at the price of only 1kb of working memory - the size of the file read buffer - and at the speed cost of a brief read from the drive each time the player enters a room.
To make my game have a chance of fitting in memory, I've palmed off nearly every single piece of text in the game, no matter how small, to such disk files. Even 'You see nothing special' is no longer a string stored in memory, it's part of a random access file on the floppy disk, and I have to keep an index of the 500+ paragraphs and messages needed by the game. The disk drive light will be on about 90% of the time while playing.
Another thing I did when I saw the memory danger coming was to prioritise game features. A bunch of verbs and their consequences went onto a luxury list that may never get implemented. I have to make sure the core stuff fits in first.
Nearly ever gesture you make to save memory is at the cost of execution speed. After programming and testing the game in an unlimited speed IIGS emulator, my first test of how it played back at real Apple II speed, 1 Mhz, freaked me out. The datacrunching pauses seemed huge. So I compared my game's execution speed to that of Infocom's Wishbringer as it would have run on a 1 Mhz Apple II. I was relieved to discover that my game is only marginally slower than Wishbringer, so I feel cool about that now. Besides, the pauses seem to add atmosphere, and make the action easier to follow as it scrolls by.
When the game is online, it may be able to run at 2Mhz, but any faster than that currently causes a sound bug in 'Apple II GO', though all other emulation would be fine.
So there's still the 'out of memory danger' ahead, but I feel moderately confident I can get this to work. Primary completion of the game code is still probably at least a week away. Then comes full playtesting, editing, debugging, and the biggest task of all, balancing all the weapon and monster stats. Combat is fully coded already, but everyone and everything has the same stats.
If I had even the 64kb available for programming my Apple II adventure (let alone a mouth-watering 128kb), I'd be totally sorted. But if you use BASIC at all, as I am, the BASIC code can't access the second bank of 64kb. Then, after the OS and BASIC interpreter are in memory, what you've really got is about 35kb tops. Even if I run this thing on an emulated IIGS with several meg of RAM, I'm still stuck with 35kb of working space. Even when the game data and code take up almost two 140k floppy disks, only 35kb can be in memory at any one time.
If you're wondering, 'Why are you using BASIC?', it's because this is an EAMON, so I'm using the EAMON engine as a base, and it's in BASIC, so this is how its gotta be.
I realised a few days ago that the game was in jeopardy of running out of working memory before being completed. Compared to most EAMONs, it has a massive item inventory, and I've also developed some nice synonym and disambiguation code for the parser that I think modern gamers would not tolerate the game without. The synonyms and item/enemy data loaded on their own take up about 60% as much memory as the entire game code.
EAMON's main trick to be able to do what it does in the first place is to keep all static text content in random access text files on the disk. You can pluck one paragraph at a time out of these, print it and then forget about it. So if I have scores of room descriptions taking up 6kb, I can 'get' the whole lot at the price of only 1kb of working memory - the size of the file read buffer - and at the speed cost of a brief read from the drive each time the player enters a room.
To make my game have a chance of fitting in memory, I've palmed off nearly every single piece of text in the game, no matter how small, to such disk files. Even 'You see nothing special' is no longer a string stored in memory, it's part of a random access file on the floppy disk, and I have to keep an index of the 500+ paragraphs and messages needed by the game. The disk drive light will be on about 90% of the time while playing.
Another thing I did when I saw the memory danger coming was to prioritise game features. A bunch of verbs and their consequences went onto a luxury list that may never get implemented. I have to make sure the core stuff fits in first.
Nearly ever gesture you make to save memory is at the cost of execution speed. After programming and testing the game in an unlimited speed IIGS emulator, my first test of how it played back at real Apple II speed, 1 Mhz, freaked me out. The datacrunching pauses seemed huge. So I compared my game's execution speed to that of Infocom's Wishbringer as it would have run on a 1 Mhz Apple II. I was relieved to discover that my game is only marginally slower than Wishbringer, so I feel cool about that now. Besides, the pauses seem to add atmosphere, and make the action easier to follow as it scrolls by.
When the game is online, it may be able to run at 2Mhz, but any faster than that currently causes a sound bug in 'Apple II GO', though all other emulation would be fine.
So there's still the 'out of memory danger' ahead, but I feel moderately confident I can get this to work. Primary completion of the game code is still probably at least a week away. Then comes full playtesting, editing, debugging, and the biggest task of all, balancing all the weapon and monster stats. Combat is fully coded already, but everyone and everything has the same stats.
[reply][view replies (8)]
Title: Wackier photos of oneself
Posted: July 18, 2009 (02:14 AM)
Posted: July 18, 2009 (02:14 AM)
Looks like I'm performing surgery on electronic devices in hell, or something. But this is actually me playing my most recent show. A red tinted Apple II memory dump is being projected on the screen behind/over me.
[reply][view replies (2)]
Title: Datacrunching
Posted: July 12, 2009 (07:16 AM)
Posted: July 12, 2009 (07:16 AM)
I spent a lot of time writing and entering data for my game over the past few weeks. I finished the bulk of that phase tonight and will be able to progress to the programming once my brain uncramps.
A lot of it was fun, inspiring and challenging to write. The text has to work logically and emotionally, and pay important game points, while fitting into an interface that has far less room in it and is far less forgiving than that of a word processor. When you do assemble the right combination of words that you think will do a particular job under these punitive conditions, it's rewarding.
What's less rewarding is supplying data for all the less glamourous props - EG THE BANANA. I am content for the game to say 'You see nothing special' if you examine the banana. The point is, I do have to supply such information for each of the 160ish items in the game, whether they are cool things or whether they are the banana.
The game will understand about 130 nouns and 100 synonyms for those nouns. As for verbs, that's more up in the air, but my guess is it will know about 40.
A lot of it was fun, inspiring and challenging to write. The text has to work logically and emotionally, and pay important game points, while fitting into an interface that has far less room in it and is far less forgiving than that of a word processor. When you do assemble the right combination of words that you think will do a particular job under these punitive conditions, it's rewarding.
What's less rewarding is supplying data for all the less glamourous props - EG THE BANANA. I am content for the game to say 'You see nothing special' if you examine the banana. The point is, I do have to supply such information for each of the 160ish items in the game, whether they are cool things or whether they are the banana.
The game will understand about 130 nouns and 100 synonyms for those nouns. As for verbs, that's more up in the air, but my guess is it will know about 40.
[reply][view replies (4)]
Title: Terminal Values
Posted: July 08, 2009 (07:34 AM)
Posted: July 08, 2009 (07:34 AM)
I came to the moment in preparing my game tonight where I had to start specifying the details of the uniform worn by the students in the fictitious school. I already have plenty of imagination and experience to draw on, but I still typed 'designing a school uniform' into google. In the fifth result slot was someone's thesis from Virginia Polytechnic, entitled
SCHOOL UNIFORM DESIGN PREFERENCES OF UNIFORM WEARERS AND TERMINAL VALUES ATTRIBUTED TO THEM
To me, coming across stuff like this infrequently is the real weird joy of the internet.
SCHOOL UNIFORM DESIGN PREFERENCES OF UNIFORM WEARERS AND TERMINAL VALUES ATTRIBUTED TO THEM
To me, coming across stuff like this infrequently is the real weird joy of the internet.
[reply][view replies (0)]
Title: Aeriae announcements - 2nd album 'Victris', and a videogame, 'Leadlight'
Posted: July 06, 2009 (05:03 AM)
Posted: July 06, 2009 (05:03 AM)
The second Aeriae album is significantly along in development. It will be called Victris I and hope to release it before the end of 2009 through my own label Call-151 Records. The label will have a more solid identity this time around, though the logo was visible back on the Hold R1 CD. The logo has also featured in Aeriae print ads and material over time. Coming onboard for Victris's graphic design is Alex Lee of What is the Apple IIGS? fame.
All I will say about the new album content is that I feel that the sound is both more detailed and more overtly melodic than Hold R1's. This reflects the expansion of my production abilities and of my compositional ideas respectively. The latter were probably more in thrall to the impulses of the IDM project on the first record.
Another project I am working on, and which I hope to unveil around the same time as the album, is an 8-bit horror game for the Apple II computer called Leadlight. The game brings some modern Silent Hill and Resident Evil like flourishes to the old text adventure game model, and is programmed using the Eamon game engine. The game is set in a private girls' school (you play a fifteen year old girl) and I see it as my eight bit writer's take on something like Dario Argento's film 'Suspiria'. The game will run in a java Apple II emulator on the Aeriae website, so to play, all anyone will have to do is visit an URL. There will be no fiddling with disk images or ROMs or emulator software, etc.
So why make a game by such a weird and ostensibly difficult manner in this day and age? The Apple II has always been a major creative inspiration for me, and I love programming it. On Hold R1, I used Fantavision on the Apple II to animate the AMay videoclip. My label Call-151 is named for the Apple II monitor command, and I keep getting sound and imagery ideas - and sound samples - from the computer for the Aeriae project. I had wondered whether I would ever find time or motivation to make this horror game, and somehow it just seemed to be a cool idea to put the game out alongside the next Aeriae record. I hope people who know adventure games will dig it, and people who've never seen them may be intrigued. Mind you, I'm still writing and programming the game, and it's not impossible it will run into some impassable technical hurdle, but fingers crossed.
Song of the Day: Goz Quarter (Autechre)
All I will say about the new album content is that I feel that the sound is both more detailed and more overtly melodic than Hold R1's. This reflects the expansion of my production abilities and of my compositional ideas respectively. The latter were probably more in thrall to the impulses of the IDM project on the first record.
Another project I am working on, and which I hope to unveil around the same time as the album, is an 8-bit horror game for the Apple II computer called Leadlight. The game brings some modern Silent Hill and Resident Evil like flourishes to the old text adventure game model, and is programmed using the Eamon game engine. The game is set in a private girls' school (you play a fifteen year old girl) and I see it as my eight bit writer's take on something like Dario Argento's film 'Suspiria'. The game will run in a java Apple II emulator on the Aeriae website, so to play, all anyone will have to do is visit an URL. There will be no fiddling with disk images or ROMs or emulator software, etc.
So why make a game by such a weird and ostensibly difficult manner in this day and age? The Apple II has always been a major creative inspiration for me, and I love programming it. On Hold R1, I used Fantavision on the Apple II to animate the AMay videoclip. My label Call-151 is named for the Apple II monitor command, and I keep getting sound and imagery ideas - and sound samples - from the computer for the Aeriae project. I had wondered whether I would ever find time or motivation to make this horror game, and somehow it just seemed to be a cool idea to put the game out alongside the next Aeriae record. I hope people who know adventure games will dig it, and people who've never seen them may be intrigued. Mind you, I'm still writing and programming the game, and it's not impossible it will run into some impassable technical hurdle, but fingers crossed.
Song of the Day: Goz Quarter (Autechre)
[reply][view replies (0)]
| External Links... |
| Aeriae - my music |
| Aeriae - on MySpace |
| Ocular Trauma, my comic |
| My (im)personal webpage |
| My visual art portfolio |
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Corey HaimPosted: March 15, 2010 (02:02 AM)
User: aschultz |
public static string review(string game, int score){STATEMENTS}Posted: March 12, 2010 (03:10 PM)
User: LowerStreetBlues |
Lovelife updates!Posted: March 12, 2010 (11:42 AM)
User: radicaldreamer |
Where's EmP?Posted: March 11, 2010 (01:04 PM)
User: EmP |
A video that simply must be seen, a writing updatePosted: March 08, 2010 (11:58 PM)
User: honestgamer |
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Recent Reviews... |
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Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem [GameCube] Kukulcan [Apple II] Resident Evil [GameCube] Aztec [Apple II] Silent Hill 4: The Room [PlayStation 2] |
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Fortress of the Witch King [Apple II] |
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