one of my favorites. there's some generic audiomulching on the beginning, but once you get 20 or 25 seconds into the song you get into the real meat of it.
http://liz.vox.com/library/audio/6a00b8ea07a9351bc000c2252020388e1d.html
the album cover of the compilation it's from is disgusting, but you'll brave that if you love bacon enough.
so joel zumaya has this horrible pain that stops him from being able to play baseball for a few games. the athletic trainers determine the symptoms are more in line with guitar players than baseball pitchers. the culprit turns out not that the tigers pitcher has been playing too much actual guitar, but mr. zumaya's love of the game guitar hero. story here by way of [H].
i thought it was amusing.
i read star wars books. i started with things like i, jedi, and the timothy zahn books. a while ago i started reading a basic chronology starting just before episode 1. so far in this chronology i've read:
cloak of deception
darth maul: shadow hunter
episode 1: the phantom menace
rogue planet
the aproaching storm
episode 2: attack of the clones
i thought i'd ask anyone who's read through this time period what they'd suggest reading next. i was thinking about shatterpoint. anything else anyone would recommend before reading episode 3?
i went on a kmfdm listening spree today. i'm too lazy to change all the links for reposting here, so here's a link to my last.fm journal on the subject.
my sister sent me a link to this battle of the bands movie that i thought i'd share here. it might not be safe for work if you work where people would be offended by the cover of nothing's shocking by jane's addiction or if you wouldn't like to have your coworkers see you watching something that strongly implies various sexual activities without actually showing them.
this evening i had my level seven belt belt test, which is the first of four brown belts in modern arnis. the short version is that i rocked out. i knew the material forwards and backwards. my instructors also had me go through some stuff beyond my level, and i did pretty well with most of it.
i feel alright.
just a shout out to sielwolf for pointing me towards boxcutter. oneiric is available on emusic, apparently. this stuff is fantastic. it's like the techniques of venetian snares aplied to the mood of boards of canada. it's very purposeful in its composition, very much a cohesive point of view while managing not to get stuck constantly looking the same direction. i almost feel bad for using my free trial downloads to get it, feeling i should pay for good stuff and use the free trials to get stuff i'm not so sure about.
in other news, i went by bleep and got the new squarepusher downloads. he's mellowing in his old age, but i like it. it makes me think of a modern squarepusher (obviously) take on the melodious aspects of i care because you do.... it's still tom jenkinson, but there seems to be more song happening between the noises. "welcome to europe" is actually even catchy. but i think it still keeps the "i" in idm.
apparently james earl jones has played a few roles other than darth vader. the dialogue from those other films has finally been put to good use.
i just love the way the amen sounds. it's like a comfort food for my ears that i just can't get enough of. i prefer that people do something interesting with it, but i'll listen to uses that are less inspired and still enjoy it. for me it's become an instrument.
on a related note, the recent planet mu sampler sacred symbols of mu is just full of great stuff. there's a lot of variety. although the amen makes it's share of appearances, there are plenty of other good things this buffet has going for it. i like it so much i'm almost annoyed. i'd like to hear a lot more of most of the artists, but shouldn't just go buy 20 CDs. if someone had just told me there was someone out there recording under the name shitmat i never would have paid attention to it. but because it was on a sampler i listened to it, and i found i actually enjoy it. there are too many good tracks on this release for anyone who likes anything like IDM (either hyper or downtempo), breakcore, dnb, acid, or just the sound of synths and sampling not to recommend it. how can i not recommend something that starts off with a track called "the unbearable phatness of being?" i should also mention that i dig the boxcutter track because sielwolf told me i'd like boxcutter and he was spot on.
i'm probably late to discover the fun things someone did to paris hilton's CD and then planted 500 copies of the new version in UK record stores.
just in case there is anyone who didn't see this before, here (NSFW) is the improved version of the CD art, and here is a video showing the CDs being placed in stores. banksy's website has more of his work. i like his new versions of paintings from flea markets.
this sort of activity reminds me of the cacophany society's cement cuddlers.
as i've played katamari damacy the katamari size has increased significantly. the diameters required to pass levels have increased past six meters to twelve meters. this ads a new point of reference for a song i've enjoyed for a long time, yü-gung by einstürzende neubauten.
first the obvious:
ich bin sechs Meter gross, und alles ist wichtig
ich bin neun Meter gross, und alles ist mehr als wichtig
ich bin zwölf Meter gross, und alles ist unverstehbar!
and in english:
i am six meters tall, and everything is important
i am nine meters tall, and everything is more than important
i am twelve meters tall, and everything is beyond comprehension!
and for something not precisely in the lyrics, but printed on the cover of my yü-gung 12" single:
im Vertruaen auf die eigene Kraft kann Yü-Gung Berge versetzen
english:
through faith in its own power yü-gung can move mountains
i haven't gotten far enough in the game to roll a mountain up into my katamari, but i have faith in the power of my own rolling.
und fütter mein Ego, Ego, Ego, Ego.
katamari damacy = awesome
all you do is roll the katamari around and make it bigger as it picks up more stuff. the level design is great because it works on many levels. the world gets smaller as your katamari grows, so what towers over you at the beginning can be reduced little more than a speed bump as you roll it up. like all great games, it is simple to learn, but difficult to master. i even like the way they took a flat graphics aesthetic and applied it to the whole world. i imagine it was a trade off for the physics of katamari rolling and the fact that world objects become part of the katamari. but they didn't just admit defeat at being unable to make everything perfectly modeled. the graphics aren't fancy, but the design is good.
i should be getting psychonauts from gamefly tomorrow. i'm looking forward to giving that one a whirl.
in other news, it looks as though my cell phone has finally given up the ghost. time for a new one.
they gave me a link to invite people. actually it was always there, i just hadn't dug deeply enough to find it. anyway, joining gamefly from this link counts towards my free ds lite.
this is a shameless pitch to get some people here to do something that gets me something for free.
i recently signed up with gamefly.com for video game rentals. so far i'm pretty happy, although it hasn't quite been two weeks yet. i'm in ohio and it usually only takes 2 biz days for me to get the games from cali. they also have something set up with the post office so that they are notified when you send a game back so that games can cross in the mail rather than waiting to get a game back from you to send another out.
anyway, if anyone who reads this is thinking of joining up, please consider letting me invite you to join. if i get 5 people to join as paying subscribers, they send me a ds lite for free. i don't want to mail out invitations indescriminantly. if you're interested, drop me a line at my slashdot name at gmail. for whatever it's worth, they claim they won't share your email or send you spam if i refer you.
time warner cable had some crappy prices for their service so we switched to wow internet and cable several months ago. both services use the same scientific atlanta dvr boxes. the software wow uses is vastly inferior in almost every area. it seems time warner is finally willing to offer reasonable pricing so we're thinking of switching back. the price would be about the same, it would only be to get a somewhat functional dvr.
so i decided to check prices on a tivo just for comparison. looks like the TiVo TCD649080 Series2 80 Hour Dual Tuner Digital Video Recorder (caps from cut & paste) is about $215 right now with a $150 rebate. wait. i just checked tivo's site and it looks like it's only $30 from tivo.
my questions to you all is this: is tivo better than the other offerings out there? is this model worth having? does anybody want to add anything else to the subject?
i sense some of you are going to suggest building a myth tv box. please consider that both cost and features are important. it looks like most decent tuner cards will cost more than the tivo box (at least with current promotions), but that may or may not be outweighed by the monthly fee.
Intel CPUs are not defective, they just act that way. -- Henry Spencer
