New Years Links
Rock, Paper, Saddam – Cool mouse / voip handset combo – DIY Pocket AMP – Reaper multitrack recorder – human/animal hybrids – Stalin's half ape supertroops – MK Vs. SF2 – Ricky Gervais podcasts – PSNI Tang Landrover model – Man sues the Catholic church to prove Jesus existed – Round the world Travel Guide – Gasbook Blog – Lennon disses Beatles
NORAD Tracks Santa 2005
Through the internet you can track Santa Claus live using the NORAD missile and aircraft detection network… this link explains the technical issues involved… apparently “Rudolph's nose gives off an infrared signature similar to a missile launch”… 🙂 Happy Christmas!
Wireless Winter Wear
Today was zero degrees, freezing… I need some new winter clothes… and even though it makes me think of those hats with the beer dispensers built in, I still wouldn't mind having this bluetooth enabled, mobile phone and ipod compatible coat (even though I don't have an iPod[tm]). At 599 us dollars it's pricey enough though… Burton are also responsible for the Headphone Beanie (a bit more affordable) which is a neat idea… since headphones can interfere with hats… and earbuds can block all external sounds, which make's been a pedestrian dangerous… and then there's the earwax…
Warrior Robots (Meet Your End)
I made this messing about with freeware audio apps Oxe FM Synth, Audiomulch (to sequence some .wav samples from oldschool video game Gorf) and Audacity to record it all… posted it up on EM411.com just for fun… the response has been friendly and indeed spot on with their criticism “where's the rest of it?” true indeed 😀 … anyhow's it's cool to be able to publish music online so easily… I much prefer EM411 to the likes of soundclick or myspace…
Warrior Robots (Meet Your End) by kierannolan
The robots image (on the 411 link) is an old piece of airbrush art used on the Generation One Transformers packages in the 80's… I remember it blowing my mind when I was a kid… a piece of sheer class from the pre photoshop age… it must have taken the artist a long while to create… really meticulously done…
A Dictionary of Video Game Theory
Does exactly what it says on the tin: link
It contains a reference to triangularity as featured in the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors… that would have been handy for the Bionic Roshambo project…
33 1/3 ENTRODUCING… by Eliot WIlder
There's just something about a well researched music interview/documentary that makes it compulsive for me, even its a band who's work I don't have a huge knowledge off (like the VH1 documentary on Megadeth with its brilliant voice overs at moments describing the bands drug binges). Anyhows this book by Eliot Wilder is a series of conversations with Josh Davis aka DJ Shadow, starting from his formative musical experience and onwards to the completion of the album Entroducing and where he has gone from there. It's cool to see someone who is a child of the sixties enthuse over Shadow's ninties sample driven opus, placing it on the same level as the Beatles' White Album. Wilder decribes sample culture as an integral part of 20th century music through the “cannibalism” and reinterpretation of riffs and melodies. He points out how most music reviews compare a song to other songs, identifying the various componants making up this new body of work. Anyhows it's a very enjoyable read indeed…
Holographic Gorillaz
Some links about the recent live performance by virtual supergroup Gorillaz at the MTV Europe awards…
.Some download links for the vid
.Times article on how it was achieved technically
.Guardian article about planned tour
.Unofficial Gorillaz site
.Official Gorillaz site
.Gorillaz fan site
Hammerhead
Been playing around with Hammerhead Rhythm Station, a freeware drum machine based on the TR-909…
From the website: “HammerHead features six separate channels, 29 built-in drum sounds, six complete breakbeats and the possibility to import six samples of your own. You can save your patterns to completely noise-free CD-quality wave files to use them with your sampler, tracker or sequencer program.”
Seriously fun stuff… Here's some riddims I knocked out with it 🙂 link
(2mb, 3mins 21secs .OGG file)
Machine Soul
So I was listening to GZA's Liquid Swords in Winamp the other evening, and then I ejected the cd while Winamp was running and put in a cdrom with some old college projects on it, it appeared as tracks on Winamp so I pressed play… and THIS is what I heard… Sounds like some abstract glitch techno… It's music, I'm sure of it… it came up on CDDB as 'DJ ZIP live at Digital Gadget', which suits it… Brings me back to listening to Commodore 64 and Spectrum loading sounds…
Must get a bag full of diodes and wires and make one of these things
Ghost In The Shell
This week Masamune Shirow's Ghost In The Shell has been on my mind a lot, I've been rewatching a subtitled dvd of GITS 2 Innocence that I picked up in Sydney's Chinatown last January… I still can't help but be blown away by the it, the story / visuals every time, breathtaking. Then on Friday The Irish Times reviewed Innocence to coincide with the screening of an English dubbed version on limited cinema release locally. Also today while browsing the 3 for 30 euro section at Xtravision I spotted Vol's 1 and 2 of Stand Alone Complex, the GITS animated tv series, and a copy of the first movie (to replace the Divx copy I have) so I snatched them up… The movie dvd features a nice music video by Sly and Robbie, a Japanese ambient music meets dub type ting… Then there's the sequel of sorts to Innocence in novel form where Batou looks for his dog and in the process questions if he has a soul… and the Stand Alone Complex 'Gig 1' (first series) box set out mid Nov… and the Subtitled Gig 2 boxset out now… plenty of brain-hacking, net-jacking, cybercrime fighting, cyborg soul searching for the winter and beyond 😀