Tag Archives: music

This week in comics, portable social networking, music, and addictive beverages

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After two months of waiting (ground mail is still too-damn-slow), I’ve finally received my copy of Battle Angel Alita “Angel of Chaos” (book 7, 1st edition). And, same as my copy of book 3 (“Killing Angel”) that came two weeks earlier — it’s a used copy, not brand new, as a I thought. That said, I feel really stupid and illiterate. I guess I’ll have to bug some of my American friends to send it to me, after all.

Why is it so hard for people to ship their products worldwide? What’s the difference? I’m the one who’s paying the shipping cost, the seller doesn’t have to do a thing about it, but write ‘Croatia’ instead of ‘USA’.

Never mind, I’m not ready to rant about not being able to order anything but books, CD’s and DVD’s from Amazon. Not even games. Eh.

So, “Angel of Chaos” is a brilliant issue, I must say, a great read. Fun, very humorous, with plenty of action (well, as always), and more intriguing than, for example, issues 4–6 (which, although great, left me feeling unsatisfied). 4.5 stars, out of 5 :)

Continuing with the comics, I’d like to point you to the most recent Sinfest trilogy: “Broke into pieces“, “Broke into pieces 2“, and “Broke into pieces 3“. I love Sinfest, it’s one of the best comics I’ve ever had the pleasure to read, on- or off-line. And this mini trilogy is one perfect example why. It’s so simple and down to earth, yet so touching and über cute :)

Then we have the Penny Arcade folks who reveal how and why those “Wii-mote killed my TV” accidents took place.

And a Wulffmorgenthaler jewel from back in August :)

The problem with social networks friend-list portability was first pointed out by John Hicks (on his Flickr page, which shows no photos now?), expanded on “box of chocolates” by Derek Featherstone and finalized on Adactio by Jeremy Keith. Interesting reads with some good points.

I’m waiting for Breedart.org to come back online bigger, better and badder then ever before. I miss it badly, it’s like losing your address book and your phone. It’s like being stuck in small room with no door or windows, and with nothing in it to inspire you. Emptiness. Until it resurrects, I’ll be posting some of my music right here. I’m working on another piano track and thinking of adding a string quartet to back it up. Also, I’ll put up some of my old tracks in a new “other and unsorted” category :)

Ever heard of Regina Spektor? I’ve just found out about her by watching her video “Fidelity” on YouTube. She reminds me of Feist — a lot. But, when listening to miss Feist, I feel like I’m listening alone. With miss Spektor, I feel like I’m listening to her music with the whole world. I don’t know if that makes any sense, I can’t describe it any better, heh. I’ve been listening to her latest album “Begin to Hope” and I like it very much. It’s easy on the ears, she’s got a great voice and it makes you feel good. Recommended? Yes. I’m gonna go find and listen to her previous stuff now.

One last thing, as the title may suggest, is my Nescafé 3in1 addiction. I’ve successfully dropped the real coffee back in March, but this pest just won’t let me be. No tea feels like a good enough replacement for the sweet taste of this monster early in the morning :( What should I do, oh, how can I overcome this… need? I’m toasted, I get nervous if I don’t see that little brown packet on my kitchen desk when I wake up. Damn you, Nestlé!

I can’t wait to see the first snowflakes falling down. How about you?:D

Retro Remakes 2006 and Counterclockwise

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The Retro Remakes 2006 compo is over and 76 classic game remakes are available for download (modem users beware: someone forgot to resize thumbs and each page is over a megabyte in size).

My dear friend Nenad (aka 16×16) has coded a remake of the classic 1983 ZX Spectrum game “Knot in 3d” for this compo, and in his version it’s titled “Counterclockwise” (link to page 4 of the compo list, should be first on the page), or simply CCW. Think of it as a game of snake, but in full 3d (16x16x16 cube), with enemy chasers (crafts) which you can destroy. You can pick up ammo, shields or score, perform “tricks” around obstacles, etc.

Aside from being a great remake (and quite addictive), I’m posting this because I’ve composed 3 tracks for this game, and some of the sound effects. I’m quite satisfied with the results and I hope you’ll enjoy the game!

I’d like to thank Nenad for giving me this opportunity, I’ve had much fun working on it :)

I’ll post the music files in a couple of days, when the judges pick the winners. I hope we’ll win something ;)

22 days later

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A lot has happened in the past three weeks.

  • In Real Life ™ : I bought an Tascam HD-P2 portable audio recorder (more accurately, it is my parents’ final investment in me). It’s a great piece of hardware, believe me. You can visit Tascam’s website for more info, but here are some of the key features: records up to 192KHz/24bit stereo on Compact Flash cards, 2 XLR mic inputs, 1x stereo line input/1xoutput (cinch), built-in limiter, timecode and video clock input, digital (coax) in/out, firewire, PS/2 keyboard input, can be DC/Firewire/battery (8xAA) powered. I’ve had it for two weeks now, but I’ve done only a couple of tests since I didn’t have a proper microphone to test with. Now I’ve borrowed two Shure’s: SM57 and Prologue 14L and we’ll see how it goes in the next couple of days.
    I’m currently playing keyboards (Korg Polysix, woot!) in a band with a couple of friends and we’ve recorded two of our practicing sessions with those mics linked — it sounds excellent. I’ll try to remember to do a mini-review of HD-P2 soon, since I haven’t found any (reviews) on the net and people seem to be looking for it.
  • Internet-wise, the biggest surprise for me was Blue Security’s announcement that they’re backing out and giving up the battle against spammers. Couple of days ago, they even advised their users to uninstall the Blue Frog software because spammers might try to use it against them. In the end, it all introduces us to a new kid on the block — it seems that P2P networks can be used to fight spam, with Blue Security’s project SourceForged. It’s called Black Frog (aka Okopipi).
  • In the gaming world, there was Nintendo Wii, effortlessly destroying all competition. After the announced name change, all seemed to go uphill for Nintendo — the name got accepted pretty quick, the controller kicks ass in every possible way, there will be plenty of games available for the console at its launch, and it’s going to cost a mere ~$200. People waited for hours at E3 just so they could play with it.
    And what about PS3? The announced $600 (for the premium version) price tag doesn’t look that attractive at first, but if you consider the hardware you’re getting for that money — it’s too cheap, really. A couple of game screenshots that I’ve seen look very promising, the pre-installed Linux is definitely a plus, there’s the Blu-ray drive (who needs HD-DVD anyway?), a 60GB hard disk, Wi-Fi, MS/SD/MMC/CF cards reader, USB, wireless controller (with, err…some motion and tilt sensitivity), nice and easy to use interface (similar to the one on PSP), HDMI, 1080p — it’s a perfect home multimedia system. And also a gaming console. Not such a bad deal after all, huh? That is, unless you live in the U.K. where the price won’t be $600, but £425 (~$800) . And probably €600 anywhere else in Europe. I never understood the laws and taxes in these cases, but, for example, to me it seems awfully wrong that I could buy a PSP for $195 in Japan almost a year ago, and here in Croatia the price is still over $300.
  • Joan of Arcadia
    That’s just another great show that got canned last year because… I think the reason was that the average age of viewers was — 54? How is that possible? It’s practically a teen show, and one of best educational series I’ve ever seen. So how come the percentage of young people who watched it was so low? I really don’t know, but I think it’s sad.
    Wanna know what else is sad? : “Charmed” is still on air. “OC” too. And many more crappy TV shows. Yes, we all have different tastes so I won’t go on, but JoA was just one of those shows that I thought would last for a while, because it talked about God in a non-religious way, it wasn’t a catholic/jewish/muslim/buddhist/whatever propaganda, it didn’t force anything — it was simply about choices and faith. And it was good.
  • I’ve watched the pilot episode (“War zone”) of “Crusade” (Babylon 5 sequel from 1999) last night. The series got cancelled even before the whole first season aired in full. And for a good reason: this pilot was probably one of the most embarrassing moments in TV history. I’m a really tolerant person, but I couldn’t force myself to watch another episode.So, that blurb above, I wrote it before reading the following text on series’ IMDB page:
    The show was canceled before it even aired. It was not canceled because it was bad, but because TNT made it bad. They did eventually air it, but totally out of order. If you ignore “War Zone” and watch the other 12, it’s a great show. The show clearly has an arc, and it was about to begin when the show was canceled. Hopefully the SCI-FI channel will pick it up in the future and continue this great series.
    I might give it a chance yet, 6.9 score on IMDB equals to that of Joan of Arcadia. It better be worth it.
  • Deftones are coming to play in Zagreb on June 27th. Oh, it’s going to be a beautiful day and I can hardly wait for it :D Reminder to self: go buy the ticket already.
    I’ve been listening to Chino’s “Team Sleep” for the past 2-3 days. It seemed a bit “shallow” at first glance, but there’s a couple of tracks that I really began to love. It’s a good one, in the end..
  • Four Eyed Monsters intrigue me. Go pay a visit to their website and watch the video podcasts.
  • I’ve finished reading Bukowski‘s “Notes of a dirty old man“. I loved it.

Another reboot, and a slightly different approach

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Greetings, Earthlings!

I’m glad that the Css Reboot site is up and running, I really enjoy browsing the reboots. But I don’t like the way sites are listed, I prefer the visual browsing using screenshots, or at least let there be a pure list of sites with direct links so I don’t have to click first on the site’s page on CssReboot, and then proceed by clicking again on the site link. Give people more options, mr. Howell ;)

Update: screenshot browsing is available – the Reboot hadn’t been officially started when I posted this a couple of hours ago. My apologies :)

My reboot? I started thinking about it some two or three months ago, with the first version completed in March.After a while, I didn’t like it so much, so I started again from scratch. The next version was done, ready, good to go about three weks ago – but it didn’t grow on me. The third try is what you’re looking at and I’m very satisfied with the final outcome. I’ve always loved the book/paper style, and the Moleskine notebook I’ve bought a while ago really inspired me. Also, I wanted to go back to a more ‘organic’ design.

I’ve removed the ‘web’ category as I haven’t been active in that field for a while. I thought I better emphasise what’s most important to me: Music. That’s why the link letters are red, so my visitors can easily spot it and understand instantly that it’ll lead them to the most interesting part of the site :) Also, the music pages are a wee bit more descriptive now and tracks can be pre-listened in-page thanks to the XSPF Flash music player.
Tracks are available in Mp3 and Ogg Vorbis formats and I plan to upload the lossless FLAC files soon.

Notice: at the moment, I’m having some PHP problems which may result in my front page displaying only two last posts and no ‘recent’ list at the bottom ? on random intervals: now it works, now it doesn’t. I’ll try to fix it by the end of the day. If anyone has any idea why a php script could suddenly stop and break, then please e-mail me. I’m pretty sure it’s not so much my coding as it’s the server’s configuration. Fixed, getID3 was having a fight with php.

I’m off to lunch. Thanks for visiting my website, I hope you’ll enjoy your stay :)

Breedart releases “Kokkonen” and “Movement”

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“Kokkonen” is Breed’s 35th art, and “Movement” 28th music release. 59 art pieces and 14 music tracks should keep you busy for a while; I believe the two are some of the bigger releases we’ve had. Also, I’ve just noticed that it’s been a year and 3 days since our last music release, interesting… I hope you won’t have to wait that long for the next one :D

As usual, there are some new members aboard, of which I’d like you to pay special attention to Skybase, who is a very talented musician. You’ll find 6 of his tracks in “Movement”.

So please visit Breedart.org, relax, and enjoy the releases ;)