20.1.07

Feeling: the heat.

Warm day today - apparently up to 36C but feeling warmer.

19.1.07

Creating: My first mashup

Ok, this is very rough but it was fun. I've had the mashup word Vanilla Ice Cream in the back of my mind for a few days now and this is the result. Vanilla Ice's song Ice Ice Baby vs Cream's Sunshine of your love - otherwise known as Sunshine of your icecream baby.

(This lives on my seldom visited Vox site - haven't figured out where else to host stuff yet)


http://col.vox.com/library/post/mashup.html

Browsing: Guitar tab sites.



Ever since I got my first (acoustic) guitar in my early teens, I've primarily strummed or picked away at three tunes I learnt in a guitar course at the Gisborne community centre. Greensleeves, some classical piece played with two fingers on the bottom (physically) three strings and The House of the Rising Sun.

Since then I've added a 12 bar blues riff to my repertoire and have picked up Guitar for dummies and a bunch of other books purporting to teach me how to go further - but at the moment my dreams of rockstardom are sadly unfulfilled.

So I thought I'd try something new - learning songs that I actually like. (Not that I dislike the others but you know what I mean).

Now if you wander about the web (and play guitar), you may be aware that there are sites where other guitar players have patiently sat down with their favourite songs and kind of reverse engineered them, figuring out chords and riffs and such and writing them down in a special notation called tablature.

Tablature is cool because it's music for people who can't read notes. This is what it looks like. (Click to enlarge)



As you can see, it represents the six strings on the guitar and the numbers show you the frets that you need to hold down. So theoretically, if you play according to the tablature, it should sound just like the song.

You can also find songs that just have the chords on these sites, which is closer to where I am but it's nice to know that when I'm ready, I can start learning the riffs as well.



Ok, great right? A community resource for guitarists, people sharing their knowledge and skills to help other people learn new things. No-one is sharing files created by someone else, people are regularly inspired to go out and buy new music so they have something to play along to and they play to more people who are likely to discover music that they haven't heard before (and presumably go out and buy that as well).

Everybody wins and nobody spoils the party.

Well nearly nobody.

In recent years, publishers of sheet music have been flexing their corporate muscle and issuing "take-down letters" under the US DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) to the websites hosting these guitar tabs and chords. One of the most well-known of these, the Online Guitar Archive is still down although they do have a copy of their takedown letter up on the site for your perusal.

Apparently cutting into the sales of sheet music is far more important than having millions of people learn a constructive and creative skill. Let's not get into how accurate the tablature pages are, whether someone has thrown in their own flourishes and particularly how the artists feel about having people learn how to play their songs and buy their music, these are obviously trivialities compared to the needs of the sheet music industry .



Obviously, this isn't the first time that this kind of behaviour has been seen from the music business. I read that with the introduction of radio, manufacturers of piano rolls had a fit about the free distribution of their intellectual property and often banned the stations from playing their artists. This, not surprisingly, didn't last long, as musicians aren't morons.

Fortunately, the internet being what it is, the moment the sheet music publishers shut down one site, ten more spring into it's place, so it's a bit of a non-issue in some ways but it's still interesting to see the depths to which big business needs to control everything, even the music.

(I don't have any particular favourite guitar tab sites, I generally just google whatever I'm looking for but you might like to check this site out - this guy has most impressively put together a list of his 500 favourite guitar riffs, with accompanying YouTube videos and tablatures - http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2278011

18.1.07

(Still) Playing: Scarface: The World is Yours

(I think that heading needs some more colons, but let's press on regardless)

I guess the fault exists with me but even though I've finished the storyline part of the game (to my knowledge), I find myself still trudging through the remaining missions - wipe out opposition gangs and acquire property - in Scarface: TWIY, working towards 100% completion of the game.

Larger games these days (particularly in the sandpit-game genre) have honking big stats sections which tell you everything from how long you have been playing the game (never something you really should know) to how far you have travelled using different forms of transport, from how many people you have shot in the left kidney (I kidney you not) to how many conversations you have had with in-game characters and the all important one - how much of the game you have finished.

I'm currently sitting on around 85% at the moment - which considering that I've taken over the four quarters of Miami and killed all the gang bosses that tried to bring me down (not to mention won over half a dozen scantily clad babes at my mansion) - doesn't quite seem enough. As I say though, there are still 20 or 30 gang cells to get rid of and a bunch of things to buy - including an authentic astronaut suit, an Easter Island head and an investment company.

Getting to this point is sheer slog though - and yes, I'm aware of the irony of considering any activity where you spend hours watching telly in a recliner rocker "slog" - I've currently got little money and the meters that tell me how much "heat" I have from the cops and the gangs are way up. This means that any time I try to do a major drug deal or kill a gang, the gangs and the cops (respectively) are all over me, the major drug dealers won't do me good deals and the bank screws me in interest rates for money laundering.

I tell you, sometimes you wonder how drug barons get out of bed in the morning.

So why bother? Who cares? If it's more like hard work now than fun, why don't you just put down the controller and - oh I don't know - get a life?

And here's the thing - my theory is that most of the pleasure that we get from games is the sense of achievement and power we get living in our virtual world. In the game world, you do the things you can't and wouldn't in the real world. (Which all those anti-game people still don't seem to get). Progress is marked increment by increment, giving you constant reinforcement that even if you don't have a lot of influence over the events in reality, everything you do in the game "matters".

When you a playing socially, this is further enhanced. Interestingly, not everyone even needs to be playing for gaming to be social - watching someone else playing through missions can be just as entertaining as sitting watching a movie and oftentimes moreso. Finding the balance between letting someone make their own mistakes and work things out and "helping them" is a fine art.

So why is 100% important? I think it's to do with the relationship you have established with the game over the course of the 40-50 hours it takes to play a standard game. To have gotten to the end of the storyline, the game has to have engaged you enough that you don't just put down the controller disappointedly saying "Well that's really a very average game". It's taught you how to use it, it's given you better and better treats as it has gotten harder and harder, it's drawn you in to the world you are playing in.

It's frustrated you, baffled you, driven you nuts when stupid civilian cars inexplicably turn suddenly in front of you, it's made you laugh when out of the blue, swimming in the ocean after your boat has blown up you are eaten by a shark and it has made you keep coming back for more.

So you get to the end of the story, you've vanquished the villains, the world is yours, you've beaten the game BUT sitting there in one line on the statistics page is a small taunt. "Yeah sure, maybe you think you won but *ahem* - look at the scoreboard. I say you haven't"

And damn it, you know that you aren't going to be beaten by a piece of software.

So on we trudge.

(Don't get me wrong, I'm still very much enjoying hooning along Miami streets in my range of sports and muscle cars, powersliding around corners and whatnot, I just think I'm ready to settle down into druglord retirement)




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17.1.07

Listening to : Lush - Ciao!

As I was riding to work this morning, pondering what to ramble about today, I was thinking that it would be a good time to do an overview of one of my top five bands, The Devastations. I mean, they've only released two albums so far (the first acclaimed by Karen O as her favourite of the year) and I've seen them live so there's plenty to talk about without being too much.

Yet while I was thinking about this, a song was buzzing around my head that has seemingly been on repeat for a few days now - Ciao! by Lush. (Listen to a preview here)

Opening with a stripped back acoustic guitar leading into what I think is some kind of French sounding accordion (which actually works - doesn't get annoying or anything :), it then launches into one of the finest duets ever.

Jarvis Cocker (in his mid-90s Different Class era Pulp finest) joins Lush singer Miki Berenyi in this biting jangle-pop back-and-forth sledge fest between two former lovers singing to each other about how much better off they are since they got rid of each other. (Quite therapeutic really). The beat is lively, the voices both great and Jarvis does one of his trademark low-talking spoken choruses in the middle.

The rest of the album that this comes from (Lovelife) is really worth a listen as well - this track (Ladykiller) is certainly another highlight.



This isn't something I would normally do but I really am taken with Ciao! at the moment, so here are the lyrics
(thanks to http://www.curve.demon.co.uk/lush/lyrics/ciao.html

Together:
I've been so happy since I walked away
I never thought that I could
Feel as great as I do today
'Cause you were nothing but a big mistake
And life is wonderful, now that I'm rid of you

Jarvis:
Oh I must've been crazy to have stayed with you
I can't believe I thought I was in love with you
But now the scales have fallen I can really see
And I say go to hell, 'cause that's where you took me

Miki:
Well, I've felt better since I slammed that door
You always cramped my style, I never noticed before
It's been a non-stop party since I flew the coop
I can't believe I fell for such a loser like you

Jarvis:
And is it any wonder that I felt so blue
When I was always having to put up with you

Miki:
Oh, here we go again, just lay the blame on me
Don't say another word, 'cause sweetheart, you're history

[Jarvis:]
[I bet you're loving every minute of it]
[Sitting in yer kitchen eating meagre meals with the curtains closed]
[Go on, be a bedsit martyr babe]
[I don't give a damn anyway]

Miki:
I know that you miss me really, bet you wish that you still had me
You'll never find someone like me but I've got no regrets at all

Jarvis:
'Cause I've met this girl and she's so good to me
She's really beautiful, fantastic company
Oh, when I'm with her I realise what love can be
'Cause she's fifty times the person you will ever be

Miki:
Good luck, mister, do you think I care?
Since you've been gone the offers have been everywhere
I've got a million guys just lining up for me
I've turned a corner, boy, my life is ecstasy

Together:
Well, I've been in heaven since I walked away
I never thought that I could feel as great as I do today
'Cause you were nothing but a waste of space
And life is wonderful, now that I'm over you

(Author: M. Berenyi)


(And yes, I will come back to the Devastations at another time)

(Oh and big big thanks to Jo for putting me onto this - as ever, you RAWK! :)

16.1.07

Using : Bloglines

I'm a compulsive reader - if something is lying about (junkmail catalogue, magazines, pamphlets, boxes), I'll most likely pick it up and take a look.

This makes the internet a dangerous place for me - it's all to easy to skip from site to site to site, reading whatever new tidbits they have for me (I have around 50 websites, blogs and cartoons that I check out regularly) until I come back to the first one (which by this time has updated) and start all over again.

This is where a site (service?) such as Bloglines comes in very handy.

Bloglines is what is called a feed-reader - it allows you to nominate a list of websites/blogs/etc that you want to keep track of, checks them all regularly for updated content and displays a summary of the story that allows you to click through to the original.



It's not the only tool that does this - any good web browser will have what they call an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader which does exactly the same thing. (Firefox, Flock, Opera - even Internet Explorer 7 has a try). Bloglines has a nice interface though and unless you use a portable browser (one that you run from a USB drive), it's the best way to access all of your feeds at once.



If you see a symbol like this one anywhere on a webpage (or the letters RSS - generally in an orange box), it means that content on that page can be gathered by a feed reader.

Setting it up (it's free) is just a matter of going to http://www.bloglines.com and creating an account. There is a directory of sites/rss-feeds that people have already subscribed to (still all free, don't let the language fool you) that you can choose from or you can just add your own.

There is probably much deeper functionality that I've just completely ignored (I think you can share your subscribed lists for one) but it's really just a matter of getting the use from it that you need.

Happy surfing and feel free to give me a hoy if you run into trouble or have any suggestions or comments.

cheers

Feeling : better

thanks.

14.1.07

Creating: Cho




Chomsky meets Che

Philosophising: Mistakes

It's still better to regret the things that you have done than the things that you haven't.

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