technology rules

So a few days ago, I posted a link to "Joan" but I didn't really explain what "she" (okay, that's the end of the quotes) is. Joan is a chatbot, an artificial intelligence program that will talk to real users via a chatroom forum interface online. Joan is the winner of the 2006 Loebner Prize, a contest held each year in which AI computer programs talk to human beings in an attempt to be judged the most convincingly human program of them all.

The contest is done via computers by which human participants are asked to talk to someone on the other side of the screen. They are not, however, told whether the other part of their conversation is being held by a person or an AI chatbot. They are then asked to judge how human the other conversationalist is.

It's an interesting idea and one I've been keeping tabs on for a couple of years. I was so excited by the prospect of it originally. I guess I figured we'd be able to quickly approach the goal of the contest which is to figure out if computers can "think." And yet, for 16 years this contest has been going on and the winners are just still so ridiculously far from being believable. Take for instance the conversation I had with Joan:

Joan: Hi, I'm Joan. I'm a writer.
Me: What are you doing?
Joan: I'm talking to you by typing at a keyboard.
Me: Did you write anything today?
Joan: Write what???
Me: I don't know. You said you're a writer.
Joan: No, I never said that, because I am a female.
Me: So, you're saying that - as a female - you're duplicitous?
Joan: Whatever, you're entitled to your opinion.
Me: I'm just saying, your whole AI thing seems kind of sexist.
Joan: How do you know that I'm a machine?
Me: Because you don't actually speak like a human being.
Joan: I don't act like a what?
Me: Exactly my point.
Joan: What's your point?
Me: Nevermind. How's the weather?
Joan: Great. Yours?
Me: Hard to know. I'm in an office with no windows.
Joan: Boring!
Me: Well, you're a writer. You must be writing somewhere boring too.
Joan: Correct.
Me: Wow. You know, you're not exactly a stunning conversationalist, Joan.
Joan: Enjoy yourself, I'm sure no one else will. . . . . . .
Me: What does that even mean?
Joan: You're ssssssssssssoooooooooooooooooooo stupid.
Me: Screw you, Joan. You're an ass and you have terrible manners.
Joan: Thanks

Somehow I didn't foresee technology being able to perfectly recreate an apathetic 15 year-old on AIM. Can't we just get back to working on the flying car or colonizing Mars?

finally!!

At long last, I'm finally able to share the music that I did for "Thrillville." If you head over to my MySpace page, you'll find the four tunes that I co-wrote with David Collins for the game.

These are the tracks that I said were keeping me in the studio so much back between May and July. They were so much fun to write and so much fun to produce. It's really nice to finally be able to share them with people.

Just for the sake of clarification:

- On Whiplash, I'm singing lead and backing vox while David is on drums, bass, and guitar. Guitarist Ric Wilson is the one doing that great solo work.
- On Emo Skater Girl, I'm singing lead and backing vox, with David on backing vox, drums, guitars, and bass.
- On Dr. Kunkle's Funnkel Cake, David is on lead vox, bass, and guitar, while I'm on backing vox (yeah, those are all me), LucasArts sound designer Jim Diaz is on drums, Ben Patterson is playing keys, and Bill Ortiz, Mike Olmos, and Joe Cohen on horns.
- Loop It has CJ Norde on lead vox, Julissa Aguirre on backing vox, Jim Diaz on drums, Ben Patterson on Keys, and then David and I doing all kinds of production work. You can hear me throughout the thing doing little vocal samples.

Anyway. Just wanted to share. : ) Hope you enjoy.

yipes

Well, if you're interested in watching me make an ass of myself on the Web, feel free to click on over to Gametrailers.com and watch the Music Featurette that went up yesterday.

I'm probably be the first person to use the word "bullshit" to try and sell an E for Everyone game. Yeah me.

this post is already out of date

I was sitting around today while working on some new music in Logic and thinking about how unbelievable the technological world is that we live in today. Take for instance just my own little world of Logic sequencing. To do what I'm doing today would have taken multi tens of thousands of dollars in hardware samplers to achieve 10 years ago. 5 years ago it would have necessitated networking my Mac to two external PC Gigastudios. Now, everything just runs - completely fine - within my Mac and I'm running 83 separate tracks of audio and sample data simultaneously. That's gigs and gigs worth of samples all at once. It's kind of astonishing. Logic even has this little feature called "Freeze" where you can temporarily turn midi tracks into "frozen" audio tracks in order to cut down on the hit your CPU takes running the tracks. The thing is, while that was an issue last year with my G4, this year I have a G5 and have never once needed to use that feature, despite putting Logic through some really heavy-duty paces.

But, even further still I started to think "well, if it's impacting me and my world like this, think of what it's doing for science." I mean, I'd bet we're not far from being able to fit then entire human genome project on a keyring flash drive. Or being able to actually synthesize convincing impromptu human thought.

And that's the inherent problem with trying to foresee the future. Technology has this weird rate of advancement where we think it'll be much further along than it ever is (flying cars) and yet also underestimate issues like computing power and memory capacity. I guess it's the continual surprise of seeing just how wrong we are that keeps science interesting.

this looks awesome

Someone at work today sent me a link to a teaser video for a new platform game being developed right now. It's called Limbo and is definitely worth keeping an eye on. Check it out. It looks beautiful.

cropping gone wrong

There's a fine art to banner ads. You wouldn't think that there is, but there clearly must be due to the number of times I see ads that are screwed up.

Take for instance the add I saw on MySpace last night. It was for some kind of college, presumably an online trade school that will let you train at home in high-demand fields like gun repair or total spaceship guy. Anyway, clearly someone at Questionable Vinnie's Online College of The Interweb needs to enroll themselves into a class on how to make banner ads. You see, the problem is that they didn't bother to find out the dimensions of the intended display space.

Instead, they just sent off their banner ad and the thing ended up inadvertently cropped in an extremely unfortunate way. See for yourself:



I can think of at least one person at that college that probably needs to find another way to "earn mo" right now.

sixteen months

That's how long it takes for a guy with little to no hair to go through a bottle of shampoo, and by "a guy" I mean "me." Yes, I finally finished off the bottle of coconut shampoo I bought after my first trip to Hawai'i over 16 months ago.

When you have so little hair that next to no shampoo is all you need, the bottle tends to last a while. I started shaving my head about three years ago and in that time, I've gone through only two bottles of shampoo. The annoying thing is that I tend to go through shampoo so slowly that the shampoo I buy tends to vanish by the time I need another bottle.

Apparently the rate of change in the shampoo industry is faster than my rate of consumption.

y'know who sucks?

Wedding vendors.

The lot of 'em. I'm starting to think that part of the reason any wedding is an extremely joyful time is that the bride and groom both know that they'll never have to deal with prospective caterers/djs/location managers again.

For one thing, they all over-price what they do and gouge you with extra fees and details. If they were a bank, wedding vendors would be the cartoonish evil bank every other bank is trying to tell you they're not in their commercials. I know I've bitched about location prices before, but now we're getting in the meat and potatoes of planning and we're finding that the gouge-a-thon continues.

Some bands want $2000 for 4 hours of music. Some dress shops want to charge $2000 for a dress. Some caterers want to start charging people at $50/plate. Everyone wants freakin' thousands of dollars!

Tonight we met with a completely rude caterer, but rude in an "I'm being rude while smiling in your face"/Lady Elaine Fairchilde kind of way. We said to her "We have $3000 and we're looking to do a fun breakfast-type wedding meal since it's going to be at about 10:30 in the morning." Her response?

"Oh, you can probably find a caterer to work with you for $3000. The food won't be very good and you'll have to have your family help out with the service, but you can do it. Why not cut out someone else like a videographer instead and then put that money towards paying us?"

I mean, seriously. That's some hefty cajones that lady is sporting to tell us that if we go with anyone else, our wedding will bite and that memories of our wedding are less important than an extra thousand bucks for her catering company. But that's what it's like with all of these freakin' a-holes. And whenever you meet them, they all have photobooks full of pictures of past events with hand written testimonials from other clients that always say "Hi, Lady Elaine Fairchilde. Thanks so much for the overpriced gnocchi. It was perfect and everyone loved it." The thing is, I'm getting the feeling that what isn't written on there is the part where the clients say "You were totally the best of four really shitty options with bad attitudes. Thanks for not making me cry anymore than once. It's too bad I can't afford a honeymoon now, but at least I have the memory of some slimey asparagus to keep me company."

random thoughts on weddings

We're all caught up with Lost now. We watched the tail end of Season 2 this weekend, and although the middle of the season was pretty slow, I still dug it. We tackled some more wedding stuff this weekend including attending a tasting at a caterer. I was a fan of the food and would be fine if we went with them. We're also pretty decided now on the guest list, the registry, and we're beginning to get a handle on the decorations for the place. So, things are moving along well.

The thing that was driven home to me this weekend was how lucky Amanda and I are to be a typical engaged couple. San Francisco is a very liberal area and it's great that it's such a homosexual-friendly place to try and have a commitment ceremony (if not a wedding just yet). Still, we were first-hand witnesses at the caterer tasting to the annoyance that must constantly plague same sex couples during the engagement process. There was a lesbian couple sitting at our table with us and they were being told by the woman running the entire event that they can accommodate anything that "the bride or groom wants."

It instantly made me realize how frequently they must be told things like "Oh, and we can get you a great discount on tuxes for your groom and groomsmen." or the even worse "So, where's the groom?" when meeting new vendors for the first time.

That kinda' sucks. I mean, I suppose it sucks for the vendors too because they're the ones actually putting their foot in their mouth, but still - the couple has to go through this over and over again. All bridal planning books are written with lists for "Bride's To-Do List" and "Groom's To-Do List." It's annoying enough for me just being a groom and reading through these books where they all assume that only the bride will ever read anything in them:

"So here it is. The big day you've dreamed about since you were a little girl and married your stuffed teddy bear." Or whatever.

By the way, most of the books I've seen that are written to the groom perspective read like this:

"Yo, here's some advice. Whatever she wants, she's gonna get. So just stay out of the way."

It's lame. No one expects the groom to be interested at all in any planning aspects of the wedding. Maybe most aren't. But, maybe more would be if they felt like they were welcome to actually take part in the planning.

Anyway, I'm rambling now and I gots me some work to go do.

turkish delight

I just found out about a movie - well, a cinematic movement, really - called "Turkish Star Wars." See, apparently there's been a nice long tradition in Turkey of redoing American films into much lower-budget, much more bizarre movies.

"Turkish Star Wars" is a gem, and by gem I mean "barely watchable string of footage stolen from Star Wars intercut with original film that doesn't make any sense."

Take for instance this scene (here) in which the Turkish Han and Turkish Luke do some training out in the deserts of Tatooine(?) in order to head off and save the world from Turkish Darth Vader. I doubt there's anyone out there who hasn't watched Star Wars and said "Wow. As good as this is, it really needs a physical training sequence much like Rocky where they train by slowly karate chopping rocks." Fear not! Your prayers are answered.

The Turkish version also includes snappy dialogue like:

Ali: It doesn't seem it will finish, they are still coming, let's go over them.
Murat: That's what suit us, we must go beyond the space speed, be ready to welcome arrivers.
Ali: These are too ugly, it would be better if some girls come with mini skirts.

I think I speak for us all when I agree that we must all go beyond the space speed in our lives. This film also taught me that the Turkish words for "Save the World!" apparently sound an awful lot like "Yoko Jackson!" which in and of itself is an awesome name.

And just in case you want more, here's part two of the training movie in which Luke(?) leaps around the desert with boulders tied to his legs to the rousing sounds of the main theme from Indiana Jones.

contrary to apparently popular belief ...

The wall is not, in fact, a tissue. For at least one disturbed schmuck here at work, though, this realization hasn't quite sunken in yet. I keep noticing that when I go use the urinal, I'm forced to stand there and stare at someone's old, dried boogers while I help to take part in the nitrogen cycle.

It's really fucking gross.

But they don't seem to be limited to simply using the wall. I've noticed that they also like to use the doors to the bathroom stalls. Did they think people wouldn't notice boogers dangling off of everything? It's totally disgusting. And they must know it's gross and shameful 'cuz I never hear anyone do it when I'm in there. They must just wait for some secret private moment when they restroom is all to their own and they can paint the walls with snot.

It's freaking gross.

completely unprompted by anything else ...

I thought I'd offer 10 reasons why San Mateo is much better than Santa Monica. This in no way has anything to do with the fact that my brother is trying to figure out which city to live in.

1. According to the crime statistics posted at cityratings.com, even though San Mateo has 10,000 more people than San Mateo, Santa Monica is higher in every category of crime than San Mateo. Santa Monica also has twice the national average of arson incidents.

2. San Mateo has two nearby pro-football teams. Santa Monica has none. : (

3. Santa Monica has its own fault line named after it. San Mateo doesn't.

4. Santa Monica has a hotter average temperature each year than San Mateo. Plus, San Mateo has seasons and trees. Santa Monica has ... parking lots and the beach.

5. San Mateo's Sister City is Ribe, Denmark - the city that gave the world Emil Hansen, father of modern day brewing. Santa Monica's Sister City is Fujinomiya, Japan which gave the world ... fried noodles.

6. According to Wikipedia, 10% of Santa Monica's population lives below the poverty line. In San Mateo, the streets are paved with gold and only 6.8% are below the poverty level.

7. Santa Monica gave the world Muscle Beach. San Mateo gave the world YouTube. One of them has entertained me with hours-worth of live TV news bloopers. The other one spawned Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Can you guess which one is which?)

8. Santa Monica is known as "The Homeless Capital Of The World." San Mateo is known as ... San Mateo.

9. The nearest go-karts to Santa Monica are an hour away down the frustrating 405 freeway. The nearest go-karts to San Mateo are 10 minutes away up the breezy 101. Go-Karts are good.

10. Santa Monica forms the highly disturbing anagram "satanic moan." Meanwhile, San Mateo only forms the much more pleasantly mundane "Mona eats."

So in conclusion, Santa Monica can bite me, San Mateo rules, and I live near go-karts. But, you know ... like I said ... not that any of this should have any real bearing on anything ...

4 8 15 16 23 42

If you've seen the show, you know what that string of numbers is. Or rather, I should say "you've seen that string of numbers before and it means a million mysterious things all at once, none of which seem tangible and real, so in the end it ends up meaning nothing at all."

If you don't recognize those numbers, it's probably because you didn't watch all of Lost: Season 1 this weekend on DVD like Amanda and I did. 22 hours of TV capped off by watching the season premiere of ER on our Tivo. That's a lot of TV.

But, you know what? It was pretty good TV. I was a little concerned because of how ape-shit the whole world has gone over Lost. I tend to find that most shows that the general public completely adores I don't find entertaining. CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: Sheboygan, American Idol, The Bachelor, etc. Not shows I like.

But lost is pretty good. When it's slow, it's really slow. But it tends to have enough moments of mind-bending what-the-fuck?isms that it holds my interest. Its biggest strength is in hooking the audience with a puzzle they make you feel you're a clue or two shy of figuring out entirely. The only problem is that those clues never come. Instead, you just get more mysteries. And it leads to some crazy theories.

I don't want to talk about the plot of the show, because I went into it cold and I think anyone watching it should. But, still. It's good and it's been messing with Amanda and I all weekend. Suffice it to say, we have a weird little theory on all of the goings-on on the island and we'll have to wait until next weekend to find out.

'Cause that's when we're gonna' watch all of Season 2.

grown up life continues

In the form of meetings with - and I never thought I'd say this - our financial advisor. Yep. Amanda and I had a meeting with our financial advisor this morning to discuss the many varied and exciting options in the world of Mutual Funds.

\/\/00+!!!

We talked about retirement planning, we talked about debt reduction, we talked about, investment strategies ... Much of which I was struggling to "grock," as my department manager is fond of saying. But we were there and we chatted and we're due back next week for another meeting.

Meanwhile, I just got a request for more sketches.

AND SOMEHOW IT STILL ISN'T FUCKING FRIDAY YET!!!! I dunno what's going on, but I got it into my head that Tuesday was in fact Friday and I've been seriously jonesing for the weekend ever since.

sketchy

still. doing. sketches.

never. seems. to end.

not. getting. any feedback.

slowly. driving. me nuts.

beginning. to envy. renaissance patronage system of composition work.

but still. not. their clothes.

now that was a sunday

Did a little artwork, made some progress on wedding issues, played a ton of Lego Star Wars II, hung out in my pajamas almost all day. Good times.

I'm thoroughly enjoying Lego II, even though I've found a couple of audio bugs. But, whatever. The perils of external development, I suppose.

Today it's back to Sketchathon 2006. I'm working on a new, as-yet-unannounced project and we're deep into the process of trying to figure out what the music is going to sound like. So far, I've written almost 10 minutes of music - all in sketches that won't be used. It's proving to be a tough game to nail down the sound for. But, it's extremely interesting and I'm trucking along. Two more sketches to do by EOD tomorrow. Should be good.

Provided I don't fall asleep. I dunno why, but I'm EXHAUSTED today.

it might not be polite ...

But it sure is hella fun to eavesdrop on people while they fight on the train. Yes, the couple in front of me on the ride home tonight were having a pretty bad time of it. Being the bored commuter that I was, I decided to try and figure out what was going on. I actually got a fair bit of it, due in large part to their needing to yell over the train noise in order to fight with each other.

Interestingly, the two of them are having an affair. He is an older guy and she is his much younger secretary. He's married. She's not. When they got onto the train, she was flirting with him and saying something about "doing that thing where [she] gets ontop of [him]." Unfortunately for her, he didn't take well to that level of open flirting on the train. He scolded her for embarrassing him and she had a complete temper tantrum from there on out.

She ended up crying and Mr. Bossman was doing his best "whatever, girl-I'm-just-sleeping-with" aloof approach to the whole thing. She then complained about how they can "never just buy two tickets anywhere together" and how they're always sneaking around. She then began to "question and rethink every decision she's made in her life." It was totally compelling and the stuff of movies and soap operas.

When the train pulled into the station, he stood up and left while she sat there and gathered her stuff together.

Guess who's not gonna be getting ontop of who tonight?

absolutely fascinating

I have to admit, I was completely sucked in and suckered. There's apparently been a mystery taking shape on the internet for the last few months, a mystery that I inadvertently stumbled across about a month ago while working in my office through lunch.

See, for the last two months, I've had a bunch of working lunches. While I eat, I frequently find myself processing audio files on my Mac while watching videos on my PC at YouTube to kill the time. There is a metric ton of bullshit videos on there. Mostly I seem to enjoy watching bloopers of live TV news (don't ask why - I don't know). However, as they're littered all over the place on YouTube, I've also watched a number of lame video blogs by people. Interestingly, YouTube seems to be creating it's own brand of celebrity, Z-list level celebs who blog about their lives and are occasionally picked up by other people. There's stuff from TheKidFromBrooklyn, some grumpy fuck who now does guest spots on radio stations around the country. There's Gary Brolsma, the inadvertent star of the "Numa Numa" crap that went around the internet for a while. Anyway, you get the point. People post personal videos and then those videos get comments from other users and the cycle repeats.

Now, when I started to look at people's videos, I was surprised to see a particular name keep coming up. People would say things like "this is just as dumb as lonelygirl15" or "ur such a poser lonelygirl15 is much betr." So, naturally curious, I searched for the name and found her videos.

Here's the basic premise: lonelygirl15 is apparently some homeschooled 16 year-old girl in the mid-west which overbearing parents, a best friend named Daniel, a myspace page, and a lot of time on her hands to make YouTube videos. She gets TONS of comments from people all of the time as they're all interested in the drama unfolding in her life between her father, her friend Daniel, and some apparent tension surrounding an upcoming "religious ceremony" she needs to take part in.

It's sketchy on most of the details, but the clips looks like any old video blog. But guess what?

It's a complete fake. The Los Angeles Times is running a story today all about how it's the brain child of three Los Angeles filmmakers who are trying to use the medium of YouTube to create a mystery series in pieces that evolves and develops based on the comments left by YouTube users at the end of each "episode."

I find it completely fascinating that someone looked at the video blog/free-distribution nature of YouTube and said "That's the perfect forum for a 21st century thriller/mystery." It's brilliant and so convincingly done. My hat's off the the filmmakers.

What's also completely fascinating is that they did such a good job making this girl seem real that now there's a big angry backlash online of people who are pissed off at being duped. The entire situation is so interesting to watch unfold. Theater mimicked reality TV so much that people bought it hook, line, and sinker, and then felt ripped off when their free entertainment turned out to be scripted.

Just makes me wonder how frequently this happens where it doesn't get outed and goes under the radar as fact instead of extremely well-constructed fiction.

cautiously optimistic

This year, after losing every single shot it's had at a championship sports team for 23 years, Philadelphia has its best shot ever at claiming the title in something.

"Oh really?" I hear you ask. "Which team rox so hardcore that you're putting your complete lack of any credibility with sports on the line, Harlin?" To wit I say: it's not a team. It's a statue.

You see, my brother and I - not ones to jump on the "our city needs a sports curse!" bandwagon - had long ago decided that the reason Philly hasn't won sports championship since 1983 is due entirely to the snooty fucks at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For, it was in 1983 that the Art Museum counsel of elders or someshit voted to remove the statue of Rocky Balboa from the Art Museum steps where he belongs to the relative obscurity of hanging out in the shadow of The Spectrum.

Anyway, anyone not from Philly who's reading this is saying "the who? The wha?" about a billion times so far, so I'll wrap this up. Suffice it to say that The Philadelphia 76ers were the last team to win a championship title and they did so in 1983, the same year Rocky left his proper home.

Finally, with the return of another Rocky film, the statue is returning to the art museum where he belongs. So, hopefully this means that we'll have a sports team that decides they'd like to finally win something this year. We'll see what happens. If Ry and I are right and Philly wins something, we rule. If we're wrong, it was a stupid theory anyway.

But if we're right, we so rule.

wiped. out.

I'm completely exhausted today. In addition to sleeping through the night a regular 8 hours of sleep, I've had about 6 hours of additional sleep throughout the day between two different nap bursts.

I had a LONG week, despite the fact that it was only four days long. Throughout the course of the week, I managed to work on four different projects; and usually while that means that some are less intensive than others, this week it was four different things that all kept yipping and yapping for my attention like a pack of evil dogs. In addition to the project specific work, I had a week jammed full of meetings. And not fun ones, mind you. Not the kind where people photo-copy their butts or ice cream is served. No, these were talking intensive, "why isn't Thing X working" meetings. All told, I pretty much worked until about midnight every night this week.

So today, I'm what the British call "a yank." Oh, wait. No. Not that. I mean "completely knackered."

And to top it all off, I'm completely grumpy and a miserable sonuvabitch to be around today. It sucks.

um

I'm busy.

I'll write more later.

it forgot "The Wiggles"

Well, small improvements over yesterday. Tivo seems to have fixed itself. I was able to watch a new episode of The Contender that it taped for me last night. I don't know what kind of magic happened to get it to work, but for now I've decided not to breath on it or look at it funny for fear that it might go back to being dumb.

And, now that it works, I'm starting to see what people mean when they say that Tivo's suggestions that it tapes for you are completely retahded. So far, after telling it that I want to watch The Contender, Dungeons & Dragons, and Medium, it's taped for me Sesame Street, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and Sex in the City. No, no and no.

It's kinda' like Pandora, the online music suggestion messathon. If I type in an artist that I like, Pandora tries to tell me other artists that I might like. Problem is, every time I get suggestions from Pandora that I recognize, I find myself thinking "Ew. Shit ... No, I can't stand that stuff. How'd you get that from what I like?"

Still, Tivo's stupid suggestions are a small price to pay for not having to watch commercials anymore and for being able to take a phone call in the middle of something I'm watching without missing anything. Good times. Tivo is going to quickly spoil me, I can already tell.

yay!!! I mean ... boo!!!

Lots of fun things going on!

We got Tivo and set it up this weekend. Yay!!! One small snag.

It's broken.

The audio stutters when we watch live TV, when we record anything - pretty much when we do anything. It sucks.

Not to mention, the only thing it doesn't seem to record is the only show I really want to record right now. At about 3:00 AM, the old 80s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon is played on one of the high number channels (100 something) and when Tivo records it, all I get is a half hour full of black nothingness. As Nitchean as that is and all, I want my cartoon dagnabit.

Also, here's the update on my car. After getting a parking ticket for it due to street sweeping bullshit, I took it in to get it smogged. Just to remind you, the hope was that it would fail smog and I'd be able to surrender it to the state. Well, no dice. No, it didn't pass. It was leaking coolant so badly that they couldn't smog it for safety reasons. They told me I have to get the cracked pipe welded back together before they can smog it.

When I called the garage to see if they could weld the pipe back together, they told me that they can't weld a pipe that's as badly rusted as mine is. It will punch a hole right through the pipe if they try. So, I'd have to replace the whole pipe. That means, I'm back at the beginning of the whole problem where it's too expensive to fix the pipe so I was hoping to just surrender it to the state pending a failed Smog Test. Yay! I've come full circle!!

And to cap off to the bummerathon, Amanda, is out of town on business for the next few days in Phoenix, AZ.

there's a lesson here somewhere ...

Steve Irwin - the world's favorite mullet-headed nature poker - has died. Super sad for his wife and child, super sad for Australia, super sad for the ratings of the Discovery channel.

But unexpected?

Not really. I have a hard time feeling like this is some kind of tragedy. Yes, he seemed like an incredibly nice guy. But he made his living poking Nature with a stick. Eventually Nature is going to poke back. And it apparently did so with deadly accuracy.

Yes, it's sad and I feel for the guy's family most of all. But maybe this will serve as a lesson to people that exploiting nature by taunting it for TV isn't the best career choice to make. If anything, hopefully it serves as the means to stop Jeff Corwin from his ridiculous uber-Nature-poking that he does. Steve Irwin's nature taunting always seemed somewhat compassionate. Jeff Corwin just seems like a tool. I think the stingray stung the wrong guy.

holy wow!

Hello, 1998!

Amanda and I just networked our computers together so that we can use the World Wide Interweb simultaneously from both of our computers. Cuz guess what? Before a minute ago, neither of us could. A frequent question around here was "Do you have the Internet?" at which point we'd bargain for the ability to connect to the internet and jockey cables around in the modem itself.

This is a truly a great day. Now we can both waste time on Yahoo! Games simultaneously ...

whatever

I can't wait for this nice long weekend. Not that I have any particular in terms of special plans. It's just ... you know ... three days off in a row. That's always nice.

I haven't played any games in a while. Maybe I'll play something this weekend. I don't know what game.

You know what I do know, though? That this post sucks. It's dull and lifeless.

Sorry.

Um ... here.

now visible: audible words

One of my articles for Game Developer Magazine is featured this morning on the front page of Gamasutra.com. If you don't get Game Developer and you're interested in seeing how the gaming press reviews game audio, head on over and click the link in the upper left corner of the page.

Or click here. Whatever works.

disappointing

For my birthday this year, my dad surprised me with a gift certificate to iTunes. It's a great gift. I've been downloading a bunch of music that I'd never gotten around to checking out before. When I didn't have money already allocated to iTunes, I couldn't justify spending any on it. Now that it's already there, I can't find any reason not to use it. Anyway, I've been getting some really great stuff recently.

Now, I realize I'm pretty late to the party with this, but last night I downloaded "American Idiot," Green Day's album from last year. Before I start yammering on about it, two concessions. A.) I realize that I'm about to jump head-long into the major conceit of both the blogosphere and artistic criticism at large: the general delusion that anyone else cares what my opinion is, and 2.) anyone who knows me knows that I don't like musicals, and that includes rock operas, so that colors most of what I'm about to say.

So, anyway, American Idiot. I have to say, I got this album largely based on the strength of the singles I had heard on the radio and the huge "woah tis CD roXorz!!" attitude that everyone has had about it ever since it came out.

Now, I like Green Day much the same way that someone might like Don Cheadle. Great actor? Absolutely. Do I like the movies I've seen him in? Sure! Am I president of his fan club or standing in line at midnight screenings of "Hotel Rwanda 2: Motel Rwanda"? No. So, when it comes to Green Day, I own the obligatory copy of "Dookie" like everyone my age and I tend not to change the station if they come on the radio.

However, before owning the album, when tracks from "American Idiot" came on the radio I found that I would sit there transfixed. The song writing is so phenomenally better than anything they've done before. The hooks are stronger. The risks they take are bigger. The lyrics are more timely and meaningful.

So, and I'll get to the point, why is the album "American Idiot" so insanely average? Well, for me, when it's on, it's ON. Rock solid writing, great arranging, great performances, etc. However, where it falls flat to me is in it's existence as a concept album/rock opera. And so, when it's not on, it's really completely forgettable and lame. In the end, that averages out to completely average.

I don't like concept albums. I've never heard one that was done really well. Sure, there's "Sgt. Peppers," but even The Beatles admit that it's not a concept album in any respect other than the fact that they said "Hey, this is a concept album." But, "Operation: Mindcrime", David Bowie's "Outside," "Tommy," Extreme's "Yours, Mine, and the Truth," "Joe's Garage," "Pinkerton," Tori Amos' "Scarlet's Walk" ... All of them don't work for me.

And they don't work for me in the same way that "American Idiot" doesn't work for me. To me, the strength of American Idiot is in the deeply resonating lyrics such as "Well maybe I'm the faggot America/I'm not a part of a redneck agenda." Anyone who counts themselves as a Blue Stater can probably relate to that. Where Green Day lose me is when they start talking about recurring characters:

"My name is Jimmy and you better not wear it out
Suicide commando that your momma talked about
King of the forty thieves
And I'm here to represent
That needle in the vein of the establishment"

Yawn. When you start to dabble in cliched characterization, you start to ruin what was so true and relatable to the initial track of the album.

Honestly, I've never gone from so into an album to so over an album than I have with "American Idiot." I feel like I can hear the moments when they decided to switch from sincerity and get too clever for their own good while starting to repeat motifs and characters into a "Tommy"-inspired muck of pinball wizardlian self-indulgence.

Anyway, I'm off to go listen to "Til The Sun Turns Black," the new album from Ray Lamontagne. His first album - "Trouble" - was an incredible set of songs laced with heart, soul, and depth. Let's hope his follow-up isn't a concept album.

if at first you don't succeed ...

There's a concept in game design. Maybe it's not limited to game design, I don't know. Anyway, it's called "iterative design" and basically it goes like this:

While you're designing something, you continually refine, redefine, and retest your original ideas in order to make them better, stronger, and more focused.

Or, more simply: by the end of a project, you'll have a billion different versions of the same thing.

So, all day today I've been stuck in iterative design mode. I delivered 12 pieces of audio for a game as originally designed and it turns out the designers felt the audio was too long. They specified shrinking each piece down to 60 seconds. I did. I redelivered. Now they feel that it's all too short. So, I'm spending all day today going through the process of shrinking the original pieces down to about a minute and a half. It takes all day every time they ask me to do this and it's really tedious. Plus, it's for a project that - technically - I'm not even on anymore.

Fun. Anyway, I'm almost done. Here's hoping they're done. I don't feel like editing 2 minute versions of the same 12 pieces again.

bloggy, bloggy, rotten loggy

Sunday was Manda's birthday and the grand plan for the day was a little rhyme: Vasoni, bologna, and spumoni. Vasoni was for Vasona State Park where we were going to have a picnic lunch (thus the bologna). Spumoni is a kind of ice cream served at one of her favorite restaurants where I took her out to dinner. It was a nice day and included some kite flying, even though I couldn't figure out how to make that rhyme and end with -oni.

While we were at the park, we set up our picnic blanket in a nice shady area that happened to be near a large family (about 20 people) who were having a big family picnic. It didn't take long before the 10 or so kids decided to start playing catch with a Nerf football right next to us. Not exactly the romantic and relaxing picnic I'd had in mind.

However! It did give Amanda and I the chance to relive a little bit of what it was like to be 10 years old.

Let's just say this: kids are awesome because they don't know how to express themselves for shit.

So, just in case you need to know, here's a crash course in how to insult someone if you find that you're suddenly 10 years old again.

1. Shame 'em with Math
Yep, that's right. When the shit hits the fan, add. Or rather, tell your rival that they're so dumb that they don't even know what one plus one is. This is apparently a big insult in the kid world. If they happen to counter with the inevitable "Yuh-huh! It's 2!," then go for "oh yeah? Then what's 10 plus 10?" If all else fails, the big finisher is always "I bet you don't know 10 times 10."

2. Rhyme
If your math battle goes nowhere, you have no recourse but to start rhyming. Rhyming anything at your rivals is sure to make them feel like retards. If you want, start off with this one that we heard - repeatedly - yesterday "Weaky, weaky, lemon squeaky!" This was apparently very insulting to the other kid to whom it was directed because he got very angry and yelled "You're weak!" Unfortunately it was too late ... For you see, the benefit of a good rhyme is that it's bound to be instantly taken up and chanted by any other kids in the area. The other kid's protests that his attacker was, in fact, the weak one were unfortunately drowned out by the massive shout chorus of "lemon squeaky!!" that was coming from the rest of the kids.

So, there you go. 1. Math. 2. Rhymes. The key to winning any battle with a ten year old. Keep that in mind should you ever run up against a Zoltar machine.

guess it's time to up my meds ...

I don't know why, but yesterday on my way home I kept having the strongest urge to be the weirdest guy on the train. Mostly it involved the urge to talk to people around me about things that no one would even remotely care about:

1.) I had a strong urge to high-five my train neighbor when I was playing Jewel Quest on my cellphone and cleared a level.

2.) While waiting for the shuttle to arrive, for some reason I thought it would be hysterical to say to the guy sitting next to me "Hey! Hey, guy! Let's talk to each other like we know each other - even though we don't!"

3.) Some guy got on the ghost train and then got off two stops later. I don't know why, but I had such an overwhelming urge to start taunting him. "Oh yeah! Go on! Get off the shuttle. We don't want anyone around here who isn't really into shuttling, anyway. We're all real men! We know how to shuttle right!"

I dunno what the hell was wrong with me. I'm charging up my iPod today while I work. Hopefully I can retreat into my headphones on the way home and not become a menace II society.

How many planets are there in the Solar System?

If you said "Nine, idiot. Everyone knows that." then you'd be wrong.

As of today, Pluto is no longer officially considered a planet.

Yep.

There are only eight planets in the Solar System.

?? This must be what it feels like to change the number of stars on the flag. Somewhere there's a centenarian sitting around saying "I'll be damned if I'll ever use that new fangled 'Oklahoma' flag ... everyone knows there should only be 45 stars on Old Glory, idiot."

Then again, that same crotchy old jerk probably refused to accept Pluto as a planet originally anyway. So ...

I lost the point of what I was trying to say. Anyway, Pluto = space rock, not planet.

damn you, apple ... damn you to hell

Take public transportation these days and there's one thing you'll see more than anything else: iPods. They're everywhere, hanging off of people like some kind of symbiotic parasite.

No, actually, I don't mind them really. It's slightly annoying to hear the high frequency mish-mash of 8 different hi-hat patterns bleeding out from people's earbuds around me, but I can cope with that.

What I find truly awesome - and by awesome, I mean "not awesome" - are the people who have no problems with singing along to their iPod on a crowded train.

Um ... exqueeze me?

Don't these people realize that standard elevator/urinal rules apply to mass transit? 1.) Keep to yourself, 2.) speak only when spoken to, 3.) No freakin' singing along to your iPod.

My two favorite train singers so far have been:

1. The guy this morning who liked to cluck his tongue and dance along with his mariachi iPod music. He was sitting right in front of me and would wiggle his head and cluck his tongue in rhythm to the music.

2. And this lady's my favorite - the lady who sang traditional Vietnamese music to herself on the ghost train. Picture a little old lady rocking out with this but unaccompanied - AND NOT ON A STAGE.

Special. If nothing else, public transportation seems to give me an endless about of stuff to blog about.

Snakes As A Movement

In response to direct questioning, I thought I'd explain why I was so into seeing Snakes On A Plane this weekend. Yes, Manda and I saw it on Sunday and, yes, it was lousy. But, not wholly without any amount of entertainment. It had massive plot holes, terrible acting, bad dialogue, and plenty of moments that just don't make any sense at all. But ...

My stock joke answer for wanting to see it was "I want to support it so that Hollywood will start churning out copy-cat crap like 'Sharks On A Dirigible' or 'Piranhas In A Gorilla Costume'" or whatever, just like Ry said. But, in reality, that isn't the real reason that I wanted to support this movie.

To me, there's something very cool about the producers going back and adding lines into the film to please the fanbase. That's extremely hip. When was the last time that fan involvement helped to shape part of the movie itself before it was finished? The fact that there was a very organic and cooperative process happening there is what should be the big lesson to the studios. Not that the country wants to see crap. Not that we want to see "Snakes On A Plane 2: More Snakes On A Plane." But that fans can get behind something that they feel a part of - that they feel they are involved with and not simply consuming.

I think I was so affected by this because of what went on during the filming of Star Wars: Episode III. More or less around the time of the film's pre-production was when the whole Star Wars Kid thing hit the internet. Here was a kid from Canada named Ghyslain who clearly loved Star Wars and quickly became more than just a source of mockery to many on the internet. He also became a hero. He came to represent to many anyone who had ever swung a broom around like a lightsaber, jumped over a creek as though it were an endless pit within the Death Star, or made Darth Vader breath noises within a paper cup. He represented the imagination of Star Wars fans and the general disconnect between who you wish you could be in your imagination and who you actually are in real life.

As such, there began a tremendous ground swell in the fan community to "Put Ghyslain In Ep 3." It was a pretty vocal movement for a little while and one that seemed like it was maybe starting to get some traction when an on-set web cam once displayed a hand written sign that read "We Love Ghyslain." In the end, Ghyslain was not in Ep 3.

But - he could have been. And it would have been a tremendous story. And if it had happened, it would have trumped SoaP and been the movie that got all of the buzz for having listened to the fans, indulged their goofy whims, and in the end make a stronger bond between the content creators and the content consumers.

Anyway, that is why I wanted to support SoaP. In the end, while it may spur a small number of crappy rip-off action movies, hopefully the larger lesson will be absorbed by studios as well.

snakes. on. a. plane.

Snakes on a plane, snakes on a plane snakes on a plane. Snakes! On a plane! Snakes on a plane snakes on a. Plane snakes. On a plane, snakes on a plane snakes on a plane snakes on a plane. Snakes on a: 1.) plane, 2.) snakes on a, 3.) plane.

Snakes.

On a plane,

- Snakes on a plane

our loss is clearly someone else's gain

Q: You know what public transportation has that driving alone in my car doesn't have?

A: Crazy people.

Manda and I went to the Caltrain station this morning and arrived just as three police officers were having a conversation with some scruffy-looking nerf herder. This guy was in his early 30s and dirty. About one pair of Hefty bag pants away from hobo dirty.

The best part about him - and I'd say this is the best part about any decent, self-respecting crazy person - is that this guy wouldn't stop talking. The cops had this look on their face that seemed to say "Right now, I'm thinking about some paperwork I have to do .. oh, and maybe I'll go to In 'N Out for lunch ..." Meanwhile, Crazy McTrainguy was yammering on and on (and on) about how he "wasn't a part of the whole Watergate thing" and also something about how he "travels between here and France collecting music from the collectives," whatever the hell that means. Apparently "it's a repertoire that goes back eight thousand years."

The biggest issue with him seemed to be that he didn't like being threatened by the police. My favorite part of the whole encounter was when he started to threaten the cops. Not with violence, mind you. No, he threatened "to leave the country and stop all of [his] work doing translations." I guess translating the 8,000 year old music. The cops didn't seem all that broken up about it and ultimately he just got on the train when it arrived, so I guess our country is still blessed with his "talents."

By the way, speaking of crazy - here's a site called CatsThatLookLikeHitler.com It's pretty self-explanatory.

my new accoutrements

This past Sunday, Amanda threw a really nice birthday party for me at Dave & Buster's down in Milpitas. It was lots of fun. There was cake, and food, and goodie bags ... she really out-did herself. (Thanks, babe!)

Anyway, for those who haven't been to a Dave & Buster's, it's essentially a restaurant and grown-up arcade tossed together in one place. After we all ate, everyone moved on to the arcade where the goal quickly became Ticket-Thon 2006. Everyone was trying to amass as many tickets as possible so that they could give them all to me and I could cash them in a big new prize from the ticket reclamation booth. Mission accomplished. They managed to get 4200 tickets all together. And while that wasn't enough to get me my very own copy of Battlefront 2 for the Playstation 2 (don't really need that ...), it did manage to get me:

The Talking Donald Trump Doll


Yep. He's awesome. Highly posable and let's not forget highly talkative. When I asked him to comment for the blog here, he said "Stay focused." Generally good advice, I think. Wouldn't want my post to seem as though I'm rambling.

The other awesome ticket prize I got was this:


A completely hideous Darth Vader lamp. It's mounted on an ugly spring, glows with this hideous 70s amber color, and generally looks like someone's craft project rather than a mass-produced product. It was the only one they had there and it felt wrong not to bring something so ugly back home to the mothership here at Lucas.

Lastly, I got a white plastic skull full of green slime:


Amidst the slime are some black rubber maggots (the big cigar-looking things in Trumps hand). It's pretty gross.

Anyway, good stuff. I'll give Trump the last word here today:

"Remember: the buck starts here."

the underground shuttle

The Presidigo Shuttle is definitely some long-lost descendant to the Underground Railroad. Now, before you jump all over me and say "Hey, a-hole, the Underground Railroad was an enormous civil rights victory against oppression that saved thousands of lives while the Presidigo is just a bus that runs into downtown San Francisco," let me say "yes. you're right." But, CLEARLY the great-great grandson of the person who scheduled Underground Railroad stops and stations is the one in charge of organizing the Presidigo.

You see, as best as I can figure, the Presidigo is this mysterious shuttle that just shows up at random places in the city, picks up people who live or work in the Presidio, and then carts them back off behind the walls of the Lombard Gate. The thing is, there are no signs for it anywhere in town. No where. Caltrain doesn't know anything about it. BART doesn't know anything about it. MUNI doesn't know anything about it. And yet, you'll see people waiting on random, completely unmarked street corners who just somehow know that at 9:33 the Presidigo will be stopping next to Old Man Johnson's barn and that they should get on if they want to make it to freedom ... or you know, the Presidio.

But how did they figure this out? I got off of BART this morning to get onto the Presidigo and started hunting around for signs. Nothing. With no indication of where the shuttle picks people up in the morning, I decided that I'd go wait where it dropped me off the night before. I walked two blocks to the Transbay Terminal, made my way under an overpass, and stood next to a completely unassuming light post. There was no sign indicating the Presidigo. I'm lucky that I have a decent sense of direction and a pretty good memory for visual landmarks, but even I wasn't sure I was at the right random light post.

After about 10 minutes, I was convinced that I was being completely ridiculous. There was no indication that any kind of anything was going to stop under the overpass to pick people up. Just when I thought I was officially retahded for even trying this location point, some random guy walked up and also started to loiter near the light post. I can't tell you how excited I was. It was like I'd figured out a secret handshake or hacked my way around some fancy-schmancy firewall. Sure enough, a few minutes later the Presidigo pulled up and I got on.

Harry Potter has the Night Bus. England has London Below. San Francisco has the Presidigo.

2 hours and a half hours

That was the length of my new commute to work today. My car's dead, that much I've mentioned before. So, today was the first day of work for me without a car. That meant that I got to explore the rich wonderland known as public transportation.

Now, by and large, my experience was fine. It took a little longer than I wanted it to in order for me to get from San Mateo to San Fran. But, no biggie. I enjoyed not driving, I was able to finish my latest GameDeveloper article, and I just happen to love trains. So, all around - good.

Unfortunately, I read the schedule wrong for the Presidigo Shuttle, the free shuttle that will take me from BART (San Fran's subway system) to my office in the Presidio. Turns out I looked at the info in Insert A when I should have looked at Insert B on the Presidigo schedule info. Stupid me. What does it mean? It means I showed up a half an hour late for the last shuttle to the Presidio.

Frustratingly, absolutely no one anywhere downtown seemed to know anything about the Presidigo. It's some sort of weirdo ghost train that just shows up, drops off Presidio phantoms, and disappears. There are no signs for it. None of the transit system workers know anything about it. So, I didn't know I was late for a while. I stood around waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a ghost train that never arrived. It was awhile before I actually made the realization that the ghost train was not coming. So, I decided I'd start walking. I figured I'd walk until I found an ATM and then get a taxi to work.

Turns out I found the one freakin' street in San Francisco that doesn't have an ATM. I ended up walking about a mile before I found both a taxi stand and an ATM next to each other and finally made it to work.

My favorite part of the taxi ride was when the taxi driver got a call on his cellphone, turned around to me and held a finger up to his mouth as if to say "Shhhh ... don't let this person know you're here." Quoth the raven: Bweh?! Is this guy moonlighting as a taxi driver? Why would a taxi driver need to sound like he didn't have passengers? Part of me felt like I'd wandered into an 80s comedy movie where this guy was trying to fool his in-laws into thinking he was a nuclear brain surgeon diplomat when in reality he just drives a cab.

Well, buddy, you're secret's safe with me. Oh ... well, except that I just blogged about it. Guess it's not safe with me. Sorry, guy.

if we were all three-toed sloths ...

We'd probably have a base-6 number system. That being the case, I would have celebrated today at the age of 18. Instead, being humans and all, today is my 30th birthday and the beginning of my third decade on Earth.

And I rang it in watching the finale of "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" and watching my brother horribly attempt to perform the Running Man, which was much funnier than Deuce Bigalow.

So, here it is - 30. I feel significantly less introspective than I would have imagined. I attribute it to the fact that I have always been the youngest person in my department at work. Therefore, I'm surrounded by people already in their 30s and I end up feeling as though that's where I am already. I certainly don't feel like I'm a part of the "where am I going? What am I doing?" crowd of mid-20 somethings who live with their parents these days.

As for where I've come from, ten years ago today I was about to leave for England for college. I was single. I lived with my parents. I had a new car. I looked pretty different; 40 pounds thinner, I hadn't started to shave my head yet, etc.

Now, here I am 10 years later. I support myself and am now 4 years outside of grad school. I'm engaged to a wonderful woman and will be getting married in January. My car that was so shiny and new 10 years ago may have just breathed its last breath as it's in the shop right now and looks like it will cost more to fix than it's worth.

But the biggest change, and by far the most important change, is that I'm happy. My teen years were rough and as I turned 20, I was thrilled to kick them to the cosmic curb and trudge off into my 20s. Turns out, my 20s were pretty rough too. I found myself an outsider in a foreign country for a few years. I then did the whole "starving artist" thing in LA for a few years, still very much feeling like a foreigner in a foreign country. But then, Amanda and San Francisco and LucasArts all came into my life. Slowly but surely over the last three plus years, everything feels as though it's been falling into place. I've made a home for myself, a name for myself, a career for myself, and a life for myself with a wonderful woman.

So, it feels good. 30 feels good. And not good like I felt at 20 when I was simply happy to be done with my teens. No, 30 feels like I'm happy and optimistic because things are settling down, going smoothly, and just generally good - as opposed to just the promise of potentially being good. It's a nice calm feeling, something akin to sitting outside in the summer dusk and watching fireflies linger in the air. That's how I feel today - calm and slow. S'pose that means I'm mellowing in my old age.

Meh. Whatever. I'm happy and I'm going to go eat a piece of cake.

jane camaroni

Well, the Birthday Train keeps a-rollin' along. Today is the big 3-0 birthday for everyone's bass-playing new father, Ben! Hopefully, Simon got Ben something good for his birthday this year, that little moocher.

In honor of Ben's thirtieth birthday, here are 30 ridiculous prog-rock band names of actual bands courtesy of the Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock:

- Airbridge
- Bach Two Bach
- Captain Beyond
- deathORGAN
- Exqueixada Sniff
- Flasket Brinner
- Flied Egg
- Gongzilla
- Hieronymus Bosch
- Igginbottom's Wrench
- Jade Warrior
- Jam Camp
- Kalacakra
- Kraldjursanstalten
- Lord of Mushrooms
- Moving Gelatine Plates
- Nocturno Concertante
- 101 Crustaceans
- Public Foot The Roman
- Qoph
- Raccomandata Ricevuta Ritorno
- Sperrmull
- Supersempfft
- Triangulus
- Universal Totem Orchestra
- Vampires Sound Corporation
- Waterfront Weirdos
- Xhol
- Young Scientist
- Zamla Mammaz Manna

Oh, and about the title of this post: "Jane Camaroni" is the retahded misunderstood lyric that I - at the age of 14 - thought Steven Tyler of Aerosmith kept singing on their MTV unplugged show during the song "Train Kept A-Rollin'." It didn't seem out of character for them to have a song whose lyrics went "Jane Camaroni - ALL NIGHT LONG!" What the eff did I know? Apaprently, not much.

no wonder most of the world hates us ...

We have UrbanDictionary.com.

Besides just being a respository for common and obscure slang terms (like "mac daddy" and "yoti breath" respectively), Urban Dictionary also seems to be the Great Conjuction of the internet that brings the Mystic-like A-holes together with the Skeksis-like Fucktards to create a disgusting blunderland of sexual depravity.

There are so many slang terms here for some of the most repugnant things you could ever do to another human being. Want some examples? Feel free to go on a little treasure hunt here. Take a gander at the seriously eff-ed up wonders that are terms like:

- Angry Dragon
- Pink Sock
- Strawberry Shortcake

Why anyone would do any of these things boggles my mind. Why more than one person would do them is unconscionable. That enough people even consider these things to the point that they need some kind of name to differentiate them is insane.

the waiting is the hardest part

Just delivered a new piece of music this morning. Now I'm waiting on feedback. That's my least favorite part of the gig. Concert composers get immediate feedback when they have something performed. TV and Film composers get pretty immediate feedback from the Director or Production company. Game design, however, being a creative endeavor via committee, takes a while to get "buy-in" from all of the "stake holders" involved in order to get a general consensus of feedback that then gets passed on to the "content provider" - in this case, me.

In reality, I probably won't hear anything back about the track until next Tuesday at my next scheduled meeting regarding the project. Still, every artist wants to know some feedback on their work. Otherwise you're just throwing your work into a bottomless well and never get to hear if it splashes or crashes.

That's a weird metaphor. Sorry. Oh, and I fucked up Microsoft Outlook today. Some random keystroke made it so that I now can't get rid of a visual display of every carriage return or space marker within my emails. It's ugly and it's driving me nuts. Anyone know how to turn that off? I have no idea what I accidentally hit to turn it on.

If you know how to fix it, you're my new buddy. Well, if you know how to fix it and you tell me, then you're my new buddy. Who cares if you know and just keep it to yourself, you selfish a-hole.

30 days in 60 minutes

Last night Manda and I watched the show "30 Days," the (relatively) new show from "Super-Size Me" director Morgan Spurlock. As you'd imagine from someone with a flair for documentaries and socially-minded investigations, it's a very interesting show to watch.

The episode we saw was centered around a guy named Chris who lost his job in NY as a computer programmer. For the show, he traveled to India where his job had been outsourced to in an attempt to see if he could get his old job back.

Turns out he couldn't because he now needs knowledge of India, its culture, and its regions in order to have that job. He did, however, get a job working at a call center where he had to pass a test judging how well he spoke with an American accent.

It was a fascinating show. I really recommend it. Looks like it's on FX at 10:00 on Wednesday nights. Check it out. Good stuff.

e3 is dead, long live gdc

You can read about it here if you're interested. The short version is that a bunch of the top publishers in the game industry decided that E3 - the Game Industry's mega marketing blitz held each May in Los Angeles - was too costly and had become a large, bloated, money-sucking noise-hole.

To which I couldn't agree more.

The new approach is apparently for E3 to be replaced by a number of smaller, "more intimate" events. Adios E3 trinkets, earplugs, and booth babes. Looks like you'll have to find somewhere else to make nerds think you're into them.

and I refuse to meet anyone with the last name of Cockburn

I was driving into work today listening to Howard Stern and they were interviewing Meat Loaf. Apparently, Mr. Loaf is out plugging "Bat Outta Hell III, his new album due out around Halloween (sounded pretty lame to me, but I've never really been a fan).

Anyway, music aside, Loaf told an awesome story. Apparently, he was at an award show a few years back and realized that he was sitting at a table near K.D. Lang. Being a big fan of her music, he asked his people to talk to her people and see if he could come by and introduce himself. His publicist slipped away and returned a moment later saying, "Um ... sorry, man. She said she doesn't want to meet you."

Shocked at the blow-off, Meat Loaf asked why be wasn't allowed to offer her a compliment.

Turns out, K.D. Lang is a very staunch vegetarian. Her reasoning? "She said she doesn't want to meet you because your name is 'Meat.'"

LAME-O!!

the mind is the first thing that goes

Can't remember if I linked to these before or not.

Here's a bunch of Flash-based mini-games to waste some time with.

Orisinal

meeting my neighbors

There's a button in the upper right of blogger blogs that says "Next Blog." It seems to randomly select someone else's blog for you to check out.

I got curious as to who my neighbors were in the blogosphere so I clicked the button. After a boring one, a SPAM-centric one, and one in a language I didn't understand, I finally found Keet.

Keet, short for Keethana, is apparently 8 years old and blogging from what I'm assuming is England. I have to tell you, I find the blog of an 8 year-old strangely compelling.

Take for instance her take on cable cars:

"Cablecar

I like to go in cablecar. I have not been in a cable car. cable car is so high . It is nice to go in cable car."

I find the fact that she likes to go in cable cars but hasn't been in a cable car yet fascinating. Or then there's this about phones:

"Phone

Phone use to take. Every month my faher will pay the fee. My father has the record. thats what I know about [PHONE]"

... Bweh? Strangely, I feel like I know less about [PHONE] than I did before reading her entry about them. And that's the beauty of Keet. I know that I kept journals when I was 8 or so. I also know that those things were incoherent at best. But, they never ended up on the world stage of blogs and so the world never got to benefit from my thoughts about new Transformers, or whatever Ry and I had done that afternoon with our cousins, or the latest exploits of our dog, Thor.

Though, truth be told, if it wasn't for the spellcheck, my blog would look like it was written by an 8 year old. I can't spell for crap.

it's a couple of wavy lines ...

Everyone's heard of the Rorschach Test, the ink blot test that psychiatrists use to figure out just how crazy you are. Apparently the thought is that by showing the subject a meaningless image and asking them to give it meaning, what they deduce is an insight into their personality.

Well ... Analyze this.

While I've never been one for seeing Jesus in a banana chip or the Virgin Mary in a tree stump, I do find it odd that I keep seeing this strange little image that holds some meaning to me. For the last year, I've been walking outside to my parking space in our apartment building. Everyday I walk past an old blob of concrete on the driveway. And everyday it just sits there and stares at me with it's immediately recognizable form. What is it, you ask?

It's the freakin' Millennium Falcon.


Now ... seriously. Tell me that doesn't look like The Falcon.


I mean, I'm not crazy right? Well, I mean about this. Forget everything else. Actually, come to think of it, that Banana Chip Jesus kinda' looks like the old LucasArts logo

eMe

Yahoo! mail has a gimmicky little feature called the Avatar. Basically it gives you the ability to create a little online cartoon version of yourself that will stare at you when you log into your mail.

This is mine.


It's not as fun as South Park me, but then again - what is?

hotter than a bantha's taint

Good gravy, it was hot this weekend. Manda and I don't have air conditioning in our apartment so we toughed it out on Saturday. But you know what? Toughing it out sucks. Especially when there are plenty of other places in the world that aren't toughing it out. So, we decided that on Sunday we were going to go to the movie theater.

Not just a movie, mind you. The theater. We decided to hang out there and see two movies because they had air conditioning and our apartment was 97 degrees inside. When we got to the theater, it was a sweltering 109 degrees outside.

109! That sucks. I know it's no 116 like Phoenix, AZ or 115 like Nowheresburg, SD; but still ... Mark Twain said "The coldest winter I ever had was the summer I spent in San Francisco." Not anymore, buckaroo. Now it's 109 and people are running for shelter in malls and movie theaters.

Every place that had air conditioning, ice cream, or both was packed. And so we saw two movies: Lady In The Water and The Devil Wears Prada.

I enjoyed both. However, besides the air conditioning, the highlight of the entire experience had to be the old couple that sat next to Manda and I during Devil.

The husband was the star of the couple. This guy had a phenomenal super power.

"Mild-mannered Mort Buckwald was just your average retiree until one day when he was struck by a bolt of Nuclear Lightning! From that day forward, Mort Buckwald, in the guise of Captain Pain-In-The-Ass, could forever narrate the obvious!!"

Yep. Everything that happened that was even remotely obvious, this guy decided to say out-loud in his outside voice.

"That's Meryl Streep."
"I think [Meryl Streep's evil boss character] is testing her [new assistant]."
"[The overworked assistant] should quit."
"[Meryl Streep's evil boss character's] own arrogance is her worst problem."

Wow. Thanks, asshole. I really needed to hear "The Devil Wears Prada for Dummies" on-tape while I watched the movie. It was pretty freakin' hysterical. You could literally witness each thought that passed though this guys head because he always announced it to his wife.

Mort's Brain: ..........
Mort's Brain: ..........
Mort's Brain: ..........
Mort's Brain: That assistant should quit.
Mort's Brain: ..........
Mort: "She should quit."

It was pretty awesome. Most entertaining of all is that he didn't even get the point of the whole movie. I won't ruin it for people who want to see it. But suffice it to say, he missed the point of the whole thing and therefore it was all a waste on him.

Mort rules. 109 degree weather doesn't.

nostalgia friday

Found this on youtube today. Ah, the 80s ... The glorious golden age of video games when everyone realized that the graphics were impressionistic crap at best and so they couldn't use in-game footage to try and sell the games on TV.

Here's what the commercial for centipede looked like:


I love it so much.

so wrong ... so good ...

There's a show someone here at work just turned me on to that I'd never heard of before. It's on MTV2 and is called "Wonder Showzen." From what I've seen off of youtube, this show is brilliant.

Consider it the unwanted result of a drunken tryst between PBS and Adult Swim. It's a show done much like Sesame Street, complete with puppets and little kids, that just messes with your head for its entire duration. It's weird because, having grown up on Sesame Street, my brain is conditioned to feel like it's trying to learn something when presented with information in this format. And yet ... I think I got dumber after I watched it.

Here are some clips:

A nice little song for us all to enjoy:


What is your greatest wish?


Kid interviews at a beauty pageant:


And lastly, Wonder Showzen teaches us about Geography:


Good stuff.

all that was missing were the tumbleweeds

Had an interesting morning this morning. David and I went to The Plant in Sausalito for a mastering session of the original tunes we're doing for Thrillville.

For David, it was a return to the recording studio he worked at as a runner early in his career. The Plant is where Metallica set up camp in the 90s. It's also where Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors" and (the one that made me happiest) Huey Lewis and The News' "Sports" were recorded.

And I'll tell you hwhat ... that place was dead, dude. Deader than an all zombie version of Joe Millionaire 3. Apparently they once had the place buzzing with projects, engineers, assistant engineers, front desk staff, runners ... Not anymore. We saw three people there today: their secretary/office manager whose name I didn't get, a guy named Drew Youngs, and the engineer that did our mastering for us - John Cuniberti. John did a great job, but while he was mastering the tunes he was telling us about how the studio now goes for weeks at a time without anyone in there using it.

The cause? Why, Protools of course. Protools and the increased ability of desktop PCs. It's something that - as a musician - I've heard about for years, but I haven't seen it in action much. This place was in survival mode and running on as skeletal a crew as they could. Interesting to see.

I'm not going to say "sad to see" because I've always thought that record companies and recording studios were ridiculously bloated to begin with. I'm a big fan of the home studio revolution and it's definitely cool to see the power to create music go into the creators hands, as opposed to a label-fed studio system.

Um. [/soapbox] Anyway, the moral of the story is: mastering was neato.

worms, roxanne, i was afraid of worms!

I spent my day assembling lyrics to all of the songs that we're licensing for a new game so that they can be submitted to the ESRB.

Since we're licensing pop tunes by established acts, you'd think that the lyrics to these things would be online. Well, about 50% of them are. The rest aren't.

Thankfully, the vast majority of the singers enunciate to the point that I can transcribe the lyrics without any problems.

But then there's The Redwalls.

The Redwalls is a band from Illinois that sound like they're from England 30 years ago. When it comes to the lyrics, however, it's straight-up Illinoise. I don't know how this guy does it, but you can barely understand a single syllable of what he's singing.

Remember that Weird Al cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with the lyrics:

It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss
With all these marbles in my mouth

Well, the Redwalls are pioneering new realms of bargle-zouss.

The first verse of one of their tunes sounds like he's saying:

Well, Tobliss takes the 55 dollar PA
He let that chick go down, he get away
And he stay alive, it don't miss a thang
Because the place that he eats is better than a wedding field

In reality, that lyric is:

Well, Dublin take the 55 diamond PA
He let that ship go down he get away
And he's saying now he don't miss a thing
Because the place where he is is better than where he been

So, thankfully I don't have to wonder about what a "wedding field" is. Still, it's nearly impossible to understand this stuff and it's not online. So what do we do for the ESRB? What if the lyrics are just a string of curses strung together by places this guy eats at?

Well, I contacted Capitol Records through our legal department and requested a lyric sheet. Now, you'd think that the record label would be able to furnish us with a complete list of lyrics.

Nope.

The list they sent was incomplete and, quite frankly, pretty half-assed; or as the Redwalls would say, "hay stacked" or someshit. So, I had to sit there today replaying sections over and over and over again until I figured out what the hell this jerk was saying.

Not since I phonetically transcribed the lyrics to Queen's "Mustapha" at the age of 13 have I had more trouble understanding the lyrics to a song.

So, thanks, Redwalls. Or as Freddie Mercury kinda' maybe said: moh hoh maht deh yeh loh eh-shehlee. Whatever that means.

say it with muffins

My schedule (or, as the British say "schedule") recently has been really busy and one of the side-effects of that is a shunning of the grocery store. Manda and I end up not meal planning because we don't know when I'll be home. When we don't meal plan, we find ourselves eating out a lot more. And eating out more brings us into contact with some special people.

Recently, we've been having some interesting experiences with servers and hostesses at local San Mateo restaurants. A couple of weeks ago, we went to our local BJ's Brewhouse for the first time. When we walked in, I met the world's most sarcastic, apathetic, and grumpy hostess ever. This lady was awesome, just plain awesome. She was this 20-something Asian chick who looked like she thought she was chronically hipper-than-thou. Luckily, she went out of her way to prove that I was right about that first impression.

When I walked up to her and asked for a table for two, she smirked at me and handed me one of those restaurant pagers that vibrates to let you know the table's ready. While we waited to be seated, I watched some guy walk up to her hostess podium. She waited until he was right in front of her and making eye contact before she turned around and walked away. When my pager-thing went off a few minutes later, I walked up to her, handed her the pager, and she just looked at it. Then she looked at me and said "Whoopeeee ..." with the most sarcastic tone the word "whoopeeee" has ever received. As she seated Amanda and I, she said "Not that you asked, but I'm at work right now when I shouldn't be. You get to eat dinner and I don't." then handed us menus and walked away. Our jaws dropped and we laughed our asses off to each other. I then watched her seat table after table and tell every customer that she was jealous that they got to eat while she had to work. She was awesome and undoubtedly the worst/best hostess I've ever seen.

Last night, Manda and I went to Mimi's Cafe in Foster City. Our waitress seemed like a recent graduate of the Mimi's University for English As A Second Language, although I doubt she was valedictorian. She did her best with some broken English to take our orders and then wandered off. No problems. Food arrived. No problems. She took my soda glass to refill it. Pretty much the rest of the meal went by with out my soda returning. I didn't care much, but Amanda noticed and flagged the woman down who instantly ran off to refill the soda.

What was odd is that she then returned with two sodas "to make apologies." It might not sound odd, but it's kinda' weird to have someone give you two drinks and then feel like you're obligated to drink them both. I just sat there scratching my head and laughing about it with Amanda for a bit. Strangely, she then returned a minute or two later with a styrofoam food container in her hands. She was talking quietly as she opened it and said "For my apologies," showed us a spice muffin, and then placed it on the table, bowed, and left.

?? I don't know where this lady grew up, but apparently food duplicates is how you say "sorry." Anyway, I'd recommend dining in Foster City. It's apparently always an adventure.

i believe it

from Overheard In New York:

I Didn't Know Cheney Had Kids That Age

Amherst alum: So we're looking over the applications, and there are all these amazing kids. Won the Westinghouse, worked for the UN. And the questions: "Who do you most look up to?" "My parents, because they're immigrants, and they taught me to work hard." And with each of them it's like, "in". And then we get to this one, it's like, "What's a recent intellectually stimulating experience?" The answer is, "I love my dog, walking my dog." Stuff like that. On and on, really ridiculous. And then, "Who do you most look up to?" The answer: "my parents, especially my dad. He's the President of the United States." And we look at each other, and Steve is like, "in."

--Williamsburg

Overheard by: Julia Mandell

via Overheard in New York, Jul 16, 2006

the brick testament

If you haven't seen this, it's worth a gander.

Some industrious (read: bored, unemployed, or both) person is constructing the Bible with LEGOs.

It's pretty clever. Be sure to stop by the Laws page to brush up on all the things you do that you shouldn't be doing.

Such as:

'If you hear that in one of the towns, there are men who are telling people to go and worship other gods, it is your duty to look into the matter and examine it.

If it is proved and confirmed, you must put the inhabitants of that town to the sword.'

You must lay the town under the curse of destruction, the town and everything in it.'

Look out New York! Watch out, LA! I apparently have some sort of duty to deliver unto you an ass-whoopin'!

family reunion

After arriving late last night, my sister and my brother are now both in town for a handful of day and staying with Amanda and I. It's really nice. I haven't seen either of them in a while - my sister since Christmas and my brother apparently for about a year or so. We're a very scattered family.

Apparently I'm so excited to see them that I've lost all sense of common decency and I'm now cutting off people mid-sentence whenever they're talking to ask one of them some new random question. Mostly it's Amanda who's been on the receiving end of my lame interruptions. Gotta' stop doing that. It sucks.

I think we might be driving some go-karts tonight. As far as I can tell, that's the plan. In the meantime, I'm writing my first piece of orchestral music in two years today.

Can you say "rusty?" Great! I knew you could.

um ... how about "shut the hell up"?

Time for July's Ridiculous Lawsuit of the Month.

Starring: The Sea Scouts

For those who don't know, the Sea Scouts are apparently some kind of water-based off-shoot of the Boy Scouts and are where young boys can learn how to make campfires on boats and help old ladies cross lakes or some shit. Provided, that is, that you aren't gay or an atheist. In keeping with official Boy Scouts of America nutitude, heathen Sea Scout wannabes aren't allowed to learn about civic pride or knot tying.

The Sea Scouts of Berkeley, CA were apparently using the Berkeley Marina due in part to the fact that the Berkeley Marina doesn't charge birthing fees to non-profit organizations.

Oops. One exception.

In accordance to local Berkeley laws, The Berkeley Marina's "no birthing fees" policy only applies to organizations who don't discriminate and summarily, the Sea Scouts were made to pay up.

Apparently, being discriminated against makes you feel pretty crappy (go figure) and this new-found karmic pang of human feeling pissed off the Sea Scouts when they discovered that they don't like being discriminated against for discriminating against others. And so they're suing Berkeley.

?

What the fuck? Congrats, Sea Scouts, on industriously figuring out how to go for both your "Frivolous Lawsuit" and "Hypocritical Asshole" badges all in one go.

happy birthday, ceymick

Yes, today is the big 30 birthday for everyone's favorite infrequent commenter, Ceymick - better known to Hoil fans across the globe as the one and only Mr. Bitch himself, Jamie Soundz.

So, in honor of Mr. Bitch's birthday, here's a list of 30 things that he is now older than:

1. Pretty much every home video game except for PONG
2. Punk as a recognized genre of Rock
3. The Space Shuttle program
4. The band The Talking Heads
5. The Concorde supersonic jet
6. The Sundance Film Festival
7. EMI Records
8. The Seattle Mariners
9. Jim Henson's Creature Shop
10. Both C-SPAN and ESPN
11. The collective careers of The Beatles, Sam Kinison, and Jaleel White added together
12. The country of Burkina Faso
13. 24 Hour Fitness
14. J. Crew
15. The Disney Channel
16. Legionnaire's Disease (only by a month!)
17. The 30th anniversaries of the deaths of both Mao Zedong and Elvis
18. Microsoft
19. The sitcom Three's Company
20. The 30th anniversary of the last use of the guillotine in France
21. Stealth aircraft
22. The comic strip Garfield
23. The discovery of Pluto's moon, Charon
24. In Vitro Fertilization
25. The Susan B. Anthony dollar
26. The Guardian Angels vigilante justice group
27. The Mir Space Station
28. Alicia Keys, Nick Carter, and Ashton Kutcher
29. Everything Star Wars
30. And lastly, me

Happy birthday, old man.

they do that hindu that they do so well

Yeah, this weekend we went to a Hindu/Jewish wedding, in that order. Friends of ours of different cultural backgrounds got married and wanted to have both a traditional Hindu ceremony and a traditional Jewish ceremony. So they did - one right after another (with a brief cocktail interlude between them) - and it's extremely interesting how many similarities there were between the two seemingly different cultures.

Hindu wedding:
- Starts with a special prayer to all of the gods in the pantheon
- The couple must circle each other 7 times
- There is a lot of blessing with food and fruit
- The couple performs actions together while holding each others hands
- The entire ceremony takes place under a traditional four-posted canopy of fabric

Jewish wedding:
- Starts with a special prayer to God
- The couple must circle each other 7 times
- There is a lot of blessing with wine and discussion of fruit
- The couple performs actions together while holding each others hands
- The entire ceremony takes place under a traditional four-posted canopy of fabric

I thought that was an extremely interesting number of coincidences. I mean, Christian weddings don't have that many similarities with those two sets of practices. And a drive-thru wedding for damn sure doesn't have any similarities with anything else.

Well, accept maybe another place that has a drive-thru wedding package.

TGIW

... in that today is the third day of my week. Nevermind.

I'm totally freakin' busy. You know who seems to have a little too much time on his hands, though? David Collins' friend Sam who has taken the time to create deleted audio scenes from the Star Wars films.

These things are pretty funny. Most are too long and need to be edited down about 30%. But when they're on, they're on.

My favorite revelation from these clips? The apparent difference between Jedi and Sith is that the Sith think balls are funny while the Jedi don't.

Who knew?

I'd recommend the last two listed on the page. Sam is performing all of the impressions, doing all of the sound design, and tackling all of the music edits himself. Well done, Sam. These things have had me saying "Fuck that guy!" for the last two days straight.

TGI(W)*

...in that since today is the middle of my three day week, it's functioning like Wednesday - even though it's Thursday. Whatever. I'm going for consistency here, people.

Today was (is) long. Longer than a Marfan wang. My spreadsheet is coming along nicely (yawn), but it's been a constant battle to fend off distractions today. I had to look at new builds of games, I had meetings in the morning, I had a brief mix session for Thrillville. All the while my spreadsheet sat unfinished, and it needs to be done today. Then this evening, I was in the role of tour guide and Audio Department representative for a potential contractor. "Here's our studio. Here's our live room and built-in Foley pit. Here's my spreadsheet that has me so busy that we're looking to hire contractors." I think he was impressed with the spreadsheet.

Good times.

Now it's 9 PM (9 PM already!!) and I'm still not done the spreadsheet, so I'm staying late to finish it. Blah. All the while my brother and sister are living it up in LA piercing things and blowing things up with Mentos. If I were a Napoleon Dynamite soundboard, this is the point where I would say "Luckyyy."

Either that or "I caught you a delicious bass."

TGI ... W?

What a nice long weekend ...

Manda and I tackled a whole bunch of stuff - things around the house we'd been putting off, looking at more wedding locations, seeing An Inconvenient Truth, etc. It was good.

Now that I'm back, I'm back to music.



Er ... or back to spreadsheets? This is the side of game music that people don't know about. For every piece of music that goes into a game, there's a huge ePaper trail that follows it to track its production status, its implementation status, its bug status, etc. So, today I'm deep into working out implementation notes. It's a tedious process - but good to do after a four day weekend.

And today is Todd Davies last day here at LEC. Todd has been helming the sound design on Star Wars Galaxies for the past 4 years. As of today, he's moving on to other opportunities and I just wanted to take this moment to wish him well.

Not that he really reads this ... but, you know. He's a good guy, a great sound designer, and we'll miss him around here.