Yeah, it's my birthday. The small A-teen. I feel so old right now. Or maybe I'm just tired because 24 hours ago I was in a 6-hour exam just waiting for it to end.

I never liked big parties with lots of guests, loud music, flames, cake and so on. I told everyone that I want this day to be just like any other one. I wont be getting anything exquisite (apart from a 4000 mile trip). I already got my Blofeld this year and I'm pretty content with that. I will, however, buy myself a very expressive instrument. Few people know of it, so it's quite cheap. But shhh... You'll see :)

And that's about it, I guess.

Kongregate is running a collaboration-type thing between sketch artists, flash designers, game designers, producers and so on. If you want to share your stuff to the world and maybe even hear your music along side a flash game, this is the place to do it. It's an all-win collaboration. You get paid and we get games.

So give it a shot :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

First, watch it.

Next, adopt a cynical smile.

What I find ironic is that these documentaries are being watched by those who get to see what's on YouTube aka "20% of the worlds population which uses 80% of its resources" instead of worrying about daily water. While this is good, since it's being addressed to those responsible, it's also pointless. How the hell can you convince any of them (me included, I guess) to give up resource harvesting? It has been pointed out: we're dependent on them.

Can you convince a drug addict to give up his addiction? Easily? Man has evolved into addiction. How many times a YEAR do you stop to look around you? Everyone seems to be going somewhere in a perpetual inertia. We're no different than drug addicts. Mindless drug addicts. We're almost 9 billion retards people and we're all hungry for various stuff. We don't feed chicken in our back yards. They are born and fed in factories at super speed on a conveyor belt. They never get to see sunlight (just like those cattle never get to eat grass).

So what happens to most drug addicts?

That's right, they die. They die of a painful death, and that's what's going to happen to all life on Earth. If you're 20 years of age, you're going to see it. And it's not going to be pleasant. Riots everywhere, wars out of poverty, famine and thirst, big boys releasing their weaponry on the innocent.

BBC and others have been doing these kinds of documentaries for years. There's nothing really happening, at least not on a large scale.

I've experienced some of the most intense heat this city every had to offer and it's not even July yet. I do not want to think of what it will be like then.

Life is on its way to suicide, thanks to a single dominant species.

When things are going to turn haywire, I suggest you have some cyanide pills at the ready. I know I will.

Business. Sucks.

I managed to pay a visit to the "local" music equipment store (it's only one around here, afaik) to help a friend out choose a guitar (yeah, like I'm the expert!) I thought that I could look around and maybe even try out some of the synths and pianos they have there. Anyway, we left school pretty soon and got there through some serious heat.

The store had to open at 9:30. We got there at 9:35 and it was closed and nobody was there. I facepalmed myself: "how the hell are these people still in business?" At 9:45 they finally decide to show up and open the store. We get in. My friend asks for a cheap $100-$200.

"Well, I don't think we have any."

Wait, any what? Guitars? They're all over the fucking store!

"But we should be able to find you something for $500 which comes with both guitar and 10W amp."

By that time I was heading for the door but my friend wanted to check it out. I sighed and started to look around. I noticed some digital pianos laying around, some by Korg and some by Yamaha. "Oh, boy, time to see how these feel."

There was actually a message on them that said "don't touch." My brain freezes for a moment, with my hands stuck in mid air in a playing position. How the FUCK is someone going to decide whether a digital piano is good for him if he cannot fucking play it in the store? I say fuck it and discretely use a couple of fingers on the keys. The Yamaha I was playing was an S90 or something along those lines. It felt rubbish. Coming from an SL990, the keys felt like playing on spunges with little springs inside. They did feel COMFORTABLE, that's for sure, but I didn't feel confident about playing. Weird.

I went back near my friend. He was already looking at an i-AXE USB guitar which they were trying to sell for $300. SAY WHAT? I could probably get one for $99 off TG. This is just BS.

I walk around the store some more and ask out of curiosity for how much they're throwing the E-MU 0404 USB (since I know the price for it from where I order my gear). It was not cheaper. Amazing. I can get the same gear for less if I buy it from a store located 300 miles away (maybe this local store gets it from there as well?)

We walk upstairs. More guitars and basses. Downstairs there were some digital pianos, a few mixers, CD players, an electric violin, mics, a few monitors and a trumpet. After looking around I come to a staggering revelation: there are no fucking synths! None whatsoever, excepting two of the Juno romplers (D and G). But nothing else! What the fuck! What kind of store lacks synths? Even rock bands throw in a few pads now and then. What, is it all VST these days? Oh, none of those either? Eerie.

I got outta there asap. My friend still wanted to check some guitars out so we went to ProGuitar, a nearby store specialized on guitars and bass (as if the one we just saw wasn't!)

We get there. Store closed, nobody there.
"But it had to open like 15 minutes ago!"
I sighed. Eventually, someone opens and tells us to stop pushing the door because there's an alarm bound to burst...

We check a few guitars out and leave. I memorize the price for a Squier. A guy demos a few guitars for us. We leave and I go back home through the searing heat.

Back home, I check the price of a Squier. Yep, $100 cheaper. Mind-boggling. I give my friend the link and he agrees. He'll be getting his guitar pretty soon.

No. Fucking. Synths.

First, you'll need to enter Multi Mode. To do this, simply press and hold Shift and then select Sound/Multi just above. You should now be in Multi Mode. In the top left corner you should see Part 1. Use the selection dial to select your desired sound. Next, you can map the sound via the key mapper. Just set the start and end points. Since we're making a drum kit, you should map each sound to a single key (with just a few exceptions).

I usually route my kick to C2. To do this, both start and end points have to be C2. Snare on C#2, Clap on D3 and so on.

Note that you can still edit the individual parts like you normally do in Sound mode.

You also have a nice mixer where you can pan and level the sound. You can also transpose and detune in a different menu, pretty useful for drums.

After you're done with one part/sound, just press and hold "Play" and move the selection dial to change the part. Repeat the same procedure. Note that you may not hear any sound. This is because by default each part is routed to a different channel (Part 1 to channel 1 and so on). You can select which part is routed to which channel in the menu after the mixer.

I won't get into too much detail on keyboard mapping when it comes to pitchable sounds like bongos but it should be pretty straightforward.

After you're done with your drum kit, you should save it. You save a Multi patch the same way you save a regular sound: just press and hold Shift and then press the Utility button. Choose a desired name and then press Shift+Utility again to save it.

To return to your sound edit mode, press and hold Shift and then select Sound/Multi again.

Note that working with Multi Mode is a bit risky, so you should bare this in mind: if you just finished sculpting a snare drum in Sound edit mode and wish to use it in a drum kit, save it first! There have been a lot of complaints about this but as soon as you get used to it, you'll be ok.

Alternatively, when you wish to start a new drum kit, just initialize a new Multi and start editing and saving each part.

I hope this has been useful. Cheers.

The_Fur: where do i fail again?
BadMojo: First off, you're the product of a failed abortion. Then your mother failed to drown you properly, only enhancing your retardation. Then you failed to develop inter-personal skills, a sense of a humour, and functioning testicles. After that, you completely failed to "have sex" or what I like to call "fucking." After which, you failed to enhance your brain to a proper level.
BadMojo: Then, you failed to make sensible arguements, failed to make funny statements, failed to win, and invariably you will try to shoot yourself in the skull and fail at that too, whereupon you will accidentally shoot two house cats and a small schoolgirl.
BadMojo: Then you will fail to make a logical case in court, where you will fail to be found innocent, and you will go to prison, where the only thing you will succeed at is being jail raped and then murdered by a fatman
BadMojo: Okay, let me rephrase: you will fail to properly protect your anus from a fatman in prison, and you will fail to have a knife-proof head, directly resulting in your subsequent failure to live
BadMojo: whereupon your organs will be donated to science, where your heart will fail, killing a small child, your lungs will fail, killing an elderly man, your liver will fail, killing a recovering alcoholic, and your kidneys will fail, making somebody pee everywhere

So I went to some chick's 18th birthday. I didn't really know what kind of present she might like. A friend of mine suggested a Bonsai tree. He then recommended that, while giving her the gift, I should tell her: "I'm sure nobody has given you a tree for your birthday" and smile. I told him "that sounds stupid". "What? Won't it be true?" "Well, you never know..." "Okay, wanna bet that you'll be the only one giving her a tree?" "Fine." "How much? $50?" "Yeah, $50 sounds ok."

Patience, imagination and a little madness.

These are the skills you require to fully benefit from this evil box. I've been playing with this synth for two months and I have to admit I haven't even touched 10% of its sonic capabilities. The more I dive into it, the more overwhelmed I get. The sounds, numbers and combinations are just mind-blowing.

Of course, this is no VA synth for beginners. Although the interface is easy to understand and you can navigate easily through it, you have to know what you're doing at all times. So make sure you're familiar with the basics of a standard synth. There are a few, very logical, accessible and intuitive VA's on eBay (Roland JP-8000, Oberheim OB-12, Korg MS-2000, Alesis Ion come to mind)

The Blofeld is a compact wavetable synthesizer. If this sounds new to you, let me explain it for you. A wavetable is simply a list of waves (like saw, sine, square but with more complex shapes) stacked together. Besides the fact that these are all different sounding waves, you can change between them in real time with varying speed. Remember how you can change the Pulse Width of a Pulse wave in real time? Changing the waves in a wavetable does, more or less, the same thing, but sometimes with a more dramatic result. Back to our Blofeld, each wavetable contains 64 waves which you can interchange smoothly in real time.

Straight from the oscillator section there's a sonic ocean of possibilities. There are 3 oscillators, two of them support wavetables, the third one only supports basic waveforms (saw, pulse, triangle, sine). Apart from these basic waveforms we then have the two "Alt" wavetables from the Waldorf Q and 66 other wavetables, including the "Upper" wavetables of the WAVE. Each oscillator supports FM, adjustable ring modulation, noise and whatnot. Unison can fatten up the sound dramatically. So there are lots of possibilities without even touching the filters.

Speaking of which, there are 2 filters with 11 types of filter which can resonate up until self-oscillation, have multiple drive curves and even support FM. The sound can be fed through each filter in various proportions. Serial and parallel routing are supported. The comb filters have a huge potential since these can be tweaked for maximum resonance, "tuned" via the keytrack and played by the keyboard, transforming the Blofeld into a rudimentary physical modeling synth.

Next we have 4 envelopes, amp, filter and 2 assignable envelopes. There are different types of envelopes with various uses: your standard ADSR, ADS1DS2R, One Shot, Loop S1S2 and Loop All. So the sound can be morphed in a complex way without needing LFOs. There are two Low Frequency Oscillators, though I fail to see the precision of the term "Low Frequency" since these oscillators can go quite deep into the audible realm (5000 Hz)

Everything I've described so far can be used as a modulation source in the happy 2 column world of the modulation matrix. 16 sources, 16 destinations. If this doesn't make your wife leave you, nothing will. If you go to far with assigning sources and destinations, your mind will just blow up. And you'll be famous for it. fmtoosc1andfmtoosc2pwm1and2triggeredbymodwhellpitchbendalteringlfospeedmodulatingfiltercutoff.

If one of your balls is still in place, the proud people over at Waldorf have included 4 modifiers to top it off. Go ahead, use them.

After you've /safely/ blown up your membranes, you can increase the bleeding by topping everything off with an FX unit or two. No need to bring any, these are included. For a decent killer, go for the Overdrive and Triple FX (S&H, Ring Mod and Chorus).

Oh, I forgot to mention, there's also an arpeggiator.

That's what I had to say. I think it's very cheap for what it delivers, so you should reconsider buying whatever you wanted to buy.

Say you don't want to connect your Blofeld to your PC at the moment; you just want to preview its sounds or mess with it. It took me some time to figure this out.

You'll need at least a simple MIDI keyboard or controller keyboard and a MIDI cable. Connect the MIDI cable from the MIDI Out of the keyboard into the MIDI In of the Blofeld (you can't miss it, really, heh). Connect the Blofeld with your headphones or your speakers. Turn on your MIDI keyboard and then turn on your Blofeld. I'm not sure how the Blofeld should be preconfigured, but mine didn't do a thing when I tried sending MIDI via the MIDI port (I thought my cable was bad).

If the Blofeld doesn't make any sound when you press a key, hold down Shift (the one next to the Effects section) and press Global (the one next to the filter section). A menu will appear. Scroll through the pages using the selection knob until you come across Ctrl Send and Ctrl Receive. For now, you'll need to turn Ctrl Receive on. Now play the keyboard and it should work fine.

Let's say you want to record control changes in your DAW. You have to access the Global Menu again and switch the Ctrl Send to Ctrl or Ctrl+SysEx (the manual recommends this mode).

Lastly, if you have multiple controllers and some of them don't have any means of carrying MIDI from other devices, here's how you set it up.

Create one audio and one MIDI track (or one for each controller if you like). Turn monitoring on for both. Route all MIDI channels to your created MIDI track. Route this track to your USB Audio Device (Blofeld), which will probably be your only MIDI output option (if you created multiple MIDI tracks, make sure you route all of them to your Blofeld). As for the audio track, select the inputs on your soundcard to which the Blofeld is routed to. You're all set!

Oh, one last thing. In the manual there's a list of controller numbers. If your controller is easy to configure (say, make presets for it), you should take the time to map the CC's on your controller. Believe me, it's worth it. Your workflow with your synth will improve dramatically. Be sure to use controllers with many knobs and selection dials. The Blofeld has a huge list of parameters to control.

That's all for now!

Since technology is evermore demanding and what you buy today may be completely useless in less than a year, I've decided to cycle around some pretty old games which I haven't played since they were actually released. I won't be upgrading very soon so that I may actually play games released more recently than 2007 because there's nothing I feel like missing. That being said, I conclude that most games these days favor high-quality graphics instead of gameplay and that older games do have a certain magic to them in spite of the 'unimpressive' graphics.

But that's not always the case.

What would you get if you'd hop in a diving suit, run through the StarCraft campaign and fill the whole chamber with water?

Well, leaving aside the 100% chance of instant death, you certainly won't get Submarine Titans. And by that I don't mean to discourage you. I'm just trying to make you understand that you shouldn't expect something revolutionary from it.

Submarine Titans is a game developed by the lesser known Ellipse Studios, published mid-2000. Back then, I only played a demo of it and I remember that it immediately caught my attention since it was an RTS and the genre has been a long time favorite for me (with previous experiences from StarCraft, Seven Kingdoms and Age of Empires).

The game features three races rather similar to those of StarCraft:
- the White Sharks are aggressive and overwhelmingly numerous;
- the Black Octopi feature advanced laser and energy technology;
- the Silicons are the alien of the deeps having rechargeable shields and biological weapons.

Each of them has similar submarines and buildings. There are three basic resources: metal, corium and gold, with the exception of the Silicons which have silicon, corium and energy. Metal and corium are displayed on the map as fields on which the player has to build extractors and transport subs in order to gather resources. Gold, however, depends on how rich in gold the map is (this can be adjusted via the map settings before a skirmish). White Sharks and Black Octopi need oxygen and they have special buildings for sublimating it.

Everything is built by an assembler. It can lay multiple buildings at the same time so expanding depends on the speed of the player. The Silicons, however, require one capsule-prototype per building.

Apart from your average RTS game, ST adds a few interesting, if not innovating, features:
- there are five depth levels through which a player can cycle. Submarines will (try to) dodge torpedoes automatically by raising or lowering their depth.
- defenses with AoE (area of effect) and DoT (damage over time). WS and SI have such defenses which emit ultrasonics over a decent area, dealing damage with every pulse.
- mind controlling technology (WS - psychotron)
- animal training (worms, sharks and dolphins). Worms steal resources from enemy extractors, dolphins commit suicide dealing massive damage and sharks protect the base from worms and dolphins.
- teleporting technology. You can use a teleporter to move anywhere on the map. There are also teleshields which blocks a player from teleporting within a certain area (inside your base, for example)
- trade center. You can exchange gold for metal/corium or vice-versa. You can also send resources to an ally by making a cargo container and delivering it to his trade center.
- super weapons. Thermo-nuclear, laser and vacuum bombs. These are quite devastating and can eliminate a player from the game instantly.
- hacking system. You can hack into another player's stats (resources, number of submarines)
- sonars. You can detect units on a very big area beyond the fog of war. This is a feature that's being added in StarCraft II (the terran tower).
- arsenal. Torpedoes and mines are produced here and ships reload automatically from the battlefield.

I think that's about it. Although these features make it more than just interesting, the game is still rather monotonous. Once you've played with one race, you've played them all. There's no real strategy involved, just moving up the tech tree and building more submarines (and by the way, the tech tree is pretty big)

The three campaigns are similar mission-wise and unrelated to each other. I've played a few hard RTS matches in my life but these missions are killing me. At around the third mission, no matter what race you choose to play, you have to carry six cargo subs to the other side of the map while defending your base from two adjacent enemies.

Other missions have very steep time limits to complete and the task is always rather inhuman. Which reminds me, there's actually a computer assistant in the game which left me rather perplexed. There are three options to choose from: base building, defending and full assistant. I don't really understand what this is for. Ok, base building I do, defending sort of but why am I being given the option not to play the game? Is the full assistance for people who have frequent lunch breaks or something? Is it to teach you how to play? Well I think they've certainly got that covered in skirmish mode where you can choose a CPU to fight another CPU while you just watch.

By the way, looking at a 40 minute match between different races lets me believe that the game is well-balanced. Or, on second thought, pretty slow. In all seriousness, this is not the kind of RTS you'd want playing for more than three matches a day. It's not fast-paced and not tactical either. It's just small submarines shooting small torpedoes at other small submarines and three minutes later big submarines shooting big torpedoes at other big submarines.

I do appreciate the multitude of features this game had to bring but it's just not as fun as such a game should have been. It's like having glass baseballs to play with. They are interesting looking but they certainly are not for playing.

Here are some demos for those of you who are hesitant about buying such a nice little synth:

Atmospheric
Demo1
Demo2
Demo3
Moog Lead Try

*WARNING* Some pretty loud shit. Be careful.

I'll do a deep review on it these days.

LOL, actually I've always been here but I haven't posted anything since whatever I cover is shit 90% of the time. But I promise that with 2009 I'll be posting a lot more serious stuff.

I've released my first "album" on LastFM; I've just selected some of my better mixed tracks to begin with. I'm actually going to do a lot of genres in the future. Stay tuned!

http://www.last.fm/music/Defyer

And in other news, spring is here.

Gah, school started. Waking up at 6 AM is NOT what I call a nice way to start your day. Once you get home you're tired as hell and you can't do what actually interests you. Frustrating.

Whenever you rush for something there's always that high risk factor of you cutting yourself at the end of the day.

I appreciate the fact that EA and Maxis managed to squeeze a lot of content in less than 4 GB. I was expecting a lot more (although I shouldn't have since most of the data is from other users - hence, online gameplay.) That's the good part.

Right from the main menu I was like "oh crap" since you have your creature creator (unicellular, evolved, tribal suit, army suit, marine suit, space suit - wtf?), your vehicles creator, your ship creator, your airship creator and your fucking space ship creator.

I experimented around with the creature creator. You can get some pretty ugly creatures if you don't think about rainbows all the time. The sculpting ability is pretty damn awesome but that's kinda where it all ends.

At the options section I noticed that the game apparently decided that my GF7600 just isn't capable of dealing with it at high settings. I changed all that. Anyway, let me cut to the chase.

You start by selecting a home planet in a fucking galaxy. There are only 5 planets to choose from the entire milky way, but whatever I'll go along with it.

After that a meteor crashes into that planet shattering and revealing your beloved single-celled organism. I chose to be a vegetarian...sorry, I mean herbivore. Right off the bat I noticed something: all the unicellular creatures around me had an anomalous amount of eyes, and neither one resemble any of these guys:

I'm all for the "procedurally generated" stuff, but I don't see why every simple creature has to display 8 or 10 eyeballs. It's like the only thing that makes them seem alive or something. It's the occasional blink that reminds you that you're not alone and neither will you become someone with no social skills at all.

And how do these "procedures" actually work? How come a horrid creature with 3 jawdropping jaws can only fucking chirp and dance like a fucking twat? When you make a freaking Giganotosaurus you don't expect it to go like a rooster, do you?

The low performance I experienced really bugged me out. It's only some blobby textures. Hell, everything looks like jelly throughout the game. Here I am playing Test Drive Unlimited admiring the view while cruising at 160MPH while some fluffy game gets the smoke going through my ventilators.

So I'm going around, eating plancton, mating and laying eggs, twitching various parts, adding spikes until I eventually fill up the big green evolution bar. Now the game forces me to add legs. At that moment, the "WTF" alarm triggered. Why the hell do I have to add legs and get out? I mean, ok, fine, that's how evolution went. Maybe I've overlooked this but I'm still wondering why can't I be a fucking fish, or a frog, or some hideous creature from the deep. I believe colonizing the deeps isn't such a big task, especially when you do it in a game. It was still a "no". The game expects me to crawl out of the water with 5 others like me. Then I have to do very simple tasks like finding food or other creatures.

I have to admit that the effort done by EA and Maxis to make such a promising game boring is truly beyond limits. It's like they took the fun from the game and stuck it in a jar of barbed wire and salt.

And don't even suggest going online because I don't want to see the horrid devilish things that lurk inside some gamers minds. I get enough goosebumps when I stare at the gamers themselves.

Bottom line is, social games and online gameplay do not go together. On second thought, social games don't go well with anything. When you're alone at home playing The Sims and getting your character(s) to take showers while your clothes disintegrate is one thing but making loads of people collaborate in their quest to defy society is a way bigger thing.

Spore was no fun for me, then again I'm a pretty pretentious gamer. But if you've got all of the Sims expansion packs on a separate hard drive then you might actually enjoy it. Who knows, maybe in The Sims 3 you'll be able to import some of the creatures found in Spore as pets and show your kids with Down syndrome how wonderful a virtual life can be.

I'm leaving for Hungary and Austria. I'll be gone a total of 10 days (of which 4 will be on the road :()

I may be able to leave a message once I settle down. Hopefully, I'll be able to work harder once I get back. I haven't been in great shape these days.

Later.

This is the third time I'm seeing this movie and Alexander's temporal paradox always gets me sad. I haven't seen the 1960 movie, though. I'm a bit more inclined towards the 2002 movie plot since it links The Traveller's motivation from the past.

H.G. Wells was such a brilliant Sci-Fi writer.

The soundtrack is nice as well.

It's over. I broke up with my girlfriend. We'll be best friends and all that, but it's over. It's been a nice year and all, but it just can't work no more.

I've started learning Python and German (I mean, in a serious way). Re-enabling my linguistic aptitude and accent may take a while, but it's gonna be worth it.

And Python, geez. Python is so simple to code that during each script I tend to write I always go like: wait a second! I can't type

c='this is a string'
print c

and expect it to print "this is a string" on the screen!

Well, the thing is you CAN. No more including libraries. You can import from C and Java but that's a totally different story.

It's all about how much you know, how organized you are and what you want your script to do.

I'm amazed of how much this distro can do out-of-the-box. Here are just a few things that surprised me:
- External HDD Plug & Play. Can be safely removed/identified as removable media.
- Intel PRO3945 Wireless (no drivers needed)
- Audigy 2 ZS Notebook through ALSA. 5.1 support. No (additional) drivers needed. ALSA rules.
- Integrated Nvidia drivers.

The only problem I experienced so far was X crashing after I changed the resolution in a graphics application. But this is way better than the random BSODs I got either because of playing MP3s directly from my external HDD or simply TOUCHING the soundcard while being plugged in (right now I think I could probably REMOVE it while using it and no major crash would occur - although I'm not that much of a maniac to try that).

I finally did a solid config on my laptop, consisting of:
120 GB NTFS Windows XP SP2 Partition
1 GB swap
33 GB Ext3 Kubuntu Partition

And I'm loving this a lot.

At least in Windows it does. Dunno bout you, but Opera does it for me.

And the OS is starting to hog up resources so I'm gonna have to Kubuntu it's ass a little bit.

I just watched the whole freaking Texas Chainsaw Massacre series. I'm done with horrors for the next few weeks! I feel as if my eye lids are forcefully open with toothpicks. Probably my head doesn't want to have any bad dreams, but I really want to sleep. It's all very strange.

Shortly, this is what I call a gutsgrinder movie.

I can't describe the way I feel.

To me, he wasn't just the best comedian, or my favorite comedian...he was someone who shared many of my thoughts, questions and weird activities. I never felt so close to a person. Ever.

"I don't know what to do in a moment of silence."