Better late than never

Published on March 1, 2009 in Music, My future and randomness. 0 Comments

Better late than never, right?

Here’s a quick update:

…I slacked off last semester and failed half my classes, got some (a lot) more records, I’ve been spinning weekly (at least) on faderwave.net, had a great Halloween/thanksgiving/Xmass/new-year/birthday, and *breath* I’ve been oh-so-happy with my newly elected president.

So what do I do now? Why did I postpone so many updates? Well, for one, every blogger has a realization that they don’t live enough to blog enough – and second of all, I’ve been meaning to move this blog over on mike’s server where I could use word press. Really! I have! I’m going to get on it!… Right after I finish my demo tape. It’s going to be two parts (two mixes) and I’ll release it online with CD cover art and everything. Though the version I plan to have out in… oh… 8 hours, won’t have any cover art. But then again it’s only going to one dude so far.

The next time I update I plan to have this all in wordpress! Hopefully!

I feel like… I feel like…

Published on October 28, 2008 in Music, Vinyl, randomness and video. 1 Comment

Last week I purchased two new (used) records off ebay, one of which has been stuck in my head for quite some time:

  • “M.A.D.A. – Feel Like Jumpin’ / Wet Dreams” (Nervous records) – This is a damn good record, both A and B (“Wet dreams”) sides are great. As previously stated, I’ve had both of these tracks stuck in my head for quite some time.
    The other record is:
  • “Rhythm Factory – Sexy Sax” (Nervous records) – It’s so-so, I think the highlight of this record would be the B side “Crank calls”. It’s samples are such novelty it’s actually quite humorous to listen to: “Hello?” “ring ring” “Hello?” – You get the idea.

…Ok this is the second post in a row I’ve made a list of some sort. I’m kicking this bad habit… to the curb… I’m never saying that again either.

Along with the records I ordered some “Gruv Glide”. It’s a reasonably priced vinyl/record cleaner that’s been getting rave reviews from everybody’s audiophile uncle. I can’t vouch for how well it improves overall sound quality, but I think the records themselves are cleaner so that’s good. The cleaner they are the more plays I’ll get out of them.

No pictures because my camera sucks at taking pictures, and I don’t have any natural light at the time of typing this.

Here’s a mix though – warning – quick time will probably load if you’re using windows, I recommend you right click and “save as”. Well… if you want to listen to it that is. It’s a mediocre mix at best. Battle mixes are typically cranked out and are made “for the fun of it”. I even tried my hand at scratching in this mix… I can assure you I kept it brief though haha. Oh man. Yea, I’m going to need a new cross fader if I’m ever going to really get into scratching. Just the other day I figured out I can open up my mixer and disable my fader(which is acting like a small resistor to my recording output!) .

Ah yes… after years of staring down Nintendo’s proprietary screws, it’s nice to be able to open up something and make it better without a modchip or special screwdriver.

Obligatory video: M.A.D.A. – Feel Like Jumpin’

Off-site blogging

Published on October 22, 2008 in links, randomness and video. 0 Comments

Sometimes instead of posting a blog I rant on my forum of choice.

These posts aren’t always popular… or rather… ever popular. They belong as a blog post after all. I feel the urge to share my thoughts with people in a convenient place though. No one ever really visits my blog other than the occasional internet drifter and a few close friends.

On a more political note, here’s this hilarious video from the Onion. The Onion never ceases to make me laugh.

Life with a harder edge

Published on October 14, 2008 in Music, Vinyl and randomness. 0 Comments

As the weather cools down, everything else seems to heat up. School of course, but with the post I made yesterday it’s evident my passion for DJing is as well. I’ve bought another Technics turntable and some news records to go with it. I was planning to use these for my first house party last Saturday, but things went awry with the host and it ended up not happening at all. I completely understand his situation though. I was so hyped to finally play somewhere but I guess it’ll have to wait for another time.

In the meantime I’m messing around with my records and familiarizing myself with all of them even more. Especially my new techno record, “Dave Angel – Classics”.

Cover:

There’s supposedly a Jazz-influenced sound to all Dave’s tracks but I find it hard to recognize if it’s there at all. Some are a little too much on the acid-house side of things for my liking as well… but there’s a time and mood for all dance music so I’m sure it’ll come in handy.

I did make a techno mix… about a month ago I think. Been quite awhile. My new goal is to transition from house music to techno which is a lot harder than it sounds on paper. Key clashing is a big deal when trying to make a really smooth mix and it’s going to take awhile before I listen to a house track and think “hey this would go good with this techno track”.

I haven’t been feeling very well this week nor tonight so I’m going to have to cut this short… maybe some more posts later in the week if I feel better.

Here’s a good track from “Dave Angel – Classics” this is called “free flow”:

New set-up

Published on October 14, 2008 in Holy Crap, PC, Vinyl and randomness. 0 Comments

Woot!

…Will blog tomorrow, not tonight.

A slice of life, and an update on where I am

Published on October 6, 2008 in Music, Personal, School, games and randomness. 0 Comments

Sometimes I forget the real propose of this blog.

I was seriously contemplating neglecting my blog forever since much of my interest has now drifted from video games to music and DJing. Video games aren’t the real reason I started blogging though. Ever since I was a… well… kindergartner, I’ve always had problems writing things down on paper or being productive in general. When I reached 7th grade school took a turn for the serious and with it I received special help and training on how to overcome my “disability”. Calling it a “disability” is a bit extreme, I don’t want to be one of those idiots who claim they’re retarded in order to coast through life when they’re clearly not. It’s just how the school termed my weakness. Er, where was I? Oh right, my writing “disability”. I turned around in 7th grade and left the program even, only to fall back into it in my second half of 8th grade.
…
Somewhere along the lines of success I had lost my motivation to continue.

If I want to relate this to games again I could go on about how I found self motivation reporting game-news back to the Nsider community (now gone thanks to Nintendo) and eventually DS-X2.com. But lets not get off track here.

The point is I struggled with writing all my life and blogging helped me exercise and sharpen my writing skills. Though that’s an understatement. Think of my writing skills as a fat guy – yes a fat guy – now imagine what that fat guy would look like after sitting on the couch for 6 weeks doing nothing but eating and walking to the fridge occasionally. That’s what my writing skills look like right now. Even if it may not appear that way in this blog entry(riiight), the fact that I’ve done absolutely no English homework since I started school again makes my writing skills appear that way to the teacher, my parents, and even myself through de-motivation. Lack of blog updates really to blame? No… but they do get my brain working. More so than posting on forums or communicating with friends. Especially when the latter is accomplished via IMing.

This is why I need to continue blogging regardless of subject.

Though video games are always going to be a favorite of mine… just don’t expect every post to lean that way. I’m thinking about revamping the page as well. I notice people do subscribe to this blog… if any one’s reading this please let me know what you think I should do with this blog page. For the meantime, here’s an update on me:

My friend Mike submitted an interactive fiction game to “The 14th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition” and I helped beta test it so I feel some personal attachment to the game. I’m also in the credits, woo! Oh- the game specifically is called “Channel Surfing” (download here) and it’s a bit tedious to navigate for first-time IF players. I know it was for me! But he could only do so much programming in the three weeks he had left to develop it. Mike is -unlike me- a brilliant writer and the writing is really the “meat” of the game, so don’t feel bad to use hints in order to progress.

This poped up on inanity one day and at first we were all thinking “WTF”. But I approached it cautiously and it seems to be solidifying into a legit party for us all. To complete it I’ve bought a second turntable and I’m in the process of buying some new records they might want to hear. If all goes well the party should take place later this week.
…
With the new turntable I had to buy an LCD monitor in order to make space on my desk… good bye CRT… we’ll see if I can find a use for it though. I would hate to throw it away.

Bank account is feeling it this week with all these purchases. I need to start looking for a job again despite this shitty economy… uhg.

Last but not least, Sin and punishment 2! Woo!

First week of college

Published on August 29, 2008 in Music, School, Vinyl and Web. 0 Comments

It’s finally happened, I started college.
Well… Junior college… but for the most part it’s got all the same freedom and options as a typical college. The one I’m attending is called Sierra college and depending on how much you visit/read into my posts, you may have heard me mention it before. I’m actually more comfortable at Sierra College then I ever was at Rocklin high school. I’m taking interesting classes, all my teachers are very nice, and it’s not run like a prison!

On the subject of high school, I briefly met some ex-Roseville high students and they had an amusing play-on-words for their high school. They called it: “hoesville” for apparently it was filled with girls that were very hoe-tastic. I don’t care if I made that word up, I like it.

This week I haven’t played any video games thanks to school, but I have been playing records whenever I can. Yep, that’s right, the records I talked about last week finally came in! You can read the thread I made on the DJforums here for some details and pictures(lower post). It was worth every penny. One of my best impulse buys! I feel obligated to actually email Primal Records and thank them for giving me so many quality records for so cheap. As probably one of the first to respond to the ad I feel I received numerous records from the co-owner’s personal collection (“DJ Olivier Desmet”) – as the ad had stated some of the “grab bags” would contain.


One of the first Techno tracks: Derrick may’s classic “nude photo”. This release was touched up a bit and called “Nude Photo ‘88″.

There’s just sooo~ much quality here. So much to work with! I can’t wait to mix with these as soon as I become acquainted with all of them. Here’s a sample of a record I just played earlier tonight. It has this awesome break. I’ll let the sample do the talking(click).
-That sample is from “Brothers’ Vibe – Dub Plates 5″ track B1, called: “smooth ride” http://www.discogs.com/release/1306533

Discogs is a great site by the way. Now that I’ve been buying vinyl it’s helped me keep track of my collection, and helped me find the names of records that don’t have any labels. There’s at least 4 or 5 records with absolutely nothing written on them other than a catalog number which is (as always) etched into the vinyl itself. Here’s what my collection is looking like so far.

I’m thinking next week I might bring my DS to school as there is an hour wait between one of my classes(which I have been passing in various ways… like doing homework – whoa I know, that’s gotta change!:P )

Reboot

Published on August 20, 2008 in Music, School, Vinyl, Web and games. 0 Comments

Behold!

Though it may not look impressive to some, I’m quite proud of my new gaming “rig” (please excuse the lousy picture). I’ve got a 20″ Sony Trinitron with three game systems elaborately set up to it all at once. Which means if I get bored of playing Sonic 2, I can start play Super Smash bros. online with the push of a few buttons. Pretty sweet stuff though I must admit I haven’t played much of the Wii as I have Dreamcast and Sega Genesis. Playing Soul Calibur 4 at a friend’s house rekindled my love for the series so I’ve been playing the original on Dreamcast on occasion. Also, I tried beating Sonic 2 as I have always tried as a kid… but failed. You would think after all these years and extensive experience in action games I would have a better handle on… well… mainly the last boss, the rest of the game is easy as pie. Though there was this one pit in mystic caves… the one with the spikes and high walls… yea. Fun fun fun.

On this note I should… note. :|
-that despite my lack of updates (which I’m sure you are all used to by now and have stopped checking the site… all 3 of you) I have been quite active. Well, by my definition at least. Before making a blog update I set a few goals for myself which were: publish interview with GAMEINVEST, make an inanetalk.com podcast, and make the best mix I possibly could with the vinyl I have. It was the last one that I got hung up on. With a limited selection of vinyl I figured the mix I release has to be perfect otherwise I end up using the same tracks over for other mixes to show my progress and that takes away the “freshness” of my music. Yesterday however I made a bold move and ordered 50 records for a very cheap price. Primal records is abandoning it’s vinyl business and was practically throwing vinyl at me. How could I say no? Yes I suppose it was yet another impulse buy for me… Either was expect a mix here next week. DEMAND IT if it’s not here. :P

Oh but what about the other two goals?
-The GAMEINVEST interview can be read here at the ever awesome DS-X2 site. ;)
-While the first ever inanetalk.com podcast can be found here on this page. (we’re also on itunes… somewhere)

Korg DS-10 is mentioned in the podcast now that think of it, and I made a track using it and a sample from Ken Ishii’s new remixed album. Korg DS-10 is lots of fun to tweak and play around with and it’s of such high quality that one could use it in a professional production environment. I’m kinda lost when it comes to arranging melodies, (I will be learning some of that this year at Sierra college hopefully) so most of my creativity comes in the form of the drum machine. You can download this “remix” right here (right click->save as).

Here’s the promo video for Ken Ishii’s new album (where I took the sample from). I totally want this… sooo bad.

so bad

E3 2008 and I

Published on July 18, 2008 in E3, games and links. 0 Comments

Put away the party hats, I’m still alive.

I took a little unannounced vacation from my blog. That and I had nothing to blog about! Really, nothing. Then E3 hit and I was busy helping out Dennis post stuff up. I also have an interview with the founder of a unique Portuguese company making “pop” games called GAMEINVEST (their caps, not mine). Ok, there’s only about 8 questions, but I put a lot of thought into this! Especially because I had no clue who these guys were at first and I had to make questions that were… you know… relevant to the company. Should be interesting, look for it sometime next week.

On a side note: Holy **** they completely redesigned their website in the last 6 hours.

While I haven’t been playing many games my friend Mike actually made one! It’s quite niche as it’s an interactive fiction game (all text) or “IF” for short. I think it’s still pretty cool. You can check it out here – and yes he used that game as an excuse to make a mini-site.

Back to talking about E3… yes opinions are everywhere on the web… but I want to rant about it too!

Nintendo fucked up their E3 presentation. Don’t get me wrong, if you make an effort to seek out upcoming quality games for Wii and DS, you will definitely find them. Nintendo however did not present any of these. Ok maybe a few, but really just the tip of the iceberg. Nintendo is taking the Wii’s potential hype and just throwing it in the fire.

Nintendo:
Dead rising for Wii? phhs… Mad world? bah!… Sam and Max? Who cares about point-and-pick games anymore?… Sonic Unleashed? meh. …You know what we need to show? We need to show WiiSport resort and WiiMusic! Yea! People will love crappy simulations of cheap midi instruments!

I didn’t watch Sony and Microsoft’s presentations, but I pretty much know what they showed and on that basis I’ll say they were equally good. Final Fantasy XIII for 360 stood out as one of the bigger surprises by far. Shows Japanese game developers are trying to bank as much as they can on the “hardcore” American gamers.

Alright, that does it for this week. I’ve got plenty of time now before school next month so I’m going to try finishing Advance Wars and reviewing it like I promised. I’m going to try getting my hands on “Korg DS-10″ next week as well! Should be fun, look out for it.

Minor Update 6/27/08

Published on June 27, 2008 in Demo, Linux, PC, Web and video games. 0 Comments

I finally got around to playing Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness – demo, in Linux. The demo/game itself was great, though a bit short. I pointed out to my friend the graphical drivers freaked out on me a lot when I tried to use higher resolution but it turns out running Compiz in the background at the same time was probably a major contributor to this. Oh well, it still looked great in 800×600. Penny Arcade’s artist (“Gabe”) has gotten progressively better over the years. To the point were you could marvel at some of his more artistic pieces. In fact right now they’re pulling off some weird 80s ping-pong movie and it looks amazing. True webcomic revolutionaries at work. The fact that they now have a game is further proof of their influence. Anyways, I’m tempted to buy the full game, but I want to start building a vinyl collection this summer instead (while maintaining a steady savings – did I mention I’ll have a job soon? :P ).

I’ve got a lot of catching up to do before E3 hits. Did you know Activision isn’t even attending this year? WTF is that about? Or are they back in it now? Shit, this is what I’m talking about. I’ve got a lot of reading(/watching (the 1UP show)) to do! Sometimes I grace something with the source of gonintendo.com and shutter. There were a couple of times I would be ahead of them, but now it’s just scary. Could I ever catch up to these people? Match their persistence? That RMC guy is one crazy M.F.-er. Alright, I shall scour the internet, tonight! I will hopefully be back on my shit before July… and get some daily DJ practice in somehow.