Feeling guilty about not posting

Oops. It’s been rather a long time since my last post, so I thought I’d post a wee update about what we’re currently up to.

Firstly, we’ve been (fairly leisurely) putting together a proper band website. It’s going to be running on google app engine (like my own site) and will have various cool things like a recipes database, gig listings, etc. It’s mostly done, but there’s some niggly things still to tidy up (which obviously wind up taking longer than everything else…), and we’ve both been pretty lazy about finishing it off.

Secondly, the plan is to start thinking about getting some gigs once the website’s done, so we’ll be booking a practice room and hopefully looking for other people to help out. Given that everything we’ve recorded relies so heavily on non-realtime laptop editing, I’m still not sure how to get it working in a live situation without sounding like boring pub rock, but on the extremely unlikely chance you’ve been reading since the blog started, you might remember this (embarrassingly boastful) post. Shortly after that post I ran into trouble getting my usb soundcard to work with the netbook, and the software got shelved.

Since then, however, I’ve replaced my main laptop, and I figure it’ll be up to the task of some realtime audio manipulation, so I’ve restarted work on the pedalboard2 software. There’s various bits and pieces still to do, but it’s actually at the state where I could feasibly use it live. Here’s a screenshot:

To begin with, the plan is to use the File Player there to play a backing track taken from whichever song we’re playing, with my guitar going through various effects beside it in a textural role, and Craig’s guitar separately playing the more straightforward parts. Then as we add more people, the backing track can get reduced until we’re not using it at all.

Anyway, once I’ve smoothed some of the rough edges off, you’ll be able to download it from my website.

Giant Bears: Finding our Way Home

A Giant Bears video made from the footage I shot during the West Highland Way trip:

Zen Running

I just spent 40 minutes completing the Gall Blaster level on Bit.Trip Runner…

Note: this is not the Gall Blaster level. I took a screenshot of the wrong level...

…yet not once did I get frustrated, or want to give up. Despite my many clumsy failures, all the times I crashed into walls or fell down holes, I never got fed up of trying. And when I eventually completed it, I didn’t just reach the finish line in one piece. I 100%-ed it. I got all the gold bars, hit all the crosses, and I bounced across the finish line like a rainbow powered pogo stick. I don’t know of any other game where I would be willing to spend so much time on a single level only to not just beat it, but get a perfect score out of it (on the first complete try).

It’s the music, of course. Bit.Trip Runner is easily the best music game I’ve ever played. Everything about the game is informed by music. Every obstacle, every pickup and jumppad, is quantised to the music. Even without the feedback of hitting the crosses, or falling down a pit, you know when you’re doing well because every button press is in time with the music. And brilliantly, this extends to the design of the levels too. Every level is full of repeating patterns – bounce up these steps, hit the jump-pad, duck under the pipe, then do it again – structured like a great piece of music.

But the key thing, the whole reason that I’m willing to spend 40 minutes on a single level in this game, is that the music never stops. When you hit an obstacle and get zapped back to the start of the level, the music doesn’t pause or break. It carries on, barely even acknowledging anything’s happened. This is a game which makes you feel incredible when you complete a level – bouncing across the finish line with your rainbow cape trailing behind you – yet completing the level is almost beside the point. For a game as hard as this, it’s remarkably easy to fall into a zen state where failures just don’t matter. It’s the experience that counts, not the outcome.

Loads of pictures

In keeping with my vague tradition of posting tons of pictures here, you can see my abortive trip up the West Highland Way with my brother here.

Incidental details begging to be expanded into their own story; no.27

From Grimoires: A History of Magic Books:

Barrett, described in one newspaper as ‘a miniature-painter, and an amateur of chemistry’, was better known in his lifetime for his failed ballooning exploits than his knowledge of magic. Three times in the year 1802 he drummed up a large paying crowd to see him attempt a balloon assent[sic?], and three times he failed embarrassingly. Regarding his attempt at Greenwich, one reporter complained, ‘at no public exhibition do we ever recollect such a complete want of management as at Mr. Barrett’s Balloon,’ while at Swansea the platform collapsed as he began to address the crowd, damaging his balloon, and causing injury to a number of spectators. He departed to the sound of hootings and howlings from the crowd. Reporting on this third fiasco The Morning Chronicle stated, ‘we hope it will be the last. In short, he does not seem to possess a sufficient knowledge of chemistry.’

…

Smith claimed some of these conjurations and talismans were culled from ancient manuscripts in the possession of the Mercurii, a secret magic society of which he was a member – perhaps the only one. However, one was also attributed to George Graham, a friend of Smith’s, who was a disaster-prone occult balloonist in the Barrett mould.

Love this book Disaster-prone occult balloonists…

To be tied together by a story and a promise

At the risk of another short post linking to someone’s blog, this story blew me away. I love her writing so much, and to think that it was partly born out of this story…

Also…

…this is fantastic…

I don’t believe in the power of love

Boom Bip’s blue eyed in the red room isn’t a particularly exciting album. It’s nice enough for the most part, but it’s unlikely to set anyone’s heart racing. That is, apart from the last song.

Here, Nina Nastasia’s vocals turn a mild mannered new age-y track into something hard and true. The second verse:

I listen to your breathing
it’s steady and it’s slow
we lie close to the ceiling
I think of children in our home
but the quiet in the corners
stirs me from the thought
I might leave tomorrow
to feel the joy of a new start

There’s something fierce and unflinchingly honest to her lyrics, a refusal to retreat into platitudes or comforting half-truths. It’s there in the first verse, “we do not talk of feelings, and you know I can’t pretend”, and of course the chorus, “I don’t believe in the power of love”. It’s a love song that deals with reality rather than the soap opera melodramatics of so many love songs, and that makes all the difference. If only she’d featured on every track on the album…

EP Elaboration: Suzumiya

Last one! I didn’t mean to spend so long on these. Anyway, Suzumiya…

A few Precursors anecdotes

Having bought Precursors on Saturday, I feel the need to share some anecdotes:

• It took me the better part of 4 days to download the game, because Beamdog seem to be a bit rubbish. Presumably they’ll fix their download client soon?
• I never knew my father, but apparently he was killed when a frozen mammoth fell out of a thawing glacier onto his head.
• Upon leaving the starting town: a man ran past me panicking and disappeared into thin air; at the same time a dune buggy flew over a hill, crashed into a rock and exploded; three bandits appeared from nowhere and killed me. This was all watched by a cattle herder who just stood there as the buggy exploded and the bandits killed me and a couple of his cow-things.
• There is a religion in the game that believes every person is just a character in a computer game, existing solely for the benefit of The Player. The stated goal of this religion is to make contact with The Player and convince them to never finish the game, so they may live forever.

I really like this game. Buggy and broken and funny and chaotic. Really enjoying myself.