Follow-up to an earlier post about Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Dance Music: Did I forget to mention the guy is funny? Below are some examples of his Lester Bangsian blurbs explaining different genres*: Acid Breaks! This and Chemical Breaks (and Big Beat, I guess) are the most favorite genres of action movie trailers, sports highlight reels, corporate powerpoint presentations, and spastic TV ads featuring people doing something extreme like driving really fast while birdwatching. I can't listen to this anymore without getting silly images in my head of jumping in the air, pausing while the camera pans around me, and then resuming kicking some guy in the head. This is part of the "electronica" wave of mainstream acceptance in the late '90s.
2 Step Garage. God, this stuff is so fucking boring! Retaining the idiotic basslines of Speed Garage, the hiccuping staccato beats of that derivative Top 40 schlock that dares call itself RnB, and even worse: the endless crooning by "guest" popstars (hence all the "featuring" accolades in playlists), divas, and whiny narcissists who like to think of themselves as just too damn cool to be listened to by you. The only good thing about 2-Step is, unlike Speed Garage, it won't be used by invading alien armadas to their high councils as grounds for turning the Earth into a giant ashtray. [This is mostly true but expect a mix of "good" 2-SG on this page soon. --ed.]
Hard Acid Techno. Here we go: the genre that reveals all the awesome destructive power of the little silver box [Roland TB-303, dispenser of the squelchy "acid sound" --ed.]. Hard as fuck acid techno. Acid that'll kick your ass so hard you'll be shitting shoes for a month. This is the kind of music everyone listens to before doing something destructive. Sports teams listen to it before a big game, politicians listen to it before a speech, armies listen to it before they go to war, kids listen to it before they clean their rooms. I bet God was listening to it before he made humans.
*...which had to be retyped--note to all using Flash or the like: those formats are good for some things, but no one will ever quote you or find your words through a search engine on the Web if you hide them in the stinky folds of a proprietary format. Simple html pages are the way to go.
Just went for drinks with my friend Rick who knows programmer tech and and thinks a lot about open source. We talked about this problem of Flash; that it's good for shows (like tv) and one-way interactive (like games) but not so good for input/output of information (text not searchable, source files not malleable, etc). Rick got a faraway look in his eye and after a bit said something like ..."it wouldn't be so hard to write your own program, it would just take time... " This sort of conversation makes me want to down all tools and learn some back-end programming. Is there an equivalent economic model to the surivalist cabin in the woods scenario, that involves doing nothing but basic, pedestrian, unmarketable code all day?
Jim might be a better person to address this than me. I wouldn't have the logic or the patience to write any code. I freeze at the sight of a command line. Everything suddenly becomes like that game in the Strongbad email:
Ye find yeself in yon dungeon. Ye see ye FLASK. Obvious exits are SOUTH, NORTH, and DENNIS. What wouldst thou deau?
>Get ye flask
Ye cannot get ye FLASK.
>Why can I not get ye FLASK?
etc etc
This sort of conversation makes me want to down all tools and learn some back-end programming. Is there an equivalent economic model to the surivalist cabin in the woods scenario, that involves doing nothing but basic, pedestrian, unmarketable code all day? Yes. I guess Richard Stallman would be the patron saint of such a lifestyle.
And programming is easy in the way your friend Rick suggests. All it really takes is a lot of time. Someone like me, who knows only a little bit, can build something rather large and useful. Assuming you have a lot of time to give the project, and assuming you don't need it to run quickly or scale to insane numbers of users.
It's sort of like playing with blocks. You just start stacking the pieces up. Except you never run out of blocks, only time.
If anybody ever wanted to experiment I'd be happy to set up a little playground and provide some links to get you started.
thanks for the info and links, Jim. a "little playground" sounds grEat.
reading about Stallman, I see that the GNU folks don't like Gifs. The reasons (to do with patents) are convoluted and interesting. PNG is suggested as an altertnative format, but it doesn't handle multiple images (apparently - I know nothing about this) so animation is out.
(by the way, I kind of like those 'get ye the flask' games. Jim Munroe made a fun alt.culture one, called Punk Points, here.
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Follow-up to an earlier post about Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Dance Music: Did I forget to mention the guy is funny? Below are some examples of his Lester Bangsian blurbs explaining different genres*: *...which had to be retyped--note to all using Flash or the like: those formats are good for some things, but no one will ever quote you or find your words through a search engine on the Web if you hide them in the stinky folds of a proprietary format. Simple html pages are the way to go.
- tom moody 2-17-2004 9:07 pm
Just went for drinks with my friend Rick who knows programmer tech and and thinks a lot about open source. We talked about this problem of Flash; that it's good for shows (like tv) and one-way interactive (like games) but not so good for input/output of information (text not searchable, source files not malleable, etc). Rick got a faraway look in his eye and after a bit said something like ..."it wouldn't be so hard to write your own program, it would just take time... " This sort of conversation makes me want to down all tools and learn some back-end programming. Is there an equivalent economic model to the surivalist cabin in the woods scenario, that involves doing nothing but basic, pedestrian, unmarketable code all day?
- sally mckay 2-20-2004 7:30 am
Jim might be a better person to address this than me. I wouldn't have the logic or the patience to write any code. I freeze at the sight of a command line. Everything suddenly becomes like that game in the Strongbad email:
Ye find yeself in yon dungeon. Ye see ye FLASK. Obvious exits are SOUTH, NORTH, and DENNIS. What wouldst thou deau?
>Get ye flask
Ye cannot get ye FLASK.
>Why can I not get ye FLASK?
etc etc
- tom moody 2-20-2004 8:05 am
Yes. I guess Richard Stallman would be the patron saint of such a lifestyle.And programming is easy in the way your friend Rick suggests. All it really takes is a lot of time. Someone like me, who knows only a little bit, can build something rather large and useful. Assuming you have a lot of time to give the project, and assuming you don't need it to run quickly or scale to insane numbers of users.
It's sort of like playing with blocks. You just start stacking the pieces up. Except you never run out of blocks, only time.
If anybody ever wanted to experiment I'd be happy to set up a little playground and provide some links to get you started.
- jim 2-22-2004 6:51 pm
thanks for the info and links, Jim. a "little playground" sounds grEat.
reading about Stallman, I see that the GNU folks don't like Gifs. The reasons (to do with patents) are convoluted and interesting. PNG is suggested as an altertnative format, but it doesn't handle multiple images (apparently - I know nothing about this) so animation is out.
(by the way, I kind of like those 'get ye the flask' games. Jim Munroe made a fun alt.culture one, called Punk Points, here.
- sally mckay 2-22-2004 11:25 pm