![You suck at protoshop. No, you [i]really[/i] oo.](http://blog.gg8.se/images/you-suck-at-photoshop-you-really-do-your-awful.png)
Strongbad is alive again!
August 27th, 2007After a long pause (Maybe summer break?) Strongbad (Internet cartoon character) is back and kicking. At the rate of one per week, there have been two new sbemails, #174 mini-golf and #175 concert. Following the same pattern, #176 should be released any minute now.
Choose one or go to the sbemail menu.
I’ll try to print that Sloshy logo on a t-shirt for my show 1 September, as a fun reference. (Which will hopefully confuse the usual audience of emo kids at the festival, hehe)
Screenshots viciously stolen from Homestarwiki.
nitro2k01 on Moshpit Open 2007, 1 September
August 23rd, 2007
So after some communication problems (Pun intended) it’s now official. I’ll be playing at the Moshpit 2007 festival. The festival is mainly an emo/rock festival, but this year they decided to dedicate one stage to electronic music, mainly chip music. (The battle stage) My fellow microdisko organizers Cornbeast and nxpnsv will play there too, as well as 7 others.
I find annoying how they mispelt my nickname. (nitro2kl instead of nitro2k01) But I don’t blame them too much, even I had a problem with it the first week I used it, so no wonder someone who types it for the first time gets it wrong.
Info: (In Swedish)
Datum: 1 september 2007
Plats: Folkets Hus, Nykvarn, Stockholm, Sweden (Resinfo)
Inträde: 100 sek förköp eller 150 kr i dörren
Åldersgräns: Ingen (Alkoholfritt)
Lineup: Se affischen
Hemsida: http://www.moshpitopen.com/ och http://www.myspace.com/moshpitopen2007
Reaktor oscilloscope showing the Youscope demo
August 23rd, 2007I recently saw this wonderful wild demo, (Youscope by tvt) consisting of an audio file being fed into an oscilloscope. (If you don’t know what a wild demo, or even just a demo is, I suggest you read up on the demo scene. No further explanation of these concepts will be given here)
I decided to build my own oscilloscope in NI Reaktor and try it out. The result was not really satisfactory. For one thing, the blur works different on an analogue oscilloscope compared to how Reaktor’s blur is working. Also, Reaktor was not meant to work as a X-Y-oscilloscope. (However, displaying a graph with t on the x axis works fine)
The first video is the original video recorded by tvt, where the demo plays on an analogue oscilloscope. The second one is my Reaktor oscilloscope.
For those of you who are into Reaktor there are two things that you might be curious about. The first thing is what the wires to the sound output are and why they are there. Well, appearently, Reaktor refuses to unless evaluate the value from the sound input unless there are wires that also leads the events to a sound output. (This probably has to do with saving CPU cycles) I also put a multiplier that multiplies by zero to silence the sound, while still letting audio events through.
The other thing is the two things inside the structure that I move the cursor over. These are simply inverters. Because of my sound card (Or the way Reaktor plots data) the image got flipped both horizontally and vertically, and the inverters flip the image so the text in becomes readable.
The little thing in the end of my video is not from the demo actually, but from Herbert Weixelbaum’s Tanzmusik (From the 8-bit operators Kraftwerk tribute) which I though looked good in X-Y-mode. (;
Green is the new black is the new green?
August 21st, 2007I recently received a t-shirt from Greenvoice, courtesy of Andrew Nesbitt, as a thank you for testing out the site.
The left image is the back of the shirt, but I had to wear the shirt the wrong way around to be able to take the shot.
The T-shirt is pretty good looking, but a few points of criticism:
- They decided to put the brand on the back of the shirt. That’s a total nono from a marketing point of view! People pay more attention to the message on the front of a shirt, as that’s usually the side of a person you’re looking it when communicating with her. The back can also be covered with for example a jacket, or as in my case, a backpack. From the designer’s point of view I can understand the decision, kind of, but I still think it would’ve been a good idea to at least print the URL in the front.
- Black text on brown fabric! Of course the word black should be in black for best effect, but the color of the fabric should be adjusted accordingly.
- The punchline! As it seems, the slogan “Green is the new black” is far from unique. This is not a problem at all really, since the mesage fits the size, especially since it has the word green in the URL. The reason I’m mentioning is that I’ve seen (almost) the same punchline twice since I got the shirt. First Google asks Is green the ne black?, referring to the fact that you can save energy by turning your electronics off. Then I saw the original punchline in a Swedish magazine. (Displayed below)
I’ll continue by describing yesterday in photos:
I was at my grandpa’s, picking apples. Here are two shots from when and sat down for some rest. One totally useless lawn shot, and on shot from above my head to see how wll I managed to cut my half hairstyle.
Here’s an apple I picked, and shot on the garden table. An ok shot, isn’t it? Then what I believe to be the same apple next to another Apple, an iMac that I found in the trash. The OS is Debian (Etch) if anyone wonders. And to the other question, no, it didn’t have Linux installed when I found it, but Mac OS 9. 
Next up I had some sushi at the sushi bar Ki-Mama. Any rumours you might have heard about it are totally true, this place in one of the best sushi bars in Stockholm. The only little complaint is that the rice could’ve been more sticky. I eat sushi with sticks, and the rice cushion fell apart for two of the pieces. (The alliteration sticky <-> sticks is unintentional) Unfortunately I didn’t remember I had my camera with me until I had finished my dish. :/
But what truly love about the place is the fantastic wall art! At first it might look like a painting, but in fact it consists of torn, round stickers and small pieces of papier marché. To me it seems to be made in a true Zen fashion. Every piece must be put in the exact right spot, and it must’ve taken a lot of perseverance to get them all in place. Likewise, the material is bound to age and degrade over time, also true to the Zen mentality.
Here are a couple of close-ups of the mosaic:
^^ Close-up of the hot springs
^^ Close-up of the octopus-sensei
So, a question to my readers. I want to know whether there is a symbolism in the theme? Does anyone know the artist who made the mosaic?
These are my theories: It’s clearly related to the sea. (What else to expect in a sushi bar?) The thing to the right is possibly a fireworks explosion, but probably a hot spring. I have a little theory that it could be a blow from the whale’s blowhole that has somehow been displaced.
The two main objects in the picture are the whale and the octopus. The octopus is carrying the whale, and as can be seen on the lower left close-up, he’s carrying the whale with one sucker on the viewer’s side of the whale.
According to my theory, the octopus is the hard working sushi chef, who without trouble can handle a fish as big as a whale. (I know that whales are mammals, but that sentence would have felt unnatural if I had used some other construction like “sea creature”. Besides, that sentence is not strictly saying that a whale is a fish, only comparing the size of fish vs a whale)
So does anyone know a deeper meaning, or can see any cultural Japanese references that I’m unaware of?
I’m on Facebook!
August 12th, 2007I can’t say I didn’t hesitate, but after a while I felt I had to see what the fuzz is about. So now I’ve joined Facebook. I tried to be careful about only adding people who would recognize me, and I didn’t turn on “spam mode”. I will not preach about what’s so good with FB. (Frankly, I’m not even sure myself yet) If you’re in it, fine, otherwise, fine too.
However, I decided to give it a serious, and today I also created a group, the Gameboy Musicians group. If you’re on Facebook, and you’re a Gameboy musician, join it, whynot?
Until next time, good bye and have a nice day!
Download my music from TuneSquare!
August 3rd, 2007I found this new place, TuneSquare, which is a music sharing community for artists and listeners, that claims that they will pay artists based on downloads. (They show an ad for each download)
It’s still in a beta phase, so they money exchange system is not active yet, so I don’t know how that part works yet. However, there’s a competition going on where the most popular artist will win some money and a cell phone.
Help me do that dy downloading the music of nitro2k01 from TuneSquare. Please support me by downloading my music from that link. I will also release some previously unavailable material on that site only.
Thanks in advance.
Lavotrino (Beta)
August 1st, 2007Something I made when experimenting with some piano VST plugins. It’s tracked rather than played, if you wonder. People with formal music training will probably find a lot of things to complain about, but hopefully someone will like it. :p
It’s not done, there lot of things to be done. (Like adding velocity, and actually finishing it!)
