Oh My Josh!

Things I found.

2011-02-01T05:40:00.000-08:00

Since I got back to uni I've been nosing around my hard drive from last year and found my cubase projects :)

here are two works in progress that I threw up on soundcloud.. Remember they're by no means finished, especially the second one. Also any suggestions on track names are welcome :p

Dumdddumdum by Skkitz

Pulse by Skkitz

2000 views! :D

2011-02-01T05:29:00.000-08:00

Just logged in for the first time in a while and saw that I now have over two thousand views! Thanks guys!

Also, seem to be getting some referalls from Google finally :) woop woop!

Real post on the way!

x

Grrrrr!

2011-01-14T06:12:00.000-08:00

It turns out the people that handle student finance, after reducing my maintenance loan for this year by almost £1000 last month, have decided that they won't let me claim for essential costs from studying abroad... This is after both them and my university told us before we signed up to go abroad that we would be able to claim for costs like flights and compulsary insurance fees... Goddamm you Cameron.. It's probably your fault somewhere down the line.

Basically what this means is that I can barely afford my accomodation payments this year and I'll be living off pasta and peanut butter... again.. I thought I left that behind when I came home from Canada :(

Green Lantern

2011-01-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

So as my last post was about a movie I thought I'd follow suit today.

The Green Lantern movie comes out in July this year and, from the trailer, looks.. well.. fun. I recently got into the Green Lantern comics and for the last couple of months I've had my head buried in any kind of Green Lantern mythos and stories I can get my hands on. (I've yet to get hold of the Blackest Night series, to my continuing dismay) So right now I'd consider myself fairly well brushed up on the Green Lantern corps. I'll definitely go and watch the movie buut I'm pretty sceptical about how it'll turn out. At first I thought they'd try to follow the Emerald Dawn story, as that's where Hal Jordan first encounters his ring, but it looks as though they're kind of gonna do their own thing... as so often happens with movie adaptations.

Anyways here's a trailer. Let me know what you think :)
(Also, I had to green text... just had to..)

Sooo... what did everybody think..?

2011-01-11T15:58:00.000-08:00

I was pretty late in gettign to see this... BUT IT WAS AWESOME WASN'T IT!? When the guy was all like "FWOOOOSHH!" and the bikes were all "ZOOOM!!" then it was like "PCHING!" "FWAPPAMM!" "BSHOOOM!!" You know!? Right!?

...

But seriously though, read the full post:

I frickin LOVED this movie. Pretty much everything about it was essentially what I look for when I go to a cinema.
The 3D was done really well and, most of all, SUBTLEY. None of this "oooh look things are flying towards us! Better duck!" The contrast set up from the 2D "real" world and the 3D "Grid" worked really well even if you saw if coming. Jeff Bridges was epicly good, as was pretty much all of the acting. The cg and effects etc. were everything you'd expect. Excellent cinematography, sets, script etc. Possibly my favourite part of the whole thing was the soundtrack (which I've been listening to non-stop for about a week now). I'm a huge Daft punk fan and every time their classic sound kicked in (always excellently placed) I felt all warm between my legs. Although I'm not sure if they wrote the orchestral stuff.. Anybody care to clarify?

So as soon as I get my hands on a dvd I'll pretty much lock myself away in my room with the curtains drawn and a box of tissues... And not just for Olivia Wilde...

Possibly one other reason I liked this so much was the fact that it's basically just a MASSIVE LINUX AD... And if youve been following me for a while then you'll know I run linux on my laptop and think it's awesome..
I wasn't sure how to feel when **MINOR SPOILER** Sam was sitting down at the table pc in his dad's office and he brought up a list of Linux terminal commands.. As soon as I told the guy next to me he facepalmed.. Also the obvious whole deal with the free/open source OS in the opening. Should I not make this public? Hmmm.. Anyways...

Have the end credits music and an awesome DP wallpaper... it's all hi-res and stuff don'cha know..

Peace

HOLY COWZEZ!

2011-01-11T13:08:00.000-08:00

Ok this is, like what.. the third time I've done this? Meaning not post in almost a month.. oh dear.

So, major updates: I'm no longer in Canada. Came home on christmas eve and almost immediately went to france to ski for a week before finally getting home to merry old England.
I'm heading back to uni (Keele) on saturday to bum around with friends until I can move into my room on campus, which is gonna be sweee-eet. Re-integration has so far led to too much Fallout3 and Icewind Dale 2 and not enough revision.. not much change there then.
Grades from last semester look good so far but I'm still waiting on two more before I jump for joy.

Ok so, that's the boring stuff out of the way... This month I'm feeling... music and games I reckons.. Check my next post for more interesting things. I leave you with.... YATTA! If you haven't seen it already, and if you don't completely love it, then I don't know what society can do for you to be honest..

(p.s. I'm back this time... promise.)

WOOP WOOP!

2010-12-17T10:59:00.000-08:00

Happy time: I just submitted my last piece of work to uni for this term =D
AND! I sorted out a room on campus next semester... Good day is good.

Back to merry old England in 6 days, then off to France to ski with the familly on boxing day. Followed by seeing people for the first time in like 7 months. I can't wait!

Also, I need a cornish pasty BADLY.

Have some music:

Where did everybody go?

2010-12-11T09:57:00.000-08:00

It seems like there was a group of us who started out blogging around the same time a few months ago and we all followed eachother pretty well.

But all my favourite bloggers haven't posted in weeks :(

Is it because we've all got our finals and assignments happening? Or did everybody just lose momentum?

When I say my favourite bloggers I'm talking about people like these guys:

http://htunlogic.blogspot.com
http://mpcbeats.blogspot.com
http://crammarcland.blogspot.com
http://cooltowndude.blogspot.com
http://failtothefail.blogspot.com
http://themaiestasphotography.blogspot.com

Snow, Harry Potter and about 3 weeks..

2010-12-08T21:16:00.000-08:00

SORRY FOR NOT POSTING IN LIKE A MONTH!!! Seriously guys, I'm uber sorry I disappeared for so long. I got lumped with all of my final projects and severe financial oblivion so my excuse is that I've been super busy.. I SHOULD be all finished by the end of next week though. So I'll hopefully get things up and running again pretty soon.

But now that I get here it's suddenly difficult to think of anything to write...

Anyways I'll try to make this post readable.. After the break:

First of all, hit play:

Well done, now read on.

Concerning my life: I saw Harry Potter a while ago. I guess most of you have seen it by now so a detailed review would just be pointless. In short, I'm glad I saw it, it was a fun movie. It finished a bit too soon and I think they rushed the story along EVEN MORE than previously. Also, the bit with the dancing... seriously? Oh dear.

Don't worry though, the new TRON is on the horizon..

+ It FINALLY snowed properly here in Montreal. After being teased by everybody back in England at how they have tons of snow and we had nothing, the gods decided to dump almost two feet on us over the course of Monday. Which is cool. Because I like snow.

It's weird to think that in two weeks from today I'll be going home.. This term has gone super fast. The main concern now is finding somewhere to live when I get back to Keele... Which isn't looking promising I must say.

Finally, I'll be taking suggestions on how to survive until January on £72... (w00t)

My favourite ways to procrastinate.

2010-11-20T13:53:00.000-08:00

Despite having 2 compositions, 3 recordings and a couple of essays to finish over the next 2 weeks I find myself yet again exploring the depths of the internet for meaningless time-wasting trivialities..

Today's search has rekindled my love for Tipper. If you don't know about Tipper then check out the following:

This guy is awesome. He's only got one track up on we7, which is where I'd usually send you to listen to musicians. But there's a few on youtube and you can get hold of his Surrounded album on emusic.

Also, I'm gonna go see the new Harry Potter movie tonight. So I'll probably post a review some time tomorrow :)

PEACE!
xx

SORT YOUR LIFE OUT!

2010-11-18T11:28:00.000-08:00

So today, and this weekend I plan on having a sort-my-fucking-life-out session.

Basically I realized I have less than £300 to last me until I leave Canada... Which could be tricky.. Especially when, as soon as I get back to England, I have to lay a deposit down on a house..

So it looks like rice and water for the next couple of months.. (w00t!)..

This mainly means I won't be able to go skiing next month :(

Laaaaame

EDIT: Also, people suggested getting a job.. which is fair. But I'm only here for one semester so I don't have a visa and can't legally earn money... WOOT.

So yeah.. 5 weeks of past and more pasta it is :)

Ok crisis over..

2010-11-16T20:18:00.000-08:00

So it turns out somebody just took my pen drive out of the computer I left it in and moved it across the room..... found it completely by chance after checking in the security lost and found boxes in ALL THREE of Concordia's buildings as well at the IT dept. office about 3 times...

Facepalm.jpg

GODDAMMIT!

2010-11-15T22:05:00.000-08:00

Lost my USB key today with all my work and a couple movies and some music and a bunch of super important banking and flight home info files on it and I forgot to back everything up since I switched OS and formatted my hard drive.... GAAAHHHH!!!! I'm so mad at myself!

Luckily most of my work is also stored online. But I had a super productive day today and just lost everything I did.

FML

Pic related.... It's my life.

Broove yourself

2010-11-13T22:58:00.000-08:00

Chill, turn your volume up and broove yourself

Found this guy on Newgrounds whilst playing this game.

Turns out Newgrounds has some kick ass musicians. Gotta be honest I'd only really used it for games and the odd animation up until recently. But there's an awesome community and it's a good platform to get your music/artwork/animations reviewed.

Check it:

Haven't posted any music in a while..

2010-11-11T09:41:00.000-08:00

Here's some Deadmau5 to listen to whilst you're blogging today. It's a 10 minute song so just leave it running while you post/read :)

Enjoy!

An age old rivalry..

2010-11-11T08:57:00.000-08:00

The other week we found this place in china town that claims to offer "all you can eat and drink" including draft beer... So, in true student form, we decided it must be done. And it just so happened that in the same evening a French guy challenged me to a drinking contest..

So we're goin to this place tomorrow with a bunch of international students from England, France, Australia and Germany to test out this "all you can drink" claim... I'm pretty skeptical to be honest. If they live up to it then I'll be pretty impressed.

Rioting you say?

2010-11-10T07:52:00.000-08:00

Read this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11726822

If you're reading right now, then watch this: http://atdhe.net/watch-bbc-news.php

Basically, the student protests in London, probably due to a few chavs, have turned pretty violent. Which kinda sucks. But still shows something.

Really though, there are about 50,000 students protesting in London right now against the rise in tuition fees. The only Lib Dem MP I've seen interviewed is being a typical politician by saying he opposes the policy but failing to vote against it.

Also, typical media coverage. Watching the BBC's coverage and they have a few contacts inside the Millibank Tower (where the violence is happening) who they are talking to periodically. Every single one they've spoken to has the same message: "we're all working as usual, there is no danger to us." But the typical sellout reporter in the studio is trying to push the idea that the building is under siege and nobody is getting out alive.

They had a speaker from the student body to question about the protest. He pushed the point that 99% of the protest is still peaceful and the only way it will be remembered as violent is if the media covers it in such a way. After thanking him the pictures, of course, go straight back to police fighting with protesters and the useless reporter trying to make it into an apocalyptic movie scene.

Screw the mass media. I had more faith in the BBC.

Peanut butter

2010-11-08T09:03:00.000-08:00

Can somebody in Canada please tell my why I can't find any good Peanut Butter?

And don't give me that Kraft nonsense..

If you haven't tried this you haven't lived:

Headphones

2010-11-07T15:32:00.000-08:00

So during my 6 cups of coffee, musical marathon last night my headphones finally gave out. Which meant that I had an excuse to sleep, but also that I needed new headphones...

In light of this I picked up a pair of these badboys today:

I was torn between these and a pair of Aerial7 Chopper2's which had a better frequency response but a slightly lower sensitivity. I'm also not familiar with Aerial7 so I decided on the old faithful Sennheiser, having had good experiences with them in the past.

They boast "high attenuation passive noise canceling", which isn't all that effective but I'm still fairly impressed with it, although it's nothing compared to a good set of high-end AudioTechnica or Bose cans, (who both had the noise canceling thing pretty well nailed) I couldn't really expect much more while still paying under $200.

Good points:

Nice, level frequency response with a good range of 18 - 22,000 Hz. (we can hear between 20 - 20,000) Level frequency response is good for critical listening, composition and studio work.
Decent passive noise canceling, but nothing to write home about. This is helped by the full ear coverage though, as opposed to smalled headphones that just kinda float on your ear and allow a lot of sound to leak in.
Very comfortable fit covering the whole ear with a good range of extension.
3m lead which is a pretty perfect length for my room.
Sennheiser headphones have notoriously good engineering and will last a good few years if treated nicely.
Lead only hangs on one side which is handy.
They don't make me look like a Skull Candy faggot.

Iffy things:

Noise canceling is only passive, I can still hear the vietnamese lady next door when she gets particularly riled up.
The lead, while long, seems a bit flimsy. I don't really trust it being handled roughly.
Instead of increasing my productivity by allowing me to listen to my work they have so far lowered my work-rate by prompting me to write this post...

Now that that's out of the way, time for more coffee.

Peace.
X

Entering work mode.

2010-11-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

Apologies for not posting in like 2 days. You can blame Concordia University... and Time Crisis...

Basically I have 3 compositions to get done this weekend and they're um.. not going well.
Anyways, I have coffee, soup + bagels and 750g of trail mix... So get ready for a night of procrastination-by-blogging! I'll probably upload the results when I'm finally finished so you can all tell me "dude.. that's just weird. You actually study this shit?"

See you on the other side.

(meanwhile, have some sonic gold. make sure you listen all the way through.. If you don't know Venetian Snares, you won't see it coming)

1000 views!

2010-11-04T07:06:00.000-07:00

I finally got my first thousand views :) (and at the same time, 50 followers)

If you were viewer number 1000, congratulations! You win nothing!

In b4 "my blog has like 593763567329 views and 678356 followers!"

RRAAAAGEEEE!!

2010-11-03T08:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the BBC posted THIS ARTICLE today. Which made me rage SO HARD.

In short, the British ~~twat convention~~ government has, on recommendation from a recent review by 'Lord Browne', has given A huge middle finger to everybody involved in education by abolishing the current cap on tuition fee's. Which means, starting 2010, we'll have to pay 'up to' (which means DEFINITELY) £9,000 per year to study.

£9,000! Are you fucking serious? that's almost THREE TIMES what we're paying already. That means families who have been saving for the last 18 years and can just about afford to get their kids to university, can now afford to go for ONE YEAR! ONE! That's a third of a degree.

This breaks Nick Clegg's so-called "promises" made before the election. As well as proving to us all what we already knew when Dave Cameron said THIS. Which was basically "Fuck the middle class."
Basically, the government decided that they'd rather continue their campaign for the pay rise they've been gagging for over the last few years than worry about the future of the country.

more>>

Watch this and rage with me:

All anybody talks about is "low income families". Enjoy destroying the middle class you elitist, arrogant, tory bastards.

"Let's increase the quality of education in our 'well funded' universities by not giving them any funding and driving lecturers out of their jobs."

Pay cuts and redundancies need to START with MP's and the greedy london bankers and their £7BILLION bonuses. NOT with the students who will be the future of the country OR the teachers and institutions that facilitate their education!

Education is a RIGHT, NOT a privilege.

GODDAMMIT I'M GONNA BREAK SOMETHING!

IT'S OVERRR!

2010-11-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

If anybody else is a fan of Alex Day's youtube channel (nerimon), then you've probably been following his Alex Reads Twilight series. He basically updates after every chapter or two of twilight. Anyways, today he finished the book.

DON'T WORRY, I haven't been converted to twilight, all his series has done is confirm how hilariously terrible the book is.

If you haven't been following the series then give it a look, it's a good laugh. Also subscribe to the channel and watch his other shit, it's all quality programming.

Anyways here's the last couple of chapters:

I would issue a SPOILER warning but I'm sure most people don't really care what happens..

(Hands up if you get the reference in the post title)

GODDAMN STUPID PROGRAMS THAT DON'T EVEN WORK PROPERLY!

2010-10-31T20:38:00.000-07:00

Anybody here a fan of MaxMSP? Well if you are then you're STUPID. Seriously, it's the most unintuitive, buggy, over-hyped, elitist, broken program ever to dirty the screen of a computer.

For anybody who is unfamiliar with MaxMSP I'll attempt to sum it up:

But seriously though. Why waste 5 minutes of your life importing audio and setting automation in one of the readily available pieces of audio editing software, like ProTools or Cubase, when you could just spend as little as 20 solid hours trying to figure out how to do it in MSP? All you have to do after that is spend another couple of hours fixing the bugs inherent bugs in the MSP programming and cleaning up the "presentation view" without forgetting what all of the identical, stupidly awkward, buttons and sliders are connected to. And then you have your perfect daw (digital-audio workstation.)

-.-

rant continues after the break>>>

So here is my lowdown of the currently most popular music and audio production software:

ProTools - ProTools is the kid at school who both knuckles down to work and somehow makes a lot of friends along the way. Although he mainly gets top grades in academic subjects.

Logic - Gets similar grades to ProTools, still wears Velcro shoes. Enjoys painting with bright colours.

Cubase - The quiet metal fan in the corner of the class who does well but keeps to himself and doesn't attract much attention in class.

Reason - The kid who gets good grades by asking the teacher questions and showing all of his workings out on test papers.

MaxMSP - The fucking Hipster drop-out who only gets good grades when the other ~~programs~~ kids, lend him their ~~VTS's~~ notes right before class.

Ok, so maybe I'm being a bit harsh.

If you're an MSP wizard, then please, please explain to me how the fuck I'm supposed to write automation to a buffered audio file...
I mean, I could easily just open up something as mundane as Audacity and have it done in 5 minutes. But noooooooo! My Lecturer (who apparently helped write Max and MSP in the first place) wants us to forgo the ease of industry standard software and make our own patch after spending the last 6 weeks teaching us IRRELEVANT techniques....

Goddamn I need a beer.

pic related, it's what my rage could do to a planet right now.

EDIT: In light of the first comment (by copyboy), I should probably make something constructive out of this.

If you're looking for some audio editing software then there are sooo many daw's to chose from. It all depends on budget.

Your best bet is probably Audacity. While not able to handle MIDI this is a very capable FREE program to edit audio files.

While ProTools is the best around at the moment it is also EXPENSIVE and pretty much impossible to get a cracked copy as you need digidesign hardware connected to run it.

If you look really hard then you could probably dig up a Cubase crack somewhere, but it is notoriously difficult to find a copy that can get by their validation keys. (You usually need a USB stick with your Cubase license attached to your pc.)

Reason is easy to come by but can only handle MIDI. Apart from the THOR synth and a few of the samplers in Reason 8, which is awesome but takes a bit of working out to use it's full potential.

So really I'd go for Audacity. Unless you're sure you want to get a stable copy of a better piece of software. In which case I'd suggest Cubase. It's what I use and you can pick up Cubase 5 with a student discount for £250. Which is very reasonable for this kind of software.

SNOOWWW!

2010-10-30T23:36:00.000-07:00

So today was a pretty chilled day. I went up to Mont Royal with Mark and we found this sweet poutine restaurant. Seriously, they had like 30 different poutines.. And I'm not generally a fan of poutine but even I was impressed. Also I picked up some gloves and a hat in preparation for winter.

(pic related, apparently this is what Elvis would have ordered...)

Tonight was also pretty fun. It involved us Brits and Mark (the Australian) going to a Mexican restaurant with a few Frenchies, then getting some beers at one of said French people's apartment.

ALSO! We got the first snow of the season in Montreal. Just before we went to the Mexican place it started to snow lightly but it picked up a bit as the night went on. It's started to get cooold too. Which means soon i'm gonna have to be wearing ski socks and pj's under my trousers... (which I'm actually looking forward to because it's soooo comfy.) See the picture to see what snow looks like.

(snow.. this is what it looks like)

Tomorrow is looking like boot-purchasing day. I could do with a good pair of moon boots. Although it will mainly be Post Modern String Quartet writing day since I need to get one written before tuesday and I've had so many issues with Sibelius and Ubuntu that I haven't started yet.. But I downloaded musescore which is free (i think open source) notation software which should be fine for now..

I might upload the quartet once it's done. What are you guys' stances on post modern 'classical' music? Anybody a fan?