The DaveBlog

Being a fan of interactive media I’ve discovered that it tends to outpace me. There are more games and fun toys that come out than I can possibly play through, let alone afford, and invariably I miss some really good ones while enjoying the ones that I already have. The problem is that the hardware required to run these tends to outdate, so a given production has a window of time where it can be reasonably acquired and played. Old computers, particularly the IBM/PC platform are troublesome since the updates are incremental and programs can exhibit a “sort of works” behavior that is hard to troubleshoot, but even old console videogames can be hard to play just because of their rarity. Some of the old classics are inaccessible since they cost a couple of hundred dollars on ebay. I’ve often wished there was some mechanism to reprint the older titles in some accessible way.

Fortunately for me, that’s sort starting to happen. Good Old Games is a company that’s offering digital downloads of some great older PC games for the price of a fast food combo meal. Furthermore, they’re either tweaked or run in wrapper software so that they’ll run on modern XP and Vista computers. I bought Freespace 2 from them already, and as soon as I clear out some of the RPGs I’m playing through I think I’ll try out the first Fallout game, which has never run on any computer I’ve ever owned. How cool is this?

Of course, “clear out some of the RPGs” might be a taller order than I think since I’m still in the middle of the excellent The World Ends With You on the DS and Final Fantasy 3/6 on the SNES. And I’ve still got this download of The Spirit Engine that I want to play through. And I’m playing WoW with some friends.

Holy crap what have I gotten myself into.

I just picked up a pair of pants and a big black spider fell out of them.

I don’t know what to trust anymore.

I always figured I was one of those uber-nerds who’d freak out if he ever lost access to the internet for any significant length of time.  I recently moved to a new place, and it took forever to get proper internet access set up.  It’s all good now, but I was basically disconnected for quite some time, between not being home during ISP business hours so I couldn’t get new service setup, and then several comical delays once I did finally get a call in to them.

However, it turns out there’s lots of fun to be had if you keep a folder of weird stuff you’ve downloaded over the years.  Until I got connected, I was able to read through Hugi #33, about half of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and play the entirety of Dink Smallwood.

Ergo: it turns out I’m still an uber-nerd.  Whodathunkit.

Or so I was told by a gal working the paint section of the local hardware store.  No introduction, no hesitation, just “you smell like food.”  The cashier echoed the sentiment.  I am notquite sure what this means other than I can now say I’ve gotten more attention from women from the use of a Subway pastrami sandwich than I’ve gotten from some brands of cologne.

One of the best things I got to do when I was in Japan is visit the Tsukiji fish market.   As you may have surmised, this is a market where many fish reside.  Most of them are frozen or in various states of being dead or almost killed.  But man, are they tasty.

Tsukiji is one of the larger fish markets in the world, and is the largest in Japan.  The majority of the nation’s fish comes from here, and I believe a sizable export market exists as well, although I didn’t spend nearly as much time learning about it as I did looking at it.  The market starts early in the morning, so if you’re just arriving in the country from California it’s actually not that bad of a place to visit, since your time zone isn’t that far off from the pace of life.  I had already been in Asia for a few weeks by this point, but that was okay, it was still worth doing.  It was quite a treat to have sushi from the freshest sushi place in the world.

I am definitely going back there should I return to Japan.

Quite an eventful set of weeks recently.
In the last few weeks, I’ve finished up my first quarter-century, gone and visited a bunch of good friends, interviewed for a job, gotten the job, and am all set to move for that job, to the town right next to the town where I met all those friends in the first place.  I am pleased to say the least.

Best part of the story?  I will be working at a hospital for the criminally insane.

So much music talk on my blog lately.  I guess it’s like something I do now.

One of my final assignments in my songwriting class at Folsom Lake is to compose a blues song.  This is not a task to which I am suited.  My musical background generally fits into electronic 4/4 boom-tish music, or loud guitar wrangling.  I must say I have no idea how to even approach writing the blues.  I mean, I know the whole 12-bar structure, I have a fair idea what a turnaround is, and I’m sure I can make up some words about hardships or trains or drinking or it being really hot outside or something, but anything I make is going to be either a complete knock-off of another song, or so far removed from blues ethos that it barely qualifies as a member of the genre.

On the other hand, maybe that second one is not so bad.  Though I should probably not use ReBirth on this one.

There was a Songwriter’s Showcase event, basically a recital, that happened at Folsom Lake College last Monday. Since I was in the songwriting class, I was performing. I played one of my newer songs, the same one I did for Inspiration Live, except with different instrumentation. This time, I had no guitarist, so it was me, my laptop, Reaper, and a BCR2000 hooked up to one of the electric pianos. The guitars and synths were prerecorded (save for the bridge section, where I did play one synth for about 20 seconds) and the drums were programmed in ReBirth, patterns triggered from the BCR. Despite my pedestrian singing voice, I think it went over really well, and the electronics were certainly a novelty to the Folsom crowd who have, as a group, generally never heard of any of this. So much, in fact, that the professor hosting the event introduced me as “a student who has incorporated electronic sounds and equipment into his playing” - as if it were something new and exotic instead of an entire genre.

While being introduced as The Electronic Music Ambassador to Folsom was pretty cool, one thing really stood out for me. Three members of The Cimorellis (an extremely talented group) were also performing that night, and I noticed that while I was performing, one of them was dancing in her seat, singing along during my chorus. Here’s one of the most talented groups of people I’ve met in recent years, and one of them knew the words to my song. She had heard them when I originally sang the song in class, and I guess liked it enough to remember it. My mind is blown.

Speaking of musicians who are not me, Josh Whelchel AKA TwiTerror, who I have known since the first Trax in Space site some nine years ago, was recently named Artist of the Month at the new site. He’s become a favorite on the site and has become very prolific, doing music for several freeware games as well as his own band, and I figured I’d known him longer than many of the site’s current members, I was in somewhat of a unique position and took the opportunity to roast him on their forums (my post is down near the bottom of that page). Huge congrats, Josh! You done good.

I am back from Japan.  My new nemesis is jet lag.  It’s never been a problem going East, but heading West it gets me every time.  I can adjust to the schedule change well enough, but the days are like staggering around the house in a sleepy haze - very like nursing a nice buzz - except that it lasts all day.  And I’m not always in the house.

There was far more that I did and want to talk about in Japan than I care to cram into one post, but I’ll mention things here and there, perhaps it will make for more interesting reading than my usual fare, which is ‘nothing.’  But it’s a blog, and a personal one at that.  Blogs are retarded.  What do you expect.

I am going to go stagger now.

In a week or so is the online distributed pseudo-live music mini-festival Inspiration Live hosted by Louigi Verona, an ambient/drumscape composer in Russia.  The idea is to take a bunch of electronic musicians used to making noise on their computers, and get them to play one or more parts to their songs on their own and record the output, a sort-of-live performance that bypasses the usual channels of production and assembly, and results in a more human, unprocessed sound.  On April the 2nd all songs submitted will be collected and released simultaneously, like a film festival, as well as broadcast over the internet-based KFOS Inner Space Radio run by DJ Allen One.  It’s a small thing being done by just a few artists, but it’s the kind of thing I’ve always wanted to take part in, so I submitted a performance my brother and I did of one of my new songs.  It’s VERY rough but it’s the first time we’ve attempted to do it so we figure it comes with the territory.  There’s a thread about it over on Trax In Space right now.  I won’t link the song but you can find it on that site if you’re determined.  Fair warning: I’m no vocalist but we didn’t have anybody else, so if you don’t like my singing you are free to screw off.