-AmpLive’s album “Rainydayz”
Freely at: http://www.onesevensevensix.com/amplive/
I apparently missed the fan outcry that surrounded this album (you can read about it on the link,) but whatever process it took to get it hosted freely on the net, then I’m glad it happened. The remix of Radiohead’s In Rainbows, with four of the seven songs featuring hip-hop vocals, could have been horrendously bad, but AmpLive never approaches that territory, and instead keeps is surprisingly fresh all throughout. There are a few effects such as ’stuttering drums’ that you just really don’t associate with Radiohead, but you can only smirk at them, given how great the album is as a whole. Normally when a rock album is remixed by a DJ, it becomes “a rap album with rock samples and the original singer is nowhere to be found.” And to that we all typically roll our eyes, right? Right. Well, of the seven tracks on the album, four have other artists’ vocals, three don’t. Of those seven albums, Thom Yorke is noticeably sampled on six of them. Of those six, he’s the sole voice on three, and heavily featured on another. If rock albums are to ever be remixed with rappers over then, then AmpLive has just written the blueprint on how to do it. The rappers, singers, and music aren’t card board cut-outs to be glued where he sees fit, but instruments in themselves to be guided by his turntable, mixing board, and creativity, to create on cohesive song.
Best tracks: 2, 4, 7, 8

-NIN’s album “The Slip”
Freely here: http://theslip.nin.com/
The Slip is Trent Reznor’s first full album since he told his record label ‘fuck off’, and decided he wanted to do things ‘his way’. As such, he gives the exemplary NIN experience: a story within an album that reeks of personal complication and near-futile struggle, only, this is different. If The Downward Spiral was the story of a person coming apart and failing, and The Fragile was an attempted rebuilding that ended in failure and realization at the fragility of the attempt, then The Slip is the realization that it’s not strength and overpowering that gains freedom, but simply agility and speed to keep other’s hands off of you; slipping away. And that’s exactly what Reznor did when he finally got out of his contract, and with that new found freedom, this album slips into a more comfortable pair of shoes as he realizes that the opposite of the pain previously felt isn’t happiness, but absence of feeling. And it (seems to) show that he’s come to realize his role in all of this, ending strongly on Demon Seed. And it’s a comfortable one too, as it plays almost like a greatest hits album that you’ve never heard before.
Best songs: 2 (though the vocal echo is a tad annoying,) 3 (noisecore, but it grew on me,) 5, 7 (Ahhh Clara, forever with us, forever not.)

-100 dBs’s album “Aphex Twin Mashups”
Freely at: http://www.100dbs.com/mixes/aphex/
DJ 100dBs (one hundred decibels,) mixes a work of techno-rap genius. Discontent that his every-day average hip-hop-head friends can’t appreciate finer techno works of Aphex Twin, he takes to task of mixing Richard James with lyrics that we all know well (assuming you’re into hiphop.) The result isn’t a molesting of Aphex, as some may imagine, but instead hip-hop that belongs on the soundtrack for The Fifth Element, or an equally hip futuristic film. Also, he has tons of other mixes for free here: http://www.100dbs.com/mixes/
Best songs: 2, 6, 8, 10

-Harvey Danger’s album Little by Little…
Freely at: http://www.harveydanger.com/downloads/
Before it was cool to do so, Harvey Danger knew that giving away their album for free would not ‘make them worthless,’ but in actually ‘get them more fans’. Seems kinda obvious now, huh? But after a few years of hiatus they were back at it in 2005 and in September they gave away Little by Little (even though a physical copy was on the shelf.) The result? According to the Wiki: “Within two months of release, the album had been downloaded 100,000 times, while the first pressing of physical copies (packaged with a disc of bonus material) had nearly sold out.”

And amazingly, if you’re the kind of person who actually read blogs, like this, I think you’ll agree that it’s really stood the test of time.
Best songs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

-DJ Z-Trip & Radar’s album Live at the Future Primitive Sound Session Vol. 2
Freely (DIRECTLY) at: http://djztrip.unknownvariable.com/audio/ztrip_fpv2.zip
From the first time I heard DJ Z-Trip I’ve been unable to pick my jaw up– No, wait, that’s not true. Not unable. UNWILLING. If history says nothing else about Z-Trip, it should be “He is the man with the golden ear.” Given any two sounds, I’ve no doubt he could figure out the way to optimally fit them together like an audial jigsaw puzzle that when completes shows a sonic picture of pure kickass. Now, this isn’t to slight Radar. DJ Radar is the turntablist who created sheet music for turntables. Yes, sheet music. He has since produced “Concerto for Turntable,” which he performed (along with an orchestra) at Carnegie Hall.

But this recording was done live, and as the liner notes say (something to the effect of (mine’s in a closet):) “Two men, five turn tables, and forty years of music.”

This is the album you want to own. Well, this and DJ Z-Trip and DJ P’s Uneasy Listening, which can also be found on DJ Z-Trip’s download page here: http://www.djztrip.com/downloads.html
Along with a remix of Mamma Said Knock You Out, Prince’s Kiss (with Murs,) Murs’ Beginning of the End Remix/Sampler, and tons more. Seriously. They’re good. They’re god damn good. They’re that good, and they’re free. And you should download them all.

I love that insane game with all of my ACII-art lovin’ heart, but I’ll be damned if the tiny window it uses doesn’t make my eyes well screaming for relief from deciphering one tiny mark from the next. The creator has said in an interview in which he talks about ‘losing’ his own project, saying: “I’m leery about third party interfaces. If a third party interface becomes popular, I think I might lose control of the project. I don’t want to be in a position where I have to accommodate and work with other people.” That’s a pretty scary notion, and one worth worrying about.

But at the same time, when my eyes hurt trying to play the game, it’s pretty hard to say that everything’s okay. I mean, I’m not saying I want 3d, or even a tileset, I just want it larger, so that I can see the stuff, y’know? Ahhh well.

But DF has something special. That thing; that “special something.” It does exactly what I want to see games do, tackle data complexity over graphical complexity. I want to be able to chop a bed up into its components, and breed war dogs, and when enemies (be they goblins or attacking wildlife,) enter your fortress, close the gates and flood the entrance with water through a system of levers that leaves your foe lying dead on the soggy ground.

Like Crysis goes to graphical extremes, and Grand Theft Auto goes to physics-interactive world exploration extremes, Dwarf Fortress juggles data like no other game out there, and it’s a shame that no one’s decided to back this guy, and hire him an additional coder to work with him (or some type of help that he’d have, anyway.) I mean, I could only imagine if a few other programmers were put under him and he was still given creative control.

I feel the need to preface this post by saying: I only have a 360 from this generation of hardware (well, a DS too,) and I eventually aim to get a PS3 and a Wii, as both either have games I want, or soon will. But I think myself a fan of games, more so than consoles. That said…

Don Reisinger put a great reality check up on Cnet today which I’ll choose to not quote, but instead paraphrase in my own words:

“Hey Sony, Microsoft, quit your bitching. Just because Nintendo cleaned your clock doesn’t mean you have to cry in the corner and whine ‘they don’t count anyway!’ They do. Now cowboy up and fight back. You”re trying to turn Nintendo into the elephant in the room no one is talking about, but it doesn’t matter, because everyone’s still giving the elephant their money, and not you.”

… Okay, so he was more nuanced, but I think I captured the sentiment well. It seemed particularly spurred forth by a comment from Sony’s CEO Howard Stringer: “I’ve played a Nintendo Wii. I don’t see it as a competitor. It’s more of an expensive niche gaming device.”

That’s hilarious; calling a cheaper competitor that’s kicked your ass in sales “expensive” and “niche.” Don’t worry Howie, I’m sure Nintendo doesn’t view you as ‘competition’ either. I mean, for that to be the case you’d have to double your hardware sales for both your console AND your handheld. Of course, you’d still be behind in both counts.

Of course, Nintendo capitalizing on their success is another thing entirely. I think they waited far too long to start believing their own hype. I really hope they’ve got some good things up their sleeve.

1. Program a Nintendo DS game.
2. Learn a second language. Esperanto?

She says “Hackers hacked my computer and now there’s this porno all over it!” I tell her it’s very unusual that someone would do this, and she tells me that “there’s no way my husband is looking at photography of naked men. He just would not do that. It’s not right.” You’re probably thinking what I was thinking; dude was in the closet, right? I figure that or the guy’s bi/bi-curious, even if they’re and older couple, maybe he’s carried this for a long time. Well, during the whole process of removing porn adware installed on her computer (processes running, startup options, etc., nothing special,) she says something that tips me off…

She says, “I’m just worried my daughter saw this stuff while she was on it last night while doing her home work. They work the kids so hard these days. She was up half the night in here, and I just do not know how she got it working with all these pop-ups.” Eureka.

In the writing of a story, it quickly became apparent to me that the characters (at least many,) are heavily reliant on Stickam more than typical IM or something audio-only like Ventrilo. Of course, I know nothing of the culture, so I have to immerse myself in it, right? Research, right? I mean, I figure I’ll even ask a few people if they mind if I stick around their room to get the hang of the whole thing. So I decide to do this. In my best effort not to be a weirdo, I even try to find someone around my age amongst the fields of kiddies so I don’t appear so much like a creep. To my surprise I find a woman that’s twenty-five and even bears a superficial resemblance to one of my characters, so I figure “Hey, here’s a good place to start!” I enter the ‘room’.

The first thing I see? The woman has fallen asleep on her bed, and the webcam is on her laptop in front of her. Her pretty face is clearly seen in lamplight as she snoozes away. In another small video window off to the side? A man has pulled out his penis and is masturbating to her. Ahhh internet, like an abusive lover you’ll never change. Any time there’s a glimmer of hope, or something new to entertain, you disappoint me, and my only solace is to try to convince myself that you hurt me because you love me.

It was made by three guys all working from their home, and they’re so damn proud of their game it would be tragic, if it weren’t so goddamn funny.

Well, okay, except the cat on the right. He knows he’s going to hell.

You seriously owe it to yourself to run through the NeoGAF thread for a quick laugh, even if you only browse the pictures. Through the thread they find that many other games have had their graves pillaged to create this shining accomplishment, including Unreal 3, Silent Hill 4, Morrowind, Diablo, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Black & White 2, and others, including ‘fmv’ from Pirates of the Caribbean flick, so, bonus points right?

Speaking of pirates, I’m going to have to pirate a copy of this game. It couldn’t get any better if it were done on purpose.

/edit: Oh god, it just keeps getting funnier! Ah Internet, I love you!

I was listening to a Patton Oswalt album the other day, and he had a bit about how comic books/movies often have alternate timelines and how he thinks that Bush’s election in 2000 was a point of divergence, and somewhere there’s a reality where Gore is president and the twin towers still stand. I’d like to think him right, but no, the point of divergance was much earlier than that. In 1996 a Republican Congress passed, and the Democrat Bill Clinton signed, the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

This Act gave telecoms (in form of surcharges and tax write-offs) two hundred billion dollars (that’s $200,000,000,000,) in exchange for, well, nothing. I mean, nothing aside from laws that made consolidation easier for them. It was supposed to go to things like providing us with fancy-shmancy shit like video-phones that popped up calls on our TVs with a connection as fluid as the show we were watching previously. I don’t know about the World Trade Center standing, but by 2008 we should be able to buy iTouch-like handsets for a hundred bucks and freely access a government maintained nationwide whitespace wifi network to call up anyone we want, anywhere, for free. In fact, bandwidth should be so cheap that we should be able to backup our HDD with no hassle and redownload anything we’ve previously owned with little/no trouble. So, why aren’t we there yet? This is something that’s always bothered me, and on a lark, I decided to look up the Act to see if I was the only one. Y’know who else thought so? A name I’d not heard in a long time. Robert X. Cringely.

He wrote a few articles about it late last year, and if you, like me, missed it, I heartily recommend reading them and taking a moment to ponder exactly what we could do with faster pipes. … Mind boggling, isn’t it? Even aside from the obvious “better porn,” both teleconferencing and working from home would be gimmes. Streaming HD content would be so easy, cable companies wouldn’t be able to get away with ruining HD channels “just because.” They also wouldn’t be able to shape traffic with such a heavy hand. And video conferencing in your living room with friends from all over the world would be seamless, as it’s not too far from it already. Of course the kicker is, before Cringely wrote those articles, that he also wrote the solution. We really need to take the last mile away from these companies. He also talks about our nation’s lack of a broadband policy and our leaders not recognizing that the internet is fast becoming infrastructure every bit as important as roads, telephones, and power, and how that’s leaving us languishing on the world scene. He’s right on every account, and it’s scary.

But being a man, and a gamer, I like puzzles, so, I’ve got a solution:

I’m calling it either “The Power Pipeline.” My plan is designed for middle-sized growing cities, but is scalable to more urban environments as well. Everyone but the most rural American should have join the nation in becoming not only world leaders in internet connectivity and capacity. We already run pipes around the nation for various reasons, most notably power (where we also use unsightly powerlines,) so I suggest an entirely new system like sewers, many feet in diameter, going from city to city, connecting America. In each city you run them to a main facilty where smaller pipes are ran across the city, along every main road and every business district, and eventually every home as well. Require them in newer areas of town, and allow older areas to buy in. What’s in the pipes? Well, first, electricity. Use the pipes to provide energy to street lights and red lights without powerlines everywhere. Also, data lines to provide internet access and phone lines. Now, how is this different than what we currently do? We need a system that’s ideally both cost effective and will last, so it’s key to allow for upgradability. So, every so-often, at ’server relay stations’ (or whatever you want to call them,) allow access to the tunnels so that old cables can be snaked out and new cables snaked in. As technology evolves, so can the Pipelines.

Paying for this monstrosity? Finance it in large part by prospective internet providers “buying in” on lines laid down (if they want to use these new highspeed lines,) and also with a surcharge on people’s bills who are using the service, as they’ll own the line where it enters their property (much how homeowners own phone and powerlines once they hit owner property. Cringley called it at $1500 per person, for each person ‘owning their own last mile.’ Given that was only a year ago, and the dollar’s down, it may be a bit more… But I think it’s worth it for a public works project of this magnitude. They say “Good, fast, cheap: choose two.” I choose good and cheap, but I really hope we can get a proof of concept up and running in middle America within three years of the The Power Pipeline Bill passing. Why? Well, if not, my chances for reelection are shot. Yeah, that’s right, reelection. Yes, I’m running.

Just wait until I tell you about my idea for a ‘Water Pipeline’ to cure drought across the nation that I devised while playing Pipe Mania.

For the record, my major annoyance is a shift toward developers providing games in a piecemeal fashion, with a total cost higher to consumers than it would’ve been under traditional circumstances.

But that thread in particular on EvAv was about new planes for Ace Combat 6. “New planes? Surely that’s worthwhile content, Jeff!” you object. “Indeed,” I retort, “The issue here is price.” They charge $2.50+ for skins to cover old models and tiny files (not even text files,) that just contain the few parameters that the planes require. That’s not even a meg if you’re doing it right. It’s Horse Armor all over again, but at least we had the common sense to be angry about it the first time. They’ve released 35+ planes, with nine (at the previous article’s date,) costing $5, and twenty-one costing at least $2.50. (About five were free.) This, for the record, is a travesty in my eyes.

People say “Then don’t buy them.” Don’t worry, I’m not being a hypocrite; I canceled my Xbox Live subscription months ago. And I don’t buy those things. I never bought a theme or gamerpic (or any other advertisement. That would be like buying a film trailer, or a print ad. It’s stupid.)

Man, remember all the great head-in-the-clouds things we heard about digital distribution? Developers could go without publishers, (or at least their efforts would be scaled back, netting developers more money with consumers paying less.) No shipping costs would also mean a reduction in product costs. With no shelves, shelf space would not be a factor, and games could be offered forever.

Back in ‘99, when Napster came out, I said “Y’know, I’d buy these songs for a dollar, if the opportunity was offered.” After almost a decade of lawsuits against music listeners, I’d be hard pressed to pay a dime (literally, I mean it, ten cents,) for a track of music. Today, I refuse to pay $50 a year for Xbox Live.

/edit: Oh! Since I canceled my account, every time I log my profile on my Xbox, it attempts to sign into Xbox Live. After a twenty minute phone call asking how to stop this automatic check, I was told I couldn’t. I’d have to delete my profile and create a new one. This wouldn’t be a big deal, if I didn’t need that profile to play my XBLA games after my console red-ringed… (They won’t play except in my account, post-refurbishing.) So, it’s not painful in and of itself, but it gets annoying, having to do it. Every. Single. Time. It’s a game console. It’s not supposed to have these problems! Gah.

What’s so micro about three dollars for a TV show? I mean, come on. Considering I already pay for the privilege of being on Xbox Live, a non-server system, this is bad enough:

Blah.