1 Poke poke...

2

Pixy, time is still wrong. Instead of being 3 hours ahead, now we're 1 hour behind.

1 http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Clouds_Across_The_Moon/4944201

1 That ad is nearly incoherent. Are there people out there claiming that chelation can be used to treat autism? Is that the deal?

2 That is indeed the deal.

It doesn't make much sense if you don't know just how much craziness there is surrounding autism these days, but nonetheless, Leeann Tweeden.

There's another one on diets, and one on vaccines.  They all have Leeann in them, so they're all good.

1 So, are the older EAO works downloadable somewhere?

2 They'll be back up soon; I'm just adjusting the mixes on some tracks to fix some clipping problems.

1 So what's the story with the music? The implication is that it's just being created combinatorially out of existing fragments. With what tool? And where did the fragments come from?

2 The program is Cinescore, which is designed for creating background music for video.  So the first pass is combinatorial - you choose a theme (a collection of pre-recorded instruments, rhythms and melodies), and then a bunch of different arrangement options, and specify the length of the track.

Then you can specify that, for example, you want this movement to be quiet and then slowly build up to a climax here and then fade away slowly until it returns with a sudden dramatic jump here - to match whatever's going on in the video.

Of course, I'm just noodling around trying to coax interesting noise out of it.  Which is sometimes a bit frustrating, as I learn my way around the program.  It's kind of the polar opposite of Acid, which I used for my previous compositions.  In Acid you have to be very specific - you take a mandolin in F# playing a particular sequence and match it up with a cornet and a cello and a wood block, and you can time things down to 1/32nd notes.  (And I have on occasion even edited the waveforms.)

In Cinescore, you say, uh, give me an intro, then a buildup, then something dramatic at 1:45, then a nice clean exit.  And then you're not quite satisfied with the outcome (if you're picky like me) and you spend three hours fiddling with it trying to get it to do just what you want.  It's an amazing program, but very annoying at the same time.  It is still 1.0, so I very much hope they stick with it and smooth out some of the kinks.

I really want to get a copy of Vocaloid, but no-one seems to sell it.  I'd be perfectly happy to use the Japanese voice sets, but I kind of need the application itself in English.

3 First minute of “Escapement” sounds a bit like Philip Glass.

(Which, BTW, is about all I can get - a minute or so of download, then the server closes the connection. D*mn dialups.)

4

First minute of “Escapement” sounds a bit like Philip Glass.

The funny thing is that it might be.

Sony (and Sonic Foundry previously) get some pretty famous musicians to record stuff for their software, but the license says you're not allowed to even mention them in your work.  So I credited my laptop instead.

5 Maybe I should put all my music up as a podcast feed.  iTunes will restart a download if it drops out, and my fans can automatically get new tracks as they're released.  (Like, once every five years...)

6 It's not a dropout, it's a forcible closure.  Have the same problem pulling stuff I've posted (like here and here).

7 Ah.  I think that might be related to the other problems we've been having, then.

We'll be moving to the new server in an hour's time, and that should fix everything.

1 What are you doing watching a live action show when you could be watching anime?

2

You're close there.  It's the only live-action I've watched in almost a year (Castle being the only other).  Steven, the "Gene Hunt Show" is better than 75% of all anime out there.  Criticize not what thoust not knowest.

If only there was a way to have Gene wander onto the set of Spice & Wolf.... hmmmm.

3 So the show is about explorers seeking DNA?

4 Yep.

...

Well, no.

It's about people getting bopped on the head and going back in time.  Except when it isn't.  Gene Hunt is not the star of the show, or and of its predecessor, Life on Mars.

5 The Gene Genie (British version, by preference) would make an admirable addition to almost any anime.

6

Err... is there a spoiler warning tag...?  Too old and drunk to find it,so don't read this!  Oh!  That's where it was!  Anyway --

Ashes 2 Ashes, and its predecessor, Life on Mars, is a Brit take of Haibane Renmei..   The protagonists are much like the parrot in the Monty Python "Bolton" sketch.  Which may or may not be a palindrome of Notlob.

In both series, as in HR the main character acts within a limited environment to come to terms not only with their own death, but also with their place in this great throbbing web of mucus we call the universe; desu.

It's an open question as to whether Gene Hunt knows what's going on (as if he were a hero/servent ala Fate/Stay Night or whether he's just taking history's backwash as it comes.  Nevertheless, if law enforcement is the question, then DI Hunt is certainly the answer.

Echoing P.M., I speak only to the Brit version; the US rip-off is dead to me.

7 Basically you-know-what as a police procedural.  That's a pretty good description.