The G33k Serenity Prayer
August 1, 2008, 1:50 amIt’s been a particularly trying week for me, in terms of dealing with the Internets, so today, I wrote this;
Zod, give us Int+2 to accept the fanboys we cannot change, Cha+5 to change the ones we can, and the Wis+1d4 to tell them apart online.
It made me feel better.
—castewar | 1 comment
(posted in the General category)
Holy F**k!
June 6, 2008, 1:02 pmA friend sent me a link to an entry for Radiohead’s remix contest - they guy turned a bunch of old computer equipment into instruments, like a scanner doing bass, and old harddrives acting as terrible speakers. The results were unique and kind of catchy, if you like strange, found electronic music.
What caught my eye is that one of the remix entries on the official site is by Toronto pseuper-group, Holy Fuck. I saw them open at Richard’s on Richards and they are a sight to behold. Drums, bass guitar, and tables filled with random electronics, which are plugged into other electronics, and not a single laptop to be seen. They find old Casio keyboards and wah-wah pedals and fuzz boxes, wire them up, and play them manually. The result is the most organic electronic music you’ll ever hear.
Now, granted, they wear their artistic credibility on their sleeves (you don’t pick Holy Fuck as a band name if you’re looking for typical fame and fortune in the music world), but that’s ok - they’ve got a good thing going, letting various musicians from other bands cycle in and out, sometimes for a single show, just to see what happens - the beep-boop version of a Grateful Dead jam session.
Thanks to a plug-in for Firefox making it impossible to play their entry on the official website, I’m going to have to embed it here - which is fine, I would have done that anyhow, but it means that I’m listening to this for the first time here. I have no feedback to write in this space.
So, fingers crossed that they don’t suck…
—castewar | no comments
(posted in the General category)
Spiffiness
May 15, 2008, 4:32 pmSo I’ve been a little busy lately - between work and allergies, my stamina for taking care of side projects has been very reduced. However, in the last month, a few things did get done.
For starters, this very blog has been upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, and it didn’t explode. Yet.
Alert Nerd got a much needed overhaul, design-wise, thanks to yours truely - everybody seems pretty happy with it. Plus, we got our first magazine issue out - Grok #1, taking a look at all things Pon Farr. The second one is in the works, called Secret Origins. We’re looking for writers and artists. Hint hint.
I made a bunch of buttons - more on them later. Handled merch at a thickets show (early prep for the Penny Arcade Expo - getting close now.)
I got Twitter up and running for myself and for Proton Charging. And along the way, I got interviewed on the radi-adi-o.
—castewar | 1 comment
(posted in the General category)
A bookshelf full of TV
April 28, 2008, 1:11 amI was pondering the other day - probably in the shower, maybe on the toilet, slim chance I was cleaning the patio which always leaves a portion of my brain unattended and mischievous - why people don’t talk about TV the way they talk about books. As in, why does someone proudly proclaim that they’ve read all of Wodehouse, but not that they’ve seem every season of M*A*S*H? I’m thinking it’s residual snobbishness, that the novel is somehow superior to the tube, but c’mon… there’s just as much shit on paper out there as there is on the telly. The point is, if you’ve slogged through Moby Dick, why isn’t that just as clever of you as having slogged through The Paperchase?
I think part of the problem is that what constitutes strong, if not outright classic literature is well laid out, and by comparison to those standards, new fiction and non-fiction can be measured. TV isn’t as well defined, so nobody knows what it means if you’ve watched every episode of LA Law. In the long run, is LA Law important, or even good TV? It was probably at least good TV, but it takes decades before an academic stamp is given to anything creative, so…
In the meantime, I think I’m going to start listing my TV chops the same as my reading chops. But that list will have to wait, for tonight, I must sleep (that’s when I’m a viking.)
—castewar | 2 comments
(posted in the General category)
Edup USB Wireless adapter
April 21, 2008, 11:49 pmI’m now up to four current generation gaming systems at home (not counting my PC) - it comes in handy, given my line of work. The downside is that meant I now have four systems, each wanting net access.
For a time I ran a network cable from the office to the living room (just around the corner), but it was annoying and in the way. Tripping hazard was high. I could have gotten a wireless router, but then that’s an additional cost of the router and the recievers for the two computers in the house. Not an economical solution.
Then a friend introduced me to a website out of Hong Kong that deals in cheap electronics and accessories. THE place to get cheap light guns for your Wii or HDTV sets and cables or little sticker skins for your DS that has dogs on it. Everything. And shipping is free. Whee!
So, I bought myself the EDUP wireless USB adapter - it looks like a sizable USB thumbstick with an antennae. Under $30. It can do two things - you can plug it into a PC or laptop and use it as a method of connecting to existing wireless networks.
OR
You can plug it into a PC already plugged into the net, and it will act as an access point. And it worked like a charm, or at least 3/4 of a charm, last night. Within 15 minutes of installing, I was able to connect my Wii, my Xbox, and my DS, no problems. The only hold out was the PSP. Bummer.
Then a quick read tonight and I had the solution (thank you infinite internet monkeys doing infinite combinations of fuck-ups with the same equipment I own.) The adapter is an 802.11b&g whatchamawhoozit. Pretty standard, except that the oldest of the four systems is my PSP, which is one of the earlier models (not one of the newer, thin models) and it only accepts 802.11b, whereas the access point was set to mixed. By setting it to b only, it worked. I’m assuming that the other three will be alright with the b only - if not, it’ll mean a little switching now and then, but not often. The PSP isn’t the main surfer system these days.
—castewar | 1 comment
(posted in the General category)
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