Month: July 2013

Categories
Music

Kasatochi: 2112 v2.0

KasatochiEver since I did the first “full album” cover a while back, I was getting requests to make this the next one. It took a bit of work to find halfway decent MIDIs of everything, and a bit of finessing from there.

01 – 2112
02 – A Passage To Bangkok
03 – The Twilight Zone
04 – Lessons
05 – Tears
06 – Something For Nothing

But… you already know the track list for this album, right?

The 2112 suite is one solid track (an effort that really stretched the tolerance of the program I use to do this stuff, by the way – if you’re wondering what was up with the album-ending one-two-three punch of long-ass prog rock on the previous download, it was because I was figuring out how to get the program to… well… not crash). I know there are names and “in/out times” for various bits of it. I grew up knowing it as “side one”, which probably gives away my age right there. 😆

Some of the MIDIs were shorter than the album running times; I really didn’t find this that distracting when listening back to it all. Your mileage may vary.

Go now to the dedicated Kasatochi page and get something for nothing.

Coming soon:
Kasatochi
…to be followed by another “full album” cover that I’ve been trying to get right for a long time, accompanied by the best Kasatochi album cover ever. (It’s actually been on display in the forum for some time, if you know where to find the Kasatochi thread.)

Kasatochi… Read more

Categories
Music

Kasatochi: Agitmalapropisms

KasatochiWhat’s this? Another more-full-length-than-full-length Kasatochi download already? I was all excited about this one. This one may actually be my favorite so far. Everything that’s on this album was specially selected because these songs sounded great in the chiptune context. I’ll admit that this hasn’t always been the case (though I’ve frequently allowed my affection for particular songs to win the day, unless the song just sounded horrible in this context – see also the “drone effect“). Toward the end of the tracklist, the songs start getting ridiculously long and self-indulgent, simply because I like them – and because they sound really interesting in this format. If you were going to tell someone to check out Kasatochi and point them toward an album that really demonstrates clearly what the whole project’s about, this would be a really good starting point. … Read more

Categories
Serious Stuff

Vote the following representatives out of office, please.

The following local members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against a proposed amendment (the Amash Amendment) to the Defense Authorization Bill. The Amash Amendment would have defunded the NSA’s warrantless-wiretap domestic spying program. Please join me in ushering these people out the door in the next election and replace them with someone who understands civil liberties.

Arkansas

  • Steve Womack
  • Rick Crawford
  • Tom Cotton

Oklahoma

  • Frank Lucas
  • Tom Cole
  • James Lankford

According to this article,

The White House called the amendment a “blunt approach” that is not “the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process.” Naturally, the irony of that specific complaint resonates: The intelligence programs in question were not enacted with any of those forms of debate. To ask that their rescinding be held to a higher standard then their enaction is hubris of a real sort.

Underlining how seriously those who are in favor of maintaining the phone record collection program took the amendment’s threat to yank its funding, General Alexander himself — the good general heads the NSA — gave briefings on the Hill to House Democrats and Republicans, albeit in different sessions.

IF you want to know which heads need to roll in your state, there is a record of the votes here. See if your state’s representatives are in the “nay” section. The names in the “nay” section are people who no longer need to be in a position to make law.

Vote while you still can, folks. This whole Big Brother setup is some seriously f@#$ed-up business.… Read more

Categories
Music

Kasatochi Expansion Pack #6

KasatochiAnother Kasatochi Expansion Pack is done; this one’s been in the works for quite some time, and you can thank a sleepless tornado-warning-filled night for the fact that it finally got finished.

01 – All Those Years Ago
02 – Wreck Of The Hesperus
03 – Blow Away
04 – Cockamamie Business
05 – Cheer Down
06 – Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
07 – Crackerbox Palace

As with the previous Expansion Pack devoted to McCartney, this EP focuses entirely on my favorite Beatle’s storied post-Beatle career, though I admit to being sorely tempted to stick “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on here. Maybe another time. For now I’m gonna go gently sleep.

You can go grab it from the dedicated Kasatochi page. There will be another release over the weekend, and another “cover album” – covering a particular entire album from beginning to end – next week. I’m sure everyone’ll be in a rush to get it. 😛

Kasatochi… Read more

Categories
Gadgetology Gaming

Convention update: GlitchCon video game history panel

OdysseyI’m going to be at Glitchcon in Springdale next month, showing off the various fruit that falls off of the multifarious branches of theLogBook.com – the books, the DVDs, the podcast, the ‘zine, the site itself. Heck, you can probably talk me into letting you hear some Kasatochi. I’ll have a table in the vendors’ room – drop by and say howdy! (Fear not, there are faaaaaaar more interesting things than me to see, including Steve Downes, the voice actor behind the helmet of Master Chief in the Halo games, sneak-previewing something perhaps Halo-related at his panel.)

I’ll also be hosting a panel of my own, though it’ll be unconventional to say the least. I’m going to do an early-history-of-video-gaming panel, and allow everyone to get their butts out of their seats and try stuff out hands-on. … Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 And Beyond The Infinite

Wave at Saturn!

Saturn itselfToday was the day everyone on Earth was supposed to wave at the planet Saturn, low on the eastern horizon in the afternoon. Way out there at Saturn, the Cassini space probe is looking back this way as Saturn eclipses the sun, and the pictures it takes during this event – while Saturn is blocking out the direct light of the sun from Cassini’s vantage point – should show Earth as a tiny bright-blue half-pixel reflecting the sun’s light.

Since it was clouded over and trying to rain on us, we made our own Saturn out of a styrofoam ball, with paper clips holding up a somewhat floppy construction-paper ring. Obviously, Douglas Trumbull isn’t quaking in his boots. … Read more

Categories
Music

Kasatochi: For All Intensive Porpoises

KasatochiGot a whole album-length thing for you this time around – what can I say, I was on a real Kasatochi tear a few weeks ago when I put this one together. There’s no real theme or specificity to it, though in listening back to it, I’m finding that there’s a large – one might almost say fishy – number of instances of “songs to which I was introduced by close friends or family members”. There are songs on here that I specifically relate to my brother, or my dad, or my mom… and yeah, a few I found all on my own, too. So what does the musical upbringing of Earl sound like when converted into NES-style chiptunes? … Read more