I reserved the Nintendo Wii this morning. 30+ people showed up, but only 24 pre-orders were available. I was lucky number 18.
Wii Prii-Order
Author Archives: Jacob Joaquin
‘Electronica’ – Live at FACT (excerpt)
I only wish they had posted the entire performance. From the description:
This is a taster of our live performance mix of ‘Electronica’, a piece which uses clips from a 1940’s russian film ‘Experiments in the Revival of Organisms’ which can be found on www.archive.org. Music by Kinetic Fallacy (Hannah Peel and Emma Welsby). Video chopped, treated and performed by Smeech.
Permalink @ blip.tv
Know Your Roots: OHM+
:the early gurus of electronic music
“Electronic music represents freedom from conventional music forms: it liberates the production of sound. I was very interested in electronic music from its philosophical point of view. It is music that takes chances: it’s adventurous, it doesn’t sit still. And that’s something that should be applied to culture at large.” – Iara Lee
Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music is a sensational sonic history, grounded in mold-breaking experimentation. With virtually no rules to follow, or previous works to emulate, these composers were given a new freedom unlike anything else before. Naysayers would call this compilation a lot of things, but not music. For the open minded, this three disc +dvd set is an opportunity for exploring a world of sound you may have not experienced before.
Greetings Program
“I desire macaroni pictures.”
TRON is my favorite movie of all time. Though the film virtually bombed at the box office in 1982, it has since gained cult following status. Every once in awhile, a direct reference to the classic pops up. For example: Homer 3D, Tony Hawk’s “I am Sci-FI” promo, Family Guy, and in South Park when Moses is portrayed as the Master Control Program.
The latest homage comes in the form of a Honda Civic commercial. This one is particularly nice as it captures the essence of the original, much more so than anything else I’ve seen. Special thanks to Tron-Sector for the find.
End of line.
Graffiti Research Lab
The Graffiti Research Lab is dedicated to outfitting graffiti writers, artists and protestors with open source tools for urban communication. The goal of the G.R.L. is to technologically empower individuals to creatively alter and reclaim their surroundings from commercial and corporate culture. G.R.L. agents are currently working in the lab and in the field to develop and test a range of experimental technologies for the state-of-the-art graffiti writer.This site documents those efforts with video documentation and DIY instructions for each project.
LED Throwies fascinate me.
Half Angel
My First Victim
The scene of the crime
I bent my first circuit this Saturday, with limited success.
The victim was a cheap-o $5 keyboard from walmart. Opening it up was as easy as removing the screws. What I found inside was very little in terms of electronic components. There were two long narrow boards that acted as the controllers for the buttons and keys. And then there was this tiny little square where all the “stuff” happened.
Connecting the limited set of dots I had to work with, I found three distinct circuit bending functions: The sound stopped, a popping sound came out of the speaker (which is bad), and the rate at which the samples played back increased by ten-fold. So I soldered a toggle to the only pair of interesting dots on the board. The end. Being useless, I’ll go back and reclaim my toggle.
What did I learn? Uninteresting toys can make for uninteresting bent instruments. Newer toys are probably much more efficient in design, thus having fewer circuits to bend. Don’t touch the hot part of a soldering iron.
Part of Get Bent
So easy, even children can do it
Animated Album Covers
Thumbuki Update: We’re Live!!
Thumbuki as seen from Space
There are times when you just have to say, “Enough is enough.” And I’ve had enough trying to perfect thumbuki before officially launching. I have a mostly functional website with incoming content and a decent layout. There is no reason, no reason at all, to put this off any longer. That’s why I’m launching thumbuki, right…. wait for it… right… NOW!
w00t! (streamers and noise makers)
Thank you. Thank you. You’re all too kind. But before you get too excited, I want to make sure you realize that there are still many issues that need to be resolved here.
As of right now, thumbuki seems to render properly on Mac Firefox and Safari. On Mac Opera, picture subtitles are most definitely off. Fixing this is going to be a high priority. The other big issue for now is that I have not seen how this page renders on PC or Linux. Good news is that I do have an old PC and an Ubuntu boot CD lying around somewhere. These issues will be fixed for maximum cross platform/browser compatibility in the near future. I’m sure there are bugs hiding in all the nooks and crannies of my html. So I’ll need to validate my code as week. I’ll get some time this weekend to do this.
One last thing… Special thanks to my good friend PAgent of PAgent’s Progress for pimping my blog last night. u r teh r0x0r!! Your free oven mit is in the mail.