Stories

Since my musical tastes tend to vary dramatically (I listened to 50,000+ tracks on shuffle on my MP3 player on a regular basis), I am often fond of things that haven't been done before. Anything new. Anything, even if not completely new, is still a sufficient twist on the old. Mashups that may not be perfectly in key but still sound good enough, two completely disparate genres melding together well... things like that.

During a DJ set at Neo, I tried to introduce as much new-not-new material that would be familiar enough to the crowd while offering a taste of something different.

It did not go well.

Despite being a goth club... I managed to clear the floor by playing the Vince Clarke Remix of Depeche Mode's "Behind the Wheel."

And that was one of the best Depeche Mode remixes in recent memory.

"I don't like this cover."

So I tried to steer the set towards more typical versions. 

Even that didn't go well.

I had someone complain when I later played Faith Healer by Recoil, which in itself was a pretty big goth club hit.

"Who is this? I don't like it."

Now, I couldn't just say "Recoil" because that wouldn't have been a satisfactory answer to someone from a fickle crowd. So I said: "It's Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb."

"No, it isn't."

Sigh. And this was within 3 months of Douglas McCarthy headlining at Metro in Chicago.

Spud

Valve used to do fun stuff before they turned into a full-time storefront. I was hoping a new ARG would happen in the days up to another announcement of a new game like they did with Potato Sack/Portal 2. However, HL:Alyx was announced without anything leading up to it. Now it's actually becoming difficult to even find a record of the Potato Sack ARG even happening. Most related websites and wikis are gone now. Even the GlaDOS@Home finale wasn't preserved at all. Describing it after the fact doesn't really begin to come close in detailing just how massive the whole event was.

The Potato Sack ARG, for all of its flaws, almost managed to become bigger than the game it was based around... I never saw nearly as much activity or interaction from the community since that time. Seems a shame that something this intricate and involved could only happen once.

It was estimated about 1,800 people managed to get all 36 potatoes. The prize, for a time, was... having 36 potatoes on your Steam profile page.

Later, those who got 36 potatoes were awarded every game in Valve's Complete Pack, plus the newest: Portal 2. I ended up figuring out, a little while after the fact, why there were 36 potatoes: That's how many games were in the Valve Complete Pack once you included Portal 2. This clue was never discovered during the ARG so nobody knew until the ARG was over whether or not there was going to be a prize for gathering all 36 potatoes.

This was one of those times where just seeing it through was enough of a prize in of itself. Hope to see something like it again in the future.

Trust me, it was much harder then...

That time my submission made the Slashdot front page...

Tinfoil costs extra

Friendly reminder that an article on a domain name owned by a magazine that has journalistic standards is generally regarded as a better source than eaglespissandfartfreedom.blog

in the face

Like a toddler throwing a tantrum and deciding to hold his breath until he gets what he wants.
Well, Trump. I encourage you to keep holding your breath until the country turns blue.

Trump refuses to rule out government shutdown if Democrats continue impeachment inquiry

Lower than a bottomless pit

Every Republican in the House of Representatives broke their oath to support and defend the Constitution today. Every. Single. One.

Quote

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.

Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

physician, heal thyself.

It's interesting how many self-proclaimed "non racist, free speech advocates" who speak out against "violent leftist organizations like antifa" also can't say "I do not support the Proud Boys and other violent groups on the right."

Hiss, pop, sparkle

This is all I have to say about today.

"This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in." - Theodore Roosevelt

Fuzzbutt

Always will miss you, Vin.

Blue Monday in the key of Richard Spencer

Youtube just banned white supremacist content from their site.

Free speech advocates are calling this a slippery slope while obviously ignoring part where free speech does not mean free of the consequences of the things you say.

If going after Nazis is a slippery slope then I kinda wanna see what’s at the bottom of that slope. It’s probably rainbows and fluffy bunnies.

MOO

When it comes to the story of the golden calf... who would have thought that Christians would settle for an orange pig?

Crushed

Holy hell, that took a while. 442 games before I won one. Gotta watch those time zones, Japanese players are brutally good at knocking me out early.

We'll fix it in post

In case you ever wondered how tv and film productions prepare devices for the screen... Found this image on a phone that was used for a video call scene in Sense8. I snagged this from a prop auction hoping I'd see the video the actor (Toby Onwumere) was acting to, but no... Just chroma key masks. Still pretty interesting...

Broken facade

Republicans and other right wingers are calling the children in cages 'crisis actors.' Apparently when one lacks the capability to feel empathy, all suffering that isn't experienced by them directly looks like acting. Republicanism in a nutshell.

All Democrats and Independents in Senate back No Child Separation bill. All of them. Not one member of the "party of family values" supports the bill to prevent children from being separated from their parents. Republicans have ZERO moral ground left to stand on.

PSA

Telling people with depression to 'reach out' is the 'thoughts and prayers' of the mental health world. It's condescending and it doesn't help.

Mental health issues often need the kind of help that those who suffer from it cannot give to themselves or feel like they can reach out to others for.

When a celebrity dies, don't say "Oh, that's so sad," and post a suicide hotline number. Look around you, RECOGNIZE those who suffer... and reach out directly to them instead.

Otherwise we feel overlooked in part of a grander message that comes off like a platitude. Means well but ultimately does nothing.

Photogenic

Oskar standing next to a light panel.

Predicted

The "What the fuck happened?" movie trilogy:

• Network (1976)
• Bulworth (1998)
• Idiocracy (2006)

Bonus supplement: Dr. Strangelove (1964)

History

The last time the Cubs won the world series, women couldn't vote... or as Trump supporters call it, "the good old days."

$199 Add-On

I'm pretty sure Steve Jobs would be rolling his grave right now but the problem is he needs an adapter to do it.

Plague Among Us

Things that encourage piracy:

• Unreasonable prices,
• DRM/Copy protection,
• Lack of availability.

There's a RedBox 1/4 block from my apartment. I was happy to just rent from that instead of downloading movies. I wouldn't buy online 'rentals' or downloads because they were much more expensive than a RedBox rental.

I decided to rent 5 movies for a long weekend at the studio. Our studio is full of professional gear, so we expect our shit to always work. FOUR of the five DVDs I rented would not play. They were brand new, no scratches. They couldn't play because of copy protection. The copy protection was so severe that I couldn't play them on anything we had in the studio. Not the MacPros, not the professional $5,000 reference DVD Player, not the professional kiosk playback machines, not the burner machine, nothing. I couldn't get a refund on my rental fees for the four movies I could not watch.

Thus officially ended my desire to bother with legitimate channels.

Copy protection and region restrictions only affect legitimate customers. When I download a torrent, I KNOW I won't have any issues playing the movie. No unskippable trailers, no warnings in twenty different languages, no annoying menus that cause even the most beefy players to lag, nothing but the movie I want to watch. No hassle, no time restrictions on streaming, no physical DRM to hamper my ability to play it. No blocking of my being able to watch it because I'm in the wrong country. Even if it were to cost me double the cost of a rental, Pirates have a better product.

The industry (of which I am a part and do everything i can to discourage DRM and price gouging) needs to pull its head out of its ass and stop with the bullshit they themselves are causing that drive people to easier methods to consume entertainment.

But wait! There's more!

Now that Scalia is gone, does this mean another one of Reagan's horcruxes is destroyed?

Virulent

I am more afraid of the lies and misinformation spread by Fox News than I am of Ebola.

Pocket Change

Facebook purchased Instagram for $1B, Oculus for $2B, and WhatsApp for $19B. Mystery to me where those numbers come from.

Sniff my Takei

Edit: For the story behind this, see: https://b.v92.org/p/eau-my.html