So, pop these on and chip out!

The 8bits of Christmas - The 8bitpeoples (FREE)

8-bit Christmas - Rush Coil - USD $3.00 +

8-Bit Jesus – Doctor Octoroc - USD $9.99

And if that’s not enough ghost chips of  Christmas present for you, @hubs curates a exhaustive list of even more Chiptune Christmas, a lot of which is free too. Wow.

And when your family tells you to turn it off, then turn on Mariah’s two albums. Cause Mariah is retro enough by now

Peace to you and yours this Christmas!

What does it mean?

I’m assuming this is omitting face-to-face, which is always best, but as the next substitute:

Instant Messaging, for sure
I’m not great on the phone. If you call me and I don’t have your number, and I say “hello” and you say “it’s me”, I might not be able to place your voice, and that’ll throw me off for the whole phone call. Ask my girlfriend the first time she called me!

I guess text messages fit into this the same way, but they cost cold, hard, cash money. I have been chatting since dial-up BBS days, and we had live see-everything-you’re-typing-as-you-type-it chat back then. We used to press enter twice to say you were done and it was the other person’s turn.

I also learned bad habits with ICQ: I might send you a few short text messages in quick succession rather than save it into one message. This means my message might have cost me double or triple just because with IM if you were typing big long messages,

> you might type sentence fragments
> so the other person knew you were still there
> and hadn’t been disconnected
> by your younger brother
> picking up the phone in the other room

because back then, IM programs didn’t tell you the other user was actually typing something. You might do something like this even:

> LOL
> yeah I saw that last year
> it’s oldie but a goodie

And that’d be more sensible as one SMS.

Anyway, since the album was released in 2007 I’ve listened to the track over 200 times, building this music video story in my head for Fast Turtle, a superhero turtle of the same name.

So after attending Webstock 2010 and getting inspired and hearing some other crazy cool ideas and being encouraged when I shared this one with Chris Winchester, here’s my treatment for my music video for Anamanaguchi’s Fast Turtle. Give it a read and let me know what you think…

I think it’s pretty tight, I just want constructive criticism and advice for the next step, which I have a feeling is storyboarding and funding. I also need some concept art: I have a little already, and have lots of ideas for environment, characters and even specific shots.

Read the treatment and leave helpful comments below!

I was previously using Quicksilver, but I never bothered to set it up on my new user, and instead decided to try out Leopard’s new Spotlight – to great effect!

The one thing I detested about Spotlight in Tiger was the fact that the default choice was “Show All”, but now in Leopard it’s the Top Hit, which is usually what I’d want. The other thing was Quicksilver had a calculator function, but the new Spotlight has a calculator feature, which is live, unlike Quicksilver!

And because I managed to score the MacHeist this year, I received a copy of CoverSutra which totally surprised me with its awesomeness; like a sneaky ninja springing out from the ceiling, katana unsheathed, cleaving my mind, but in a totally awesome way, as ninjas are prone to do.

Saturday March 10 2007
St James Auckland
$60-90

Get tickets to Weird Al now! I’ll hopefully be going!

1. I sucked at tag. Primary school was pretty hellish for me — I was unfit, I had no friends, and I could never catch anyone. It’s a part of my life that I like to forget. Because I had no-one who liked me or understood me (my parents admit to not really understanding me and my interests when I was young) I turned to reading books and learning. If I had to pick someone who I think understood me when I was young, I’d probably have to say my grandmother on my mother’s side, Lois, who unfortunately passed away while I was at Intermediate, or just starting, I can’t remember. She would buy books for me all the time, and it was her who I credit for getting me into computers and specifically programming. An Osbourne book on Basic for various computers like the Commodore 64 and the TRS-80, and the really simple game listings within it. I would spend hours staring at that code, trying to figure out what the game would do. I wouldn’t get any kind of computer until after she passed away, and then it was a 286 and no-one told me where GW-Basic was.

   Gosh, there’s a bit there. Does that count as only one?

2. I love computer games, but in reality, I’m not a hardcore gamer. I like the games that I can pick up, play for 15 minutes, and then put to one side. To this end, I rarely finish a game. A mild case of ADD? It’s certainly not AD&D I can count on one hand the games I’ve clocked without cheats:
   • Half-Life (PC)
   • Half-Life 2 (PC)
   • Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (PC) (but that barely counts)
   • Phoenix Wright (Nintendo DS) (but it’s mostly trial-and-error. Heh, trial, law game)
   • Doukutsu Monogatari (aka Cave Story) (PC)

   Yet recently I’ve bought so many DS and GBA games for my Nintendo DS Lite, and haven’t clocked any others

3. I’m not allergic to anything, but I have had cancer. I have a giant scar on my back from where they removed a melanoma (skin cancer). Luckily it came back from the labs that it hadn’t spread, but I can’t give blood anymore. If they’d let me, I’d go every six months. So if you’re reading this, and you are able to give blood, you should go do it — it helps so many people out there, and only inconveniences you for a few hours; heck, most workplaces will let you go give blood on work time!
4. When I want to chill out, the forest is my chill out space. I love to just go somewhere and listen, relax. Rivers are also very awesome. I was baby sitting a couple of my mum’s friend’s kids for the weekend one time in the middle of summer, and they had some really large inner tubes, so we took them out on the river out the back of their house, and had a ball and we all got so tired, we walked back, packed stuff away, and we all fell asleep in the lounge where we were sitting, totally unexpectedly. It was probably the quietest they ever were!
5. I like chiptunes. Music made on old retro hardware that sounds like it could have come out of an old GameBoy or C64. I especially like the stuff that comes out of 8bitpeoples
6. Bonus Fact: I don’t like peas. But that said, they are tolerable when mixed with other vegetables. But by themselves, blargh.

Bob Brown (Confessions of a Guru), Hamish MacEwan (self titled), Hillary (Kiwirose in Canada), Dan Milward (Mind of Mufasa) (fix your feeds, they’re broken), and Unbounded (self-titled), even though Unbounded is the kind of guy who would abhor this kinda meme; TAG – You’re it!

If you are like Paul and don’t know who Fat Freddy’s Drop are, climb out from under your rock and listen to their tracks! FFD are an independant Wellington dub reggae group who won all the major awards at the last New Zealand Music Awards. You’ve probably heard “Wandering Eye” on the radio without knowing who it was. Pick up their album or get their tracks from the iTMS.

So I got Paul to take my copy of their album Based on a True Story along and get it signed by the group. He did, he is some kind of legend And Fat Freddy’s are awesome for signing it too! Cheers guys, I don’t need to tell you how awesome you are!

I got a text this morning saying they were still in town, and if I wanted, I could come pick up my CD and maybe meet some of the group So I did. I wish I had a bit more to say and ask, but at that hour in the morning, I was just waking up, and they were about ready to go to bed after filming all night.

Anyway, the music video is due out in a few months or something, so keep your eyes peeled!

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side. Hunter S Thompson

And with that said, go listen to Cory Doctorow’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) talk he gave in Antwerp earlier this year.

Also Relevant: MPAA Logo Goatse

But hey, I’ve got some cool stuff to tell you about, so bear with me.

— — —

First of all, I bought me a small portable metal bible about two weeks ago. The cheesily entitled Battlezone Bible, Yeah, it’s cheesy, but it’s an ESV. I love it — best translation ever. Not to mention it fits in my trenchcoat inner chest pocket nicely. I would catch the bus just so I could read it. It reads so beautifully. And just carrying the bible with you everywhere is a constant reminder of the presence of God. I can read on my breaks, or any spare moment I get.

— — —

Secondly, the IRD love me right now, but it wasn’t so shiny-happy-people until Thursday. I hadn’t filed my taxes for about 3 years, and the IRD got pissed and basically made a default assessment of about NZD$10,000 and sent me bills. But they bounced (because I hadn’t changed my address with them), and so the IRD talked to my employer and forced them to take NZD~$250 a fortnight out of my paychecks. The payclerk told me what was going on and I was all “WTF!!?!”. So I got an accountant and told them to sort this damn crap out. And they did, for a nominal fee of course. So on Thursday night, I come home from Thursday Night Curry to find an envelope by my door. I open it up: “Hi we’re the IRD, here’s a cheque for ~$3400!” And I was all like SW00t! So I paid my accountant (about $1400 , but hey, better than $10,000), and paid my bills…

…and bought a BRAND NEW IPOD! W000000T!

A 60GB Color iPod. I tell you, I seriously missed having one. When you’ve got music and podcasts to listen to on the way, I’ve found that I actually WANT to walk places. Roll on summer! Dang, I need to get fit…

I’ve also missed Craig Patchett and Adam Curry in the morning. I’m re-subscribed my podcast catcher (iTunes now, was FeedDemon) to the Daily Source Code, the Radio Adventures of Dr Floyd, and several others, including many Godcast Network channels. I also started listening to Rachel’s Choice which is done by potentially the youngest podcaster in the world, Rachel Patchett of age 8, who chooses a track of christian music and a bible verse to share each week. (a side note: Wellington christian band The Lads were featured on Rachel’s Choice back in June. For those not in the know, The Lads are probably the most popular christian group in New Zealand)

— — —

So now I’m in this quandry: I can catch the bus and read my bible and listen to music, or I can listen to podcasts and walk to work. *shakes fist angrily at quandry!* Never mind, I will be going full time at 3months, which is only a five minute walk away from my house… at least I can still read on my breaks. Oh well.

— — —

Oh yeah, and now that I’m rich, I’ve bought flight tickets and am fully paid up for WE05! YAY! A very HUGE THANKS to all of you who gave your support, I really appreciate all the help you’ve gave!

Turns out it’s called Radio Data System (RDS), and does more than display text on the radio’s display. It can transmit the current time, so that your RDS enabled car stereo will remain sync’d, monitor other frequencies for traffic reports, and even turn the volume up if an emergency broadcast is detected…

Pretty neat huh? There aren’t many stations in New Zealand that support it, but I found what could be a partial or complete list on the Wood Electronics site.

Tonight, after a nice steak at the birthday party of my friend Matthew, he and his friends were gonna go and do some Karaoke. I was sceptical, as you can understand — I am the first to say “hell no” when it comes to karaoke. However, they mentioned that they were going to this place in Manners Mall — upstairs. There is only two bars on Manners, Hoops, a hip-hop bar on the ground floor, and the Pool Bar, which is a pool hall. Apparently, we weren’t going to either of those places. I was intrigued; I tagged along keeping an open mind.

Up the escalators in the Rock Shop Plaza and we reach the top floor just outside the Pool Bar. We don’t go in, but a couple of people from the group go up to “negotiate” our entry into “Oops! Karaoke”, a small complex of over 8 of what I could best describe as ‘karaoke booths’.

The seven of us are admitted and shown to a booth. The booth has 2 comfy couches, a table littered with vinyl covered books, a Korean remote control outclassing most label makers, two microphones connected by cables to a machine in the wall, which is also connected to 4 TVs in the wall.

Before I realise what is happening, a wig, a cowboy hat, and some tamborines are procured from the depths of the couches, and the lights dim and music begins. Two of the people have picked a song and are getting right into it, no waiting. I’m handed one of the vinyl books and told that the blue pages in this book are songs in English and advised to find a song I know and enter the code on the remote. I start flicking through the book, simultaneously listening to my new found Asian friends sing songs. (incidently, I’m the only non-asian in attendance) I’m sitting next to the birthday celebrant, who I know pretty well, and he’s singing a song I know REALLY well. He finishes a verse and hands me the mic. Everyone present encourages me to sing, so I do. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the songs we sang, but they were English pop songs that you’d probably know.

I get right into it, singing my best. When I’m done, a score comes up on the screen — 94. I guess it’s out of 100, because the birthday boy says that I did awesomely well. Well I’m not sure, but compared to one of the guys sitting across from me, I’m definitely doing okay

I proceed to find songs I know in the book, and sing along with the songs that others have picked that I know the tune to, singing into the microphone if it’s passed to me. I’m having a ball! But I hate karaoke!? This isn’t the same as in karaoke bars; This isn’t embarrassing; this is having fun with your friends! W00t! I pick a song, and when it comes up, my friends join in with me!

In the wall, the little karaoke machine is responding to the remote. You look up a song in the book and punch the number of the song into the remote, and press the big yellow “reserve” button. The number you punch appears on the TVs, with the title of the song in English and Korean next to it. The number and title of the next song up are along the screen. When one song ends, the next song begins.

Quickly I realise that the machine is quite simple: it is basically a library of MIDI files, with a loop of irrelevant video behind the lyrics. I spot a laminated sheet on the table that translates the Korean remote: not only does the remote program which songs we want to sing next, but the remote can change the speed of the music, change the key that the song is in, change the volume of the music, the volume of the microphones, the amount of echo in the microphones, and even a button to unleash canned applause, the latter of which I managed to activate after a rather good rendition of “My Heart will go On – Celine Dion”; a song easily hammed, but in this case, well deserved of an automated applause

The unit in the wall has a LED readout, one for the number of the song you’d punch in, but another for how many minutes we had left to sing. It started at ~70 minutes. At the end, we were having a really good time, and it let us sing our last song, then we left.

Would I do this kind of Karaoke again? You betcha. Making a fool of yourself in front of people you know, who are also making fools of themselves, is the best thing on earth. The fact that you’re doing your best to sing along to songs everyone already knows becomes hilarious and fun. Ask me 4 hours earlier if I’d have this much fun singing Karaoke and I’d have told you to get out of my face.

My name is Brett Taylor, and I like to sing karaoke with my friends.

• GodCast.org — Creative Commons licenced podcasts with christian content, especially The Living Word and Rev Tim’s Podcast
• Flickr — Finding cool photos that get your creative juices flowing has never been so easy, and never so fun!
• Picasa — Makes performing simple photo improvements fast and easy… if only it would integrate with Flickr…
• Walking around Wellington — especially to places I’ve never walked, such as the Interisland Ferry Terminal. I’m doing the 10,000 step program, so reaching 10,000 steps before I go to bed is a real motivator… and taking the new camera makes it fun too … walking to the ferry terminal that day got me up above 20,000 steps for the first time!
• Getting Things Done — or more specifically the methodology outlined in the book Getting Things Done (slashdot review)… being organised and completing tasks is a motivator!

You gotta focus on the positive sides of things. My Podcast on Webfroot is going really well. You should tune in, listen to it, and send me your feedback! If you send in a recording of your comments on the show, I’ll play it on the next episode! If you’ve got content and/or music that you think I should play, send that in to me too! Come party together on the show It’s all about having fun!

Oh, and don’t forget the Wellington Firefox Party!

Anyway, last week Smileychris, Kodiak and I hooked up with a couple of friends from Napier and went and had coffee at a cafe, then we went to an arcade. Chris and I were pretty keen to hop on a DDR machine — Chris hadn’t been on one before, and I’d only tried one time before. It’s much easier with friends. And if you think it’s stupid, you haven’t tried it… it’s quite fun.

Anyway, 3 days ago Chris bought a Dance Mat for NZD$30 and a Playstation to USB adaptor so he could step at home, and he’s really enjoying it. I really like it too, but I haven’t had much of an opportunity to go hard for a session — Chris is always on it

Anyway, it seems to be the #1 geek way to lose weight!

Hi brett

You may have received a reply already, so apologies if that is the case. I
just wanted to say thank you for your support and kind words, I had a
fantastic time at studio nine, and can’t wait to get out to NZ again, you
are all lovely mellow soulful people who know how to party (and that love of
reggae and loud basslines helps too!).

All the best!

Andy scruff

Hot Pot Show
with Mr. Scruff & Treva Whateva
Every Friday night/Saturday morning, 1-2am
on Key 103 (Manchester)

You are one skilled artist. I live in New Zealand, and although I’m writing to your radio show email address, I have never listened your show. However I have listened to all your CDs

I am writing to tell you how MP3s of your CDs introduced me to your fantastic tunes and

I have a friend in England who I met online. He is a big fan of your music, and he told me I should see if I could score some Mr Scruff MP3s online. I did. And I was impressed, nay, flabbergasted! Your music was beyond words! It was indescribable to those who had not yet become instant fans after hearing one track! I wanted more. I downloaded more. I listened in pleasure, wanting just one more track. Your music is an addiction. I went to all the music stores in Wellington looking for any of your CDs. After several months of listening I found your Get a Move On / Ug single and PURCHASED IT. Even though I had heard both of these tracks before, I said I must own that and give the Scruff his due – a small amount of money. Now notice that this CD was an import; most full album CDs in NZ cost about NZD$30. I paid $41 for your SINGLE CD. I then heard Trouser Jazz was on the way, and I pre-ordered it from a CD Store that said they were getting them in. It cost me the same $41. Another store also got Trouser Jazz in, and got some Keep It Unreals in too, so I bought one of those too! Heck, I almost bought your vinyl, even though I have no decks, but I thought I’d leave it for someone who would get much more happiness from it that I could. I even bought a Zentertainment CD just because it had a track by you on it.

Then you came to Wellington and played a 6 hour set at StudioNine! Wow! I scored me some tickets and attended your DJ session and had the time of my life!

So there you have it – I am a Mr Scruff Fan for life, and you can thank a friend of mine challenging me to download MP3s.

This letter has been posted here for all to see at: http://glutnix.webfroot.co.nz/index.php?p=110%A0more=1%A0c=1

Thank you once again for your amazing musical prowess!
Brett Taylor

With my new hard drive installed, I’ve gone and installed Unreal Tournament 2003. If you haven’t played UT2k3 or it’s XBox counterpart Unreal Championship, you haven’t lived. And talking of 3D, UselessCreations has released a new version of their ever-so-popular Matrix Reloaded 3D screensaver. The new version is interactive; you can move the mouse to track around the code simulation. Also check out their Inside the Matrix screensaver,
featuring a low-polygon model of Neo flying round an infinite city of buildings which are dripping with the matrix code. Not as cool as the Matrix Reloaded 3D screensaver though.

Smileychris pointed me at Enhancer 017 for Winamp 2.x. As I had just installed Winamp and hadn’t yet turned on the Equaliser, installing this plugin instantly improved the quality of the sound output.

What’s Playing (the way I’m using it) sends the id3 details of the last n songs to a php script. This script then takes those details and writes a bit of html which you then include in your page. What’s Playing can also upload an HTML file to your FTP server if that’s how you would rather do it.

Saturday I slept in and then Chris and Mark gave me a present. It was Lazy Sunday 3, which is what I wanted for my birthday (cheers guys!). But even better was the card they gave me – Mark, it seemed, had spent two days making a birthday card featuring a fake letter sent to Strong Bad asking him to send me an email saying Happy Birthday – LMAO! Excellent, guys!

Later that night a few of my friends (Mark L, Jaron, Ben and Steph) came over and we played xbox for a little while, then got Hells and watched Jackass The Movie. That is one classic movie… if you’ve never seen a Jackass, and are not squeemish, you will be after the end of this movie.

Anyway, the birthday was overall the best birthday I’ve ever had, and caps off the fact that this is the best era i’ve had in my life (new job, girlfriend, overall happy to be alive motif). I don’t things could get worse but we’ll see

Friday 24th:
Depart Karori Baptist at 8:30am with Matamata punched in as our destination. Rod was driving our van up. We stopped off in Taihape for a toilet break, and for lunch. We arrive at Totara Springs, the campsite where Parachute is held about 5ish. We put up our tents in the spitting rain, and stuff kicked off about 7:30.
Later that night at 10:40, I went to the Elusive Tones of Wonder, and they played the funky tunes. They had to cut their set short, which was unfortunate. I was wearing one of my various orange shirts, so I caught up with the Moz and Gannett and they gladly signed it W00t! I was pretty tired at this point – road trips tend to do that to a person.

Saturday:
I got up, got dressed, got some brekkie and went down to the main stage to worship. Tony Campolo was talking this year – I really was challenged about what he had to say: Believing in Jesus is easy, but following him as a disciple is much much harder. Then he spoke again on the Politics of Jesus – I don’t remember much of that for some reason. I went to the village and looked around after that. I went to the ParachuteMusic.com tent which was selling heaps of christian music and t-shirts and junk. I was hardly in there for 30 seconds when I hear someone shout out “Brett!” behind me. So I turn around, and there’s Hillary working behind the counter! For those of you who don’t know, Hillary is my ex-girlfriend who I still get along with really well – she’s one of my best friends So we say Hi and hug and stuff and she asks me if I was going to the Jitterbug Swing Dance – I said yeah I’ll go with if you want – so we went and had a great old time! At Parachute 2000 three years before this we had gone together to the Barndance Hoedown where Obadiah and the Minor Prophets were playing classic old country hoedown music and teaching people to doe-see-doe, so this year was a bit of a flashback – but it was a really fun time
I didn’t really do a whole lot till 7:30 so I went down to main stage and got in the HUGE mosh pit where there was easily over 800 bodies, where I listened to Sarah McBride, Rapture Ruckus (who were da bomb) and Detour (who rocked the place!). I was on the bottom of a mosh pit collapse – it didn’t hurt or anything, but it was an experience for sure. Smelly!
Out of Eden came on, and I left the mosh pit feeling really knackered, and I went back the to the tent and crashed.

Sunday:
I got up about 6:30 and went and had a shower. Sweet! The showers at Parachute were actually of a pretty good standard! Constant hot water, only one tap, and decent pressure. Went to morning worship where Elevator, a electronica band(?) played the classics. The sermon by John Burns who spoke about the miracle in a daddy’s hug – Hugging your children can make the difference in their lives – believe it!
After that, I went to Andy Hunter, a christian DJ from the UK – he spoke about having worship as a lifestyle. What I got out of it was how he likened the relationship with Jesus as a love relationship not unlike a relationship with your wife or husband – you have to really spend time with him by yourself to get to know him, and the more you spend time with him, the more you’ll want to keep spending time with him.
Straight after Andy Hunter, the MC on the Atomic Stage where the seminar was came out and said they would be starting a half-hour early for Brotherhood Lush, who weren’t on the cards. Apparently Brotherhood Lush broke up about two years ago, and the three band members turned up at Parachute this year, met up, and decided to do a surprise reunion concert. So I hung around and went and listened to them. They played Sea-sick Fish, Even If, and another song. They also played Mind Your Head. They called out to the minor crowd who was there and said we need background vocalists for this song. One girl put her hand up, and I said yeah, allright, I’ll come up to, so I did, and I sung Mind your head with Brotherhood Lush! W00t!
After that I just mucked around not doing a whole lot, but I caught up with Kodiak and we decided to go see the bands at mainstage who were doing contemporary worship. Orange (formally known as spacedoctrine), Form and then the amazing South African band Tree63 who honestly just played amazing worship songs I really enjoyed worshiping God with. Wow, it was sweet! Then me and Kode went to the Elusive Tones again who got to finish their set this time – they were really cool – then we dashed back to mainstage to hear Andy Hunter – Kodiak didn’t enjoy him that much, but I thought he was awesome! I left about three quarters the way through his set cos I was real tired.

Monday:
Wow, I got up, went to listen to Tony Campolo again, and then came back and helped pull the tents down, took my gear back to the van, and we left headed for Wellington at about 12:30ish.

So over all, the weekend was WICKED! Next year, it’s gonna be at Mystery Creek in Hamilton, so I think I’ll try and take the plane up. Sweet!