Hi,
Lets get the Flash thing out of the way straight up this week. This time it’s the old, “the aliens are coming. the aliens are coming… shoot ’em shoot’em” school but the missles are a tad… well they spiral downward, hitting your mouse-driven targeting system with some delay. It’s really quite mesmerizing to watch, let alone weird as to play. 13 levels in all, I gave up after 2. But wait – there’s more! There are tons of other games at Dannyspace…
http://www.dannyspace.com/html/game.html
Danny is a very strange puppy. Oh yeah and its loud (but it has an off button).
Blame time. Seona and Phil (You remember Phil) have brought to my attention that I haven’t mentioned “Adventure Quest. to quote “A Free RPG you can play using your browser. Create a character and fight creatures to earn magical weapons armor.” Blow away a lunch hour or two. (or more)… you know who to Blame.
http://www.battleon.com/
So now that thats out of the way. This was a very strange little week.
Jools was checking out an entry on Gizmodo (trying to find a GPS enabled camera… read the blog https://thatchspace.com/wordpress/2006/01/25/on-the-road-in-north-west-scotland/ or *http://tinyurl.com/9s4xz *) when she spied the Hard Drive Disk Dying Dance Contest (this is also on the blog).
Here’s how it goes Hitachi put audio samples of dying hard drives as a support aid (if your drive sounds like this , your wallet is toast). Gizmodo noticed these samples and thought “How industrial. Some one could use those in a piece of music) and launched a competition. To cut a long story short, 99 people entered their pieces and Jools and I are in there. Thats right folks armed only with Acid, Sound Forge, a reasonable library of sounds (and the usual lack of taste on my part) Jools and I blew a couple of hours and had way too much fun. The results have been posted.
Jools piece sound really good, mine sounds predictable by comparison. But it get s better, there is a gut called Tim who has been reviewing all 99 bits and he gave Jools 9XKUDOS (he was impressed). You can go to the site and read the comments and listen to the pieces. Are we going to win? Not me. May be Jools. Was it fun? Absolutely. Are we going to do it again? In an eyeblink.
So you now need a whole bunch of links
The Thatchspace Blog Entry *http://tinyurl.com/cnvcd* or https://thatchspace.com/wordpress/2006/01/25/hard-drive-disk-dying-dance-contest-gizmodo/
The ODEO website where the 99 pieces are http://odeo.com/channel/60183/view
Thatch’s Bit (HardDrive Stab) and comments (I so love the comment) http://odeo.com/audio/622656/view
Jools Bit (HardDrive Chill) and comments http://odeo.com/audio/622604/view
and for completenss sake. The sounds that started all this *http://tinyurl.com/34y47* or http://www.hitachigst.com/hddt/knowtree.nsf/cffe836ed7c12018862565b000530c74/4b1a62a50f405d0d86256756006e340c?OpenDocument
Someone out there asked for one of these. If you’ve ever wanted to put together a series of shots into a panorama, you might want to try the free Autostitch program. It’s the result of research from the Artificial Intelligence lab at the University of British Columbia. What makes this one unique in that you simply feed in the photos to use, and it does the rest – no human intervention required! (Your mileage might vary) They have a free demo version online that you can download and play with to your heart’s content.
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/%7Embrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
Thats what friends are for dept: Actually there isn’t a lot you can say about this one, you really just have to go and have a look. Ping took an empty room in a new apartment and turned it into an elaborate “sideways room,” with furniture, books, a rubbish bin, etc all stuck to a sidewall, giving the impression that the room was at right angles to gravity. He documented it with photos and tips for the DIYer so you can scare the hell out of your less sober friends. (Dont see many of them around here anymore)
http://zestyping.livejournal.com/97476.html
Now don’t forget the to pop into the blog ( https://thatchspace.com/ ) for the odd update during the week.
As usual Have a good one
thatch
{ Currently listening to old Van Morrison and the Hard Drive Competition stuff (talk about masochism)}
{ Quick Status Check: Listening to dying hard drive noises for 6 hours is probably hell. }