Barking Japanese Cat

Stumbled upon this in my forays into the internet, taking a break from producing and editing clips as I try to cover all there is to cover on the Xbox One and other endeavors. This shorthair's name is Matsuko, and her purring meow sounds suspiciously like barking.

Block Zappers 2 Wins Award

In other news, I worked with an upcoming developer on a block busting game (in the most literal sense of the words) earlier last week, Block Zappers 2, and got a happy surprise when we made daily fifth. I was ecstatic, as it features my music. The game is a point-click shooter, in which the aim is to eliminate the blocks filing toward you. You are given three abilities and a health bar to tide you over the ensuing waves. After level one, things get challenging, and you have to stay on your toes to survive. Go check it out!

Songs featured:

Christmas Break

I moved out of my dorm for Christmas Break this Wednesday with some much appreciated help from a dear anon, and I should be home until the 6th next month which is a huge plus. Most if not all of my classes are registered for, and I anticipate graduating either next fall or spring. Hoping band classes don't conflict with classes for my major. It's happened before. Damn infernal odd hour classes.

Over break, I plan to revisit Fallout 3, post unboxing clips to YouTube, and finish my review of the Xbox One as a whole. I'm also still working on the review request backlog. You guys are gonna keep me busy. I'd be lying if I said I didn't appreciate it. :P

Also, if I haven't said so already, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone. You're the best!

So, spent a week in Disney with the EMCC Mighty Lion Band and so on. I'll keep it short and sweet -- long lines, rude people, expensive food, some fireworks at the end that didn't really make any of it feel worth it. My feet still hurt. Buuuut, I was in a parade. Yay? I'll see if I can update later with a video from the parade (I asked a friend to send me the file, but until then, we wait.)

Here, have a grainy picture of me and some other (anonymous but loved) bandos from the fancy dinner we had at the hotel -- which btw didn't even have traditional Thanksgiving fare. I'm on the left.

No, it's not red-eye. We're werewolves -- with those reflective linings in our eyes to help us see at night. Totally... Side note, man, this NG editor can be a bitch when it comes to adding photos... Tip, add them after you've got all your text in, if you haven't figured out already.

Might have to turn your head for this one. Sorry for the shit quality. As you can see, the One is basically presenting itself as a Gears of War Bundle, which it is not. And buyer beware, the 14 day trial is not valid if you've ever had a trial from a previous purchase, and trying to use it will void the card without giving you gold, so no one else gets to use it!

Anyway, onto how I ended stuck with an Xbox One -- or Idiotbox/Xbonehead, as I like to call it, which I paid a hefty $329 at Walmart for. All in one entertainment system my ass. If you're buying this console, make damn sure you know exactly what games will be backwards compatible, and also that you have DIGITAL copies of either the game or the DLC, because it's a POS in that area. If I wanted to pay an extra $60 dollars to buy a digital copy of games I already owned the discs and DLC for, I would have done so before next gen, Microsoft.

Only about 100 Xbox360 games are compatible with the Xbox One, and out of those 100, I had Fallout 3. Keep in mind I have all the DLC for Fallout 3, and the One even pretended to install the nifty DLC disc I had, but upon installing the game, none of it recognized! Some users say you have to buy the game of the year edition or Fallout 4 inorder to enjoy the full version of the original, but that's prohibitively expensive and very backward of Microsoft. Typical of the Xbox, I suppose. If I had known about this, I never would have gotten one in the first place. Thank you, false advertising!

#XboxOneIsAWasteofMoney that I hope they fix some time in the near future. I would revert to the 360 if I had a working HDD. The reason I purchased the console to begin with was because my 360 is on its last legs!

I'll be posting unboxing and review later, once I trim the footage, but this pic pretty much covers my opinion.

So, I'm aware it's about two weeks away, but I wanted to get this out before I head off to Disney with the Mighty Lion Band and get caught up with the parade we're set to do. Happy Thanksgiving, and may you all stuff yourselves to bursting. I know we (the band) will -- fancy dinner and all that.

Also, those of you who have review requests on my ancient request board, I'm still filling those, albeit at a slow rate. Feel free to leave more here. I will get to them. Batches of five or less at a time, please. It helps me keep track. If I like the material, I might even tweet it to my thousand-something followers on twitter. Free exposure!

I've got several new songs in the making, and I've also stumbled on some new samples. Check them out. Over a gig, I think, with several different packs and over one hundred different kicks. No viruses on my end either, which is nice.

Speaking of new songs, this week, I released Voltage to Drum and Bass and Lonely Night in Rain to Ambient respectively, and I'm thinking of putting together a cohesive album. Meantime, any commentary on my producing is appreciated.

Thanks, and Happy Thanksgiving -- again!

Couldn't take my laptop to camp, Friday, and just got home now. Gonna take care of all the requests I can now. Thanks!

Drop me a link to your songs, up to 5 at a time, and I'll give you a review. Hell, if it's awesome, I might tweet it to my 1200+ followers!

Also open for commissions, YouTube stuff, and even SoundCloud.

To make a request, simply drop a comment! Thanks!

Guys and gals, I don't usually ask much other than a listen to a song or a share every now and then, but I caught wind on the bbs of a user who was fired from his job due to anxiety -- a dick move from his boss if you ask me. Check out @Sequenced's last news post if you would, and share if you want. You might know him from the Audio portal/forums. He's asked for paypal donations, but even if you don't have any money, I think it'd make his day if some people went through and checked out his stuff or left some kind words.

Thanks,
~A

Feeling pretty nerdy about searching myself on Grooveshark just to check, but I just released my latest remix of All About Us - t.A.T.u. on SoundCloud without any upload to Grooveshark; you can find it here. So, we can conclude that Grooveshark is now pulling from SoundCloud. Trippy, right?

Check the remix below -- some uptempo, hard-ish techno, with a little influence from house. I may post a modified instrumental here to NG due to the way it handles copyrighted samples.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, as some people disable downloads on their tracks for a reason, but for me, it makes no real difference. The majority of any revenue I make comes from NG, donations, or commission -- occasionally DJ work. Download this track either via SoundCloud or Grooveshark, share if you like, drop a comment, and have a great day!

A rather stripped down, somewhat unstable version of the original Grooveshark is available, grooveshark.im, and it seems to draw at least some of its content from SoundCloud, as well as Grooveshark's backed up archives. How do I figure? A search revealed my original Grooveshark catalog plus some songs I only remember adding to SoundCloud due to copyright issues on NG or straight forgetfulness. Unless someone specifically downloaded these songs from my SoundCloud and uploaded them to Grooveshark, I highly doubt "Track 2" or "Renegade Dances", both of which are classical music, would be on Grooveshark at all, since I never uploaded them. It's worth checking into, for sure, if not only for curiosity's sake. Playlists are fully functional from what I can tell, and the search is blazing fast.

Now, onto the story behind this. Grooveshark's latest iteration is the third or fourth since its untimely demise in May. Its reviver, identified as Shark, responded to the entities responsible for the recent, "brutal" top-level domain takedowns of subsequent iterations by saying, "You can not stop us. On the contrary! The harder you come at us the stronger we'll fight."

He and his team aim to release Grooveshark in open-source, a victory for all but the record labels who are already filthy rich from exploiting artists' talent, paying the average musician a measly $23.40 for every $1000 dollars of music sales (source), and you can bet the big four are bothered by the possibility of a free streaming service that cuts them out of the loop, doesn't send you thousands of ads begging for you to go premium, doesn't charge the artist for uploading their catalog, allows you to play anything you want at any time, and doesn't pester you to download copies of songs you can't access outside of the service only to wipe gigabytes of music from your bank if you then sync these songs to more than 3 devices (I'm looking at you, Spotify).

You know what I think? Everyone should be thanking them -- free adverising that denies labels an excuse to extract payment from artists by charging for hosting, packaging, etc. Artists may not make money directly from Grooveshark, but you know as well as I do, getting your music out there in the first place is the surest way to generate sales. This is why labels exist, to propagate the music, only they take hefty cuts of sales for themselves. Artists these days mostly make money from live performances, tickets, and merchandise sold at these events.

This is why the labels are coming down hard on any service that cuts them out of the loop and why I think Grooveshark deserves to live. It will force labels to be more competitive and fair to both the consumer and the artist. What about you? Drop a comment and share if you're excited to see where we're headed from here.

Doing a bit better now. Neck is healed, and I managed to completely clean out K's machine and send it back to her, virus free. I'm on my mother's crappy desktop as we speak, waiting on a new charger to come in, donated by my dad. Thanks to everyone who sent condolences/good will!

Speaking of computers, I've managed to get a half-decent DAW to work on here and am working (ever so slowly) on some new tunes, saving the files to USB for when I get my laptop up again. Not much to work with, though. Still, things are beginning to look up. Finally!

Also, if anyone has links to any good sample packs, I'd love you forever. My new DAW has a sampler plugin sort of similar to a DIY drum machine, and I'm always on the lookout for new sounds.

Thanks again, everyone!

Long story short, I've been out of commission the past few days due to a freak accident ending up with me tearing a muscle in my neck -- couldn't turn it to the left at all and ended up passing out from pain -- so I'm on a tab or two as I type; bear with me here. I've been on Panax ginseng for about 4 days now, which is really helping with the recovery, it seems -- 10 cc, liquid, from China, Prince of Peace brand, if you're into that sort of thing.

Anyway, I haven't made a post until now because my laptop charger bit the dust. I have a Lenovo T410, and the charger is very... distinct. Quick check of the voltage confirmed it was dead, although the laptop itself is fine. This is good, although I'm not sure where in the hell I'm going to find a T410 charger, or at least a similar one that won't blow up the charger port.

This brings me to the laptop I'm on now, my niece's, which I'm forced to use, rather than my phone, as the NG news editor doesn't work on my Jellybean OS. Shit, what a piece of work this thing is. We'll call her K for the purposes of this post, but Jesus Christ, the amount of viruses on this machine before I laid hands on it was astronomical, and somehow, I think more are crawling in through the temp folder. Most of it was adware, browser hijacking, and annoying malicious uninstalls worked around so that if you were frustrated, you'd just end up installing more of the same shit with every button click.

About the Repair

IE had been hijacked to Trovi and Bing searches, and this setting went through all the browsers. She also had installed some suspicious browsers like "speed browser". What an original name that, eh? Yeah, turned out to be a hijacker/adware spout. Eventually, I managed to delete and end-process enough of these to get IE to a functional level, without every page I searched for to turn into a hijack, and I downloaded Avira, cleaning out the temp folder as I went. All in all, I cleaned about 70 viruses by hand, and Avira found several more when it installed. If not for AdBlock, I'm not even sure if I could make it work. Even now, links are popping up from the text I've got down, so I clearly have a lot of work to do -- about 400 blocked ads since I started typing this post, now that I mention it.

I also uninstalled the worthless piece of shit that is McAfee. Gonna get back to cleaning out temp and settings now before I sleep tonight and take my ginseng. If anyone has heard of a way to permanently get rid of Coupoon, Search Protect, and its malicious friends, mail me please. Even Avira, end-processing, manual uninstalling, and deleting is turning up sparse results, and they keep finding ways in. I may just save K's most personal files on a USB and factory reset this piece of shit notebook. (IMO, it should be illegal to design a PC without a fan -- HP bastards)

Moral of the Story

Never install programs from sources that look unofficial, offer to clean your PC or boost performance, or have "optional programs" bundled in. Never express install. Never download coupon programs. Never install ANYTHING you haven't looked up first. Malware and adware writers are counting on unwitting idiots to ply their trade, and they know just how to get around your average antivirus -- or in McAfee's case, virus -- so you'll be sitting there at your PC, tearing your scalp off, trying to figure out how to get rid of the problem. A little research saves a lot of havoc.

Also, I usually don't approve of using AdBlock on NG due to how revenue is earned and paid out to other users, but in the case of adware, God in heaven am I happy I'm using it now. 488 ads from these damn programs and counting. They're even trying to link to ads in the text I'm typing, bastards!

Wish me luck getting rid of them!