They Cost Not Lots

Reposted from http://www.physorg.com/news171263002.html

The new hypothesis suggests that life on Earth originated at photosynthetically-active porous structures made of zinc sulfide similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Credit: The Institute for Exploration, the University of Rhode Island (URI) Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO), and the URI Institute for Archaeological Oceanography.

I was just browsing a respected music production forum when I came across some tutorials that really made me do a double take. These were “song structure” tutorials. You know… stuff like “How to write a Hard Dance track“. Instruction was along the lines of : put a bass drum on every beat, a cymbal at the beginning of each phrase , bass line running on off beats, etc... that sort of thing. In a nutshell it gave the “formula”, that is to say the rule set, by which each style defines itself.

Now why did these tutorials make me do a double take? Basically I just could not believe that people were honestly trying to write music by constraining themselves to a particular style’s rule sets. I know corporate cock sucking whores like to use formulas to create junk pop in order to sell crap to the masses, but I did not think honest and supposedly creative musicians worked this way. A way, that I might add, is totally foreign to me. When I write, I don’t think “Ok.. Now I’m going to write a trance track” or “hey I might write a song using the 70’s hard rock formula”. I just open up to the muses, let the inspiration flow, and whatever comes… comes. Sometimes what comes is crap, sometimes it is not, and there is always refinement of what was inspired, but for the most part it is 100% inspiration. Music is art, and art is the creative expression of one’s Self (note the capital letter there!). Following a rule set is the antithesis of this. It stifles creativity, discourages innovation, penalises originality and gives birth to ubiquitous mediocrity.

This here is my latest offering from Tryptic 2.0. It is a dance track that fuses electronica and rock elements together and is called "The Mass of the Phoenix". A hi-fi mp3 version can be downloaded HERE . The song was inspired by and named after Aleister Crowley's ritual of the same name and represents my first real steps using the Access Virus TI synth.

On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion, convened by RDFRS and filmed by Josh Timonen. All four authors have recently received a large amount of media attention for their writings against religion - some positive, and some negative. In this conversation the group trades stories of the public's reaction to their recent books, their unexpected successes, criticisms and common misrepresentations. They discuss the tough questions about religion that face the world today, and propose new strategies for going forward.

After noticing that there are a plethora of wow blogs, but next to none for the shaman class, I thought I'd try to rectify the situation and get one off of the ground. As a result you wont see too much written in this, my personal blog, about my travels in WoW anymore... you find all that sort of stuff over there. the Blog is called Ride the Lightning, and it focuses on Resto spec for a casual playstyle, and Elemental spec in 25 man progression raiding. If that is your gig then go and check it out. Heck.. just go and check it out anyways! :)

Oh my! How awesome was UFC94! I am a fan of the fighting of both GSP and BJ-Penn, so to see these two future hall of famers go at it again was something of a dream come true. Personality wise, BJ is a bit of a dick and is exactly the kind of person I would like to see get his face smashed in. GSP ... quite the opposite. I was rooting for George St-Pierre!

Going into the fight, I expected it to be fairly evenly matched with victory going to the person who managed to capitalize on some small mistake his opponent made. I really felt it could have gone either way. Both were candidates for the best pound for pound fighter and their styles match up well. Once the fight started, however, it was obvious there was nothing even about it. GSP totally dominated, demoralized and humiliated Penn. It was amazing to watch. GSP was able to do what was previously thought impossible. He was easily able to pass Penn's guard and get side control. He did this not just once, but half a dozen times. He made Penn's guard look like that of a White belt! Nobody passes Penn's guard like that. Nobody... except GSP. Wow. Just wow!

I've just uploaded a copy of "Coming Down" to the server. This little tune is my first real foray into music production outside of Reason. It is a slowish ambient piece of electronica set over the top of a hiphop beat. The song is an attempt to capture the feeling of a certain place at a certain time. When, where, why and what should be aptly hinted at by its title.

It seems Comrade Rudd and his over zealous communications minister Steve Conroy are keen to take us down the same path as those other bastions of freedom, China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. Closed tests of mandatory internet filtering at the ISP level have been completed and are now on the verge of being trialed on the nation at large. In short, the Australian government is about to censor every Australian's internet feed and there is no legal way we can opt out of it.