Jamiroquai & Ballet

Does it work?

I'm not unattractive....

... I'm just so bloody shy!

Picture of the Week

Funny, sad, weird, cute... brilliant!

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SiCKO - Michael Moore

I watched Michael Moore's new film today, "SiCKO". It's another 2+ hour Michael Moore'ism, which people will either love or hate. The movie contains a few core valid points, a touch of humor and a bucket load of crocodile tears. As always with Moore's films, it becomes painfully obvious when he's cherry picking facts and figures, in this case, highlighting how wonderful health care systems are in other countries. Please note that while he champions Britain's NHS, he never gets a chance to comment on Irelands wonderful two-tier "worst of both worlds" system.

The best part of the movie comes near the end when Moore reviles that he paid the annonymous donation of $12000 sent to his Internet Nemesis moorewatch.com, to help pay for the medical treatment the webmaster's wife needed. I wouldnt go as far as saying that this was a cynical move by Moore, but it certainly was included to inflict damage on moorewatch.com.

I'm waiting for someone to make a documentary about Michael Moore himself. About how he always makes the grass seem greener on the other side, hiding the patches where the dog pissed on.

Bertie Ahern On Suicide

'Sitting on the sidelines, cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity. I don't know how people who engage in that don't commit suicide because frankly the only thing that motivates me is being able to actively change something,'

Bertie Ahern 04/07/04
Irish Prime Minister

Hauptwerk Virtual Pipe Organ

I've been messing around with this virtual organ over the last few months. It looks great, it sounds great and its a lot of fun to use but be warned.... you need mega ram! It will still play even if youve not got much but you'll feel it strain. They seem to have a new virtual theatre organ there too now.

Speaking of virtual theatre organ's, someone left a comment in the Make:Blog post about a virtual organ, the Mighty Miditzer Virtual Theatre Organ. Looks interesting, I'll have to check it out.

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Picture of the Week

Another image from David Rencher, make sure you click it for the larger version. This is the first image of his I came across when looking for an image for this. I would have used it but I couldnt crop out the houses. Wonderful image anyway, it reminds me of my dreams, where everything is lit as if its day but theres no sun.

Secrets of a Martian Forest

Finally... The tune only took me too hours of doodling in Reason (originally just trying to recalibrate the patches on my audio interface card) but to host the fucking thing took me two weeks!

The Internet hates audio. Sure, we have billions of petabytes available for videos of spotty teens miming shitty pop songs, but dare you try and find a reliable, free, host for audio and you shall fail! I guess it stems from the whole mp3 worries people had years ago, but jesus christ, people are hosting feature length movies on google video now!

Anyway, the song. The original working title was "The Crunch" but for some reason Doom came to mind when listening back to it. Thats the Mars connection. I do wonder at times what those funny shapes on Mars are, and so, 3 hours later, I came up with a title I was happy with. Well, when your music is crap you might as well have a pretentious title :)

I was very happy with the photograph I used for the artwork, its almost exactly what I imagined when searching for such an image. It comes from a great photographer, David Rencher. He has some fantastic night shots. Most interestingly, his geotags his photographs using google maps.

I'm hosting the file on mediamax.com. I swear to god, if it goes down again I'm going to lash the cash and buy some decent ftp storage off someone. Its fucking reticules. I uploaded that file at least 20 times two weeks ago and this weekend it finally appears! The song itself isnt great, I was kinda just wanking over the Dr. Rex module and it grew from that, although theres only 3 rex patches, 2 be drum parts. Some fab manual drumming at the end... like me, youll love it too! :) I could keep tinkering with it (badly needs some chorusing in spots) but its just a doodle...

[Secrets of a Martian Forest.mp3]

People Are So Fat

Spare me your comments, cretins! Obviously I'm being sarcastic.

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Sophie Ellis Bextor Animations

[animations gone, for now]

Unused Flash animations for this post. You need to mouse-over the first one. The one underneat it is the way I originally wanted the one beside to turn out. The last one is simple Sophie parting her curtains... oh please, not like that! :)

Gainward Bliss 8500GT Golden Sample

I bought a 8500GT a few weeks back, its the first gfx card I ever bought. In the past I made do with the cards that came with the PC but that ATI x300 had to go!

Not bad for a hundred bucks, but it developed problems, which hopefully I'll post about later. I threw the last image in for the craic, its not really there to show it off, its just the first thing I loaded up after I installed it.

Transformers

What do you get if you cross "jar jar binks" with the "crazy frog"? Watch Transformers and youll find out. It has the very definition of annoying sub-characters in it, an annoying little shit of a robot going "wikitywikitywee" all the time. Christ I wanted split Michael Bay in two for that shitty little robot alone!

• The super cyber hacker dudes were the black guys out of "Me, Myself and Irene" (at least thats what it looked like).
• The dialogue consists solely of product names.
• The Transformers have 2 minutes of screen time (other than CGI fight scene wankery).
• Storyline involves the current middle east troubles which means that its going to date as badly as Rambo 3 has. "Oh noes!1!!1! Its Osama Bin Laden and his band of deadly Decepticons!"
• Its waaaaaay too long. Over 2 hours of lazy editing. We seemed to spend half an hour on the scene with the autobots hiding in yermano's garden.
• Another movie where they pronounce "cretin" like cretins do i.e. creeeeeton.
• "Transformers, robots in disguise!" wheres the fucking music man?

It has its good points though...

• Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime
• A few funny parts.
• The scene where the steering wheel wraps around yerwanno's face.
• It looks great, you can't deny that but we've seen it all before in that citrone add and that music video for the Chemical Brothers. Plus the Transformers designs are way too busy.

Again, more importantly, what about the "talented" actors in this movie. Well we have two:

Rachael Taylor

Nice looking woman but mercy, way too thin. Her head looks too big for her body!

Megan Fox

Ummmm.... YES! :)

4: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Awful, AWFUL film! If movies had a smell this would smell of poopoo! As always with film reviews, lets talk about the "talent".


Pure muck! I'm afraid this film has no redeeming qualities!

Muvee on your N73

Well speak of the devil! After posting about the Muvee thingie on my Nokia 6670 I, today, found that I have a version of Muvee on my N73 too! It's a native application hidden away in the gallery. Theres a picture editor there too. I'm not surprised it took me this long to find them, considering I never use the native gallery (its a piece of memory leaking shit).

Knightriders

I watched George A. Romero's Knightriders last week, which stars Ed Harris and Tom Savini. I made the above video clip with Muvee, a shitty little piece of software that came with my graphics card. It takes a stream of video and edits it automatically for you... you guessed it, the results are terrible! The mobile phone version was of more use when I had it on my Nokia 6670.

Anyway, is the movie any good? Well its about motorbike riders performing Renaissance fair games, and its 2.5 hours long so what do you think!? :) As one IMDB user wrote "The best movie ever made on the subject of Renaissance Fair Bike Riders"... says it all really!

Intel Backs OLPC's XO

And Intel said such harsh things about the XO in the past. I wonder what backing they will give to it though considering the CPU is an AMD. Nevertheless, I still want an XO :)

[Intel back OX]

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Picture Of The Week

Whats so great about this picture? Well you really need to look here to understand. See that little red speck left of centre? Thats the kite in the POTW. Theres a wonderful set of miniature photography to be found at little-people.blogspot.com. The owner of the blog also has a blog with bird cartoons, which are a little weird to be honest, but the miniatures are great! :)

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Another thing to kill me!

Being shy will kill you via a heart attack. Load them on anyway... I'm already chalked up for 4 assassinations, 2 strokes, 7 brain tumors, and a dose of bowel cancer.

The BroadWave Synthesizer

Man wants to build an ARP 2600 using some blueprints from Music From Outer Space, and why not! The samples sound great, unfortunately he's a bit too fond of using Apple Shit-Time so prepare to wait for them all to load first, worth the wait though.

So, 17 years ago I made a huge, HUGE mistake... I sold my dearly beloved ARP 2600 in order to buy an Atari STFM (remember those?)

I always regretted doing this, and recently thought about getting another 2600. The problem is that second hand prices are ridiculously high - one went on ebay recently for over £2,500! and the Macbeth M5 at £3,000 is way beyond my reach.

What to do, what to do??... Build my own!

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Royksopp - The Understanding

The music is really flowing now. Since I came across Justice I'm finding all these other cool bands too, like Royksopp. Man, why didnt anybody tell me about these bands. The above track is called "Circuit Breaker". A bumbadee track that just scrambles along like a V8, with a vocal track and lyric set that would make Colin Angus of The Shamen proud. Speaking of the Shamen, its got a fairly Hempton Mannor'ish beat going through it. But dont stop now, check out "Alpha Male" below...



Holy shit Batman, it just builds and builds, and when you think its really going, it builds some more. With mellotron flutes and crusty cruznits... oh my, I need some oxygen!

Live Earth

Live Earth sums up everything I hate about trendy environmentalism. Madonna's on TV at the moment telling us to save the planet. Why only last week, Madonna had 12000 acres of forest cut down to make room for her ego.

Live Earth [via]

I want an Irish ID card

Do we have any such thing in Ireland? I can find nothing via google, bar the same old "anti-ID" shite spouted by civil-liberty cunts who have things to hide.

I need one, I want one, is there one to get? I'm no longer a student so I cant get one of those magic student card things, and I don't want to risk loosing another bulky passport or driving licence. I heard there was a new Garda card out, is that an ID card or just another "proof of age" card for 14 year old skangers looking to get locked on a half a bottle of Smirnoff Ice?

Speaking of bulky driving licences, why don't we copy Britain's system... or can we only copy British rule when it involves banning something? Britain have a great system, you have the paper licence but you leave that part at home and carry a credit card type licence in your wallet or purse. Of course this will never be introduced in Ireland. Ireland after all is a country with NO public transport and yet treats cars as luxuary items, things that only the "elite" should own. My paper licence is in flitters because I, like so many other people, have to carry it with them at all times in case I need to drive more than one vehicle in a day.

Anyway, this wasnt meant to be a rant it is an honest inquirey. It couldnt be a rant of course because as Bertie said, those who complain should commit suicide. I'm off to the river now... byeeeee!

I'm No.1 For "Ballet"

Take "that" wikipedia, I'm up there before you when people search for ballet... ok so, its just in "images" and ok its not actually my image and errr... I never bothered re-hosting it on either my blogger or photobucket account (the shame, the shame!) but thats my link up there baby!

Now, if only I could stop people visiting here because of the terms "Irish" and "Porn" I'd be made. Or maybe, I could give them what they want..... hmmmmmm.... :)

Picture of the Week

You might want to click this weeks picture for the hi res version otherwise you wont be seeing much. It's an image of Jupitor and the Earth in the field of vision. This photograph was possible by using NASA's project "Narcissus", which was launched 2 in 2005. Basically, what theyve done is send a huge reflective surface into space acting as a giant mirror which they then photograph its reflection front Earth. Cool huh? Pity its complete bollocks!

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MySpace Skank Gave Me Good Music

I was looking around myspace (cruisin for chicks) when I came across one page and let the music run. I usual don't let the [emo] music get even a single note in, but then again I usually don't visit myspace. So this music was playing, a kind of annoying Famous Five/"nah, nah nanah nah" thing. I was about to close the browser when the song suddenly got a shot of elctro funkification. I was intrieged! So I looked it up and found a myspace page for the band. A french duo called "Justice", with graphics like a christian version of MDK. So I played the second of their availible little ditties. Nice I thought, like Daft Punk with balls when suddenly I hear the main theme from Tenebre by Goblin. Holy shit, an icy forrest appeared on the back of my neck! "This is the coolest thing I've ever heard!" I thought to myself, for a split second, but I then quickly came to my senses and remembered John Cage's 4'33" of notated silence.

Could I listen to a whole album of this stuff? How long before I start seeking the death of every DJ on the planet again. Probably very soon but until then, lets D.A.N.C.E!




Claudio Simonetti would be spinning in his grave if he knew how they stole his music, if he were dead of course.

Tickle My Organ

Two organists take on musical chairs and the Toccata movement of Widor's Fifth at the same time! I realise its a common as muck piece of music in the world of organs but it's still my favorite. The speed is quite impressive if nothing else but I do prefer it at slower tempo's. If only all of life were as innocent as these two boyo's, I tell you!



One of the nicer versions on youtube, performed by Winfried König. Excellent register choice but youtube really doesnt like rendering organ sounds all that well.