Batman: The Dark Knight

Went to see it last night, review comming soon.

This is a sad excuse of a post just to keep the monthly posting average up :)

Automatic Pilot - Live On Broadway

I bought this a while back, proving that I do, eventually, pay for music that I get initially for free. I'm only noting it because of the size of box amazon.com decided to send it in.

Automatic Pilot, the best Gay Erotic-Jazz Band that ever was :)

Judas Priest - Nostradamus (2008)

Judas Priest is right! Jesus, they should have named the album Nostra-disastrous! This one takes off where their previous album ended, covered in muck at the bottom of a lake. I've been a fan of Judas Priest for nearly 16 years and this is the worst musical monstrosity they've ever come up with. Hardcore fans will say its misunderstood and too brilliant for us naysayers to understand, and thats fine... but its still shit.

The album is nearly one hundred minutes long and its full of boring meandering [bad] neo-symphoinic-metal, with no real conviction or reason for being. That would be fine, no seriously, that would be fine if they spent a bit of cash of decent orchestrations. do it Instead we get a ham fisted attempt played on something sounding like a cheap Casio keyboard.

Notice how I didn't mention the subject matter of this "concept album" yet? I won't even bother, is there any need to? If the music was decent, Halford could sing his weekly shopping list for all I care. Halford likes Nostradamus and his quatrains, I won't hold it against him.

There is one gem in the rough though, the title track on the second CD. Its the second last track and it seems more like a reward for listeners who managed to get through both CD's without switching off. do it Its excellent, no wait, its fucking excellent. Nothing more has to be said about it than it would fit in perfectly on "Painkiller". The few other half decent tracks strewn in and around the pap aren't total right-offs, but they still sound a bit plastic'y.

I guess, people said the same negative things about "Turbo" when it came out in the 80's, but now we listen back and sing along to all its cheesy goodness. So who knows, maybe in 22 years time we'll be thinking fond things about "Nostradamus". I'm making a prediction, we w...

Guess The Pianist

A short gif animation I made of a certain piano player performing a jazzy ostinato, but can you name that pianist. No prize, but you'll have your pride (minus dignity).

Playback speed will depend on your browser and machine. IE deliberately plays them slow. If it seems too fast, its probably still playing slow compared to the actual performance :)

My Broadband Got Upgraded

I noticed my broadband speed went from 3mb to 5mb at the start of the weekend, it still says I'm connecting at only 3mb though. I know speedtest.net have a nice embeddable summary at the end of their speed test, but you can't beat watching that needle fly up around the dial :) Ping is still shit though.

[More upgrade news at Holy Shmoly]

The Angry Atheist - A Short Movie I Conjured

There will be blood...

Old Stereograms

A nice collection of vintage stereogram images at ffffound.com.

Blog

Good old reliable blog... were liking jazz won't give you strange looks.

Phun Machine

I made this a few weeks back in Phun and was going to be part of the video I wrote the "Just Ice" music for. I left the original audio on it now: Victor Barry on Corks Talk Back one night, talking about the ill-fated Galway porn-cinema.

Intergalactic Interdimensional Vegetarism

Lilli describes how she feels about eating animals. Lilli is not the girl in the video though, in fact Lilli is not even of this world. She's actually being channeled through the female "portal" named Desteni who is in this video. Holy fucking shit!

There's 900 more videos if you're still not convinced.

Charlie McCreevy & His 95 Year Music Copyright Law

Fuck Lisbon, this is the shit right here. The old Chazzer's proposing extending European copyright on recorded music from 50 years to 95 years. He's doing this to defend the earnings of aging Record Labels musicians, apparently. What, you mean they blew all there pension savings on blow? Though shit, draw a state pension like everyone else then.

Lets hear from McCreevy himself though, maybe we're being unfair:

"I am not talking about featured artists like Cliff Richard or Charles Aznavour. I am talking about the thousands of anonymous session musicians who contributed to sound recordings in the late fifties and sixties. They will no longer get airplay royalties from their recordings. But these royalties are often their sole pension.”

Do session musicians get paid royalties? I they get paid a once off lump sum for their work. How could they be "anonymous" and getting paid royalties anyway. It doesn't make sense though, if these musicians were busy enough all their life to make a decent living from, then why are they suffering now? If they only were only performed on a few "failed" songs then why didn't they get another job, like everyone else has to.

Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull fame, wrote about this "50 year" copyright law two years ago.

"Along with my band, Jethro Tull, I have released over 30 albums in the course of the last four decades and sold over 60 million records.

This means loss of Royalty income not only to the (perhaps well-off, perhaps quite poor) performers on the records but, more importantly from the industry perspective, the loss of income to the record companies, and ultimately to the UK exchequer.

Record companies typically use a substantial proportion of their income from successful recordings of the past to develop brilliant, new performers like Katie Melua, and that is something worth singing about. A longer term of copyright protection would promote this kind of investment. "

As disgusting as it is to read, the Katie Melua part I mean, not the "60 million+ record sales and still moaning" part, at least he's being honest. This isn't about the musician, its about the record industry. It's always been about the record industry. If money is being wasted on the likes of Katie Melua though, then we're probably better off downloading illicit copies of Aqualung and Stormwatch, lest anymore fucking "bicycles" appear. Not that she wrote that song of course, she doesn't write her own music.

Ian's not finished....

"For some, such monies account for all, or nearly all, of their current income. Why should we perhaps have to see these musicians struggle in old age without heat
for their homes or the wherewithal to pay their nursing home bills"

I can't figure out if he's taking the piss here or not. Maybe he's talking about Michael Jackson or something.

Anyway, this things probably been passed by now. Well at least I'll be rich in old age, I'll cash in on all that crap I've been producing with Reason over the years, the lawz guarantee it!

Bottom line... As Anderson himself pointed out... composers are protected by a long copyright law already: lifetime copyright plus a further 70 years after they die. The 50 year law only refers to the recorded performance, something which is not owned by the artist anyway, but by their label [as proof, see how EMI shafted Radiohead recently]. This is a law for record companies, to let them keep flogging the horses, no matter how old and decrepit they are.

[torrentfreak.com post on this matter via usemycomputer.com]

KFC In Iraq

Kentucky Fried Chicken have opened a branch in Iraq. I reckon it will be busier than the one in Mahon Point anyway.

"FALLUJAH, Iraq – Only a short time ago the city of Fallujah served as stronghold for insurgents. Daily skirmishes, improvised explosive device detonations and public unease made operating a business in the city very difficult.

Today, with improved security throughout the region, the low price of 4,000 dinar, or $3.50, will purchase a full meal at the recently established Kentucky Fried Chicken in the Hey Al Dubat area of the city.

The KFC is the first to open for business in the city. Before improved conditions in the city, insurgents threatened business owners, demanding money to support acts of terrorism.

The restaurant has several employees, and three that work full time. Employees there serve an average 25 customers per day.

“I love the work here, because we have the opportunity to go to work every day,” said a KFC employee."

[Full Article on military.com via The AnarchAngel]

I'm Under Attack... Hotlinkers

Well it looks like the situation is worse than I first thought. A whole lot of hotlinkin' goin' on! From what I could find through google (by searching using the term "a148/gammagoblin"), it seems the main culprits are images of:

• Serena Williams
• Kate Beckinsale
  
• Ugly Betty
• Willie Stroker
• Rob Halford

I don't mind small images so much, as long as theyre a once-off, but a few animated gif's were being used in forums which tends to add up quickly. I think I may have to brand all images I host now, no matter who created them. It would be an unfortunate thing to do but if people are going to steal bandwidth I might as well try and recoup some kind of advertising from it.



And if by pure coincidence, Photobucket tell me I have only 3 days to upgrade to a pro account before they raise the yearly price for $25 to $40. Talk about decisions, decisions! But hang on a second.... they didn't send it regarding my gammagoblin account, they sent it regarding an unused account I forgot I had. Thats interesting...

Anyway, Its not the money, its only pittance really, but there are a few reasons I'm against it. Blogging takes up enough of my time, I don't want to start paying for it now too. Paying, ties my real identity to gammagoblin via credit cards (Photobucket employees hold grudges, I saw it in a movie once). Paying means that I'm tied to a service that will not continue when I'm gone (and there's no one there to pay the bills). While I won't care about this when I'm dead, I care about it now.



The main reason I'm pissed off: I only have 76 fucking megabytes of pictures in my photobucket account! Fucking bandwidth stealing cunts!

Zimbabwe Introduces $100 Billion Banknotes

100 Billion Dollars!

With inflation spiraling out of control, Zimbabwe has introduced a $100 billion note (CNN has a photo of a $500 million note). $100 billion is the equivalent to one U.S. dollar and is enough to buy four oranges.

The official inflation rate is currently at official inflation rate now at 2.2 million percent although it is likely to be a lot higher.

According to Wikipedia, Hungary suffered the highest rate of hyperinflation ever recorded shortly after the Second World War. The value of the Pengő was doubling every 15 hours and in mid-1946 the 100,000,000,000,000,000,000* (100 quintillion) Pengő banknote was issued - the highest denomination banknote ever issued. a one sextillion Pengő was also printed but was never issued.



100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (100 quintillion) Pengő


By the end of July 1946 one U.S. dollar was worth 460 octillion Pengő (460 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000)! To stabilise the economy a new currency was introduced - the Forint. One Forint was worth 400 octillion Pengő.

Related: Other examples of hyperinflation.

* - This is a quintillion as defined by the US (also used by the UN). A British quintillion would be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

[Directly lifted (minus Dr. Evil) from A Welsh View]

So, is it a good time to invest in Zimbabwe Dollars? Imagine if the country suddenly got rich over night or something... just imagine!

Roger Taylor & The Feeling

Conner - The Feeling

I am dead certain that The Feeling's lead singer, Dan Gillespie Sells, is Queen drummer, Roger Taylor, in disguise. Their voices are amazingly similar. And that song is like something Roger would do.

It's hard choosing two songs which give a 100% clear example of the similarity, but if you're anyway familiar with Roger's voice I'm sure you'll have to agree that The Feeling ripped him off and he should sue :) He could use the money to produce another fantastic solo album for us all to enjoy lol Seriously though, even the little gravelly bits are identical.


Foreign Sand - Roger Taylor

Serena's Ass Cheeks Nearly Blew Up My Blog

I got this smelly email from Photobucket last night just before I went asleep. I thought it might be a scam as I couldn't understand where all the bandwidth suddenly went, then I remembered that I got a lot of inbound links around the time of Wimbledon. All hits led to my post on "Serena Williams". I assume theres a bit of hotlinking going on too, draining away my 25GB. I find it ironic to get this warning at a time when hits are at a monthly low and I'm wondering where my 60+ readers went.



I did a rough estimation for the above graph. Adding up all the days hits (minus about 300 for a daily average), then multiplying that figure with a rough size for the Serena Williams image (250KB), I got about 26GB a figure very close to the actual 25GB mark. So it seems like a legit email Photobucket sent.

I wish I could easily search for hotlinked images by searching google using the stem of my photobucket account URL as a search term. Then at least I could rename them and alter the affected posts here. If I go over my bandwith cap practically everything on this blog will disappear, maybe its for the best lol.

Funny Picture

I found this in a small collection of funny frozen-in-time images at xarj.net. A few I hadn't seen before.

Solve Obesity & The Energy Crises

"Make the fuckers cycle!" There are two major problems facing us today, growing waistbands and shrinking oil supplies. Add to this the probable increase in global temperature because of the use of fossil fuels and we can start to feel very sorry for ourselves. But we need to look at where the oil has gone. Well effectively its gone under our skin. We are consumption machines, everything we do is to survive and better ourselves. You cannot destroy energy, only transform it. Oil was refined into combustible fuels for machines to toil the land, transport the grain, make the bread, and then to transport the bread to our tables for us to eat. We consume the energy and store the excess. We're consuming more than we need and its making us fat. We have all this energy within us and we are unable to tap into it. Fuck wind, solar or wave power... we are all our own little personal generators.


The Basic premise

What puts me off the most about exercise is just how pointless it is. It's like walking to the south pole when you could drive to it in a Toyota Hilux (no, not like Top Gear you fools! That was the North Pole.). Doing something for the sake of doing it doesn't work for me, nor does it for most people. Cycling was grand when you weren't old enough to drive but you've a car now, and you pay too much for you not to use it. But imagine if we could earn money from back-feeding the national grid with biomechanical energy. You plug your exercise bike into a wall socket and away you go. Or better still, set up biomechanical power plant made up from those on social welfare. It could be the new civil service job! Factories are closing down everyday, so why not give the ex-workers a job where they literally drive the country along.

"But hang on there a second" I hear you say "isn't this a bit like the matrix?". Absolutely! Only youre not trying to directly step-up the native neurological voltage within the human body to a usable level, instead you are transforming the stored energy with the fat cells, by the use of mechanical means, to electricity.


Power generation could be this sexy!

By easing people into the power generation scheme, with short shifts to begin with and a high number of shift workers, the mortality rate could be significantly reduced to acceptable levels. What would inevitability happen though is a barrage of lawsuits from family's of those who expired during the generating process. This would no doubt call into question the ethics of such a power generation scheme, but remember: fat kills too and fat on a dead man, is wasted energy. Of course steam could be generated to turn turbines from the burning of these dead bodies....

Ok so, ignore the last paragraph, it's still an interesting idea. I even switched to a "green" wristwatch a while back. Just imagine all the whales I've saved by buying this baby. Mother fuckin' kinetics!


My kinetic Seiko divers watch. It's actually a magic-eye image... give it a go

"But isn't this a brilliant idea, why haven't we already started doing this?" Well two reasons, actually no, 3 reasons... fuck I don't know how many reasons yet, I'm making this shit up as I go along.

1. No need, the oil was always there
2. We're lazy, we'd prefer to burn up the last few drops of oil instead.
3. The amount of power generated is shit.

Yeah, number three is the real stumbling block in all this. Basically, it works out at 1KWH per 1 minute cycled. So what's that equate to? Well you have to cycle for a 100 minutes to watch an hours worth of TV, and if you were to try and boil a kettle, forget it! Your energy would be better spent trying to develop a taste for cold tea instead.


Just look at this poor fucker struggle as the wattage clocks up.

But thats thinking big. Think smaller. You could develop enough power to charge your phone after about 7 minutes of cycling. Or like in the above videos, light light-bulbs for a while. As things progress, the ratio between time cycled and power generated will get better. Heck, in a little while those crazy scientists will develop a process where a bike will generate enough power to get you from home to workplace and back again... but thats years off yet.

Well its like this, when the doctor says "Johnny, if you don't start exercising, you're fucked. In fact, I think your fucked already, but you have children and you need to show that your making some effort to prolong your life.", wouldn't it be nice to don the sweatpants, plug your Fatgen™ Exercise Bike 4000™ into a wall socket and provide people like us, with the electricity we need to watch porn with.

I like you!

Kindest Regards,
Hiromi Nashikonika
CEO and Founder of Fatgen Exercise Paraphernalia™.

[originally penned in January 2008]

Volume of n-Spheres and the Gamma Function

Only posting this because of the great title: "Volume of n-Spheres and the Gamma Function"... Thats the best sounding title I've read in a while. It's fucking space age man, loaded with techno!

A "sphere" of radius R in n dimensions is defined as the locus of points with a distance less than R from a given point. This implies that a sphere in n = 1 dimension is just a line segment of length 2R, so the volume (or "content") of a 1-sphere is simply 2R.

A sphere of radius R in two dimensions can be regarded as consisting of a continuous sequence of one-dimensional spheres at a perpendicular distance u from some fixed 1-sphere, and such that the radius of the 1-sphere at a distance u is r(u) = sqrt(R^2 - u^2), where u varies uniformly from -R to +R. In general, an n-sphere consists of a sequence of (n-1)-spheres of radius r(u) as u varies uniformly from -R to +R.

Therefore, given the volume formula V_{n}[R] for n-dimensional spheres, we can determine the formula V_{n+1}[R] for (n+1)-spheres as follows...

[read more at mathpages.com]

Bizarre Photoshop

A story of some truly bizarre alterations made to photographs of students for their yearbook in a US college. A national photographic company came in to do the work, take the photos and produce the annuals, but for some unknown reason made weird changes to the photographs.

"Some girls' heads ended up on boys' bodies, and vice versa. Some necks were stretched, and some outfits were altered.

The problem photos are obvious. One girl's arm is missing. Another girl is missing her clothing – and was left with a blurred chest.

Multiple students have the same body and clothes. Some shirt colors were changed, while patterns and wording on other shirts were wiped out.

At least 34 students had someone else's body."

[Full story at dallasnews.com]

Madonna & OMFO - Mashup

I heard Madonna's "Give It 2 Me" for the first time yesterday. I thought it sounded quite similar to "Magic Mămăliga" by OMFO (German Popov), made famous by the Borat movie. The polka rhythm and phrasings seemed to match up, in my head at least. I was going to just mention it in passing but then decided to go one step further and merge the two. As it turned out, the two matched quite well. Because Madonna goes a bit crazy in the middle of her song I decided to let Borat have a little cameo appearance :)

Original Two Songs

"Magic Mămăliga" by OMFO	"Give It 2 Me" by Madonna

Play from vimeo.com video above or download from box.net...

Give It To Borat.mp3[6MB]



[UPDATE 14.07.08]Sorry, it appears I might have fucked up the levels on this public version. The Magic Mămăliga and Borat parts aren't as clear when played back through some systems (ie anything other than headphones). Thats what I get for rushing... and thats what I get for lashing the cash for a new music production system and not actually using it. I always seem to get inspired when all I've got is some old crappy piece of crappy onboard-sound pc. It will probably be two weeks before I get a fixed copy up. At least you get the idea of what I was on about with this version.

Fishy

New Blog: Cork Jazz 2008

Posting here has been a bit slim of late, thats because my attention has been diverted a new blog I created a few weeks back. It relates to the upcoming Guinness Cork Jazz festival in October. I'm slowly making my way through all the acts (as they appear on the official website), creating a post for each.

There's nothing amazing there, just a youtube video or two and a few links to related websites. I may add items as time goes on. I've also started to put up posts for each of the venues that will be used, with a google map detailing the position of each. I'm doing all this primarily for my own benefit, so that I'm familiar with the acts before the festival starts, but I figure that others may also benefit from having a blog they can quickly browse through all the acts, and sample their music.

It's still a work in progress, so bare with me while I update it. Suggestions for content for each act is greatly welcomed and can done so via comments or email. Oh one other thing, this blog is a separate entity to this one, so unlike my other sub-blog's listed on the right, its content won't be republished here, meaning that if you want to keep up to date with it automagically, you'll have to subscribe to its feed separately (the big blue thingy).

http://corkjazz2008.blogspot.com

Chase, The Cat With No Face.

Chase, and her blog, have been getting a lot interest on the internet over the past few weeks. She is a 3 year kitty cat who suffered extensive damage to her face as kitten. Perhaps worse than the disfigurement she suffered are the calls for her owner to put her down because in their opinion, the cat is suffering too much. Quite how they know this for certain is a mystery, the cat certainly looks like its in no severe discomfort. One person even suggested that there was something seedy about having its owner create a blog about such a disfigured cat. Strangers can be such "experts" at times.



[via]

Mark Townley, Death Threats...

It's like the Duracell Bunny, it just keeps going on and on, and on and... "Mark Townley" has spoken to the Sunday Tribune about how his life has changed since those infamous Live Line appearences.

"I received death threats and have reported them to the gardaí ... I worked 18 hours a day for months and in the space of two days I became Dublin's most wanted man," he said.

Dozens of callers to the Liveline programme had told how they handed over up to €300 for modelling lessons and a photographic portfolio. They were asked to pay an upfront fee of €150 and were told there was just a day left to sign up.

The show heard how girls as young as 13 were being approached on the streets and asked to pay to join the agency for a chance to become Ireland's Next Top Model in a "scam" that supposedly yielded up to €750,000 for Townley."

Thanks to the anonymous commenter for the heads-up on this.

BMW M3 Challenge

I downloaded the M3 Challenge game for PC a few months back. It's not bad actually, a kind of M3 simulator based on a GTR variant. Two tracks are included, both based on Nuremberg track, but there isn't a straight long enough to get the car into 7th gear (but maybe thats just me :). The best part of the game though is the ability to clutch whenever you want, so it's possible to blip the throttle coming out of a bend to give a bit of kick. The gearbox is also one of the most disappointing features though, as there is only a manual car to drive. It's possible to select automatic gear shits but this is only a manual version with he gearshifts being controlled by the computer. There is no model available for the SMG version, which isn't going to affect the speed of shifts but it would have been nice to see.

The above video is part of the intro sequence [I only found this out later because I always skipped through it]. I found the bink file in one of the games folders and converted it to an avi. It's a nice video of the car, but theres something curious about the music. It's credited as being "M3 The Long Road" by Dr. Stephen Maysted, and indeed the start does contain that song but the song changes for the rest of the video. Theres no mention of who or what it is but it does sound a lot like something Liam Howlett (The Prodigy) would come up with... and he's provided music for BMW in the past.

Best (of) Radiohead Album to Date

Radiohead, or should I say, EMI has released what I feel is their best album to date. If you spend five seconds googling for the album you will see why I made a point of stating that its EMI and not the band thats releasing this.

Why is it their best? Well simply put, Radiohead have had a fine selection of songs in their lifetime, I mean really excellent and iconic pieces of music, but unfortunately their albums are shit. They have one or two singles from each that get you hooked but you soon find out that the rest of the album is absolute filler.

All hard-core Radiohead fans reading this will now no-doubt be furiously clicking the "add comment" link at the bottom to vent their outrage and call for my head. I'm not bothered though, Radiohead fans continuously prove they are as about as tolerant to differing views as a Muslim at a bar mitzvah. They are in fact, the "Apple fanboys" of music. Music is only part of their fandom. Thom Yorke is actually their god and anyone not saying nice things deserves a good jihad thrown at them.



Just look at their reaction to the new "Best Of" album on Amazon.com . In a nutshell "How dare 'evil' EMI do this to the poor band. Radiohead are too good for 'best-of's' anyway. They invented music. MUSE are shit". Jesus christ, get over it! Thom York will not personally suffer; most people will just fucking download it illegally anyway.

I think what pisses me off most about Radiohead fans is their inability to stick to a story. They vehemently hate the idea of Radiohead becoming overly popular and yet expect everyone to think they are the greatest band ever. I think I might actually give the rest of their music a closer listen to if it wasn't for the fear of being indoctrinated into some cult of bullshit for doing so.

I've been waiting for this album for years but unfortunately, EMI have made a mess of the single disc version. It's crucially missing Knives Out, which is excellent, although if the truth be told, Brad Mehldau's version blows it away.



Actually, Brad Mehldau makes everything sound better. Listen to his version of Paranoid Android. This is the song that made me take note of Brad Mehldau when I first heard it a few years ago.



Fuck it, I think I'll just buy another Mehldau album instead.

For Professinal Use Only

I've become quite infatuated with fotosports.com. There's some genuinely excellent sports shots up for sale, but the snag is, you have to register and be vetted to see if you intend to use the images for professional purposes. Thats grand, I can understand the reasoning behind it, but prey tell, what kind of professional use could the above picture Serena Williams in this years Wimbledon final be used for?

Note: Masturbation is not a profession, its a hobby. At most, its a vocation.

You can order prints though, and t-shirts and stuff. Hmmm... Maybe I'll get myself a few t-shirts, they'd look well under a sports coat.

Chick Corea & John McLaughlin In Cork!!!

Holy fuck, I just blew my trousers off... and the tennis hasn't even started yet!

[Cork Jazz Festival 2008 Website]

Williams v Williams

Well, I know what I'm doing this Saturday.

The weather may be sunny,
Or turn out a bit drizzly,
But at least on the Tv,
The tennis will be jizzly.

Venus to win.

[BBC News]

[UPDATE 05.07.08] And indeed she did win, but with a final like that, everyones a winner!

Having a bad Tuesday?

Then look at this poor guy. Setting off a sprinkler in a warehouse is bad, but when a ladder appears in a video on the internet, you know things are about to get worse.