You know, this post really sucks. Don't let that stop you from listening to the tunes in the linked post, though.
Don't worry, when you post, the only thing we ever look at are the links.
Someday I'll put up a post with a link to itself!
Then we'll just keep following that link until we achieve satori, the state of total enlightenment.
You can only achieve satori, the state of total enlightenment, by giving up on your links to this world, Walt.
That's not what your momma says.
My mother is more of a classical Pyrrhonian skeptic than a Buddhist.
7: I think you've had a little too much champagne, Sifu.
Huh. I was sitting down to finish the Melville Army of Shadows and come across the documentary about Evelyn Glennie, including rehearsals with Fred Frith and the Taiko drummers.
I'll get back to you.
Melville Army of Shadows
Such a great movie.
Touch the Sound directed by Thomas Riedelssheimer. Lots of Frith, Fred does soundtracks for R's documentaries. Lots of cuts to art photography shots:fields of flowers, burnt out buildings, breakers on Scottish rocks, people chewing, name it. It is like R is trying to find the visual equivalent to Glennies's approach to ambient and found sound.
Glennie has amazng red hair. And good feet.
I will review your musical selections just as soon as I finish watching Nurse With Wound on Larry King.
Oh wow. That first link. It's... it's... it's... I have no words.
The Attack Attack video is hysterical. I like how the guitarists are all doing deep Horton squats. Can you really headbang and play a Casio simultaneously?
Melville schmelville. Bring It On is a great movie.
OK, they are both great movies.
I am very glad I watched those videos, neb. Thank you. I've been writing songs for my new band and this makes me feel a lot better.
Brokencyde is merely bad. But Attack Attack! is brilliant! I would compare them to the early work John Zorn did with Naked City. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a direct, conscious influence.
Also I'm going to form a band called Attack, Attack!
I suppose there's no a priori reason to think that death metal/metalcore/grindcoreësque vokill expectorations couldn't be rhythmic or lyrical components in a shitty pop tune, but it would have to be one whose other components aren't so bright and bubbly.
Wait for it... my mother digs this stuff. That's because it's thick on the ground in Japan and apparently has been for years. Nobody knows what the hell it is, except the Japanese really dig taking sections from many different genres and mixing them up into a non-tasty mess. So these guys appear to be a low-rent imitation of the craptacular Japanese imitation.
JM: The Attack Attack video is hysterical. I like how the guitarists are all doing deep Horton squats.
With their guitars positioned to represent giant instrumental cocks! That they are um, wanking, rather than using in the uh, cool way. It's symbolic!
Can you really headbang and play a Casio simultaneously?
I dunno, but Bree Bree (Brokencyde) is apparently supposed to be some kind of pig squeal. Which is worth listening to enduring for the pig squeal. And the pig squeal is even better at 1.5 x speed. Said squeal also seems to have inspired two young ladies to drive around looking looking for Crunk to enable them to make the pig squeal noise.
I'm guessing this is one of those moments when a genre goes conpletely over the top and there is a sudden phase transition to utter irrelevance and total unhipness.
max
['Or one could hope.']
re: 18
Is that a joke? [I'm not being sarcastic, I really don't know if you are kidding]
I mean Zorn has done loads of harcore/metal influenced stuff, but the influence runs to Zorn when it comes to this music, not from Zorn.* I'd lay pretty high odds the likes of Attack Attack! are influenced by the same thrash/hardcore/grindcore bands that Zorn was influenced by.
That kind of hardcore with pop choruses stuff has been in and out of the British charts for a while. It's pretty mainstream stuff. Sheesh, there are ex boy-band members charting post-hardcore stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nevueJLezCc&feature=related
Then there are bands that mix hardcore, pop and techno, for added cross-over appeal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4MiC67seUY
[They've had at least one top 40 single in the UK, believe it or not]
* with the exception of some things like Praxis, where the musicians are a mixture of jazzers and thrash metal blokes.
But influence runs from Zorn when it comes to having multiple disparate genres in the same song—that's one of the things Naked City was famous for, and something he's done elsewhere (eg the piano piece "The Carny").
Oh and:
Nurse With Wound on Larry King.
For serious?
re: 22
I'd be, erm, very surprised if the likes of Enter Shikari have ever heard of Zorn.* I'd bet the same holds for Attack Attack!
And, as I said, that sort of genre-hybrid is pretty mainstream in the UK. And, according to Max, in Japan too. Convergent evolution again, I'd bet. With no Zorn influence.
*Great though Zorn is, of course: the current disc I have on near constant rotation is one of the live Electric Masada discs from the recent(ish) 50th birthday celebrations.
I was kidding when I said that there was direct conscious influence.
I was only half kidding when I said you could make a positive comparison between Attack Attack! and John Zorn. The transitions are far more jarring than you get in normal metal/boy band crossover stuff, and it has the same appealing feel as Naked City.
There are moments on the first Naked City album where he jumps from grindcore to samba, but I can't find any on the web.
Can you really headbang and play a Casio simultaneously?
Outsiders don't appreciate the fact that heavy metal keyboards often lurch violently during performances, so the player needs to hold on the them very tightly, his muscles straining and his face flush, to keep it from flying away.
re: 25
Yeah, I'm just saying that the transitions are pretty similar to a fair amount of stuff that's been charting here for a while. Attack Attack! sound pretty fourth-rate/barrel-scraping to me, I have to say.
Oh, I was going to add, the idea that Attack Attack! is influenced by Zorn is laughable.
Their music doesn't sound anything like Naked City's anyway; for one thing, in Naked City the incongruity of the leaps is the point. Attack Attack! far too obviously wants these things to be a song and not a mishmash.
has the same appealing feel as Naked City
…appealing?
one of the live Electric Masada discs from the recent(ish) 50th birthday celebrations.
Those are great. I passed up a chance to see Electric Masada live recently because it was $50. This may have been a mistake.
10, 11: Woo! So great.
Mothers Against Brokencyde is the funniest link I saw this week.
Their music doesn't sound anything like Naked City's anyway; for one thing, in Naked City the incongruity of the leaps is the point. Attack Attack! far too obviously wants these things to be a song and not a mishmash.
You give too much weight to artistic intent.
I meant my comparison in the same spirit as this piece of art criticism.
Mothers Against Brokencyde is a pale imitation of the Mothers Against Andrew W.K., or Mothers Against To Live and Shave in L.A., or whatever it was, of some years back.
Ah! It was Mothers Against Noise, and part of their brief with Mr W.K. was that he had been in To Live and Shave in L.A., I think.
You will be shot, rob.
You give too much weight to artistic intent.
I read the intent off from the results. If they wanted to be Naked Cityësque, they failed.
re: 34
Not me, that's not how my people roll. Chibbing people, maybe.
30: "Show yo cooch, win a smooch!" Yay!
Wait, Brokencyde is on the Warped tour? They actually have fans and sell records?
I thought we were making fun of some wanna be kids whose parents had bought them some nice equipment.
In Brokencyde's lamentable case
"Lamentable" - one of my favorite words. Very 18th century, but well-suited for the 21st.
Repeated from other thread:
||
I'm buying a laptop. For work (office, home, road). Any wisdom to impart?
|>
The new MacBook Pros are really nice -- if you don't need a Windows machine, check them out.
I feel like I do need a Windows machine. That's what I've always had. I'm I wrong? It's mostly going to be used for Word docs, and email.
40: Ooh, that looks nice. And $1199! Not bad.
It's mostly going to be used for Word docs, and email.
It shouldn't much matter, then. Macs work fine with Word files. It's just a question of which interface you'd prefer. The only reason you'd really need a Windows machine is if you have some specific software that only works on one, or (in certain cases) need to remotely connect to an office network or something.
OMG, I think I'm buying one *right now*.
Yeah, what Matt said. There's no real reason not to use a Mac unless there's some very specific software need you have.
To be honest, if your primary needs are just Word and email, pretty much any half-decent laptop you buy is going to be perfectly fine; PC or Mac. The base spec of anything but the cheapest laptop is more than adequate for all that and a lot more.
If it was me I'd be looking at things like: do I like the screen, is the keyboard nice to type on at length, how is the trackpad? i.e. ergonomic stuff.
There's a 13-inch MacBook Pro now? Those bastards!
Why bother to learn another operating system if all you're doing is email and word processing?
I thought we were making fun of some wanna be kids whose parents had bought them some nice equipment.
You don't really need nice equipment to make that kind of music, other than maybe a laptop. The rest you can get with BitTorrent.
Wow. That was thrilling and sickening. New MBPro on its way to my house!
My system administrator is checking them out, thanks. I'm most concerned with reliability, I guess. If I go Windows, I can use some of the macros they have here, but I don't consider that a deal breaker.
Why bother to learn another operating system if all you're doing is email and word processing?
There isn't really a learning curve. And MacBooks are so pretty. (My passion for my laptop: objectively disturbing.)
It is true that if you just want to do email and Word, pretty much anything will do. (I assume. Maybe Word's awful idiosyncracies show up more on some machines than others? I haven't used it in ten years, but I remember documents looking completely different when opened on different computers, or tables and figures being rearranged randomly.)
I will want to dual screen, of course.
There isn't really a learning curve.
There was for me, even though I'd used other kinds of Unix.
Anyway, if besides email and word processing you also want to make "crunk" traxx to scream over top of, you'll want the (PC-only) Fruity Loops.
Word is just as annoying on Mac as on Windows, so you can rest easy on that score.
Word 2007 is horrible beyond reason.
Macs, iPhones, and Pixar are all part of the same conspiracy to subjugate us to the iron yet aesthetic boot heel of Steve Jobs. "California Uber Alles" was aimed at the wrong target.
Heh. What with Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and Google; the IT industry, despite the hippy nerd marketing, does seem to be all about the iron boot.
That means I'm selling my current lovely 13" MacBook (white, the upper tier of that line, two years old) along with the printer-scanner-copier, for $500 plus shipping. It doesn't hold a battery charge very long and has a tiny area where the body casing liner pulled away, but it's otherwise like brand new. Email me if you might want it.
Since Carp cross posted, I guess I'll do the same with my response:
311: I had one of those 3-pounders (Dell), which was fantastic, schlepping-wise, but my hard drive and 2 replacements failed. My computer-fixers told me that there just isn't enough cushioning built into something that light to protect the hard drive and they see tons of failures for that reason.
My other Dells (currently a Latitude D630) have been total workhorses and resilient as hell. (That includes the one that I dropped from waist high in the airport security line. Everyone in line was horrified and sympathetic, but the thing kept working.)
However, the batteries all seem to go south pretty quickly. Initially, my current one would run for 3 or 4 hours, even with wireless turned on. A year (or 2; I can't quite remember) I suddenly can't get more than half an hour. My co-workers have had the same experience with their Dell batteries.
The previous is provided for anecdata only.
P.S. If you're going PC, move heaven and earth to somehow get XP and not have to suffer with Vista. Windows 7 allegedly fixes some Vista problems, but I see no reason to believe Microsoft about that.
P.P.S. Consider a refurb.
P.P.P.S. Have a good backup system.
P.P.P.P.S. That's everything I can think of for now.
Why bother to learn another operating system if all you're doing is email and word processing?
Because if all you're doing is e-mail and word processing, "learn another operating system" is mostly "how do I launch a program and where is the off switch."
Except for Word 2007. Good lord, what a mess of a program.
60: We're being forced to switch at one of my offices. The fact that it's 2009 and I've only been e-mailed one .docx had given me a hint that 2007 wasn't an improvement.
Now that I'm convincingly old enough to order kids off my lawn, I don't think I should have to learn a new word processor more than once a decade.
They switched my work computer to Office 2007. One night, without telling me. By 10 a.m. the next day I was crying tears of frustration.
I think that rather than learning Vista and Word 2007 the next time I need a new computer, I'm just going to switch to Mac and Open Office.
At El B's recommendation I bought an Eee and I'm loving how portable it is.
62: "By 10 a.m. the next day I was crying tears of frustration."
How is that different than the other days?
There are disadvantages to having a 14 year old systems administrator, but the ability to ground him is worth a lot.
Over on the girlfriend thread, Josh says that you can turn off the Vista stuff to make it run like XP. That doesn't do anything about the Office 7 problem though.
OpenOffice seems to take significantly longer to load than is reasonable, on most computers I've used it on. Other than that it seems unobjectionable, although I still prefer to just use LaTeX.
True, Vista does suck. I only use it for music stuff that I can't do on Linux.
The beta version of Windows 7 that I tried last winter was nicer. Although apparently one of the account controls they removed to make it less annoying also opened it to a malware attack.
66: you can turn off the Vista stuff to make it run like XP
You can turn off the vista stuff to make the UI like XP, you can't make it perform like XP. But both XP and 7 are decent OSs.
OpenOffice seems to take significantly longer to load than is reasonable
I've had this problem too.
Hey, can we go back to talking about the bad metal bands? Mothers against Brokencyde is a typical example of hysterical-parent activism. (Is it a parody? Was it put up by Brokencyde to promote the band?) Nevertheless, I would really be upset if Caroline or Joey started listening to them. I'd be upset, not because they are talentless, but because they are assholes, and their assholishness works synergisticly with their talentlessness to create a huge vortex of suckitude.
They moved our department over to Word 2007 about three months ago. I don't think it's really that much worse than the previous version once you get used to it; it's just bad in all new ways. I'm convinced Microsoft hires the guys with cardboard "will work for food god bless" signs to do all their application interface work.
but because they are assholes, and their assholishness works synergisticly with their talentlessness to create a huge vortex of suckitude.
So, wait, is it ultimately an aesthetic complaint after all?
re: 71
I think the basic interface paradigm they adopted for the Word 2007 UI is insane. The non-constant menus, etc. I don't know what the correct UI-guru term for it is but whatever it is, the person responsible for it needs nailing to a wall. It's been creeping in for a while, and if an application doesn't have an option where I can go in and set it to 'expert mode, all options visible, no fucking hidden shit' then it pissed me off. Then again, even on the Mac I spent about 75% of my working day inside a bash shell, so maybe I'm not the target market.
Re: Vista, on the other hand, I switched to it on my desktop and have had no problems. I find it's fine once I turned off half of the security features. I haven't noticed any performance hit either. Maybe there's a RAM threshold beyond which it's fine.
I don't hate Word 2007 any more than I hated the previous Words, but I don't hate it any less, either.
The one time I used Office 2007 I spent half my session searching in vain for an Undo button before finally learning via the Web that they'd done away with it.
re: 76
Yeah, that sort of thing. I use Open Office by preference. Although it is stupidly slow.
Then again, even on the Mac I spent about 75% of my working day at Unfogged and 25% inside a bash shell
MaB is an obvious parody.
I think if you had more interaction with real live parents who are Worried About Their Children, this would be less obvious. I'm certain its still true, but the parody is close to reality here.
The one time I used Office 2007 I spent half my session searching in vain for an Undo button before finally learning via the Web that they'd done away with it.
Did there used to be a special *button* for it? Really? Wacky! I never noticed. There's still Undo in the edit menu, and the keyboard shortcut works just fine.
This is a pretty helpful interactive thingamabob where you can click in a mock-up of Word 2003 and it shows you how to do the comparable thing in 2007.
There's an undo button on the top left corner of the window. It's a curved arrow pointing left.
re: 78
Hah. That's where you're wrong. Because of the time difference there isn't much happening when I'm actually at work. Instead I tend to catch up with the busy comment threads in the morning with the first cup of coffee, or when I'm winding down late at night.
Mac users should use NeoOffice instead of Open Office. Same code, Mac-specific build. Runs a bit faster, though not leaps and bounds.
Mac users should do what they feel like.
We feel like WORSHIPPING STEVE JOBS!
51: If you want to drive two external monitors, you can't do that natively on Macbooks (Pro or not); you need additional hardware. You can always leave the screen up and use that as one monitor with an external one, as long as having differently-sized monitors doesn't bother you.
One thing to consider is that you cannot get a docking station for a Macbook. If you end up toting the laptop a lot, that could get annoying.
OTOH, if you get VMWare Fusion, you don't have to choose between OSes.
you can click in a mock-up of Word 2003 and it shows you how to do the comparable thing in 2007
That is quite helpful, and I'll bookmark it for the dark day when I'm forced to switch.
Please tell me they haven't done anything alarming to Excel in 7.
88: Excel 2007 moves to the same "ribbon"-style menu system. So. Um. Panic?
So I was just looking at the Word 7 page, which includes the information that "The Ribbon [lamest name for a tool bar ever?] . . . is designed to help you quickly find the commands that you need." Obviously, then, "it is not possible to customize the Ribbon" (e.g., add to, rearrange, change, or remove commands). Because Microsoft knows what you need and how your brain groups and processes information.
Uh-oh. Just saw Stanley's 89. Gulp indeed.
My company has decided to move its product to using the same ribbons Microsoft is moving to. Because "it's the future". Despite my protests.
That's it. Now it's really time to BURN SHIT DOWN.
94: They took away the macro for that.
Oh, Stanley, you make me laugh through my tears.
re: 95
Thankfully Emacs users still have access to M-x burn-shit-down.
Also, wtf is it with this 'too many comments have been submitted in too short a time period' thing?
Also, wtf is it with this 'too many comments have been submitted in too short a time period' thing?
When I was a gainfully employed programmer and my company needed a standardized format for entering product data into excel, I included a mod that caused the Office paperclip to, every ten-thousandth time, threaten the user's family, by name if they'd registered one.
Is that why you're no longer a gainfully employed programmer?
99 makes me want to forgive foolishmortal for the whole "photoshopping my face onto scenes of unspeakable horror" thing.
Not directly, but it could be related.
101: I never actually did that, yet it's supposed to be some emblematic indictment of my character, somehow. Anyway, the paperclip was perfectly polite, at least until you tried to decline helpful Word tips.
Kraabicus: Over on the girlfriend thread, Josh says that you can turn off the Vista stuff to make it run like XP.
Go to this page, which is an overall outline of how to (basically) tweak Vista (which, in the end, is mostly how to tweak XP... on back, plus new features). (Note: I just found the Black Viper (appropriate for this thread, no?) page via google; it just seems to be the best and most effective one for a neophyte.) Go to this page and fetcher the tweaker located there. It's just another version of TweakUI, which is (or was) the basic tweak addon. It's free.
Essentially, first turn off all the goddamn excessive video crap and then start blowing away excess/unused services and it should run a lot better. Maybe not well, but better.
That is quite helpful, and I'll bookmark it for the dark day when I'm forced to switch.
Turn off Office 2007 Ribbon Menu and Switch to Office 2003 MenuClicky linky, make stinky problem go blinky bye.
Apparently, there's also a youtuby direction thing that doesn't require an addon.
I'd also bet that OpenOffice doesn't have the/a startup loader running like Office does, causing it to appear slower. I am pretty sure they have one.
max
['Same shit... different day.']