David Fisher : What is Noise Blog

I got an email from Trent Reznor today about an album he’s been working on with Saul Williams. The project/album is called NiggyTardust and it looks to be rather interesting.

The album will be released online-only at first in what Trent admits is a Radiohead-like manner, with a major difference being that Saul Williams is not a household name. Details can be found at the website: http://niggytardust.com

I personally like the twist that they have put on the online payment of it. You can either say (and it literally says this one the website) that you can support the artist, or “you don’t care about that” and just want the music. Interesting. He’s gonna get my $5.

I should note that it’s been mastered by Brian “Big Bass” Gardner, who I’m going to try to get to do my album when I get a chance. I see him on Gearslutz quite often and he seems to have reasonable rates.

Tags: Brian "Big Bass" Gardner, niggytardust, online distribution, saul williams

I’ve always been “that guy” at work that’s wishing that he could bring his own computer with the programs that I like using instead of using whatever corporate provides.

Well now I’m beginning to see a weakness to this side of things as well. Everyone with my company uses their own computers. The all choose their operating systems. They all choose their software. They all choose their own workflow.

It all works perfectly, unless you’re trying to choose a new tool, or have ‘assumed’ interoperability. Rolling out a piece of software requires that it work on 3 operating systems that everyone is happy about the piece of software. Not as easy as the “big corporation” just adding the install script for the software into your login.

I always laugh at people having to use horrid computers at work (toting around 10lb underpowered Lennovos) but I’m beginning to see why corporate doesn’t let them load their Ubuntu on everything, or drag their Mac into work.

Tags: business, computer

I don’t normally have time to sit around and play video games, but being dead sick I had a few hours that I was not feeling totally 100% sick, and only 98% sick that I was actually able to try out Valve’s new video game: Portal. Unlike Harry Potter reviews being published an hour after it’s release however, even with the recent release (and my rather recent purchase of) the game it is very very short as games go and so this is actually a fairly well informed review.

It’s supposed to be somewhere between 2-3 hours long to get through the entire game. Well in my condition of being sick, I guess I’m the one legged man running a marathon (without a fake leg) because it took me over 5 hours. I may have won the record for being the slowest person over 7 to win the game.

First of all, I like the fact that it was a short game. Some of the best games ever were short. Super Mario Brothers, Contra, etc… This one falls into the “only modern game to be short that isn’t meant for children” category. I’m not a hardcore gamer, and I like it that way. Unlike hardcore gamers that play WoW everyday- I have a girlfriend and shower frequently. I don’t have the time to sit there and dodge 100 lighteningbolts perfectly just to get a single piece of a certain weapon to beat one boss.

The premise of the game (in case you’re living in a cave or are still stuck playing FF-X and dodging lighteningbolts after all these years) is that you are in some place, and you are solving these puzzles. Your tool to do it is a gun that makes shortcuts in reality. Shoot the floor, then shoot the ceiling. Walk into new hole in floor and fall out ceiling. Crazy but simple enough.

The gameplay is clean enough for almost all children IMHO. There’s more blood on FOX in 5 minutes than in this game. There’s a little bit of blood that hits the wall if/when a gun shoot you (which is actually fairly rare the most part), and no foul language. But Cake is mentioned often.

The puzzles are great, and there’s challenge modes after you beat the game. I won’t spoil the ending, but its rather interesting.

The game has the absolute best game ending music/song EVER. There’s no multiplayer, as that would be just silly. I like the fact that it’s not a twitchy game for the most part, although one or two moments do require more twitch than I enjoyed in my drugged up state of being rather sick. Most people who enjoy FPS stuff will find it problem-free however. There’s no difficulty mode, so if you beat the game, then move on the challenges- which are very challenging.

Basically the game takes Brain Age + Halflife 2 and makes a killer puzzle game out of it. It is short, sweet, and tastes like cake. More games like this need to be made. It should be noted that for the most part you can turn the settings up a lot more than you can in HL:2 because there’s no outside areas and no characters to render. My Macbook Pro ran it pretty much everything all the way up and at full native resolution just fine. The download was stupidly quick. Valve’s servers rock the house.

The only thing I can’t understand about the game is why it’s so damn big? 6GB+ is pretty big for a game much shorter than other HL2 games. Who knows. Either way, I like it.

Tags: games, halflife, Portal, Valve

The flu + strep almost did me in. Or that’s the way it feels. I think i’m going to be better soon, but I went in this morning to get a shot of penicillin in the ass after my tests came back to show that I had strep + something else (presumably the flu virus).

The real kick in the ass, was that after getting the shot the nurse asked, “Where do you plan on going after this?”, “Home to lay down” I said. He said that penicillin shots are very… thick, and take some working around to spread well so I had to walk for at least an hour if not more, without really sitting down much. Not a huge deal normally, but I was lightheaded from not eating much over the past week and hadn’t walked more than perhaps 100 steps in the same past week. Seriously.

I went to the Prudential after stopping by $tarbuck$ and getting some sweetened iced tea (for something to drink, and something to quickly boost my bloodsugar without much caffeine). I figured that the Pru had the benefits of having decent air to breathe, no traffic, places to stare at, places to sit down/fall over if needed, and also mall security so if I fell flat on my face then someone would not just assume me to be some unshaven homeless man. Also the weather outside has been weird here. Actually weather feels weird overall since I haven’t been outside in almost a week.

Right now I’m a bit disoriented/dizzy still, muscules feel odd still, throat still hurting some with an odd headache and overall still not feeling quite right. However that’s 100x better than I was 3 days ago.

Oh and major thanks to the doctor and nurse for not even making me check-in (or pay) for the face time and shot of penicillin today. My bank account at the moment can’t sustain it, and I’ve found that my insurance is literally useless and I’m questioning if it’s actually a scam.

Tags: dizzy, flu, imnotdeadyet, penicillin, shot, sick, strep, virus

First of all I feel like hell. That’s great and all, but I can’t get crap done today. I even woke up at like 6am, which is pretty unheard of him. It’s rather striking to me that it’s barely after 2pm right now.

In addition, because i’m sick and it’s cold outside I took the fan out of my window. Big suprise, my window in my 180sq ft 100 year old apartment won’t close. Even if it would slide close, there is no latch on it. Best of all, I can’t get in touch with my management. Big suprize again!

What is a glimmer of hope however is that it seems that the lady in charge of the property management now (since the guy that started it is off on some far away island enjoying his riches), Lyghmy Edmond is perhaps either promoted or fired. She was pretty unresponsive and just about one of the worst communicators that I’ve ever seen. The response time was worse than that of the US Government to the massacre in Darfur or Burma (no oil afterall!). Either way, her name is no longer on the website or the phone tree. Whoo. At least that means I don’t have to deal with her anymore.

To give you an idea of how bad her response time is, it took nearly TWO MONTHS for me to get in touch with them to pay the rent. They insisted on using a direct debit system as opposed to using checks to pay the rent like everyone else in the world. This system didn’t work, and when I called them (to no response over two months) and left voicemails like, “Hi my name is Dave, and I live at XXX. I want to give you the money for rent but you need to call me at ZZZ-ZZZ-ZZZ. I’m trying to give you money”. Yes that’s an asshole of me, but I was beginning to be afraid of eviction through their ineptness. They had even tried to show my apartment once to a prospective tenenant, not realizing that someone lived there. Oh yea, and they were unable to find a copy of my lease, unaware anyone lives here, overall were somewhat dumbfounded. Oh, one last thing, I had to give them my account information THREE times due to them losing it twice. Talk about inept. For my friend Rich that lives next door, they were unable to give him his key to move in on Sept 1 for various reasons until very late in the day (simply unacceptable when there’s a moving truck parted illegally out front).

I’m hungary, but I don’t feel well enough to really cook something, although I did cut some eggplant to make tonight and I’m soaking it in salt water. I’ll have to see if I can find the energy to make it. At this point, Blogging is about all I feel like doing, which is sad. I have some Italian movie (or a movie about italy) that I got from Netflix for whatever reason, but it’s (and i’m dead serious) about 500 minutes long. Perhaps great for a sick day, but that’s pushing even my limits of

Tags: Uncategorized