I just got back from blockparty 2007, and it was freaking great. For those not initiated on the concept of a demoparty, as explanation, the ubiquitous wikipedia link. I have never been to a demo party before, but as my consciousness said when I preregistered, “my 14 year old self will not forgive me for skipping this”.

Truthfully, it has been a while since I have watched any demos, but being in a room full of demo fans screaming a visual when some sweet tunnel effect comes up on screen was totally fantastic. A bunch of the demos brought a tear to my eye. Also the passion of all the demoscene people was palpable. It was really nice to be in a room with people that are passionate about computer graphics for arts sake, and in a concepts be damned, lets push some pixels kind of way.

I entered only three of the compos this year, and managed to only come in last place in one of them. I came in second in a “freestyle compo” which was freestyle rapping over that timbaland track ripped from a demoscene tune. For that I won an effects pedal from Effector 13, which is fucking awesome. I came in second to last in the freestyle music compo (any type of entry) and came in last in the chiptune compo. Ah well, next year better eq’ing and better music. I imagine the entries will be available on the web at some point, and I will throw up a link to them when I get it.

Also while at the party I managed to finish off an entry for the lgpt 10k contest and it is up on the web right now. I am really enjoying the dubsteppy chip stuff, and I think I am gonna try to do a whole ep worth of it eventually. And in related, “new releases” news, an ep that I did for meltrecords is also up on the web now. That one is more of a dark electro thing, and there are some great remixes on it from both 5dots, the melt records head, and the amazing rolo, who really made the track that I gave him great. So, go download This shower is a suspended bucket.

Any who! next year, and there will be a next year, as it has been promised by the great jason scott, I will hopefully be entering many more of the compos, esp. the demo compo. BECAUSE DANG IT TUNNELS ARE AWESOME! Greetz and thanks to everyone there, you all made it super fun.

As a bonus, two deloreans passed me on the drive back to Pittsburgh. Back to the future dudes, back to the future.

!(left_img)http://dl.dropbox.com/u/43672/blog_static/music/images/suspended_bucket.jpg(suspended bucket)! First time getting remixed, first time releasing a track that wasn't 4/4. I am pretty happy with the production on this one. "Download zip":http://5dots.net/file_download/95 from "melt records":http://meltrecords.net/

I saw Grindhouse yesterday, and it was pretty awesome for a tex-sploitation zombie flick / muscle car slasher chase movie. Clearly, there were some major downsides, but stuff “blew’d up real good” and the presentation with previews separating the movies was unabashedly great.

After watching it, I tracked down Vanishing Point, a movie which was referenced many times during the Tarintino section, Death Proof. Vanishing Point was fantastic as well, and really makes me want to go on a muscle car genre binge. Here is a list culled from some wikipedia’ing (is there a better verb form of that?).

• Two-Lane Blacktop
• Death Race 2000
• Dirty Larry, Crazy Mary
• Gone in 60 Seconds
• Bullitt
• The French Connection
• Cannonball

I will report back when I have completed this list. Wish me luck, and also if you would like to join me for any screenings, let me know.

Hello there, I just cleaned the corner of my room. This is what it looks like right now. That corner used to look more like the opposite corner of my room which is slowly collapsing under the weight of my clothing. In fact, it used to be full of clothing, but I have just made a bag of stuff to go to goodwill. Since the last post, I did a bunch more videos, which are on my youtube stream. I think the best one is this match.com ad mash. Other high points of the youtube stream are dancebot and dronemash. There is also some more static work on my flickr stream. I am still recovering from the creative act month, but I have an animation in progress, which should be done somewhere in april if I am really lucky and focused. Ok, talk to you later! an addendum. I read the Frank Miller Elektra: Assassins book, and it was severely fantastic, at least as far as the art was concerned. I also read the Evan Dorkin Dork: Volume 1 book, and it was pretty good, if you can get past the self hatred and the slave labor graphics drawing style all over the place. I can't really stand that publishing house due mostly to the fact that all of their artists draw EXACTLY THE SAME.

I just finished my projects for week one of the creative act. Only three days late, woo! My theme was "decay", and that started as meaning iterative decay, but by the end of the week it ended up being about signal loss and addition through poor documentation. A stronger theme through the week was that everything was an animation, and most of it had to do with creative screen capturing. Without further ado, here are the videos. Presented as a youtube playlist, as I am trying to roll with the prol' //edit: apparently I need to just link for you, as embedding isn't working. GTFO!