While I've got a bit of time, I thought I'd update here. Things have been going really well; ahsha's visit last weekend, travel problems and somewhat crappy weather nonwithstanding, was really enjoyable, and with a bit of luck I'll see him again before all too long. (I'll probably write a bit about that in a separate entry.) Last Thursday was great as well; although my mum and stepdad arrived a bit late, through no fault of their own, a most excellent day was had by all of us, and I came home with a lot of really great stuff, some of which I'll mention below.

Essentially, I wanted to post something of a follow-up to my previous entry. In the last few days, I've had a couple of letters from Red Tape Studios, and it looks like I've been approved for the Computer Music Production course, which will be starting on Tuesday the 12th of January in the evening. I've also been invited to an interview regarding the NCFE DJ Skills course; this is at 7:30pm on Thursday the 10th (next week), and should that be successful, the course starts on the 13th of January -- the day after the Computer Music Production -- and takes place on a Wednesday and Thursday evening between 6pm and 9:30pm for 13 weeks, so I'll be in class 3 nights a week if it all works out. No word as of yet about the Keyboard and Music Theory Skills or Mix Surgery classes, but I'm sure that'll come in time. I'm thinking I might try and defer one of the classes to a later date so I'm not in for 3 consecutive nights, but I suppose that wouldn't be all bad if it turns out that way.

In other music-related news, I had my letter to Computer Music magazine published, and my dad's bought me a subscription to that mag as an Xmas present; I buy it every month anyway, so it makes sense to subscribe. Anyway, in the response to the letter they were extremely helpful -- I'd written asking what the next step from sequencing samples in ACID Pro was -- and not only was the reply a lot of practical use but also very encouraging: apparently, lauded musicians -- and, coincidentally, ones I really like -- such as Trentemøller and the dubstep artist Rusko use ACID, so I feel like my choice of software is validated, and that I'm in good company.

Among a number of other games I've got recently -- I was bought a few as Xmas presents by my folks -- I have 3 MMO's that I'm planning to try out in the new year. (There's no point in starting them now, as I wouldn't get the most out of the 30-day trial period.) I picked up Age of Conan (for 50p!), Lord of the Rings Online and the Mines of Moria expansion (for £5 and £3 respectively), and was bought Warhammer Online as a gift. ahsha got Age of Conan too, so that's at least one person I'll be able to play with. I'll likely play them consecutively rather than concurrently, so as to make the most of the free time; I figure that, given how cheap they all were, it's no big deal if I only play them for the free period --and if one or more turn out to be really good and I keep at them for a longer time, so much the better. In the new year I'll likely be in a better position financially to afford a subscription to one of them, so that's another reason to wait.

The last thing to mention for now is that I've made some progress with regard to spirituality. Among the books I brought back from seeing my folks -- including, notably, one we got there, a new and more complete translation of Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure, sumptuously illustrated, hardbound, and for 75% less than its recommended price -- I got some that I'd ordered from Speaking Tree, which due to an error with their website, had been sent to my mum's address (the billing address) instead of my own. All of the books from there are hugely discounted, but the best (and perhaps most important) items I got were Peter Fenner's Radiant Mind teachings; I got both the hardback book (£22 RRP) and the 7-CD audio learning course (£60 RRP) for just £15 for both.

I tend to be wary of these things, to some extent at least, but this looks like it could be really good; and, if it turns out to not be so great, it didn't cost me the earth. I've been feeling a bit more open to things actually working, and a bit more able to engage with spiritual type things; this on its own is progress, but I don't plan to become mindlessly devoted to any one specific program or teacher -- I still like to try a variety of things, and a lot of what I've been reading lately is truly fascinating; I feel that there's a number of ways now that I'll be able to improve my life.

I've been meaning to write here for a few days, but I've had some kind of nonspecific cold-y flu-y thing that I'm just starting to get over. Anyways, I've kept in reasonably good spirits, and I thought I'd share some information on what I'm going to be doing, both in the near future and next year.

First of all, I've applied to do two courses with the Open University, who I've studied with several times in the past. Starting in February, I'll be studying the short course Start listening to music; this should provide me with some background in music theory that I've been lacking in the past, and plus it should be a pretty fun subject to study. I've loved music all my life, and I think it'd be interesting to learn about new approaches to listening to it.

In May, I'll be taking Digital worlds: designing games, creating alternative realities, which I'm really looking forward to; having been into games in a big way for the better part of two decades, this covers game culture, design, and theory, along with having practical applications. According to friends that are either studying degrees in the subject or actually working in the games industry (fuzzylu, bluewoozle, I'm looking at you here), it looks like a good course, plus I believe you get to keep the software -- Game Maker Pro -- at the end of it. I have some crazy idea of getting into indie game design, but whether that's more than a pipe dream at this point remains to be determined.

That's not the end of the courses I'm planning to take. I've got in touch with Red Tape Studios, who I studied a course with before (though I was unable to complete it due to circumstances beyond my control); I've applied to re-do the course on Computer Music Production -- basically an introduction to Logic Pro 8 -- I was unable to complete previously, along with the NCFE DJ skills course. Both are portfolio-based and you receive a certificate at the end, which I think would give me a great sense of achievement, as well as something tangible to express my skills. I've applied for two even shorter courses at Red Tape, though they aren't listed on the website, only in the printed prospectus they sent me: one is on Keyboard and Music Theory Skills, which would be great as I've been making music for years now and I only have the vaguest notion of theory -- and I sure as hell can't play a keyboard. The other is called 'Mix Surgery', and involves ways of using Pro Tools and Logic to achieve a specific sound. Seeing as I still master everything in Cool Edit Pro (now Adobe Audition, but I still use the old version), I could probably make some progress here.

It's also worth mentioning at this point that I've finally put something up on electricdog.tv; it's not much, but it's better than the 'coming soon' page that's been there for years, or the cryptic message I had up; I forget which was more current. Anyway, mattlazycat, a good friend of mine and an awesome designer to boot, recommended I take a look at Blueprint CSS to make a better site; this seems to be a simple and elegant way to make a fairly simple site design quickly, and it looks promising -- I just hope it's not beyond my ability to learn how to best use it. I did initially try browsing ThemeForest at the suggestion of another friend, but I couldn't find one that suited my needs, though I was prepared to pay. I eventually settled on slightly reworking a free theme I found elsewhere; it'll do for now, I suppose.

I've also set up a new website for my music on BandCamp. I'll probably make an announcement of this in a post of its own, but I wanted to mention it anyway; this is almost certainly going to be the main source for new music from me for the forseeable future. Everything on there -- and, according to mikosquirrel, I'm hella productive, though putting things out at the rate I do feels normal for me -- is free of charge to download in a wide variety of formats, and everything is issued under a Creative Commons license. Thanks must also go to realityclinic and shirosirius for allowing me to pillage their Flickr accounts for cover art.

Another thing to mention, although I'm planning to make a post about this on its own, I've recently rekindled an interest in Taoism, and the martial arts, particularly Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong. I've got quite a number of books on these and related subjects (including the Confucian 'classics'), and without going into too much detail, it's influenced my thinking quite a lot. There is a lot to like in Taoism, for me, and it's something I've had an interest in for many years; many texts and periods of Chinese history point towards a syncretic unity of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, and indeed these three seem far more complementary than contradictory. Anyway, I'll go into more detail on this at some point; I just wanted to give mention to it.

Finally, I might be a bit scarce on the internets for the next couple of weeks. I have a hell of a lot going on; tonight ahsha is arriving and staying here for a few days -- I've not seen him in about 5 years(!) so it should be good. Next Wednesday I'm out in town as usual, then on the Thursday my mum and stepdad are visiting for the day, to bring some stuff, do some shopping, and generally just so we can spend time together; on Friday another friend's visiting for the weekend, the Tuesday after that I'm seeing my occupational therapist, Wednesday is town again, then on the Friday I'm planning to go visit kyu_diary and imperial_wolf. The weekend after that, tungro is meant to be visiting; I've not seen him in a long time either, and I'm really looking forward to it. The weekend after that, if I'm still in Sheffield, I'll be seeing friends, and once that's over I'll be going to my folks' for 2 or 3 weeks for Xmas/New Year stuffs. On top of that, I have a bunch of games to be getting on with as well as a lot to read, so the majority of my free time is going to be occupied -- though no doubt pleasantly, I hasten to add.

[It's] about going back to space, because it's waiting for us, and it's where we're meant to be.
     -- Warren Ellis, from his introduction to Orbiter

Schrödinger's Dog - Orbit (2009) Inspired by both Clint Mansell's excellent Moon soundtrack and Jon Hallur's work for the sci-fi MMORPG EVE Online, Orbit is began life as an experiment in downtempo dubstep but quickly evolved into a two-part minimal/ambient epic, running to nearly 20 minutes in total. The sound is sparse yet evocative, with sweeping synths providing atmosphere and shuffling, evolving beats giving a sense of unease. Ethereal melodies float in and out of the music, but nothing stays exactly the same for long when you are in ORBIT.

Direct download: 31mb .zip

[4shared] [Megaupload] [RapidShare] [archive.org]

Sometimes, when you work on creative things, something turns out to be really special, maybe even a highlight of your career. For me, ORBIT is one of those things.

I'd write more, but I'm very tired. A few quick links: atomic traveller has freeware algorithmic music generators; moonbell creates generative sound from images of the moon's surface; Digital Expressionism has copyleft fractal art, which formed the basis of ORBIT's cover; making music hacks your hearing; Nicolas Fournel has some interesting music and sound tools; and @RichardDevine is where I got a lot of these links from. On a more thematic tack, Space Quotes and Space Quotations have a lot of things to say about why space is important, the spirit of which very much informed the creation of ORBIT.

I had another date with torque_tiger last Thursday, and that ( went pretty well. )

Since then, and in general since I last wrote, things have been fairly quiet. I've generally been feeling alright, though, and while things have been going more slowly than I'd like, I've managed to get some stuff done. I finished X-Men Origins: Wolverine (and will review that at some point), and I think I'm already used to my new phone -- it now has this snowleopard as a wallpaper, music from Lost Odyssey for the ringtone/message alert, and the theme from Persona 4 for the alarm. (It's awesome in a massively geeky way.)

Talking of massively geeky things, I've been given links to a couple of nifty sites. Manga Fox has, well, manga (foxes optional; though beware occasional ad redirects) for free, including some pretty popular series, and Crunchyroll does much the same thing for anime.

Finally, because it's Music Monday (at least on twitter), I figured I'd post a couple of links. Indie Paws is a blog with a good selection of posts and quite a substantial number of free mp3's, which is always a good thing. (Also, m'friend Mag [edit: magrcon] writes for it from time to time.) I've also been listening to some Fall of Efrafa, and at that link their entire discography is available for free.

So this is an update I've been meaning to make for a while; just haven't found the time. Mainly it's about roleplaying stuff which all goes neatly behind ( a cut. )

Now for some more fun stuff, and not just vaguely geeky links that I'm sick of having open in Firefox. First up, I got a new and shiny phone -- the Sony Ericsson W302 -- and I've been playing with that a bit, although in a rather limited way as I lost the memory card that came with it (due to a rather forceful eject mechanism -- it went flying and the thing's the size of a fingernail) and my 4gb one hasn't arrived yet. I also had recommended to me ITC, which if I hadn't already bought a new computer, I would certainly take a look at. That being said, the NatAmi Project looks ambitious and interesting, if largely conjecture at this point.

Finally some geeky music stuff. First off, torque_tiger recommended the oddly-named Mungyodance to me, some kind of DDR/StepMania/arrowsmashing type thing, which looks quite fun. Apparently it has several hundred tracks, and so it should at over 3gb in size. I'd still like to give it a try, so hopefully I can arrange for someone to burn me a copy -- it'd likely take forever and a day for me to download it.

Also, on IRC the other day there was some discussion of videogame music, and naturally the conversation eventually turned to OCRemix. After much discussion we came up with a very eclectic kind of top 9 -- it was a top 10 or 12 but some were a bit awful -- though these are in no particular order and should not be thought of as in any way authorative, being after all the choices of an arbitrary group of people on an IRC channel one afternoon. If anyone has any other recommendations, I'd genuinely like to hear them. There's some great talent out there. But without further preamble:

1. Harmony - Dragon Song (Secret of Mana)
   This is such an amazing track. Some beautiful guitar and synth work as well as original vocals. I never really played any of the Seiken Densetsu series, but I can totally agree with the feeling in the track -- even when games were pretty primitive in both audiovisual and technical terms, they could really get the imagination working and make you feel invested in them.


2. The Wingless - Godspeed (Star Fox)
   This is another good one, though it's different in tone -- completely electronica, far as I can tell, but it's got a great ambience. It's long but the two parts come together really well. Again I never really played the game, but it manages to have that feeling of flight which is appropriate for, well, almost any space-combat game, but particularly made me think of the Wing Commander series.


3. Star Salzman - Pillar of Salt (Xenogears)
   I really loved Xenogears; in all its overblown pretentiousness, it was one of the first really good post-Evangelion stories out there. Sadly I never managed to finish it (though I still own a copy) due to my memory card crapping out. Anyway, this track is all kinds of pretty. It manages to maintain the distinct style of the original and have a unique identity at the same time. The middle-eastern feel combined with the sci-fi ambience reminds me of the best aspects of Assassin's Creed, too, which is no bad thing.


4. Scott Peeples - Another Inspiration (Chrono Cross)
   Now, Chrono Cross I actually finished, despite it being (like Xenogears) only ever available on import here. It quickly became a favourite, although in my life when I was playing it, it wasn't a great time for me. Without wanting to sound over the top, this track reminds me of that time; it's got that little melancholy edge while at the same time being really pretty. And man, getting the end boss with the colours in the proper order was hard.


5. Arkimedes - Dreaming While I Wake (Shenmue)
   Shenmue was one of the reasons I bought a Dreamcast. I loved that game, even with all the flaws. It's a shame that the story was never really continued beyond Shenmue II, though obviously some of us still hold out hope that Sega will stop making awful Sonic sequels and go back to a franchise that has plenty of life left in it. Anyway. THis is kind of... not quite synth-pop, but it's got that 80's feel certainly. I love the original vocals on this. It reminds me a little of lo-fi stuff like Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, and that can only be a good thing.


6. ceili, Sephire - Snowfall on Forbidden Lands (Shadow of the Colossus)
   I do not have words for how unbelievably pretty this is. If you only download one from this entirely arbitrary top 9, make it this one. SotC was a good candidate for the whole games-as-art thing, and this remix is the poster child for how awesome remixes of game music can be.
   
   The last few are a bit more light-hearted, but no less good for it:
   
   
7. The Megas - The Annihilation of Monsteropolis (Mega Man 2)
   This is basically rivalled only by The Protomen, who made a Megaman Rock Opera, and really it's pretty difficult to beat that.


8. Arkimedes - Fall From Above (You Can't Stop) (Halo)
   If I did not include a Halo mix at some point, nidonocu would kill me. This one I was a bit shaky about at first (the robot voice and the other vocals really shouldn't work), but somehow this manages to be pretty great.


9. Game Over - Little Mac's Confession (Punch-Out!!)
   Don't let the pretty arpeggios in the intro fool you. This is from a Swedish band that does metal covers of Nintendo game music. If you think that sounds awesome then you are right.

I've been thinking of giving this kind of music a try, myself, though I'm not sure where to start -- I've only done a handful of remixes at all, and never really attempted anything with game music. One final related link, though I forget who I got it off: DA CHIP! is a series of chiptune reworkings of Daft Punk songs, and if that sounds like your kind of thing, then you should download it because it is free and made of all kinds of awesome.

Also? This video (SFW) shows a truly awesome Super Mario World ROMhack - no controller input at all after selecting the level. That is all.

[edit: oh yeah I forgot to add, Watchmen came out on DVD here yesterday so after some consideration I decided to order it, along with the Complete Motion Comic and the Tales of the Black Freighter animation; there's going to be a 5-disc edition in the US, but that seems to comprise basically a slightly extended director's cut of the film and the stuff I ordered, so not much point, even if it does get released here...]

I know a kid who thinks he's hip hop cause he buys it
I know a kid who thinks he's hip hop cause he never buys shit
Underground or mainstream
Some are bound to change schemes.

     -- Sage Francis, Underground For Dummies

So I'm listening to Sub.FM a lot lately -- I first saw it mentioned on Warren Ellis' twitter -- seeing as dubstep and its related spinoffs seem to be the in thing of late, and for once I actually like the genre. (There's also the more obviously-titled Dubstep.FM, but I'm not so keen on that one; DubTerrain is pretty neat though.) The quality of the stream's not brilliant, but in a conversation elsewhere there was some talk of audio enhancers. Normally I'm skeptical of these, but mikosquirrel pointed me in the direction of the DFX Audio Enhancer, which (on certain types of music at least) works really well; with dubstep, you can crank the bass to obscene, bone-shuddering levels, as it should be.

( In which I ramble a bit about music and other cultural stuff. )

Finally a couple of arty type things that I rather like: Multicolr Search Lab lets you pick up to 10 colours and use them to navigate a selection from "10 million of the most 'interesting' Creative Commons images on Flickr". It's a nice idea. Also, New Math is all kinds of awesome; reminds me a bit of one of my favourite artists, Jenny Holzer.

So, based on various people's comments, the view on Twitter seems fairly sharply polarised, with some people quite vehemently against it. (Personally, I like it a lot.) As this post is not so much about Twitter but more things from there, I think I'm safe to proceed with only a reference to nidonocu's rather eloquently-put post, "Twitter, or how I learned to stop worrying and love 140 characters". For what it's worth, although I still have the service set up to ship tweets to LJ, I've now set it so only tweets with a certain tag will appear, and even then (assuming it works) they'll be under a cut. And surely, if scrolling past a cut tag is that much of an issue, then it's not just my entries you'll have trouble with.

( Anyway, without further ado... )

So, I've been playing with a few new toys recently, both software and hardware.

( First up, and my favourite thing in ages... )

Finally, it's worth mentioning that I'm looking into expressing creativity in writing; two books I got recently, Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down The Bones (which treats writing as Zen practice), and The Ode Less Travelled, a book on writing poetry by the ever-lovely Stephen Fry, have made me think about giving it a try.

It's my first public post in a little over a week -- twitter nonwithstanding, and autoposting that still isn't working -- and I wanted to talk about the weekend just gone, which was particularly good, especially the Sunday.

( Saturday wasn't bad either, but not much happened. )

In the next few days, I need to work on the final project for my photography course; I've selected the 10 images I want to use, but I still have three questions to answer at ~200 words each, and it needs to be in before next Monday. I've also some work to do on my arts course before Monday evening, but that's less pressing. Ideally before I go out tomorrow, the books from Wisdom will be delivered, and I'll have time to burn a DVD for lord_kook, as he's going to do some mixing and possibly other work on my album CityZen when he has time.

So, it's been a while since I last wrote, and I've got a few things to put up here. Unfortunately I've been feeling pretty down for the most part, though things have been better the last couple of days. Anyway, the first thing to mention is some good news: I scored 80% on the test on my photography course, which was a higher mark than I expected. I'm also doing quite well on the arts course, and had a tutorial by phone on Wednesday of last week; this was very helpful, and although it may be tricky to find time to do the work I need to do before the next tutorial on Monday, I'm more confident about the course as a whole. We also discussed the possibility of aiming for a diploma or a degree, and I think the former is certainly attainable; I need to either look online for a qualification to aim for or call up to get the Arts and Humanities Prospectus.

( There's some more good things to say as well. )

Finally, there's still the idea of going to Manchester at the weekend with gothicwhitewolf; however, for various reasons I won't go into (though not least among them, being behind with uni work) I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to be able to go. The plan is for him to come here tomorrow evening and we'll stay in Sheffield overnight, and then go to Manchester earlyish on the Saturday, staying the night and returning on Sunday. I'm perfectly happy to spend time with him tomorrow, but it's the Saturday that I have some problems with. I'll talk it out and see if some solution can be reached, but I may end up just coming back home; he was going to go anyway, and stay the night, so it shouldn't be a great loss if I don't make it.

This evening the plan has suddenly transpired is to go see kitsunefury for a while. We're meeting in town and going back to his place -- I've not been before -- for however long. I really need to get back here tonight rather than staying over as I've quite a few things to do. For now I should get something to eat and take a shower, then maybe make a start on uni work.

So, this has been a pretty awesome weekend. I've got a lot done, and I'm feeling generally in a positive frame of mind. Hopefully things will continue in this vein; for now at least, I figured I'd make a record of what's been going on.

( I guess it starts with Friday night. )

Overall, it's been a very good weekend. Although at the moment I'm far from depressed, my stepdad sent me a link to a very good article by Clare Allan, on the Guardian site: One of the very worst features of depression is the impossibility of communicating the reality you are in to anyone outside it.

I've taken out a paid membership for 3 months for my DeviantArt account, as well as having put a couple more pictures up there. Hopefully it'll be worthwhile; it's good karma if nothing else. Along similar lines, I wanted to give a regular small donation to Soma FM as I listen so often, but there's a bit of trouble with PayPal at the moment (it's set up with my mum's card, and we can't remember the password) so I've not been able to do that as of yet. I did a little more work on the computer though -- freed up a load of space by deleting crap I never use, and installed all the old Fallout games to have another play through.

Also, I've been meaning to update my profile, since they changed the layout, but I haven't found time for that yet. I'll make a note when it's changed; for now I should get something to eat and go to sleep.

So, now I'm back home from nearly 3 weeks with my folks, I figured I'd spend some time writing about what happened, seeing as I didn't manage to find the time to write while I was there.

( I'm going to split it into two posts to avoid WALL OF TEXT. )

The last thing I want to mention on the creative front, and something that kind of leads into the next post I want to make, is that I got Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg; it looks at writing as a form of Zen practice, and I'm hoping it'll give me some ideas to not only write better in general, but also perhaps to start doing some more creative writing as well -- I've always rather envied people who manage NaNoWriMo and suchlike.

I think the best thing, really, that's come of all this is a sense of hope and greater confidence in myself. I'm a bit behind with uni work -- on the photography course at least -- but I should be able to catch up, and the tutor for the arts course I'm doing called me the other night to introduce herself and give some advice. We also arranged for a tutorial by phone next Wednesday, by which point I need to have read the first chapter of the textbook. Should be manageable, and with a bit of luck I'll successfully complete both courses this time.

Oh, and I changed my journal layout and posted the answers to that lyrics meme.

At the risk of sounding a touch schizophrenic, the situation since my last post has vastly improved. On Thursday, I was still feeling bad and decided to have an early night; for whatever reason I decided I'd select another book to read, and picked out volume four of Thomas Cleary's Classics of Buddhism and Zen, a series of compiled translations. I started reading the first text in the book, Transmission of Light (Denkoroku) and I was somehow able to focus on it with great clarity, and it seemed quite profound. After having read several chapters, I went to sleep peacefully.

( The next day went well. )

There's a couple of minor downsides though. I had a couple of great photo opportunities while I was out, but unfortunately the only camera I had with me was out of juice, and I didn't have enough batteries on me to replace them. I'm also a bit annoyed at myself for not getting DS puzzle game Professor Layton and the Curious Village (or at least asking them to hold onto it for me) when I saw a cheap preowned copy of it; by the time I phoned this morning, it'd already been sold. I also seem to have totally mislaid the rest of the huge pack of AAA batteries I bought, so there's no more power for my small camera or mp3 player until I have opportunity to get some more next week, or they turn up somehow.

I also managed to sleep forever today (well, was up earlyish, then somehow managed to nap from about 2:30 to 7:30) and my back's rather sore -- possibly as I've not gotten around to doing any yoga in a while, due to not feeling good. Hopefully I'll continue to feel better and get more done over the next few days; I'm really looking forward to the end of next week and visiting my folks again, as I could do with a bit of a break. For now though, sleep.

Two new pictures and two new tracks:

	Schrödinger's Dog - Night Drive (Extended Mix) Some rather funky tech house to begin with. For once I wrote a short-ish track, as I often do, and then realised a way I could go back to it and make it longer. Hopefully it's not too obvious where it originally ended, though maybe now it's a bit too long. Can't win 'em all I guess, but I'm reasonably happy with how it's turned out.
	Schrödinger's Dog - Shine and Emptiness I largely blame miyabisan and last week's Hard Drive for this. I have a hard time classifying stuff lately, but I figure this is minimal techno; I'm pretty pleased with it overall, though I wish I'd been able to make it longer as I did with Night Drive. It's just a little bit Trentemøller.

( Plus a few little things about how my life's going. )

Things haven't been terrible or anything lately, it's just that I've either not had the inclination to write (Twitter nonwithstanding) or something like a lack of time has got in the way. It's been about 2 weeks since my last 'life' post, so I'll write again in the reasonably near future, I suppose. In the meantime, as ever, I hope people like the music and pictures.

So, I've been listening to a lot of Lustmord and Stars of the Lid recently, and I thought I'd dig around in the archives to see if I had anything with that kind of vibe. Picked up some stuff from about 6 years ago and rehashed it into an EP. There's some sort of weird problem where the mp3's aren't reporting their length properly, but I can't do anything about that as the original .wav files are lost. (Unless I burn it to CD then re-rip it, which would probably lose fidelity.) I was up all last night (re)making this; hope some folks enjoy. Darkly ambient electronica throughout.

1. Intermission I


2. Intermission II


3. Intermission III


4. Intermission IV


5. Point Zero


6. Untitled

Physical copies of the EP will be made available on request, probably at cost, on the remote chance someone actually wants one. I might even try to sell some, if I can find somewhere locally to carry a few copies.

[edit: By request, the music and medium-rez artwork are now available in a .zip file: download here]

I'll make a regular stuff-about-my-life post soon, and I have some completely new music to post (not just old stuff rehashed). In the meantime, tonight I'm missing not only a psytrance event I've not been to in ages, but also seeing an ex who I get on well with, primarily because I'm stupid with money and don't have enough left to go out. Also, thanks to someone posting it on something completely unrelated, I can't get this song (lyrics here) out of my head. Seems appropriate somehow.

"Procession"

Schrödinger's Dog - The Fireworks Between [3:04, 130bpm, 4.8mb] A little hard to classify, but inspired variously by Darwinia and Crystal Castles -- and if using a Jane's Addiction-esque guitar riff combined with 8-bit bleeps is wrong, then I don't want to be right. May upload this to SheezyArt, but I need to check their policy documents first. Image on the left is designed to accompany the track; click for the full version on dA.

As a quick note, I'll continue posting images and music to this journal as usual, but dA and Sheezy will probably see more updates. I tend to prefer to put a bit more content here than just a picture if I can, so the other sites are more suitable for that. Still, I'm happy that I've got back into producing visual art again, and I've got loads of unused photos that I could do something with, let alone anything new I may take.

Also, this generator is useful for coming up with band/song/album names. Also also, SheezyArt is still being awful and broken for me, so I'll try again in a couple of days. Or just stick with dA and find somewhere else to put my music.

I heard a track last night on the Hard Drive that I'd not heard in years, and for some reason it really struck a chord with me. Since then, ( I can't get the song out of my head. )

Not been feeling so good in the last 24 hours. Hopefully I'll feel better soon, but... there's some things troubling me that aren't just going to go away. Nothing I want to talk about yet. Oh, and if anyone has an mp3 or something of the song, that'd be really appreciated.

Happiiy, there's more good stuff to talk about today. I've been pretty busy since I last wrote, but (mostly) in a good way.

First up, I've put some of my new art online; after looking for a place to host images and music, as I already have a place for ordinary photographs. I returned to DeviantArt (as electricdog) after a six year absence -- my old account, straywulf, has some very old artwork, but I may repost some of that on the new one, which currently has 5 pieces not posted elsewhere, three of them brand new.

I also got an account on SheezyArt, which -- unlike DeviantArt -- accepts music as well as images, but there were issues with the site yesterday so I've not yet uploaded anything there.

Talking of music, I wish I'd seen this Penny Arcade strip before I named my 'band' -- Schrödinger's Wolfman would be an awesome name.

Finally on the subject I've added a few bits to my Miscellany gallery, all or less of which may be amusing.

( There is yet more. )

I've not been neglecting my spiritual side either. I managed to get Natural Radiance by Lama Surya Das, a book and CD set of teachings on Dzogchen, something which I've been wanting to practice ever since I heard about it. I've found the set to be incredibly useful and effective, and I'm not even halfway through yet. Also, I got an email telling me about the Foundation Course now available on the Free Buddhist Audio site; along with the downloadable talks, it's proving to be a valuable resource.

There's a little bit of a downside though. Despite getting all this creative stuff done and potential courses coming up, I've sacrificed a holiday to Amsterdam in order to study. And, although I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of my games, books, and so on lately, and as much as I prefer to be solitary, I'm still getting pretty lonely. Hopefully that'll pass in time, and I'll have classes to keep me occupied.

• Schrödinger's Dog - Digital Headache [1:58, 130bpm, 3mb]

  
  
  A icy little minimal techno arrangement I put together on Thursday night after the Hard Drive, having been listening to too many wipE'out" soundtracks (thanks huskion) on my mp3 player of late. I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out, though I think I probably could have extended the idea into a longer track. If I was better at animation, I'd make some kind of video to go with it. Click the image for the bigger version.

Quite a bit's been going on these last few days since I got back, and I haven't really had time to process it all yet. I want to write and get things down, but there's a lot of stuff I have to sort through first and I haven't had the time. At least I've had chance to do something creative, though. Hope folks like.

[edit: at huskion's suggestion, I modified the track slightly to make it sound a bit less harsh:

• Schrödinger's Dog - Digital Headache (Alternative Mix)

The highs are softened and the whole thing is a little deeper and more atmospheric; even though I'm listing this as an 'alternative' mix, I think it's probably the better version.]

This is, after over four weeks, my last day staying with my folks; nearly everything is packed ready for me to head home tomorrow afternoon. I've almost entirely enjoyed my time here, and although I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to -- though I'm very happily back in touch with massivesustain -- or do quite as much as I would have liked, it's been a good trip. I'm ready to go back, though.

The short version of events is to say that the fighting between my mum and stepdad has stopped entirely and been resolved, with quite a bit of help from me, and so I can leave without too much worry in my heart. On the other hand, I've confirmed that the microphone on my mobile is broken, so I can't talk on it and will need a new one soon. Still, I have Skype, so voicechat is still possible (when I'm online, at least) in the interim.

( The longer version... )

There's not much else to tell, really. I'm still waiting to hear back about the Introduction to Computer Music Production course I want to do, and I have a few prospectuses to look through back home (as well as other stuff, like DS games and hopefully no bills). With luck, I'll soon be back in education and in the rest of the time I can engage in the hobbies that interest me, and hopefully get back into the habit of regular Buddhist practice and meditation again.