It's art...

...now pay me...



...or burn me to the ground...

nic.

posted by Nic @ 11:25 PM 0 comments   

I have invented a new game...

...I know, I’m a games designer and all – but this is one you can play with just a cell/mobile phone and a bottle (2 plus is better) of wine.

Okay, here we go...

1: Get drunk. Very drunk.
2: Start to call random people on your mobile.
3: If you get an answer - you're out (btw, it helps if you have friends in LA cos they always have there answer phone on)
3: Last person to get a live call wins...

Damn it Stepth... why did you have to pick up...

Fun for all the family...

Nic.

posted by Nic @ 10:09 PM 0 comments   

Two blogs in one night...

...that’s just crazy talk.

So, you all know I like a little bit of J-Pop. Nothing quite hits the spot when you need to wake up in the morning I find. Some of it is plain genius. Some of it is plain awful.

Then some of it is a plain rip off.

I remember seeing the Japanese ‘Tatu’ a while back. Check this out... is this not the Japanese ‘Avril La-whateverhernameis’. Click HERE. (file is a wmv BTW.)

Weird thing is when I first saw Avril she reminded me of a J-Pop type artist. Hmmmmm...

Nic.

posted by Nic @ 7:59 PM 0 comments   

Console-Chan...

I love emulators. I love em’ – but there hasn’t really been any big steps taken recently. I remember those heady days of the ‘Ultra HLE’ and the like.

But look. Check this out. Released a couple of days ago. A fully working Dreamcast emulator and it’s pretty damn impressive. I have a crap PC (2.4 gig, naff base Nvidia card) and on most DC games I’m getting full frame rate (with sound I might add). Tasty.

Emulators might become a whole load more important to me over the next few months as there is a chance I’ll leaving Blighty. This probably means leaving all my consoles over here (and there’s a lot of them), but I guess I can ‘replace’ most of them with emulators and a kick ass laptop.

Here’s some screens from the ‘Chankast’ emulator.

posted by Nic @ 6:35 PM 0 comments   

I have my 'Robosapian'...

...fear me and the things I may do with my army of robots!!!

nic.

posted by Nic @ 8:41 PM 0 comments   

"I want to break free..."

I’m listening to a lot of ‘dublab’ (http://www.dublab.com) at the moment. They play some really interesting stuff on there.

Also writing a couple of ‘andjuliet’ tunes at the moment. When they’re a bit more complete I’ll list them on the music page.

Taking about music, I sneaked a peek at that MS20 vsti that Korg have released. Sweet. Takes me back to my high school days. I’ll probably pick it up once I’m all settled down and stuff... the times they are a changing.

Nic.

posted by Nic @ 11:22 PM 0 comments   

Crazy Porsches..

Oh yeah – I’m back BTW. Back online and quicker than ever... bliss.

So what’s new? Well – I’ve added a movie of the game I’m currently working on in the games design section – but I’m thinking about pulling it down in a couple of days. I’m also in the process of messing around with setting up a message board – but I’ve got no idea what it’d be about... hmmmmmm...

Still playing around with Reason and my 2.5 disks turned up the other day... here’s yet another acid fix. This is all just me getting used to the setup. At some point I’ll tackle some more ‘andjuliette’ stuff.

Oh yeah – blogger seems to have had a face-lift. Surely a perfect time to get one of these online journal things if you don’t have one... then you too can write completely pointless messages and post 16 bar ‘acid’ tracks...

I guess finally I wanted to point you to a site that Wayne showed me the other day. It's the work of a friend of mine who was on the old project... check out her cool character stuff!!

http://www.caperstreet.com/

Nic.

posted by Nic @ 10:06 PM 0 comments   

Solution to the music setup blues???

Regular readers (and those who are actually interested in the audio/music side of things - so Wayne then) will recall that I’ve been looking to change my music setup. I’ve been using ‘Acid’ for years and it serves me well. However, I’ve just about out grown it’s (somewhat copious) potential.

I’ve been looking at (read, downloading hooky copies of) a number of packages. I’ve looked at:

Orion (which I actually have a legit copy of – but not the plat version)
Live
Cubase SX
Fruity Loops
Magix music whatsit

Etc. etc. etc.

All I really want is something to turn to when I hit the limits of Acid. This is usually when I need to turn to a synth, drum machine, sampler etc. Acid has VERY BASIC MIDI capability – which is why I started looking elsewhere. I needed something more advanced.

Anyway – none of the above ‘did it’ for me. To give it 'props', Live seems like a really nice package, I just need a bit more control over the audio. It’s something I’d look at if I were ever to play ‘live’.

So have I found a solution? YES! And it was right underneath my nose.

I bought (yes bought – I have a legit Acid too FYI) Reason when it came out. I just never took to it. Probably because I had a lame sound card at the time and couldn’t get my head around the latency issues. Anyway – I installed it again the other day because I remembered it could act as a Rewire slave. That basically means I could run Acid and Reason at the same time and have them perfectly synced.

It worked, which is probably very unshocking to the millions of people who are already doing this. It also solves all my issues with Acid. I can turn to Reason when I need the synths etc, and back to Acid to mangle the loops etc.

Anyway, as a treat for reading this far – here’s something I put together in about 10 minutes with a Reason synth and drum machines.

Click HERE

Needless to say I’ve just ordered the update to get from V1 to V2.5.

A nice solution, and one I didn’t have to pay out too much for as well!!!

Nic.

posted by Nic @ 11:31 AM 0 comments