Author: Gareth

And the Snow Snow Snow Came Down Down Down….

Taking a day from work today, due to a good old-fashioned “Nor’Easter” currently dumping an estimated 10 inches of snow on our heads. Allie’s school was closed, Laura’s library is closed. I actually tried to brave it out and take the 45-mile commute, but I got a grand total of one block before I started sliding down the UNPLOWED street (and what the hell is up with that, anyway? They knew the storm was coming…), sideways, downhill. That’s pretty much all it took. I spent the next 5 minutes trying to get back up the hill the other way. FUN.

I probably spoke too soon about the “project hint” in the last update. As I was saying to some industry friends yesterday, I’ve currently got like a half-dozen game projects on various degrees of backburnerdom, and honestly, I’m not sure which of them jazzes me enough to finish first. So, you’ll just have to wait and see.

For any of you electronic-music composition-types out there, I’ve got a couple of links for you:

A bunch of acapella bootleg mp3s— the vocal tracks of various songs, so that you can create your own remixes.

Basic Hip Digital Oddio–a site devoted to rare audio oddities, all of which makes for great sample-fodder.

Speaking of sample-fodder, a site that I have linked here before, Blaxploitation.com has a great selection of minute-long samples from rare blaxploitation film soundtracks, perfect for mining for funky-ass breaks.

Another good site for wierd stuff to mix into music is BadMovies.org, which has wav sounds from many of the reviewed films. Come on, you know how great it would be to follow a trance synth arpeggio with THIS.

Happy mixing….

GMS

Frivolous Game Stuff

Just a quick update: work on Apollyon Noir is coming along…that’s the big project for now, and looks like it will be coming out under the Thyrsus Games banner. In other game-related developments, I’ve got a new web site for Adamant Entertainment being developed, where I’ll be selling pdf games as I design them. This will allow me to produce stuff without really worrying about how wide its appeal might be.

I’ll most likely kick things off with a freebie. Click here for a hint (well, OK, more like a huge screaming announcement) as to the subject matter of the game that I’m almost finished designing.

GMS

Ad Astra Per Aspera

I’m nervous about what might happen to the Space Program. My fear is that we’ll pull back–chastened by the disaster, attention drawn elsewhere by security issues, growing financially conservative due to the economy….and maybe even assigning blame to NASA for missing warning signs. This could be it. Figure out a way to get the International Space Station crew home, put the chairs on the tables, and turn out the lights.

That’s my fear.

I’ve always dreamed of space travel, since I was a child. Dreams of a career as an astronaut were scuttled fairly early on by a lack of interest in math, and a realization that there wasn’t room in a cockpit for a tall guy. However, I never lost the attachment to the dream. As a people, though, we seemed to stop looking outward…we stopped caring about what’s out there. We seemed to lose our spirit of exploration.

That’s what I want back. That’s what I wanted to hear from Bush yesterday. Hearing him say that the work will continue was heartening…but I want more. I want to hear “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” Or Mars. Or anything.

We need the President to kick Congress in the ass, shake the money tree, and re-fire our spirit of exploration. Tap into that fire that drew us all together after 9/11. If we’re going to try to lead the world (and our foreign policy seems to speak to a certain desire for Hegemony), then let’s lead it for the best reasons, as well as for the worst. Let’s show the world that we can answer the brutality of backwards-looking fanaticism not just with reciprocal violence, but also by rising above it to further the advances of all of humanity–because we can.

We’re the only ones who can, and it’s time not only for us to remember that, but time for us to remind everyone else as well.

GMS