djpretzel

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We've not given anyone any sort of permission to do this, beyond charging for the cost of the media itself, which would be like five cents or whatever, nowadays. Can you provide any additional information? Vendor name, photos, etc.? Was it MAD-Gear by any chance? They do sell OC ReMix shirts and are friends, so hopefully they're not selling actual OCR CDs without our permission...

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What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

There's definitely some truth to it. That's why we'll be deploying the updated design independent of some of the other elements we're working on. Basically, the "5.0" design will be implemented well before a lot of the "5.0" features. From past observation, when you do both at the same time, the features get completely lost, and everyone just talks about the design regardless. Also, sorry to perhaps disappoint, but the new design will be aesthetically based on the existing design. It's more of a re-imagining of the current look than a whole new look, which I think makes sense. In my opinion, for a good long while, nothing whatsoever. However, with albums and interviews and all this new content, we're trying to do more with the space provided at 1024x768, and the sidebar does impede on horizontal real estate. Right now the site is kinda "navigation happy" - sidebar on far left, horizontal tabs, AND the DHTML drop-downs. That was done primarily because we needed SEO-friendly nav as the DHTML simply wasn't, hence sidebar. If we can get some better, SEO-friendly drop-down navigation, sidebar does become somewhat superfluous. That's my current thinking, at least.

At first I thought this thread would be about the evolution of the overall site, as opposed to specifically the music on it. Both are interesting topics to me; the former I've been pouring loads of effort into for the last 2-3 years especially, the latter has always been an ongoing interest. First of all, it's definitely rather meta to have nostalgia for the early days of a community that in large part focuses on nostalgia itself, but this is the beauty of the Internet. For some folks, the grass will always be greener - I remember Larry pointing me to a livejournal rant of sorts by former regular endblink where he complained that we never posted any Sega mixes any more. Statistically, he was dead wrong, which Larry pointed out, but his counter was that it didn't SEEM like there were as many Sega mixes any more, IIRC, because the overall music had changed in some intangible and unquantifiable way. For my part, I think there are still plenty of mixes that capture the imagination, that may not have extreme polish or sheen but which more than compensate in charm. Heineken and Hazy Place come to mind recently; El Lagarto completely innovated on all levels and deserved even more attention than the considerable amount it received. There are still quirky tracks that only appeal to some, but they might be a bit fewer and further between. However, between them are mixes that absolutely blow me away on both production AND arrangement. I think there's been a rising trend - silly, in my opinion - to dismiss anything that sounds amazing as being weak on arrangement, as if the two were necessarily inversely related. Part of the whole "OCR are gearheads" argument, where unless you employ gigasamples, we hate your guts, etc. To some metal heads, we're technophiles that have a never-ending love affair with boom-tiss. To some electronica artists, we wouldn't know trance if it came up and kicked us in the ass, and have weak stomachs for repetition and presets. We used to spend a lot of time talking about "raising the bar", and I think we accomplished that goal a couple years ago. Every once in awhile we refine our standards, but we haven't revised their core tenets in a long time. I personally wouldn't want to see the bar raised any further; I think we've hit a happy medium that keeps quality high but still allows for mixes that color way outside the lines and/or ignore traditional production/arrangement norms. Musically, I think things are pretty damn awesome right now. I've got a penchant for vocal mixes and would still like to see more, but overall there's a wealth of ideas coming from different artists with different perspectives, and everyone seems to be improving, learning, and - as the post title puts it - evolving. As for evolution of the site... little by little, I've been making changes. You've seen some of them already, some of them are right around the corner, and others... not quite DNF territory, but they'll definitely be ready "when they're ready". I've been more open & receptive to advice from others, Larry's made some good suggestions, and I feel like we're on the right track in several areas. OC ReMix 5.0 is essentially being worked on, in other words. It will leave some processes and issues unaddressed, is virtually guaranteed to get a knee-jerk negative reaction from some, will certainly leave room for further improvement, and will most likely be rolled out in pieces, not all at the same time. Spoilers? As it stands at the moment, we'll probably be killing the sidebar. We will expect - nay, demand - a moment of silence from all, if indeed it is honorably discharged. We'll work on enhancing search & filtering capabilities and moving the quick search to a more prominent location. I hate buzzwords and the whole "2.0" moniker is way overplayed, but some of those core concepts - usability, simplicity, and grace - will be part of what I'm shooting for, design-wise. I'd like to make chiptunes easier to find, so we'll probably be moving those around a bit. I'd like to kill our non-SEO, proprietary DHTML drop-down menus in favor of something home-grown and more powerful. We still need to integrate the workshop skills/collab info with artist profiles, and vBulletin blogs will still happen in some form or another. That's the tip of the iceberg, really, but I thought it was worth divulging. At some point we'll start a thread for ideas/suggestions, with the caveat that certain things have already been decided and we can't expand the scope too far, or nothing will ever get done.

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Wes was right, it was missing... fixed it last night, before Larry posted.

Well, it's an interesting situation & conversation. I guess my question becomes, what about mix writeups? http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00909/ is the first example of a mix by you where I employed a male personal pronoun. In my opinion, it would be somewhat silly to keep those as is but remove "male" from your artist profile, as the one basically confirms the other... Are we really talking about completely neutralizing all references to you that involve gender pronouns? Why object now to the icon but not way before, to the pronouns?

Well, we'd like to make certain of it, but there are only a few of us, artists are often unreachable (temporarily or permanently), etc. If you could confirm or deny it, I don't think that's asking for too awful much. Your definition of certainty involves genital inspection... we don't really wanna go there. At a certain point, you're just simply being unreasonable.

The symbol's file name and alternative text both indicate "male"; gender would be "masculine". The argument you're making is an academic, ideological one, and while I always like fighting the good fight and might agree on some abstract level with the essence of your point, we unfortunately live in something college professors, MTV, and parents alike love to refer to as "the real world"; it is not a perfect place, and there are not unicorns. The real world has innumerable circumstances, from ordering a chalupa at Taco Bell to pumping gas to interviewing for a job to simply walking down a street where your sex is not in any way "private"; people are ascertaining it based on your physical appearance. If the standard for referring to someone as "him" or "her" required documented genital evidence, as you sarcastically suggest, we'd live in a very awkward world; see SNL's "It's Pat" skits for reference. English and to a much greater extent many other languages like Spanish, French, Russian, etc. all have completely different words/conjugations that are employed based on sex/gender. What you're essentially proposing is that each individual should only be referred to as male or female once he/she/it has explicitly acqueisced to such a label. Based on your existence on the planet thus far, does that really seem to be how things work? I'm curious here... maybe you walk the walk AND talk the talk, but I'd highly suspect that you yourself, even on a daily basis, make conclusions about the sex and gender of others. It's a sketchy issue and I do acknowledge some gray area, but I'm not convinced there's a huge degree of privacy involved. I consider it a reality of the human condition that participating in society requires sex/gender identification & labeling as an implicit process. Perhaps, when Scotty's beaming us up and we're using replicators to make our Earl Grey tea, society (and language itself) will have evolved... but I wouldn't hold your breath.

This actually looks like our bad; AFAIK Larry entered this, and it looks like he did get the info from Facebook, as I couldn't find it anywhere else. I'll change it if you want. My personal preference is that, assuming it's correct, it remain in place, but since it's not public info, we shouldn't have assumed it was cool to add. From our perspective, we just want to make OCR more personable, to connect listeners with artists more, and we feel like full names for ReMixers and composers, and any other data that is public, only helps achieve that goal. I personally have never understood those who seek extreme anonymity on the Internet, but I respect that there may be different considerations involved. Clearly, though, we at least need a policy where we only add information that is publicly available, without friend status, etc. Let me know what you want to do, and thanks for bringing this to our attention.

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We didn't post anything regarding your sexual orientation, but given the public availability of your Youtube videos, etc., we considered sex (not gender) basically a "known fact" and acted accordingly. As far as the expectation being unreasonable, if this were an individually controlled, personal profile I would agree that we acted in bad form. However, artist profile pages - for composers and ReMixers alike - are more like IMDB/MobyGames/Wikipedia pages, i.e. informational in nature and not maintained directly by artists themselves. Our intent is to provide biographical information and not to present a Facebook/MySpace style page that individuals have more control over - we have forum profiles for that. Hypothetical example: Nobuo Uematsu emails us and tells us to remove sex information from his profile. That he is male is widely known; while we'd like to comply since he's... you know... Nobuo Uematsu... we would not, because we would essentially be lying or omitting publicly available information. Now, you aren't Nobuo Uematsu, but we've ascertained this information through publicly available means, so it's still an appropriate policy, in my opinion. Similar example: should Wikipedia let Yasunori Mitsuda edit his own article and identify his gender as "Space Alien," if he's convinced that he is? I'd hope not. I'm not trying to shoot you down, and I think this warrants more discussion, but I think perhaps the primary point to consider is that artist profile pages are more about factual information that we can ascertain rather than personal information artists themselves choose to share, which again, we have forum profiles for...

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OverClocked ReMix @ San Japan Japanese Culture & Anime Festival San Antonio, Texas August 14-16, 2009 http://www.san-japan.org/ http://www.twitter.com/sanjapan Who's planning on going? So far all we know of is: djpretzel Liontamer We're flying in, so we can't offer rides, but if anyone wants to coordinate, ask question, etc., here's a thread

OC ReMix @ ScrewAttack Gaming Convention, 2009 July 3rd-5th, 2009 Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas http://www.sgconvention.com/ Who's planning on going? So far all we know of is: djpretzel Liontamer Israfel Bladiator Brushfire We're flying in, so we can't offer rides, but if anyone wants to coordinate, ask question, etc., here's a thread

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Well said, Taucer. I might also add that when you appeal to OCR to change the title, you're basically asking for censorship. When you appeal to the artist, you're asking them to reconsider based on the merits of your argument, and it becomes their personal decision. I'm not trying to pass the buck, here, but as a forum for artists I'd prefer decisions come from them rather than me or "OC ReMix" as an entity.

I received a complaint that this mix's title, "JESUS CHRIST IT'S A DINOSAUR GET IN THE EPOCH," was profane because of its usage of Jesus Christ as an expletive. Here is my response: _____________________________

I think Keyboard Cat needs to play the ice cap mix off Thanks for sharing, this was fun. Also, I wouldn't feel too bad... at least you don't have anything like this on the site. I have to live with the pain of my Contra and SingingPretzel mixes for eternity - omgsobad, indeed.

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Duplicate threads merged... please don't start a new thread for the same track!

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.