prophetik music

cerrax, you still owe me a collab on something from like two years ago.

i hear that. i have a few pics from my wedding where my eyes are suspiciously reflective.

singing that piece with my choir was one of the high points of my musical education. leonardo dreams of his flying machine by eric whitacre was the other big one i can think of.

yeah i just figured you were mistaken or something. i'm going to try that controller-to-usb mod once i get a little farther along with my setup. i'm also going to attempt to find the info on a n64-controller-to-usb mod, cause i KNOW i've see them and i don't own an n64 anymore.

gimme a few minutes, i'll work you up a good system. ok, here goes. dvd burner boot hard drive storage hard drive evga 9800gtx+ dvd drive zalman zm600-hp 600w hard drive (up to 750w under load...it's modular and amazing) 2x2gb ddr2 800mhz ram evga 780i motherboard e8500 cpu xigmatek cpu cooler retention bracket for the cooler, totalyl worth the 7 bucks shipping to me (14867, near ithaca ny) is about 25$. at that price, you could go with either two cards or just get something like the gtx 260 core 216, which is an absolute beast when it comes to processing power. one of the most powerful card profiles available today. not that much more money either, considering it almost doubles the performance of the 9800gtx+. i go with evga boards and cards - they have a lifetime warranty if you register it within 30 days. and they have the best customer service in the industry. i had a card that had issues about a month after the 1-year warranty you get if you don't register, and they still replaced it for free AND let me sign up that card for the lifetime warranty. it's worth the extra ten bucks or so. i'd say to go with a 64-bit version of your os of preference. vista's 64-bit version is excellent. if you're not going to do that, you'll get between 3.25 and 3.5 gigs of ram based on how much video ram your card has. just keep it in mind. it's not a big performance hit (xp is SO slim compared to vista) but it's there. 64-bit'd give you all 4 gigs of your ram...and at that price you could get 8 gigs easily. total with the above loadout would be $1156.33. assuming you don't need a case. if you need a case, get something big that's worth the time. if you don't mind it being a little louder and want something flashy, the sunbeam transformer is a great one (about 100$ shipped at newegg, lots of fans and blue leds). the antec nine hundred is another good one. if you want something a little classier, just dig around. but watch shipping costs, they add up a lot. if you want a quad instead of the one listed above, the q6600 is a good offering for a good price. if you want a 1tb drive for storage instead of 750, go with the samsung 1tb offering on newegg. it's the standard for price, speed, and temp performance. don't go with the 1.5tb drive, it's an open drive. more of an enthusiast item. if you're into bluray, go with this hd-rom/bd-rom/dvd-rw drive. it'll read hd and blu-ray and burn discs, and it's got lightscribe as well. if you get just that and not the other two drives, it'd be about 90 bucks more. hopefully that'd help. if you want anything more, let me know.

so, i've started attempting to get some sponsors for the system from smaller mod organizations that might want to get some advertising out of it. oh, and on a whim i contacted Stardock about a copy of their WindowBlinds skinning utility for the UI once it's done. we'll see what happens =)

blue man group's song club nowhere was a song that i really like, but it never made me cry.

i think you'd find that timing is incredibly overrated, really. i run 5-5-5-15 ddr2 800mhz ram, and when i spent some money and got 3-4-4-8 ram i barely noticed a difference. that said, asus doesn't list your board on their site. you might want to confim that board name...what graphics chipset does it use? it's a socket 478, right?

there's a possibility that those tracks are in mp3 VBR and iTunes isn't recognizing the digital tag that lets it know that. try redownloading - likely, a few bits here or there got fragmented on the dl.

in general, when you've got ram with two different timings being installed, the board generally reverts to the slower settings. so, likely, if you installed the cheapest ram (never do rebates, not worth the time...particularly with ram and power supplys, i've found), it'd revert to the timing that's the slowest. in other words, your new ram would function at your old ram's timing. just go with the cheapest ones, any bonus you'd get would be cancelled out by the poor timing on your older ram.

here's the internals in the metal casing that's inside of the plastic case. i'm probably going to install the internals into either a handbuilt case or an old 386 desktop case i've got sitting around for the lulz. with an expanded hard drive, of course. i might just chop up a broken 360 to run backups and xbox originals instead, i haven't decided if it's worth the time getting the software to run backups off of the (also hacked) hard drive. here's a better picture of the motherboard and psu of the xbox. most of this is coming out, of course. a worthy item to note is that the front controller ports are connected through a header card to the motherboard...but they're almost exactly the same as standard usb. i might even be able to reuse the header, we'll see. i'll probably just wind up using those brackets to hold reused usb ports. that's all for now. when my next computer job comes in, i'll buy the parts and get the interior set up. because all of my case mod tools are at the house i grew up in, i'll have to wait till i go home for christmas to do the case modifications. i should be able to set everything up now, though, assuming there aren't any huge issues with space inside the box.

i forgot to take pictures of it before i disassembled it, but here's what i found. there's all the case parts in the box, disassembled. all xboxes have two layers to the case - a plastic layer and a thin metal box inside as well. the plastic layer is what i'll mod up - but i will likely use the metal box to help organize everything in the htpc itself. there's a better view of the case parts. i'm still planning on using the front buttons if at all possible. here's the header for the front buttons. i'm going to try to find some wiring diagrams so i can see what button does what. the eject button should be able to stay wired the way it is (the dvd player's power and controls are attached directly to the motherboard with data through an IDE cable, so this should be easy to continue using). the power button will get a bit rewired, and i'm going to use it like a standard momentary switch with the picopsu.

i thought that the discussion of persona 3, for example, was really great.

jooooiiiin you must joooooiin us

i think that you've got a really good point - video games have grown out of the 2d platformers and are really starting to come of age as a medium of expression - particularly because unlike other mediums, like music, the act of understanding a game means that you play it, you're involved with it. as a classical musician, i can say that music has a similar appeal to me, but it's a much more closed environment - within the confines of a high-level classical performance group - than something like a game, which is pretty much experienced by everyone in the same way. i think that sephfire's youtube video about sex and video games points out some really good ideas on this topic again, and the video was good enough to warrant bringing up here again. does anyone else have a feeling on this? and, for that matter, should this get moved to the flamepit that is ppr?

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/serious-games-issues.ars serious games: ars looks at games that tackle the big issues yet again, ars comes through with another really interesting article that i think a lot of you should read. some really interesting and thought-provoking things are talked about here. thoughts?

wips should not be public unless it's like an audition piece or something. all project pieces should be kept close to the chest until release, it makes for a much better release experience then.

too human is fun, but it's relatively short and way too long at the same time (only four official missions where you can customize your equipment afterwords, very long in that it took some 15 hours to beat the whole thing even though it was only four missions). if you can get someone else to get it too (and pay less than 30$ for it) it's worth the price because playing it together is a lot of fun. DMC4 is great fun if you like buttonmashers and the like. if you're not into pretty much straightforward action games with terrible voice acting and script writing, avoid. but i found the pc version enjoyable, and modable as well. force unleashed is great fun but too short and has a slightly empty storyline. wish it was on pc as well. ok, there's three.

is it por-tiss-head, or por-tih-shed?

have you ever sang that song in context, in an ensemble large enough to make it work? i sat in front of the sopranos. all nintey of them. three pages of high As later (because no soprano, woman or boy, on the planet can sing a high A and project it over an orchestra without making it have vibrato large enough for truck parking), i was crying.

don't be an ass, damned. he's pointing out that while he has been moved, it's a topic he doesn't feel like mentioning because no matter how tastefully they mention it (which he did, nice work thin crust) someone will feel like they're proselytizing. like yourself. i've been moved to tears by several songs i heard in church, notably the keith getty/stuart townsend song 'in christ alone'. it was pretty much the unofficial song of the college i went to in undergrad, and everyone always sang their heart out in chapel when someone played it during worship. i still get a little stuffy singing it in church with my wife (who went to the same school as i did for undergrad).

most don't, and pretty much if you ask too many questions most will just ban your ip for a short time until you stop asking said questions.

that sounds good to me. i might as well give it a shot.

bada bing bada bump

anyone seen video diary 7 yet? it came out on the 2nd, and there's some solid footage about the sound effects and comopsitional content of the game's music. interesting comments on the lead sound designer's take on the soundtrack in the game.