Simpsonized!

The camera never lies (ho ho!), which is why there isn't a photo of me gracing this page. Instead I've used a service which provides a representation which can be edited and enhanced in ways that would require considerable skill in Photoshop, The Gimp, or any of those other wannabe photo editing software packages.

All I did was visit Simpsonizeme.com, uploaded a photo of me for it to work on, refined the results and saved them to my Mac, and then I added a graduated background and sepia conversion in a well-known photo editing software package. Since I'm never likely to appear in a real episode of The Simpsons, this is probably my perihelion.

If you don't already know, then you might like to ponder on who the sponsor company might be for the SimpsonizeMe website before visiting it.

Exploring deeper...

Since I routinely mis-use things, I also took a picture of Homer Simpson and let that be Simpsonized too. I then took the result and Simpsonized that, and...


The results of all these iterations are quite striking: the first generation has completely un-Homer'ed him, and then it seems to settle down into a kind of 'Alternative Universe' Homer (with glasses) for several generations (Number 4 reminds me of...), But just as you think it is locked into it, the sixth generation goes off at a completely new tangent.

Obscure Wipeout HD Locations Number 1

Video games usually have two ways of playing them. The way you are supposed to play them, and the way that the developers and programmers never thought of... Okay, so sometimes they do anticipate people going berserker (Star Wars: Phantom Menace on the Sony Playstation 1 is a classic example) but most times they go out of their way to make sure that you do it 'right'.

Deliberate mis-use of most hi-tech equipment is one of my standard operating practices. I've messed about with DIY lava lamps, e-bows, cornflour anti-thixotropicity, warping plastic in microwave ovens and more - none of which activities are in any way condoned or encouraged by me, of course.

But video games are one area where I am happy to promote the creative use of deliberate exploration beyond the designed limits (the same applies to programming synthesizers, but that's another story). So when my very local 16-year old games expert showed me his 'Guess where this Wipeout HD screenshot is from?' picture collection, then it just screamed to be shared with a wider audience.

Where is this Harimau going?

Which is the cue for the screenshot and your eyeballs. The rest is simple:

• Which track is the screen shot from, and whereabouts on that track (landmarks will do)?

There's no prize for this 'not really a competition at all', but solving this puzzle should have huge kudos value for PS3 Wipeout HD addicts! Happy searching, and the answer will be in a future post.

Buying MP3 music tracks

I buy lots of music online. My normal practice has long been to buy CDs so that I get a physical object with linear PCM audio, and I then convert that to MP3 (OK: pedantically AAC) format to play on my iPods as I move around. I have bought a lot of CDs: high three figures, and maybe four.

But recently things have begun to change. I've discovered that some music is not available on CD, and that the only way to purchase it is to download it. And this is only the start. So here's the story of a not untypical purchase and where it leads.

I love anime. In the days before browsers, I used to 'surf' ftp sites using command line ftp, and joined the small and select band of insiders who knew about Japanese animation. In the early 1990s this was seriously obscure undergound stuff, and the rise of anime to the mainstream has been fascinating, from both an artistic and a technological viewpoint. So I've been a visitor to anime music video (AMV) sites like animemusicvideos.org for many years, and I'm continually astonished by the amazing talent that is displayed there - arguably some of the best music video editing on the planet.

Recently, I was moved to tears by a compelling piece of work called 'Auriga' by Nostromo_vx (aka Xavier Guinchard). Currently in the top 10 of AMVs on amv.org (see above), this uses a superbly-chosen range of anime clips and a brilliant dance music track. In fact, the trance track was so good that I decided to buy it - and anyone who says that no-one ever buys music because they heard it online has never met me. The detailed information for the video said that the provenance was:

• DJ Spoke: Watch Them Fall Down (Montano Dub)
• DJ Spoke: Watch Them Fall Down (Original Mix)

So I set about finding these tracks: as CDs or downloads...

eMusic.com didn't come up with anything useful. The more specialist Dancetracksdigital.com isn't normally very strong on Trance, and this was no exception. But Beatport.com came up with the download goods, as did Amazon.com, and so did that increasingly diverse source iTunes! My frequent UK supplier, Amazon.co.uk, had some tracks on CDs, but not the right ones, and pseudo-helpfully asked if I meant 'DJ Spore'?

Prices and format options varied enormously. Amazon.com offered MP3 downloads for $0.88 (but not to a UK IP address, and there's another story), iTunes offered AAC downloads for £0.79, and Beatport.com offered MP3, MP4 and WAV, with prices going from £1.48 up to £2.63 for that coveted linear format. In the end I paid lots of money for two 320 kbps high rate MP3 tracks because more than three times the cost of a normal iTunes download seemed like too high a price to pay, whilst 1.48 per track seemed to be the middle ground. So a viewing of a video led directly to the sale of two tracks, and I quite like DJ Spoke's style, so he's now on my list of 'artists to watch'.

The best bit about all of this is the ending. As it happens, the best remix of this track is the one from the AMV. Xavier's version has the end of the Montana dub as the beginning, uses the bass from the middle eight, and chops between the two versions, to create the best version by far. A version which, as far as I know, isn't available. Now if I was DJ Spoke, or his label, I'd be looking to add this version to the other remixes...

Russlings returns!

After more years than I dare to think about, my punningly-named column from the early 1990s editions of the enduringly wonderful hi-tech music magazine Sound On Sound has re-appeared - here. The name has changed slightly, because there's now a zoo-oriented blog called 'Russlings', but the brain behind this re-appearance is the same old me, albeit slightly older. (and hopefully wiser...)

Actually, to be honest, what I really mean to say is that after an embarrassingly long period of time, I've finally got around to setting up my own blog to accompany my eponymous web-site.

What I'm intending to do here is provide comment and analysis on today's hi-tech world: to reflect on its diversity, novelty, and even on what appears to be an ever-increasingly commodity: its insanity. Note that this is my intent - the reality will probably be not as frequent or as informed as I would like it to be. I have some particularly useful talents for this: deadlines nearly missed; an inate inability to stop using dashes to join what should really be two sentences; a total block regarding learning from copy editing; and a sense of humour that defies understanding. "A 'raised Spock's eyebrow' sort of humour," is how one colleague put it - rather generously, I thought.