Every now and then I'll find my music used in a place I don't expect.  Here's an older example featuring a speaker made out of a hard drive:

And here's a much newer example that I find more surprising, as it means that this guy actually reads this blog (the only place I put this silly bit of music):

Always fun seeing these things pop up.

Last week I decided I would buy The Grand Chef Vol. 1 DVD set on Amazon Marketplace.  Ninety bucks is a bit much, so I decided to get one of the much cheaper used copies being advertised.  A couple clicks here and there and the item is bought.  The next day, the seller sent this message:

Thank you for shopping with me. I upgraded your set to a double volume collector's set (which includes the sequel, "Grand Chef II" (also known as "Gourmet 2"). The USPS parcel's # is...

Huh, that's interesting.  I wonder what this collector's set is.  No sign of it on Ya Entertainment's web site.

When I open the package on Saturday night, I'm greeted with this:

Yep, I am not happy about this one bit.  I believe this might be the first time I've actually fallen victim to a bait and switch.  If I really wanted to get the Chinese version, I would have spent half the price and bought it on ebay.  I'm not looking forward to dealing with Amazon and the seller in the morning...

Magic Knight Rayearth is: one of my favorite series ever.  When Alice asked if I'd be interested in being part of a Rayearth cosplay photoshoot, I broke into a big grin and said: "Sure!"

(Inside, my mind was thinking: "OMG AWESOME SO COOL RAYEARTH I LOVE RAYEARTH!!!@!@1!@11111!!!!")

Thing is, as the photoshoot date inched closer, I started to feel more and more nervous.  Performance anxiety, a relic from my serious pianist past which had started to crop up again in my video game career as well as my teaching career, was now rearing its ugly head with this relatively trivial pursuit of cosplay photography.  I suppose it was only natural; I would be the proverbial newbie in a group of experienced photographers shooting a trio of experienced cosplayers.  It didn't help that fashion photography and modeling was never what I concentrated on (always considered myself a documentarian since I started shooting back in the early 90s), and giving direction was far from my strong suit.  I must have imagined a Hollywood movie worth of embarrassment in the weeks prior to the photoshoot.

Thankfully, none of the horrible predicaments I was imagining for myself actually took place.

Behold: the amplifier. 

I like amplifiers because they take something and: MAKE IT BIGGER. 

I like that attribute in my microphone pre-amps and mixers.  I like to hear that in my sports radio talk show hosts. 

I also like it in my video games. 

I enjoy the way that video games take the little input I give them and explode it into cornucopia of heady ideals and intricate details.  If you watch me while playing some of my favorite video games, all I'm doing is twitching a few thumb and wrist muscles here and there.  From a distance one would wonder whether I'm doing anything at all.  But view the output visuals on that television screen and listen to the audio on those speakers!  One realizes how great the video game is, amplifying my small (if relatively synchronized) muscle movements into ballet, cinema, novel, and symphony.

Nowadays, however, there's this thing called the Wii.  I look at it and many of the games and I can't help but think that it's not an amplifier.  It's a band-pass filter.

A little more complex, right?  Now, don't get me wrong: I like filters when I'm doing music recording.  I can take a sound that's full of stuff that I don't want and excise it, leaving the part that I care about.

In my video games, however, I don't want the game taking my rich, expressive, emotive input and turning it into an icon, which is what I see many Wii games do.  With the Wii, we see players gesticulating wildly with the wiimote and nunchuk in an effort to make certain that the video game properly filters the beauty that is human motion into: the iconic reduction necessary to make video games work as video games.

I like icon.  It's useful and effective and it's the way we humans appreciate and manipulate the world... and the fact that I can deal with icon is precisely why I don't want video games having to guess at the icon I wish to insert into the structure that is my video game performance.

No: I don't hate the concept of Wiimote.  In fact, I think it has the potential to be fantastic.  The rich input that the combination of the player and the Wiimote is capable of makes me think: OH MAN, NOW THE GAME OUTPUT COULD BE EVEN BETTER!  Alas, no game has made me think that, as game after game released on Nintendo's system has seen the player's input be reduced to output more befitting the series of 1s and 0s created by the lowly gamepad.  Swing sword or don't swing sword.  Throw item or don't throw item.  Toggle switch or don't toggle switch.  Despite the burgeoning popular success of the Wii, you cannot convince me that the variable swinging of a peripheral triggering an individual action can compare to the feat of translation that is: down, down-forward, forward + punch.

I guess all I can do these days is be thankful that the Wii and its design philosophy has not infected all the games that I enjoy.  Action games, adventure games, sports games, fighting games, racing games, even role playing games: you continue to have my respect as you continue to push what is created when the simple action of a thumb pushing a button is amplified..

Spectators are the driving force behind sports and music.  Why isn't this the case with video games? 

Back in my early college days, I was: a piano performance major.  Not that I really believed in the importance of music interpretation; I just happened to be pretty good at it!  (Really!)  Natural, then, that I hate what it is I’ve lived my life with, right?  So it makes sense that these days I’m wondering about the importance of video game player.  (Right?) 

Me, I totally believe in the importance of playing the game.  The game isn’t just some artifact that is to be observed.  It must be played.  How else would the message of the game be communicated except through the actual play?

So right now I'm printing stuff.

I've got two fairly nice Epson Stylus Photo 1280 printers.  When they work, they create wonderful, wonderful output.  On really beautiful paper (like my preferred Ilford Premium Pearl Photo) the prints turn out drop-dead gorgeous.

Unfortunately, they don't work 100% of the time.  In fact, they don't work even 40% of the time.

On this particular job I'm stressing over, I'm being commissioned to make 20 full bleed art prints.  Unfortunately for me, I can't just put 20 sheets of paper into the feed and hit a button.  Doesn't work that way.

First off, the feed mechanism on both of these printers sucks.  You look at the printer wrong and suddenly it's sucking in two or three sheets of paper at a time.  When the media costs $0.50 to $1.00 a sheet, you don't want that to happen, so that means I print one sheet at a time.  Every 20+ minute I have to load another sheet of paper.  Fun.

Then there's the print heads.  These things get clogged every 5 sheets or so.  One clogged nozzle means nasty streaking.  That means I'm doing nozzle checks before every single print I make.

Then there's the fact that full bleed printing is non-trivial on these printers.  You can't simply say you want borderless prints.  (Well, you can, but only if you like a couple millimeters being cut off on every border.  That means I have to guesstimate the dimensions in my print settings.  Right now, I'm telling Photoshop to print the picture as 12.8" x 18.707" in order for the printer driver to properly fill the 13" x 19" page.)

And then there's the stuff that you just can't account for.  Just an hour ago, one of the two printers developed a clog that just will not go away, even after an hour worth of cleaning cycles.  Earlier today, the Windows print manager decided that every job was done after about 8 inches of the 19 inch long document was printed.  Before that, the printer decided it would be a good thing to mar otherwise perfect prints with a smear of black ink on the bottom edge.  Yesterday, a fly got into the printer and... well, you can see the results here.

So!  All in all: printing sucks.

Lately I've been considering my options.  I only use these printers to print jobs for other people, so considering all the time and money I funnel into them, I should probably just get rid of them.  Considering my nature, it's far more likely that I'll replace them and continue offering services...

The site looks great in Firefox 3... and horrible in everything else.  Chrome, IE, Opera... ARGH!  Damn top bar is messed up... ah well...

Edit: FIXED!  No thanks to you lousy updated css...