I’ve recently gotten back into my old hobby of producing music. Eons ago I had gotten pretty good at it, and a surprising number of my works wound up in various video games of the era (mid to late 90’s). Then one day, I had a terrible disk crash, lost all of my source files and “signature” sounds, and I pretty much threw in the towel. Sure, I played around with the new tools back then, like the first versions of Acid and Reason, but I didn’t take it seriously anymore… it was just fun to make noise for a few hours.

Earlier this year, my good friend Bitburn convinced me to give it another shot. I started by “remixing” one of his tracks, though I really just grabbed a few sounds and melodies and made them into something very different. It wasn’t great, but considering it was my first serious effort in over six years, I’m willing to cut myself some slack. Later that week, I was bored one evening and played around with my music software. I mashed together a few canned loops, made a few minor edits and cooked up a simple bassline, and in the space of two hours “Parking Nazi” was born. I think for something I just cobbled together out of Reason loops, it’s a pretty freakin’ sweet track, but I got lucky. I didn’t have much of a plan when I started it, I just surfed through my vast collection of loops and samples until I found bits I liked. I was really just playing around.

After the first few songs, I got busy with other things and didn’t touch the music for a while, though it lingered in the back of my head. I was a bit depressed and frustrated from my difficulties. Music used to be so easy for me, so to have lost my “touch” over the years, it was very demotivating to have to relearn everything. Then out of nowhere it hit me: everything I’ve learned in the computer world, I’ve learned through trial and error. I’ve fried components, I’ve trashed data, I’ve taken things apart and messed with them, but most importantly I’ve done A LOT. I’ve built dozens of applications, hundreds of web sites, and thousands of computers, and each time I learned a little trick or improved a small detail that has culminated into my broad skill set today.

Right then I decided I would start producing a ton of music, whatever came through my mind. It doesn’t matter if it’s repetitive, or imperfect, or even finished… the more I experiment, the quicker I’ll learn. There’s nothing wrong with having a hundred unfinished songs on my hard drive. I think of it as a notepad, with scribbles and doodles, but instead of being ink on paper, they are sounds, melodies, rhythms and chords. The junk I save today, may well be transformed into a solid hit next month, or perhaps it will remain as junk, serving as a warning of what not to do. Either way, it is immensely valuable as a learning tool.

Nothing much to add, but if you’re at all interested in the lovely circle-jerk that is banking, I invite you to spend a few minutes reading this excellent article at Daily Kos, that I think explains the situation in a way most people can understand (well, most non-inbred people).

For more fun, check out the Bank Implode-O-Meter. Screw religion, if you’re going to waste 20% of your active brain cells on complete fiction, believe in modern finance!

Me, I’m still waiting for Star Trek replicators to make all these dick-waxing auto-asphyxiating tie-fetishists obsolete.

I bring your attention to article A: ‘Body Of Christ’ Snatched From Church, Held Hostage By UCF Student

Now consider article B: ‘Body Of Christ” Returned To Church After Student Receives Email Threats

If you’re too lazy to read, the titles pretty much give it away. University kid goes to church, university kid doesn’t eat the Jesus cracker fast enough, university kid gets physically and verbally attacked by Jesus freaks. I half-expect church leaders to be borderline-homicidal, but the email threats are way too much. What’s the big deal ? It’s a ghetto piece of so-called “unleavened bread”, probably imported from China, where it’s cooked up by 12 year old slave kids who’ve never even heard of Jesus H. Christ.

Turn it around: let’s say I am a cult leader, and the rules of my cult state that one must insert “The Body of Fnarg”, which is actually just a piece of no-name straberry licorice, up one’s anus. Does that grant me the privilege of smashing your ignorant skull if I ever catch you using a piece of licorice beyond the confines of your ass hole ? The Catholic church seems to believe so.

The day religious folks give up hypocrisy, is the day I’ll stop bashing religious folks. Believe in something if your fragile mind requires it, but mind your goddamned business!

There’s a petition online. Like all petitions, it probably won’t do a damned thing, but it says “fuck you” in the domain name, and that earns automatic brownie points from me :) Fuck You Rogers - Petition

Update:A spin doctor from Pizza Pizza contacted me and credited $50 to my account, and I’m not one to turn down free pizza! I still declare a jihad on the Somerset tards - I’m not much for suicide bombers, but maybe a large group of fat nerds could show up, dressed in their finest trans-gender World of Warcraft costumes, all calling in complaints on their overpriced iPhones until Rick James’ pimpin’ arm reaches down from the heavens and fiercely slaps the pizza nazis like the bitches they are. UNITY!

Anyone who knows me, knows I love pizza. I eat it all the time, and just when I think I’m sick of it, I order some more. Well one of the places I often order from is Pizza Pizza (whenever Pizza Shark isn’t open - lazy dogs!). I ordered two pizzas today, and I have to say, it’s the closest I’ve ever come to physically assaulting a delivery driver - lucky for him, I was at work and held it in. Here’s a copy of the letter I wrote to their headquarters:

I’ve had several issues with the location at 673 Somerset St West, Ottawa, Ontario. Today was, by far, the most puzzling and horrendous I’ve ever encountered.

For lunch, I ordered two large pizzas and beverages at the office. When they arrived, one of the ingredients was completely missing, so I called back to report the problem. They sent a new pizza, when it arrived the delivery driver told me the cook was very upset about the complaint, and he told me to call the 11-11 number to remove my complaint. He gave me an entire script to tell the phone rep, and would not leave until this was done. He basically told me to say the original pizza was fine, that someone else had called on my behalf and made the complaint in error, and that I did not require a new pizza be delivered (even though the replacement was already here). I can only assume each owner gets penalized based on the number of complaints, and he wanted to avoid another bad mark. He followed me all the way back to my office to be sure I was making the call, and waited until I had hung up before leaving the premises. My coworkers witnessed the entire ordeal and were completely dumbfounded. I found this practice deceptive, extremely offensive and felt a bit threatened by his attitude. I’m not easily scared, but something about his demeanor got under my skin. He did it without hesitation, which tells me this may be a common occurrence. It is certainly the first time I’ve seen anything like it.

I was outraged, and the moment he drove away, I called right back and relayed the incident to the customer service agent. They were very apologetic, and said they would inform the district manager. I have had other issues with this particular location, mostly involving the food quality and toppings, but I let them slip until today. I would have been perfectly content with the replacement pizza, had the driver not tried to manipulate me.

I eat pizza several times a week, it’s almost comical. Lunches at the office, lazy evenings at home with my wife, and late nights after drinking with the boys… I’ve had no problems with the others, whether it’s in Ottawa, Toronto, or elsewhere. I’m not going to stop ordering pizza, but I will go out of my way to avoid the Somerset location, even if it means I have to pick it up myself at a different Pizza Pizza location. I can assure you my friends and coworkers will be invited to do the same. The Pizza Pizza brand is a strong one, and petty fraudsters like the Somerset crew should not be allowed to tarnish the company’s image and ruin it for the hundreds of other Pizza Pizza operators who have been doing a fine job for decades.

Sincerely,
-Bill Lambert

Yep, he made me call the head office and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I bet my face was turning purple with anger, I just wanted to bludgeon him with the handset. Don’t ever order from the Somerset Pizza Pizza in Ottawa, they’ll fuck up your order AND threaten you. Order from any other location and you’ll likely receive a lovely meal with that ghetto quality you love but just won’t admit :)

And if you happen to know the names of the owner and/or drivers, I’m all ears, just in case they decide to retaliate somehow - after today’s antics, I wouldn’t put it beyond them.

In other words, all those neat features they listed on the box, which people foolishly paid for, well those features do not work under Vista, Microsoft’s latest mainstream operating system.

Let’s think about that for a moment: it’s a sound card. It takes digital sound, converts it to analog and shoves it down a pair of wires to the speaker. Actually it doesn’t even drive the speakers, you still need amplifiers (which are built into most computer speakers). As far as add-on devices go, this is about as simple as it gets. Here’s an example of a basic home-made sound circuit that hooks up via USB.

Anyway, Daniel K is a smart fella who hacked the drivers in order to bring those missing features back in Vista, and he has shared his work online for others to enjoy. He’s basically giving away for free what should have been Creative’s responsibility from the beginning, giving Sound Blaster owners what they want and paid for, and he’s being punished and threatened by the company as a direct result of these actions.

If you want to find out more about this despicable company, hit up Google and read all about how they once tried to charge money for Audigy device drivers, or how they drop support for their products after 2-3 years only to re-release near-identical hardware for more money (see “X-Fi Xtreme Audio”).

I invite everyone to boycott these bastards. Today’s Sound Blasters have nothing in common with the products we all fell in love with 20 years ago.

Here’s the forum thread concerning Daniel K. Many people have signed up to the forum purely to leave angry comments, I invite you to take a few minutes to do the same. Tell this company exactly how much they suck. They will never change, but the more people post, the more attention this story will get and hopefully others will stop buying this overpriced garbage so we can all watch the company die!

Message to Daniel_K - Sound Blaster - Creative Labs

Billsmind.com needs a reboot, a new format that better represents what it’s like to live in my reactive world. Until I figure it out, I probably won’t be posting much on here.

If you want to be informed when this new encyclopedia of Billco hits primetime, leave a comment below with your contact info and I’ll give you a shout when the time is right. No spam, I promise.

The spam did not originate from my server. These are just half-bred scammers putting fake addresses in the “From” field. I would love to find out who’s behind this, chop them into a bloody goulash and have demon sex with their remains, but that’s not quite how thinks work on the Internet.

I would simply remind that if you receive any email from people you don’t know, look them up before clicking on that Hallmark e-card, screensaver or banking site they’re promoting :/ Most spammers are based in non-english speaking countries so any obvious language issues should raise your suspicion.

I have installed a few spam countermeasures on my server, but they only work in tandem with “smart” mail servers which are sadly not that popular with large ISPs and webmail services. Please do what you can to protect yourself from these small-time crooks.

I won’t even try to say anything clever about this. Fuck them all! Fuck the idiot inspector, fuck his boss, fuck everyone who touched the paperwork involved in this case. I hope they all get gang-raped by a pack of Wii hoarders for the rest of eternity.

We live in a fake world. Fake people, fake careers, fake tits and fake money. Well if you’re the kind of fake person that likes a fake computer, here’s your keyboard: the Optimus Maximus, by Art Lebedev (aka the “geniuses” who got paid to draw a heart on a microwave).

For those of you who just got off the boat, this keyboard’s claim to fame is that each key has its own mini color OLED display, so you can put little icons and animations on them. It’s real purty! Of course I don’t ever look at my keyboard when I type, much like most competent typists, so it would just be an irritating glow at the edge of my field of vision, and yet I’m still magically attracted to the stupid thing, much like suburban white kids are attracted to iPods in that “Oh my god I’m such a trendy douche!” kind of way.

Oh, yeah, it costs $1500+ for the high end model, but thankfully they have cheaper units that only have a few lighted keys, starting at $450-ish for just the space bar. I hear they have a trade-in program where you can mail in your kidneys and get a 10% discount.

As many people have already commented, we’re just waiting for Logitech to copy the idea and make a cheaper, more comfortable wireless version that’s rightfully made in China, like all cheap junk should be. They could probably extend some of the tech used in their G15 keyboard, like ummm, an embedded controller so your CPU doesn’t have to do all the work.

See the problem with the Optimus keyboard is that it’s supposed to be a piece of “functional art”. It was designed by artists, not engineers. It’s meant to be pretty, not so much practical. The mere fact that each key has its own mini 48×48 pixel display is direct proof that a brain was not employed during the creation of this monstrosity. Any sweatshop worker with a half-gram of coke in his veins would know it’s far more efficient (and cheap) to build one full-size display, throw on some see-thru keys, and if you’re really that anal you can paint some black outlines where the keys go. Perhaps not as “perfect” as the Art Lebedev keyboard, but you could sell the cheap one for $200 and still make a dirty dirty profit, while our poor little Russian designers get shut out of the market and are forced to go “invent” a Pokémon microwave.

Boo fucking hoo.