I was perusing Metafilter this morning and found this post about two talented French Canadian musicians, Antoine Dufour and Tommy Gauthier.
Dufour is an accomplished fingerstyle guitarist, and has placed in several North American championships, and Gauthier is a respected fiddler. The two of them have a lot of videos up, which can be found on Mr. Gauthier’s MySpace.
Ray Kurzweil, who’s about the closest thing to a hero we’ve got these days, gets mentioned quite a lot in this New York Times writeup on The Singularity University, which was started by Google Founder Larry Page to introduce entrepreneurs to emerging technology in the areas of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, energy, biotech, robotics and computing. The cost for the 10 week course that aims to prepare you for the future? $25,000. Looks like I won’t be going anytime soon.
Here’s a demo in progress of one of the tracks I’m working on my upcoming album Opposite of Love. It’s called Crazy (For Your Love). Like all the songs on this album, it’s another one of my older songs that I’ve been playing for a while that I want to get recorded and done.
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This one goes back to about 2002.
Total time on the track this far has been about 25-30 hours recording, editing and mixing. So far there’s 2 acoustic guitars, 2 main vocals + one background vox, 2 electrics + 1 solo track.
Lyrics:
I would do anything for you.
All you have to do is ask.
Why are we playing these games again?
I thought we’d left them in the past.
I need to know if there’s something on your mind.
I need to know if you want me to go or if you need more time.
I don’t know if you want me around.
I’m trying to listen, but you don’t talk now.
But I’m crazy for your love.
And I’m guilty of not showing you enough.
And I need your body like a drug.
And I’ll be right here waiting.
And you say there’s someone new.
He won’t last they never do.
And now this time I’ve got someone too,
but everyday I think of you.
I’ve been spending way too much time this morning playing this awesome free side shooter called Hydorah. It’s in the style of Gradius or R-Type, has one difficulty level and is pretty damn hard. Check it out.
Hydorah Official Trailer from Locomalito on Vimeo.
Vice Magazine has an interview with Ray Kurzweil, inventor, futurist, and prophet of the Singularity. For those of you who don’t know, Ray believes that we are nearing the a new age when robotics, genetics, and nanotechnology and superhuman machine intelligence will usher in a new age where the line between biological and machine, real and virtual will be no more. A lot of people think Kurzweil is a kook, but I eat this shit up. A lot of people derisively call this the Rapture of the Nerds because of all the talk of brain uploading, nanoswarms and other far out sci-fi sounding concepts, but Ray is a man of great reputation and has built his books
The truth is computer continue to increase at an accelerated pace, and it doesn’t look like Moore’s law is slowing down yet. Projects to simulate a full scale human mind are in the works and should be successful in the next 20 years or so. Once we manage to simulate the mind on a scale faster than real time, things are going to change quickly. It will be the last invention we need make, as computers begin redesigning themselves and living the equivalent of a few days in mere hours. There’s no telling where things will go from there.
It may sound scary to some of you, but to me it sounds very exciting.
Sometimes before I go to sleep I’ll write out some stream of consciousness in a notebook where I keep my song lyrics. Here’s one I did two weeks ago.
Balanced precariously on the point of contention
attrition mangling the bodies fair
Westminster beggars with toothless companions
Decreasing compliance with vacant stares
What is this which you have brung?
Steely defiance electronic vice
Where is the savior they promised us?
Towering infernos, concrete & ice
Metal master lenses enveloping eyes
Black rubber batons buried in bone
Streetlights are fading a new sun will rise
Red rivets running, a man stands alone
Unlearn the program, the conductor is missing
No one and no thing and there is no you
Discover the meaning of their misdirection
The new diagnosis: Nothing is true
Mad medications & chemical cures
A gross demonstration of what was once pure
One sideways push, potential fall
Teetering topless across the walls
gross amputation the gangrenous limb
encoded the signal thus sent unto them
Rapture reset, howling to the wind
Magnetic meltdown catastrophe sent
Stakes tied to the ropes which went
flying with the tent
Interstellar insult, silence of the world
Discord of the Heavens
the signal never heard
Interstate Prometheus laughing while it burns
The horizon line receding
as the world it always turns
It’s been too long. It feels like 2 years have gone by since daHIFI was back under our control, not held some cybersquatting domain thieves. We can understand the business plan: Snatch up recently lapsed domains, wait for their owners to come back looking for them and then charge exorbitant rates to release them back. Sorry fuckers, but we don’t play that game. We did learn our lesson however. Never deal with Network Solutions or Register.com. We’re letting our web host handle the details from here on out and hopefully this won’t happen again.
Anyways, here we are again. It’s been too long since I’ve had a proper home on the web. I’ve been doing my thing with epicHoney.net for the past year and change to pass the time, but that site is more for the Hampton Roads music, not my own personal ramblings. It’s good to be home. I’m not going to bother with the archives, they seemed so dated last time I browsed through them, half of the links broken and half of the political venom long since dissipated due to the passage of time. No, we’ll just start anew, fresh from scratch. Just a post when we feel like it, hopefully stretch those creative muscles that have seen better days.
It’s fitting that today’s the first of June, Memorial Day a dozen minutes behind me. My birthday is less than a week away, my 31st. I’ve got a lot to do this next week, hopefully I’ll be starting a new job, and there’s plenty to get done between school, house projects and music. I just hope I can squeeze some more time out of the day to attend to this site. I think I can manage.
That’s enough for now, there’s some things I need to do before I sleep and I think it best if I let my subconscious take control for a few hours before I do anything else here. Ta-ta for now,
welcome back.
