the-inbetween.com

Crystal Castles vs Creative Commons

Remember that time I wrote about the then new Crystal Castles album? My semi-review came from the perspective of someone familiar with the chiptune sound and annoyed by all the Pitchforkerati buzz proclaiming it “innovative.” I objected to those proclamations but, essentially, raved about the music itself and, essentially, admired Crystal Castles‘ nonchalance to the scene. They weren’t of the scene but they were of the same pop-culture zeitgeist, having grown up with 8-bit videogames, that created that scene. Synchronicity and all that.

As it turns out, they were full of shit.

One Crystal Castles quote from the previous post that bears repeating is the following:

That keyboard was made back in 2004 and then we learned about this whole 8-bit scene, which we don’t really have anything to do with. It’s a completely different world.

Which would be fine were it not for the fact that they have just been found to have been using unlicensed and unapproved samples from artists in the 8-bit scene, specifically Lo-Bat and Covox. Oops. It puts everything they have said in an entirely new light, especially when you consider the stink that they caused when it was revealed they used art on shirts and albums, that they found, without ever getting the artists permission.

One time is, maybe, a careless mistake. Two, three, four times over is kleptomania. The worst part is that they distance themselves –a completely different world– from the very same community that they are influenced by. Chiptunes? Not cool. Asshole douchebaggery? Totally hipster! Put it on Pitchfork.

The 8-bit Peoples website has the “official” response as well as links that detail the situation some more: Crystal Castles and Chip Music Copyright Infringements, Chiptune Music Theft Continues; Crystal Castles Abuses Creative Commons License and chipflip: plagiarism. The best place for information, however, is the epic (now 23 page) thread on the 8bitcollective forums.

Fuck that, Crystal Castles is now permanently off of my radar. Go listen to some chiptunes .

Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend

The Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend is nearing its end. I downloaded the game and played for an hour and a half on Friday evening. I do have The Orange Box, which contains Team Fortress 2, on the 360 but I never felt compelled to play it there. Partly because there were some serious lag issues when it first launched.

I like the game — it’s a very well made shooter — and I love its art direction and design but I don’t know if I’m willing to buy it for a second time. Things are different on the PC. During my third match, on Friday, some loser connected to the server I was on and started blasting, through the voice chat, Haddaway’s “What is Love?” and other shitty 90s pop tunes. He was instantly muted.

That kind of experience reminded me why I don’t like playing games like this on the PC. Sure, there are many douchebags on XBox Live too but being on a more closed system their griefing abilities are limited. On the PC, which is far more open to hacks and exploits, this kind of annoying bullshit is so much more aggravating and so much more common. It all makes the price of entry, even when it’s free, not worth it.

Justice - “Stress”

French electro-hipsters Justice recently released a new video for their track “Stress”. [hi-res video link] It lives up to the title. The video follows a gang of banlieue thugs as they go on a rampage across the city. It’s violent and uncompromising, likely to never be seen on TV on this side of the Atlantic, and, to no one’s surprise, already quite controversial. In some ways, it’s a very condensed version of La Haine [trailer].

On a superficial level, the violence is gratuitous. These thugs go around beating up bystanders, tourists, old ladies and security guards without any retribution. That’s likely why so many people have a problem with this video: they get away with it. After being subjected to this stressful ordeal the viewer is never given the karmic release they likely expected. Not only do they lack that catharsis, but by the end of it the viewer itself becomes as a victim to the thugs’ rampage.

The video works because there’s a constant tension between the actions of the characters on screen and the viewer, represented as the film crew. This is established early on when you see a hand come out a wipe the camera. From this point on you know that this isn’t some imaginary third person view, this is seen from the first person perspective of the cameraman. The characters are aware of it, though in an uneasy sort of way.

As it goes along they become more conscious of the camera. They goad it along, as though their carnage is for show.

Soon enough, the authorities come and try to take them and the camera down. You see a guard come, palm raised, at the camera. The screen goes black. A moment later, we are saved as the thugs turn on that guard and beat the shit out of him. Everyone runs. It is at this point when we become more aware of the camera crew as we see the sound guy, holding his microphone, running away alongside the thugs.

The camera crew — the viewer — has changed from a detached observer into someone complicit in the violence. They are no longer detached observers. It is no surprise that they, too, become victims to it. It’s hard to feel sympathy for them. They — we — brought it upon ourselves. In this sense it is far more reminiscent of Man Bites Dog than La Haine.

So is the violence in this video gratuitous? Yes. But that shouldn’t be seen as a celebration or glorification of it. The only people that would see it as such are those that look at it at a superficial level, seeing a bunch of hooligans beating up innocent people and nothing more. There’s more to it than just that.

It is, then, very appropriate that the video was let loose during the same week that saw the release of Grand Theft Auto IV.

IP Imperialism

It’s not a new development, but it is one that seems to resurface every few months. The US is, of course, trying to export US-style copyright reform to Canada. This is happening all around the world. Many new treaties and trade pacts between the United States and foreign countries include copyright stipulations. The US is exceedingly aggressive in this regard and, often times, very one sided. They complain when other nations don’t respect copyrights as strictly as they do, citing international treaties and agreements, but they turn a blind eye to their own anti-competitive practices. Sometimes even rewriting WTO treaties for their own gain at the expense of other nations: In May, the United States said it was rewriting its trade rules to remove gambling from the jurisdiction of the W.T.O.. It’s easy to understand why the United States does this: culture is the only major exportable resource it has left.

This is why, in this age of globalization and bitTorrent and cheap DVD copies, those of us outside of the United States get this bullshit:

There’s a lot to be said about how region locking is anti-competitive and how a lot of these major IP holders are in favour of globalization if it gets them into new markets but against it if it benefits the consumer. Essays have been written. Books are likely to be published. But the biggest problem with it, from a personal perspective, is that it requires local IP holders to be as “on the ball” as its major American owners. Online region locking wouldn’t be such a problem if there were local alternatives and competition. There isn’t. Canadian media companies aren’t exactly at the forefront of such progress, which is a shame because this is a very internet and tech savvy country. Hell, we’re just now getting on the iPhone bandwagon — a year late to the party.

But there’s hope…

Quite a bit bit of it. Hopefully, Canadian media companies will soon get their heads out of their asses and realize that, yes, Canadians use the internet too.

FITC and Flash

FITC Toronto was in full swing over the last weekend and it struck me with a severe case of deja vu. Annual conferences like this, if you attend them frequently enough, are strange beasts. Forgotten names are brought up, faces that are seen once a year show up and all the lunch time (in)decisions and presentations feel awfully familiar. There are always interesting bits and pieces and insights to take away from some of the talks, though it’s often a bunch of stuff that can be seen on the presenters’ website anyway.

But it’s a great place to network and find work and, with my upcoming ronin lifestyle, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

One of the main presentations at FITC, every year, is the Adobe keynote. It is often the same predictable thing. They show some weird, little side tools (this year it was kuler), some new Adobe Labs stuff, they boast about the adoption rate for the latest version of Flash player (video traffic this year) and they show new features from the perpetual next version of the Flash authoring application. This year they focused mostly on improved animation tweening controls, a modified timeline and some native rigging and 3D tools. Nice features, but they should have been in the previous version of Flash. Or, more accurately, they should have been there before they alienated their animator (read: non-programmer) demographic.

A preview of some of the motion tween features in Flash 10. See the rest of my FITC 08 pictures here.

But it’s all part of the Madden philosophy: getting people to pay for a constant stream of incremental updates and fucking over those that don’t by restricting the compatibility between the new versions. Fuck you Adobe. Everyone would be perfectly happy if you released upgrades half as often with twice as many features, but you couldn’t milk that now, could you?

Even those files that are saved as “Flash 8″ documents don’t work for me because I have the audacity to have “Flash 8 Basic“. Unable to open document with this version of Flash because it contains screens? Seriously? Screens? Who uses “screens”? No one. The file has no screens. You’re just trying to fuck me. Damnit. I’m sick of it. You win. I give up. Take my money. I am upgrading today.

But this better be the last time.

Sins of a Solar Empire’s UI Designer

As a long time web user it really bugs me when games have really poor user interface design and architecture. It’s one thing when it’s in-game, with all the engine and graphical and game data considerations, but when the menu interface is broken and/or archaic it’s downright annoying. Sins of a Solar Empire is one such title. I like the game — played a three-plus hour battle online yesterday — but my experience, on the whole, is lukewarm because of an irritating registration process.

But before I get to registration I’m going to backtrack to the installation process: it didn’t work. Every time I would try I would get an error on the progress bar. It was a pop-up alert box that told me, in very informative terms, “Error” and nothing else. The message was blank, the font was messed up and the OK button closed the entire installer. Thanks Stardock!

A quick search revealed the problem: I had the audacity to have the demo installed. Removing that fixed everything and, after a brief installation, I was ready to play, once again cursing at the dreaded PC-Gamer experience (and dreading the future of consoles.) But before I could play I wanted to set up my Iron Clad Online account.

1. I load the game and see the splash screen. There is an “update serial” button. I click it and a text input prompt comes up. I type the 30 character CD-key. Error.
2. Apparently I missed a character. No big deal. I hit the “update serial” button again. I expected to have what I entered still there so that I can easily fix the typo. It wasn’t. I type the 30 character CD-key. It goes through but there’s no confirmation. I don’t know if it worked.
3. I start the game and skip the opening cinematics. I get to the main menu and hit the “multiplayer - iron clad online” button. I am greeted with a login screen.
4. I hit the “Create Account” button and get a standard username, password, retype password, CD-key form. I type the 30 character CD-key. Error
5. After I typed everything out, the game tells me that I have the wrong version of Iron Clad Online. I quit out and hit the update button. It takes me to the Sins of a Solar Empire web page and a login screen. You need to have an account to download updates.
6. I go to create an account, type in a username, password, my email address. I type the 30 character CD-key. I hit submit and wait for my confirmation email. It doesn’t come.
7. Ten minutes later I have the email and my account is confirmed. I download the update, run it, restart the game and go to create an account again. I type the 30 character CD-key. Error.
8. It tells me that my username is already in use. I assume that the registration from the first time went through so I go to login and type my username and password. Invalid. Retype my password. Invalid. I try every combination I thought I signed up with. Invalid. Maybe it didn’t go through the first time and maybe someone else has that username.
9. I go through the registration again, this time with a different username. I type the 30 character CD-key. Error. CD-Key already in use.
10. So I’m registered but I don’t know what my username/password combination is. I’d like to reset the password or get a reminder, but no such option exists.
11. I go online and find a support email address. I email them. An hour later I get a message asking me for my CD-key and the username I signed up with. I type the 30 character CD-key. Hit send.
12. 17 hours later, Josie sends me an email with my username and password. In plain text. Apparently, from typing in my CD-Key so often I inadvertently left the caps lock on. My login finally works.

The process speaks for itself.

Not great.

What concerns me the most is that, in the end, this whole ordeal has revealed that Iron Clad stores user’s password in a human retrievable and readable format. This, obviously, worries me about security. It stresses the point that you should never use the same password for multiple web services. Moreover, the fact that a user can’t manually reset or retrieve their own password, without having to wait for some tech support person to send it to them in plain text through email, shows a serious oversight in UI design. This is functionality that is standard on the most basic of websites made by the most amateur of web developers. I’d expect similar functionality from a company that can put together epic, real-time battles involving hundreds of ships in a full 3D environment. Those are awesome. The interface is not.

Great

Alternate Best Comedy Sketches

No doubt you’ve seen the list of 50 greatest comedy sketches that’s making the rounds. Lists like that make great weblog fodder. Unlike most lists, though, this one isn’t all bad. The top two (or three) are a little predictable and for all the Monty Python love that I have (I’d have filled half of that list with Python skits) I’m not entirely fond of the “Dead Parrot” bit. I’d have listed the Philosopher’s World Cup and the wartime joke but maybe they’re too involved to qualify as “sketches”. Also: fish slapping dance.

It might be my bias speaking, but the early to mid 90s were a great time for sketch comedy on television. These were also the years when I was television obsessed, watching all of those shows and a whole load of sitcoms and the Simpsons (those were peak years) too, so I remember all the good stuff fondly. I think this period of time defined my sense of humour. It helped that these were also some of the absolute best years of Saturday Night Live, which was a show I watched religiously in my pre-teens. I still remember seeing a lot of the classic episodes live, including the (in)famous Nirvana and Sinead O’Connor performances. I was twelve at the time. In that period of my life TV was the only thing worth remembering.

Looking at that Top 50 list I was surprised to see that my two favourite SNL clips weren’t mentioned at all: Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker and Stand-Up and Win. Who are the ad-wizards that came up with this one? is a quote that lingered in my mind for years until it gained a certain level of self-referentiality when, one day, I realized that I was one such advertising industry ad-wizard.

Two other personal favourite sketches from that era come from short-lived shows. Before the whole MTV thing, Ben Stiller had a Sunday evening sketch show on Fox. One of my favourite bits from its run was the goofy, but dead-on, Die Hard parody: Die Hard 12: Die Hungry. The other is from the Dana Carvey Show, a really short-lived series (for numerous reasons beyond its hilarity) that had a post-SNL and pre-mediocrity Carvey and two, now quite famous, young comedians by the names of Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell^[1].

The show is mostly remembered for Waiters Nauseated By Food, which featured those two future stars, but for me it will always be about the very short and very juvenile pay and leave “pranks”. I remember standing in a high school class discussing that episode with friends while waiting for the buzzer to ring and over-hearing another student’s story about how he failed his driving test by running into the stop sign on the test course. As I said, the early to mid 90s defined my sense of humour.

The great Dana Carvey Show is now available, in its entirety — for the first time^[2] — on Joost. If you are American.

1. Also featured a writing credit for Charlie Kaufman
2. There was a bootleg Brutallo DVD out there for a while but it was missing three episodes.

Pentax K20D

I have a penchant for overly expensive hobbies. When I’m not playing an over-priced game on an expensive console connected to an even more expensive HD television — like right now, with the XBox dead in the water — I like to go out and take pictures. Photography, even if you go digital and remove the film and processing costs, is not a cheap hobby if you want to pursue it seriously. It’s a relatively new interest for me but it is, yes, something I want to pursue seriously. Hence, I bought a new camera. It was an impulse purchase.

Those that are in the know would ask “but didn’t you buy a new camera less than a year ago?” Well, I did. It was the Pentax model previous to this one. It was a fine camera and was a very good introduction to the world of SLR and I took many photos with it, but I gave it to my sister for Christmas. She had more use for it than I did, being a third year photography student and all. After several months, however, I started to miss that camera. Lucky for me, a new model was just around the corner. No, I did not need all the new stuff — the K10D was perfectly good — but something about the new and top-of-the-line appealed to the technodork in me. When I found out that it was released, earlier than I anticipated it, I had to have it. I like being bleeding edge on the pro-sumer front.

There isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two cameras, especially to an amateur that’s still learning. The body is practically identical. The UI is practically identical. The features are mostly the same, except for some additions like better ISO, “Live View” and other more advanced features. I think the sensor is new too, but I’m not sure. Most notably the biggest change is numerical: the K20D has 14.6 Megapixels compared to the K10D’s 10.2.

That is a fucking lot of pixels. The uncompressed RAW files it generates are over 24MB each with a resolution of 4457×3104 at 240dpi. That is a fucking lot of pixels. To better visualize what that means, here is a picture at a 1:1 pixel ratio:

Now here is the picture it is taken from, scaled to fit:

It’s really quite striking. I can’t imagine taking too many photos at that full resolution, but it’s nice that it’s there. Of course, any photos I take as I learn and familiarize myself with the camera will be posted to my flickr feed so if you’re curious about what the camera can do check that out and also look at the fledgling K20D flickr group.

Oh. I should also mention one other reason why I purchased this camera: I quit my job, I am moving out of my apartment and moving to Europe. It’s a minor thing.

Kudos to Microsoft

It’s back.

I’ve bitched about the reliability of XBox hardware before. I’ve complained about the lousy call centre experience I had last time my XBox 360 died and the time it took to get my console fixed. This week, however, Microsoft has done right; I received my replacement 360 Friday afternoon. That’s a turn-around of six days. System broke and reported on Saturday, I received the box Monday afternoon, sent it Tuesday and I was delivered a replacement on Friday. That is mighty nice.

It’s a far cry from my previous experience last spring which, all told, took over five weeks, part of which was due to a total address butchering at the hands of the call centre. Of course, one reason why there was such a drastic difference is likely due to my mentioning that this is the second time the console has failed. Rather than take the chance on refurbishing that console, they sent me a new altogether. I think they have stocks of these in warehouses waiting for failures. All part of the billion dollar warranty upgrade, I’m sure.

But, regardless, it was a very positive experience and I was back online in no time, spending too much money buying new Call of Duty 4 maps. I’d fill in their feedback form and rate the whole ordeal as “excellent” but postage is free if mailed within the United States. Oh well.

Chiptunes vs Crystal Castles

As a final addendum to my post on Crystal Castles, I present:

Yes, somebody did a pure chiptune remix of Crystal Castles. I love it; it’s so meta. A lo-fi 8-bit remix of a song that, itself, was a lo-fi remix of a song. At this point, I expect and hope that somebody brings down the bits even more and remixes the 8-bit version using Monotone.

Earth Hour

Earth Hour is a crock of shit. It’s an insignificant gesture that amounts to nothing. An 8.7% drop in power usage sounds significant, but what does it really mean? Assuming that there isn’t any statistical error in that number (there likely is!), an 8.7% deviation from the hourly average amounts to an annual deviation of 0.0009932%. Basically insignificant. A number so small that things like National Night Out, where people are encouraged to keep all their outside lights on, will likely cancel it out. Then again, they don’t have the marketing push that Earth Hour does.

Google’s temporary black on white design was emblematic of the problem. In their own about page they acknowledged that black screens on LCD monitors actually consume more electricity than white ones. It’s a shallow showing from Google when you consider just how much power their data centres consume and what kind of environmental impact they have.

To make a real difference — an 8%, if not more, annual drop in consumption — you have to do more than a symbolic gesture. Ban incandescent bulbs. Get all the massive corporate towers to shut off their lights when not in use (something they should be doing for Lights Out anyway). Get retailers to dim their glaring lightshow storefronts turned off. Get people to use public transit and get the government to invest in it, especially the dilapidated TTC (who are in a legal strike position as of Tuesday and, if they do go on strike they will be bring more cars onto the roads.)

And Earth Hour isn’t really about that. It’s about the marketing. The WWF, along with Leo Burnett Australia (the Australian office of my current employer), spent a lot of money on a very extensive campaign to promote this. It is a feel-good campaign that can be exploited and flaunted (which they’re very much doing).

Ironically, the best thing about Earth Hour was when they shut off all the obnoxiously bright and distracting advertisements and TV screens that surround Yonge and Dundas. Now that is a cause I can get behind.

April Blues

April is the time of the year when all the huge mounds of snow on the sidewalk start to melt leaving, in their wake, huge mounds of cigarette butts, grime and dog shit. All the filth that accumulated in the winter months is now in full display for the spring. It’s a wonderful time.

Now that the days are getting longer and warmer it’s best to start heading outside. It’s time to leave the shelter of home, turn off those video games and enjoy some fresh spring air. It’s the best time for it, before the stale summer smog hits. Perhaps, then, I should be thankful that my second XBox 360 has died.

But I’m not. I’m annoyed, as a consumer, that I’ve had more XBox 360s fail on me in two years than all the other consoles I’ve ever owned over twenty-two years. Only one other console has ever failed me: a GameBoy. And only because water was spilled into its cartridge slot. And it still kinda worked if you didn’t mind the fucked up display. Here I am dealing with shoddy Microsoft hardware and while I await a replacement, I wonder: why the hell don’t I have a Playstation 3? When the huge multi-platform release of the season, Grand Theft Auto IV, is released later in April, why should I risk getting the version for the system that might inevitably fail me yet again?

It’s about time I purchase a Playstation 3, but first I think I’ll go outside and enjoy the spring.