What is going on with my health and that of my PC?

What is happening? I am not feeling well and everything is going Pete Tong. For a start I went to bed early last night, woke up too early, felt off, went back to bed and woke up at lunchtime. My curse is totally messed up sleeping hours.

Then on the way the bus broke down and I decided to get into town before MMU. Once there I apologised to Nick because I was supposed to be in for 9am because the external examiner was in today. Of course he was not impressed but by then I was feeling awful.

There is also a stealth trojan on my PC. A definate present from Limewire. My PC slows down after being on for a few hours. Also when I leave Boinc or Limewire running overnight they sometimes crash with loss of data. A total pain in the arse when downloading large files or crunching climate models. Sophos has picked it up but because it is lodged in Windows system files there is no way of removing it without taking up huge chunks of time and effort on a second PC (or re-installing Windows).

One good thing out of today - I got my ticket for Sunrise this Friday.

DJ Taster Course

I went to the DJ taster course at Midi School today from 1 to 5pm. The instructor, Johnny was very clear in his delivery and explained the DJ equipment in a simple and memorable way. He explained how to keep the input level or trim so that the LEDs just go over 0db (like a cup full to the top) and how to set the vertical sliders to the top for vinyl (so the horizontal cross mixer could be used to determine the presentation of the mix). Then there was the output signal (master fader) that is again set to 0db so give the amp the biggest signal possible without distortion. This stops the amp heating up or speakers blowing. Also, he explained the construction of the decks, torque (4.5kg on Stanton 150s, 3.5Kg on Technics) and headphone use.

Then it was hands on time. There were 6 of us and we were split into groups of three (apparently 6 is the limit for the 10 week course). Then we had a go at cueing, beat matching and pitch shifting. I was hopeless at first but after 10 minutes the technique of cueing the start of the second record to match the 4:4 beat of the first became a little easier. However, it will take a lot of practice (several months) to get the cueing and beat matching (matching 4:4 beats and speed before pitch bending) correct. This is the 'preparation' phase for the mix (on headphones but we practised wihtout them so he could hear and help). Then there is the presentation in the mix - only of real use when beat matching and tempo are correct. DJing is like learning another instrument. Apparently drummers pick DJing up straight away.

Another thing that came up was the increase in demand for DJs and tracks that incpororate indie into dance music. I think this is beyond cyber and psy-trance but would be a natural development of the 1980s revival. As there are so many DJs around it helps to promote club nights and/or make your own tunes. These are the main ways to get noticed but it also requires a lot of balls and not just juggling ones either.

i-create and online portfolios

Earlier today I went to MANCAT for a workshop on a new creative portfolio system called i-create. Unfortunately, I did not find the correct bus stop in town and my taxi took me to the wrong campus. Apparently the New Technology Institute is not the same place as the Moston campus. MANCAT have two campuses in Moston! So I called Abi and she drove me between the two campuses.

Everyone was introducing each other so I had missed nothing and more people turned up later anyway. The service is in the test phase at the moment and will become live between April and June. However they are short of creative people and online portfolios (the target is 700). The session went well and 'The Last Mile' (the organisers) presented the background and need for such an e-commerce service. We reviewed some profiles - I just had to stand up and express how cheesy and desperate the 'camera crew' were! Then we had an hour to put up our own portfolios (start to do this). However my image and audio files just would not upload onto the server (I found out later that there is a 10Mb limit per file).

The Website address is http://www.lastmile.tribalctad.co.uk/ and they are looking for more creative people to get involved and upload their work for potential employers. In terms of function the site lies between a jobsearch site where you can upload a demo and a personal Website where the artist has to create everything and hope that someone out there notices. It looks like a very useful resource and I will need to get some of my work onto it. I also wish them the best of luck.

Limewire, Kazaa and dead hard disks

Why is it that file sharing destroys my PC? In June 2004 I installed and ran Kazaa lite on my old PC and after just a couple of weeks and many backups to disk the machine went haywire. I did not know whether it was a virus or just my hard disk packing in. A format and reboot of the machine produced a variety of errors when trying to reinstall Windows (of three flavours). Opening up and jigging the hard drives created an impression of fullness and of 'not working'

Deano had a look over the weekend and one Hard Disk is definately bust. The other is too low on virtual memory to run Windows. This means it is full. In case it was originally a virus I did not want to swap it into my current machine. Now this machine with Limewire just three days old is running slow and almost ground to a halt earlier on. Just my luck. I think the AMD chipset is struggling with parallel tasks a lot more than an Intel chip.

In addition to this I have had problems with a 19 inch monitor smoking up (after 6 months bought new). I just do not want to pay huge amounts of postage to send it back to the German company for repair and find that they tell me it arrived smashed. This brings me onto the smashed speakers I received on ebay and the idiot who would not give me the ParcelForce code. Then there is the Playstation 2 with the bust CD laser that I got second hand. Not to mention other problems with things like this in the past.

The laws of contact

People come and go and yet there are a small number who are friends for more than a few months. Now it seems that it is all too easy to lose contact with people through changes in telephone numbers, not having enough time to meet up, relocation and other commitments. I am poor at keeping in contact with people and can become depressed when no one answers the phone or calls me back but sometimes this is because I take months to call in the first place.

This is not the end of the story. There are people, particularly women, who keep in contact for a while and then all of a sudden never return a call. Then other women who never give a chance to know you in the first place. Then there are women who do not forgive an angry outburst or a failed rendezvous and just ignore everything you throw at them. I absolutely hate being ignored and consider it a total insult - more so then them speaking their own mind and telling me not to contact them again. This can be true of both sexes but in general men tend to tell you to f*** off more then women.

In addition to being let down people drop contact because of family trouble, new and problematic sexual relationships, having babies, commitments through work or study and plain old laziness. There is also a factor of drifting away after a while but this is usually facilitated by losing something in common or relocation to another area. Some other gripes of mine are people taking advantage and changing of the goal posts.

So, why is it so hard to maintain female friends when you are single? This has something to do with how safe women feel with male friends. Being single puts them off but I have seen many men whether gay or hetereosexual in sexual relationships having lots of female friends. Quite often some of these friends like the men so much that they want sex with them. Yet a single man with little sexual experience is snubbed by this horrid capitalist modern society. If you are rich and in a job or charming and with loads of attractive friends then there is not a problem. If poor or fat or ugly or shy or sensitive then it is a major mountain to climb. This is not counting the issues of women who are single mothers or the 30 somethings who want an ideal partner to father unborn children.

Travel, work, Rest & Play

Why did it take nearly three hours to get back from Liverpool yesterday? This was very inconvenient since I only managed 2 hours sleep the night before and it also took 2 hours to get down there and that was after rushing like a blue-arsed fly in the morning. I was tired and worn out at Onteca and the computer decided to die on me too. Then we left at 3:20pm and walked to the station only to just miss the train to Manchester. So we went for the Oxford Road one. this stops everywhere and as a result took 1 hour 15 minutes instead of 45 minutes.

Then at Oxford Road I waited for a West Didsbury bus because I was too tired to get any bus. It was gone 5:15pm when I got on one and it was 6:15pm when I got home. I cannot believe this rush hour traffic. It took as long to get there and back (5 hours) as it took to be there. No wonder that I took the next day off even though I went to bed at 10pm the night before (falling in sleep in front of the TV) . I got so pi**ed off that I went back to bed after getting up at 6am. Then it was lunchtime and I had to prepare for my presentation for Nick tomorrow (Thursday).

Rubber Johnny

Chris Cunningham and his work for Warp and Aphex Twin.

Video 'Rubber Johnny' (the shapeshifing mutant child in a wheelchair with only a dog for company)

Happy Salad Friends

Happy Tree Friends - sick cartoons where cute little animal characters cause as much blood and gore to each other as possible:

http://mondo.happytreefriends.com/

Salad Fingers - surreal and creepy flash toons for acid junkies and dope heads:

http://www.newgrounds.com/collection/saladfingers.html

There must be a lot of other decidedly wrong toon stuff and creepy character misshaps on the Web. I would like to get hold of some 3D animated stuff (or create some myself).

Interactive Game Narrative

Ideas for narrative ranging from 3D game environment to 2D Flash interface to video clips exploring views and opinions. Narrative hidden and possible use of Dream state or DMT state.

A Day of Disasters

Today was a catalogue of disasters
Everything went Pete Tong
From sleeping through my alarm
To mad runs for buses and trains
And a driver throwing people off the bus

Had no ticket for the train
So had to pay at Liverpool
Soaked on arrival to Onteca
Tired and unable to do anything
And the CD writer was not working

Review of Sirkus Saigon

The night, filming, the band and venue. Simon's birthday.

3D Animation and Maya

My fascination with computer graphics and animation goes back to the early 1990s. Whilst at Aberdeen I did an MSc in Remote Sensing that covered image processing, programming and geographical information systems. Coupled with my huge amount of time in the computer labs I wanted more. So at Teesside I learned Softimage and 3D graphics programming. My experience with 3D animation blossomed with the project to simulate comet Hale Bopp. It was frustrating getting to a full lab with very little tutor support. To cap it all I could not get the particle system to generate the tail and my flyby suffered from bouncing planet syndrome.

For the following few years my 3D skills were applied to the Arc/Info GIS and to 3D graphics programming. I so regret not doing the artificial life project with the college at Teesside for I was later stung by a rejection at Salford for lack of AI knowledge. Recently I have played with 3D Studio Max 6 and now have access to Maya at Onteca. The tutor Steve is great and we did a hand in the last session. It is easier then you think once you understand the menus and the process. I did have to ask for heal several times and most people found the class too fast.

Now all I need to do is find time before the next session to get some more tutorials done and it may even save my degree. If I can learn enough Maya in the next month then I may resurrect an old project idea or two and get a degree. A job would be nice too. We will see.

Website Prominance

Currently I am working on several Websites. These include my portfolio and demo site (www.candymana.co.uk), solar energy devices (www.solarenergydevices.com), and melting pot (www.meltingpot05.co.uk) . These will soon be completed or enhanced by the end of this month. Also, they will be joined by friends of 305 and Interactive Arts update for the final year show 2006 (http://www.artdes.mmu.ac.uk/interactivearts/). It is hoped that my portfolio and demo site will spur me to get most of my creative work online and produce new creative work. This would be game demos, music, art, video, animation, stories, poetry and project work.

Later in the year I intend to expand my flash, dreamweaver and HTML skills into realm of scripting and hope to help the Pagan Federation with their site (http://www.paganfed.org/guide.php) although this may already be done, 2D and 3D themed narratives, my 3D interface idea and the environmental awareness portal site. There is always the issue of time and applying my efforts wisely.

Addictions

An addiction is an activity or dependence caused by an activity that makes it very hard for the person to break. There is physical and mental addiction. Addiction can be in the form of chemical drugs or a physical activity such as sleep, exercise or TV watching. I have managed to stop smoking and drugs in the last couple of months. It is still difficult to avoid cigarette cravings when out at a pub or stuck waiting for a bus but on most days I do not even think of a cigarette when at home. Much the same is true of marijuana although I tend to take more paracetamol then I used to and for mostly minor aches and pains.

There are however several addictions that I currently suffer from. One is sugar filled food such as chocolate bars and falling asleep after eating. As a consequence I have put on weight and am struggling to get things done. My sleep times are all over the place and sometimes I am in bed for 12 hours hooked on my dreams. Eating in front of the TV is bad for it tend to lead to hours watching programmes that I would not normally watch. Then there is my excessive Internet use and the fact that most of the time I tend to avoid games in case I send all my time hooked on a particular game.

This is bad and I really could do with a regimented sleep pattern, no TV and structured computer time. I also need to get out more via networking, films, clubs and get a job. I resent the rubbish jobs that agencies get you. Life is so depressing yet so full of potential.

Targets for the Month

Over this month of February I will need to attain the following targets:

1) Lose half stone of weight - get it down to 16 stone from just over 16 and a half stone
2) Regular exercise and activities including swimming, gym, meditation, juggling and guitar
3) Major job hunt to fit in with my schedule
4) Acoustics hand in and get HNC
5) Finish dissertation and get online journal and Website done
6) Get practical work sketched, storyboarded and done demo pieces from Nick and experiment with ideas
7) Increase networking and visits to galleries, Vauderville, clubs and 5 rhythm dancing
8) Increase general creative output including sketching, computer art and music production
9) Tidy up flat, get rid of rubbish and sell items on ebay

Some of these things are easier to achieve than others but I do need all of this done to be almost up to speed with the Interactive Arts course and to avoid financial catastrophe.