ricardocabellov5.5

If you read this blog, probably you already know kosmoplovci. If you don't, check this out.

They are (still) doing sort of an experimental stuff as they sometimes can look like not from this planet. The typo they use (do), the music they use (do), they videos they use (do). Really experimental, and (imho) fucking great.

Two months ago, domin8tr from kosmoplovci contacted me (I was very happy that the guys who did the music for the second part of kolonija contacted me :D) regarding one of my "old" tunes I did under the label minimalanimal (terminator) as he just played it in one of their transmissions and wanted to know if it was still online. I was very surprised, since I did the tune nobody gave me any feedback about it. Well, yes, the typical stuff "trace style", "you're mad", blah blah.. But I was proud of that one because the mood/style and progression, but looks like at this moment nobody understood me. Some year later, I finally have some feedback! :)

So, if you like autechre / squarepusher / noise / experimental stuf.. You should download all their transmissions, and also, enjoy the brand new winamp radio they just setup!

UPDATE Regarding to the kind of music I'm talking in that post, I just realized that the guys of mfx now have a link in their site to download their CD1 for free. do it!

As some people are these days talking about it, I'll give a lot of background of what minimalanimal was.

minimalanimal was like a joke to all those "art" demogroups that were appearing in 2002 (like kosmoplovci). It was suposed to be like a unknown group where each member had the word "art" in the nick, as.. stARTtix, mepARTo, kickstART, McARThur, Dr.fART, nculARTe, ecART (guess who was that one ;). It was a great time, probably the most active time for the spanish demoscene. Yes, spanish, you knew that, we were just all the spanish groups making jokes. It started on the #demoscene channel in irc-hispano (as usual), and 2hours later I had the first joke, but under the group threepixels. As I was working on the prod, I didn't realized that they chose the name "minimalanimal" for that. Some weeks later I started to do some other demos under minimalanimal.

threepixels sux (a totally destroyed version of the demo minimalanimal sux by threepixels, actually, the effect is just an invert each frame without cleaning the screen.. hehe..

Until now I was using commercial tunes, but on the next one I decided to use my own one doing a live recording (as I didn't know how to use the composer in Reason ;). So for kosmoplovci / minimalanimal that's what I did. Really mental audio, mental visuals, and also I added a piece of the book "Don Quijote" to keep any watcher attention ;) Doing that one I started to understand all the noise/experimental stuff, I really worked a little bit on that one to get a nice felling and new sounds, also like a new style. Also the name for it was like dedicating the prod to kosmoplovci. It was a very insteresting prod. Some months later, at breakpoint'03, they released minimalanimla / kosmoplovci as answer, miles away from my approach tho. But was nice to see that somebody was listening ;)

The last prod I did with minimalanimal was messiah, released as well at breakpoing'03, again I did the music for it (live recording), less noise and more melody (as melodic as some people doesn't believe that I did it ;). This time I had the idea to add great demos info files as textures to keep the watcher attention. The mood of the demo was quite nice and the feedback for that one was really good.

Somehow (mainly because I moved to london after that one, and the days of nothing to do living at my parents flat were over), that was the las prod I did for minimalanimal, just when I started to understand everything.

I have to say that all that was thanks to 3pxstudio, so, kudos to mac, tho I think he wasn't really proud of me for using his tool to do that kind of stuff O:)

Some weeks ago, sergeeo started an interesting topic in escena.org forums. He was complaining about the concept of live nowadays. Now, anybody can do a live, get a copy of Reason, some presets, a MIDI input and that's enough. Years ago a live was a couple of people performing each one with a different instrument. Actually, the rock scene is still being like that as you know.

I guess the problem is just calling the reason live, as live. I think we should just call perform / performance / gig, instead of live.

However, that idea inspired me to do a real live with Reason. How's that possible? Well, just record the output, and just improvise/compose in realtime. Add sounds, create rythms, modify, destroy.. Try to make a music in realtime, quite similar to what I do with the VJ stuff, but as the main channel now (If you do a mistake doing visuals, is not really a big deal, the main channel is the music).

So, If you're wondering what exactly I did, start downloading the live! :D robk live - sergeeo's fault.mp3 (100mb+)

Btw, I don't expect you to listen more than 10min ;) but minute 39 was alright.

Enjoy!

Some years ago, I thought mac was just kidding when he told me that travelocity was cool. At that point I never heard about it, and in spanish slang means something like transsexual city. Travelocity is actually a travel planner / plane tickets booking website. Mainly for american/international travels.

I decided to try it because I realized that I had a lot of holidays to use (I just forgot to use them) and then i had the idea/dream to do a nice 2week travel (november/december)around USA (London > NY > Seattle > San Francisco (i'll try to visit Las Vegas as well) > London). Yep, I'm not kidding ;)

That will be a lof of time inside airplanes :S.. But atleast within the process of booking you're able to choose where you want to sit, so now i'm sure I will be quite confortable :). I was using firefox and I didn't have any kind of slowdown, problem, or losing the information I introduced as I was used to.

I don't think i'll bring the laptop.. just the camera, cloth.. and those things. But I guess there will be enough free internet points to keep you updated adding posts here :D

Hello mum!! ;)

D'oh! No tenia ya suficiente con tener que "soportar" toda la basura que sacaban del "nen" a traves de los pocos videos (por suerte) que podia ver desde la web de antena3tv, sino que ademas tenia que usar internet explorer para ver una web lenta y mal hecha que solo funcionaba con ese browser obsoleto. Para mas inri, en el ultimo capitulo, aparte de que no hay manera de ver ninguno de los videos porque, de nuevo, la web falla.. he visto eso de "video FAN" envia la palabra FAN al numero XXX para ver este video.

Me temo que por aqui ya no paso senyor Buenafuente. No me puedo imaginar que no este en manos del terrat esta accion, asi que hasta aqui llego mi interes.. Solo ha durado 1 anyo, cuanto tardara en convertirse en el nuevo Cronicas Marcianas? Si ya lo decia Torbe..

I don't know if you already seen anything, but looks like microsoft are spreading a lot of "previews" of all the software they are working on. Probably because there were feeling the people was starting to don't trust them.

Those previews are actually 1gigabyte WMV videos recorded with a DVcam, usually there is a developer/architect/whatever explaining how the software works, and the cameraman is asking some good/bad questions.

Regarding the videos... 1gigabyte.. wow! couldn't they just compress them a little bit? Even using a 8mb connection they still too big. The quality of the video, the style, the feeling.. well, it just looks like an amateur porn movie.

Regarding what the preview itself... as usual, microsoft does have a lot of power, but they don't know how to show it. For example, whatever mac does, windows can do that as well, but looks like nobody in microsoft works to see how to impress the people, with shadows, distorstions.. blabla.. if you have to do a demo of a product, you have to know how to sell it showing cool things.. not just ugly things.. Regarding what they want to show... If you just concentrate and think all what you could do with the technology they are showing.. well, honestly, lookg like FINALLY they are doing good stuff, Office12 looks very cool, also Sparkle, aka Macromedia Flash killer, is very, very cool. It's the killer of Macromedia Flash but just for the cases where Macromedia Flash is used in Windows apps, not for web stuff.

If you have a really good connection and you want to see more previews, check that site out.

Yeeh! scenesp.org had a big problem the last week and some of your favourite websites were offline. Finally we are back, but sole/xplsv/mrdoob are now moving to a new hosting (textdrive). Looks like is a pay-only-once deal offer. The only you have to do is pray for the company to stay atleast one year.. We'll do.

There is a lot of stuff to talk about, Windows Visa Toaster Edition fact, phodoob updated, flash8, thisisnotaneditor progress. I think I'll start talking about these projects a little bit, problems I find, and fixes..

I was suposed to go to sundown2005 the last weekend but we finally had to move offices at Spring.

The new offices look greaaat! One year ago we were like 3 guys on these building, doing our best, and now we are 20+ people and we are almost filling the whole building. We got a nice balcony now as well, were we did a bbq last monday with a veeery bad ending ;) Anyway was very funny.

Check out some pictures of the bbq here!

Shit! The UMD of WipeOut pure that I bought with my PSP just broke! Thanks good I found a page where you can download backup files.

Looks like you need this program to be able to execute them.

So, as probably you know, last weekend I had the oportunity to attend a very cool & posh party. The journey was shorter than expected, as soon as we arrived to there shine was already doing the hardtechno djset that I sent him some tunes for. I wanted to do the visuals for that set but was just at midday and if the sun is out there is not too much to do. So first thing was go to the pool, say hi to everyone, foreigners and spanish, and then relax, relax, relax.. There was really good vibes in the party. I had to do extra effects for the live so I had to work on the grass meanwhile the rest was just relaxing, but I had to say that I enjoyed that :D So, the first night I wasn't suposed to perfom, but the orgos just asked me to perfom that night with some guy. So I did some layers to announce the name of the dj on the visuals and It looked good enough that I reused them the next day :)

Regarding the actual gig, there was a bit of delay between the dj and the projector, so effects using the linein to modify objects were not working very well. Also, on I didn't have monitor so I was looking the projection directly, and there was a lot of smoke (artificial) and also flashes on the ambient, and that was giving me nuts. Sometimes the visuals were very dark, and I was looking on the tool what layer was doing that, and that was actually the smoke on the ambient. Also, we got a key on the tool to stop the flash each beat thing, and when I was watching the flash on the screen (was an external flash) that was confusing me a lot as well. Anyway, the gigs were as usual, trying to do like a musicvideo in realtime and well synced with the music. I still have to do more effects and also try the shader stuff as we only have diffuse/enviroment materials now.. But I was able to experiment with some new features of the tool. On the second night, I had the idea to create as image a greetings so the visuals would look like a demo. The funny thing that was I did it in hurry and I forgot some people, and I had to apologize meanwhile i was doing the gig :P

So as party, was probably best party ever, for first time the spanish scene was being innovative in something doing a party in a mansion, and taking advantage of the weather we got.

You can see some pictures that I took here, and more and more pictures here.

As soon as we were back in London, we just went to sleep and after some hours we wake up with a lot of noise on the street as we had the neighbourhood carnival (notting hill). It was very nice to see all those streets full of people (as usually there is no people in the neighbourhood). At some poing of the day there was too many people and we had It was quite annoying. Anyway, was a great after-party. Some more pictures of the after party (notting hill carnival) here ;)

So.. that wasn't not all yet, 3 days later, xplsv.com had to perform in lasal with the guys of roterfleck. I didn't have the tickets for that and also I didn't have the money to do that, so this time shine did the visuals with all my effects resource. As far as I know the gig was great, and the boss of the "chiringuito" was very impressed with the visuals, so probably we will have to perform again next year o/ :)

And that was all more or less. Next gig will be in Exeter, UK (first time in UK). Again in a demoscene party, sundown!

Looks like two sectors are having the same problem. There is a relation between loading times and technology. But as everyone could think, as better the technology is, the loading time ISN'T lower.

Websites
Flash appeared some years ago, and for a normal user, the first change that he see is a new "loading.." screen that without Flash he didn't have to wait. Is that supose to be an improvement? We really should use flash in a clever way and have something better than not "loading" when you need to load.. (I have to give the credit of that paragraph to Spring's Manager Director, Simon Wittacker, tho ;)

Games
Now I can compare the newest game technology with the very old one (let's say pcengine for example). As soon as I had the pcengine emulator running on my GP32 I realized about that. You can start playing in less than 10seconds after turning on the handheld. Like, Turn on, select emulator, select game, start, start, start.. and that's it, you're serving a ball in a very cool tennis game.. But now, with PSP, you have to wait all the time for loading the disk (UMD). I was playing Wipeout, and that was like Playstation.. Loading loading loading.. now play.. then, loading loading loading..

They/We are just missing the point!!!