Microblogging Journal through 10/14/2024
1,289 words.
Dispatches from @ultrviolet@gts.endgameviable.com:
Monday 10/07
- 21:41 # So I don’t forget this handy AI prompt: If I measure 10445538 samples at 48000 samples per second, how many beats per minute is that in 4/4 time signature across 96 bars?
Tuesday 10/08
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10:22 # Last night I spent some time trying to clean up my ADAT transfer projects. What I did in 2013 was transfer the entire tape into one REAPER project per tape. So last night I set about trying to split the projects into one project per song, and try to import the original MIDI tracks and align them with the audio. It turns out to be quite a chore to set the right BPM and sync up the MIDI because for reasons I don’t fully understand (possibly due to variations in tape speed), the BPM of the audio tracks does not match the BPM of the original MIDI files. There is an MTC sync track on each tape but I don’t think I can utilize it here.
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10:23 # The fact that the BPM doesn’t match up makes me think all of these audio tracks will also be slightly out of tune, too, but I haven’t check that. It might actually be better to stretch the audio to match the original BPM. Will have to do some experiments on that.
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10:30 # Actually now that I think about it, I may have blundered horribly in 2013 and set the ADAT on the wrong sample rate setting. It has a switch to go between 44.1khz and 48khz, and I have no idea what I used in the 90s, but the REAPER projects are all 48khz. I just looked at the last ADAT deck I have in my house and it’s set on 44.1khz. Bleh. I can probably test the sample rate by importing the finished mixdowns into the projects and trying to line them up with the raw tracks. If they match, it was done right. Otherwise one will be longer or shorter than the other.
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Wednesday 10/09
- 18:16 # I’m extremely annoyed that the Roland Sound Canvas VSTi plugin was discontinued. Especially annoyed that it was discontinued before I knew it was being discontinued so I could get a lifetime key for it. Even more especially annoyed because I don’t see anything on offer from Roland as a newer replacement. That is all.
Thursday 10/10
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08:22 # I’ve been able to use a free general midi LV2 plugin (never heard of LV2 before but it works in REAPER) as a quick sound module so I can actually hear the MIDI tracks I’ve been working with lately. It’s bare bones, has no UI so it’s only controlled by MIDI messages, but it sounds decent enough. https://x42-plugins.com/x42/x42-gmsynth
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08:27 # In the ADAT sampling rate saga, I’ve discovered that the newer projects are dead-on with the right BPM, so I think the mismatched BPM was only an issue for the older projects, which were originally transferred to the ADAT from 4-track cassettes when I first bought the ADAT, so I suspect there may have been some tape speed issues there. It’s okay though because I merely have to set the BPM on those older projects to some mathematically calculated value like 124.7319 to line everything up. Super easy, barely an inconvenience.
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20:52 # It hasn’t even occurred to me to try Throne and Liberty after looking at the Steam page. On first glance, it appears to have the exact same generic fantasy vibe with the exact same bright flashy weapon effects that every other game has. I genuinely can’t comprehend why every game developer keeps making the exact same game over and over and over again.
Friday 10/11
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08:00 # I tried out Silent Hill 2 last night. Played about an hour. It’s a high quality walking simulator so far. Roughly 99% ambience. No story, no scares, lots of invisible walls, almost nothing to interact with. I have to assume this is an intentional choice not to put anything interesting within the first two hours of the game, so players will be forced to keep playing past the Steam two hour return window. Or else they’re taking for granted that brand loyalty will keep people playing no matter how boring the first hour is. Or maybe they assume all players are ADHD and sprint past the beginning without stopping to look at anything? Anyway, it has great reviews and I don’t plan to return it, but I’m not rearranging my plans to continue playing it either.
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08:12 # I got an email that my cohost data is now available for export. Fortunately, I don’t think I posted a single message on cohost. Because, you know, it was super obvious that every one of those “hey look we’re not Twitter!” sites was going to fail from the beginning. Because, you know, making a global communication platform to rival Twitter isn’t something your average garage development team can pull off, especially without any money.
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08:29 # Looking over some of my recent missives, I wish I wasn’t so down on the entire games industry, but what choice do I have? Modern games are extremely boring and uninspired and corporate factory-produced compared to 20 years ago. Even most of the indie ones are just “hey let’s remake this one game we liked as kids except with slightly different graphics and sounds.” I mean I don’t want to see it that way but it’s hard to deny the reality of what I’m seeing with my own two eyes.
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08:39 # The popular mainstream strategy for making games in the modern world seems to be to make something that players can play because they’re so bored they have nothing better to do, or to make something that’s relaxing and unchallenging because the rest of the player’s life is overwhelming. Both of those are fine, but I don’t really need them in my life very often. I’m looking for something a bit more than that for a “main” game.
- 08:44 # I suppose a third popular mainstream strategy for making games is to make something that all your friends are playing and they need you to play it too. Games based entirely on peer pressure. That pretty much covers the entirety of the online competitive game market. I haven’t really played any of those kinds of games since the 2000s.
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15:31 # I wish I knew why Apple forces us to re-learn how boxes work every time we open one of their products. I guess that’s one of the things that happens when you have too much money. Regular boxes that open in the normal way you expect? Pssht. Lame.
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16:20 # Listening back to the video I recorded last night of Silent Hill 2… they should call it Silent Dialog 2. They’re leaning super hard on the “mumbling quietly in front of a condenser mic to evoke a moody mood” trope. No wonder they recommend wearing headphones because it’s the only way you can understand the words without subtitles.
Sunday 10/13
- 16:00 # So I was trying to mow the lawn before all the leaves fall and whatnot, and my riding mower decides to completely fall apart. First, the battery is dead, so I have to jump start it (shout out to iClever’s battery charger/jump starter thingy, an essential tool for any modern household). Then, the mower deck starts freaking out and I can’t actually mow. All around fun. That means I’m going to have to take the mower deck off and try to figure out how to repair it, having never done such a thing before. Probably by replacing the blades and/or rebalancing them or something. That ain’t going to get done this weekend.
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