by ·Comments Off on Speech Synthesis is NOT a Music Instrument

One day, YOU shall be mine!

And I must say if I didn’t already hate Apple for all the sucky hardware they’ve managed to sell me over the past year or so, the fact they use Logic’s position as compulsory industry standard to shove their ludicrous price down your throat (without any upgrade discount)… that would do it…

And don’t give me any of that “Logic Express” Lite version crap: I have seen Amiga software that could do more in 94.

Anyway, don’t have much of a choice: Logic Platinum 5.2 isn’t gonna cut it any longer and I can’t afford to go to SF each time I need access to decent compression filters or studio mastering tools.

On a totally unconnected though music-related note (note, haha…), a personal message to all my fellow sound tweakers out there:

Stop using out-of-the-box speech synthesis software in your fucking tracks!

It might have sounded retro-futuristic cute or witty post-modern electroclash a few years ago. Now, it just reeks of unimaginative track filler. At best, it sounds pretentious and gratuitous, at worst it only emphasizes the fact you were basically too broke or too lazy to get decent vocals on your track but still wanted to divert attention from its overal emptiness. Fuck, it’s not like broke and aspiring singers are hard to come by. They only come second behind broke and aspiring DJs in sheer number (though thankfully the latter are slowly disappearing, probably finally dying of starvation or something). And if you are too lazy to get out of your basement to grab the first person with a semi-decent voice, then just record yourself: who cares if you sound like a shrieking asthmatic dachshund. hell, that’s what vocoders are for. Look at Mr. Bangalter and the Daft Punk boys: couldn’t sing a C sharp to save their life, didn’t stop them from hitting it big all over the world with their hour-long tribute to band-filtered candy pop.

In short, unless you are Thom Yorke and it’s 1997, just leave that speech synthesis function the fuck alone. Thanks.

By the way, to all the Apple zealots out there: I was kidding when I said I hate Apple. Of course I don’t. I love Apple. Rhhaa, oh yea, hurt me harder, mistress

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Finally got around to writing some kind of doc for my mail posting script for WordPress. And I can therefore finally release it for the world to use and enjoy.

Please welcome a new member in the WP plugin & hack family: wp-keitaimail v. 1.0b!

Actually, it is not technically a plugin, nor a hack, rather a standalone script that interfaces with WP to let you post entries to your blog via Email.
The name ‘keitai’ simply means ‘cell phone’ in Japanese… This script might as well have been called wp-cellphone-mail, I just liked the sound of ‘keitai’.

You can see a working demo on the right-hand side of this blog where it powers the “keitai log”. I have been using it for nearly a month now and it should be really stable albeit a tad complicated to set up (see below).

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by ·Comments Off on Random thoughts from the Week-end
  • Beam bum has finally been added to my list of potential career options with a fairly high probability rating.
  • Drinking lukewarm Dom Perignon off the bottle all night is not as bad as it sound.
  • Drinking lukewarm Chivas Regal around 9 in the morning is as bad as it sounds. But it does help rinsing the taste of sand off your mouth.
  • There are a lot of reasons why you could wake up to your underwear rolled up in a bunch twenty feet away. 3am skinny dipping is only one of them.
  • Among the many things that probably should not be attempted past a certain hour while highly intoxicated (or intoxicatingly high): barbecuing with chopsticks, shooting fireworks and fixing electrical equipment hold a good position. But they can yield great fun nonetheless.
  • Miscellaneous tattoos: an Oakland Raiders logo (shoulder), a large representation of JC on a cross (chest) and a chinese kanji meaning ‘road’ in Japanese (shoulder).
  • Sunscreen spray battle is fun. and retrospectively, quite literally saved my ass.
  • Denny’s is always a safe choice for a Sunday morning fix, even if the eggs are a bit crunchy from the sand that keeps falling in your plate.

by ·Comments Off on La chair est triste, hélas, et j’ai lu tous les livres…

As promised, here is a first update on the progress of the previously mentioned no-roommate project.

And I am ashamed to say that there isn’t much progress altogether.

You see, after briefly considering adult movie-making or experiments in urban anchoretical life as chief occupations for my week-end, I finally settled on a much more pedestrian — yet of proven entertainment value — plan. A plan essentially centered around a few easy concepts such as: alcohol (preferably cheap and plentiful), friend(s), cultural exploration of new neighbourhoods (through random sampling of bars and izakaia) as well as, potentially, use of substances and sex (on same requirements as alcohol).

In that case, you may ask, why am I sitting in front of my laptop on a friday night, typing this while most obviously not partaking in any of these activities. And that is a very legitimate question.

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My roommate is leaving on vacation this morning. Gonna go spend a week in the bled and two weeks in Paris.

That means I have the place for myself and an endless array of options unrolling before my eyes:

I could have a few people over and finally shoot that “movie” we’ve been meaning to do for a long time now… although we would first need to get ahold of the gerbils and the fifty pots of Nutella chocolate spread required by the plot. Not easy to find authentic Nutella in Tokyo, especially bulk quantities.. I can see the Nutella (and maybe the goats too) being an issue.

And do not discuss the brand choice or offer some cheap local alternative: you do not expect me to compromise my artistic vision because of some measly geographical impediments.

Alternatively, I could just stock up on frozen pizza, rice and a case of Lychee-flavored Fanta (best. flavor. ever), turn off my cell phone and avoid any interaction with the outside world for a week or two. As an optional part, homemade brownies with uncle Herb special secret ingredients might be added to the plan. I can see some potential in that.

One thing is sure: the whole skipping-the-shower part is not likely. I will definitely be sticking with my four showers a day. At least as long as Tokyo’s average temperature persist in hovering above neuron melting-point temperature.

Anyway, we shall shortly be figuring out the best use to make of our newly lowered social responsibilities and concomitant increase of living space. If it involves anything funny and somewhat legal in at least a few US states, I’ll be sure to let you know.
ノルヂヌさんはフランスやアルジェリアに来月まで居るんだからアパートで一人で。大きなパーティをやると思う。:)

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Busy is a pale euphemism to describe the current chaotic state of my life right now.

If I tell you I am currently a full-time music producer and arranger, full-time VoIP server architect and full-time applied mathematics student, you might get an idea of what I mean. And there is no mistake in the previous sentence: the word full-time is purposely used three times because I am very much supposed to be doing each of these occupation full-time. Which is kind of a problem given that Earth rotation period seems to be stalling around 24 hours these days. Factor in my current involvement with WordPress development as well as my attempts to keep an appearance of social life by making regular expeditions with friends to nasty local watering holes where we proceed to get absolutely plastered on cheap sake… and you have a mathematical impossibility the likes of which even Gödel would give up on.

Since there are only so many hours of sleep you can remove from your daily schedule before permanent psychosis sets in (I mean, real psychosis, not the milder form of borderline psychopathic behaviour I usually retreat to on a good day), and since I also decided that food could not safely be removed from my daily essential needs, I had to cut down on other activities. As a result, my news readings has long fallen from many hours of intense paper scrutinizing, down to a 30 second scan of my RSS feed list and a few occasional glances at online news articles, every other week… As for TV: I have barely ever watched it in my life and the only TV set of the house is currently stored in my roommate’s room where neither of us ever turn it on, so it isn’t much of an issue.

So we can safely say that I know close to nothing about the big (and small) events of the world these days, except for the rough outline (Bush has not yet declared martial law in the US, Ishihara still hates foreigners and Tokyo maintains a precise average daily temperature of: “very hot”)…

Hell, for all I know, the War of the Worlds has already begun and I am talking (writing, really, but anyway) for a bunch of unmanned computers sitting atop the ashes of what used to be the proud western civilization, while Godzilla is busy fighting evil alien spaceships off the coast of Japan.

当節は仕事や勉強だからすごく忙しい。Continue reading