25 Random Songs

 Uncategorized  2 Responses »
Jun 282009
 

I load up Facebook and what do I see?

“Once you’ve been tagged… (1) Turn on your MP3 player. (2) Go to SHUFFLE songs mode. (3) Write down the first 25 songs that come up–song title and artist–NO editing/cheating, please. (4) Choose 25 people to be tagged. It is generally considered to be in good taste to tag the person who tagged you.

If I tagged you, it’s because I’m betting that your musical selection is entertaining, or at least amusing.

(To do this, go to “NOTES” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, enter your 25 Shuffle Songs, Click ‘Preview’ below to tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click Publish, the little blue box at the bottom of your screen).”

Damn! I’ve been tagged with the 25 Random Songs meme-virus. Oh well, here goes:

Beauty Has Her Way by Mummy Calls (The Lost Boys Soundtrack)
I listened to The Lost Boys soundtrack religiously when I first got it, and while I still like it a lot there is no denying that it contains far too many sax solos. The whole CD could easily be the soundtrack to Saxophone:The Movie.

Who Put the Bomp (In The Bomp Ba Bomp Ba Bomp) by Barry Mann
I grew up in a small town with only one radio station. Looking back they did a pretty good job of trying to satisfy everyone, but means that I know more about 50s and 60s music than I do about, say New York punk. Anyway, they used to play this song – basically a piss-take on DoWop bands. I still find it hilarious.

E=mcHawking
I explode like a bomb. No one is spared;
My power is my mass times the speed of light squared.
I don’t know where Stephen Hawking finds the time to be both the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge and a hardcore gangster rapper simultaneously.

Pulp Culture by Thomas Dolby
I got this from a Thomas Dolby Best Of, pretty good stuff, although this is not one of the standout songs.

Como Sera by Edgar Joel
I bought an album of salsa music a while ago. It is pretty cheesy.

Merry as a Grig by Van Philips (Ren and Stimpy Production Music)
Ren and Stimpy made a point of plundering recording archives for old-old-timey orchestral music. Lots of muted trumpets and xylophones.
I have just realised I have no idea what a Grig is, nor why one should be merry.

Jango’s Escape by John Williams (Star Wars Episode 2 Soundtrack)
The music was the best part about Star Wars, and this is one of the better pieces.

Christmas is Interesting by Jonathan Coulton
From a CD I ordered online after I downloaded a couple of songs off his website after he was linked to the Wikipedia page on The Mandelbrot Set, of all things.

A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton

Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite #2, Op. 55 – 3. Peer Gynt’s Homecoming
I have a whole bunch of classic CDs in my library, mainly for when I am working and I need to concentrate. I was debating whether to exclude the classical stuff from this list, but it seemed like cheating.

Gummi Bears Theme
For a while I was collecting TV theme tunes. I cannot recall how I got started, but I still have them. This one always makes me smile when it comes up on shuffle – The Gummi Bears was a pretty good show.

The Sixth Sense Malcolm Is Dead – James Newton Howard (A History of Horror)
One fine day about 8 years ago I walked into Borders with too much money. I solved that problem by buying A History of Horror, a two CD set of horror movie themes going back to the 1920s. It has some great music on it, but also some tedious muck (this track lies somewhere in between.)
I recall that I was torn between buying this or BatBoy:The Musical original cast recording. I am still not sure if I made the right decision.

More Than A Feeling – Boston
Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and drift awaaaay… Ironically a song about reminiscing over an old song has turned into an old song that reminds me about my youth. God that makes me feel old, but I bet not as old as it makes the members of Boston feel.

Swear It’s True – The Mockers (25 Years of Kiwi Rock)
I liked The Mockers, but Forever Tuesday Morning is a better song.

Second Solution – The Living End
The Living End are still going, but rebellious punkesque bands really have a hard sell-by date (c.f. Green Day). This is them from their prime.

Crepe Suzette – Cyril Watters (Ren and Stimpy Production Music)
More Ren and Stimpy

Org Con in B flat, Op.4, No.2 – Halleluja
I once help win first place in a quiz by knowing that Handel’s Messuah was first performed in Dublin. I also know it makes for good background music.

I Get a Kick Out of You – Felix Slatkin Ultra-Lounge Volume 3 – Space Capades
The Ultra-Lounge series mines much the same vein as the Ren and Stimpy Music, just from a couple of decades later – lots of 40s and 50s cheese. This is from Space Capades, so there is lots of vibraphone.

Stravinsky: Pulcinella – Scherzino

Symphony No.1, Op.7 ‘Le Poème de la forêt’ in D minor. II. Renouveau

Leave A Tender Moment Alone – Billy Joel
Billy Joel is deeply, deeply uncool. I don’t care, I like it.

Best That You Can Do – Christopher Cross
There is going to be hell to pay when I find out who broke in and planted this in my iTunes library.

William, It Was Really Nothing – The Smiths
You know how I missed out on whole musical trends growing up? One of those trends was The Smiths, the only song I knew was How Soon is Now which I liked. A few years ago I bought a 2CD Best Of The Smiths collection to see what I had missed. And you know what? I hate The Smiths.
How Soon in Now is still pretty cool though.

I Could Be So Good For You – Dennis Waterman
Not sure where this comes from, maybe from my TV Theme collecting days.

Ode To My Family – Cranberries
Everyone of a certain age has either this or Wonderwall by Oasis in their collection.

 Posted by at 2:27 pm

Opening Narration Quiz

 Culture  13 Responses »
Jun 222009
 

You know what is wrong with television today? Not enough opening narration, that’s what! Back in the day, you could count on the producers to slap a few words together to sum up the premise of the show you were about to see, little tone poems worming their way into the subconscious week after week.

Here is a selection of opening narrations that will surely trigger memories, or at least drive you mad attempting to recall. Post your answers in the comments, no googling!

  1. “A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist.”
  2. “These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.”
  3. “It’s a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. <Redacted> and <redacted> wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it’s our last, best hope for peace.”
  4. “Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said <redacted>”
  5. “By the way my name is Max – I take care of them. Which isn’t easy, ’cause when they met it was murder!”
  6. “The year is 1987, and NASA launches the last of America’s deep space probes.”
  7. “Now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.”
  8. “This is the voice of the <redacted>. We know that you can hear us, Earth man!”
  9. “I am the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes”
  10. “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture.”
  11. “Theorizing that one could <redacted> within his own <redacted>, Dr. <redacted> stepped into the <redacted> — and vanished.”
  12. “This is the story of a time long ago, a time of myth and legend. When the ancient gods were petty and cruel, and they plagued mankind with suffering. Only one man dared to challenge their power”
  13. “Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life! Medium atomic weights are available!”
  14. “…and he must let the world think that he is dead, until he can find a way to control the raging spirit that dwells within him…”

Bonus movie narration:

  1. “From the dawn of time we came; moving silently down through the centuries…”

Bonus Bonus Epilogue narration:

  1. “Fleeing from the <redacted> tyranny, the last <redacted>, <redacted>, leads a rag-tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest.”

Safari 4 is Pretty Good

 Computer  1 Response »
Jun 132009
 

Safari 4 has been out for a couple of days now, and I must say I am enjoying using it. On the Mac, Safari has always had a great overall browser experience but Firefox always managed to stay my weapon of choice for viewing the Internet. This may change, Safari 4 is a very nice piece of software.

Apple is clearly wanting to make Safari an integral part of the Mac experience – Safari is very well integrated into the Mac OS (you can use Spotlight to search your history, passwords are stored in the keychain, etc), and the UI has all the polish you would expect from Apple. I particularly like the graphical Top Sites view that Safari presents when you first start it.

One thing I have always liked about Safari is the way it renders text and graphics. It always seemed to be just that little bit more polished than other browsers – correctly anti-aliasing fonts and respecting the embedded colour profiles of images. In my opinion Safari is still the best looking browser.

Apple are making a big song-and-dance about how Safari 4 is much faster than other browsers. What they mean is that they have included a very good Javascript JIT compiler which speeds up script-heavy sites by a large margin. This is excellent news, but Safari is hardly alone in focusing on Javascript performance and very recent versions of other browsers have very similar performance.

On Windows, Safari is something of an oddity. It works just as well and still renders sites better than most other Windows browsers, but its awkward neither-Mac-fish-or-Windows-fowl UI doesn’t help. The Windows version also lacks the smooth GUI animation that makes the Mac version so pleasant to use. Apple are doing their best to push Safari onto iTunes users, but I can’t see it taking off except among web developers, Safari’s built in web development tools are very cool.

There are still a few problem areas. Safari doesn’t seem to enjoy displaying animated GIFs, which often stutter before they are fully loaded. It very occasionally beachballs for a second on some pages, not all the time but enough to be annoying.

Finally, another rant about the HTML video tag (since the last one got quite a bit of attention): Safari supports the video tag but farms out the video to Quicktime. I suppose this is better than nothing, but you can tell that it is not well integrated. Videos do not show up in the list of page assets and it is clear that Quicktime is downloading the video itself, bypassing the browser’s cache. On top of this, performance is quite poor when the Javascript controls are used. The video quality is top-notch, but the experience is disappointing.

It sounds like I am dumping on Safari, but really they are minor niggles in a sea of greatness. I still think Firefox has the edge (particular Firefox3.5, which is shaping up nicely) but you could do worse.

A game rated arrrr! Monkey Island Returns (updated)

 Computer, Culture  No Responses »
Jun 042009
 

The Secret of Monkey Island consumed a lot of my time back in the day, it is one of the best (and funniest) games ever produced. I have wondered for a while now why some of the old adventure games haven’t been dusted off and republished for the new consoles – the Wii in particular seems well suited to the genre. It seems somebody has had the same idea:

That’s the second biggest monkey head I’ve ever seen!

Update: Ron Gilbert, the author of Monkey Island, has posted a very interesting “director’s commentary” for the original Monkey Island.