I really enjoy the Christmas and New Year holidays. It’s a great time to be able to take a little break from work, look back at all the things you accomplished in the past year and forward to those that have to get done in the next. It’s also great because many friends who have gone elsewhere come back into town. That’s a big part of the reason I haven’t been saying much here, there’s so much else to do. My waking hours have gotten really odd.

So there’s not much else to say right now other than Merry Christmas everyone! Once the family festivities settle down a bit I’m looking forward to a postmortem post of the last few days.

Enur - Sarah just turned me on to this a few minutes ago. Only one track there but it’s a pretty dance-y little track that I kind of dig. Plus the album art is alright by me.

Faunts - I found out about this group because they did the closing credits music for Mass Effect. I liked the song enough that I waited till the end of the credits to find out who did it and then immediately Googled them. Not surprisingly the comments are full of people like me that heard about them because of the music at the end of Mass Effect. The track in question is M4 Part II, which is in their MySpace player. Their other stuff is also pretty good. Normally I don’t go for much Indie music, but this is pretty solid.

Penelope Fortier - I heard about her from this MasterCard commercial. I was intrigued for a few reasons. First, I love that song, especially because of John Coltrane’s jazzy rendition. I also played the song in high school on sax, so I really dig it. Second, she is very pretty. (Yeah yeah.) Third, she has an amazing quality to her voice that I really like. I looked into it a little more and it she’s done a couple other commercials as well, the most notable one that I can recall was was the RadioShack commercial where the guy has eight million albums laying around and she says he needs to do something about it. When she returns some time later all the music is playing on an iPod. She did another one for Verizon that I didn’t like as much. Regardless, check out some of her other stuff on the MySpace profile. She is really quite talented.

I’ve had several things that I’ve wanted to post about for some time now. I’m getting to the point now that if I don’t say SOMETHING about these topics, they’ll slip past. And since I don’t have the time right now to fully blow them out, I’ve decided to do a sort of bulleted overview. Something is better than nothing right? So here it goes.

• Judging MSU Engineering Design Day
  As I mentioned here and there I was given the opportunity to serve as one of six judges for the computer science senior design projects that were presenting at MSU’s Fall Engineering Design Day. (Pictures here.) It was a really a great experience and I’m glad they want me back for the Spring. It brought back a lot of memories of back when I was working on my capstone project. Another cool thing was I was invited to the graduation breakfast the next morning (which I unfortunately didn’t get to make when I was graduating) which was a really nice presentation, and I got to hear an astronaut (Capt. Winston Scott, retired) speak and even had the chance to talk to him afterwards for a while. Very cool guy. I’m really lucky and happy that I live close enough to my alma mater to stay involved.
• Shoveling snow
  Being a homeowner comes with all kinds of other responsibilities, like shoveling your walk and drive so people don’t fall and sue you. Luckily, I actually don’t mind shoveling very much. It can be quite peaceful and relaxing. Today we are getting dumped on (about 8 inches outside right now, supposed to get up to 12) and when it gets to be too much snow it is less fun and more tedious, but at least it’s still pretty good exercise. It reminds me of when I was a kid though, going out after school to shovel. The snow muffles everything. I also happen to like snow. It’s not Winter in Michigan without the snow.Edit: Of course, I said this on the day that that we had nearly twelve inches of snow dropped on us. It was not quite as relaxing to shovel, but it was a good workout.
• The BeatLab
  My home studio (or “The BeatLab” as I call it) is quite complete. I am rocking the Korg Electribe MX-1 with some skill now and have created some rather good patterns. I’ve also managed to get it integrated with the KP3 and my digital world by going straight in to the FireBox and into Ableton Live 7. Using a nice little Saturator/Compressor combo I’m able to boost the signal up to a good level (the pre-amps on the FireBox are great for mics or guitars, but for the stereo signal of my groovebox it didn’t quite cut it.
• Partying downtown
  I’ve been spending more and more time downtown lately and it’s been nothing short of fantastic. I am really happy that I’ve started to make some more friends that not only like to go downtown, but a good number of them also live there. I have to say it makes me wish a bit that I had bought a place downtown myself, but in the end when I look back on my decision I can’t say I’m unhappy at all. Still, it’s great to be down there. If I ever strike the lottery I’ll be buying a place at the Book-Cadillac.
• Being sick
  I came down with something yesterday and it’s hanging with me a bit. Kind of a bad time for it given how busy things are at work (lots to do before vacation), but at least I’m able to work from home and still get all my stuff done.
• Wii!
  Against all odds, I got a Wii. It is fantastic. FANTASTIC.

The guy with the light who is shown briefly is the greatest part. He is keeping it real.

I’m getting pretty drawn in to the yelp thing. I have to say it’s pretty fun, especially now that it looks like people are starting to read my reviews. In fact, I even got a couple compliments! One of them was from Jenn, who is sort of responsible for this whole thing, but another was from honest to goodness yelper who thought I was doing OK. Also had a few people friend me, and that’s just fine by me.

But it goes to show that hopefully my plan of wanting to energize the yelp community for the Metro Detroit region might not be so far fetched. I got Paul signed up (now he just needs to start doing a few reviews) and hopefully I can coerce a few of my other friends to as well.

Jenn has given me the task of writing 20 (or was it 25) reviews by Wednesday of next week. I think I’m up for the task…

I also put my Facebook badge on this site. While the other sites are good, I still consider this to be the hub of my internet activities, so drawing in my other public bits and pieces with badges and what not here seems like a good idea.

I don’t like the way it really flows with my layout right now. I think eventually (when I get around to redesigning and getting a proper WP template in place) there will be a special section for all that stuff, and I’ll try to make it as uniform as possible.

Most of you probably noticed the gigantic Yelp-thing on the sidebar. That’s my “Yelp Bling” as they call it. Not a whole lot there right now, but basically it is me committing to reviewing more things on Yelp starting now. I always go on and on about how much I love Detroit and how if you know where to go you can have a really great time here (something that the NY Times seems to agree with) so I’m going to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and start reviewing some places on Yelp.

My hope for this is 1. to instruct the masses here who don’t get out enough that they can - in fact - have a great time in their home city and 2. assure potential out-of-towners that yes there is plenty to see and do and no you will not die (as long as you don’t go looking for trouble). Interestingly enough it seems there are a few other people on Yelp who have already gotten a bit of a jump start on me, which is good!

Unfortunately the Metro Detroit area is lagging behind in terms of reviews, so this is an official call to all my friends from around here. Create an account, friend me, and review your favorite (and least favorite) spots. Hopefully that will help contribute to some positive vibes for the area.

After talking to Jason for a bit a few things about Mass Effect came to light that I thought I mention as an addendum to my previous post.

While we both agree that the core storyline experience was great, we also agree that some of the side missions were a bit weak. There were definitely some good ones, but a lot ended up being more shallow than I’d hoped for. Additionally they all mostly followed the same structure of “learn about something, go to that planet, shoot a few guys, you’re done.” More could have been in this area to make things a bit more well rounded. Though I did think some of the Citadel side quests were more interesting and I completed most of those.

Another thing that would have added to the game would be more interesting loot progression. There’s really no unique items in the game. As Jason said, everything is just “gun 1″, “gun 2″, “armor 4″, etc. This takes away from some of the vested interest in your character.

Overall still a great game though. I’d give it a 9 out of 10.

Last night I beat Mass Effect. At the end I barely realized that I had put nearly 40 hours into the game. This is a big deal for me, since I usually am bad about beating games. (It’s true unfortunately, though I am getting much better about it.) I can say that, overall, it was one of the best experiences I’ve had playing a console RPG.

Sure there were a few technical faults (really bad texture pop-in, load times, basically things that wouldn’t have been there if they’d cached the game to the HD) but in general Mass Effect was a very polished gameplay experience that drew me in. The “moral choices” didn’t really go that deep, but the voice acting and conversations were done so well that it still managed to add a lot to the story line and experience.

I’m going to definitely do another play through in the near future. Next character will be a hardcore jerk, I think.

One thing I really liked though was that the game didn’t end with a cliff hanger. It actually completed the story line so you felt some sense of finality. But they left enough open that there will be a sequel (or two). I’ll be ready and waiting for it.

I had a pretty busy weekend, what with judging MSU’s Engineering Design Day for the Comp Sci dept and  hanging out with my sister, Toby, and Paul, but I’m taking my time to digest it all. Also I’m working.

As I mentioned about a week ago I ordered a Korg Kaossilator from some kind soul in Japan who took pity on the rest of the world which doesn’t have it available for retail and sold some on his eBay store. Even better, he didn’t really gouge, so I ended up only paying $20 more than I would have had I waited till late January or February. $20 is a small price to pay to get to play with it now.

So yesterday after work I stopped by the post office and picked it up (since, you know, they will of course only come to my house while I’m not there). I popped it open (slightly disappointed that it didn’t include a DC adapter as I’d hoped) chunked in 4 AA batteries I had laying around and jacked in the phones. Immediately I was able to start playing some funky little melodies on the durable, rubberized touch pad. I was struck by how nice this little guy really is. From a build quality standpoint I was reasonably impressed. The buttons and knob feel nice, the plastic doesn’t feel cheap, and I already mentioned the touch pad being pretty tough. On the audio side of things I was also pleased with the sound quality. It sounded pretty nice over the phones and when I hooked it up to the KP3 over the line outs and to my main monitoring system I was blown away with how good it actually sounded. Some of the sounds are very “Atari” (which can be very good) but many of the sounds are quite expressive and nice. Sure it doesn’t give you any real control over the sounds themselves (other than the y-axis, which serves to give you some control over a given parameter like drive, cutoff, or whatever) but the included sounds are quite nice. One patch in particular stunned me with a nice bass drop it did. My BX10s shook the house.

But above all I really like how the device is designed from a user experience standpoint. It’s very simple, but the amount of functionality that it provides is pretty impressive. The LCD display is simple, but functional. It displays your current patch and the beat (a flashing blip in the lower right) or the current parameter for whatever button you’re currently holding down. The central knob gives you control over the patch/parameter. The top button is tap tempo and BPM. On the lower left is scale (chromatic, Ionian, Dorian, 4ths, etc.) and lower right gives you control over the loop (overdub, play, stop, erase). If you press the top and lower left buttons at the same time you can change the key you’re in (three octaves, from C2 to B4, I think), while top plus lower right will give you some control over the loop length. It’s not particularly long, 8 beats at most, but it’s enough. Hidden on the edge of the device on the lower left corner is the arp/gate control which enables the gating. If you hold it down you can pick from 50 different gate patterns, so plenty of flexibility there.

The touch pad of course is the main action and how you actually “play” the device. The x-axis plays the various notes on the currently selected scale, in the currently selected key. For example if you have it on chromatic in C then as you drag your finger across the pad from left to right you will start playing C and move up half-steps. Pretty standard. There are a lot of different scale types (31 in fact), so you get all the Western ones you would expect but lots of good Arabic and East Asian scales as well. As I mentioned already the y-axis gives you some control over the sound that’s playing itself. It’s like an emphasis generally, but it’s probably expressed through several different types of parameters that can be controlled.

I’ll be honest, you don’t really need to be a musician to goof around with this thing and make some stuff that sounds fun. I think that’s the point though. Still, having some musical background might let you actually produce some truly musical results; either way it’s fun.

When this comes out in the US I think I could easily recommend it to anyone who wants a TENORI-ON but cant afford the steep price tag, or simply can’t get their hands on one yet. I’m not saying the Kaossilator is really direct competition for the TENORI-ON; it’s a phenomenal device that clearly does a lot more than the Kaossilator. But lets face it, the Kaossilator costs more than SIX times less, and that’s at retail prices (which you can’t even buy since they’re only selling it in the UK right now). So, from a value standpoint, the Kaossilator is the clear winner. Especially if, you know, you have a KP3 and Ableton Live 7 and an EMX-1 to use it with. *cough*

Overall it’s a great little device that I look forward to adding in to my setup. Routings are getting to be tricky though. My workflow (which used to be very streamlined with Ableton Live + hardware controller) has jumped up a couple notches in the complexity. That’ll take some getting used to. All of that is for another post though.