New music, a soundscape of "Trains of Hell" posted on SoundCloud

Decided to test the limits of one of my favorite synths and my favorite DAW by creating a complex soundscape. I was getting audio dropouts so had to quit while I was ahead. Posted the whole thing, "Trains of Hell", on SoundCloud. It's a mere 2 minutes, 40 seconds or so out of your life so have a listen.

New music: "We Come in Ambient Peace"

Update for 020150523:

I was very pleased, hands in the air excited actually, to see I made the final cut of seven favorites picked by Propellerhead staff in its "Ambient challenge".
 

Original post, 020150517:

Propellerhead, the Swedish company who make Reason and a couple of interesting iOS apps called Figure and Take, are running a contest called "The Ambient challenge" for the week beginning May 15. I cranked out a 3 minute, 20 second extravaganza I called "We Come in Ambient Peace". You can listen to it here:

http://phead.mu/s/Gycn7pZC

New music on SoundCloud: This Is My Groove

This is kind of a chillout/ambient piece, sort of danceable, that I called through lack of imagination "This Is My Groove". It's just a short excerpt as the entire piece is just under 7 minutes.

"The Peripheral" 2014 novel by William Gibson

I very much enjoyed Vancouver science fiction author William Gibson's latest novel The Peripheral. He said he drew inspiration from the 1985 story "Mozart in Mirrorshades" by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner. That story appeared in Mirrorshades: the Cyberpunk Anthology edited by Bruce Sterling (1986). I'd call Gibson's novel a sci-fi thriller, one that would make for a pretty good movie in the right hands. The novel's short chapters more or less alternate between a future, not our own, and a past whose future has been changed by that future. It's time travel, but not in any physical sense nor between the same time streams. I found the novel to be a real page turner. There are some strong female characters, including one of the protagonists. You might find it a little tough to get into at first, but if you stick with it I think you'll find it a rewarding, stimulating read.

http://www.amazon.ca/Peripheral-William-Gibson/dp/0399158448

The Darkest Hour (2014) novel: if Germany had won World War 2

Finished an absorbing first novel by British author Tony Schumacher called The Darkest Hour (2014). It's an alternate history where Germany won World War 2 and occupied much of England, including London. Set in 1946 in London, the work is very dark but compelling. It follows a former police sergeant and war hero, John Henry Rossett, who's being used by the Germans to round up Jews and deport them to the Continent. I thought I had the ending figured out, but I got fooled along the way as the novel took a different turn than I expected. Highly recommended for anyone into alternate  histories. This one also has movie all over it.

"Spaghetti Western Heaven Excerpt" uploaded to SoundCloud

Finished off a piece, my first real full-fledged song, this morning. Created entirely with the amazing compositional aid Rapid Composer along with some unusual software synth sounds from Modelonia and Kontakt. No music loops were used or harmed.

Have a listen to "Spaghetti Western Heaven Excerpt". The whole piece is just under 3.5 minutes, but due to the file size I couldn't upload the whole thing as a 320kbps MP3.

New music excerpt uploaded to SoundCloud

I was stuck for a title, so I just called this excerpt "Downtempo Demo". The whole piece is just over 5 and a half minutes. The excerpt is just over 1 and a half minutes.

New piece of music uploaded to SoundCloud, "Ethnic Harmonies"

Had some time to work on a new piece of music today, "Ethnic Harmonies". I've uploaded an excerpt, about 1:45 minutes to a SoundCloud account. Hope you enjoy it.

New, full track, "Into the Clouds of Jupiter", uploaded to SoundCloud.com

I worked on this one for a few days. It's mostly comprised of some royalty-free music loops along with some sounds generated by software synthesizers. I called it "Into the Clouds of Jupiter" as it's supposed to evoke the first descent into the clouds of the planet Jupiter. I uploaded the full track, just over four minutes, and disabled downloading.

Uploaded dancehall instrumental excerpt to SoundCloud

Here's a short excerpt from a dancehall instrumental piece I've been working on and uploaded to SoundCloud. Have a listen.

Another piece of new music posted to SoundCloud

Don't know what's gotten into me, but I really like the simplicity of Sony ACID Music Studio and being able to throw some loops together and get a track down very quickly. Of course I'm not a sound engineer so my mixing and mastering skills are about at an elementary level.

I posted another piece new music to SoundCloud, simply an except of an uptempo, chillout piece created today (February 10, 2014). Hope you enjoy it.

My new music on SoundCloud

Seems like forever since I created some music for posting on SoundCloud.com. What can I say. Retirement's been keeping me busy as has a part-time job I started in September 2013. Last year we also sold our house and downsized.

Since I'm running out of title ideas, I just called this one DowntempoChilled-Feb092014. This is an excerpt taken from the last 1:45 minutes; the total duration of this track is 5:45 minutes.

Update about 8 hours later: I noticed that this piece has already have 4 Favoritings, which I think is pretty good for an older newbie.

CameraWorkers.davidmattison.com is being updated

September 27, 2013:

The update to CameraWorkers.davidmattison.com is complete. It mostly looks the same. One of the changes I implemented in the new release of the software powering the site is the ability to share any page through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

---

September 26, 2013:

I'm aware that CameraWorkers.davidmattison.com is no longer functioning. This is due to a update to the PHP programming language used by the software that powers the site. The PHP update broke the coding and the site is running an older version of the software that I had not bothered to update following the WebServe.ca server crash in December 2012 that I blogged about on December 17, 2012.

The update to CameraWorkers.davidmattison.com is going to take me a couple of days as it's a lot more complex this time round.

"Sharknado" vs "Atlantic Rim"

Not sure which is worse, a tornado depositing living sharks into the streets of Los Angeles, or monsters from the deep attacking Florida and being beaten back by robot fighters. On the latter, did you think I was talking about the new movie "Pacific Rim" or had made a mistake in the title of this blog post? No, because a TV movie aired in Canada on July 13, 2013 called "Atlantic Rim", which right down to the title and plot could not be a more direct ripoff of "Pacific Rim".

The copyright lawyers must be sharpening their pencils. After all, there has been a legal battle waging over the use of the title "The Butler" which originally was a 1916 movie now owned by Warner Brothers. The Weinstein Company thought it could use the title "The Butler" for its upcoming film that stars Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, a White House butler employed by all the presidents between Eisenhower and Reagan. I too had always thought that you could not copyright a title, however, this dispute seems to be based on other legal and non-legal issues. According to this Huffington Post story on July 9, Harvey Weinstein told "CBS This Morning host Norah O'Donnell, there have been 122 instances of movies using the same title as other movies in Hollywood history, including the recent comedy "The Heat," which shares its name with three other films." As others have pointed out, something else is going on.

Might be an interesting project to put together a Web site called Ripoff Central or something like that which documents "Hollywood" vs indie film ripoffs. I'm sure the producers of "Atlantic Rim" will defend its existence on the basis of you can't copyright an idea, only its execution. After I watch my recording of "Atlantic Rim" I'll try and report back. Sadly, I never recorded "Sharknado" but I hope to catch it in a rerun.

Ubisoft.com got hacked; change your account password advisory

Canadian software developer Ubisoft got hacked. Received an e-mail this morning advising me to change my password, which I did.

Here is the first part of the e-mail:

We recently found that one of our Web sites was exploited to gain unauthorized access to some of our online systems. We instantly took steps to close off this access, investigate the incident and begin restoring the integrity of any compromised systems. 

During this process, we learned that data had been illegally accessed from our account database, including user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords. Please note that no personal payment information is stored with Ubisoft, meaning your debit/credit card information was safe from this intrusion. 

If you happen to know anyone who's unsure whether this is a phishing e-mail, it's not, at least the version I received. After I changed my password, I got redirected to a page with images and links to three YouTube videos of upcoming Ubisoft games: Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. At the top of the page it said "UBI.COM IS CURRENTLY UNDER MAINTENANCE."

Posted "Danceathonic" New Year's Eve epic track to SoundCloud

Wishing everyone a great 2013, now that the world has not ended, with my epic New Year's Eve track "Danceathonic." You can download all 5 minutes of its danceable goodness at https://soundcloud.com/citizenofhalo4/danceathonic

Worst online shopping experience ever ... FutureShop.ca Web-only Sales

What a way to spend Christmas Eve ... in an online queue waiting for the FutureShop.ca Web servers to allow me to conduct a checkout of an item I ordered during this pre-Boxing Day Web-only sale that started at 8 pm EST. I got through the checkout process once and the system was processing my credit card, then failed because it could not connect to another server for a credit card security check. Way to go FutureShop.ca! I phoned their Customer Service and spoke to a very nice young woman who basically could not tell me anything, not even if my credit card had been charged. Her suggestion, which was my conclusion, was to go through the whole process again. We wished each other a Merry Christmas.

On my second round, more errors and an even longer wait in the online queue. I finally get to the order page, put in a different credit card, and the system goes off to process the payment then finally comes back with another error page: "An error occurred while processing your request." Followed by a reference number that's part of the Checkout process URL.

The folks who programmed the system obviously didn't proofread or test the process very thoroughly. On the Queue Status page below the bar that measures your progress in terms of a meaningless percentage the first thing it says is "Once you reach the front of the queue, you'll automatically be taken to the checkout." Actually, that's not true, because when your progress bar reaches 100% a greyed out button turns red and you have to click "Continue Checkout" to go anywhere.

This reminds me of online computing in the 90s. Over 1.5 hours wasted. My first two attempts were in Internet Explorer 9. My third attempt, ongoing as I write, is in Google Chrome, which was noticeably faster up to the Queue Status page.

Success with Google Chrome! Let that be a lesson for me, never try to order anything online with Microsoft Windows' Internet Explorer.

Uploaded "Spell Like Calvertron" remix contest entry to SoundCloud

A couple of days ago came across a contest with a nice first prize, not that I have much hope of winning it. It's a remix contest using music loops from a dubstep producer with the stage name of Calvertron. Contest sponsored by PrimeLoops.com. Decided to appeal to his vanity and called mine "Spell Like Calvertron". My piece uses loops from a nifty software version of Texas Instruments' Speak & Spell. My SoundCloud entry is under my Citizen of Halo 4 nom de plume.

Submitted third entry to Halo 4 Remix contest

Submitted my third entry to the Halo 4 Remix contest, a remix of the "Awakening" track. It's on my SoundCloud account I set up for the contest as well as via the Halo 4 Remix Contest site.

Uploaded "Tabla Mint Jam" excerpt to SoundCloud

Worked on this one over two days. The percussion beats are from REX loops of Indian instruments, with two or three different tabla parts. The guitarish and vox-like sounds were made from a single MIDI track I created and run through a couple of software synths and then enhanced, or mangled (in a good way I think), with Native Instruments' Guitar Rig software FX. The result is "Tabla Mint Jam", a one-minute excerpt from the five and half minute long jam you'll find on one of my SoundCloud accounts. I hope to upload the full version to Nimbit.