www.maestrosync.com

Are You Authorised

maestro — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:20:11 +0000

Since I’ve just restarted Authority development after six months I thought I ought to quicken the pace of updates on the blog, so here we go. After some teething problems (i.e. every page taking five seconds to load because I was making over 1000 database queries a hit) the new game code is working very nicely and I’ve got almost all of the old Authority functions re-implemented. I’ve also added a new game management panel to the interface which I’m liking the look of*:

*figuratively speaking. I’m not actually satisfied with the way it looks.

The best “attack type” on Wikipedia

maestro — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:54:52 +0000

What am I talking about, you ask? The terrorist attack infobox on Wikipedia has a field for listing the “attack type”—aircraft attack, car bombing, that kind of thing; or, in the case of the Wall Street bombing, horse-drawn wagon bombing.

THE BEST ARTICLE ON WIKIPEDIA EVER

maestro — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:49:09 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusually-shaped_vegetable

The best serious description of an imperialist French elephant on Wikipedia

maestro — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:16:11 +0000

“Despite the presence of these counsellors, Babar’s rule seems to be totally independent of any elected body, and completely autocratic.”

Goddamn fascist elephant.

Return of the remixes (posters)

maestro — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:40:31 +0000

Remixing (i.e. changing the text on) vintage World War II propaganda posters is just something I do. This time, they’ve got nothing to do with the 2007 federal election.

And, as special bonus for anyone who has never had someone look at them weird after seeing their desktop wallpaper, I present the 1600×1200 “That’s Corn” wallpaper.

High voltage

maestro — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:18:41 +0000

I’ve been looking at videos of plasma speakers and musical tesla coils on YouTube, and I now have two questions:

Why haven’t I heard about them before?
Why don’t I have one?

Also on YouTube: Steve Ballmer advertising Windows 2.0. I love the way he thinks he’s got charisma.

Authority hasn’t been forgotten

maestro — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:54:27 +0000

The project has been on hiatus for about six months because past design and programming decisions had forced me into a corner when it came to the final portion of the game. This was a corner forcing the coding to be untidy and complicated. So! I’m overhauling a lot of the code and I’m confident this will make Authority happen and happen better. No timetable will be set at this point.

Redesign: Novus

maestro — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:39:45 +0000

Today I have launched the latest version of www.maestrosync.com, which I have given the rather uninspired title of Novus. Fundamentally, it’s based on the latest versions of WordPress and K2. There was then much designing and coding (HTML, CSS, and proper PHP) and the site was born. Some brief notes:

I wanted to give the site a proper and stylish design, so I used a grid. It doesn’t leap out at you because the design is simple, but almost everything is aligned to the grid.
The colour scheme is a bit of a change for me—in the past I have mostly used shades of blue, but the red goes well with the darker blue.
This is the first version of the site which is really usable and easy to navigate, particularly when it comes to my projects.
The logo is a stylised ae ligature, which itself comes from when I used to style the title as ‘mæstrosync’.

There are still a few rough edges that I’m working on, so ignore them for the time being.

I’m being biased against biased Southerners so it cancels out?

maestro — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:14:59 +0000

“Calendars have long been held as suspect in Lynchburg, Tennessee, just like suffrage for women and negroes.”

Old music

maestro — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:17:35 +0000

For historical purposes I present this archive of some musical things I made before I had much interesting in writing proper songs or learning musical theory. I wouldn’t recommend listening to them, but here they are nevertheless, plus some brief comments:

Actéon: Sounds somewhat cool, but that’s really just because of the samples used.
As The Fall Comes, We Cower And Make Amends: There’s an interesting harmony somewhere here and I like the ending.
Brassic: This was not even an attempt at being musical.
Deliver Me: The first part isn’t great (apart from the bass), but I like the guitar in the second part.
Don’t Forget Who You Were: Chiptune-y. Actually not bad, although I wish I had known musical theory back then so it could be more harmonious.
Dulcimatic Caving: Okay this does not count as music.
Eco: Weird. The percussion should sound funkier than it does.
Inf Baud: That bass sound is sampled from Supermassive Black Hole.
Kyrton: The bass is surprisingly good, as are the drums in the ‘verse’. The distorted piano arpeggio gets in the way.
No Standing: This is less than half an idea stretched over a whole song.
Reunite the Infinitives / CRT: Some of the best stuff I did—I like the simple but ominous tones of Reunite the Infinites and the uneasy retro dance vibe of CRT.
Sawtooth Geneva: Great riff. There’s also some interesting percussion going on here.
Sawtooth Geneva (swissmix): The same great riff as before, combined with a better song structure. Of course, the definitive version of this is Sawtooth Geneva (via Zürich), which was created once I had acquired some musical abilities.
Stibeam: It’s Starlight except completely out of tune.
The Archduke of Peru: Oh man is this discordant. It has some interesting drum and bass parts.
The Last Look Upon The Town Before Turning Around And Departing: I never liked the ending.
Tick, tick, ham: It’s a good title. There are a couple of alright ideas in here.
Triage: Three middling MIDI things.
Untitled: Because I was clearly too busy to come up with a title? A decent riff let down by my total ignorance of harmony (and structure too).
Utah Busline: This just isn’t anything.
We Now Interrupt Scheduled Programming: This is quite good. As the name might suggest, it’s the theme to an imaginary news program.