This coming week, the employees in our group at Microsoft have an extra deliverable: a seven-slide (or less) PowerPoint deck on any topic they want, provided it fits modified PechaKucha presentation guidelines, in this case, auto-advancing every 30 seconds. I thought it was about time I applied a little measurement and PM-geekiness to karaoke, a hobby I’ve had for close to a decade now. The results – well, see for yourself:
The Language of Game Development, Spoken Here
Archives for posts with tag: music
As failures come in threes, so do the lessons. After a week of traveling, listening, learning and speaking about my passion in video games, I’m ready to share the last of this tripartite teaching with a final story that has a happy ending.
What – you thought it was all failures, all the time? That’s not how it works. Not for me, not for you, not for anyone. There’s a third rule to failure that makes it all make sense. Read the rest of this entry »
As an aesthetic utility, Hash is highly invested in music. Bands, genres, and beats are embedded in how many of the characters in Hash describe the world around them and share their experiences. Even the technology plays back to the early ages of DJs, LPs, and FM: Tommy Eighty-Eight‘s headphones have the nostalgic bulk of yesterday’s studio gear, the ubiquitous flexible “pancake” computers carried by the City of the Future’s denizens are a quiet, digital homage to the faithful, ultimately surpassed, 7-inch EP vinyl record.
I’d like to show you around a few albums and singles that contributed to the world of Hash.
Thanks to Pomomusings for the Photo, Dude.
I feel like I need to start this with a disclaimer: I’ve got nothing against Billy Joel. But, being both an avid karaoke follower who hears this song a little too much for my liking, and having also seen it appear on Jeopardy as the question to a Final Jeopardy answer identifying it as the target of an effusive letter from a grateful history teacher, I realized this 1989 hit song was getting a little too much credit.
You all know the song – a sort of Hiroshima-to-Pepsi laundry list of every major sociopolitical event that I assume serve as bookends around the time Billy Joel considered his golden years. There’s AIDS, crack, and Bernie Goetz, among other verses.
The song has been lauded for being an evocative portrayal of modern American history, an effective teaching aid, and, of course, nominated for a Grammy. It has also been called one of the 50 worst songs ever created.
Well, I’ve had enough of it. For now, anyway, until I grow to like the song again. While I detox, I’d like to introduce (or re-introduce) you to ten songs I think dive deeper or stretch broader or just plain don’t ramble about history, giving Billy Joel’s wagon-train of an era biopic a run for its money.
I cannot figure out this city.
Maybe it’s the mixed blessing of having delicate, photosensitive hegemonic nerves crushed with the light of outside, escaping the bounds of an arguably stifled Eastside cultural cross-section, but there’s something manic about the architecture and outbound societal codewords visible in the metropolitan area’s shops and promenades, and it’s really hard to define.
Disclaimer. I come by any conclusions here largely out of ignorance, not knowledge. I don’t want to be this guy.
I gather it’s one of the little joys (bewilderments) of travel to notice things being done to your favorite foods that you’d never wish on anyone – downtown Helsinki’s take on Mexican food, for instance, is to serve their tacos covered with creme fraiche and fruit salsa. Their “Texas” restaurant starts off quite readily with BBQ ribs and T-bone steaks, but rapidly sneaks in continental-intruder-entrees like Duck Confit.
I realize it’s tempting to adopt the superior attitude of oh, those silly Europeans until you realize everybody does this – including Americans – and to mock one culture for exploitative foodmarketing practices is to leave an awful lot of kettles open for being called black.
It was years ago, I’m sure, that I got the Two Against Nature music-video DVD, and I figure that with a few glasses of white wine on board, I’m willing to tackle it.
I get it – in word, deed, and eyegravity (that thing people do when they just sort of look at you until you’re embarassed enough to recant) that Steely Dan is no longer anyone’s favorite band. I have my doubts that they ever were. I’m serious. You’d like ‘em, sure, but you’d say Brubeck, Bechet, or – hell, even Bacharach before you gave Dan the top slot.
C: Tell me your favorite band.
X: Oh, Steely Dan, definitely.
C: (eyegravity)
X: Well, I mean – okay, so I always liked what Traffic did with “Low Spark” better.
Dan fans – of which I’d count myself among, at least in the pedestrian cadre – have to put up with the reality that along with everyone else, they too have to tolerate a strategic volley of musical squickery that leaves The Grand House Steely as that uncle with enough tribal casino debt and the resultant ankle monitor that gets everyone at the Christmas party changing the subject and finding the far punch bowl instead of the near one.