OverClocked Remixes

Here I am, sitting at the computer, trying to write a lab report that's due for chemistry class on Tuesday, watching my blood sugar go back up to the high numbers that make it hard to concentrate on anything, lamenting being sick for the past two-thirds of the week, and praying that the stoichiometry stuff I still need to do will be quick and easy since I have driving class for over four hours tomorrow. It's one of those weekends that would be making me panic if it all weren't so dreary and depressing.

To provide a muffler for the noises and distractions all around me, I am listening to a bunch of fan-made remixes of video game music. And when I say "remix" I'm not talking about just rock'n'roll, techno type stuff. I'm referring to amazing arrangements of one or many VG tunes using a variety of instruments and covering a multitude of styles. Piano, trumpets, strings, some spunky stuff... Adventure, peace, fun, sadness... All made by people who do it because they can. The site (and community) that hosts them is OCRemix.org and they are called OC Remixes (big surprise). Many are synthesized; after all, how many people have a real orchestra at their command? The big deal is the quality, so unless you live by yourself and have a very good microphone, you might as well synthesize your piano pieces as well. That way all you require is the good equipment; no need to worry about keeping your breath out of the recording or anything.

So anyway, on top of everything else, I'm again experiencing the desire to make some of my own. Actually, those that I mentioned four posts ago are some. The problem is, I've needed a good program or mixer to produce them. Well, my dad found a certain Magix Music Studio at Half-Price Books for about $25, less than half of the retail $80. It looks like it could do what I need it to, but it doesn't run smoothly on our computers. Wanting to get a laptop anyway, I figured maybe the way to go would be to get a Macbook and run Windows XP on it. Time to get a job, right? But whenever that looked like a good idea, I had too much else I wanted to do.

On the other hand, since I'm making so little progress as a ROM hacker (that SMW site tells hackers all there is to know about SMW, not how to be a SMW hacker), I'm revisiting the possibility. The sooner I start, the sooner I can work my way towards something. I've realized that, while I spend so much time on various interests, there is often a lack of actual productivity in them. The way I see it, if I want to really get into these things, I need to do it with determination, with a passion. As long as I'm only exploring in such areas, I should make sure something else gets some real attention and effort.


By the way, for a good taste of the variety OCRemix has to offer, try searching for "Predetermination," "The Place We Knew," "Flight of Destiny," "Timeless," "Odyssey Beyond the Falls," "Jamming Loneliness," "Darkworld Jazz," and "A Day in the Life of a Gambler." .....Just to name a few ; ) --though if you're into rock/metal stuff, just click on anything and sooner or later you'll find what you want.

SMW Hacking

I've had plenty of time on the computer lately, so how come I haven't been blogging more? Because I found a website dedicated to Super Mario World ROM hacking. And it's a Mario World unto itself.

One problem with wanting to be a ROMhacker has been the lack of organized information. Having no computer programming experience to begin with, the wealth of terms and workings involved are not so much overwhelming as inadequately explained. Tutorials never seem to say enough; they often assume you already know all about something they refer to, or are inapplicable to half of the existing tools for the area.

I have hope with this place because it hosts as much as is currently known on a single game. There are tools for graphics editing, changing game mechanics, and even inserting music via a text file. They have a ~41% (and counting) complete list of all the ROM addresses, with their byte sizes and game effects. And it's a place to share creations, ideas, findings, and questions.

Or so you'd think. The forums give me the impression that they absolutely hate questions from bewildered "noobs" with the "inability to read a readme." Fine, you bunch of stuck-ups. I'm rather averse to message boards anyway. They demand too much time to partake in, and outsiders will have a hard time finding what they need. That's why, when I require an explanation, I use Google[TM-thing!] and search for specific keywords in a single website; this can usually locate a particular post relevant to my problem.

Anyway, I figured if I really want to learn this stuff, I should start where there is plenty to learn. There will be many differences in hacking other games, but this way I'll gain the background knowledge necessary to see where I'm going. It's like feeling your way through a dark, familiar room as opposed to a dark, unfamiliar room.

All I need is the time-and-determination side of nerdage, which I know won't come for me automatically.

New Chemistry Class

(Hey, a life-relevant post!)

Yesterday I joined a different chemistry class, which meets every Tuesday. I like the teacher, Dr. C, whom one of my brothers learned from back in highschool as well. Due to differences in the textbooks' depths, this class is farther into the subject, but hasn't been covering some parts in quite as much detail. I'm currently a bit rusty in areas that I had down cold in physical science last year, though that should change without a problem.

The main factor in switching classes was our schedule. My brother started going to a community college, and that conflicted with the Wednesday chemistry course. My mom and I actually had to choose between the two classes at the start of the school year, and while I didn't want to miss out on the one my brother so loved, Dr. F (who is a neat teacher, don't get me wrong) provided a more convenient program at the time.

I guess this way I'll have gotten a bit of each!

"Castlevania" music like you've never heard before

I could write a very long analysis of the parameters of video game music, but I'll save that for another time. Right now I'd like to share something truly awesome to hear: a beautiful piano rendition of the outdoor theme from Castlevania II. Never take a melody only one way you hear it. A great thing about music is its versatility, the ranges and styles that can be achieved with a single tune.

I like to work on video game piano arrangements myself. I've currently turned out a short elaboration of the title screen of Shadowgate; a rather moving piece from Solar Jetman accented with another bit from Shadowgate; and a remix that takes from Super Mario Bros., Chrono Trigger, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which will probably become more than piano once I can properly synthesize anything.

Science, Philosophy, and Common Knowledge

Philosophy classes resumed this morning, and we started in on the appetites. The Christmas break reading on the subject got the addition of a newspaper article about a week ago, which discussed shopping and what goes on psychologically throughout. Neuroscientists used MRI scans and found a "war in the brain" between the pleasure over a desired item and the pain of spending money for it.

Through my philosophic eyes: "Yes, that makes perfect sense. The concupiscible appetite's attractions and aversions are blah blah blah...."

Through my everyday eyes: "They needed MRIs to show that? Give me a break."

"Climate change" on the radio this morning ...

As near as I can remember:

"What we're dealing with is climate change..."
"Change?"
"That's right."
"So as soon as it stopped warming, it became 'change'?"
"Look, what I'm trying to say is the climate's changing..."
"Of course it is."
"The temperature is..."
"If the climate never changed, it wouldn't be climate."
"When..."
"If the temperature was always the same, we'd have no concept of temperature!"
"Okay, but when the planet's conditions are altered..."
"Uh-huh..."
"...and the temperature is gradually rising over..."
"It's cold out."
"Mike..."
"More people die from the cold than from the heat!"
"And even more die from tsunamis."
"Tsunamis have nothing to do with this!"
"Listen..."
"Tsunamis are caused by a shift in the Earth's crust..."
"...the plates change, exactly..."
"They don't change because of the temperature..."
"Right, it's because of earthquakes."
"Yeah."
"What I'm getting at is..."
"Earthquakes don't happen because the earth heats up!"
"No, I'm just saying that the world changes..."
"Yeah, but..."
"...and we..."
"Listen, Nick... It's getting colder! So shut up!"

A "3-D CD"

ZMaro, SCobbler, and I were chatting about video games at my late birthday party yesterday, and at some point ZM mentioned that the Playstation was supposed to be a "3-D system," yet there seemed to be as many 2-D games on it as there were 3-D games. "Well, those disks are pretty flat," I joked. "A true 3-D system would have some triangular prism that floats in mid-air and is read by lasers from multiple directions."

As many of our conversations go, this simple, witty comment shot us off on a whole different tangent as we began discussing how a three-dimensional "CD" would function.

SC, being a bit over-practical for the amount of sugar we were running off, pointed out that a pyramid would be almost impossible to spin like a CD and be read; a sphere would work much better. Before I could say more than "A sphere is dull," he added that a cone would be best, because you wouldn't have to deal with the inconsistent proximity of the sphere's surface to the reading laser. I wasn't sure what he was talking about at the time, although now I think he might have been referring to a single laser moving in a perpendicular direction to the sphere's spinning, like a CD player's laser moving from the inside to the outside. If this is the case, a cone would help, as the angle would never change. However, a cone would truly remedy the problem if it was spun on a tilted axis such that the side facing the laser was vertically straight, but if you went in that direction you might as well settle on a cylinder.

I, on the other hand, wasn't thinking of having the object spin whilst the laser(s) moved. I was picturing an object held in the center of a zero-G container rotating (though not necessarily spinning quickly) in any direction so that fixed lasers could read every area. However, I still didn't manage to communicate this because ZMaro took us completely off-guard by saying that the lasers would spin around the sphere. My dad kind of stabbed the idea and left it for dead by exposing the inefficiency of doing that. Then SCobbler practically discarded the whole anti-gravity part by suggesting "rollers" that would turn the sphere (of course, I suppose using a cone might negate the antigrav as well).

I eventually just verbalized the fact that a pyramid would be the coolest, but SC wouldn't go down without a fight. Thanks to him we began rationalizing the dilemma of where information is located. He said that a sphere or pyramid would cause issues with where to start reading and it would be impractical to have "directions" all over the thing to point to what to read next. "Hey," I said, "by the time this is done in the first place, data storage will be so advanced that it shouldn't pose a problem." I think we ended on that note, but it may only have been because ZM had to leave.

So we went from yakking about games to theorizing 3-D optical storage, and all the while our parents stood by watching and waiting for us to finish. As ZM said last night, "Sometimes I forget just how nerdy we sound."