The Life and Times of Brock

Was just reading Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell and I came across this incredible quote that I happened to really like. It gives me reason to be positive about the global good that Capitalism has—better than any other system at reducing poverty that we’ve ever found.

When the United Nations announced in 2000 a goal to reduce the number of people living in such poverty by 2015 to one-half the level that had existed in 1990, it turned out that this goal had already been achieved—aparently unknown to the U.N. officials.

The effectiveness of the market does not depend on officials understanding it. The reduction in world poverty continued into the twenty-first century.Data from the World Bank showed that the percentage of the world’s population living in extreme poverty fell from 42 percent in 1990 to 25 percent in 2005.

The reason Capitalism works so well is because it wasn’t designed by anyone. Nobody built Capitalism; it’s simply a logical extension of free people wanting to do whatever they want with their own property and possessions, and making mutually beneficial transactions. It’s both the most effective, and most moral system that we’ve found.

People who are against free market Capitalism are against freedom. It’s that simple.

By the time I come back to read this at a later stage in my life, these links will most likely be dead and/or changed. Or Soundcloud won’t even exist anymore (and tumblr will be backed up via the Internet Archive). However, that’s okay. I finished these two tracks and I really like them.

The first one is called Tomorrow, and I actually wrote it some months ago using the default instruments in Cubase and a shittonne of reverb. It sounded good. But now I’ve gone back and redone it, updating the library (with the HALion symphonic orchestra and The Grand 3—also the violas are brand new):

http://soundcloud.com/brockatkinson/tomorrow

It’s quite long, at just over 7 minutes, and is in G Major. It’s really slow and somber, at 72bpm. The mix and conversion took about a day (perhaps a little more), and this version is slightly different than the one I have on my computer (this one has fuzziness in some areas from distorting when it clips).

The second song, and I’m particularly proud of it, is called Yesterday. I couldn’t think of a better title. When I release it as part of an album I’ll presumably change the name to something more fitting.

http://soundcloud.com/brockatkinson/yesterday

This is shorter, at 4:30, and is in C# Major. It too, is at 72bpm. However, it’s more uplifting than Tomorrow. And it doesn’t have the repetitive melody (strain) through it—it’s more improvised than the previous piece. Most of the instruments were recorded once each, then heavily tweaked, but not really changed. The really nice addition for this is the flute, which comes in at certain moments to give a different flavour to the mix.

Anyway, there you go. I have another long song (about 6 and a half minutes), which originally started out as two pianos, but I might take it to further heights with more instrumentation.

This is really to add into my sound portfolio, which I can use to get me sound and music jobs at a later stage. There’s one in China for a company called Spicy Horse, which is an American McGee company.

I just got two of my results back—the third one won’t be for a little bit later because we had multiple extensions going to the final possible date. But out of the two units I got marks for, I received a 76 (Intro to Sound Studies) and a 79 (Sound).

While they’re pretty good marks, I’m kind of annoyed that I got 79 for Sound, because I got 79 for Music Technology last semester (even though I got top of that unit). So that’s two units which are major aspects that I wanted to pwn, and got nearly pwn marks for each.

Oh well. Hopefully it will be good enough.

In other news, I haven’t yet been looking for games funding. I’ve talked to Max to show me to some of his friends that do film funding, and I was meant to go on Wednesday (before they went to Little Creatures for some beers), but I was called by my Dad to go and work with him at a place in Harrisdale. That kinda sucked.

However, due to working for two days (the first day was during a storm), and also the money that Mum said she’d give me for Christmas, I’m hoping to get them to get me a bass amp.

We had the option of getting a gig next thursday at Yaya’s in Northbridge, but were too late and it was filled by the time we replied. I kinda wanted to play, even if we have scant material (the band has stuff that I can learn easily from before I was there). We’ll try sometime in January.

Also on Wednesday night we were at the jam session place, and right at the end, after Matt and Ben (Guitarist and Drummer, respectively) played guitars and I jumped on the drums, Matt grabbed my bass, and then Ben decided to take my spot on the drums. Then I complained on my way to picking up the guitar, muttering, “but I suck at guitar.”

I fucking owned it.

I don’t really know how it happened, but I put on the delay pedal and started shredding in C# minor, along with the other guys, and we played this epic long, glorious post-rock song. It was goddamn majestic.

Afterwards I realized that the delay pedal had a high feedback, low delay, and was on reverse. It sounded awesome. Afterwards we just kinda looked at each other with a “did that just happen” kind of look. Then Ben rushed over and asked me how to make that sound. I couldn’t explain, but we played it again and it was kind of awesome then, as well. Fortunately we got a recording from it.

The big problem is that it completely cuts out Lachlan, our singer—the song was just so much, so gloriously loud and noisey, that vocals in there would be too much. We’ll see if we can jot him in there somewhere.

Also Ben has told me to listen to Jakob and I am and they are fucking incredible.

It’s the end of the week and I’ve been doing okay. I spent my last $10 cash on my petrol, and then was running out and only had $7 in the bank, so I used my little bottle to fill it up for the $7 in my bank account, to not seem socially awkward. Then when I got to work I used the bottle to pour into the tank. I’m still on empty, and have $2 left on me (which will be used to buy some bread tomorrow). But it’s okay; on Tuesday it should be fine.

It’s all my own fault anyway.

I watched Children of Men again last night. I fell asleep but it still is incredible. I would love to be able to make a game like that.

I talked to my friend Adam (Casual) who said he’s interested in making games. I rattled off an idea where you use a ball to change the colour of bricks, then we started brainstorming and got onto the idea of using paint or sound to work a way through the world. It sounded good. I might try to make a prototype using Construct sometime soon.

I handed in my essay last night for Sound Studies. It really is pretty incredible, and I do like all the points I raised. My problem was that it was a 2500 word essay, and I was over 3000 words, and had to chop some. I found some superfluous sentences, and finished at 2796 words, which is just over the 2500+10%, but I have a feeling my tutor is not going to care too much about it.

For the record, the topic was Audio in Games provide an experience incomparable to any other media.

So I recently started working part-time as a babysitter of sorts. It’s more like a ‘nanny’ job, as I take these two kids to school, and pick them up afterwards. It’s okay, but it only pays $20 an hour (3 hours a day). The kids are interesting; Sophia is brilliantly intelligent (she went up a year and is topping her classes even still), and Johann is kinda cool, but still needs a lot of growing up to do.

Anyway, so I got paid for the first time the other day, and then went out and promptly bought Steinberg’s The Grand 3 sound pack, at $115 (even though I swear it used to be $105), and Boss’ ME-25 (guitar multi-effects pedal). I haven’t used either very much since I’ve got them, but plan to.

Anyway, I paid two weeks of rent, and then I found that my money is all basically gone. I think I have $20 left to my name until next Monday, and I’m running out of petrol. So I’ve gotta make the food in my house last.

Also I’m playing bass in a band called Bad Houses. They are a noise rock band, and we had a jam session last Tuesday which was really cool, and wrote ourselves the first song since I joined. Hopefully we should be playing shows (apparently) by January sometime.

Reading Jordan Mechner’s diaries has given me inspiration to do short snippets of information about my life, that are slightly more than 140 characters long. I decided tumblr was the place to do this. Posterous should be for longer, more ‘professional’ blogging.

Where am I in my life?

This year I did a minor in Sound, after I’d finished my Internet & Games Software majors. It’s been great. Last semester I won the Music Technology award (highest score in the unit), and got a copy of Cubase Artist 6. I have a cheap keyboard that I hook up to it to make music using MIDI. I don’t use it as much as I feel I should be.

I want to write albums. Concept albums. Electronica-based, with post-rock and noise elements.

I’ve recently become—over the last 6 months—a politically charged Anarcho-Capitalist. It should be interesting when I read this again in 20 or so years what I think about that; whether it’s considered a natural, normal move - or instead a radical, extremist move. Either way I want to write an album called ‘Music for Anarchy’ with snippets and quotes surrounding philosophical anarchy.

I have decided I procrastinate way too much. It’s very difficult to move out of the habit. I just stare at the computer screen and not do study. I still pass everything, though, which I think simply exacerbates the issue.

I’ve been considering founding my own games startup early next year. There are some guys from uni that I’m interested in partnering with: Nic, Joe, and Ary. Ideally, I’d like to have a solid team of four (two artists, a programmer/artist and a sound guy), but that probably won’t work out quite as well as I assume it would. Covering such a wide range of personalities, it’d be hard to keep us from arguing. Also what happens with payment issues if one leaves 80% of the way through, and so on?

I would like to keep my current house for next year, but I’m not sure what the real estate agents think of us. And our neighbours aren’t overly fond of us either.

Only a week of uni to go; this week I have a 2500 word essay about game sound that I haven’t started (…!), then next week I’m scoring The Great Train Robbery, then after that the games I’m working on are due. I should essentially be creating and handing in two games.

Much work to be done. It’d be fine if I didn’t procrastinate so much.

This originally was somewhat of a rant that I started on facebook, referencing this article. I will just grab the text I started writing, and put it on here.

I understand that not many people on here venture outside the high walls of facebook, so I’ll quickly give an idea of what this is about:

Online social-networking does not necessarily indicate real-world social networking. Sure, some things introduced in social networks are complementing to real-world interactions, such as event organization, the ability to chat/message people, and (to a lesser extent) photos.

The hidden connection between social networking and real-world networking is (believed to be) location; where you physically are in the world. The ability to broadcast and share location can be crucial to real-world interaction (whether good or bad). But there are a few ways to utilize location.

Some, such as the Google Latitude model, use a phone’s GPS to record your location by latitude and longitude, giving a rough area of where you are. This is okay, but it doesn’t always give context.

The other idea is to have what’s known as a “check-in” feature, using the GPS and business records surrounding your location. This location (not just latitude and longitude, but also business visited) can provide greater context to what you’re currently doing.

Note: Google Latitude is starting to move into check-in nature. It won’t be long until it integrates these features.

Now, facebook is getting into the location game. This is inevitable. It’s also easy to see that this will be utilizing some form of “check-in” feature (like foursquare uses, and dodgeball used before that). But the question remains: will Facebook’s check-in notation be more like foursquare’s, or twitter’s?

The rough difference between them is this: foursquare is designed for your interaction to share your location first, and then what you’re doing (status update) second. It then turns the world into a form of social, real-world game that gives points, badges (achievements), and so on. Its purpose is to interact with the world, and share that information. Twitter, on the other hand, is about your status update first and foremost, with your location (and even business, if supported) second, as a mere tag at the footer of your update. Other than being able to share your location with friends and followers, there is very little reward.

I believe that facebook’s will be similar to this. A tag at the end of your status update of the business you’re currently at - and subsequently a map - and also extracting the data from geotagged photos and giving them a form of context.

But, again, outside of sharing your location with your friends (which is very valuable, mind you), there is little reward. However, facebook are trying to monetize off businesses, starting with McDonald’s restaurants, based on check-ins, which is what foursquare has been doing for a while.

In the end, as far as I can see, foursquare will still be in business. People will be able to integrate foursquare into their facebook profile, while getting the best of both worlds; the ability to share location with non-foursquare friends (which they can already do, but it’s not as rich), and also utilize the rewards-based system that foursquare possesses. It’s because of these rewards that will keep foursquare alive, and relevant.

Why have I screwed my body-clock up to such an extreme amount? My average sleep-time is moving slowly from 1am to 3am. The average would be roughly 2:40am now, and, as I currently sit here typing, I’m really not that tired. Often I’ve had to force myself to sleep when I see that it’s nearing 3am.

I believe I have what’s known as Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. I don’t necessarily see it as a disadvantage; this is just how I am, and how I’ve been few years (4, 5, maybe even 6 years now).

I think this will follow my for some years, and I will have to be somewhat inventive as to how I deal with it. Every time I’ve tried to revert my clock to a normal time (for working 9 - 5 or earlier), there’s been a constant rejection.

Just rather curious where it comes from, I suppose…