Commence Digestion

I have a few fetishes one of which is the sight and sound of raw talent. So lately I've been watching "The Black Cab Sessions" an idea which when I first heard of it literally "floored" me. Basically its a group of people in the U.K. who take recording equipment, meet a band in the middle of London, hail one of the cities obligatory black cabbies and ride around filming the band playing a song. Its a one take kinda thing. I've pretty much watched them all so far (I did skip around a bit and I can't say I've really seen them all) and without sounding too much like a gamer I will say that it is indeed "epic" (or "purple" for those in the know). I think the whole "back seat of a cab" venue has its own sort of ambiance that you can't really get anywhere else, and its nicely portrayed in the videos. http://www.blackcabsessions.com/ here is the link if your interested in listening to some good stuff, its nice to see that they are taking both local U.K. bands as well as some American bands. I prefer listening to the new talent like Eugene Mcguiness or Luke Toms who dresses like Galager but sounds amazing in my book, but I think its nice to hear more well known bands like The Kooks and The New Pornographers in that sort of a setting as well. On top of this there is this video "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Vtr8i87Do" which is awesome, no you can't hear what hes saying in the beginning but you can hear the song which is the important part. I'm fascinated by peoples ability to set music to words. Generally speaking words are not the problem for me its the music that I have hard time meshing with what I want to say.

The other fetish I have is this weird fascination with online communities, or maybe a better description would be "the power of communities to create things that companies couldn't have thought of in their wildest dreams". A fine example of this is the game Counter Strike, which is in fact a MOD for another popular game Half Life. A MOD in essence is a game built upon someone else's code. You essentially take the code and rework it to make it do what you want. Then add original content you made, models for the characters in game, skins, new sounds, make your own maps and then voila. With every mod you generally release it and it either bombs and no one plays it or you get a small following of people who play it. With Counter Strike it did so well that Valve (the company who made Half Life) acquired the rights to it and began shipping it as a completely separate game. I believe the people who worked on it are now working within the gaming industry as well. Well apparently something like this has been done with a flight simulator and upon hearing this I was intrigued. Apparently there is a community of people who go online everyday and fly planes NOT ONLY do they fly planes there are also a select group within the community who act as air traffic controllers, not only that, the entire system is set up exactly like real life. So you can't just jump in the game and take off. You need to check the weather, make sure your flight plan is worked out and THEN send it in to get clearance so you can even take off and leave the run way. Apparently you can't even BECOME an air traffic controller without having first taken the test to get your license to actually do the job in game. The way it all works is through a network set up that allows you to talk to the air traffic controllers in the game, a program called "sqwakbox(sp?)". But the whole thing is player run, so the servers are set up and maintained by someone somewhere and of course the program is all coded and distributed freely. Personally I thought it was the coolest thing ever, I love peoples imagination and companies willingness to let people mess around with their code always allows for nice surprises. Which is why I love any game with a map editor. I've tried my hand at mapping and modding for several games but my inability to follow through with projects always bites me in the arse. So I'm left with little to show for it. Which is why most of the ideas I have are shelved.

This is an odd sort of post, no deep philosophical or religious things to talk about no insights or revelations really. I was challenged that I hadn't written anything in a while however so I figured I would remedy that situation. I'm still on the look out for a job so if you know anyone hiring thats paying 10 bucks an hour or more is flexible around school schedules and can give me close if not full time let me know.