@laughingfelix found this Twitter HUD called “SLITTER” (ha) in Second Life. Has a very elegant, web-looking appearance. Haven’t tried it for myself yet.
SLITTER Premium Koenji Branch (via Liqueur Felix)
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You see, Arthyr's twin brother had been competing with him for the self-proclaimed "World's Most Dastardishly Amazing Pro Artist". "Pro" being the opposite of "con" here; they'd don different identities and assume different personas — adopt as many fake titles as they could in a week, then seek to be recognized as legitimized experts.
Yet all that suckerism had taken its toll on Arthyr, so he retired to his lair under the streets. It was a cozy kingdom. Every now and then he'd abduct someone and bring them under. It was surprisingly un-creepy and they never pressed charges. But they could never, ever come back, he warned: it becomes like a drug, and the second time in, you'll feel desensitized. Arthyr himself wondered why he kept bringing people down here if the thrill was wearing off.
But this was just part of his life, a phase, a passing sequence of events, and then the pattern would give way to a refreshingly anew thought. Arthyr thought of dialing his bro — they'd been out of touch for ~3 years — but the better part of his heart told him to leave it be.
One memorable night, Arthyr kidnapped a coloratura-alto belle and had her sing for him. She stayed about a week, her flycar still running in the rain, windshield wipers rocking unreliably. But they had spaghetti (he's an excellent cook who likes to dress up in Iron Chef-style costumes, you see), the finest in the Vermeese Countryside, and she felt — for the first time — an emotion which most people simply don't get to experience. It's called glappiness, and I'd explain it to you if words were more beautiful.
Arthyr P. Morridge is still at large. After my one-time personal encounter, his imparted rules for living a glappy life:
- Lack of self-awareness means fulfillment of self.
- Create your own culture.
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The sky's stepped golden shades from the fragile cyan line dividing the dirt from the stellar, burning embers suffocating clouds to all sides. An underworld racing circuit, financed by the decadent and/or bored, edgy enough for the corecore ground yet available in a home game version.
Purple, gold, and black — team colors of Seridice, high-rollin' angst mavens with enough self-conscious angst and baggage to bring the track down. Trained by A-Tet herself, Six-Time League Champion before her Glass Dagger racer came crashing down, wiped out into a plasternium billboard for Jolly Nuts, severing her spine and ending her flesh-life. But she lives on in cyberspace.
Multinational corporation sponsorship? You got it. This is the future of antigravity racing.
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So much science fiction relies on "What if?"
When we think "science fiction", or at least when I think about it, my mind gravitates towards literary or visual media. It makes sense, we had books before movies. But even with sci-fi music, they're often listed as accompaniments — like The Matrix and Hackers soundtracks, to name two marketable ones — and not so much standalone works with a story to tell. Outside of vocals, cinematics are painted when both eyes are closed.
Observation: there's a curious shortage of prog rock fused with techno music altho synths are prominently found in both, but it'd be the ultimate breeding of CHANGE + REPETITION. The DYNAMIC and STATIC. I'd be up for such an instrumental concept album that tells a gripping tale. (Maybe I'll have to make such a thing, you know what they say about "If you want it done right…" according to your own vision.)
So, back to "What if?" This is part of why I'm so enchanted by time travel, alternate realities, parallel universes, and soforth. It's why a natural fraction of my aim with the musical Dream Journal is to bring such notions into sonic dimensions, and over time, to develop those themes of what music might've been made if trends were different. If certain fads extended into longer-term continuities. Less combinatorial minds may cringe, but not those who consider the possibilities!
WHAT IF a music style relegated to oblivion in one universe became the clubbers' compilation special in another? WHAT IF more dubstep was in quintuplets instead of triplets? WHAT IF odd meters were so very ordinary and 4/4 was bizarre? HOW ABOUT the Stateside Electronica "Revolution" having soundly succeeded, as judged by the media? WHAT IF Philip K. Dick had published The Owl In Daylight, was living into a ripe old age, contented to see it become a bible to aspiring producers, much as how Tofflers' The Third Wave served its purpose for techno rebels? And instead of such segregation, ghettoization between IDM and Top 40, WHAT IF our anatomy had evolved differently so that the two coexisted more harmoniously in people's playlist? And WHAT ABOUT a universe where the RIAA doesn't exist, where misconceptions of sampling were debunked in the 1950s? (There's a knockout punch for ya!)
In the mid-90s, I proudly declared punk and disco (to paint a broad stroke, at one 70s-ish time considered abominable, an ideological incompatibility) would get married. I wish I could've found more people at the time who felt the same way, because I never grow weary of sharing my interest with likeminded souls, and some electro house realizes that dream, many years later.
Another thing: I want more anthem trance to not just have gorgeous riff programming, but classical structures and wild solos (psytrance has been fulfilling some of those). Combine the quantized with the swing, the locked grooves with the noodly fingering. Much as the costumes in Dune, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and so many other great sci-fi stories are an amalgamation of historical strains we know today (which it turns out, have an incredibly diverse weave of influences — Newton was right about giants' shoulders), I feel that should be manifested in music more. Not subconsciously or hinted at, nor rudely shouted in your face, but like all good marketing, its message of WHAT ACTION TO TAKE is unmistakable.
Then, "What if?" becomes "What now?" and that is both earnestly endearing and dangerously provocative to me.
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I fancy a well-made mix tape; I just think there's too many people involved in them. The music, that is. I never understood the whole alias/pseudonym thing that's adopted, especially in electronic dance music, to make something in a different style. That sounds like cowardice. Well, I understand apprehensions about prejudice, a la "If they see my name attached, they won't listen" and I'm always one for a pleasant surprise. I also know some producers adopt other names to escape contractual obligations. (Fact: humans are the only species to lay claim to a series of squiggly shapes.) But too often, it doesn't serve a useful purpose, and just confuses the heck out of would-be listeners. There are already too many different people who sound alike. (Exhibit A: trance sub-anthems.)
I'd like to see someONE release a mix album that they completely did (for all effective purposes outside of session players, a collaboration or two, and post-production) and each track could be under a different alias. They wouldn't reveal this until sometime later to collect listeners' reactions — there could be clues in the track titles — and they'd genuinely have to be able to shift into different psych states and produce work which is really not like their "usual" self. Bonus points if they're comparatively unknown to begin with. That way, it elegantly resolves the tension of "Are they the same?" and collects it all in a unified release, instead of scattering singles about.
For that matter, there aren't enough obscure experimental artists who daylight as big pop stars. It'd be discovered too easily but I think brilliance just can't be blinded by boxes, yeah…
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I upgraded to Mac screencasting tool Screenflow 2.0. If you're going to upgrade or buy it anew, use coupon code CPN4942505165 (thanx RetailMeNot!) to save $10. So for the $29 – $10 = $19 upgrade cost I paid, I feel it's fair, and here's why:
Summary
Some cool new stuff. But lots of missed opportunities to be awesome.
What's sad?
It may be a major point revision, but it feels more like a .5 upgrade which it accurately reflects, because there's not enough heavyweight features to make you refresh your workflow in an amazing way.
A number of basic features which would've heavily benefited from polish are unchanged. For example, a new YouTube upload has been added which I haven't tried yet, and that's a cool idea because I often upload to YT. But, when trying to upload to YT with a clip longer than 10 minutes, it pops up an error saying I can't, despite the fact some older accounts can. A minority, perhaps, but worth consideration. It shouldn't assume.
Furthermore, there's still no option to save custom presets, which is a huge disappointment for me, as I make several different types of videos ranging from recording company meetings where smooth motion isn't a requirement, to kinetic video tutorials where fidelity matters. I'd rather not have to hand-type my settings every time I want to change; I suggested this months ago and received acknowledgment but I'm sad it's still not in there. Meanwhile, other tools like iShowU HD do have it.
Furtherfurthermore, there's a new Ducking audio feature which seems promising at first glance, but I couldn't get Ducking to work elegantly. It's just too darn uppity about background hiss and noise and keeps the audio ducked instead of letting go when it needs to. I should be able to set a sensitivity threshold. So, not a well-implemented thing.
The Effects still lack one of the most basic of all, a decent limiter (!). Asked before. A limiter is, in some ways, the equivalent to an audio recorder what an airbag is to a car. The screencast app that comes closest to this is Camtasia for Windows' dynamic adjustment — the Mac version has no such thing. Strange I see so many tips for getting better audio in screencasts, yet not more attention paid to boosting the loudness of your voice sans clipping. Heck, GarageBand has a limiter. Apple knows where it's at. My reasonable dream would be said aforementioned limiter + noise gate and reduction. I can achieve this with my sophisticated plugin chain in other apps like Ableton Live and Sony Vegas, but most people won't bother, they want a simple way, and this is why a limiter for the laypeople is worth implementing.
Also thumbs-down, adjusting transitions feels really fiddly. Why can't I right-click and specify a transition be exactly 1 second? Why doesn't the Transitions Inspector, of all things, let me set that? And why aren't the previews in the TI animated? The transitions do look quite nice. But they're too basic and without essential parameters — for instance, page curl always happens from the top-left corner, which is going to be tough for someone making a book-like presentation. I don't expect a full NLE, but these are fundamental. Guess I'm spoiled by my NewBlueFX.
There's still no intuitive way to setup clip templates, which makes it a pain to apply text styles from one document onto another. There's a "Paste clips" which works somewhat towards the solution within a project, but I'd prefer a dropdown I can select batches of settings from. It'd be highly practical to have more template support overall: I'm tired of manually setting "Pointer Zoom" to 200% with "Click Effect" to "Radar" for one project after another.
Still no way to import one project's media into another without this un-Mac-like workaround? A letdown and obvious opportunity to improve. File > Add Additional Recording almost sounds like it does that, but no, like the older version, it means make a new screen recording, not bring in an existing one. Insert > Choose can't do it, either.
Despite what appeared to be extensive community beta testing, I'm surprised a number of weird, obvious bugs made it through. For instance, the "?" help button in Preferences is broken, leading to "Help Viewer cannot open this content." It's also possible to leave the Transitions Inspector in a stuck state where no document is open. I asked too late to be a beta tester, otherwise I would've gladly helped. 
What's glad!
New editing features stand out. I already made use of speeding a clip up, and putting in still pictures — at last! — is good. (Screenflow has this weird dichotomy of doing some basic things incredibly right, and neglecting others.)
Some little UI touches are really pleasant, like showing the length of a clip in seconds when you drag its edges and redesigning the canvas to not be so damned fiddly about being dragged around. (That was a horrible usability flaw in 1.5.x, because I had to keep undoing all those unwanted moves.) And, the Hide Desktop command is a subtle gem. Also, there's a clip context menu which is a smart notion — but unlike Camtasia Mac, you can't simply right-click the canvas and crop with a single click. Screenflow 2.0 retains the old "Snap to Front Window" which requires four-edge dragging each time. Sigh.
Being able to apply Saturation, Brightness, and Contrast is highly useful, especially for webcam clips. But in addition to Saturation, a Vibrance mode like Photoshop which affects skin tones less — where you can tweak it up and you don't turn into a carrot-person — would be extremely practical.
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I enjoy club life at the Gateau Croissant, even if that doesn't always (or mostly) mean dancing. Besides, too much loud noise is bad for your ears. But it's interesting to watch human behavior, everything you can see when perched on your own quiet corner of the sushi bar — across the room, one couple making out. Nearby, a couple-to-be flirting.
This is how I learn about how people behave when they're together, and the best part is it's completely non-threatening. When I feel like I've had too much, I can just log off, and this world — this other world — goes on, but is relegated to the background. It becomes the diminished reality. And I go about my bio, which is no less interesting or awesome, but definitely a lot quieter. Oh, and we still have Zima Twist here.
I can be the stoic one of the bunch; I've friends who are club promoters, fashionistas, and socialites, and they're glad to have me and my hair — all bunched up with a fleural poking out — around. I provide a source of reliable amusement, from my ultra-rapid handclaps to my recitation of sci-fi trivia, but I know despite all the vapidness with the nightlife, I've grown beyond being a circus attraction. I'm thankful for their company, too. We can all get together and really be our otherselves sans bio-specific slop, and that's what makes this club so enjoyable. Some call it escapism; I'd like to believe we're bettering our personalities over time so we're well-equipped to deal with both faces.
And to stretch out the value of what Peacehol said, wouldn't it be nice to be famous for one half of your life and live the rest in obscurity? That's my approaching condition.
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