Taylor Swift

Whether you’re a Kiss Kompletist or simply fascinated with the career arc of one-time Ace Frehley replacement Vinnie Vincent, recent entries at the Bobby Rock Blog — memoirs of ex-Vinnie Vincent Invasion drummer, Bobby Rock — are a must read, particularly the extensive descriptions of the hellish attempts to measure up to Vincent’s version of click-track perfection. Still, after characterizing Vincent as an exacting taskmaster with few social skills, Rock is hardly unsympathetic, insisting, “I’m the better musician for having endured the rigors of those sessions.”

How about some kind of OCD type vibe as an explanation? Nowadays, we think nothing of diagnosing folks with some form of this. But back then, it wasn’t largely talked about, and we were all far less familiar with it. One could make a case that Vinnie’s behavior had all the classic symptoms. It’s like the guy who can’t leave his house until he knows that all the soup cans are facing label-out in the pantry… and then he has trouble leaving the house without going back and checking on the soup cans multiple times before he actually leaves. Here, Vinnie appeared to have an obsession with the tracks being perfect against the machine, and I know there are maybe a few “behind the scenes” things that a few of us there were privy to that might support this case.

The man was simply a perfectionist who was trying to create an oil painting with watercolors. He was wanting to hear these triggered, programmed-sounding Mutt Lange-style drums du jour, when we were set up to deliver more of a classic, raw, acoustic-drums-in-a-big-room-with-a-live-drummer-bashing kind of thing. But… none of us really knew this at the time.

Consider the context. Up until the early 80s, virtually everything had live drums on it. Pop, rock, soul, even disco. But Vinnie was someone who liked all kinds of music, and I knew he listened to a lot of the standard pop stuff from the mid-80s, as well. (Forever a student of good songwriting, no matter the genre.) At the same time, Vinnie was a serious player, and he appreciated serious musicianship. So I think Vinnie was having trouble finding a balance between these two opposing concepts: he loved the modern, rock-solid, big drum approach of either programmed or programmed-sounding drums; but he also loved a drummer who could play a bunch of crazy shit, as well. So these sessions were largely about Vinnie trying to reconcile these two concepts… without really knowing he was trying to reconcile them.

A final question I get from time to time: Would I ever work with Vinnie Vincent again? My answer? A few prerequisite inquiries aside… hell yes. Vinnie Vincent is a bad motherfucker, and truly bad motherfuckers are almost as extinct these days as the main man himself.

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April 6th, 2016: In actual psycholinguistic papers they draw their own shapes but *I* used default Photoshop shapes because I am a PROFESSIONAL ARTIST (just not the kind that draws). – Ryan

Chris King, a game designer at Paradox Development Studio, says the key to making strategy games like Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings is knowing how much history to include...and leave out. ...

Kevin Gallo just announced Bash support on Windows.

If you have never had to interact with the Windows Batch language, this might not seem like such a big deal. Surely Batch could not be substantially worse than Bash, right?

Bash: a language that was neither designed, nor evolved. An adequate solution to a problem that has since become orders of magnitude harder. As arcane as it is useful, as dangerous as it is ubiquitous, Bash: the language that asks how much we are willing to give up for convenience’s sake?

Sure, Bash could be worse. But substantially worse? Bash had one value proposition: it was just good enough. It is difficult to imagine that it would have flourished as it has, if that had that not been true.

But the truth is what it is. Batch is substantially worse. And how much worse sort of beggars belief. Look:

• The time a batch script takes to execute is at least O(n*(n-1)/2) (aka O(n^2)) in the LENGTH OF THE FILE, INCLUDING COMMENTS. The reason is that the batch engine reads the entire file, then executes a line, then reads the file again, then executes another line, and so on.
• It is therefore customary to use a GOTO to skip over sizable comment blocks, so that you don’t have to “execute” them.
• The lines inside “lexical” blocks like those of the for loop are not interpreted separately. They are CONCATENATED TOGETHER AND INTERPRETED ALL AT ONCE, meaning that if do something as innocuous as adding a :: comment inside a for loop or an if block, the terminating ) will go missing and batch will not know what to do. It will think that you forgot to add a ) to close the for loop.
• Never comment out code. If you, do bad things will eventually happen. For example, on some Windows systems, the REM-style comment, REM Ensure > true, will actually pipe the “output” of the comment to a file called true. Since comments have no output, the effect is to generate an empty file called true.
• Variable expansion occurs at PARSE TIME, not evaluation time. This is particularly bad in the case of blocks like for and if, because all the lines in the block are concatenated together and parsed at once. So, normally if you call something like findstr inside a for block, you would expect %errorlevel% to be set to indicate whether there was an error. But, it’s not. The variable %errorlevel% is never updated, because it was assigned whatever value it had when Batch PARSED THE for BLOCK. The statement if %errorlevel% neq 0 is therefore completely meaningless inside a for block.
• If you add 2 :: comments in a for block, you will get errors that claim The system cannot find the drive specified and there is a possibility that your script will exit with error code 123. This happens because (in spite of popular guidance that you should use :: as a comment) it turns out that the :: comment syntax is actually not a comment at all, but a LABEL, and in label syntax, :: must be at the beginning of the line with no leading whitespace, and two consecutive labels causes batch to freak out, because batch concatenated them together into the same line.

And the list goes on and on.

When I was in college a few years ago, I thought that PowerShell was a fun take on what a modern shell could look like. It is not. PowerShell is the cure for polio, and Jeffrey Snover is the Jonas Salk of the Windows ecosystem.

Batch is like an alien device that has appeared on the earth, and at first you think it’s a gift, but then you realize it is a machine of destruction, here to raze your society to the ground, and the only viable solution is to find a way to rid yourself of it completely.

Like the Necronomicon or some other Satanic book, Batch does not seem so bad at first, but when the correct medium (in this case, the computer) reads the words, you find that a portal to hell has opened and suddenly the trees are coming alive and you’re being sucked into your computer screen you’re thinking about how 10 minutes ago your biggest problem was whether you were going to get to the store in time tonight to grab that macaroni you like, and now, as you are floating through the demon portal, you’re just wondering why this thing didn’t come with a warning on this side or something like that.

Bash is like the neighbor who seems nice and sweet, but maybe they don’t have a life you’d want to have personally. They have some pretty serious character flaws and obviously make mistakes, but in the end they are a nice person who tries hard to make sure the people that depend on them are doing ok.

Batch is the guy who looks like that neighbor, but then turns out to be a serial killer.

So, here we are. This is the reality of the Windows world. Yesterday, your choice was Batch or PowerShell. Today your choice is Batch, PowerShell, or Bash. (Well, it’s not really as simple as that, but you get my point.)

And as you make your choice, it’s worth visiting the graves of the fallen.

MMOs continue to be weird, but Eve is particularly so [via] 

ProudNet is a server and network engine used by Street Fighter V's online multiplayer mode. Learn how ProudNet can help you on your next online multiplayer game. ...

Disco Halal is repressing this 1984 nugget produced by Tony Carey from Yellow Power. Beware : can contains some saxos and guitar solo that don't fit every ears...

Yokota is a 20-year-old student with blonde hair who we met on the street in Harajuku.

Her look features a resale plaid shirt over a resale black turtleneck sweater, H&M black ripped skinny jeans, and Dr. Martens boots. Accessories – some of which came from Fig&Viper – include a hair tie, necklace, and UNIF backpack.

Yokota told us that her favorite brands are Fig&Viper and Dr. Martens. Find her on Twitter for more info.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Juria is a 19-year-old fashion student – originally from Okinawa – who we often see around the streets of Harajuku.

Her look features red/orange hair under a Thrasher cap, a graphic hoodie by B級糞SYSTEM (from Punk Do Okinawa) with a handmade crust punk patches skirt, and resale Dr. Martens boots. Accessories include leather bracelets and a patched Hentaiworks backpack from Pogotown Okinawa (with a plush Kirby charm).

Juria’s favorites shops/brand include Punk Do, Pogotown, Never Mind the XU, and Blackberry Okinawa. Her favorite bands are Dotsuitarunen, ALKSLK, and The Rodeos. Juria is active on both Instagram and Twitter if you’d like to follow her adventures in Harajuku and Okinawa.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

I picked the winner, time to go to the track  

A rebuke to PC Music?

[Video][Website]
[6.00]Madeleine Lee: “Work” is a song you can vogue to. It has the qualities I admire in people who can vogue: deceptively straightforward moves and a cool demeanor, at a speed so relentless it’s lethal.
[6]

Crystal Leww: SOPHIE and PC Music made waves last year for their brand of pseudo-intellectual experiments in classing up pop music. I hated it — pop has always been worthy of serious consideration — and hated the way those acts benefited from feminine signifiers and imagery without slogging through the real shit that women in dance music endure. In addition, the music was unbound by rules in a really boring, unlistenable way. DUCKY’s music is similarly weird and internet-influenced without divorcing itself from the first rule of dance music, which is to make people dance. “Work” chugs along at a crazy high BPM, a collection of whistles and bumps and stomps and a repeated, pitch-shifted “work.” “Work”‘s incredible pop and dance sensibilities make the point that it’s trying to make stick further: a fuck you to the perception that women making dance music have shadowy male SOPHIE’s masterminding their work. DUCKY’s vocals here sound sickly, even condescendingly sweet even while she’s telling everyone “baby please I’ll decimate you with one hand over my eyes.” The line “I don’t need to replicate you but I’ll teach you for a bill” sounds like a deliberate dig at the rabid PC Music fanboys of the world. This is the sound of a producer demanding their goddamn respect while refusing to remove the qualities that have prevented them from getting that respect.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: On another track “all I do is work” would come off sad or weary or at least have those undertones, but not here; it’s a dispatch from total hyperfocused flow. And another producer would probably want the exact cutesy cadence — you know the one, you’re probably expecting it — that the vocals deliberately shut down.
[8]

Iain Mew: Maddeningly catchy in a way that makes my response live up to its demands: on the basis of this song I don’t really like her, but I do respect her skill.
[5]

Cédric Le Merrer: My life these days is far removed from the clubs this is meant to be played in, but this resonates somehow. I’m alternating the pressures of being a new father and having a new job. I work all day staring at spreadsheets and at night I sleep on the floor next to the baby bed. The ebb and flow of the track don’t remind me so much of an intoxicated dancefloor experience as it does being sleep deprived in an open space and running on sugar and caffeine. I relate to these songs about working all the time, but not the part about it being empowering, though.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: The world doesn’t need a Bmore club take on 20 Fingers.
[1]

Brad Shoup: She’s not that far off from footwork. Anyway, I love how committed she is to the duck thing, from the line about the bill to the way the title morphs into quack and back again. The track itself is frantic: the low-end pumps as it keeps up with Ducky’s vocal, the whistles recall Miami bass. I’m imagining an EDM bro spinning on the floor like a cartoon tornado.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: Here I was, all ready to go to bat for the manic Nest Hq / Activia Benz sound, but “Work” isn’t really a strong to take super strong position on. It’s a solid number and in our current pop environment a nice new angle on “work,” but ultimately feels more like a warm-up to something bigger in the mix.
[5]

More and more people are discovering the joy of Neko Atsume, a uniquely charming cat-collecting app that's easy to drop in and out of.

interactive musical experiment  

A Tribe Called Quest MC Phife Dawg dies at the age of 45

Rapper Malik Isaac Taylor, better known as A Tribe Called Quest's Phife Dawg, has died. He was 45 years old. Taylor had been suffering health problems for several years; he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1990 and received a kidney transplant from his wife in 2008.

Taylor grew up in Queens, New York, where he founded A Tribe Called Quest with school friends Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Mohammed. The group released their debut album People's Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm in 1990 to considerable critical acclaim. The album kicked off a trilogy – continued by 1991's The Low End Theory and concluded with 1993's Midnight Marauders – that is widely recognised as one of the greatest and most influential album sequences in the history of hiphop. Parallel to this, the group formed the Afrodelic collective Native Tongues with De La Soul and Jungle Brothers, whose cultural impact can still be felt today in the work of artists like Shabazz Palaces, THEESatisfaction and Open Mike Eagle.

Though often overshadowed by the charismatic and hyperactive Q-Tip, Taylor was appreciated by fans for his sharp wit and earthy preoccupations. The MC was unafraid to flip his own health issues into an artful boast, dropping the line "When's the last time you heard a funky diabetic?" on 1993's "Oh My God".

A Tribe Called Quest's last two albums, 1996's Beats, Rhymes And Life and 1998's The Love Movement, were co-produced by Detroit beatmaker Jay Dee, later known as J Dilla, who alongside Pete Rock ahd Hi-Tek worked on Taylor's only solo album, 2000's Ventilation: Da LP. A follow-up with the working title of MUTTYmorPHosis was reputedly in the works.

Let's Go To Hell: Scattered Memories Of The Butthole Surfers published by James Burns of The Anal Obsession website

A new book lifts the lid on life inside The Butthole Surfers, one of the most chaotic yet original rock groups of the 1980s. James Burns’s Let's Go To Hell: Scattered Memories Of The Butthole Surfers is the culmination of over two decades of gathering information on the Texan band, much of which was originally collated on Burns’s The Anal Obsession website. The book is now available in a new paperback edition, which follows Burn’s self-published first version of last year.

“Music journalist Charles M Young had the idea for the book a long time ago,” Burns recounts. “But being friends with the band meant they would endlessly lead him on wild goose chases about their origins, making up fake bands that supposedly existed in the early San Antonio ‘scene’.” Burns, a New Yorker, picked up on the band years after their records were released. “I am probably the only person who was able to get any factual information,” he argues. “By actually not knowing the band, being so far removed, that is the only way I was able to write.”

The problem with documenting the career of The Butthole Surfers, a group who soaked up psychedelic drugs and cultivated their reputation as merry pranksters, is separating fact and fiction. They were notorious for bizarre interviews, notably conducting one in bed surrounded by beer and pizza while seemingly tripping on acid. “The Anal Obsession web page documents nearly all of their concerts, so I had the frame of reference of where they were and when,” Burns says. “I had been in contact with many of their friends and former band members, and often heard similar stories, so I pieced them together in to some semblance of the truth.”

In the 1990s The Butthole Surfers were hailed as precursors of grunge. “There were a few years between, say, 1987–91, if it wasn’t for The Butthole Surfers filling that void, I am not sure what would have happened,” says Burns. The Surfers' use of tape editing, loops and vocal manipulation has also exerted a strong influence on noise music, as well as psychedelic explorers of various shades, in the decades that followed.

The group never officially split up, but its members have followed separate paths in recent years. “I had been asking questions via their online forum, and Paul [Leary] and King [Coffey] were answering questions like that,” Burns explains. “We chatted at length... Jeff [Pinkus] and Teresa [Nervosa] too… as well as all the members of past incarnations. They all hate talking about the band. It’s the one thing they all have in common.”

The notable absence from the book is Gibby Haynes, perhaps the main driving force of the group. “They have been misrepresented in the press so often, it was understandable they were a bit squeamish about the idea of a book,” Burns concedes. “Gibby never did agree to speak to me, but I completely understand where he was coming from. Paul Leary, however, really is a genius when it comes to equipment and recording and production techniques. The last half of the book goes into their discography and I was able to finally get the sleevenotes missing from their albums... Here’s a scoop: the Ibanez DM1100 digital delay holds many of the secrets.”

The Butthole Surfers’ last studio album was released in 2001, but a live album Live At The Forum London emerged in 2008. “The band will never be ‘broken up’,” states Burns. “There is a bond much stronger than just friendship. We may get an another studio album one day, another tour is much less likely, but who knows for sure? One thing I can say after all these years of following them is to never try to predict what they might do next.”

Let's Go to Hell: Scattered Memories Of The Butthole Surfers is out now. More information is available at The Anal Obsession website.

GTA V hacked to follow a single deer as it randomly roams the landscape  

It’s spring, and for hopelessly obsessed cinephiles, that means one thing: film festival season! But where to go? Cannes is too corporate, Sundance is too Redford-y – plus, you know, you don’t feel like traveling thousands of miles and spending ungodly amounts of money to watch a bunch of milquetoast studio wannabes in a room full of desperate, sweaty industry types. Ah, but this is Boston. And if you’ve been haunting the beantown weirdo cinema scene for any length of time, you already know that all those other festivals are irrelevant. Because we have BUFF.

Currently in its eighteenth year, the Boston Underground Film Festival offers a dependably electric assortment of local talent and international lunacy, world premieres and cult exhumations, and, quite frequently, things that are simply impossible to describe. Highlights of this year’s roster include the Polish vampire-mermaid film The Lure; a Tuareg-language Prince homage entitled Rain the Color Blue with a Little Red In It (there is no Tuareg word for “Purple”); Ross Sutherland’s VHS-infused multimedia live performance Stand By for Tape Back-Up; the recently rediscovered 1977 Japanese animated mindfuck Belladonna of Sadness; Blood of the Tribades, the new lesbian vampire homage by local darlings Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein; live appearances by genre legends Frank Henenlotter (debuting his new feature Chasing Banksy) and Larry Fessenden (presenting a 15th anniversary screening of his own The Wendigo); and several programs of mind-bending short subjects.

All of this is to say: you really need to get your ass over to the Brattle and the HFA to check some of this out. And keep an eye on this spot for daily reviews from the Hassle’s intrepid team of Film Flam correspondents. Robert Redford is all well and good, after all, but he’s no drunken, Satanic bunny rabbit.

Click here for tickets, showtimes, and additional info

Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Nina Freeman. I'm a level designer at Fullbright, working on Tacoma. I also work on games on my own time, including the recently released Cibele. Cibele is a game based on a true story about a young woman and a young man who meet up to have sex after forming a relationship in an online game. I'm interested in making video games that are focused on concise stories with complex and honest characters. I want these games to support player-character embodiment and performance, because I strive to help players come away from the games I work on with a sense that they were able to perform as a character, or at least better understand their experience in an intimate way.

What hardware do you use?

I have a home PC, a work PC and a Macbook Air. At Fullbright, I work in Unity on PC at a nifty standing desk. That PC has two monitors, and I have one of them positioned vertically. I do most of my scripting on the vertical monitor and other Unity stuff on the horizontal one.

My home PC is getting pretty old, as it was built for me by some friends when I was in college in 2010-ish. They made it from scratch with nice parts we bought on NewEgg. I use it primarily to make Windows builds and for playtesting my personal work. I also sometimes work on Tacoma from home using my home PC. However, for some reason I bought a black keyboard with black letters so.. sometimes it can be hard to type, haha. It was probably not the best choice, but otherwise the setup works fine.

For my personal work, I usually work on my Macbook Air. My Macbook Air is my pride and joy, as I have slowly completely covered it in cute stickers. There's also an old, holographic Pikachu sticker I found in my parents attic gracing the front of it, as a centerpiece. I also almost always work with a mug in my hand. For personal work, I often work out of cafes, so I drink a lot of chai lattes out of cute mugs at a local shop!

Oh yeah, and I always have a lot of plushies on my desks, both at home and at work. Being surrounded by plushies while working all day is definitely a good thing!

And what software?

Unity has been my main game making platform this year. Before Unity, I primarily worked in ActionScript 3 using the Flixel library and Adobe Air. I sometimes use Adobe Photoshop to make temp graphics or in-game text. For these Flash games, the text editor I use is Sublime Text 2. I have also dabbled in Audacity in order to make simple sound effects and record scratch dialogue.

Outside of Flash and Unity, I have dabbled in Twine and Ruby/Rails.

What would be your dream setup?

My dream set up would be a new MacBook Pro and a new custom built PC. It's always been pretty important for me to develop and test simultaneously on both platforms, so being up to date with the hardware is important. I also think, perhaps even more important than the hardware, is the desk and chair. I don't have a very comfortable place to sit and work at home, and I find myself getting sore a lot. Whereas, at the Fullbright office, my setup is very comfortable. As someone who makes games all day every day, having a comfortable place to do it is really important. So, some kind of comfy desk and chair situation with new Mac and PC hardware would be my dream setup.

---

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Toshimi (20), Toy (20), and Paco (19) caught our eye with their monochrome looks on the famous Cat Street in Harajuku.

Toshimi – on the left with silver hair – is wearing an Opening Ceremony sweatshirt with Uniqlo skinny jeans and Dr. Martens shoes. Accessories include a WEGO plush clutch and Vivienne Westwood accessories. Toshimi’s favorite musical group is Big Bang. Find him on Instagram or Twitter for more pictures.

Toy – in the middle with sunglasses – is wearing an Opening Ceremony coat over a Richardson button up shirt, Gap skinny jeans, and Dr. Martens boots. His clutch bag is from Chanel. Toy’s favorite brands are Richardson and Chanel and he likes K-Pop music. He is also active on Instagram and Twitter.

Paco – on the right with blonde hair – is wearing a Spinns jacket over a MORPH8NE button up shirt, Spinns skinny jeans, a leather tote bag, and YRU boots. His favorite fashion brand is MORPH8NE and he likes the music of BTS and Seventeen. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

…the Bruisers, of course, being the first. Via Change.org, Brian Kelly takes issue with the fact, “there is currently no statue of Portsmouth native Ronnie James Dio, paragon of Rock and Roll, anywhere in Portsmouth.”

Ronnie James Dio is a hero and a champion of art and deserves to be memorialized forever on his native soil. This petition is to help bring a statue, bust or memorial of Ronnie James Dio (born Ronald James Padavona; July 10, 1942 – May 16, 2010) to an agreed upon location in Prescott Park the South End of Portsmouth, NH

Dio was a musician that had, and still has, a great influence on many in the music industry. There are currently other towns and cities with Dio’s likeness, but at this time, his birthplace has nothing. Mr. Dio sold over 47 million albums in his life and is still selling today. He was a heavy hitter in bands like Elf, Rainbow, Dio, Black Sabbath and more. His contributions are undeniable. We have to do something.

This petition will help gauge and demonstrate interest in a tribute we can all agree upon. The tribute itself will be crowd or city funded (through provisions set aside in Portsmouth to pay for artistic installations) and multiple designs will be presented before asking for approval. We truly hope the city of Portsmouth will help us find the right tribute to one of the most influential musicians of our time.

We would love to see him him to be depicted as he was in the video for “Holy Diver}, sword in hand, ready to fight for the Arts and what is right. We understand this might not coincide with the wishes of all, so we will of course work with the estate of Mr. Dio to determine how they would like him depicted.

My friends Jean, Andi, and Jose Luis are organizing a post-punk festival in NYC in August, featuring an incredible line up of artists from various times and places. Highly recommend attending if you are able!

Facebook event page with further info and links

Flyer:

Nintendo's social app is fun, funny, and easy to use, even if you're not in Japan.

A reader named Discord_Inc asked a quick question about early-era Pokémon the other day, so I thought I’d take a look.

I was replaying Pokemon Red in honor of the series 20th anniversary when I noticed something. If you check the TV in the lower floor of your house it tells you a movie is playing with four boys walking along the railroad tracks. I realize now that’s supposed to be a reference to Stand by Me, which sort of fits in a weird way.

I was curious if the Japanese version also references Stand by Me or if it has a different coming of age file. I’m also curious what the film is in other regions, but that might be a better question to ask the comments.

Here’s a look at the text in question:

Pocket Monsters Red Version (Game Boy)	Pokémon Red Version (Game Boy)

And here’s the the text side-by-side for comparison:

Japanese Version (basic translation)	English Version
There’s a movie playing on the TV!	There’s a movie on TV.
4 boys are walking on a railroad track……	Four boys are walking on railroad tracks.
…… I better get going too!	I better go too.

So it looks like the Japanese text indeed references the railroad scene from Stand By Me too, rather than a different movie altogether.

Stand By Me was such a big phenomenon in Japan that I kind of expected this to be the case. They even sold special versions of the movie so Japanese people could learn English!

And it’s even permeated the Japanese boy band industry!

Getting back to games, off the top of my head I know that MOTHER for the Famicom referenced the movie too:

MOTHER (Famicom)	EarthBound Beginnings (NES/Wii U)

Japanese Version (basic translation)	English Version
One time when I was little I walked through the tunnel.	I remember walking through the tunnel when I was young.
I went to see a dead body.	I went to see what was on the other side.

I guess the removal of the dead body in the English text removed the Stand By Me reference though. But the point is that the movie has worked its way into Japanese culture in such an interesting way that I’d like to study it more myself.

You know, this gets me wondering what other Japanese games, movies, etc. might reference Stand By Me. For some reason I feel like there are plenty more, so if you know of any let me know!