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Can I send you some sunshine? There’s loads to spare here…

Posted by Attila - 23/08/08 at 05:08:37 pm

*I wanted to write something nice and a lot more organized; and a lot earlier. Instead here’s all sorts of things in random order*

I’m celebrating my one week anniversary in Dubai, with a bottle of ‘arwa‘ water and a cereal bar. It’s a love-hate relationship and I wonder where it will lead me.

I left my rented apartment in Cambridge in a hurry last Friday; note to self: if you’re moving halfway round the world, please make sure you arrange the actual moving process at least a week before leaving. The last day was basically: cleaning up my flat, waiting for DHL van to pick up my stuff, waiting for real estate agency person to have a final inspection, catching a train to London, getting on plane. I have to say I was lucky, it went mostly as planned, thanks to some great help from my friends.

At Heathrow people let me get through security faster, so I could catch my plane (I pity the people who sat next to me, I was sweating like a race horse). The flight was through Bahrain, during the night and landed without problems in Dubai.

It’s freakin’ HOT here! First I was taken to the Mall of the Emirates to get some basic stuff. That place is huge! *checks little store guide* It has an artificial ski slope, an indoor amusement park, cinema, theater, ~80 restaurants and ~450 shops. Oh, and a Kempinski Hotel. You can see all sorts of famous people here from time to time (like yesterday there were these Hollywood stars in one of the designer fashion stores, instantly creating a huge gob of people around the entrance of it, holding up camera phones to get a cheeky shot of what’s going on in there).

Anyway, after that I was taken to my place (which is temporary). I have this room in this apartment on the 5th floor of this high rise and 3 flat mates to boost (a German girl and a brother and sister from Romania). It’s quite good, and very close to the mall, too.

Have I mentioned it’s HOT here? Add to this, there’s no shade anywhere, but near the massive towers, that are being built constantly (day and night, no stopping, no laws against noise here it seems). Ramadan is right round the corner and it’s the hottest month here. I couldn’t have chosen a better time of the year to come. Because of the heat you go via car even if it’s the next corner. Everything is air conditioned here, but even then you go out, get drenched almost instantly. Mind you I don’t have a car yet. I even need to make a driver license too, so it’s a good month or two until I’ll have one.

…so I go to work via carpool or taxi. There doesn’t seem to be any other form of public transportation, than that. There’s a lot of bus station signs, but I’ve yet to see a bus. There’s a train network being built as well, but that won’t be ready for years. Taxies are alright, the drivers not always. You’re best off guiding them almost corner by corner, otherwise you might end up somewhere random and/or get on the motorway (Salik) and pay extra for it…

Having a car is a must. Everything is spaced out as much as possible, roads and buildings are created organically, there doesn’t seem to be any system behind it at all. On foot everything can be measured in 30 minute distances at least. Building sites are everywhere, around them huge piles of garbage and the occasional dead rat (mostly separated from the road via planks). One has to wonder when the place will be “done”.

My workplace isn’t too far from my flat, which is very good and there’s a fair few Hungarians where I work, which is both a blessing and a curse. English is spoken by most everybody and everywhere.

Food is great and plenty, there’s loads of different things to try. I wonder how this will change as Ramadan comes though…

During this week that I’ve been here I’ve seen Bat Man in the Imax theater in the Ibn Battuta Mall and watched a slightly awkward play in the community theater in the Emirates Mall, too (having Arabic subtitles is a bit weird still, having English dubbing while Arabic actors are playing on stage is a lot more so).

All in all I’m still a bit freaked out by everything that’s been happening around me, but I’m also very curious about what’s round the corner. For now I hope, that my stuff will arrive in one piece (and will probably never buy a desktop computer again, it’s a massive hassle to transport, as much is I love it), and that things will settle down.

Run, I have a musical instrument and I’m not afraid to use it!

Posted by Attila - 11/08/08 at 03:08:58 pm

Well, calling it music is a slight exaggeration…

*Lotsa random links warning*

So I’m mad for all sorts of gadgetry and also have something for electronic music, but people who know me know that already. Recently I came in contact with a fair few musical gadgets and software and I’ve even attempted to make some myself (don’t hold your breath though). I’m totally in love with Yamaha’s Tenori-On as well as the Monome Midi controller. I loved to play around with Propellerhead Rebirth back in the day (would love to try a real TB-303 in real life too if I had the chance) and more recently Reason too. Talking to some people, who are into this kind of thing and subscribing to the RSS of blogs like Synthopia and Matrixsynth, now I also know that I don’t know sh*t about the topic really…

OK, so on to the DS, which as it turns out can be used for all sorts of music making. Not just games like Elektroplankton, Rhythm Tengoku Gold or Daigasso Band Brothers DX (and many others), but it can also be used as a MIDI controller or a tracker! Because these last two are homebrew projects, you need some way to be able to run this sort of software.

When I first heard of the Korg DS-10, I was immediately psyched for it, which led to ordering it through play-asia. The package was delivered by UPS about a week ago (where I found out that the UPS package scanners have an ABC keyboard instead of QWERTY, even the delivery guy had problems with that, yay for standardisation). In a few minutes it was all unpacked (sorry, no 20 minute unboxing video this time), headphones on, volume set to high!

I fired it all up, stylus sliding and tapping like a blur, knobs turning, patterns created, FX connected up and I came up with this:

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Hahaha, I bet you were expecting something pumping! I’m sorry, I just had to recreate this little melody from the Final Fantasy series; plus it also shows that the DS-10 is not only for acid house and Kraftwerk sounds…

The manual is in Japanese, but the cool thing is that the user interface is very intuitive (and all in English!), so it should be all fine. Basically there is a map screen (as seen on the top screen on my pretentious product shot) that shows all the modules you can use to make music and each module has its own screen too. There are two synths, each with its own effects patches, kaossilator pad, keyboard and sequencer. There’s also a drum sequencer with 4 different drum synths and fx patch. Most everything can be automated using the sequencers. With WIFI you can sync up to 8 DSes for maximum jam potential.

It’s amazing that something like this can fit on a DS, but of course it’s not perfect. The negative sides I’d say are the relatively awkward way of switching between modules sometimes, the noise level of the DS itself as well as the fact that the DS-10 doesn’t talk MIDI…

Alright, one more little piece of something I made up, the day after I got it:

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This is an excerpt from the 3rd song on my upcoming album, titled Solar Powered Ferret Fan, I’m sure it will be a smash hit …or not.

P.S.: Bonus! Check out Denkitribe’s work on YouTube! He has some very nice jams, using all sorts of weird instruments (mostly electronic), Korg DS-10 included (somehow I guess that his stuff could sell a lot more DS-10s than mine).

A new era of (Japanese) TV addiction!

Posted by Attila - 03/08/08 at 03:08:13 pm

When I came back from Japan I promised myself, that I’ll find a way to somehow make it possible to watch Japanese TV at home, and a few days ago I did it! It’s called Nihon Nama Terebi and it’s a web service, that uses SlingBox technology, of which I’ve only heard before. Sling Media makes these set top boxes, where you plug in the TV cable and it can stream the channels on the internet.

Until now other solutions I’ve found were usually no “proper” channels, or had horrible quality streams that stalled after a few seconds, if they even started to play.

So I applied for a 2 day trial at NNT, which went easily despite the fact that most of the site is in Japanese. Soon after I got an e-mail with access details… Basically one has to download the SlingPlayer software, which works under Mac and Windows too and enter some information. The quality of the service seems to be very nice and reliable (as much as my own connection is…) and I have 7 channels to choose from.

There are a lot of different shows: of course there’s all the hilarious edutainment shows where all participants get humiliated over and over again. In one I watched, you could see them screaming, with a camera strapped to their foreheads, while riding on the top 30 most thrilling roller coasters around the world. Everybody had a good laugh and learned some interesting facts about physics. There’s a cartload of cooking programs too, and they are not too shy to show all sorts of sea animals chopped up alive, but most of the dishes look absolutely delicious in the end, the presentation is flawless (and they taste delicious too, I promise!). Oh and don’t forget baseball! Ichiro has just reached 3000 career baseball hits! …And women’s golf. And anime, on tap. And daily soaps (called ‘drama’ there, also on tap)

I’ve also seen an episode of Heroes and Desperate Housewives and an awful Jackie Chan movie. These were a bit interesting, Japanese and English dubbing is put into the left and right speakers respectively and you’re better off switching to mono (from the left or right channel) if you value your sanity; something that is probably a remnant of the analog era. There’s an advert that they show on repeat, apparently in 2011 analog TV will be completely phased out.

All in all it’s really addictive, it gave my Japanese learning a big push, as well as reminded me of when I went to Japan: many nights when we got back to the hotel room we watched TV until we fell asleep. Now imagine three grown up men getting excited about a daily soap titled Love & Farm! I guess the novelty factor had something to do with it, but still…

One more thing: did I mention it’s not free? Of course I didn’t. As I’ve calculated though the monthly fee should be similar that of World of Warcraft, so it’s not too bad.

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