As PC sound quality improved, game composers increasingly sought recognition of the legitimacy of their art. Throughout the early 90s, various attempts were made at making game music more mainstream and accepted. In some cases, composers attempted to create more serious music. LucasArts' Loom, which was released in 1990, sported a MIDI soundtrack with nothing but arrangements of Tchaikovsky works, culminating in a final section played to the tune of Swan Lake. Michael Land's music for The Dig (LucasArts 1995) was almost a movie soundtrack, with a blatantly apparent (and intended) Wagnerian influence.

Some companies weren't so successful in their attempts to legitimize or commercialize their music. Sierra On-Line released King's Quest VI in 1992, and wrote a pop song with the game's romantic couple singing a duet, akin to "Somewhere Out There". They launched a massive marketing campaign linking the song to the game, and then sent CDs of the song to disc jockeys all over America. I don't think I heard the song played a single time in the months around the game's release.

This attempt to disseminate game soundtracks in spite of their games continues today. Since 1998, the senior music producer at Sierra has been petitioning for the addition of a "game music" category in the Grammy Awards, although I'm not sure how far that has progressed. In 2000, Blizzard Entertainment took an animated cutscene from its game, Diablo II, and played it in the previews of various mainstream movies. This allowed its animation, graphics, and music to be considered for awards as a video short.

Meanwhile back in the 90s, the expanded storage capabilities of CDs brought about the end of mass MIDI use. When gamers heard how much better game music sounded as CD audio, more and more companies followed the LucasArts method and recorded their music as extra tracks. This procedure had two major flaws. First, the music had to fight for space with the actual game data, which was growing exponentially larger every year. Most CDs with real games on them only had enough extra room for about a half hour of CD music. This brought back an interest in looped themes, and limited the scope of soundtracks within games.

CD music also destroyed music played on the fly. Where MIDI music could segue or alter based on in-game events, CD music was limited to starting, pausing, and stopping. It was best used for games where a constant theme played in the background, like real-time strategy games such as Blizzard's Warcraft II in 1995.

MIDI music's popularity was briefly prolonged with the introduction of inexpensive daughter-cards by Roland and Yamaha, which attached to an existing card and provided support for wavetable synthesis, the high quality sampling method used by Roland's more expensive modules. Wavetable synthesis is still used today as a musician's tool, but the large disparity in quality of daughter-cards kept MIDI from remaining the primary musical tool. Today, most soundcards come equipped with wavetable synthesis right out of the box, but it's rarely used except in the demo MIDI files that come with your computer.

Instead of MIDI, game composers turned to real recorded music, often recorded in a traditional studio with a mix of acoustic and electronic instruments. The first popular game to break away from the MIDI mold was Origin's Crusader: No Regret in 1995. It used sampled sounds to create a pumping techno beat for its arcade action. The action-techno style of music was first popularized with the Doom series, and has been used in numerous shooter games since.

Also in 1995, LucasArts released Full Throttle, a game about a misanthropic biker named Ben. The soundtrack for this game featured music by the heavy metal band, Gone Jackals (MP3, 813KB), obviously recording the music in its entirety, rather than recording just the sounds used to create the music. 1998's Grim Fandango also used this approach, creating a soundtrack of swing and bebop influences that perfectly complemented one of the most sophisticated adventure games ever written (MP3, 406KB).

Finally, in the "pretty but stupid" category of games was Origin's Ultima IX in 1999. Although the game itself doesn't warrant much attention, the soundtrack is notable for utilizing the efforts of a full orchestra. Because the songs of the Ultima series have so much history, very little leeway was permissable for the composer, resulting in lush but traditional songs. This soundtrack marked the next peak in game music, when sampled and recorded musical scores had reached a plateau of quality.

Tomorrow: Nintendo 64 and Ambient Music

It's time for another four day weekend. I finished off my XML research towards the end of the week here and will spend the weekend designing the interface between the Music Fundamentals Shockwave apps and the web browser. Essentially, the apps will report on the progress of the student user after every activity. The web page where the app is hears this report and tells another program to record that information to a student progress file. I haven't decided whether to do this with an applet, a servlet, or more Shockwave yet, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

This first half should take about a month to code and test. Once it's sound, I'll start the second half, which involves writing an Instructor tool to quickly tabulate student files in meaningful ways. Hopefully my final product will be better than the chicken-feces approach used in Practica Musica.

The basketballers beat PBS&J last night 120-105. Or not so much "beat" as "lost to", and not so much "120" as "20".

I did house stuff all day today. My parents even came out to lend a hand. Tomorrow will probably be more of the same, followed by a new episode of Alias. If I haven't already sent you the guided tour, you can see pictures in a new part of the Photos section, labelled "House" for good reason. There's also a blown up version with some movies here .

Yesterday's notable search terms:

nitrosomonas supplier, listen to movement for rosa by camphouse, montana nudist colonies, improvising chord, carl halmo, greenland teenage smoking, chris fraker

Happy Valentine's Day to all my hoochies .

Listening to the Scissor Sister's song, Return to Oz reminded me of the 1985 movie by the same name. Though it was a sequel in name to Wizard of Oz, it was much darker and easily one of the scarier movies ever billed as a kids' movie. The plot involved Dorothy escaping from a mental institution where they did electroshock therapy and returning to an Oz which has been destroyed for years. Everyone is turned to stone, and the land is overrun with Skeksies, psychedelic clowns with wheels for feet. There's also an evil witch who has a hallway of heads, where she goes to wear a different one every day.

As crazy as that summary sounds, this movie was actually closer to the Oz books than the original movie, and most of it is based directly on the writings of L. Frank Baum's thirteen book series. I read the books as a kid but they're no longer in print. Thankfully, they're fully online now.

Anyone else remember being scared of this movie as a kid?

Happy Singles-Awareness Day! There's a big bowl of Valentine's Day candy on my desk at work if you want any. Pay no attention to the fact that it's been there since Halloween -- Jolly Ranchers are the ancient Greek candy of love, and Hershey's Kisses are inherently smooch-themed anyhow. You also won't find any gross powdery-tasting conversation hearts in my bucket -- the only way they'd ever be good is if they were made out of Sweettarts.

When I was in elementary school, we were required to create little valentine receptacles out of construction paper and hang them along the underside of the chalkboard. Then, the entire class would get up en masse and distribute cards to the rest of the class. The main rule was that if you made a valentine for someone, you also had to make one for each person in the rest of the class. So no one would feel left out, teachers would distribute class rosters to all the parents in the week before. For Valentines 2006, I dug into my file cabinet for the Big Bag Of Valentines, containing all the cards and letters from twenty-five years of holidays, birthdays, and graduations. You can tell the bag is old because it came from Peoples Drug, a pharmacy that sat in strip malls in the late 80s next to Trak-Auto and Dart Drug.

Last November, I wrote about Jesse King and his amazing Origami Valentine skills. Here is the card he sent to every single person in my first grade class.

In second grade, cards with Garfield on the front seemed to be all the rage. I can't even remember what kind of cards I gave to people, but they were probably on sale with a Limit of 6, please, and I probably used the same cards every year since we had bought them in bulk by going in and out of the store multiple times.

I got this valentine from my friend Jennie in second grade. It says, "This is no fish story, teacher, I'm hooked on you! You're the best!". I', pretty sure I wasn't the teacher, but then again, there are a lot of things I don't remember about elementary school.

The Valentine folder-stuffing tradition lasted until 3rd or 4th grade, after which they phased it out in favour of chasing girls on the playground. Apparently the childhood ego becomes strong enough that it doesn't require state-sanctioned card distribution in 4th grade.

This next one isn't exactly a valentine, but I found it in the bag and had to post it.

In third grade, I did a book report on The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. As part of the report, I wrote a letter to the author, asking if she would come to my school and read to us. The fact that she lived in Washington state pretty much made my request useless, but now I can say that I have an autographed postcard from a famous author. When times are tough and my house (which I have now owned for exactly two years) is about to be foreclosed, I plan on selling the postcard on eBay for several thousand dollars.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, we are now selling frozen turkey hearts to interested visitors. The first ten to act will also receive other assorted giblets, like the liver and gizzard. Please make checks payable to The URI! Zone (refrigerated shipping extra). And now, on with the show!

Capsule Review Day
(there are no spoilers in these reviews)

Idiocracy
After some initial hype, this movie seems to have skipped the theatres completely, probably because of the premise that corporate entities like Costco and Carl Jr.'s have taken over the world five hundred years in the future. Written by Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, and Office Space, this movie satirizes the dumbing down of modern society in the same way that his previous movie satirized office jobs. It's light on substance, but fun enough to watch once, and Luke Wilson is his usual harmless self in the lead role. The biggest problem with this movie (and to a lesser extent, Office Space) is that while Judge makes some hilarious observations about his subject matter, he's not quite as good at stringing them all together in a meaningful storyline. This movie probably would have been better as a series of brief skits on MadTV rather than a feature length film.
Final Grade: B-

Unknown
I'd never even heard of this movie until I walked into Blockbuster, despite its all-star cast, but I was pleasantly surprised. Five men wake up in a locked warehouse with no memory of who they are or why they're there. From these contrived Saw-like beginnings, a tightly-drawn psychological puzzle emerges when the five realize that a kidnapping went south, with two of them being the kidnappees. They've only got a couple hours to escape or figure out who the bad guys are before the rest of the kidnappers return with the ransom. The plot drags a little whenever they cut to the outside world (a subplot of cops chasing the other kidnappers), but overall it's an effective Memento-style whodunit. The final-final twist is a little too clever and probably unnecessary, but it's still a fun way to end the movie.
Final Grade: B+

Illusionist
Having been taught a lesson by the debacle that was Gosford Park, I usually tend to avoid any movie that looks like a period piece. I'd sooner listen to Rasputina's remake of Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll on infinite loop than watch Kirsten Dunst prance around as Marie Antoinette. I picked this one up only because I know Edward Norton could win an Oscar for his role as a nanoparticle in the movie adaptation of Prey, and had a blind faith that he could save this movie. Don't let the turn-of-the-century trappings scare you away from Illusionist: it's not a period piece; it's just a very well-done movie that happens to be set in a period. The movie's both engrossing and fun and the performances are top-notch throughout, even with "That Sideways Merlot guy" as the head of the police.
Final Grade: A

24 - Season Four
Out of the first four seasons of 24, this could be the least annoying season ever. This is a high accolade in my book, and shows that the writers of 24 are getting better at exploiting the formula every season. Thankfully, the most annoying actress from previous seasons is no longer on the show, and there are some great new introductions, like the perfectly-detestable indecisive Vice President. The season peters out a bit at the end, but the overall pacing is tight, and cougar storylines are kept to a bare minimum.
Final Grade: A-

24 - Season Five Prequel
As an extra, the DVD sets like to include mini-prequels, ten minute episodes not shown on TV that bridge the gap between seasons. The season four prequel was mildly entertaining, but this one was horrible. It was essentially a ten minute commercial for Toyoto which involved Jack Bauer driving around a lumber yard. Not since Alias has there been such a pitifully disguised product placement.
Final Grade: F--

Capsule Review Day: TV Shows (Part I of II)

there are no major spoilers in these reviews

In a format blatantly stolen from the Sunday Source, you can find my thoughts on every full season of TV show I own or have watched. Use this if you're looking for something new to watch in these cold winter months, and let me know if you want to borrow something! Have another show to recommend? Use the Comments section!

24 (Thriller):
Counter-terrorist agent, Jack Bauer, saves the world in a continuous twenty-four hour span. High in intensity and mindless entertainment if you can stomach a few horrible actors and more inter-office backstabbing than a high school girls' clique. I've watched five of the six available seasons.

4400 (Sci-Fi):
4400 humans vanish into thin air at various points in the twentieth century and they all suddenly reappear in the present day. Cheesy effects are counterbalanced by smart writing and interesting characters. Fourth season recently aired on TV.

Alias (Spy Thriller / Character Drama):
Sydney Bristow thinks she's working for the CIA but discovers she works for the enemy, as does her father. The two try to take down the enemy from the inside while its criminal mastermind works to solve the mystery of Milo Rambaldi, an ancient prophet who may have discovered the secrets of immortality. Ended after five seasons.

Arrested Development (Mockumentary):
A narrated comedy about a rich, dysfunctional family. One episode alone will not turn you -- but the laughs reach a critical mass as you realize that every episode's inside jokes builds upon previous ones. Cancelled.

Boston Public (School Drama):
This show never made it to DVD, but I really wish it would. Tells the stories of public high school life from the perspective of the teachers. The first two seasons were excellent. The later seasons featured Mini-Me hiding in a locker to give students test answers and were not so hot. Cancelled after four seasons.

Dexter (Crime / Character Drama):
A blood-spatter specialist on the police force is also a serial killer, albeit one with a social conscience.

Firefly (Sci-Fi / Western):
Captain Reynolds and his crew fly through the "Wild West" of space, taking odd jobs and staying one step ahead of law and order. Cancelled during the first season

Freaks and Geeks (Sitcom / Drama):
High school stories of the geeks and weirdos.

Friends (Sitcom):
Twenty-somethings living in New York City. Obvious brain-dead comedy, which is sometimes exactly what you want.

To be continued next week...(Heroes through Veronica Mars)

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

1:27 AM: Returning from one of our rare nights out in D.C. and going to bed.		9:15 AM: Booty wakes us up by stepping on our faces.
9:34 AM: An early morning flight to Everlook.		10:00 AM: A trip to the grocery store to obtain all sorts of foodstuffs.
10:34 AM: Grocery shopping complete -- mostly carbs in bread and liquid form.		1:04 PM: Popcorn for an afternoon movie.
2:30 PM: This is what happens during three hour movies.		2:45 PM: Sketching and measuring the kitchen for cabinets.
5:06 PM: It's time for steak!		6:14 PM: It's time for poker!
8:45 PM: Kelley wins a hand with three aces.		10:51 PM: Kelley wins his first Northern Virginia game of poker.

See more 12 of 12ers at Chad's site!

Housiversary Day

Celebrating eight years of living in the same place! Who does that anymore?

As you can see below, the neighbourhood has really gone downhill, invaded by people with colour. Mostly orange.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Alice in Wonderland (PG):
Rebecca actually liked this movie more than I did, and the whole time I was watching it, the only word that came to mind was "obligatory". I guess when you have Tim Burton try to apply his weirdness to a franchise that's already inherently weird, the weirdness cancels out. The graphics and style are vivid and well-done, of course, but they never exceed expectations. I did enjoy the animation of the Cheshire Cat, but it was annoying to turn up the volume every time Johnny Depp mumbled through his lines while being EXCITINGLY FRESH AND ZANY. A couple related dance sequences near the end also broke the fourth wall down completely.

Final Grade: C

Celeste and Jesse Forever (R):
This was a pleasant, believable romantic comedy about a couple several years into marriage. It doesn't rely on villanous characters or contrived happy endings, and was a nice way to spend a movie night last weekend.

Final Grade: B

Justified, Season One:
This show about a U.S. Marshal in present-day Kentucky was not something I would have normally picked up on my own, but apparently my parents are getting better at recommending shows to me (in spite of the fact that they keep trying to sell me on Upstairs, Downstairs). The tone of the show is low-key but never boring, and after a diet of so many increasingly gratuitous Showtime and HBO shows, it has an understated charm that I really enjoyed. Well-acted, good story arcs, and a good guest appearance by the actor who played Tom Friendly the Other in LOST make this show worth watching. I hope that Robert Knepper (T-Bag from Prison Break) shows up somewhere in a future season.

Final Grade: B+

Ups and Downs: Snow Day Recap

• Up: Celebrated Rebecca's day off with three soft-boiled eggs and toast.


• Down: Burned my hand while absentmindedly brushing cat hair off of the stove, oblivious to burner I had just removed a pot of boiling eggs from.


• Up: Got to use the giant bandaids that I never have any use for.


• Up: Got in a morning workout of shoveling 1 of 2 cars out, in 13.5 inches of snow.


• Up: Had Shells and Cheese for lunch while watching Betas.


• Down: Had to thaw my heat pump with a hair dryer get the high pressure switch to kick back on.


• Up: Won three games of Hearthstone with an unfamiliar class.


• Down: Lost eight other games of Hearthstone.


• Up: Shoveled more in the evening, and was surprised to see that our street (normally plowed once, three days after a storm) was plowed 4 times in 2 hours by 4 different trucks.


• Up: Managed to get partial reception on the Olympics over my HD antenna even with a foot of snow on the roof (my antenna is mounted in the attic).


• Down: Had to watch speed skating, and endure "Weak or No Signal" errors throughout the events (but surprisingly, never during a commercial).

Stuff In My Drawers Day: Online Dating Profiles

To commemorate 11 years since Rebecca's first email contact with me on February 13, 2007, here is a screenshot of our original Match.com dating profiles from long ago. We showed this as a graphic in our wedding slideshow.

I tried to login to Match to capture the entire profile (including the part under "Ethnicity" where I said there was a little Indian in me and he was delicious) but the site is confusing and over-monetized now, and the text seems to be lost forever.

Review Day: A Conjuring of Assassins by Cate Glass / Carol Berg

There are no major spoilers in this review.

A Conjuring of Assassins is the second book in the Chimera series by Carol Berg, writing under the pen name, Cate Glass. (I also reviewed Book One, An Illusion of Thieves last year). The author delivers a satisfying, self-contained story that can be appreciated on its own, but doesn't push the overall series forward in a significant way.

Book Two picks up immediately after the grand caper in Book One, with Romy and her friends recruited to solve a tangled political problem by using their particular talents. The first 20% of the book is peppered with plenty of gentle recap, which will be great if Book One isn't fresh in your mind but more irritating if you're reading them back-to-back. There's an overreliance on coincidence to introduce new story elements, such as Placidio the swordsman running afoul with the Pizotti family, Romy's encounter with a familiar lawyer, or the discovery of an injured man in the fog.

Once the characters begin their new assignment in earnest (around Chapter 6), the book finds its stride and will keep you hooked until the end. The heist storyline is centered more around political intrigue and influence this time, adding a well-executed layer of interest above simply stealing a MacGuffin. I have always appreciated the way that this author builds suspense in a central mystery by methodically dropping hints and reminders of key questions until the master plan becomes clear to the reader -- this approach works particularly well in the Chimera series.

The characters (both new and old) are well-written although they don't evolve much beyond their starting points. Granted, this makes tons of sense when you consider that the entire book takes place in roughly a week, but the characters sometimes toe the line between being interesting in their own right and treading water as mere plot ciphers.

More noticeable is the fact that the world-building takes a backseat in this outing. This is a fun "heist of the week" story that takes place in Cantagna -- the intricate foundation of societal structure, mysticism, and beliefs that the author established in Book One is no closer to culmination by the end. I would have appreciated a few more breadcrumbs to keep me invested. For example, we see the 'sniffers' in action many times, but are no closer to understanding their predicament or means of detection. Romy's visions of antiquity are obviously telegraphing something about future books, but the reveals relegated to the final pages of Book Two offer more questions than answers.

With calibrated expectations, there is a lot to love in A Conjuring of Assassins. This is a tasty morsel of a story that acts as a refreshing palate cleanser in between volumes of your favourite byzantine epic fantasy. Read it for the well-choreographed caper plot that doesn't fall back on a trite, neverending succession of backstabs to surprise. Read it for the main characters that realize they are made stronger through their trust and friendship and the supporting characters that are too delightfully complex to label as pure villains. Just don't be surprised if you reach the end and are left wanting, like a mid-season episode of Alias!

Final Grade: B-

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

6:43 AM: Exercising and watching the second season of The Witcher.

7:32 AM: Showered and ready for the day.

7:46 AM: Bagel for breakfast.

8:16 AM: Maia wakes up and shows us the plane she built last night when she was supposed to be sleeping.

8:56 AM: Making pancakes and bacon for the family.

11:42 AM: Playing Contraption Maker with Maia.

1:50 PM: Collecting gumballs in Claude Moore Park.

4:21 PM: Relocating my cabin in Fallout 76.

5:02 PM: Watching figure skating in the Winter Olympics.

6:02 PM: A perfect triple axel.

6:13 PM: Liking pizza crust.

6:57 PM: Post-bath handwriting lessons.

House Day

Celebrating 20 years as a Sterling resident!

People who have lived in this house since I bought it:

• Me (2004 - 2024)
• Anna A. (2004 - 2005)
• Eric B. (2004 - 2005)
• Ben A. (2005)
• Kathy S. (2005)
• Rebecca U. (2009 - 2024)
• Abby W. (2013 - 2014)
• Maia U. (2017 - 2024)
• Ian U. (2021 - 2024)

Animals who have stayed in this house since I bought it:

• Booty
• Kitty
• Amber
• Sydney
• Leia
• Oliver
• Titan
• Lake
• Abby