Impulse Tracker vs. ProTools

It seems that one of the average punters’ favourite things about Look Who’s Toxic are the songs we do with backing tracks played from my iPod. Those backing tracks are all written in a program called Impulse Tracker, a program that predates Fruity Loops, Reason, Logic, or any other sampler/sequencer programs that kids nowadays are using — it even predates Windows 95. The reasons we use it are simple: it’s what I learnt on, I understand what most of the features do, and they do just about everything I need.

One of our Impulse Tracker songs, Do The Fetus, is getting another run as the opener on our upcoming EP. Last night, after getting some very solid advice, Rob and I spent a few hours putting a little extra spit and polish on this new version of the song.

Previously, whenever we’ve used Impulse Tracker in recordings, we’ve composed and mixed the song in Impulse Tracker, and then recorded the result as a stereo signal directly from the line out of the computer. Last night, Rob and I spent a few hours sticking a click track at the very start of every channel, recording each instrument individually, synching up the recordings, and then mixing it in ProTools.

The results were amazing. I’d never really noticed how lifeless and dull things sound coming out of Impulse Tracker until now. The ProTools mix has the lovely deep bass notes and little trebly accents I’d always imagined, but was never quite able to get right. My theory is that the lacklustre sounds are a result of some kind of phrase interference and/or optimisation that’s going on inside Impulse Tracker — remember that this program was designed to run on 386es and can do real-time mixing of up to 64 channels — a very impressive feat in my book.

Now I want to go back and do new mixes of all my old Impulse Tracker songs, but I’m sure Rob wouldn’t be too into that. Maybe if he showed me how to do it in ProTools myself I could give it a wack.

Beard, three weeks old

Today marks the start of my beard’s third week, and I’m happy to say that it’s coming along nicely and will probably stick around for a few weeks yet. Neil has suggested Richard Karn as a guide to where I want to go — I reckon he might be onto something.

Scales

Last Thursday I was 110 kilos. On Saturday night, I was 120. I weighed 115 kilograms on Sunday morning. Something tells me my scales are lying to me.

Google vs. MSN Search

Microsoft is offering prizes to users of it’s MSN Search Engine. I like free stuff, so I thought I’d give it a go.

I went to msnsearchandwin.com and looked at their “How To Play” example, which uses the phrase “Xbox 360″ as it’s search term. So I tried the search out on Google and MSN.

Google

Google gave me what I expected. The page started with a couple of links to news articles about Xbox 360 shortages, and then the results proper started. I got xbox.com, xbox.com’s US homepage, and the Xbox page on microsoft.com. I generally browse with a pretty small window, so that’s all I saw other than the ads on the right of the screen.

MSN Search

MSN Search, on the other hand, gave me three ads in a green box, followed by a series of links to buy an Xbox 360 from a variety of retailers. These things took up all the room in my small browser window, so I had to scroll down, something I rarely have to do on Google. The first actual result was displayed as “http://msid.msn.com/mps_id_sharing/redirect.asp?www.xbox.com/en-US/”, which is actually a redirection to the same xbox.com site Google gave me. Next was a link to “xbox360s.freepay.com - Get a FREE XBOX 360!”, which just reeked of spamminess so I ignored it. The final link I saw was to IGN’s Xbox 360 pages.

While I still love free stuff, MSN isn’t going to win me over that easily.

The Most Racist Band In The World

Look Who’s Toxic had an actual band practice last night, which was a refreshing change to sitting in Rob’s bedroom mixing our recordings. We worked on a few new songs, one of which has the working title “Hot Niggaz”. Add this to our recent songs “Asians Feed Me”, “Lebbo Justice Now” and “Tell Me Why I Don’t Trust Homos” and a worrying trend begins to emerge. Maybe Neil and I need to start writing some of the band’s lyrics.

110 Kilograms

Even I can notice a difference now.

I’ve got a two-week trial membership at a local gym that starts tonight. I’ve always hated the idea of a gym — I’m convinced that it’s going to be horribly demeaning, just like high school PE — but I’ll give it a go for a couple of weeks. Hopefully they’ll be able to give me some advice as to some exercises that I could be doing. And it will shut my dad up.

iPod + Bike = Danger

See? I told you so! C’mon Rosebank, how about a Rockin’ Retro Stackhat?

(thanks Andrew)

Opera on Nintendo DS

Rumour has it that Nintendo and Opera are set to announce a web browser for the Nintendo DS. Most of the pieces seem to be in place — there’s Internet connectivity, a decent amount of screen space, a solid rendering engine, and an effective input method (although typing anything longer than a domain name is still a pain in the arse — they need to licence Inkwell or something).

In fact, this might blow my argument for getting a MacBook right out of the water.

EDIT: Heh, post #69…

Giving Up Booze

After feeling sick all day yesterday, I’ve decided to give up booze for a while. I won’t be touching a drop until the 24th February at the earliest. This ruins my plans to take a bottle of whiskey to see Walk The Line for Valentines Day, but it will be worth it.

New Super Mario Brothers

This has me pretty excited — the return of the side-scrolling platform game. There’s a video of it available, too.