Annoying Whinge of the Day

As mp3 (and aac) becomes the new standard for music storage in the digital era, the complaining of audiophiles about the lack of music quality gets louder and more insistent. Via Arts and Letters Daily, here's a good example of what I'm talking about. Sure, I too am disheartened when I read that recording levels are being manipulated for volume (for best results on a portable mp3 player) at the cost of quality, but the anguished moaning about how an entire generation of kids is growing up with no experience of a quality music recording is starting to annoy me.

Here's something that no one seems to be considering: Moore's Law. In ten years, our portable mp3 players will probably be able to hold every surviving audio record ever made at lossless quality and still have room for rips of all three Lord of the Rings boxed set DVDs. Fear not audiophiles, the current trend towards shite audio quality is just a passing phase, the birth pains of the digital era. In a few years you'll be able to go back to arguing over whether the kind of wire used in your headphone cables makes the music sound 'warmer'.

Nerd Links Day

If your day job involves software at all then you probably want to be reading The Daily WTF, it's fucking hysterical.

But even funnier is Zero Punctuation at The Escapist, easily the best video game reviews I've ever read.

Wednesday Night Math Rock Geek Out

Battles
Live at The Gaelic Club, 26^th September

The Gaelic Club was about ten times more packed than the last time I was there, which was back in February to see Suffocation, a very, very different band to Battles. The audience in attendance this time around was also ten times less intense and in fact it was probably one of the geekiest crowds I've ever been in.

My Disco

The openers were My Disco, who I saw last year opening for Mogwai and who really impressed me back then. They're a good match for Battles; their mathy but danceable rhythms are quite similar, although My Disco have more of a straight up rock tone compared to Battles' artificial synthiness. They were just as good this time around, almost as much fun as the headliners.

Battles: Featuring shirtless John Stanier

As artificial as their sound is, Battles turned out to be a great live band. With a combination of guitars, keys, crazy noise boxes and of course John Stanier's amazing drumming, they recreate the sound of the album more or less straight up, but with a more loose, aggressive energy, as befits a live concert. The music is highly technically challenging and it was a treat to see them deliver it so skilfully The guitarists liked to show off by fingering their guitars with one hand and playing keys simultaneously with the other. Stanier is a fucking machine, and his kit is given pride of place at centre stage front in order to reflect his importance to the band. Collectively as performers they come across as a bunch of cocky showoffs, but I'm inclined to give them a break. Anyone who does the hard yards in brilliant but underrated bands like Tomahawk or Don Caballero and finally ends up getting recognition for something as imaginative and skilfully impressive as Battles deserves to smugly enjoy all the coke and pussy that's coming their way.

Yes, Stanier's ride cymbal is set absurdly high.

The happy, adrenalising energy of the music was a little wasted on the crowd. Many of the pimply basement dwellers in attendance would probably be too scared to actually move in any way more exaggerated than a rhythmic nod of the head and a polite golf clap between songs for fear of losing indie cred, and even were that not the case, the pokey little Gaelic was packed wall to wall so there was no chance of flailing around like a lunatic, the way the music wanted you to.

Predictably enough, big single 'Atlas' was the highlight of the set.

Here's hoping next time they play in a bigger venue so that we can all flail away.

New Web Comics

And by 'new' I mean 'old but new to me'.

For those of us who admit to the occasional bit of roleplaying: DM of the Rings

For those of us who like stuff that is really funny: Basic Instructions

Random Tired Sunday Post

John Scalzi makes a good argument as to why the Lord of the Rings movies are better than the books. Via Uncertain Principles.

Google Reader

...is absolute gold.

The only downside is that it concatenates everything in your RSS feed onto a single page. So some troubling, serious post from No Right Turn melds straight on into whatever hardcore porn stills are on the front page of Fleshbot (NSFW).

And speaking of Fleshbot and RSS, I wonder why they split their feeds into 'gay' and 'straight' (and 'all'). It seems a little sexist. Shouldn't it be 'people who like boys', 'people who like girls' and 'people who like everyone'?

Teh Funny Interwebs Thursday Installment

Lore Sjöberg's ideas for geek reality TV. They're all funny but OS Swap cracks me up.

The CEO Of Seagate Is A Clever Guy

Interview here.

"YouTube is like eBay. The founders didn't know what they were doing. The consumers just took hold of it."

"Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn."