psyche

People raised on it think pop-rock is rock. Give them a flat degree chord and they’ll vomit.

It’s characterised by the dehumanisation of music. Looping. De-emphasis of progression. Melody as an afterthought. It always goes rhythm => chords => melody - not necessarily bad in itself, but there is no thought put in at any of these steps. It attempts to slavishy obey key, save for clumsy shifts up a tone or a semitone or accidentally setting all chords major on its computer. When catchiness is achieved, and it rarely is, it’s regarded as the ultimate end of the music’s existence.

Instead artificial catchiness is created by repetition of stupid but simple hooks until they get “stuck in your head”. Good pop writers are forced to also write terrible music in order to stay ahead in a chart dominated by machines.

Pax

Here’s my guess for the importance of chords in a key, in descending order:

I, V, IV, vi, iii, ii, VII (this is in the key of I major with i meaning I minor)

Little fills like ii V7 I or IVm V IVm I seem to be falling out of favour. There seem to be two types of songs: I IV V vi songs and “minor key” songs which are all like vi III ii (or II) and then V IV I. Lots of songs masquerade as minor key songs while actually being mainly iv IV V. Meh.

Of course, everyone who attempts to write music seriously figures this out pretty quickly and some choose to capitalise on how weird it seems to people who don’t think about it (1,2) while others just keep quiet and write hits and everyone wonders “Wow, so catchy. But how?”… lulz.

Pax

Happily, Wikipedia had already picked up on it, but I heard some Warren Zevon in the mix of Kid Rock’s new commercial sound recording.

The song has almost no value apart from the catchiness of the three chord trick embellishments stolen from Zevon and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I think it’s pretty bad when you can’t even think of your own variation of the three chord trick. Hmm.

Pax

Yes, I forgot a lot of stuff.

I went to the CERN open day on Sunday April 6^th - I’ll put up videos (of the Computer Center) and general photos if someone reminds me. For now, here and here.

I saw Muse and The Futureheads on April 12^th (Teenage Cancer Trust) thing with Oliver Jones (I don’t think I give that guy enough credit for his sociopolitical intelligence. A good guy. One to watch.) and it was awesome.

With Bryant Tan and Charlie Patterson being prodigiously good informaticians and Vivan somewhere in Princeton talking to legends of computing, it actually seems like maybe some of the interesting things that are going to happen in computer science could, you know, be initiated by some of us. That’s cool. We’re not bad. As Mr Rokison despairs over our computing set, I can’t help thinking that actually we’ve come a long way - and are, for the most part, totally awesome.

Also, I’m going to buy this. It is an almost-perfect proxy for the experience of old computer stuff. Which I missed. Because of time.

I saw Iron Man. I didn’t think it was a masterpiece… but I thought it was very good, actually. The thing I liked about Fantastic Four was the characterisation (especially The Thing and The Human Torch) - but the rest of it was crap. Iron Man, however, had Mr Downey Jr. (who I thought was really good in this - REALLY!) as well as other general awesomeness. I don’t know about the Stane guy - I don’t think he had the villainous undercurrent these superhero bad guys usually do. I think a subtle hint of what a character will develop into isn’t actually that unrealistic and can be an elegant storytelling device, even if people pan things like that as making the plot too obvious etc.. Done properly, it would have added weight. Anyway, yeah. That was good. Yeah.

Good things coming up: The Dark Knight, Watchmen, The Incredible Hulk
Horrifying things: A-levels

Crippling self-doubt, not helped by genius of peers, can be remedied, I found out, with guitar practise*. Just practise. Seriously. You’ll be a better guitarist and worry less. Coping mechanisms: fun, fun, fun! I don’t even let the self-doubt thing percolate properly anymore. I just refresh my whole brain whenever it starts. It’s pretty good.

Pax

* lulz commas

Thinking of the metaphorical meaning of The Enigma of Amigara Fault, suicide and such jump to mind. I couldn’t help thinking of Lain being my “hole” - it was perfectly tailored to bring out all my psychological insecurities and quirks, and it did. Interestingly, teachers like Mr Barker, Mr Rokison and Mr Smith have only known me since my shift into mediocrity and insanity, and I think Mr Motion is beginning to understand that my mental arithmetic is sluggish at best. Rambling, rambling, rambling. I think my theme of happy/sad is linked to bipolar disorder or at least mania.

I was thinking about trying to speed up my mental maths: if you know your squares up to 20, you could do something like this:

Input: multiply a and b.

Check whether a mod 2 = b mod 2 (i.e. are they both odd or both even? This isn’t necessary but is a vestige of this retardation’s origin in my mental maths crazy stuff - I know a bunch of n²s for ns up to 20 and then some randomers like 25 and some powers of two because of computing jigga.)

If so, use the thing. Using some (like going backward to difference of two squares).

ab = ((a+b)/2-(a+b)/2+a)((a+b)/2+(a+b)/2-a) = ((a+b)/2)² - (a - (a+b)/2)²

So ab = (mean - distanceToMean)(mean + distanceToMean) = mean² - distanceToMean². Yeah.

Hmm. So like: 12 x 14?

1. 12 + 14 = 26
2. 26/2 = 13
3. 13² (lookup, so only one operation, not the fat O(n²) number that multiplication usually takes) = 169
4. 12-13 = -1
5. (-1)² = 1
6. 169 - 1 = 168

Looks retarded but I actually find that easier than going 14 x 10 + 14 x 2 = 140 + 28 = 168. I’m not joking.

Maybe it becomes useful later?

17 x 23 = 20² - 3² = 391

As it pivots on square values and I only want to go up to 20, you can make other stuff:

11 x 29 = 20² - 9² = 319

So it’s “If both numbers are odd or both numbers are even*, their product is the mean squared minus half the distance between them (or the distance to the mean) squared.”

This is fun.

23 x 27 = 625 - 4 = 621. Pimping.

And stuff. Actually, maybe the reason I like this is not to do with number of operations but merely type of operation: I find multiplication difficult; I am an idiot. Addition and subtraction I also dislike but not as much as I dislike multiplication.

*I think I added this constraint so you only get whole numbers. Remember, I’m an idiot!

Having a lookup table of squares and doing this - any good for computational optimisation? MAYBE.

I ordered some of Nakaido Reichi’s music from OCS Books. When I went in there, they started talking Japanese at me - possibly because I was having a bad hair day. Thus, today I got my hair cut. That’s all.

I’m watching this in the hope of properly understanding quantum computing.

Notions of the “observer’s mind” remind me of Lain and obviously Plato’s allegory of the cave reminds me of The Matrix.

These tech talks are awesome. Google aren’t as bad as their (generally) fbugly [functional but ugly] UI design suggests: this is the real deal!

UPDATE: Seriously.

Pax

When I first listened to Biffy Clyro’s Puzzle, I thought it was just crap for people who get excited by loud guitar music. It’s actually totally amazing. The 4 + 2 + 9 = 15 thing and the way each song subtly references others within the album and the quirkiness and ability to play the guitar without showing off is actually amazing. In fact, it’s so amazing that I literally do not care whether other people like it because I could just sit here listening to it.

Thus, new awesome list: David Gray, Warren Zevon, bôa, The Wallflowers, Biffy Clyro, Badly Drawn Boy.

Awesome.

Pax

I got an iPod Touch today. It’s pretty great.

Pax

Well, I’ve registered and populated disinformatics.com.

psyche will now be the name of this blog and disinformatics the rest of the site. I redid the tactical calculator. Now there are fewer tables. Eventually I need to extend it to allow for you to define an enemy squad and have a squad recommended to you, perhaps with financial constraints. Later, maybe.

The BIO was good although I got 28%. It was nice to try to program without distraction.

This blog has been updated for nearly a year now. In the past year, stuff has happened. Computing replaced physics and my guitar playing improved slightly. It’s been a good year.

I have a really bad headache.

There have been talks at school by Thomas Vander Wal, Riccardo Cambiassi, Paul Farnell + David Smalley and most recently, Jeremy Keith. I’ll briefly talk about Mr Keith as his talk is the only one I can remember properly at the moment. He was pretty awesome - the talk went far beyond what I thought it would be and actually it touched on many of the things I’ve been wondering about recently. As well as appearing to be some sort of web development god, he seemed acutely aware of everything to do with the web. Unfortunately a statistics test prevented me from talking to him after the talk but it was still awesome. David Smith and Adam Zethraeus have blogged all these appearances, I believe.

Reading through the science page confuses me a little. I seemed to consider lots of stuff in detail only to find it foreign when it presented itself again later in my life. Strange.

Pax

Wikipedia:

“Hey Ya!” is a song in the key of G major. Each cadential six-measure phrase is constructed using a change of meter on the fourth measure and uses a I–IV–V–VI chord progression. G major and C major chords are played for one and two 4/4 measures respectively. André 3000 then uses a deceptive cadence after a 2/4 measure of the dominant D major chord, leading into two 4/4 measures of an E major chord (which is not in the key of G major).

The last time I looked at this, I think it said it was in C major and that the E major (which would have been an A major) was an A minor. I think Obadiah Parker plays an Amin7 (if in C)… that’s why the original just sounds wrong… the bass seems to imply the minor thing. I… ugh. Somehow I didn’t realise this. I was just listening and I thought “What the hell?” and thought maybe my iTunes was somehow major-ising every chord, so I checked the video on YouTube… urgh.

So this dissonance hasn’t been accepted by the general public - it’s been hidden under loud bass!

Pax

There’s been a bit of a lacuna and I don’t think I’ll fill it entirely as others have committed the events I missed to posterity.

I now make a large number of notes on my phone and in Mail. I now retain much more information than I used to - or at least, my computer and phone do, and I am able to retrieve this information.

Themes of personal reality and our inability to accurately perceive the real physical world are endlessly depressing. To quote Eiri Masami:

A memory is merely a record. Thoughts and emotions are but a limited sum derived from this record. Between this mere receptacle we call human form and the truly real world stands an insurmountable wall.

I think I’ll be uploading the text from omnipresence in wired as it’s quite interesting. It seems that Lain contains everything I care about. From the existential stuff to the misanthropy to the genuinely researched computer science (it’s way, way beyond The Matrix intellectually and emotionally. I never thought I’d say something like that)

Despite it being what people tell me is a simple process, I haven’t been able to get Inquisitor to install since upgrading to Leopard. Elliot and I have switched to Opera. It’s awesome.

Some connections sprang up. I Am Legend was brought to my attention by my uncle many years ago and is soon to be a film (I know that there have been repeated films based on it). It features urban decay and loneliness. Good. It feels like the truth is out there - if only I could find someone to explain it to me! How do you check if what you’re doing is the right thing? You can’t just sit and think, because you fudge your mind. There’s no rulebook. You ask other people. Consensus reality!

Suppose I’m a histrionic pathological liar. This combined with a general obsessiveness means I would be prone to interchange reality and fiction in my head. It would often have no consequence but it means I become fixated (Lain). Is there a cure? I think so. I still wonder about HotSauce. I also wonder about how the Lain people knew about computers and information science. Strange. Lain and The Matrix make me worry about secret truths. I think that’s why I try to make everyone watch Lain. I fear that information will be lost forever.

It’s easy to get sick of something and move on… but more dangerous is not getting sick of it. Instead of burning it out during an intense phase of interest, it might haunt you. Lain haunted me for about year before I really knew what it was. Maybe this is partly why it is taking me so long to shake it.

I used to consider myself a good writer and although it’s clear now that I am nothing of the sort, I still have a fondness for my piece of GCSE English coursework about a rather deranged man called Slavik. He met his end choking on a Quorn sandwich. More recently, Enjoy Every Sandwich. Connection! \o/

They should superimpose satnav data onto car windscreens somehow. Augmented reality.

I saw David Gray at the Roundhouse on the 14th. I like him. He’s clever.

Ikea and council flats at night. Kids hanging around some rusting metal railings outside a car park. Sad-looking car that never moves. Secret people locked up in those little houses. Suburban gloom?!

If I were in an attention-seeking, dramatic mood, I’d simply smile with some sort of emotional weight.

Pax