[COMMUNITY] 4 Pug Russell Terriers for sale!

[UPDATE] New Pod Cast !!!

Hey guys,
A brand new pod cast of me is now available specifically directed towards those aspiring comic book writers like myself. Check it out! If you are an aspiring writer, be sure to check out this very valuable resource located at http://mysite.verizon.net/joe_edkin/index.html .

[MUSIC] Hmmm so Losers can Win a Grammy

One of the most anticipated award shows of the year, crediting popular musicians for their contribution(s) to the music society, musical excellence, and as an outstanding entrepreneur, is none other than the Grammys. With this year marking the 50th year since it's inception, for the artists that were present, there was allot to be excited about. Though the awards did move in it's usual manner (red carpet, performances, comical introductions, ect), only one event was proven to be the most surprising and utterly upsetting moments in the entire show, the Grammy award to Kanye West.

Seriously, what kind of moron comes and receives one of the highest rated awards in the US and complains ?! Sure you have your individuals who have professionally denied the Grammy award, but they didn't complain like some spoiled brat! Then again, why should you find this surprising at all? I mean Kanye did wine his ass off last year when he lost it, and to make it worse, he tags the infamous black line to it saying "Can't a Black man get a break"? Like the Black community doesn't have enough to worry about.

Not only does he complain, but at the same time insults two of hip hops' highest contributors, individuals that have influenced and done more for the hip hop community than any of Kanye's works combined, Nasir "Nas" Jones, and Lonnie "Common" Lynn! It was so bad, the mixing engineers were trying to play the music to get him to leave, but he continued, and on his grand podium called stupidity and arrogance, he announces his final words saying he wants Album of the year and he should get it. After today, I wouldn't think that Kanye would deserves even lifetime achievement if we eventually see the honors awards contributing the old hip hop community of our day (I mean could you imagine, a life time achievement award appointed to Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, or Usher?)



In my personal opinion, Kanye West is by far one of the most overrated, childish, unprofessional "musicians" in the industry today, and after todays Grammys, only affirmed this notion.

[PRODUCTION] Can you hear me now?!?!

Monitoring is defiantly one of the most important things in your studio aside from all your fancy compressors, gates, eq’s, whatever. If your monitors sound like crap, then your mix is going to sound like crap and the end result will be crap and your “fans” will hate you for your crap project *sneer*. With that said, it’s important to get every part of your signal chain, in and out, as close to perfect as you and your wallet can get. Sadly, like yours truly, not all of us own the collateral to create our dream studio with a huge AMEX Rembrandt inline mixer with Pro Tools HD (prefer Nuendo), Manley, and API gear. So we can only go so far.

In my case, the situation is, I want to upgrade my monitor set from the KRK Rokit 5’s and Event 5's to something else. Now the Rokit 5’s are nice speakers for a start. You may even be able to get nice mixes off em, hell I still use em and my mixes come out pretty well. However, you’ll be working hard on those highs and forget about your lows. On the low end they really tend to exaggerate your bass and the highs don’t seem to translate very well. To compensate I’ve acquired some Event 5’s which I use for my Hi frequency monitoring since the low end is little to nill (you don’t get much below 58Hz on the KRK's). Though for $300 for the KRK’s and $300 for the Event pairs, they did perform in accordance to their price range. In terms of what I had to do to compensate for the exaggerated bass, I took a mix that I knew how was mixed or was supposed to perform, played it in my DAW, and attenuated the signal coming in to the point where I thought I was listening to this properly (or almost properly anyway). I made a note on where these exaggerations occur and reference that note when I start mixing.



One mistake not to make is to mix on all four speakers like I used to. If you’re going to have 4 or 6 speakers to monitor a stereo mix (in regards to project studios) one set should be your mains (even though they are near fields), another your “B” reference, and if you have 6 (which in general can be crappy PC Mono speakers), they’ll be your “C “for low grade performance (like for people who still have monophonic televisions and such).

So now I’m going shopping for a better pair of speakers.Here’s the question that I’m faced with. What is the most ideal monitor to get that will not overdo the bass in my small room, but will still translate well enough for a great mix? Obviously monitoring true low bass requires some serious power and money and frankly for a project studio is not necessary. If you can get enough and that signal is as accurate as possible (unlike the KRK’s heh) then you’ll be ok, hence my dilemma between the ADAM Audio A7’s, the ADAM Audio P11A’s, or something else.


















We’ll go more into detail about this dilemma next time!

[UPDATE] SNAP No. 4 is OUT!!!

Hey everyone!
Tis ya boi Key Jay and the long awaited SNAP No.4 video is out! For those who are interested in the Beat Making videos, they start from the end of the second movie (Time: 5:50), and continue to the last movie. Hit me Back!

[GAME] NiGHTS (Wii) - Review

Ok so the verdict is in on the sequel to an all time classic. Frankly, I'm satisfied with the review as it's pretty much accurate in what I'd say as well. Taking a SEGA classic and redoing it with the high expectations under it was a tough one and I will say I congratulate them for it. I meen here it is SEGA the seemingly most stubborn company in the bizz finally listening to the public! Whoda thought huh? But really, the game could have (in all honesty) been better executed. I mean sure it looks "nice" on the Wii but why such low grade visuals?!?! The controls in my opinion with the kids were not awful IMO I mean they worked and were pretty responsive, but the point of it was, like they said, was almost nill. From the beginning, I thought they should have used another platform to begin with and still do, and seeing the Wii mote option act like that gives me more incentive that it was implemented at the last moment meaning they probably couldn't get a good rap on the hardware interface programming just yet lol. I mean seriously guys, I know you were going with a classic feel, but if you had used a better resource like IDK the XBOX 360 maybe, though you'd have a problem sale wise with kids, you'd have a better program in which ...HEY!... MAYBE YOU COULD SWITCH TO OPEN WORLD! That'd be something though. Maybe next time guys?!? Maybe?? MAYBE????.....Ohh well. I still had fun though :D.

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[Production] Nuendo 4 is OUT!

Though I have yet to see it on music shelves yet (probably for the same reason why you dont see Adam speakers on shelves either heh hee), but you can order it directly from the site.

read more | digg story

[Random] Hey! It's Elmer Fudd! But....that aint no Rabbit....

First a Rabbit, then a Duck. Now a dear?!? I swear Elmer. You're the only one that I know that could mistake a Lion from a Squirrel.

read more | digg story

[UPDATE] iPod....cast NOW!!!!

Personally I like ZUNEs >:D
Regardless, I now have a podcast section in which you can also sign up with as a separate RSS feed (located at bottom)! It's amazing what technology can do these days heh. The above podcast was recorded directly in real time over my phone! I added the text when I got home an hour later, but as soon as the call was done, it was available online! Freakin sweet!

[GAMES] Gamer Colleges

You know what’s annoying (but not in the dumpster), people who get all psyched about those Gamer College and their commercials. Here they are, always wanting to create a game but didn’t know how and…HEY! They see on TV, a nice fancy Devry or Full Sail commercial featuring game development. All of a sudden there all hyped cause they can go to school and all they do is play games all day as a career and make em and best of all, I get free games! It has to be probably the most easiest well paid professions ever! I’m applying! … Idiot!

First off, Game Development is by far not the easiest profession ever. Sure you get your kicks by playing games almost all the time (of course that depends on the department you reside in) and you’ll make your dollar (I mean seriously, the Game Industry is a multibillion dollar industry which is beginning to rival the movie industry), but it’s not all fun and games and when you’re under the gun, everything changes.

So what the hell gives me some credibility for this? Well I’ve tried and done it though I’m no industry pro. I’ve tried 3D but did more in 2D. Long ago in high school, for kicks and fun, I was developing a free squeal to the SEGA popular classic, Streets of Rage game known as Streets of Rage 4: UEI Edition. I worked on it for about 4 years before I eventually canceled the project because I simply had no time for it, and I wanted to do something original. I have some experience in a few programming languages which would be VB, C++, and GML. Sure some of this may be wrong since I don’t have a degree in it (hey you didn’t see this on GameDev so stop nagging me lol), but if this is you, then I encourage you to not entirely take my word for it in the first place and DO YOUR RESEARCH!

Now that we’ve established that, let’s continue. Even though I worked in 2D which in general is WAY more simplistic than 3D, I was able to get a glimpse of some of the programming technicalities that you could face, and some of the basic math requirements that depending on the game you’re developing could explode in to monster mathematical formulas and concepts. Ohh so you just want to play and make games huh? Lol

One thing about it (which what turned me off to game development as far as programming) is the amount of Math you need to know. Yep don’t think that there’s some easy way around it. As a game developer, you are a programmer, therefore in order to get the effects that you want in the standard 3D space of today’s industry, great Math skills is not only required, but it’ll save your ass and keep you ahead of the competition. Here’s a simple example. Remember the game Ristar? In it, there’s a enemy who’s arm is a sequence of balls that swing around and I think was able to break apart if you hit him the right way. Anyway, though the concept of the swing arm ball connected enemy may seem simple, you have to think, how the hell am I going to create an enemy whose arm is created by balls in which all the balls have a similar pivot point, and swing around at the same time? Further I want to make it so that if I call the object 6 times from the master body code, that each ball called will inherit an +x and +y position from its predecessor. Further, each ball needs to swing with the common reference being that pivot and needs to be tracked so the balls won’t move away from their pivot at any given point and stays in line with the other balls. I would think to do this, you’d use the circumference formula with some kind of code that modifies the swing track size (the circle that you’ll be defining) in relation to the pivot with one of the modifiers being the ball current position……I told you, that’s just the simple! And to make it worse, it’s a 2D Game!





Physics are also becoming a requirement in my opinion. Don’t believe me? Let me ask you. The standard game development physics engine in today’s industry (Yes you may need to know some physics) is probably Havok (correct me if I’m wrong) which more than likely developers have to pay a license fee in order to use the resources. What if the developers no longer want to pay the high license price for the engine? Now you the game developer a.k.a. programmer must develop on top of the original game engine, a physics engine that works with all your 3D models in your new space. Ohh wait, game engine? Games don’t have motors! Well technically they do. In general, commercial 3D games do not run like normal windows applications. Doing that would make the game look very boring and if you’re talking about console games, now you have even more work considering you can no longer program your engine on top of Windows! Anyway, what is preferred is to create some sort of “sub OS” (PC Wise) whose main task is to run your game without interferences from unneeded resources from your platform and can use 3D instructions. This is your Game Engine. Sure there are third party engines available which look very nice, but it is preferred that developers create their own. That way, they don’t have to worry about another payment for code and resource licensing from a third party developer and the engine is not cluttered up with useless code that your game probably won’t use anyway. Ohh but wait, how are you going to get your models in your engine? What sound format will be accepted, how will the controls work, what engine based effects will be utilized, lighting schemes, shadow schemes, texture utilization and mapping, ect. Ect. Ect. Guess what, that’s YOUR job. YOU figure it out! So when do I get to play?! HEH :D

So now you like screw it, I’ll just get someone to do the programming for me. I aint no math wiz and still want to create a game. We’ll get into that next time >:D.