Schmid blog 2007 jul-dec

Schmid 20:44, 28 October 2007 (CET) - Copenhagen
Big news: I have received employment at the computer game development company Pollux Gamelabs, and I am consequently moving to Copenhagen. In November, I'll be staying in Bagsværd at the place of the uncle and aunt of my Father. If the pieces come together, I should have a place of my own in December. I'll be working together with my University buddy Jeppe, coding C# until our brains melt. :) The schmid.dk "server park" is left where it is, and no changes to the schmid.dk sites should ensue of my moving. However, I will not be online much in November, so don't expect too much in the way of updates in this period.

Schmid 11:37, 17 October 2007 (CEST) - Musikcaféen
I'm playing at Musikcaféen in Aarhus on Saturday, with Tone and yngveSin. It seems we're playing after midnight, and I'll close things up with my particular brand of bone-crunching yet strangely alluring breaks. Hope to see you there!

Schmid 18:18, 7 October 2007 (CEST) - Downtime
A fatal Harddisk error resulted in a few days of downtime of this site. The culprit was a Maxtor MaXLine II 300GB ATA/133 that failed way before its time. I recovered data and settings from the HD before it went to HD heaven. The new member of the schmid.dk storage familiy is a 500 GB Hitachi HDT725050VLAT80. :)

Warning: technical mumbo-jumbo follows:

I had to reinstall Gentoo Linux and had annoying problems with the DHCP client dhcpcd 3.1.5, which simply did not work; I got no IP from my provider. After copying dhcpcd 2.0.5 from my LiveCD, it worked fine.

Of course I forgot to enable iptables support in my genkernel kernel and had to rebuild it. I should have run genkernel --menuconfig all the first time.

After resolving the dhcpcd nonsense, the rest of the installation was absolutely no problem. After emerging dnsmasq and dhcp, I copied the old configuration files, and everything worked.

Schmid 18:02, 28 September 2007 (CEST) - Biohorror
Inspired by the wonderful 2005 horror movie, Isolation, I have made a new page on schmid.wiki regarding the horror fiction subgenre biohorror. It contains a short list of works within the genre and notable directors and authors.

'Isolation' is really worth a watch. It is a low-budget movie made with great skill and good acting. Remarkably, even though it takes place on a farm and everything revolves around cows (cows are very rarely horrifying), the movie is reminiscent of some of the absolute classics of the genre, most notably Alien and The Thing.

On a not totally unrelated subject, on the right you can see a picture of a Pholcus Phalangioides from my chamber, and the reason why it has become the dominant spider instead of the Tegenaria Atrica. Good riddance, too, as I fear and loathe those fast-moving murderous monsters. Pholcus are small, delicate, and almost cute in their own spidery way. And highly efficient killers (which is not very cute).

Schmid 17:51, 18 September 2007 (CEST) - A.vacate + Schmid + Yngvesin + SilentBoom
I'm playing at 1000fryd on Thursday. Check it out for some trip hop/drum 'n bass and a live band called A.vacate (UK/D).

Update: Yngvesin and SilentBoom is also on the line-up! Oh what jungle-based fun we shall have...

Schmid 23:05, 12 September 2007 (CEST) - 渡辺 信一郎
Shinichirō Watanabe is the director of some of the most well-known and acclaimed anime series. In 1998, he wrote and directed Cowboy Bebop (カウボーイビバップ), a sci-fi/western, notable for its funny and lovable characters (my favourite being the weird hacker girl Ed) and for its jazzy sound track by Yoko Kanno. In 2001, it was followed by a motion picture Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heavens Door (カウボーイビバップ 天国の扉), which also is highly recommendable.

Even more famous amongst non-anime fans is Kid's Story (2003) which is a part of The Animatrix.

I just finished watching Samurai Champloo (サムライチャンプルー) (2004) which certainly has the coolest animation of any of Watanabe's series. It is a tale of friendship and honour from feudal Japan, accompanied by extremely anacronistic hip hop. The series is abundant with spectacular fight sequences, which are among the best in the samurai genre. Like in Cowboy Bebop, the characters are very likeable and a bit mysterious, the two ronin samurai masters Jin and Mugen join forces to protect the annoying yet cute girl, Fuu.

If you're not into anime, you should try one of these series out, as none of them are hardcore wacky anime, which may be a bit tough on Western brains.

Of course, if you are into anime, you have already seen them :).

Schmid 15:58, 21 August 2007 (CEST) Suset '07
I'm playing at Suset '07 in Tversted September 1st. Suset runs from august 31th to september 2nd, and is located in north of Jutland, Denmark.

Update: Schmid 15:15, 3 September 2007 (CEST) - Suset in Retrospect
Yesterday I dragged my exhausted body home from Tversted.

The warm-up act was DJ Strømpefødder (Esben Pretzmann from 'Drengene fra Angora'). In typical celebrity DJ style, he played a non-mixed CD set of his favourite music. He was more than a little bit drunk, and actually tumbled over during the set.

Yngve followed, playing his particular brand of semi-dancable loony house and other uncategorizable music. I went down to the beach at around 23:00 to enjoy the beauty of unspoiled nature, but nature is rapidly transformed into culture when too many people enjoy it, and the beach was populated with elderly tourists in cars with their headlights on, sending beams of light out into the sea. Not very natural. To further reduce the impression of nature's power, the waves and the wind were overpowered by robotic commands uttered by some early Apple speech synthesis software from some techno track of Yngve's. So much for nature.

At midnight, I took over. I started with three new sinister trip-hop tracks at 69 BPM, which worked very well, followed by my usual drum 'n bass/jungle set. The crowd was small but enthusiastic, and I took great pride in the fact that the police was summoned twice by the neighbours to stop the infernal noise. Thankfully, they were flexible enough to allow the festival to continue, and I followed up with a DJ set of old hip hop: NWA, Cypress Hill, Beastie Boys, Pete Rock, and Public Enemy.

Update: Schmid 21:24, 3 September 2007 (CEST) Lovecraftian Acid (House) Flashback
All through the long hellish hours of blackness I toiled with my musical trade under the horned waning moon. When my labour was over, I retreated into my small chamber. As the autumn of the year had begun, the winds from the north cursed and whined, only bested by the horrid thumping noises from outside the wooden cabin. The incessant beating of the drums of the primitive native people violently shook the walls of my resting place. Hours later, the noises ended, finally granting me an uneasy slumber.

That fateful night, my rest was disturbed by the strange babblings of my temporary neighbour Pretzmann, who persistently uttered deep murmurs and small screams of horror throughout the remainder of the night. He sounded like a man waging an unending battle with horrors from incomprehensible dimensions far beyond the reach of the waking human mind.

Finally, in the small hours of the morning, the unsettling sounds ceased. The following day I sought out Pretzmann, to inquire upon the mysterious events that had occurred during the night, only to find that he had vanished without a trace.

My mind, aching from the nocturnal conceptions it had been forced to confront, was perhaps too fragile to accept the only possible explanation for Pretzmanns mysterious disappearance. That explanation is only too clear to me now.

During his dreams, Pretzmann had found a doorway to another realm of existence, beyond the wall of sleep, and entered it, never to return.

Schmid 00:07, 21 August 2007 (CEST) Public Service
This weekend I went to Public Service, an electronic music festival in 'DR byen' on Amager. I stayed at Jeppe and Bidda's place with Yngve, Simon, and Jacob Nørgaard. The concerts we attended on Friday were kind of crappy, but Saturday picked up. We heard some atmospheric and well-engineered ambient IDM from the 15-year old prodigy Mike Sheridan in the beautiful setting of the Tietgenkollegiet. Mikkel Metal played a cool IDM set, which was very well attended. Bjørn Svin was up to his usual high standard, delivering his particular take on techno with the most artistic act we attended at the festival. Akufen played a hard techno/house set accompanied by laserbeams; we were a bit dissapointed with him not playing live, but the DJ set was pretty good, and everything just seemed to come together. Pole appeared with a nerdy-looking band consisting on himself playing computerized static noise and a good drummer and bass player, playing tight and surprisingly upbeat music. All in all the festival was a good experience, and I would probably attend another instalment, were this not the last planned Public Service ever... :(

Schmid 23:36, 26 July 2007 (CEST) Hellraiser
As part of my personal horror movie festival, I've watched all eight Hellraiser movies. Yes, there really is eight of them, and they're not all good, that's for sure.

The first Hellraiser from 1987 was directed by the man himself, Clive Barker. He did an outstanding job, considering this was his first full-length film. I remember being scared shitless the first time I saw it (maybe 10 years ago), and it still works. The effects are somewhat dated, but the scene with 'the hellbound heart' pounding beneath the floorboards, seeping up and slowly rebuilding a humanoid shape from slime, is one of my all-time horror favourites.

The sequel Hellbound: Hellraiser II from 1988 was directed by Tony Randel, who later directed some pretty unimpressive-looking movies. It is still based on the original story, and expands upon the original, following Kirsty Cotton after the events of the original. It has some truly disgusting scenes and some imaginative effects, and is worth watching if you want more after the first one. It is, however, not as good.

The third movie in the series, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) by Anthony Hickox is horrible. And not in a good way :). The story is no longer Barker's, and it shows, the characters are unrealistic and badly played, the main characters of J. P. Monroe (Kevin Bernhardt) and Joey (Terry Farrell) being prime examples. Even the Cenobites are ruined, as new ones are created with a totally misplaced sense of humour: I mean ... come on ... it's not a comedy. Anyway, the plot is reasonably good and has a few twists, but overall the movie sucks.
 * the DJ Cenobite has CD disks through his brain which he throws at people
 * the camera-guy has a camera through his brain (sense a theme here?) and says stuff like "that's a wrap"

Hellraiser: Bloodline from 1996 is definetely better. The story is set in three different ages at once, the 18th century, the 20th century, and the 22nd century, following the bloodline of the mechanical genius and creator of The Lament Configuration (the box), Phillip L'Merchant (Bruce Ramsay). A new evil character is introduced, the evil princess, unconvincingly played by Valentina Vargas, complete with some new minions, including a few brutal-looking Hellhounds. The movie was directed by special effects and make-up department worker Kevin Yagher, and apparently he wasn't quite satisfied with the result, as he chose to list himself as Alan Smithee :). The movie is not a complete failure, and I was reasonably entertained while watching it.

And now it gets better, because the direct-to-dvd release Hellraiser: Inferno from 2000 by Scott Derrickson is actually one of the best of the lot. The story is centered entirely on a single character, Detective Joseph Thorne, played very convincingly by Craig Sheffer. The police officer slowly descends from immorality and corruption into complete madness. If you can relate to the character, the movie is painful to watch, as everything is slowly taken away from him. The movie is carried entirely on the shoulders of Sheffer, and he does a great job. Also, the horror scences are few and far between, but are genuinely terrifying, and some fresh visual ideas are added to the vocabulary of the series. This may be the second best Hellraiser movie (the first being the best).

Cinematographer Rick Bota got a three-for-the-price-of-one deal and blurted out the direct-to-DVD releases:
 * Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)
 * Hellraiser: Deader (2005)
 * Hellraiser: Hellworld (also 2005 - how does he do it?)

Hellraiser: Hellseeker is awful, in part due to a shoddy, TV-like quality to the movie, in part due to every single nice visual idea or story twist being unapologeticly stolen from the wonderful Jacob's Ladder, but mostly due to the performance of the lead actor, Dean Winters who only has two expressions: a little smirk, that looks like someone just told a joke, and he didn't really get it, and the other, which says: "Don't fuck with me, I'll kick your ass". Neither of these really fit the story at any time.

It was easy to hate Hellseeker, but Hellraiser: Deader actually started out quite good. Kari Wuhrer is much better casted than Dean Winters, and the manuscript is not half bad; something about some death-and-resurrection cult in Rumania. The horror starts early in the film, with 'Amy Klein' investigating a disgusting apartment with a dead girl sitting in the bathroom. In the best scene in the movie, Amy finds herself in her hotel room, with a knife through her chest. The scene is almost poetic in its gory horror, as Amy is disgusted and surprised by the knife, without feeling any pain. After that, the disappointment is that more severe, when the movie ends with a childish, stupid, tacked-on Pinhead scene, with slapstick gore and cheesy dialogue. Thus, the movie was killed beyond salvation.

Phew! That's a lotta Hellraiser...

Schmid 00:05, 15 July 2007 (CEST) Magic Pen, Get Fatter, and Mr. Universe 1967


I have reached the 70's in my Spider-Man comics. In Amazing Spider-Man #102, there were a few cute commercials, I'd like to show you.

First off, here's a nice item: a spy "pen" radio. It seems to be an early precursor of the iPod. However, what is particularly fascinating is the powering of the thing. According to the commercial it is self-powered, but it doesn't run on batteries, in fact it does not use electricity at all. How is it powered? Steam? Magic? It is a mystery; one that may never be solved.



← Here's a well-known face. Who would have guessed that Mr. Universe 1967 and the star of 'Hercules in New York' (which incidently is #72 on IMDB's worst movies of all times list at the time of writing - check out a clip where Arnie fights a bear) would go on and become "International Star of the Decade" and eventually Governor of California? Of course, he's not the first movie star to go into politics, think of Ronald Reagan - he may however be the most unlikely candidate ever to become governor, but I guess the Americans have an open mind, or what? ;)



The ideal female body shape was a bit different in the 70's, which is very apparent in this ad for weight gain tablets. "Don't be skinny because of bad eating habits. Gain as much weight as you like." Guess you should wash it down with a milkshake.

Schmid 20:23, 14 July 2007 (CEST) Horror/Horrible Movies


Thursday, we watched the Transformers movie, which of course was highly anticipated by such a 80's geek as me (I owned a respectable collection of the toys when I was a kid). The movie has been well received by the viewers, and we hoped for a nice piece of entertainment. An adaptation which has a premise as weakly defined as the Transformers storyline has the opportunity to create a new and convincing storyline. However, the story of the movie is as mess; the dialogue is terrible, the characters are extremely unconvincing, especially the contrived romantic sub-plot between the supermodel chick and the geek, and even the comic talent of John Turturro was totally wasted, as his secret government agency character was ill-defined and misplaced.

Anyways, a few things made the cinematic piece of fast food almost worth watching: Overall, the movie is crap, which makes the IMDB score of 8.0 at the time of writing pretty exaggerated. I think that that score will drop eventually, when the serious movie critics get around to reviewing it.
 * awesome transformer effects (courtesy of Industrial Light and Magic),
 * Megatron, which is a huge frozen monster during most of the movie,
 * the fight sequences in the desert, which were very entertaining.

The following nights we watched some less dissapointing movies, the first being Stuart Gordon's delightful From Beyond (1986), based upon H. P. Lovecraft's short story of the same name. Jeffrey Combs plays the main character (as usual in Gordon's films), and he activates a device that stimulates growth of the pineal gland, enabling him to observe a nightmarish parallel world where sexual depravation and the eating of brains is commonplace. The movie is very 80's and is genuinely disgusting in places, which added to the fun.

The second movie was The Resurrected by Dan O'Bannon, the writer of Alien and director of the great 80's zombie masterpiece The Return of the Living Dead. The Resurrected was slow to build up, which I suspect was in coherence with the original story, also by H. P. Lovecraft, but the last part of the movie was genuine splatter horror and much fun.

You might sense a theme here, and it's true: I'm in Lovecraft country right now, and I just can't get enough. I have read his short story Herbert West - Reanimator after watching Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator (1985) and I just cannot seem to get enough. Later on I'll probably move on to Clive Barker and perhaps one of Lovecrafts students, Ramsey Campbell.

Schmid 19:30, 14 July 2007 (CEST) About Time
Sorry for not writing anything for so long... I have been busy with my studies, and after I completed them, I just haven't gotten around to it.

Anyways, now I am a fully fledged Master of Computer Science. Our group got an 11 (of 13 - a very nice result) for our Master's Thesis:

"Animated Billboard Clouds for Foliage Simplification"

Now it's time for finding a job, preferably one with little to do and much to earn :). I'm thinking about joining the growing computer games industry in Denmark.

My father drove to Sweden yesterday night, and is staying close to the great lake of Vänern.

But first its time for Rest and Recuperation and I invited Nabaz and Thomas Jauert to join me for that purpose. We were supposed to bask in the summer sun but the weather had different plans, i.e. rain. So we activated plan B, Magic, Super Munchkin, Tekken 5. Thomas checked out the beautiful Final Fantasy XII, but he has hardware issues with the computer he brought with him, which right now absorbs all his time. Nabaz jumped into Legacy of Kain: Defiance (which I completed a few days ago), but he left for Aalborg now, to complete the second to last assignment in his social sciences studies. Right now I'm working on Metal Gear Solid 3:Snake Eater, which is absolutely awesome, except that I'm constantly dying. The other Metal Gear games are kid's play compared to this. But cares, as long as it is good entertainment!