Metallica Figure Skating
This is just awesome.
I don’t have time to play videogames. But I will have to find it when Starcraft II comes out. This video is simply perfect. 21 minutes of pure Starcraft II war gameplay on HD. Beautiful to the extreme. 12 years waiting will be worth it. GG!
En Pau Farell m’ha dedicat Un Dibuix. I estic tan content que necessito posar-lo aquí. I és que aquest dibuix m’ha fet pensar en la de coses que hem viscut ell i jo, i la d’anys que fa que ens coneixem. En Pau i jo, a l’edat de 8 o 9 anys, ens posàvem a dibuixar Bola de Drac sempre que podíem. Després ell em va passar el “…And Justice For All” de Metallica i tot va canviar. Després ens posàvem a tocar la guitarra i ell em deia que Metallica feien quintes i jo no sabia què era una quinta. Després ens posàvem a parlar de la vida, i jo no sabia què era i ara encara tampoc. Després ens posàvem a parlar de dones. Després ens posàvem a beure cervesa. I després el tio va i em fa un dibuix.
Que gran titan. T’estimo!
While programming for the iPhone, this questions raised in my head:
And now that I read this article from the Lostipedia, I can continue programming safely.
I have been blown away with this fascinating visual/audio illusion. Watch the following video and listen carefully on what he’s saying.
Now close your eyes and play the video again. Do you hear the same thing?
Most people will hear “Da-da, da-da” (or “ga-ga, ga-ga”) when watching the video with the eyes open, but then will hear “Ba-ba, ba-ba” when they close their eyes. In this video, the audio and the image do not relate, however our brain tries to make them relate somehow. What we are actually hearing is “Ba-ba, ba-ba”, but what we’re seeing is a man saying “Ga-ga, ga-ga”. So our brain is trying to find a middle point and we hear “Da-da, da-da” (or “ga-ga, ga-ga”).
This is known as the McGurk Effect, and you can read the original paper written by Harry McGurk & John MacDonald in 1976 here.
I’ve been working on this application for the iPhone called Sonic Skull Shot (SSS) for the past week as an assignment for the course Mobile Music, taught by Professor Ge Wang.
It is a nice OpenGL application for the iPhone that makes use of the accelerometer and some touches to create a sling shot to throw skulls while synthezising some sound. It took me so many hours to do that, but in the end I think the result is pretty good.
You can download it from here!
Last weekend the NAMM Show 10′ took place like every year in Anaheim, L.A., but this year I was invited to go and I must say that being there has been such an amazing experience.
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First of all, I got invited to the NAMM thanks to Joachim Ganseman, a visitor PhD student at CCRMA that managed to get invitations for all Master Students at this department.
It was my first time in L.A., and this city is *huge*. We had to cross most part of it in order to get into the Anaheim Convention Center (where NAMM takes place), and it took us like 2 hours to do that. And this Convention Center turned out to be so big and so crowded that even the cellphone network was constantly going down.
Hundreds of expositors (around 1,500) were there, and every single music related brand was there. Roland, Universal Audio, Mesa/Boogie, Ibanez, Tama, Dw, VicFirth, Elixir Strings, Boss, Fender, Marshall, Ernie Ball, Shure, Dean Markley, Mackie, ESP, ENGL, etc, etc, etc. Basically everything. You get the idea.
We could see from the latest audio processing card with crazy high-speed DSP stuff to the latest Steve Vai guitar being held by an amazing statue of Steve Vai himself. From metal heads to DJ audio technology guys. From Melissa Cross to Joe Satriani. From Vinnie Paul to Slash.
I got to talk to Melissa Cross and told her about my Growl Hero project. She was really interested! I also talked to Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater about it, and he replied an email and he apparently is willing to do some work with the iPhone Stanford Orchestra!
Some other achievements: Signs from Slash (Guns’n'Roses), Paul Gilbert (Mr. Big), Andy Timmons, Chris Broderick (Megadeth), Tony MacAlpine (Planet X), John Myung (Dream Theater), John Petrucci (Dream Theater) and Steve Lukather (Toto).
Here some pictures, but you can check my Flickr Album to see all of them!
This quarter I signed up for the course Mobile Music, taught by Professor Ge Wang. It is a course to write music code for Mobile devices, mostly focused on the iPhone.
Yesterday was due the first assignment which was writing three small music apps for the iPhone. I must say that the library created initially for Smule and later modified for the MoPho (Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra) is extremely amazing.
Check out my small apps here. Enjoy titans!