Pulp Free

Weighing in at 2.68 MB in size, I bring you an amazing animated GIF (I do apologize if you haven’t discovered broadband / wideband connections yet…)

This post is almost as much for me as it is for the rest of my visitors (all three of you…). As I wandered of a wander across the Internet (as I do late at night) - I came across Chirag Mehta’s Web site. One thing lead to another and I started readying some of his older entries were he talked about the performance of his personal Web server being able to handle quite a bit of bandwidth (and some other similar type musings.) Essentially he hosted a java-based applet on his site called Falling Sands (which originally came from DOFI-Blog) and was getting quite a lot of hits. I’m all for traffic and I like the whole idea of performance on commodity hardware and cobbled together servers.

So this information about Falling Sands was out in December, 2005. Yeah - where was I? Can you image if I knew about this wonderful time waster two years ago - what my life would be like now? So here… You too can play now…

(This particular version I have here came from the Falling Sand Web site - there are a few varieties out there).

Over time I’m put a few of my favorite screen shots up (first one) as I lose even more sleep with this addiction. Need to know how to play? (This particular version doesn’t have the constant falling particles…)

"Falling Sand Game", also "World of Sand", (2005) is a Java applet first found on the Dofi Blog via Fark thread, later enlarged and rehosted by Chirag Mehta. The game has been popular on community link sites like Digg and Delicious and involves four main falling particles: sand, water, salt, and oil. Each of these particles have special properties that can be manipulated; among these include burning, desiccating, growing, eroding, and more. Along with these four, main particles are auxiliary environmental manipulators: Wall, Fire, Plant, Spout, Cera (or wax), ???, and Eraser. By putting these together, one can thoroughly enjoy the modeling and construction of very complex structures and systems. There is an additional special feature that can be turned on, off, or told to remain in place. This is called the namekuji. In Japanese, "namekuji" means slug, naturally for the properties of a slug when salt is poured onto it. Several different versions exist, varying from applets with zombies, or human bodies, that have their own unique properties to applets where auxiliary environmental manipulators have additional properties.
 

Pretty dramatic title for such a quick post, right? That’s because for the first time in two weeks, I was exposed to the 15 minutes of Guiding Light that C can’t live without each morning. It seems to cause me a little bit of extraneous drama that I don’t normally have in my life… Anyway…

At 4:37 (ish) - I had the delightful realization that our house was shaking. Of course, I was sleeping - but it woke me enough to enjoy the last 5 seconds of it. Being rather sleepy, I got up to look around. As if I’d be able to “see” something outside. (If you want to really enjoy yourself, wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me some questions… the answers will truly amaze you…)

Not seeing anything of particular outside (like a large ogre, a bulldozer, maybe some pissed off squirrels) - I went back to bed wondering “what could it have been?” Did an earthquake cross my mind? No…

Did I mention that I’m a certified genius?

So this morning I said to C - “Did you feel that house shake this morning?” - she said she was sleeping. But flipped the news on and said, quite matter-o-factly - “it was an earthquake this morning.”

I actually like San Francisco - I’ve even been to San Jose. I think I’d probably do okay in California - because this morning’s 5.2 earthquake didn’t really seem to bother me. It was… well - interesting. Thankfully we didn’t have any damage - and it looks like it didn’t impact much of the region. I just wonder what it was like in West Salem, Illinois where the earthquake was centered. They probably had a better ride…

Some time back I talked a bit about my mission to discover the roots of a particular drum loop (Ashley’s Roachclip). A long and arduous trip that had a fruitful ending. Well - it comes that I have many of these types of soulful searching that are continuously ongoing. The latest effort of mine involves tracking down an often used clip of music used in such movies as Kill Bill and more recently Transformers.

Sometimes called music beds or entrance songs - usually they’re snippets of full length songs that go unnamed and are used in everything from sports shows, WWF entrances to film and TV trailers. No longer the case in this scenario - I found what I was looking for.

In researching some Web sites for my previous post about Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love, I watched a YouTube clip of Leona on X Factor. Long and behold - the entrance music to her stepping up to the microphone was the same music bed I’ve been looking for! A few more Google searches and 30 more minutes of whittling away my Sunday afternoon - I came across:

Tomoyasu Hotei - Battle Without Honor Or Humanity

From Wikipedia:

“Battle Without Honor or Humanity” is an alternate version of “Shin jingi-naki tatakai”, an instrumental piece by Tomoyasu Hotei, originally used in the 2000 film Another Battle (aka Shin Jinginaki Tatakai) by Junji Sakamoto, in which Hotei also performs as an actor. The original version was also available in Hotei’s live album Rock the Future Tour 2000-2001. Three versions of the track are featured on Hotei’s 2004 album Electric Samurai (The Noble Savage).

Now that I know what it is, I can now share with you one of my favorite music beds… Doesn’t it make you just want to star in your own action movie?

Tomoyasu Hotei - Battle Without Honor Or Humanity - (Song Sample)

No real reason for showing Uma Thurman & Kill Bill… Just thought it needed a little something…

Today must be a good day… Probably trying to increase my post to days ratio - but nonetheless - you’re getting a few posts today!

The first Earworm comes courtesy of Leona Lewis, winner of the 2006 X Factor reality series (Think American Idol for England… You have to love Simon Cowell). While technically released as the biggest-selling single in the UK in 2007, it’s only recently (March 2008) has the single hit the US shores.

I probably came across this single in early February and was intrigued by it enough to hold onto it and place it into my listening list. While it wouldn’t win any composition awards (essentially the same hook over and over) - the lyrics are catchy and Leona’s vocal skills also very easy to listen to… While being compared to Whitney Houston already (heck - there’s possibly a bit of Mariah Carey or Celine Dion in there as well) - I’ll leave a bit of time to see how well she does…

No need to wait anymore… Here is your tune…

Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love (Part 1) - (Song Sample)