Aspect Heavy

Aspect Heavy semi-officially launched the other day! The web-site isn't really done, but it works for now.

We wanted to expand on audio production stuff, and so our first new projects are two opposing directions from what Comatose does.

With the new Aspect Heavy website we launched Perspeculum and the Aspect Heavy Podcast.

Perspeculum is by far the strangest thing we've ever done. It's an extraction a step removed from conversations and podcasting. It's the stuff you'd want to be removed by a noise removal. It's putting the background in the foreground. It's pretty strange, but it was fun to do.

I thought it would be fun to release a "Season" at one time and have every episode be the exact same length. So that's what we did. A smaller detail is how each episode is paired with distinct art that is meant to compliment the noise.



The Aspect Heavy Podcast is in the complete opposite direction. It's a conversation style podcast without a script and without pre-planned topics. It was also surprisingly difficult to do. There were a few unreleased test episodes that were just too horrible.

The first time Nizar did the intro, and we introduced each other was met with a long pause as we suddenly realized we didn't know how to start a conversation. At least not one that is being recorded.

We finally recorded a descent episode, and after quite a bit of editing, I felt we could release it. There's still some problems with the levels and weird noises from not being in good recording spots, but it works as a proof of concept. We'll keep at it and hopefully get better as time goes on.

http://comapod.com/post/123839991800/aspect-heavy-podcast-perspeculum-minions

There are some other shows that may be coming out in the near future, but they're not quite ready to be talked about just yet.

atob.xyz

One of the more interesting results of the craziness that was reddit last week was the massive advertisement for reddit alternatives.

The problem with the vast majority of them is they were more often than not more clones than alternatives. And even more often they had few users and server problems. I don't think the "next reddit" is going to be exactly like reddit, and trying to cash in on the current, or recently passed, chaos is not the smartest thing to do.

The other problem is that all of the alternatives that I saw didn't have a strong established internal culture. A massive wave of redditors joining would then effectively change the what they had in an attempt to make it reddit 2.0 rather than something new.

Amongst all the rehashes of attempts at reddit 2.0, I found one of the most interesting websites I've ever seen.

atob.xyz

It's one part 4chan, one part reddit, one part nobodyhere.com. Especially that last one. I used to spend a lot of time on that strange website back in high school, and one of its lesser known features (already on a lesser known website) is the inclusion of an anonymous chat... in the form of bug avatars in a sink. It's absurd to the core, but led to interesting conversations and great friendships.

atob.xyz captures that spirit, albeit with much more internet-ness than nobodyhere's bug sink, but it's close enough. It's goofy and whimsical and anonymous. A fun way to kill some time and make jokes with others who enjoy the silly nature of the site.

One Year of Comatose

Earlier this week we came out with episode 52 of Comatose!



That makes a year's worth of Comatose! There's an important distinction there, because the actual beginning of the show was in early June of 2014. We missed a few weeks in the beginning.

Our narrator, Taro Yamada, had a baby and got married right after episode 2, which left us a little lost for continuing the show. Luckily Nizar stepped up to the challenge and created what's probably the most distinct voice of the show.

I wanted this episode to mirror episode 1 in at least some way. So I got everyone from our not-so-great first episode back together to make our anniversary edition.

The result is a somewhat bland episode, but I like it. It's reminiscent of that first episode where we were just recording whatever we could to see how it sounded.

A lot of cool stuff in the works that hopefully I'll remember to write about here!

Windows 7 -> Ubuntu 14.04

I woke up yesterday to the wonderful sound of my harddrive failing.

That and because I was sweating into my bed.

Right now it's la canicule here in France, which is a fancy way of saying unbelievably hot. So when I woke up to computer troubles, well, I knew it was going to be an annoying day.

After a groggy look at my BIOS settings and seeing the same error again and again, it became clear that I at least needed a Windows 7 install disk if I wanted to boot up my computer.

The boot sector was corrupted.

Problem is I received this computer with Windows 7 preinstalled and without an install disk. I figured I'd see if the computer store had a disk I could buy or if they had another fix I could use.

A hot walk to the computer store gave me an estimate in the hundreds of euros if I needed a new harddrive. I didn't think that was it, and the clerk gave me the great of idea of running a linux liveDVD to see if the files were still there.

Bought a DVD, burned a disk for the first time in years and.... all my files were there! I quickly backed up everything and started trying to get a Windows 7 disk to get my computer up and running.

In the middle of searching I started wondering why I even needed it. I could just install Ubuntu from the liveDVD!

So I did it.

And it was the first time I'd used Ubuntu since 2008. Boy has it improved. I mean (most) things actually worked without any noodling around in the terminal! Including sound!

I'm enjoying Ubuntu 14.04 now. Best of all it's running better than Windows 7 ever ran on this machine.