Club Silicon

Correspondence

Taking a look at my inbox can be depressing. At least four people have asked questions about the album that I haven't yet responded to. Not good. Suneel provided me with a much better version of Hope II which I'd like to post, but I haven't gotten 'round to that yet either. Also not good.

Granted, with children and a day job a lot of people seem to understand the time sink. And I'm understanding that even though I've written Chip Davis (Mannheim Steamroller) twice I haven't gotten a response. But of course there's a bit of dissapointment. I don't want family, friends, or fans to experience that dissapointment.

Time really does seem to be working against you when you decide to live the American Dream (if such a thing exists).

Anyway, for those of you good enough to keep faith even with the lack of regular updates, I salute you. Keep on trucking!

New phone!

Behold, the Samsung SCH-i760. The Treo 600 finally bit the dust and a new portable device takes the throne.

The benefits:

• - Decent Bluetooth
  - Keyboard
  - Windows Mobile 6
  - Word, Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint
  - ScummVM (plays LucasArts games)
  - DOSBox (plays 80s and early 90s DOS games)
  - MAME (80s arcade games)
  - Genesis, NES and SNES emulators also
  - Voice recognition calling

- 12 track digital audio workstation

The drawbacks:

- No unit conversion in its calculator
- A few more button combinations to use / tougher UI

A mini laptop, so to speak. I confess I'm taken aback by the fact that this thing can emulate an AdLib sound card that, when it was released twenty years ago was twice the size of this thing, and something that would have run so many applications would have been at least ten times bigger, ten times heavier and would have cost ten times as much.

Why then, has such advancement in capacity and capability come with automobiles? According to something my dad read, "cars would be the size of roller skates, would go the speed of light, and cost as much as a television."

Truth be stranger than fiction, my friends.

Grade A Inspiration: Queen

YouTube is a wonderful thing. I'm sure we're all saying that now but in browsing yesterday I came across the making of "One Vision" there, and let's just say I got inspired.

Anyone who doesn't think Queen is a great band should have their head examined. Really. Go get an MRI right now if none of their songs are your cup of tea.

It was fascinating watching Freddie desperately search for ways to tell Roger Taylor (the drummer) to play a specific rhythm. Since apparently none of the band had much knowledge of theory, they "just played" or sang, writing appeared to be a pretty funky process. And I got to see that Freddie Mercury is actually not perfect as a vocalist, he had a few "off" takes.

But, through it all, they made some of the best rock music in history. Compare what one might call "rock" these days whether it is Nickelback or Godsmack (or Limp Bizkit), I dunno... these young punks are doing something new, sure, but do they "rock"? Not as much as Queen.

Hope II, new single!

As you may or may not already know Jeanette released "Hope II" last night on www.alexanderbrandon.net. Check it out!

Hope was one of the first MODs I wrote quite a few years ago and I decided to write a few tunes in the midst of interviewing guitarists and vocalists for "Contention" for Jeanette's Jazzercise. It's harder than it would seem, to write a song that people can exercise to, but I'm trying to find a medium between what works for the class and what I like. So this is the first full effort along those lines. As a song itself I enjoy it and hope you will too.

Contention, the next studio album

I apologize for the lack of updates about the current music project. Life has a way of... getting in the way.

I just wrote up a schedule. See, Andrew Sega of Iris, who most of you probably know as Necros, said that either write electronic albums, or bit the bullet and start a band. Biting the bullet is right.

Challenges abound from getting the precision of MOD files into live recording, to actually getting my lineup solidified. Then, there's marketing more than simply an email blast, and while Club Silicon has exceeded my expectations in terms of its readership, I'd like this album to be somewhat mainstream for exposure, and that may or may not mean going with a CD Baby-like entity or the folks that can "get you into iTunes".

But the simple goals are still there. Write music I want to write, announce it to as many people as possible, and hope they enjoy it.

I won't divulge just what kind of music it is, except at this point you know there's live recording involved. In addition, while I believe I announced release this year, it ain't going to happen. But there is now a hard date. I will NOT be a Battlecruiser 3000 AD or a Duke Nukem Forever.

April 1st, 2009.

No April foolin'. Mark your calendars.

Answer me this

Now that my family is at last moved in to our new place in Moreno Valley I'll be getting more updates and genuinely cool posts. Sorry for the delay all. Suneel I will most certainly respond to your inquiry about the new album, which sadly was also put on hold, but is definitely still progressing.

I need some help in answering a question about budgets and taxes. We're all aware that gas prices are going sky high, however I keep wondering not only the reason for the hikes, but also where this money goes.

At a 7/11 pump near work I happened to notice a sign that said 18 cents per gallon goes to the state of California. In addtion, I also read in an Orange County paper that said all music programs were going to be cut from local elementary schools because the state was going to make a budget cut of 19 million dollars.

Let's do some numbers. There are 36 million people living in the state of California as of the 2006 Census estimate. Of these 36 million, let's assume only half drive. Most likely the number is more, but for the sake of this argument let's say 50%. That equals: 18 million people who drive. Of this 18 million, let's say 12 million commute on a daily basis, 5 days a week. Let's also say that this 12 million buys one tank of gas per week, or an average of 30 miles each way to and from work. Let's say an average tank is 15 gallons accounting for trucks and SUVs. Now, for the math:

12 million x 15 gallons x 18 cents = $32400000. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, 32 million dollars EACH AND EVERY WEEK. How much per year? $1684800000. 16 billion dollars.

And that doesn't even apply to state taxes. Our roads are jammed and in disrepair, which requires municipal responsibility unless it is a highway, and even highways are also jammed and in disrepair as well.

So answer me this: where is all this money going, and why can't some of it go towards musical education in California schools?

I for one am writing my senator and representative about it. I encourage you to do the same.

Boil It Down, Part 1

Intangibles will return, since there are always intangibles. So, consider this an evolution of Intangibles. We will call it "Boil It Down". Consider it a small monograph (I just realized that "Audio For Games" is a monograph actually!) on subjects previously intangible.

Today we will look at what is worthwhile. Just what IS worthwhile? An easy subject to answer on the surface, a complex one to answer in more detail. Family, selflessness, fun. All these things are worthwhile. But I had a realization today. In order to examine just what is worthwhile, you need to ask yourself simple questions. Without those simple questions continually being asked, your brain turns to mush as you get older, and you begin taking interest in less and less things. This is a phenomenon I have found in most adults, myself included.

Simple question #1: What is worthwhile?

Answer #1: Music (listening, singing, playing, and writing)

Simple question #2: Why?

Answer #2: It creates a series of emotions on its own, or enhances existing emotions, or brings back memories (mostly pleasant). Outside my own reasons it is the most unique form of expression for any living thing. It relates to language as well as the manipulation of sound, and at its root, sound when used in various ways creates the emotions mentioned earlier.

Answer #3: Music used to be a way of competing against other composers. In the MOD scene, on IRC, one would "release" a song and have other composers judge that song. Even fans would show up on the channel and weigh in with their opinions. That is something I wished I could have again.

Simple question #3: How would you go about having this competitive group again?

Answer #4: Create a means of distributing songs amongst a select few such as game composers. Should these pieces be intended for commercial release, songs would only be streamed rather than downloaded.

Answer #5: There are already forums (GANG, VGM, etc..) where this could take place in some way, and in addition, old game music could be reviewed and re-enjoyed, even analyzed by the people that wrote it.

There. I just took a section of my swirling mind and organized it in a neat and tidy package, if only a small package that will be a part of a large warehouse of packages. I highly recommend you do the same if you experience confusion along the lines of something you may or may not consider "worthwhile".

As an update, the family has gone through a lot of weirdness lately. We almost moved, but didn't thanks to a wonderfully generous previous landlord. I also went through two crunchy milestones at work. So utterly no music writing for the next album. Sorry chaps. I believe May was my deadline, but that is once again going to have to be extended. I really don't want to turn into the Duke Nukem Forever of album releases, but just like 3DRealms, the next album will be "done when it's done", and only when it'll be utterly satisfying for its listeners.

Peace,

-Alex

The beauty of the rainy season

No pictures, no eye candy. Just words this time.

Southern California may be a tough place to make a living in, but it sure gets beautiful when it rains.

My drive to work is around an hour long on a good day, like today. I ran some errands and headed up later in the day, around eleven am. I head north to 91 and then west through Anaheim, then south on 55 towards Santa Ana.

The drive up 15 on any other day would have yielded grey rocky mountains mostly shrouded in haze, before which there would have been dusty tan hills. Today was different. Those same desert-like hills now contained bright green grass with orange and purple flowers. And the grey mountains were clear, and shone almost like a sword with white snow at the peaks. Most other places are cold or wet at this time of year, but the temperature, weather and surroundings might as well have been Shangri-La.

The drive was the best I've ever had and made the long commute worthwhile. It may not be worth paying 400k+ for a house that you can raise a family in. Or it may not be a place where you can drive down the road without flipping someone off, but it sure is beautiful.

Back again

Happy 2008, everyone. I just wanted to write in and say things are cool, just busy. Haven't seen a delay of updates like this since a few years ago I think.

Album work is coming along slowly but steadily. Craig Rundels is hitting some guitar tracks and I'm on the lookout for vocalists. Tenor male and soprano female, specifically. Jeanette will be doing some singing but I like the multi-vocalist idea of bands like Toto and Fleetwood Mac, so I'll be going that route.

Went to NAMM 2008 and here's what I saw:

The Bechstein is my mother's favorite piano builder, and while I didn't play it they sounded very warm and mid-range.

The guy at the mic is Joe Satriani, touting the latest Vox pedals. The 20th anniversary of the JS guitar series by Ibanez is going to be commemorated with an anniversary guitar, the prototype of which has a "3d" image of Joe's first big commercial release: Surfing with the Alien.

I had about two seconds of chat with Mix magazine and also got a bit bored really fast. Not knowing anyone and (my fault) not setting up appointments beforehand leaves you just to wander around, and there wasn't much "big" this year the way there was in 2006 when I first went and saw Yngvie, Vai, Petrucci and got a surprise performance where I got to listen 5 feet away from Al DiMeola (pure magic, absolutely beautiful).

I'm also going to be bowing out from Mix's "AudioNext" column, putting more juice into both Obsidian and the album. It was great introducing the pro audio magazine world to games on a regular basis (with awesome articles having been written well before my entrance by Blair Jackson and the like), but it's too much to handle with everything else. I'll be going out with a bang though with a huge feature on the PS3 vs. Xbox360 "under the hood", with interviews with Halo 3 director Marty O'Donnell, Xbox audio head Brian Schmidt and Gene Semel (director at SCEA San Diego).

Stay tuned for hopefully my first attempt at tackling some follow up for Club Silicon interviews and features now long overdue such as Game Audio Remix, a chat with Dave Warhol (musician on Adventure Construction Set), a look back into the grey book series with Jason Emery. Oh yeah, I've actually played a few of those games you all recommended in that post a few months back. I did review Mass Effect, but UT3 and a few others are still forthcoming. And a free song or two as well from the cellar.

American Healthcare, part 2

This post will combine a rant about United States healthcare with a bit about information management. With all the ways that computers make life easier, you'd think that people would be able to do the following online:

- Sign up with a physician, whether primary care or specialized
- Make an appointment

As of right now I want to make an appointment, but I can't. I have to wait until regular business hours. Business hours are passe, they're dead and gone. Schedules are almost always stored on a computer, and they probably have been for the past ten years. All you need is a hook to a secure web interface and you can have your schedule actually tell a patient (or a customer of any kind) just what times are free. When a schedule fills up for a doctor over a predetermined period, patients (or, in the case of a mechanic or something, customers) are switched to another doctor, and the process continues. This way you don't need to call each and every damn doctor to see if they're accepting new patients (at times, this information is listed on an insurance site, but not always).

Physicians might have to charge less if they had systems handling their patients rather than people. There must be databases consisting of thousands of symptoms that can establish a number of possibilities for a patient (Health Net being one of them), and all the patient has to do is fill out a form.

Also, how about arriving 15-30 minutes early to fill out those standard release and information forms? Why not have THEM online rather than dozens of square feet devoted to hardcopies of such information? Rather than have a receptionist, have a systems maintenance technician that can ensure this data is kept secure and safe on a regular basis.

The same goes for insurance. All my insurance information is handled online. These systems could be interfaced to ensure that people had coverage before an appointment is scheduled.

This would also enable people to have a much easier time of dealing with the administrative issues that happen so often at the doctor.

I suppose this is one of those "I'd do this myself and make a fortune if I had time" ideas, but hey, at least I can rant about it. :)

Here is a response from my dad on the subject:

It was a major breakthrough when the healthcare financial management (HCFA) gained acceptance of the HCFA standard insurance reporting form on paper (the HCFA 1500.)  Large hospitals now generally have relationships with the large healthcare payers (Medicare, Blue Cross, Aetna, US Health, and a few others) so that they can send claims using electronic data transfer, and now over an internet connection.  Doctor's offices can do this as well, if they want to, and large practices usually do.  The step to allowing individual patients to file e-forms is a very big one.  It was not made a part of HIPAA (healthcare insurance portability and accountability act; it was enacted in 1996 with compliance dates set through 2003, but most dates have slipped due to the immutability of healthcare data systems and business processes) because when the act was being drafted Internet was not used to the extent it is now.  HIPAA does have a lot of privacy rules, and the emphasis in healthcare information systems is now concentrating on eliminating medical error, compliance with an ever-expanding number of laws, implementing new technologies (especially in the area of imaging) and data security (which includes patient privacy.)  Making things simpler for patients is not even on their radar.

Music and Toothbrushes

Here's one of those funny things that you might not think about. Today we got a Costco coupon book in the mail.

Years ago, I first encountered the Costco "bulk" form of retail in Sam's Club. You could get 24 cans of generic soda for about $6. Extremely cheap, Jason Emery's parents went there a lot.

So this coupon book had "put thousands of dollars in your pocket from these savings!" Incredible, I mean really incredible. I can actually have lots of money in my pocket just by BUYING THINGS! Okay, we've all understood this illusion, it has been around commercial enterprise for years. Spend more to save more. The smart ones don't "buy" into this at all, but instead look for the best price only for that which they need.

But then again, where is the reference for what it really costs? Cost of manufacture of course is a complex array of information. But there's something to be said for just how much you feel is fair to pay for something. Most intelligent folk probably have the following figures somewhere in their head:

Fast food meal: $5-$8
Car: $15000, tops
House: $100000, tops
Bed: $500-$800 depending on side

Anyway, here's the kicker: how much do you pay for a toothbrush you use only for personal cleanliness once or twice a day for 6 months for 30 seconds at a time? Around 3$, maybe as high as $5. Now...

How much do you pay for a song that fills you with joy each time you hear it, and you use it anytime you want, for 3 minutes (sometimes more), for the rest of your life? iTunes has set the standard value at $1.

Think about it.

New Single!

A nice present for Christmas, I hope. This was written back in the day but was one of my first vocal efforts with music in MOD format by none other than Bryan Rudge. I hope you enjoy it! The next release will be the new album: Contention, and will be released May 1st, 2008. I want to shout out to all the folks that picked up Era's End, and props to my wife for getting the lyrics to niftily pop up when you click on the song. Thanks again!

Merry Christmas

Happy Holidays from Club Silicon! Enjoy the Pixel Joint supplied artwork, eat cookies, play games, and try not to get sick from irresponsible exercise instructors who bring their phlegm ridden hacking children to work.

Information Management Series: Productivity

This image isn't the same at all as the one on my father's Information Continuum 3 ring binders back in the 80s, but it'll do for now until a more proper updated symbol becomes available. Maybe I'll have a scan of some of those binders so you can bask in how much more intelligent the information there is.

I decided to take note of a single piece of information from InfoWeek, and since it is from October 1st it is most likely horribly outdated, however I feel that it may just be helpful to CS readers, so I'm posting it anyway. Recently the family Dell Inspiron 9300 took a dump and decided to respond randomly to Jeanette's mouse clicks. Often it would need a reboot to function, so I ran spyware programs such as AdAware Spyware Doctor as well as a virus scanner to no avail. I also went through and did some house cleaning, deleting unecessary programs. Jeanette runs a pretty clean PC so that didn't take long. Problem was not solved.

We've all been here. No new information really, and enough of the sob story, although I don't need to tell you how much precious time this kind of crap sucks out of your life.

I bit the bullet and looked at laptop pricing, which is pretty good really, about the same as when we bought our current one about a year and a half ago. But the kicker is the companies you trust give you Outlook Express and Word .5 when you're not looking. Add Office Basic and the cost jumps up several hundred bucks, easily 20-30% of the cost of your PC. Finally the lightbulb went off. "Why in the name of hell are we doing this?"

Admittedly, it is a small form of highway robbery. Microsoft monopolized the market and took God knows how many versions of its Office suite to actually reach something decent with 2003, now the Vista versions go and screw up the learning curve we were all used to and we have to pay for this newfound functionality, which to be honest really isn't all that special.

So I picked up InfoWeek and lo and behold there was another option: Lotus Symphony. Granted, it isn't fully rolled out but it is free. The Open Office standard has been around for some time for a grass roots movement to usurp the throne. The question I'd love to know is: does this stuff actually replace Office? Can it export Office files? Anyone else here use it and had success?

In true form I will report back with my findings.

Game Review: Mass Effect

While I've played precious little of this title, I can say it is definitely worthwhile.

In the early days of Club Silicon, this newsletter would have provided one of perhaps half a dozen reviews at this point, most of which would be in print. However thanks to web magic, most CS readers will have read about or played Mass Effect. Therefore I shall provide information on what the reviewers have not covered.

Mass Effect, in effect, is...?

First, the obvious, just in case there are those of you who haven't heard of or played this title. Mass Effect is a science fiction role playing game focusing on deeper combat gameplay, a more compelling story, and more beautiful graphics than has ever been achieved in gaming. Bioware, the game's deveoper, has achieved this for the most part. This game could be taken very seriously by people in Hollywood as a solid bit of entertainment, but with player control. Bioware is famous for its taking the genre to new heights, and Mass Effect is no exception.

RPG staples, oldies but goodies

The player can customize their character to their hearts desire, making them a man or woman, even choosing responses to various conversations. They can choose to evoke biotechnology (the equivalent of magic), weapons skill (go in shooting), or technology skills (hack your way through life) to achieve their goals. Similar elements pioneered by such games as System Shock and Deus Ex. The storyline and world is truly vast, with the environments being rendered on a level of detail that is truly astounding. You can see the glint of reflection on realistic rivers and oceans of water down to small pores and hairs on character faces. The science fiction aspect is rendered in intricate detail but also with breathtaking futuristic beauty. In short, this is a gorgeous game that will leave your mouth gaping open, especially in high definition on a big screen.

Fight!

Combat is fairly well handled, weapons and strategies are plentiful. This is a truly hi tech version (with advances in many areas) of the best RPG traditions of old and what made them more mainstream (less rolling dice, more game choice and more instant satisfaction to develop a character) all around.

What does it sound like?

Oh yes, and the sound, VO and music? The sound effects are capable, lacking in some areas such as realtime VO being mixed too low to hear above cinematic VO levels, but the design is excellent. The weapons sound unique, appropriately futuristic and well balanced. The VO ranges from pretty good (such Captain Anderson, voiced by Keith David), to mediocre (Seth Green), and the pacing is well done. The music is my favorite aspect. It is sublime and nearly flawless (to paraphrase The Matrix: Revolutions). Written by Jack Wall with additional music by Sam Hulick, Richard Jaques and David Kates, it is very Vangelis in style, carefully blending orchestral in the minority with synthesis in the majority. It just plain ends up sounding beautifully, as though it belonged playing in your head as you read all those Isaac Asimov novels. While it is unlikely since the soundtrack is for sale, I'm going to see if Jack can get me a clip of the music to download here.

Cons

The downside is mainly trying to keep the player interested is a tough task. There's an awful lot of choice with little bang for the buck achieving minor goals (such as advancing various missions, some of which don't even show up in your journal). But even more so is the facial animation, particularly the lip syncing. These characters mostly look incredible, with Shepard, the player character, leading the pack. But when they talk, all bets are off and the realism stops right there. I'm very much hoping this paves the way for new paradigms that don't bucher lines that are pretty carefully delivered that you can ALMOST take seriously were it not for lip movement that convinces you you're watching a foreign film.

Summary, please

All in all Mass Effect is an incredible RPG. It does have its down sides, as mentioned (oh, did I mention there really isn't much exploration in non-hub combat worlds, and very little, if any, in the way of transitional gameplay between planets and hubs?), but the beauty of the environments as well as a story that really does keep you involved goes a long way. Pick it up!

The year of "Unreal"

Ladies and gentlemen, Unreal Tournament 3 has been released, and it is quite a fun title. Andrew Sega, Michiel Van Den Bos, Peter Hajba, Tero Kostermaa, Dan Gardopee and myself wrote music for the first Unreal Tournament. Since then there have been several sequels: UT2003, UT2004, Unreal Championship and Unreal Championship 2. Why this is called Unreal Tournament 3 I really don't know other than the fact that it is made with the Unreal 3 engine. Also that if they called it 2007 (as originally planned) it would look odd. Cliff's original plan was to release one every year as EA does with its sports franchises. However, discipline and original, new enjoyable ideas don't always mix.

A good chunk of music in UT3 is remixed versions of old scores done by myself and Michiel, as well as Mechanism 8 by Andy Sega. These can be heard on the website, but they can also be purchased.

Even better, at Gamestop if you purchase UT3 you can also get a free copy of Unreal Anthology. Even more folks to enjoy the original games as well as the bundled score. My congratulations and thanks to Epic and Midway for enlightening a whole new generation of players to these classics, in more ways than one. And last but not least thanks go to the composers that made for such great scores almost ten years ago.

"Sorry, Santa is booked"

Today my four year old was very much looking forward to seeing Santa Claus at the Temecular Promenade mall. We have been taking our children to see Santa for quite awhile. However today we encountered something unprecedented. At 11 am, a rep told us "sorry, we're booked. We can't allow anyone else in line. The wait is 3 hours from here."

We have waited over an hour for Santa without a problem, and the line in this case was about as long as the ones we have waited in before. However, never has anyone said that they can't continue the line. While I'm not weeping that Nicholas' heart was crushed, what were we to tell him, and more importantly, what about all the other people that were turned away? That kind of thing is pretty upsetting. We'll be writing to the paper about it. It's one thing to have a long line, but another to turn people away if you advertise Santa.

'Tis the season

I'm sure everyone reading this knows this already, but this holiday season has an unprecedented set of game releases, all fully taking advantage of next generation technology. I don't think we've yet seen such a bold step into such a big "across the board" change in gaming since the 1990s venture into 3d. A brief list of the games I want to eventually get my hands on are:

Halo 3
Mass Effect
Crysis
Unreal Tournament 3 (with pieces remixed from originals by yours truly, more on that soon)
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Super Mario Galaxy
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
The Orange Box

My home time is severely limited. I spend so much time away from my family that I want to spend time with them almost exclusively at home. This hopefully will change when we get a multiplayer console to supercede our aging GameCube. In the meantime I will schedule specific play time for these titles (well, at least the relevant ones) at work.

Have you CS readers played them yet? Write in and provide your own reviews! Revel in the great influx of holiday hits. :)

What does takeaway mean?

There are always Intangibles. But I haven't written about any in awhile. I just realized that I'm writing articles and columns and books that thousands of people have read, perhaps tens or even hundreds of thousands have read. And wow... that's cool.

However I just came back to earth and started thinking. How many of these people not only read these things, but... <a big pause here, I want to build it up...>

.... but remember them.

Incredible isn't it? It started a chain reaction in my head. How much DO I remember of what I read? How much is fluff that goes in one ear and out the other? Will you, beloved CS reader, forget this? My wife remembers a heck of a lot, more than I do, but even she forgets. I read a great deal, and sometimes when I read I get inspired. But it might as well be like listening to a song. You really get inspired sometimes by a song, it takes you away from traffic or something else you'd rather not deal with. Almost as surely as alcohol I guess. Anyway. Back to inspiration. Think about the last time something inspired you, and then think about how that inspiration fizzled out.

My inspiration sometimes comes from music, sometimes from IT, for different reasons. For music, it is because I want to write something cool that other people will like as well, sometimes because I am just plain vain. There's a good deal of emotion involved, passion for writing, singing, playing, all of it. For IT, there's an awful lot of emotion too, but not as pure, there's some thought inolved that sparks the emotion, not as much pure "feel" as music has.

I was reading an InfoWeek (here we go again, right?), and I know there were four terms in there that I never heard before. Then I remembered that the last issue of InfoWeek had something similar going on, and another end article by Rob Preston. Each consecutive read grew a feeling, and the feeling was "do any of these stories ever resolve?"

THAT is the connection, as thin as it may be, between music and IT. Music resolves. Not one of the things I read in IT resolves. Nothing says "BPM... just look at what it has done!" Theory, not practice. Not that there aren't success stories. We hear all the time about how much money people have made provided it is in the millions. We read every week about how many copies of Oracle have been sold or how many million users are projected to use RFID by the year 2030. Awesome.

I want to read more references. I just achieved a reference by reporting BACK on how well game audio education has progressed in a year and directly referenced specific schools. You'll read it in this month's Mix. However I haven't yet read in InfoWeek about something that was revisited as either a success or a failure. Slow down. Or at least let me meet the people who don't want it to slow down, and figure out how they can process so many new techs and new directions and new people in the world of computers. Or does one person just read one part of the magazine and write down the things that have any relationship to each other in a practical way?

To anyone who was able to read this and understand it... thank you. Let me boil it down for you: take that which has inspired you and try to keep track of it, IF it is important. Only you can decide if it is important. If it is, hold on to it, or try to remember it.

A great invention would be not just a personal organizer or a reminder system but something that tracks your inspirations and follows them to their fruition, either in failure or success.

Heroes: Aaron Rudkin

Sucks that one of NBC's popular television programs decided to steal the title for this particular section of CS. Ah well, if we inspire, we inspire. What can ya do.

I had two best men at my wedding. One was Jason Emery, who needs no further introduction. The other was the ultra cool guy pictured here: Aaron Rudkin.

Aaron lived on the same street as I did in Annapolis, Maryland. His family moved here and there but are now all settled in San Diego. Lucky for me, I'm not that far away. I was able to be a groomsman at his wedding and the photo is the rehearsal. Not more than six months ago he was hitched to the lovely Kaitlyn Chau. I couldn't be happier for him.

Enough of the boring background. This guy is about the best IT professional I've met, and it isn't because he knows the latest RFID and server tech (although hell, he just might). It's because he instilled a philosophy of customer service many of us would do well to emulate. On the phone one day he explained "the guy had a problem I couldn't solve, but I told him to hang on while I found someone who could solve it." He didn't just give up. He was tenacious. I've heard stories of IT group directors who might as well be shift managers at McDonalds in terms of their actual managerial and people "skills", and his infamous joke, walking into work early one morning saying "Oh man, am I feeling scuzzy... and I'm NOT talking about the Adaptec!" At which the entire staff bursts into screaming fits of laughter.

Aaron also has a sense of humor second to none, and an uncanny knack for analyzing film and TV, extracting funny things hidden in the script or plot. Time to quote him, and write the first genuinely funny thing in CS history:

In Superman II there is a scene where Lex Luthor is attempting to join forces with General Zod, Non, and Ursa; the Krypton criminals, to fight Superman. Luthor explains: "he is... just one. Where you are... three!" Non then lets out an irritated low growl, to which Luthor nervously responds "Or four if you count him twice."

There are two possible reasons for Non's primitive interjection. One, Nom, under any circumstances, does not like being referred to as only one person. Two, the growl was completely random, which makes even less sense than the first reason. So why the growl?

I have to admit the first time I read that I couldn't stop laughing. Go see the movie and, sure enough, the big lug growls, and you can't help but wonder what kind of crack the script writer was smoking when they put that one in.

Aaron and I used to spend time at many a bar in Annapolis talking of life, culture, women (of course) and sheer insanity. We played Doom 2 deathmatch and his prowess was only matched by a dozen or so. In fact, he wiped the floor with poor John Romero in a Doom 2 deathmatch at his bachelor party (thanks again to Romero for obliging, I still owe him a case of champagne). If anything John had Aaron beat for smacktalk that night. John was on speakerphone with us during the match and after being killed a little too quickly after a respawn, he burst out "Fuck that lucky ass bullshit shot!" Awesome.

We also quote Red Dwarf and Black Adder constantly along with some other favorite films:

Deep Cover
Deathtrap
Commando
The Fugitive
Cracking Up
Spinal Tap
Basic Instinct
The Punisher (yes, the Dolph Lundgren version)
Iron Eagle

I could honestly go on forever, but time is short, and his charm can best be communicated through an interview, which will be provided in a post coming soon to an MP3 player near you.

To sum up, they just don't make them like this anymore, and I'm glad through life's tribulations that we are still keeping in touch and enjoying (however rarely) the occaisional cigar.