showdown in blog city

Old Anime

Hidamari Sketch

I've been watching the old season really slowly for awhile now. It wasn't that I wasn't enjoying it, it was more that I just wanted to like, savor it, I guess. Really enjoyable show. Started x365 today, very impressive. It also captures something that I really like in art, when something goes from like... modest beginnings to something grand? Or like, it starts to really value itself. Like in the first season the budget wasn't as good and they weren't sure that people would like the characters enough to see this level of like, connection-building material? Uhh other examples are Ico to Shadows of the Colossus. Or um, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to Ulysses? I'm sure there's a really good example somewhere. Anyways a term I just thought of that I like is “miracle to masterpiece”. So I dunno yeah. Sorta miss the first season OP and ED though.

New Anime

Nothing for this update! Yup! I wanted to post this before I went away for the weekend. Usagi Drop is out but I don't want to watch it without an Idolmaster chaser in case it is sad.

New Music

Outerspace – My Brother's Keeper

Listened to this because I like these guys. I wasn't expecting a whole lot but I got everything I could've hoped for, really. They might not have the same sort of deathswag that JMT or Army of the Pharaohs can get, like, nothing's gonna hit as hard as “Battle Cry” on here, but they do get a lot of the more like, mystique intimidation that you saw on stuff like “I Against I” or “Blood In, Blood Out”, where there's like a subtle or downright funky beat and people just kill everything on it. “Bodega Gospel” is this definitely, really solid beat, choice crew cut sorta spitting. The title track and a few others go for the former style, though, and although they can't go quite as hard, they certainly don't embarrass themselves. That hook hits like a ton of bricks man. Worth a listen if you want this sort of thing and you've already memorized Visions of Gandhi etc.

Vocaloid Best From ニコニコ動画 （あか)

So I like listening to Vocaloid music but I really have a pretty poor sense of what's out there. I usually just end up getting linked to the really popular ones and sometimes I grab a new album if it's by a composer I really like, but the vast majority of the stuff I just have no idea what to do with. 'Cause there's just so, so much and it just comes flying at me from all directions. Anyways I guess what I'm getting at is that I like these best-of compilations. I recognized maybe like half the songs on here I think. I recognized the thing being remixed in a bunch of other ones, which is strange, because I always like only half remembered it and I was never sure if it was what I thought it was. Anything is possible in a genre like this. Anyways the whole release confuses me to think about because I have no idea why these tracks were chosen specifically, like, I figured initially it might be the most popular Vocaloid songs of the last year or something but there's also really old stuff like “Melt” on it. Maybe it would help if I could read Japanese. Oh well. All very catchy stuff.

Danny Brown – XXX

Dunno where this guy came from, I feel like I heard of him at some point. This is real interesting though. I feel like the entire plane of hip hop has been elevated in the weirdness direction in the last year or so and I couldn't be happier. This is like the bizarro world version of Lil B I guess, who was already the bizarro world version of a lot of other stuff, plus a bunch of like Waka Flocka Flame. The production goes between depressed Lex Luger to some real new level unlocked stuff. Lyrically he's actually pretty decipherable and there's a lot of pretty fascinating bleak storytelling here along with a lot of really clever one liners. His flow mixes up a lot too, between hilariously chunky brick-spitting like Lil B 2.0 (Lil C?) and your traditional storytelling eloquence (Little Bee?) and really wonky stop-start madness. It's all quite good. It seems like rap is in some contest of topping itself in extreme esoterica (OF, Death Grips, Shabazz Palaces, etc, etc) and the results have been consistently fantastic. It's a format so well suited to essentially everything, 'cause there's so much to like and so much that can be easily loved in a good hip hop track, no matter how weird anything else gets. I dunno if Danny Brown has the throne at the moment but he certainly made an okay shot here. I just wish I didn't get to this after the Pitchfork kids. Oh well. I just can't get over that this seems like Danny sat down and was like, I want to make some hip hop, I want to say some things, and the environment of the genre made it so this is what happened. This is like the style of new semi-underground hip hop today. How cool is that? How cool is that??!?

Old Music

Cupp Cave – Garbage Pail Beats

I was recommend this on... /mu/ I think? Don't actually remember how I ended up downloading this. Anyways this is the wonkiest thing I've ever heard. This like defines wonky for me. Even if it isn't actually wonky this is wonky for me. This is the new core of this genre. Whenever I tell someone “he does like wonky beats” and they say “what does that mean?” I no longer have to stumble over some poor explanation of “uh, like, really grimey samples, really scattered stop-start tempo, lots of silly sounds, really wobbly baselines...”, I can just say “listen to this album and this album is all that is wonky.” Man fun times over here! I really want someone to rap over some of this stuff but I also don't want to put someone up to that challenge. It'd be like trying to sprint over some like, uh, what are those really small hills called? Whatever I think it's sort of pointless to try to describe it. It's like trying to explain a shade of green. Just look at it mang.

Future Music

2011 is already one of the best years in music I can name and it's gonna get even better I mean holy cow. Here are some albums coming up that I think I will like. This reference is mainly for me I guess. Sorry to people showing up here Googling this stuff and hoping for leaks.

Blu – Jesus

Wasn't I just talking about a pretty cool new Blu album I had heard? Apparently there's another one. Confusing. Oh well should be good.

DJ Shadow – The Less You Know, The Better

I've been sorta shaky on a lot of his recent stuff but that's probably just 'cause I'm always comparing it to like, Endtroducing. Will probably be really catchy and fun if I can stop doing that.

One Be Lo – L.A.B.O.R.

Aw yeah this is exciting. Although it is like not even half as cool as the oft-rumoured Binary Star reunion, the OneManArmy of rap is still uh a one man army. Should be “a lot of fire” from “waterworld”.

Blu – Open

Okay yeah what is going on here man slow down you're confusing me are you the Boris of hip hop?

Nas – Life is Good

Eh I'm willing to give Nas another shot. Guest appearances along will make this worth it. Distant Relatives was pretty solid too.

Jedi Mind Tricks – Violence Begets Violence

I dunno if it is what I hope it is I will like it for exactly what it is.

Witchdoctor - The United Race Ov America

This guy is like a really unappreciative dirty south rapper I think. I dunno I liked most of the verses I remember him doing at least. Haven't heard his previous albums though.

Mike G – Gold

All things considered he might be the most consistent member of OF aside from Earl. Hopefully this will have the same sorts of production as ALI, 'cause that was really cool stuff.

Apparently there's also albums coming out by Kanye, The Roots and Big Boi, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Bjork – Biophilia

Dunno about this whole “app-album” business but new Bjork always is pretty nice to get.

Justice – Audio, Video, Disco

This is gonna be really good and you know it and I know it. I'm sick of people being skeptical even though I was among them until pretty recently.

M83 – Hurry Up, We're Dreaming

Wow Sundays=Youth was 3 years ago, eh? That seems wrong. If this is as good it will be great because it is so long. It will probably be even better as they're going back to a more ambient style I think?

This is pretty futile, I think. There's way too many. Really what it comes down to is the trifecta:

-Das Racist's Relax

-Justice's Audio, Video, Disco

-The new Animal Collective album that I am sure will be released I am sure and it will have “A Long Time Ago” on it and it will be the biggest jam since “Alsatian Darn”.

Oh and there's gonna be 3 new Das Racist mixtapes released on New Years. This is kinda sucky 'cause I'm usually out “partying” etc on New Years and thus won't be able to hear them right away!! But yeah they're all going to be excellent I bet and I mean DAP IS MAKING A MIXTAPE? That's just too hype for words.

Found Abstract Poetry

I really like found art and I think I came up with a pretty good source. Here's how you do it:

1) Find a video on Youtube that has “Transcribe audio”. Not every one does and I'm not sure what makes it so that some do and others don't.

2) Turn on the transcription and copy everything down. New set of subtitles = new line.

3) Drop jaw at the BRILLIANCE.

Why this is so cool: Youtube, when guessing at the transcription, uses typical speech patterns, probably based on analyzing tons of text while crawling. That leads to it trying to create actual plausible sentence chunks. The results have the same sort of “cadence” as Marakov chains. But here you get the bonus of it being “spaced” in the way that people tend to speak and everything usually has a pseudo-assonance, like a Joycean parody of speech (the “met butterly” sort of thing). It works especially well with hip hop I assume but to be fair that's the only thing I've tried. It's sort of tedious. I may have overstated how cool the results are but I still think it's a pretty neat gimmick. Anyways here's some results:

From Das Racist's legendary freestyle on that Pitchfork show:

are you doing

girl you know what is this that attack

seriously

foreclosure discovered aftershave shampoo crackle back cataracts was

natural habitat

this is what i see what i'd like to see some travel jack

perhaps not real friends

businessmen organized

kilowatt

we've got lots to take a shot traffic or walk

flooding ground-based while you're at the U.S. says he was a release

tremendous single in the night before

destination participation and would like to thank

rotation

trillion and like a hundred and eighteen good stewardship cumberland wilbert

shoot casuals

michael jackson

two million dollar value jobs

prob prolly my contract jackson million-dollar live albums

billion-dollar-plus haha

michael jackson was william barloon

illumination camaraderie

college michael jackson jackson a million dollars

when the senate

willow

threat

clothes

session of africa

warning for u

you

harding

demand and rich

just won't be able to deliver noticed him

slice

prasad

distributed

dividends or interest

was different

Seems to be some commentary on DA RICH? I dunno some pretty funny things. “Session of Africa” seems vaguely deep.

cLOUDDEAD's “Jimmy Breeze (1)”

tended

did are

drifted

and can't unit

do you that

content

the review

and u

removed brand

mix

hai

services

transfer

director almost there

and what about all this

street catfish

killed

dad

being submissive

scientists it's excellent procedures grand

peacemaking cuz

side

since

florist and well done

in polite visitation demand

catalogs piece we just haven't had the painful decision not to sit notes

homeless p

fanciful and stand

controlled

greg citizens does

it

pins it

please arrive at the white house was goldman's head and minimum maintenance and and and and

and

families

the

menu

and related

Sort of disappointed, it didn't even notice they were talking for most of it. “Street catfish” I think is really really cool though.

Kool AD's “Hyphy Ballad”

feeling for you

facilities means I.D. card

it seems to be specific sweepstakes fixable blitzkrieg

state fourteen

single executive assistant kathy is robertson blvd los

synchronicity

no one had been consistent

things and i think we can meet someone apostle also

glistens on

distant listed morristown new jersey nets themselves heartwarming

certainly upset about the past

seeps oil is working again

troubles the surgery

top-flight thousands of cars

experienced syrians natural

disappoint

commits the deputy rap

that we can grab at bats that background grabbing grabbing grabbing dabur

gardiner dancing

black amin cox says gehtto

country united like an insider

doesn't mustard

jim if you don't like this on the second there

crazy resident

okay so you can use laser-guided repeatedly even see things breach of

feels great resource dropped out of madness house without that protection

written unisex decisions that resulted actually getting someone who wants to

add to see if anyone else

gymnasts

benefits dot com lessons

nobody bothered to be part of the class

viacom budget-cutting flasks multitask that's

lazy bum rap in this country was just looking around the disposable suddenly

disappeared seems to have

house with the movie industry may have some people

regulatory header itself right breast

on a smart

you know i know it's not coming

already said it was air capability in their game

it's like a high degree of response

white people like what everyone comes out of the sixteen to keep the peace

siegal hypoplasia people's minds and i think he decided to have when you want

to prevent these people promises that we don't know why not get she was

optimistic

fine shel incentives

compromised for profits

democrats were standing in the hospital being robbed cochlear implants cuts not

profile

for what it means of a possible to proceed frisking put everything into

menial club

video biggest everybody

i could handle it

building

possible criticism

blood libel

consist of employees

david molpus

around six million dollars

syndrome

peoplesoft

self-employed

this place too long

denied

myself

himself scientific

declining

and uncle tom's birthday

tubular bells and whistles

clinton

obstacles

not resist

elijah muhammad's

success

sonic youth institute

would you mind if some of the nation's

wildness

shouldn't be too bad

those last minute

necessary

cranberries

vocally thank you thank you for choosing justices

Wow, amazing stuff here. “Sonic youth institute”, “Uncle Tom's birthday” and “Tubular Bells and Whistles” are my favorites, but there's tons of classic lines. “I think he decided to have what you want”? That's DEEP, man, just THINK about that! Not even sarcastic here. It's like, a statement on the unsuccessful bitterly envying the rich. Some LaMont Chu “happiness in being envied” sort of stuff. Bananas. “Lazy bum rap in this country was just looking around the disposable suddenly/disappeared seems to have”, that's COOL. That's HAUNTING. “gymnasts/benefits dot com lessons/nobody/bothered to be part of the class/viacom budget-cutting flasks multitask”, WOAH. Take that, early current reincarnation of the early 2000s dot com bubble that today's twitter investors have forgotten about!! Take that, big companies with too many fingers in too many pies!

That's all I've done before I got bored. Found Prose is pretty silly when it's as random as this, and trying to find meaning in it is obviously just pointless or a sign of schizophrenia. O-or maybe Google's speech recognition algorithms are trying to teach us something!! What it is though is a nice challenge. Plus you get a lot of cool words put together that you might not see elsewhere. I mean “tubular bells and whistles” well one Google search showed me that obviously it's been done before and probably is encapsulated in the recognition algorithm as a set phrase but it's still pretty cool right?

But yeah it would be neat if other people did this. I'm sure there's somewhere in the API that I can just pull the text of the subtitles from I think? I could even do a script or something.

Competitive Ideologies

So like last week I played some chess as I am often wont to do. I go down and play with these dudes on nice stone tables outside the city hall. It's a real eclectic crowd. There's like, old Russian dudes, Asian businessmen looking like lunch break, twitchy-looking 20somethings that seem like some stereotype I had yet to be fortunate enough to encounter. I'm probably in the bottom third of players. Everyone is very friendly and such though. I think it'll be a good way to improve.

Anyways I wanted to talk about one game I played last week. This is going to be like, major ego tripping here. I'm not that great a chess player but I'm getting good enough to be able to recognize good things. Like, if I watch a match between two grandmasters I can see when they've done something really inspired. Once the commentator points it out. And then usually it's like a few turns after and then I go back and look at that move they were “oohing” about and then I see it. But I see it eventually, is the point, and I think I finally saw something of that insight, that “yomi” (actually this isn't the best word to use I just wanted to use it), in something I did.

Before I stroke my ego with regards to that more I should explain how I think about chess now. I'm happy that in the last year or so I've completely rethought how I look at chess. My older cousin, who I played with a lot, said awhile back that I had a mindset like I was just staring at his king and trying to come up with mates. It was completely accurate. I'd come up with some wacky plan, foolproof it in the few most obvious ways, and then execute it with disregard for everything else. What was really bad is that it occasionally worked, not against my cousin but against other people I played, and this really made it difficult for me to abandon the line of thinking. I essentially had to construct a new mindset for what was important to do in a chess game from the ground up. It ended up being very similar to how various people had told me to play before, but being told and actually deducing it on one's own is a big difference when it comes to how seriously you'll take it.

So before my strategy was “find the path to victory” or “play to win”. I approached it like it was an extended chess puzzle. Really I mean in the long run, like, the post heat-death of the universe run, once chess is “solved”, this will be how the computers will play, so I guess I'm just ahead of my time.

Nowadays I play “give myself the best chance to win” or “play to advantage”. The latter term came from somewhere besides me but I forget where. I think of chess almost as if it was Civilization: imperfect knowledge, all about being well off in resources and being prepared for anything. If you can keep your resources ahead of your opponent, you should win. Or at the least, you should be in the better position to win.

So what are the resources of chess?

Material – this one's pretty easy to explain and evaluate. The value of pieces changes depending on other things, yes, but as long as you have some system of their worth at any given point you can total it up and figure out if you're ahead or behind. In an “open” endgame the player with higher material ought to win assuredly, but any time before that material is the least important resource. You can't move more than one piece a turn, after all, so the fact you have a rook in the wings does nothing for you compared to a pawn in an offensive position.

Again, I'm just explaining the way I think of chess now. To a better player I'm sure it will seem silly. I hope that soon it will seem silly to me too. But that's what it is.

Position – this one's also pretty easy to define but really difficult to evaluate. Good positioning is the difference between a rook in the starting position and a rook on the enemy's bottom rank. For each individual piece, you can try to think of how much of a resource they are positionally by thinking of what they can potentially do and what they prevent your opponent from doing. However, the resource of positioning is more than just the sum of the positioning of all your material. It is the cohesive strength of your entire side of the board. This is very hard to evaluate. Positioning is obviously very important, but the third resource is even moreso.

Tempo – okay this one's hard to explain and really really hard to evaluate. Think of it like this: if you had a few free turns, turns during which your opponent could do nothing, you'd get pretty far ahead in the other two resources, right? You could probably even win in a lot of cases, especially if you were already ahead in the other two resources. That's the sort of thing I mean with “giving yourself as many opportunities to win as possible”, by the way. So obviously you don't get free turns in chess. However, if your opponent does something that you don't need to respond to, that doesn't really affect you at all, is that not equivalent to a free turn? If the thing you want to do next to increase your resource advantage doesn't change after your opponent plays, it's sort of like he never played at all, right? This is a tempo advantage. I don't know where I got the term tempo but I really like using it. Getting a tempo advantage like this usually costs one of the other two resources unless your opponent like pseudo-blunders by taking forever to march his rook out for no good reason. Consider this incredibly simplified scenario, though: you throw your bishop into a sort of sticky spot in their second row. You throw it at their bishop's pawn, or something. Let's say you know it'll be completely trapped in two turns and guaranteed dead in three. Seems pretty silly to condemn your bishop to death for a pawn, right? But you're not just getting a pawn, you're getting two free turns to do anything so long as it doesn't distract your opponent from finishing it off. Cool, right? I dunno. I don't think I'm explaining it too well. Maybe constructing a really hackneyed example isn't helping. Anyways, tempo is really the most important resource when you get down to it. The player with lower tempo is always responding to his opponent. Actually that's probably the best way to describe tempo right there, 'cause as soon as he doesn't need to respond to his opponent, that means he has the tempo advantage. Any extended strategic evaluation of the term can follow from those principles.

Anyways, I try to just play chess with the principle that so long as I stay ahead as much as I can on these things, I'll likely win. Until I'm actually in a position where a win condition is staring me in the face, I won't even consider it. I just try to play so that such a position will likely reveal itself to me. This usually means just having an attitude of “advance”, of constantly moving to a more aggressive position. Get everything off the back row, castle and then try to push everything up along that side. Hopefully try to make one area of his board especially weak. Etc. Nothing too complicated, nothing too fancy. If I have to sac something I try to bury it in a spot where it'll take him awhile to dig it up and kill it. That's about all I try to do to maintain a tempo advantage.

When I win, it's usually because I kept this sort of thing solid, didn't miss any good moves, and knew when to go for a push. When I lost and had still done this, it was usually because of something I'd describe as especially insightful. I wish I had a concrete examples but basically I'd summarize them as “tempo attacks”. This is like, an elaborate situation where tempo is gained through sacrificing materials, and then tempo is traded for enough of a positional advantage to win before an endgame, or get enough material to win an endgame. Of course most of the games I lost I lost because I missed something stupid, but occasionally I'd force them to do something amazing like this. And one time, this time that I mentioned at the beginning of this whole thing, I managed to do something amazing.

Okay so we're even in materials and I guess sort of even in position, but we're trying to feel out opportunities with regards to that. This was a game against an old Russian dude, who strangely enough are probably the least intimidating opponents, psyche-wise. Everyone else sort of gets a “game face” on but they seem very casual, almost disinterested, humming little songs and such. They probably aren't trying against me at all. Anyways he sees an opportunity to launch one of these “tempo attacks”, and takes it. I really wish I could remember exactly what it was. I don't know what the protocol is about like, recording games, 'cause I really like to look at old games, especially if I do something I really want to remember in them.

I think the general assault is by his Queen at what I'd call the “core” of my army at that point. He really gets his Queen rolling in the deep and threatening everything without killing much. I know that what he's really doing is leading me on somewhat of a wild goose chase, making me rearrange everything to his own devices. The queen is actually inconsequential. What matters is the weakening of my castled king's defenses. This is pretty brutal to begin with, and realizing it doesn't even matter much. If I allow his queen any more tempo, suddenly there's blood everywhere, suddenly he has such a material advantage that his old plan is irrelevant, he can go even more aggressive, push to an endgame, and simply win. If I wanted to stay alive, I had to keep responding to his queen's threats. But if I did that, I could never do anything myself. He had the tempo advantage. I was playing by his tune.

So, what did I do? I can't remember. It was a knight move, and it covered the space I thought he'd want to move his queen to and it covered the next sort of “poke threat” he could do, PLUS it threatened some other fairly inconsequential thing. So you might be like, well, what was he doing that he couldn't take something else? And that was the thing – his queen did have another piece it was threatening that wasn't covered, it was just not the ideal piece for him to take. I let him have it, and he took it, but suddenly I had the tempo advantage. I had to push back, and I did, by launching a series of like, pseudo-forks that pushed his queen right back out, finishing it off with a fork of his king and queen that, yeah, he really should have seen, but that's just it. Suddenly I had him on the ropes. I really wish I could remember the specific moves. I just remember thinking about the move, and seeing all these useful applications, knowing what he would do... I dunno, it was almost awe-inspiring. He commented that it was a very good move and a few onlookers agreed. The rest of the game I played without making any mistakes, and pulled another couple tricky sort of things on him. It really felt like the best game of chess I've ever played.

Okay enough of that silliness.

I was going to write something about competitive games in general but I wrote too much on chess. Anyways one quick thing that's cool to be is the idea of seeing a path to victory in a window, no matter how small that window is. I see this in chess, Smash Bros., Pokemon, nearly everything. It's seeing an opportunity to take a tempo advantage and push it so hard that every other resource is irrelevant.

I think if I could summarize what I think the coolest general strategy in competitive games is, I would say that it is “alternating overt and subtle pressure without committing until you have enough of an advantage to push for victory.”

  I should explain that more but I'll do it some other time.