Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Today was really something different.Last week I received an email from a researcher working on the Channel 5 TV series "The Gadget Show", asking if I could help in sourcing an Atari 2600 to feature on a piece they were doing.
I responded that I had one, and that though I wouldn't send it out on its own, being the first model, and a fairly rare collectors item, I'd be happy to take it along.
So, today I made my way to the production company's building with said Atari, a spare, several power supplies, and a hand-full of games.
After a bit of a wait in their main offices, where I got to see most of the Gadget Show presenters, Otis Deley, Jon Bentley, Suzi Perry, and the presenter who would be playing my Atari, Jason Bradbury, we went over to the room where they were shooting, and I got to sit in.
As it turns out, it was quite a good job that I took spare power supplies, as the first one I plugged in conked out, right in the middle of shooting.
I was also able to give a little expert advice on certain aspects of gaming history, which had a direct impact on what Jason said in his piece.
So it was only a very minor thing, but I felt really chuffed.
The show will be airing in August, on either the 3rd, or the 6th... not sure which. So if you should find yourself watching that, and see the piece on the Atari 2600... well... that's mine, that is. And if you peer round the corner of your TV with magic glasses or something, you might just see me sitting there, just out of shot, coz I was in that room :D
Steve 10:57 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, June 29, 2009
Just setting the record straight regarding the suggested "theme" in my recent videos.Labels: video
Steve 1:12 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, June 28, 2009
I've always found stop motion animation very amusing, and for a long time, wanted to try it myself.So, a month or so ago I started using some video editing software on some of my youtube videos, and it occurred to me that though it wasn't designed for stop motion, with a little ingenuity, I could actually use it for that purpose.
Here are the results...
This was the first, test video... 12 seconds took me 3 hours. It's very random, but appeals to my rather odd sense of humour.
This second attempt, which took 6 hours, was building on the ideas in the first animation, and also plays on the fact that I think Barak Obama's voice sounds a lot like the WWE wrestler, The Rock.
Labels: animation
Steve 7:12 AM [+] (2) comments
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Finally, the pages with all of those music videos are up onBenway's Music Videos.
I'm working my way through adding the links to the menu on the left, but that's not going to be completed until I've uploaded the new retro gaming site I'm working on. No sense updating all of those links when I'm only gonna have to do it again soon.
Steve 2:46 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
So, all of my tunes are now on youtube. I'll be creating individual pages for each tune on this site soon... tomorrow, if all goes according to plan.In the meantime, here's all of them in one embedded player.
Steve 9:57 PM [+] (3) comments
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Okay, so embedding these videos is slowing down page loading far too much.So, if you'd like to see/hear more of the tunes I'm uploading, until I get round to putting up a dedicated page on this site, you can find all the latest ones on my youtube videos page.
Steve 7:11 AM [+] (1) comments
Friday, June 05, 2009
This is number 5 in the series.This was recorded in 1989 using a Tascam Porta 01 4 track portastudio.
All of the instruments were played by myself, except for the drums, which were a Yamaha DD10.
This is another tune I'd hoped to do more with, with a band, but again, that never happened.
It was inspired by the later tracks on the album Closer, by Joy Division. In that sense, I guess it's quite generic, but I do like the atmosphere, if you'll forgive the pun.
Along with most of the other tunes in this series, this sounds better on headphones, as a lot of the subtleties and layers are lost through speakers.
Steve 5:13 AM [+] (0) comments
This is number four in the series.
This was recorded in 1989 using a Tascam Porta 01 4 track portastudio.
All of the instruments were played by myself, except for the drums, which were a Yamaha DD10.
By this time I'd changed the "band" name, as "The Non-Existant Puppies" name no longer seemed suited to the kind of music I was making. At the time, I hoped to put together a band to play this stuff live, hopefully with a singer, but in the end, that never happened, and these tunes never existed outside of the tape they were recorded on.
Influences were The Fall and King Of The Slums.
I guess the main thing that crosses my mind when listening to this is "I really shouldn't have tried playing lead guitar." Though I do like the rhythm guitar quite a lot.
Steve 4:17 AM [+] (0) comments
This is the third tune.
By this time the band had gone through several line-up changes, none of which produced anything noteworthy, and had finally disbanded. This tune is probably the best example of the kind of clumsy noodling I managed to come up with on my own, while attempting to learn how to actually play the guitar, instead of just thrashing mindlessly at it.
Again, no clever recording equipment was used. It was just me with my amp next to an old mono tape recorder.
Steve 1:48 AM [+] (0) comments
This is the second in the series.
Steve 1:43 AM [+] (0) comments
This is the first in a series of videos I'm uploading (as mentioned a few days ago), to document my musical progression from utterly rubbish, to somewhat mediocre.
I was prompted to do these videos after finding some 20 year old tapes that I thought were lost, and then discovering that I could almost completely remove the terrible tape hiss using Audacity audio editing software.
I'm entirely aware that this tune is bloody awful, so comments stating that "You can't play" or "That's crap" are completely redundant.
This was recorded in 1988 and represents the best effort by a bunch of teens who could neither play nor sing, but were having a lot of fun making quite a racket.
No clever recording equipment was used. We simply placed our amps around a cheap mono tape recorder at the appropriate distances to get the right volumes, while the "singer" simply screamed as loud as he could.
Musical influences were a few local (Milton Keynes) alternative bands - Claire, The Sally Harper Project and Despair, and the infamous Manchester band - The Fall.
Steve 1:35 AM [+] (0) comments
I went to the hospital yesterday for an ultrasound scan. This was to confirm the suspicions of my doctor, and hospital consultant, that the hernia I'd had repaired a couple of years had re-ruptured.
Guess what?
Not only has it ruptured again, but I have *two* of them... one of which I was completely unaware of.
Bugger!
I'd already resigned from work on medical grounds, as the one I knew about was causing me some discomfort, and my doctor suggested it wasn't advisable to do any heavy lifting. So the doctor I saw yesterday confirmed that this was a good idea.
All of this leaves me a little anxious, as though I'm very much liking not being in that line of work any more, my "plan B" of trying to make a living from building more websites isn't going at all well so far. Traffic was looking good for a few days, and then google threw a hissy fit, and almost completely de-listed my new site, for no obvious reason.
Oh well. I'll just have to work at it.
Steve 1:26 AM [+] (0) comments
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