I have discovered the best sound to use for a new mail notification in your e-mail client. It’s the object pick-up noise form Atari’s Adventure for the 2600. I’ve attached the WAV file to this post so that you to can feel like you are grabbing the goblet next time you get a v!@gr@ ©ialis spam in your in-box!
Part of a Cabaret Voltaire three-pack I bought. Natural sounds take dominance over the usual electronic noise. If you like early Cabaret Voltaire, especially 2×45, you will like this.
Not as ska-rific as their first record, yet lacking the pop brilliance of their later records. But still, it’s Madness so it’s good.
A one-off single featuring drummer extraordinaire Martin Atkins, Jesus Lizard’s David Simms, Bowie clone Chirs Connelly and someone named Mary covering Dudley Moore’s Bedazzled. Much more groovy/trippy than the original.
A hit-or-miss collection of covers and home-recording style noodling from ex-PIL guitarist Levene. Not as grating as Metal Box era PIL, but not as catchy as later PIL either.
Raw grrrl rock backed with a cheesy Alesis 16-B drum machine.
For the first 20 minutes or so I couldn’t see why this film got such bad reviews. I was really enjoying it. And then they introduce the “love interest” and the story starts to focus on the jaded sci-fi trope of the robot who thinks he’s a man. There are plot holes galore and editing jumps that feel like place holders for commercials. We don’t care about the new terminator, all we want to see is the story of John Conner and Kyle Reese. At the very least, there are enough nods to fanboys to keep it watchable until the end (the digital surprise cameo is jaw-dropping). But the last moments of this film which are soooo cringe-worthy will make you eject the DVD with a sour taste in your mouth.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Adobe. Some of their products are great’Photoshop is a verb these days for good reason’but, they have also released some of the most disappointing software I have ever used. Encore, their DVD authoring program, will crash anytime you try to do anything with even a moderate degree of complexity. Dreamweaver will give you cryptic JavaScript errors out of the blue, when you are not actively editing anything. Heck, everyone knows Acrobat is a bloated resource hog.
Back in the early 00’s, Macromedia Contribute was a great idea. Give web developers a cheap (Contribute 1 & 2 sold for around $60-$80 bucks) WYSIWYG web editor to give to their clients who may not be comfortable with the destructive power of Dreamweaver. Sure, it didn’t quite render CSS right, but nothing really did at the time. Contribute just worked and filled a niche.
Fast forward to 2010. Macromedia is no more. Adobe has been trying to integrate all of their products into interoperable “creative suites” of programs. In theory this seems good. I like being able to dump files from one application to another without any hassles. Unfortunately, this makes the world of Adobe a bit like Melrose Place, where you don’t know who’s sleeping with who and Acrobat has given half the cast an embarrasing, throbbing rash.
These days, my clients who are using Contribute to edit sites I created for them are plagued with cryptic errors and equally cryptic workarounds. For example, one of my sites will not allow users to center text of all things. Another site gives you errors when you try to type in a repeating region. Other users have connection issues all the time. On top of all this pain, Adobe now charges something like $190 bucks for a single license. Sorry, Contribute. But friends we can be no more.