Morten's Blog

Great tune by Frightened Rabbit from Scotland. You can find more from them on Spotify.

Another excellent tune from The Tragically Hip. This one starring the golden trio from The Trailer Park Boys. These guys almost makes one proud of only living 3.600 kilometers from the border of Canada.

I first heard The Tragically Hip in The Trailer Park Boys series. I hope they get (more) on Spotify soon, one song is just not enough! But releasing more on youtube is a start though.

Thanks to IgniterMedia for this great compilation. See here for a text version.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars quite a lot this summer. And although great as it is, the Guild Wars soundtrack can get a bit old at times, so I went looking for some good role-playing background music on Google. I found some lists of recommendations here and there, but they contained mostly death metal, which is utter garbarge. So I started compiling a Spotify list of what is, in my opinion, good background music for RPG.

Get the list here. It includes among others; Vangelis, Jesper Kyd, Danny Elfman, Jerry Goldsmith and Philip Glass.

The list will be evolving as i come across good albums or tunes. If you know an album or song that would fit amongst the others i would appreciate feedback. I apologize beforehand if any tunes are unsuited for RPG, as i’ve grabbed whole albums and have not listened to the entire collection.

Spotify logo

This is a pretty easy way to automatically rip music from Spotify using AV Voice Changer 6. DO NOT DO THIS, YOU WILL BE IN VIOLATION OF THE SPOTIFY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT!

What you would need:

• A Spotify account and the Spotify client
• Audio4fun’s AV Voice Changer Software Diamond 6

Voice Changer is intended to be just that, a voice changer. It can make you sound like a cartoon mosquito or one of those creepy kidnappers from the movies, in real time. But the feature we would want is Voice Changer’s sound recording function which would allow us to record the tunes streamed from Spotify into separate files with the compression method of our choosing.

Start up the Spotify client and log in. Find a couple of tunes you like and put them in a playlist. Check that the music plays ok and without lag. Disconnect your microphone, and make sure there won’t be anything else making sound on your computer. Start up Voice Changer and verify that the audio from Spotify registers in Voice Changer’s volume meter. We don’t want our tunes to sound like smurf songs, so just turn off all the effects by clicking the On/Off button.

Voice Changer interface

Stop the music from playing for a moment and click Voice Changer’s Recorder button. A small window should open up, looking something like this:

Voice Changer's recorder window

(Read More..)

Ever wanted to record your Super Mario skills on the Super Nintendo console, without the console? Don’t worry, most of todays computers are powerful enough to pretend being, or emulate, a console machine. Most likely so is your’s.  And you’re in luck, Super Nintendo is one of, if not the best, emulated console system there is. All you basically need is an emulator, the piece of software that magically turns your PC into a good ol’ console; and the ROM file of your favorite game. The game ROM’s are in most cases copyrighted, so i can’t nor won’t supply you with those. Make sure you own the game cartridge, or else you might find yourself in violation of copyright laws.

The things you will need:

• A Super Nintendo emulator for Windows called ZSnes, coded by zsKnight and _Demo_ *
  
• The ROM image from your favorite SNES game. Look around, they are not that hard to find.
• MEncoder by Gianluigi Tiesi

* At the time of writing, ZSnes has reached version 1.51

Copy your ROM image(s) to any folder. Preferably one that doesn’t require you to click trough too many folders to get to it.

Installing the software is pretty straightforward, just extract the two archives, each into their own folders. It might work having ZSnes and MEncoder in the same folder, but i haven’t tried it. Also, i think that’s a little messy. You are going to add the MEncoder location to window’s PATH environment variable instead, so remember the location where you extracted it. Follow the instructions below as the procedure differs a little depending on what version of Windows you are using.

Edit your Path environment variable

For Windows Vista you can go to the Control panel and click on the System icon, select Advanced System Settings in the left menu and then the “Environment variables” button. Then, in the list under “System Variables”, look for Path (might be lower- or uppercase). When you have found it, edit it and add the location of the folder where the MEncoder executable file is located. Remember to add the semicolon that is needed to separate the various folders listed in the Path string. Click OK, and your done.

(How to set the path in Windows 2000 / Windows XP)

When that’s all done, let’s start up ZSnes and configure it a little. The main things to check out is the Screen Resolution, Filters and Input

Choose your optimal screen preferences under “Video” in the Config menu. I have a widescreen and wanted ZSnes to fill the screen completely, so i made a custom screen setting it to 1360×768 with the DS F option (check the legend for description). Choose the Filter that you feel gives the best result. Configure your Input, and let’s load up a game already! Click GAME in the top menu, and select LOAD. Then browse to the folder where you copied or extracted the ROM file(s), select the game you want to play and click the LOAD button. If the game runs, great! if it doesn’t, seek help! (Read More..)

Ostrov (The Island)

If you are up for a good movie this weekend, i can highly recommend the russian movie “Ostrov“, released in 2006.

It’s about a sailor named Anatoli (Timofei Tribuntsev), who during the second world war gets captured by a German patrol boat, along with his captain Tikhon on a small coal freighter. He’s given the choice between shooting Thikon and live, or die himself.

He shoots, and the Germans leave him on the boat. But not before they’ve put explosive charges all over the freighter. The boat explodes, and Anatoli is fortunate to be found alive on the beach by some Orthodox munks. And he settles down there after his recovery.

We then follow an older Anatoli (Pyotr Mamonov) from the year 1976, still living at the monastery, in the boiler hut located on a small island. He is constantly haunted by the fact that he shot his captain and friend, Thikon. He has also become quite eccentric over the years, to put it mildly, and a nuisance to many of the other munks. And while he appears at times to be stark raving mad, there is strange logic to his behavior. People come from far away to see him, asking for help with all kinds of problems; from unwanted pregnancies to demon possessions.

The movie shows a man with strong faith and a hunger for salvation. It is full of good moments and humor.

I give it 5 out of 6.

You can get it at Amazon.com

“The eyes of the storm” by Saviour Machine.

Same method as the previous time lapse video i made, but now you can actually see things happening.

This is a time lapse video i made using my digital videocamera and Python, taking a picture every 5th second. It is quite boring so i had to add some music, Rob Costlow’s “Not Alone”

This is the Python script i used:

from VideoCapture import Device
from time import sleep

SecondsBetweenFrames = 5
FilePrefix = "bilde_"
DirectoryToStore = "E:\\Basen\\"
Kamera = Device()
FrameNr = 0

while True:
    FrameNr = FrameNr + 1
    Kamera.saveSnapshot(DirectoryToStore + FilePrefix + str(FrameNr) + '.jpg')
    print "Lagret bilde: " + FilePrefix + str(FrameNr) + '.jpg'
    sleep(SecondsBetweenFrames)

* You’ll need the VideoCapture and PIL Python extensions

Movie by tr0d

More Saviour Machine anyone?