Not So Famous…

First off, what is “Play!”? Play! is a full orchestra and choir playing and singing some amazing music from old and new video games. Recent games have had a score that sounded like a movie score without any embellishment. However, even with the limits of 8-bit programming, some older games had some amazing music that has been expanded upon over the years. I specifically think of Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda.

Some people may be thinking, “Why would I want to listen to a bunch of video game music??” You really need to understand that video games are just a medium for conveying story. Just as movies have used scores effectively to emphasize various emotions and plot points, video games have often employed the same methods. One difference between video game and movie music that is crucial is that video game music must remain easy to listen to throughout multiple hearings. I’ve played games that had horrid or annoying music, such as the original Hot Shots Golf for Playstation. Generally speaking, if a game has crappy music, I’ll turn off the sound and put something else on. Some games, however, have really stunning music, and this is what Play! was created to showcase. It’s FAR more than a bunch of beeps and boops. And I could only see one song in which a synthesizer was used. Everything else was done the way Orchestral and Choral music has always been done: Live, and full of life.

I have tried to remember all of the pieces that were played that night, but I know I will forget some. All of them were great…some of them just didn’t impress their name or game on me. I’ll not cover each game in depth, as I didn’t like all of them equally. I’ll hit the highlights according to me.

Super Mario Brothers – What better score to open up Play! than with the game that helped bring video games into the home with Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers? This piece was as familiar to me as anything I have ever heard. Hearing professional musicians pay homage to the beginning of a very fond addiction of mine is something I’ll never forget. They did a great job at swinging the notes, which is not something a classically trained musician is often able to practice. They rendered the game most excellently, playing selections from overland levels, swimming levels, and the underground levels quite well. The giant screen above the orchestra, while obstructing my view of the choir, was excellent in helping to immerse you in the world of the game, showing clips from many of the various Mario games over the years. I loved every note of it!

Shenmue – I had never heard of this game, but apparently it was a popular game for the Sega Dreamcast system. The music was quite good, and the cutscenes played above the orchestra were enough to interest me in the game.

Sonic The Hedgehog – I played this game a great deal, but apparently not enough for the music to make much of an impact on me. I recognized the main tune, but the rest were a little harder for me to remember. I remembered a couple of them, but nothing like what I remembered of the opening Mario tunes. Still, the orchestra did a great job at rendering it, and the screen was excellent in showing me what I missed in later Sonic games. They looked like a lot of fun!

World of Warcraft – This epic fantasy MMO has some epic music to go along with it. Really, if anyone harbors the illusion that video game music consists of beeps and boops, this score will be enough to quickly disabuse you of that notion. Anyone who has ever limped their character into Stormwind City knows how welcoming that music really can be. The choir was amazing on this piece. Really amazing! (Especially the Stormwind part.)

Metal Gear Solid – This sounded so much like a movie score that I was completely amazed. I played through Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, but I never realized how well the music created fear, confusion, and urgency until I focused solely on it. The screens really reminded my why I liked those games so much, as well as they reminded me that I didn’t really get very far in the 3^rd installment. I am ashamed. lol. This score could have gone with Mission: Impossible, or the Bourne movies. Really quite good.

Halo: Combat Evolved – I couldn’t believe how exactly like the game this performance sounded. From the male choir at the beginning, to the full orchestra and choir at the end, I felt like standing up in the auditorium and hucking a plasma grenade at something alien! Really well done.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – At this point in the concert, Shawn turned to me and said, “this is what I came here for.”  I have never played Oblivion, but I really liked the score. Again, I emphasize that the music of video games has evolved as much, if not more, than the graphics of games have done. This score could have been a part of the Lord of the Rings movies, or any decent fantasy epic. The same guy did the music for Morrowind as well, which I really liked. So it was no surprise to me that this was as stunning as it was.

Final Fantasy – They only did one song, “One Winged Angel”, which many of the gathered fans from the nearby Anime conference recognized by name. Interestingly enough, out of all the pieces I heard for the first time that evening, this is the one that left the most lasting impression on me. Could have something to do with the choir singing “se-phi-roth!” at the chorus-like melody. Sephiroth is one of the few characters from Final Fantasy that I recognize, so I was happy to know what they were saying. I remember it being a very good piece, as well. A little “harder” than some of the others. Right before this piece, I recall the conductor announcing that a very important guest would be introducing this piece. The audience broke into a roar of applause when Nobuo Uematsu, aka Uematsu-san’s face appeared onto the screen. I couldn’t understand the Japanese he was speaking, of course, but I couldn’t have heard it anyway. The audience was just THAT stoked to hear from Uematsu-san.

Legend of Zelda – Nothing, however, compares to the sharp intake of breath that the anime fans sucked out of the room when the composer of such hits as Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda (among much else) appeared on the screen. I don’t remember when Koji Kondo appeared on the screen, but the excitement as he welcomed fans to this concert was absolutely electric! Anyway, the capstone of the evening, and the best closer I could possibly hope for was the Legend of Zelda compilation they played. I have long held the belief that some of the greatest game music has been heard in the Legend of Zelda games, and this rendition only served to reinforce that belief. THIS piece is what I came for, and I was not disappointed. From the well-known Link Theme to the various overworld themes, it was so hard not to hum along with the orchestra. I couldn’t help conducting a few bars from my seat, however. (Very surreptitiously, I might add. No sweeping motions from me.)

There were a couple of pieces that were world premiers, some of which I actually remember.

Blue Dragon – This Dragonball Z-looking game looked kind of interesting. The protagonist looks like a little kid, and there were some visuals of the game that actually caused my wife to laugh a little. Overall, however, it wasn’t anything very stunning. The music, however, I remember as being quite good, and it’s been no surprise to see that Uematsu-san composed the music for this game.

Lair – This game looks completely stellar. I can’t even really describe the sheer amazing look of this game. To begin with, you’re a dragon-rider a la Eragon, though as I understand it, the lore of this game is not in that world. However, jumping from dragon to dragon, aerial combat with other dragons, using your dragon to slay enemy armies, grappling with enemy dragon-riders on THEIR dragons, and then jumping back to yours….it just looks truly amazing. The really sad thing is that they’re writing the game for the Playstation 3, which I will never get. Furthermore, they’re using the Sixaxis controls for the game, which are PS3-specific. If I ever get a chance to play this game, I will be a happy man. And the score was very good as well. Hard to describe it, but it had a lot of brass, high and low. Well worth the listen, and I was pleased.

The Last Odyssey and Darkness – I don’t remember anything about these pieces, except to say that I didn’t really DISLIKE anything in the entire concert. Game music makes and excellent transition between the console and the orchestra.

The hall was aesthetically pleasing, but the acoustic qualities of the area in which we were sitting were lamentable. Now, I have heard stories of people who have sat in halls and heard muddiness and poor quality. This was not the case for us. The quality of what we heard was quite good, but the reverb left something to be desired. Those of you who have never studied acoustics or sat in a live concert can’t really know what I’m talking about, but the sustain of a final chord long after the orchestra has cut off is what helps bring the live performance to life. Now, you don’t want so much sustain so as to muddy the entire performance. There are “sweet spots” in any hall, where the sustain is just enough to really bring the pieces to life. We were not sitting in one of those spots.

We had seats in the balcony; 9^th row out of 15. This meant that we had an excellent view of everything but the choir, which was cool for my friend, Gabe, who had never been to a live performance. I had a great deal of fun being able to point out what instruments he and I had talked about, and I think he got a lot out of being able to watch an orchestra bring 40+ individuals together to form a cohesive sound. The subjugation of the individual for the benefit of the sound of the whole is something that has to be seen and heard to be believed.

However, we were in the dead area of the hall. The sound had nearly spent its intensity when it got to us, and we didn’t get the effect of the various waves bouncing off all areas of the hall to return to us in a spectacular sustain. Instead, the waves we heard bounced off the wall behind us and returned to grace the ears of those in the more expensive seats.

That being said, I am very happy that we got to see this performance. I enjoyed my time, and thought the musicians did an excellent job, as you would expect professionals to do. However, the best thing of the evening is that Gabe now wants to see another live performance. Anytime I can turn someone on to the joys of live classical music, I feel as though a great deed has been accomplished. If you have a tour date of Play! coming to your town, or a town within 3 hours of it, go see it! You will not regret it.

My theory is thus:
My users only want to check their mail when I restart the Exchange server.  Seriously, some people take 2 weeks or more to respond to e-mails, but those same users are the ones calling me when I restart the server to ask if there’s something wrong with our server.  :)

I have recently become addicted to Guitar Hero II. This is a really fun game that has been around for a little while. It’s nothing new, but it’s a lot of fun, and it’s new to me.

Basically, what you have is a guitar-shaped controller. Where the low frets are located are 5 color-coded buttons. Where you would normally strum a guitar is a kind of rocker switch that you can hit up or down. Finally, there’s a whammy bar where a whammy bar would normally go.

On the screen is what looks like the neck of a guitar moving lengthwise toward you with each string representing one of the colored buttons on the neck of the guitar. As the game starts, colored dots and lines come toward you on the neck, and you have to simultaneously press one of the fret buttons and strum at the moment the dot passes the bottom of the screen. You also have to hold the fret button for as long as a line is on the particular color. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a pretty simple game. (Though getting good at it is not so simple.) Finally, you play along with songs that have been re-recorded for the game. When you’re playing, you hear the whole song…when you mess up, the guitar track cuts out.

Anyway, the game is a lot of fun, though not as cheap as I would like. The game with guitar costs $80 for the Playstation 2, and $90 for the XBox 360. (I bought for the PS2.)

However, there is an open-source clone (read: free!) of the game available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux called Frets on Fire. It comes with 3 original songs, and there are many more that are available online. Original songs are better than people’s ports of actual songs, because the guitar track is recorded separately so when you mess up, only the guitar cuts out. One of the nice features of this game that I have yet to try is that you can import Guitar Hero 1 & 2 songs from the game discs and play them on your computer. Finally, you can buy a Playstation controller adapter for your computer, and you can then use the actual guitar hero II controller on your computer. Nice if you have it on a laptop and don’t want to bring along an entire PS2, controller, and TV set. :) I might take it with me when I go to Scotland. ;)

Anyway, if you have the opportunity to play this game, go for it. :) It’s fun!

I had a conversation with my sister yesterday that did not go well.  I’m not going to be specific here, but there’s a specific point of contention between us, and we were discussing it.

Her ultimate problem is not that she doesn’t know what the Bible says concerning this point of contention between us.  She does know.  She just doesn’t care, and that’s her problem.  The particular issue she’s dealing with will clear up if the Lord converts her heart.  I put it to her yesterday as an either-or situation.  She either chooses to be obedient to the Lord, repents of her sin, and trusts only in Christ as her Savior for the remission of her sins, or else she chooses to continue to live in rebellion against the Lord for every sin she’s ever committed.

Her arguments are less important than the fact that she refuses to obey the Lord, but basically, she thinks that what I’m telling her regarding the Bible are “just” my beliefs, and that they’re not true for everyone.  I explained to her that there’s an objective reality behind my beliefs, and that reality is what gives those beliefs any value. This objective reality is that it’s the truth, and no matter what she believes about my beliefs, that objective reality is going to assert its real-ness at some point to her.  I just hope it’s not too late for her.  Because there IS a “too late”, and it is exactly what I said…too late to do anything about it.

Anyway, I communicated the Gospel to her.  She rejected it as completely as she could, saying those are my beliefs, and they aren’t for everybody, etc.  Rejecting that there’s an objective reality apart from everyone’s beliefs.  I don’t know how I can communicate it to her any more clearly.

My question is, what now?  I’ve explained the Gospel to her before, and she’s rejected it.  So I didn’t say anything to her about it for a long time.  I know the Lord can use what I said to convert her heart, but there’s nothing I can say that I’ve not already said.

Any thoughts?  Should I continue placing the Gospel in front of her, or should I just not try to bother her with it?  Of course I’ll be praying…nothing will change that.  I’m just curious as to what my actions should be.

http://tominthebox.blogspot.com/2007/05/40-million-dollar-debt-paid-but-debtor.html

Tom in the Box is well-known for his excellent tongue-in-cheek ramblings regarding the silliness of some religious perspectives. Today, however, I was interested to note that his latest offering seemed at first glance to have nothing to do with religion at all.

His faux-news story today had to do with a man who had $39.4 million in debt. His brother paid his debt off, however, and the man now owes not a single cent. The man’s problem now is that he does not believe that his brother paid off the debt. He still thinks he owes it all. The bankers have told him he owes nothing, but since he still believes he does, they’re pressing charges and the man now faces prison time. In the middle of reading this I said, “That makes NO sense. What the heck is he talking about???” All of a sudden, it hit me.

He is poking fun at the Arminian perspective of soteriology. Arminians believe that Christ died for all men. The logical outcome of this belief has some serious ramifications that most Arminians never even think about:

1. Christ’s sacrifice becomes worth nothing. After all, if the debt has been paid, but sinners are still under condemnation, then Christ’s death was completely worthless. It paid for nothing in and of itself. Sinners are still going to be assessed the penalty of their sin. So Christ’s death was worthless.
2. Man’s choice then becomes salvific. Christ’s death was worthless until man chooses to accept it. Man’s choice then becomes the pin on which his entire salvation hinges. This, of course, is the biggest attraction to the Arminian perspective. Our free will goes from something that only wants evil to something that actually chose to serve Christ.

Either the argument ends up in those two places, or you turn into a universalist, which makes even less sense.

But we can see the argument break down when we look at what they’re really saying. In the case of the man whose debt was paid in full, he’s still going to be assessed the penalty of what he owed because he doesn’t believe the debt is paid. In real life, how would that work?

Basically. we’d say, “Well, it doesn’t really matter what you think. Either the debt was paid, or it wasn’t. If it was, then you don’t have to go to prison…there’s no longer anything to send you there. If it wasn’t, then you still have to go to prison. However, there’s an objective reality that underlies this whole situation that renders your belief irrelevant.”

Thank God that our salvation is not based on our ability to correctly understand it.

I was initially going to write a much longer entry, but time escapes me.  If you’ve ever played any of the Legend of Zelda games, you know how excellent the music really is. (Even the 8-bit games…I know a good theme when I hear one.)

I’ve always felt that they should orchestrate some of these tunes and release the scores for ensembles to play.  Well, an independent group actually has done this.  They use electronically simulated instruments, but they do a dang good job.  Check it out here:

http://www.zreomusic.com

Lately, I’ve been hearing a great deal about serving the Lord, and I’ve questioned my own service to the Lord. At church this past Lord’s Day, I believe Pastor was talking about how our call is to service…our call is not to become Christians and rest on our laurels, but that we should all be finding out in what capacity we can serve Him and serve Him.

I’ve been thinking about how I can serve God. There are enough geeks at my church to build a Cray Supercomputer, I think. I’ve been thinking about what I can offer in terms of my technology background, web site administration, etc. There’s really not much. Everything I can do, someone else has already done. I’ll keep my ear to the ground, etc., in case there IS something I can do, but at this time, I’m wondering what my service can be.

Lately, I have been talking to some people that I met playing The Matrix Online, and I realized that a part of my service to the Lord is sharing my faith to a group of people who often are neglected due to the Church’s negative image of “the gamer”. I’ve been able to send Bibles and books to friends through this, and I’ve been able to answer their questions about religious matters. One of these friends actually asked me if I would consider setting up a forum so that people could ask questions and have them answered, etc. I initially considered the idea to be not so good…didn’t seem like it would be easy, etc….religious forums often degenerate into personal attack-fests, etc. But after I thought about all these arguments, I realized that I had the ability to set this up, and with the forum softwares that are out there, I have the ability to moderate the forums to try and keep things civil, etc.

So the Bible Q&A forums were born. You can find these forums at http://www.thedow.org, so please, go and register….take part in the discussions I hope will happen on there. I never intended to become a Bible Answer Man, or anything of the sort. This is a place where people can come and ask questions of people regarding some of the difficult Biblical concepts with which we Christians are familiar.

I’m also always happy to take any criticism on this thing. All it can do is make it better. And if it degenerates into a brawling mess, I always have the option of completely removing it. :) But if the Lord will use it to bring one person to His truth, then it was worth it.

http://www.thedow.org

I’ve been an instant messaging fan for over 10 years.  However, I’ve seen more and more clients appear on the scene, and frankly, it’s starting to irritate me.

As it stands at this moment, I have 5 separate IM accounts because my friends like 5 different IM clients. (MSN, AIM, Yahoo, GTalk, and XFire.)  As it stands, if I want the option to talk to any/all of my friends, I have to have 5 stupid IM clients running at the same time.  Furthermore,  with all the extra features these IM clients are trying to do, these clients are starting to get bigger and bigger and hog more and more system resources, slowing down my PC to a crawl.  It really is getting quite ridiculous.

For the last 4 years or so, however, I have been using a free, open-source software package called GAIM, which allows me to log in to all of my accounts using 1 lightweight program, and display all of my buddy lists together!!!  The novelty!!  A one stop shop??  Amazing.  It’s been around for a couple years, and the client has improved by leaps and bounds.

Recently, due to some sort of lawsuit settlement with AOL, GAIM has changed its name to Pidgin, which initially seems like a horrible choice.  However, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin, and I think you’ll see the wisdom in it. It really is very cutesy, which will sadly attract plenty of people, even if they don’t know what a pidgin really is in the world of language. With the name change, they have released Pidgin 2.0.0, which is an amazing step in the evolution of the GAIM/Pidgin client!

To begin with, the single greatest feature of Pidgin is the fact that you can have all your buddies from all the IM Networks on a single list.  If a friend has multiple logins for several networks, you can combine all their screen names into a single entry on the list. Having a chat with several friends no longer means that you have 15 windows open.  Pidgin combines all of your chats into a single window with multiple tabs you can organize just by dragging and dropping! Plugins add extended functionality to the program such as other protocols, pop-up notification like you get with the official clients, etc.  There really is no reason to get 3-5 different IM clients, when one will do just as well.

My personal setup is standard Pidgin, with the Guifications (for toaster-style pop up notification of people logging on, off, typing and messaging) and GFire (for logging into the XFire IM network to chat with friends in game) plugins. The GFire plugin has very rare official releases.  The general practice is to download a “snapshot” of the current in-test release. Only the snapshot releases of GFire have support for the newest version of Pidgin.

For the record, I know there are other clients out there that appear to work as well or better the Pidgin.  I have tried a couple of them.  For my money (it’s completely free), Pidgin is the sleekest, most polished of all of them:

• Trillian looks pretty, but compared to Pidgin, it appeared to be a total resource hog.  Plus, the full version of Trillian is not free.  Free-ness is good, as long as the software works.  Trillian also does not allow me to connect to the XFire IM network, which means I have to have XFire open, which IM client I hate!!
• Miranda is supposed to be pretty good, but from what I have seen and read, you need lots of plug-ins to make basic functionality work.  Pidgin works out of the bow (figuratively speaking, of course) with support for all the major protocols, such as MSN, Yahoo, Lotus Sametime, Jabber/GTalk, AIM, Gadu-Gadu, ICQ, etc… I don’t really have time to figure out a new set of plugins, so for me, Miranda is out.  Pidgin works very well for my needs with a minimum number of plugins (as I said earlier….2 are what I consider to be must-haves.)

Here is a list of links you’ll need to start using Pidgin:

• Pidgin - http://www.pidgin.im
• Guifications (For toaster-style pop up notifications) - http://www.guifications.org
• GFire (For logging in to XFire IM Network) - http://gfire.sourceforge.net/snapshots/

I normally try to avoid posting much in the way of news articles, but these two this morning sort of ticked me off, and rather than rant at my wife before she heads off to a ladies’ stamp party, I figured I’d rant to all of you, since she rarely reads my blog. ;)

First, can any good thing come out of L.A.?
L.A. Mayor Troubled By Police Action

Shoot, he’s not the only one troubled by this police action. For those who don’t have time to read the original story, I’ll just paraphrase it here. Basically, there was a demonstration by illegal aliens demanding benefits, equal rights, blah blah. I have a fundamental problem with this, of course, since they’re NOT FREAKING CITIZENS!!!! My government and tax money shouldn’t go toward paying for anything for freakin’ people who flaunt the law by being here illegally!!! Not to mention, they’re holding up signs that demanded rights alongside a Mexican flag. You know what?? Reading those together, I see that you should look for your rights IN MEXICO. But that really isn’t the point.

The point is the fact that police shot rubber bullets and used batons on a crowd where “50-100 people” were throwing rocks and bottles at the police. Now, I remember a country where throwing rocks and bottles at police would get you shot with a bullet that was a little less forgiving than a rubber one. In fact, I think I STILL live in that country, though it’s changed. Someone actually filed a federal suit claiming that her rights were violated. Well, let’s talk about that right:

Amendment 1:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
(copied from LII: Constitution)

Hm…”the right of the people peaceably to assemble”? What happens if “the people” are no longer assembling peaceably? What if they’re throwing rocks and bottles at the keepers of the peace? Well, see, that constitutes assault with a weapon (possibly deadly). To be honest, the police had a responsibility to respond with force. I love the liberal media’s assertion that police should refrain from using any force at all until they’re killed. Apparently, after our civil servants are dead, we can reasonably ascertain that they should have, in fact, used force…more’s the pity for them. Oh well…better luck next time. But as long as the police officers in question are still alive, no matter how wounded they may be, no amount of force is reasonable. I used to wonder at Michael Savage’s assertion that “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder”, but after seeing enough of these kinds of stories, I no longer do. Liberals who agree with things like this are apparently incapable of rational thought, and have no business making any sorts of decisions, let alone talking to or working in the media.

Did the police use force on those who were not throwing rocks and/or bottles? Well, the only case in which we’re fairly sure this didn’t happen was with the woman who brought the federal suit against the LAPD; a reporter, who was probably too busy covering the event to be throwing rocks at the officers. The problem is this:

If you think of a group of people assembling as a conglomeration of individuals, each of whom should be treated as an individual, then you hamstring the ability of the policemen to keep order in such a situation. I wouldn’t have wanted to deal with a group of 50-100 people some of whom were throwing rocks and bottles at the officers. But that wasn’t what they were dealing with, there. No no…they were dealing with a MUCH LARGER group of people, and there were 50-100 people who were throwing rocks and bottles. A group like that must be judged differently than otherwise. The police must look at the general tenor of the crowd. A situation like what they faced quickly becomes more and more serious until someone carrying a gun (and I guarantee you there was one there) falls prey to the mob mentality. The police did exactly as they should have to defuse the situation before it got worse.

An article like this is designed to ONLY feed the people’s feeling that the police are the enemy. It’s a tactic used to help foster more situations of this nature so that the left can justify their anti-police rhetoric. It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it ticked me off.

==========

Study puts spotlight on battlefield ethics

This article has one purpose and one purpose only: to foster discontent with the military and the war. Now, I have no problem with people feeling as though we shouldn’t be in Iraq…that is a perfectly acceptable opinion, though maybe flawed. This study goes deeper though. They’re basically determining that war destroys our young people, and that at its present state, the military is not qualified to be prosecuting this or any war.

War is ugly, sure. But we live in a world where war is necessary. It’s not a tool to raise or lower approval ratings…it’s designed to destroy those who would oppose the Free World. The military is necessary because of the Total Depravity of man! If you begin with a faulty assumption, such as “man is basically good”, then you’re going to end up at a faulty conclusion…namely that the military serves no worthy purpose. This is where you’d be wrong.

Support and pray for our troops, people. Don’t allow the left to hand you your opinion of the war and the military. Don’t allow anyone to do that. Think, and think hard about your beliefs. Examine them…reject those that make no sense.

I was doing a mission for Zion, looking for the General’s commandos with Seraph. Seraph’s new-found ability to see inside of people’s code has become useful in that he thinks he might be able to track down Sati from fighting commandos. Anyway, all of a sudden, Seraph noticed a strange reading and told me to go check it out. When I walked outside, my mission controller, Tyndall, said that it looked like what they’d been waiting for. When I walked into the room to which they directed me…this is the sight that greeted my eyes.