Lights On

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In just under 40 minutes, Ellie Goulding answers the question “What would Imogen Heap sound like if she did pop?”

Ellie Goulding - Lights

You’d think the producers had decided that nothing on each track may sound harsher than Ellie’s voice. I mean that in a good way - it’s comparable to (but softer than) Cerys Matthews, interesting enough to act as an instrument in its own right, and often the driving force in each song. Although considering her acoustic folk roots, it’s no surprise.

In some ways it’s a shame she has transitioned only halfway between folk and Frankmusik. For example, I don’t know whether to be impressed or disappointed that the synthesisers didn’t break out of their soft, inoffensive bubble during Pink-soundalike ‘Every Time You Go’. Having access to a vast range of electronics affords you an intensity a lone singer-songwriter could only dream of achieving, but that capability isn’t used here. Goulding has stuck to what she knows best, in a move that has undoubtedly disappointed many critics expecting her to go one further than ‘Under The Sheets’.

That said, effects are put to very good use, keeping it fresh and interesting, even while you’re saying to yourself “this is a bit like Linkin Park here” or “ooh, they nicked that from ‘Last Christmas’”.

All in all, ‘Lights’ is a decent bit of pop with good melodies, an interesting backing track, a bit of emotional response and a nice voice to listen to. Really, everything pop music is meant to be, rather than Simon Cowell-produced noise pollution. If I wanted the full wrath of synthesisers and samplers I’d put on some Animal Collective, thankyouverymuch.

Bean salsa wrap

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I had a few leftovers that needed using up - most importantly, the remnants of my homemade salsa after my housemates attacked it with their army of tortilla chips. Fortunately for me, I have a well-stocked food cupboard at my disposal.

Bean salsa wrap

Ingredients

  • 130g mixed beans, rinsed and drained
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 1 heaped tsp Cajun seasoning (I use Bart)
  • 100g tomato salsa
  • a little bit of green pepper
  • 20g cheese, grated
  • 1 large wrap - a brand like Discovery works well
  • 1 leaf of a large lettuce
  • a little soured cream

Throw the beans in a saucepan pan together with the oil. Mix the Cajun seasoning into the beans and heat gently for 5 minutes.

Add the pepper and the salsa. I turned the heat up a little since my salsa just came out of the fridge. Sometimes you feel impatient, and that’s okay in its place, where you can afford to do it. (i.e. right here.) Anyway, heat through - probably another 5-7 minutes.

While you wait for that, grate the cheese and tear up the lettuce into itty bits. Have the decency not to use iceberg - that stuff is barely acceptable in a cold salad, let alone any place where warmth is involved. But if, say, your partner or housemates buy it, use it anyway and remember to scold them thoroughly afterwards for having such a mundane taste in vegetables.

Seriously. Iceberg lettuce is as pointless as a vacuum cleaner in space. It sucks hard yet achieves nothing. Feel free to take that analogy to the bank, by the way.

Er, where was I? Ah yes. Now you’ve cut up your cheese and lettuce into small pieces, it’s time to dispose of the evidence. But first, zap the wrap in the microwave for 10 seconds - no point having a warm filling if its container is going to cool it down before you even manage to get halfway through.

Cover the wrap with lettuce, spoon the bean salsa on top in a wide line, sprinkle the cheese over the mixture, and finally pour soured cream on top.

Folding wraps is the only hard part in this entire exercise. One careless move and you could get a creamy hand, except in this instance it’s socially acceptable to lick it off. And now you have that on your mind, happy eating! Tee hee!

Postscript: It might pay to mash the beans a little. Ersatz refried beans, if you will. I might try it with proper ones someday.

A songwriting machine named Emily Howell

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During my daily dose of reddit I saw an article on the artifically-intelligent software composer, Emily Howell, and the story of David Cope and his first creation Emmy (or EMI, for Experiments in Musical Intelligence).

Algorithmic music has always interested me, but not for the sheer pleasure of music appreciation; it’s the way you can create atmosphere on-demand, and given my love of computer games - the most interactive art form yet - the ability to make music defined by your actions raises the experience to a whole new level.

Just imagine. You become one with the violins. Horns wait for their cue while the bassoon annotates your every move. While you were busy playing the conductor with your existence, the timpani has tirelessly amplified your heartbeat a million times. Every little bit so seamless and unobtrusive, so perfect, that the music feels like a natural extension of you. It literally is the soundtrack of your life, and just thinking of the potential gives me goosebumps.

Anyway.

That’s all well and good, but Emily isn’t that kind of composer.

She writes music for the sake of music. And in contrast to her forebears, it’s all original. (Naturally, with the necessary qualifications that any jazz man will give you - numerous quotes about everybody stealing from everybody else spring to mind, unattributed in my disorganised mind yet universally acknowledged.)

I honestly have no problem with this, since anyone can write a song. Writing a good song, well, that’s something else.

What I’ve heard so far (excerpt 1, excerpt 2) is certainly pleasing, but it’s far from Chopin. That’s not a performance issue, either - Chopin sounds great even in the hands of an amateur - but something more fundamental. I’m definitely impressed that a computer wrote it, but as a piece generally? Meh.

I’m not here to write a review, though. What I found especially interesting was the reaction of critics against Emily’s precursor, Emmy. David Cope created Emmy in an attempt to solve a severe case of writer’s block; her task was to create chorales in the style of Bach. She passed with flying colours, and musical scholars hated him for it.

(Cope also created more scores in the style of other composers, with varying success.)

The funny thing is, being able to compose music to sound like a long-lost Bach piece shouldn’t be as amazing, disturbing, or even as revolting as the critics have made out. Our definition of a Bach piece is based solely on his repertoire as a reference point; the computer doesn’t have to capture the essence of Bach at all, merely convince us that it is Bach. Something entirely different.

Conversely, suppose you find a long-lost Bach piece that sounds unlike his other work. You have two choices: destroy the evidence, or move the goalposts to retain consistency, calling it a blue period, or hampered by external creative interests. (I particularly like that one - it’s like saying he’s on drugs without the stigma of an outright accusation.)

Either way, perception and reality are not necessarily aligned, which is why I consider mimicking specific things a bit of a red herring when asking whether music has ‘soul’. The illusion of soul, perhaps; a snapshot of it. But that doesn’t make it the real deal.

“The question,” Cope says, “isn’t whether computers have a soul, but whether humans have a soul.”

Emily Howell doesn’t tickle my soul - at least, not with what I’ve heard so far. However, even this is not the most important part of the question. So far, Emily relies on Cope for control, and to assess whether the results are any good. We have no idea what the success rate is, or how much intervention and selection is required. Even now, the output isn’t spectacular.

Liken it to the infinite monkey theorem; a tool like Emily can speed up the process, but we decide whether the output is correct or has artistic excellence, not the ignorant monkeys. The milestone lies beyond this, in generating works of art every time, and I’m just not convinced we’re even near that yet.

A threat to contemporary composers? Only when the results are consistently good without the need for manual selection. But even if Emily accelerates the creative process as David Cope indicates, this should be seen as a step forward for everybody. After all, nobody’s complaining that the Industrial Revolution happened.

Epic Quail

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The Quails

I first saw the Quails in their home town (and Muse’s, who they were supporting at the time) in Devon. They offer a slice of indie akin to the likes of the Strokes and the Killers, plus a bit of Bloc Party without the intensity. The vocals may be a little insipid, but the lead guitar work is sound and the band as a whole manages to stay cohesive.

This time they visited Bristol, and it was all perfectly agreeable and fun to dance to. Exactly what you want from a live act - in contrast to, say, The Invisible, who got into the realms of bad jazz at times; overly repetitive and lacking direction. It starts well but you’re definitely glad when the song is over.

They won’t win awards but they definitely have talent, so it’ll be interesting to see if they go anywhere. More here!

The Quails bassist

Redesign!

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The redesign I’d threatened for months has finally arrived! I hope you like it, ‘cause if not, tough.

You also have easy access to the cooking and coding posts through clicking the photos at the very top. Delicious!

Sweet and Sour deliciousness

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Chinese New Year was yesterday, for those keeping track - it was rather unfortunate that Singles Awareness Day overshadowed it, but that’s what you get when you have competing calendars.

I was left to fend for myself tonight, so I decided to go along with the season and cook one of my favourites - sweet and sour stir fry. I’d much rather make my own sauces than go for a jar. This is trivial if you’re making some pasta thing, where a bought tomato sauce is little more than a minor convenience, but complex sauces are unsurprisingly more involved.

However, I found one that is quite tasty and isn’t too demanding on your store cupboard. Rice vinegar would be better, but I tried it with white wine vinegar and results were definitely acceptable. A sprinkle of crushed chilli gives a delicious kick to it, but be sparing.

Banana & choc chip cake (and apols)

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Yeah, I've been a bit otherwise occupied, lately, haven't I? If it's any consolation, there are a few drafts waiting to be turned from meaningless drivel into utter bilge. Something like that, anyway.

Without further agadoo, here's a banana and chocolate chip cake I made this weekend.

Banana Cake
Typical. Doesn't even survive the 5 minutes it takes to get the camera out.

The chocolate chips were sparse out of necessity, but in a way, I thought that was a good choice - you get the full flavour of the banana, with a chocolatey intermission every few bites. Delish!

Banana & choc chip cake

Ingredients
  • 100g butter, softened
  • 150g demerara sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 large bananas, the riper the better
  • 200g plain flour
  • 4 level tsp baking powder
  • 50g chocolate chips
Grease a sandwich tin and preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Cream the butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs.
Mash the bananas in a separate bowl using a fork. If your bananas aren't very ripe and you don't like the idea of bending all your cutlery, put them in a blender instead.
Now add the banana sludge to the batter and mix well.
Fold the flour/baking powder into the mixture until it is an even colour and (probably lumpy) consistency.
Finally, fold the chips in, and pour the mixture into a sandwich tin.
Bake for 40 minutes in a fan oven, 50-60 otherwise. Test the cake with a skewer as usual before you take it out - I know it contains banana, but it shouldn't be sludgy.

And there you have it, a cake with a great crust, moist centre, and delicious taste. Did you know that half of this cake counts as one of your five-a-day? Wink, wink...

Raytracer in Lua, update

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I'm actually making a PDF of this for my uni course, which I shall display / break up into bits when it's done. You'll have to wait a few days for that, though - be patient.

Good news, though; LuaJIT has just received all the sponsorship it had asked for to create a 64-bit version! I don't know a great deal about the differences between x86 and x86-64, but having seen some of the unique compilation and optimisation methods employed in LuaJIT, I'm rather excited to see what kind of tricks he can wring out of the 64-bit instruction set.

NP-complete pain in the neck

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When I was a kid, I often asked "why" or "what" questions. "Why is the sky blue", "what's in this box", "why can't I have another chocolate", etc. and the answer that would infuriate me the most was "not telling!", or even worse, "because!" Yeah, okay, but WHYYYyyeeeeeeeee-aaaayyyyyyyyy? *pout*

I wonder if mathematicians feel the same way when they're faced with things like NP-complete problems.

"Yes, there is a solution to this, but hell if I'm going to tell you what it is."

"Aww, meanie! Is this a solution?"

"No."

"How about this?"

"Nope."

"Okay... um, this one?"

"No."

"What abou-"

"Nor that."

"Then WHAAAAT IIIIIS IIIIIIIIT?!" *pout*


The best you can hope for is knowing when a problem falls into that category and steering well clear of it. Or be smart enough to discover P = NP, but I won't hold my breath.

Banoffee Republic

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Was out shopping at Lakeside today. I felt I deserved a coffee after a long day of shopping and suffering shop assistants' continual assaults of 'can I help you?'. Since there's no Boston Tea Party round these parts, why not take a chance with a chain I was unfamiliar with? Thus we duly headed to Coffee Republic.

Looking at the menu, it seemed rather promising - they offered ristretto, which is a very strong and esoteric choice by anyone's standards. Certainly something you expect to see from people serious about coffee, or so you'd think. Unfortunately the experience was pretty awful.

It all started to go wrong when I ordered a vanilla latte. Pease, don't hold that against me, I just felt like something sweet, okay? Besides, I've not even started yet. We looked up at the menu and we saw:

Latte£2.60
Skinny Latte£2.60
Vanilla Latte
Cappuccino£2.60
Skinny Cappuccino£2.60

OK, you assume it's all £2.60, don't you? I did. The marketing department probably wanted you to think that too. Cunningly, at the very bottom of the menu, there's a small line stating "Extra syrups: 60p". But that's doesn't apply because a vanilla latte is intrinsically vanilla, right?

Ha. It's a regular latte with 'extra' vanilla syrup, and they never explicitly said it cost £2.60. Paying £3.20 for a coffee, flavoured or not, is way over the top. This is underhand, deceptive and technically correct; a combination that makes nobody happy except their accountants.

I could've lived with it if it was a decent cup of coffee. If only. By the taste of it, they definitely put 'extra' syrup in - it was sickly, vanilla-y (but mostly syrupy) and pretty devoid of anything else, including hot milk. I'd have had more fun with a McDonald's milkshake.

And just in case you thought they might redeem themselves - ah, no, unless your favourite drink is tea-flavoured dishwater. It was as weak as anything.

I seriously hope it's just the staff at Lakeside that's sub-par. Either way, I have no intention of seeing if they're better elsewhere; there are more consistent coffee chains out there that will get my business. Awful.