Categories
Me Myself&I

Nerdy choices

Watching everything that goes on in the tech and computer world –well as much as I can-, here some thoughts.

My hair is a bird
Just so nobody can’t say nothin’

Closed/Open technologies and monopole.

It’s an endless loop I guess. Usually at first we use the closed ones because they are better and when the technology is mature enough –when people really need it while the tech reaches stability- we move to alternatives to the point where we’re almost totally free to use this technology seeminglessly and endlessly. And then a new closed tech comes etc

So there’s nothing wrong using closed tech. Opera offers a great browser experience and it’s a closed tech. The only thing to do with closed technologies is to not giving up everything on them. Using them to get things done and have a boost of productivity is fine.

Adobe Flash is an excellent example of a great productivity tool for which we tend to give up everything, building a monopole based on a proprietary technology where only a giant company like MS can compete with (Silverlight). But Flash is cool –though not as fast as the Grandmaster-, it is used by visual designers. They are the coolest guys of the entire universe they can’t be wrong!

That’s weird. The stability of the open source alternative should be here and competing. I can’t wait to have the open source equivalent of the PDF format, without any restriction and gazillion of devices capable of reading it while offering perfect performances, feeding great apps.

I see some people complaining about the monopole of iTunes these days and people going away from a market so tightly controlled by the California based company that apps are refused arbitrary.

Well, Apple is known for that –just having to install iTunes to see the music catalog is the first step-, it’s closed closed closed. The size of the iphone market is now enough to make people think twice before being stuck.

It’s like the cooler you seem, the more you can fuck people. Open or closed technology doesn’t even count. That’s why I don’t want Chrome. Way too nice Google, and you already have me with mail and rss.

OS/Apps and updates.

They all fail at some point. Whatever it is, from Snow Leopard to WordPress to Windows, a major update on a major system has to break some stuffs. That’s why 7 is impressive for me, it didn’t break anything and everything worked out out of the box on three very different computer. Because doing an operating system is one of the most complex task in the world, sometimes it doesn’t deliver. Hopefully it’s less and less the case whatever the flavor of what is running your computer on.

Also the more the app is used, the more it’s vulnerable and needs updates. WordPress and Firefox come in mind. It’s just like that. And no system is unbreakable so.. All this noise on news about what is normal in the software world is pretty annoying because during that time, they don’t talk about great apps and services that would be worth the word.

Patents & lock-in.

Well, I agree with Raph Koster on this one. You have a great idea, you did work hard on it, it seems fair that you want some revenue from it. The point is to what degree. It seems that people always want to abuse that, largely. The lack of competition because of abusive patents especially on hardware is slowing the spread of progress so hard (multitouch mess).

Anyway the only way to prevent abuses or slow generalization of great tech things seems to make sure to be in the middle of it. No sides, just going here and there, getting the one that fits your need without compromising your freedom.

Categories
Audio&Games

Word sound design

Chocobeam
Chocobeam Sound Lab. The beginning.

So I founded my company and called it Chocobeam (Sound Lab). I find that it’s interesting to come out with a word to imagine a name because at some point, it’s pure sound.

When you hear the name of something, the brain converts audio to words to meaning. So the audio layer comes on first, even if it’s for a micromillisecond so you are not even noticing it (because the meaning is really what the brain is searching for).

Anyway this sound is what people are sharing and spreading by word of mouth about you, first. It also can be repeated in the case of a success, billion times everywhere. You’d better sound good when there’s competition, it can make a difference.

So my references are for most of them japanese: Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, Softbank etc or from the web and computer world: Twitter, Vimeo, Amazon, Google.. What I found is that:

  • They are easy to say for a lot of people around the world. Of course based on english.
  • Contraction of two words (Capsule Computer seriously, it’s genius) works good. I personally find that it’s better to have a cool name that having a perfect description of the service/product.
  • Three syllables is always a win because it’s like a story: there’s a start, a middle and and end. People love stories. UPS sounds finished, Fedex not much. Two syllables is dangerous, too fast for people to remember it and after three, the more you have the more it’s boring to say. The more you have, the more you can describe and give meaning though. It still often sounds boring or pompous.
  • People need to be able to read it and pronounce it well at first try. Super not easy. I remember the first time I heard about Nintendo I thought it was hard to say. And weird to read.

With that in mind, considering my values and what my business is about, I came to Chocobeam. Sounds cute (Chocobo anyone?) and kind of edgy even pronounced ala française (without the Ch dynamic).  Some people just want to read Chocobean but I can’t do nothing for them. Get back to school? Kidding.

The meaning is quite simple: contraction of chocolate and beam, chocolate being me and the beam being my audio. Be kind, to get this brainstorm done I almost had a phlebitis.

Beam has two others meaning though: in french beam is “bim” and it kind of reminds me of the slang in the suburbs of Paris. “BIM! dans ta sale face lààà!” meaning “BAM! motherfucker”, adding a comics-related and active sound while reminding me where I come from.

BEAM is also an acronym and means Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics and Mechanics (BEAM robotics). I think it fits well my work in the interactive design and computer games field.

Looking at that sometime I really believe that how the name of your service/brand/product sounds has a big impact. I wrote about it two years ago when there was so much web 2.0 services with stupid names. Who made it through time? None with weird silly sounding names and difficult pronunciation. Facebook fits my points above. Three-four syllables, good dynamic between consonant and sibilant, easy to say around the world, easy to write and have some meaning (and humor). Instant interest, instant good feeling. Perfect.

Counter example: Aka-Aki. The service is interesting and promising. The name is awful. Freaking not appealing at all. It sounds complicated. It sounds boring (“can you spell it to me?”), you can’t hardly get it the first time you hear it (and I had to search the web to be sure of how it’s written even if I already was aware of his existence!). It’s like people creating this service found that it was a fun and cool name. It’s already killing them outside Germany where they are quite successful.

If you want some consulting on this issue, if you need advices to help you find the timeless name of your product, brand, application, feel free to send an email at info@chocobeam.com.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Overload

I feel like I’m overcapacity. Too much information, I can’t process them all. Facebook was not a really good idea for that. I am officially scared to launch the website. It’s a time-elapsing hemoragy.

I have some trouble to find a way to filter, priorize all this digital social information creation thing. The more I create, the more I get feedback. The more I get feedback the more I need to answer it. The more I answer it, the less I create. Then I switch for another period, endlessly.

Quite exhausting. A blog comment appears in the mail, I click, read it, prepare my answer then see 4 tweets with 2 links with one to a picture. Internal dialog:

“RT the article? Haha funny picture. Where was I. Oh I didn’t read this tab yet, good 5 pages article. Let’s see. Oh, it blinks in the taskbar, the discussion is on. Correcting, the three conversations are on. Another link ok but quickly then because I was doing.. Oh damn the answer to the blog comment. Oh. I was writing an email at first and needed a starred rss item. Let’s see. Oh new items. And new tweets. And it’s blinking again. And it feels exciting.”

This little reward loop in my brain is saying to me: “yeaaah, encore”. I’m a fucking mouse in a laboratory. With a scroll-wheel in the forehead.

I have around 400 streams of information to check everyday, some of them are enough alone to occupy my brain for hours. Videos. I now avoid them widely, so time-consuming.

GTFO The Internet
I know. But the Internet is so addictive. Especially when Gmail is down.

I guess we all are in the same shit.

Categories
Audio&Games

It’s shifting

But first, we need to stop a bit this BS around.

Like the bullshots. We exactly know how they are done, we all know this is pure bullshit compared to real gameplay in-game, with opponents, AI inputs etc

But still, Kotaku for example is full of them more than ever. And people jerk off on it. We had to when we were young because game news were only on paper. In 2009? I don’t even understand.

It’s like this crazyness about figurines and movie adaptation of games. Come on even at 11 years old I knew Doom or Wolfenstein stories were not serious, just here to wrap some outstanding and groundbreaking 3D engines and gameplay. Now they try to make it as if the story was really the core of these games, using the IP to some extreme. Ridiculous.

Sony is launching the PS3 Slim and still loose money on it. As everybody knows, it’s all about software and the PS3 has already lost this battle: games are either multi-platform and sell or Sony exclusive and don’t. For the BR player? Yeah maybe. We sell 1To hard drives for 100$ now and media centers like crazy but yeah, maybe.

I think the public is tired of having to go all the way for a manufacturer, or having no choice but to buy them all. The trend seems to be to go away from closed platforms. Always have been the case: after some hegemony from closed platforms (Amiga, Atari, C64), they suddenly die.

For developers and consumers it’s a win/win. In the Scott Miller ind-depth interview on Gamasutra, we can see that it really has always been the case: the more you aim your game to a large crowd -technically, making sure it runs on the largest chunk of people’s computers- the more you make money. It seems stupid I know. 

“Obviously all your Kroz games were text-based, and you said they sold extremely well. So graphics weren’t a prerequisite at that time to have a successful game for the IBM PC, right?

SM: That appeared to be the case. Most people back in those days when I was doing the Kroz games had CGA cards. EGA was up and coming, but you really couldn’t count on it. These disk magazines like Softdisk wanted the kind of ASCII-based games I was making because they felt like everyone could play them. They didn’t want games that could just work on ten or twenty percent of people’s computers.”

When a developer goes exclusive with a very specific theme in his game –like, WAR- he’s aiming an awful little market. Really juicy ok but with no growth expected. That is what are aiming a lot of publishers these days: 10% of the overall computer market maybe less.

Talking about growth, netbooks sales are up by 40% from last year this quarter. Just sayin’

So to resume: publishers and big names are trying to make sure that we are partying like in 2003 with AAA games and exclusives deals while developers are getting laid off more than ever from that kind of game productions –canceled games every week- with veterans going indie –Chris Hecker man!-. On top of that, consumers are buying games on mobile platforms and tend to enjoy fast and quick game sessions. They use closed platforms when it’s good and different –DS, Iphone- but they know they don’t want that in the future.

They want the fun and the freedom. Developers, don’t forget the freedom part. Oh by the way,


Ron Gilbert’s last game. Very curious to see this one. I mean, to buy it.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Citizen fail

LAX Immigration and Customs, first time:

“Have a nice stay, enjoy California!”

Second time:

“Are you on vacation here? Allright”

Third time:

“What are you doing here? Where’s the plane ticket to get back to your country? What are you doing here? Why staying for so long? Let me see your card. So why are you coming here?”

Immigration. It seems fair until you’re on the other side.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Love it or quit it.

It was the french president Sarkozy talking to suburbs and saying that about France.

Well I’d rather do both.

I’m stupid: I started working with this idea that it always seems to be greener there while it seems shit where you actually are, but that is on average (well in the western world) the same wherever you go. There’s down and upside. So I believed France and Europe would be a good playground to do stuff, no need to go away in Canada or CA. There is plenty of good things in here and a cultural melting-pot quite unmatched on Earth. Paris is amazing for that (and weird, I’d talk about it). I was thinking about the challenges and the potentials. There are still here.

But nothing big happened. Or it’s so slow it’s invisible.

No real good signs of society improvements just some willing to move forward but nothing happens really. France is lagging. In so many ways it even goes backward (wtf is this religious vivacity these days?? or Hadopi or this amazing rampant bigotry..).

People don’t give a shit. Globally, French don’t give a shit. Progress is difficult in this context.

Wherever I am, since I’ve been living outside a bit, I can’t believe how France don’t care from the airport to sidewalks to services, whatever. It’s not that it’s bad behaviors, it’s more like it’s dull and selfish ones (boss kidnapping I mean, come on!). It’s even more irritating when people apologize. Sometimes I want to stab the dude in the eye and say “SORRY I DIDNT KNOW IT COULD HURT I MEAN I HAVE THE RIGHT TO PLAY WITH A KNIFE RIGHT?”.

I love the independence state of mind of France, questioning everything, all the time. I think it’s good to be not sure of anything, because that’s what life is. I hate the careless rude, rough, mean side of it.

We don’t have to have them both. We could have the positive one and ditch the stupid side but no, that would be totally not french to do so.

I guess.

Anyway, I feel angry against myself for giving up, against french people for having all the pain in the ass to believe, adapt, build and finish stuff instead of always talk and criticize it (because if they are not like this, they usually are not in France anymore) against California for being so awesome despite its own downside.

I hate waste in every way and I can’t stop thinking about it when I remind myself of these last years or when I listen to my friends or public transports conversations. Social, society opportunities falling and failing.

And then I just have to see some smart witty funny french people and..

Man I feel weird. But I’m doing it. Both.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Sunset Submarine

Après un mois et des poussières sans nuages, ça fait bizarre quand même. Juste après le Groenland, mer de nuage. A 10 km c’est magnifique, j’ai même vu un château dans le ciel. A 3 km sur Paris, on plonge doucement dedans. C’est doux, c’est gris.

C’est du moisi.

N’empêche le lever du soleil sur la planète blue en altitude, c’est le pied.

Categories
Audio&Games

Open terminal

“For 2009, sales are expected to jump to 35 million, rising to an estimated 139 million in 2013.”

About netbooks. I think it could be the case.

For me the netbook is the beginning of the computer becoming something like a fridge, really useful, really efficient, cheap, with the brand that says nothing except that it is totally useless and irrelevant to know it (almost).

What is interesting is that its development around the world is matching the beginning of services like OnLive or Gaikai. David Perry said in some interview:

“You don’t need to have full screen HD to play a game, you just don’t. It needs to be good, but each game has a set size it’ll work at, and we suggest that they go as small as they can while still having a great experience – because the audience will be exponential. The smaller you go, the bigger the audience.”

Playing on screens like the DS/iPhone or the low res of the Wii which are currently the best selling game devices proves the point. People don’t give as much about overall technical graphical achievement that they do for innovation and gameplay and fantasy (which I will discuss later). So if the server side game service is working as in this demo (and this is where Prism or others are gonna be useful):

Well people running little computers with gigabit ethernet or wifi n are gonna be happy. They are legion.

Categories
Music

unDust the funk

The Dust Brothers.

I was reading this interview of brother E.Z. Mike in Waxpoetic and couldn’t stop but think that Funk is so central and yet so not understood.

E.Z. Mike did with King Gizmo the insanely funky and acclaimed Beastie Boys Paul’s Boutique, Beck’s Odelay and Fight Club soundtrack among others.

Question:

Waxpoetic: “I’ve run into a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds who really dig the Fight Club soundtrack. Along with the movie, it’s really become a cult classic as an instrumental record. Do you feel that record now?”

E.Z. Mike: […] To me, the funk is the core of everything I do. To me, the thing I focus on is the bass and the beat. To me, that’s the driving force of music at least [the music] I want to hear. So I always start there; that’s the foundation. The cool thing is, with funk as the foundation I mean, it’s incredible how versatile the funk is: you can throw anything on top of it and it works. […]

That’s why as a music producer from the 2000s I did start to dig funk in its original flavor from the 70s to 80s instead of wanting to buy the exact same sample machine of some famous hip-hop producer or stuff like that.

People may think that I appreciate and love funk and soul music just for the black side of it but that’s not my first argument. The argument is musical: funk is the foundation of almost all the music of the last decades. It evolved to hip-hop – like it or not, it’s the most international music ever, it’s everywhere-, it gave soundtracks that funkyness, it is the base of house music, JPop etc. It almost gave birth to reggae too (the US RnB and jazz were the biggest influences on Jamaïca well-known music).

The versatility of production on funk records is seriously quite unmatched. There is no music with that wide choice of how the record sounds, from heavy bass to heavy horns to heavy guitar saturated or not, heavy keyboards, synthetizers, to heavy beats with all the gradient between them all together. It’s truly amazing.


Picture of the funk. Keywords: Sun, urban, dirty, searching, exciting, cool.

So when listening to Paul’s Boutique or whatever in the 90s sample music I was always really frustrated to only have a fragment, a loop, two bars of it. I wanted all the funk and nothing but the root, the original. I was always thinking “there must be a lot more that this breakbeat which is brilliant but I want to listen to more. Btw who the fuck is Bob James???”.

There is so much to learn about music and its effectiveness with funk:

“Funk utilized the same extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, or dominant seventh chords with altered ninths. However, unlike bebop jazz, with its complex, rapid-fire chord changes, funk virtually abandoned chord changes, creating static single chord vamps with little harmonic movement, but with a complex and driving rhythmic feel.

The chords used in funk songs typically imply a dorian or mixolydian mode, as opposed to the major or natural minor tonalities of most popular music. Melodic content was derived by mixing these modes with the blues scale.”

I mean funk is simply a lighter and rhythm based jazz music. It’s like it tends to be the most efficient way to make you wanna move physically or “active in your head” using music knowledge from bebop which is one of the most expressive and complex music ever created. That’s why it works so well, body and soul at the same time. It comes from there.

And yet funk is either consider as gimmicky, soul-less (compared to rock like U2 maybe, but it’s less boring) or meaning dancefloor and bottom bell pants.

It’s way more than that. You should dig more my friend.

Categories
Me Myself&I

US Me

What to say?

That I have never been that happy in life? That it’s the best summer ever? Or that it’s gonna be the best autumn of the galaxy at least for me?

I don’t want to make you more jealous that you already are.

Seriously though, there is still some unsolved and important stuff to deal with but at the same time it’s always the case whatever you do so..

I don’t know which subject to talk about living here, on Sunset blvd. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be about food and diet though :) I’m still in the process of assimilation of cultural differences. I miss nothing in the everyday life compared to France, at least for now. At the opposite getting back to Paris scared me and made me regret L.A. Not only for Her.

I have unleashed the archives to december 2005 and re-reading some stuff I can’t say I’m not having what I wanted. It’s all happening. It’s scary fabulous. I’m suspicious about the scary part.

Maybe I miss to speak/hear french. That’s why I’m finding myself listening to “Libre comme l’air” from Reciprok french hiphop band (la hontassse). I feel so constricted in english, checking so many times my grammar and all. Eventually it’s gonna be automatic.

But man, this weather.. I breath better with roads everywhere and an ocean breeze than in Paris with woods but no breeze at all, just a big annoying wind. And fucking rain.

It’s awkward to listen to the music I know in a completely different environment like one song was reminding how much I wanted some change, looking at the moon, freezing in my appartment while playing before having some soup.


Paris, I’m not missing your cloudy mood. At all. I need an amp though.

It’s weird because I didn’t believe that I would find something or someone in the US. I was just fed up with Paris and parisians. I even wondered if I would not return in the french countryside, making music and growing vegetables. Even if I know that I’m too urban for that, it was tempting. Living cheaply, independantly, no bullshit, just jokes weed&wine. I was thinking about it so hard when back in my less than 300 people village.

And then a few weeks later, I’m starting a life in a 11 million people city. It makes me wonder what is next? Well for now some funk legends live. It’s like that my friend!