07
May 07

Leadership

Path: mv.asterisco.pt!mvalente
From: mvale…@ruido-visual.pt (Mario Valente)
Newsgroups: mv
Subject: Leadership
Date: Mon, 03 May 07 04:47:21 GMT

Your single, only task as a leader is to deal with
change: you either create it or anticipate it.

I dont know if I read this somewhere or if its an
original thought brought about by any half awake
syncretic mental process. I’m sure the lazyweb will
correct me anyway…

— MV


07
May 07

Black Rock

Path: mv.asterisco.pt!mvalente
From: mvale…@ruido-visual.pt (Mario Valente)
Newsgroups: mv
Subject: Black Rock
Date: Mon, 02 May 07 03:49:21 GMT

At nearly 4 a.m. this post should probably be titled
“At That Time of the Night, part 3”; its not because
its a followup to the previous post, brought about
because the film I got to watch on late night TV.

Anyone remember “Cobra”? With Stallone?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090859/

Not a piece of cinematic art, for sure; but a great
piece of “designer violence”. Stallone kicks ass left
and right as if there were no tomorrow…

While watching the movie I heard a song and, in
true Buzz zen master style, I recognized the only few
chords played: it was “Feel the Heat”, by Jean Beauvoir,
from one of my favourite albums of all time “Drums Along
the Mohawk”. So there you go, links for the movie, the
album and the two videos for the song:

www.amazon.co.uk/Drums-Along-Mohawk-Beauvoir-Jean/dp/B000006STX/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_2/026-0776094-3478038
www.amazon.co.uk/Cobra-Sylvester-Stallone/dp/B00004CZEJ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/026-0776094-3478038
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeO5DfdZi7Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzgNjVXl9a8

(incidentally, movie and album are from 1986, best year
ever in terms of musical production)

But, in line with my previous rant on hip hop, this
got me thinking: what the hell happened to black musicians
playing black rock? I refuse to accept the current MTV stereotype
where all black music is exploitative (and boring) gangsta rap or
pointless hip hop. Rock n roll is at its heart black music, and
when you get a couple of brothers on the rythm section, you get
one hell of a rock band and some mighty good tunes.

Case in point, see Jean Beauvoir above and also with its
own band “Crown of Thorns”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9H3fSHMV2w

Another good example, although more pop-ish, is Roachford
with “Cuddly Toy (Feel for Me)”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMIHuawR3M8

Still in the pop-ish area you get the true James Brown
heir, Terence Trent D’Arby, that used to kick both Prince’s
and Michael Jackson’s ass when he wasnt singing tearful ballads.
Here’s the man with “Dance Little Sister”, funk rock at its
best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xm3IxHdK5U

(Why INXS didnt get him as the definitive replacement for
Michael Hutchence still pisses me off…)

Getting into the more raw side of the rock stuff I still
find Dan Reed Network one of my favourite bands ever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isZxL_uh3pw

And, of course, kick ass band Living Colour. I mean, the
drummer kicks ass, the bass player kicks ass, the singer
rocks and Vernon Reid, the guitar player, is Jimi Hendrix
transposed into modern times (although without the drugs
and with $10.000 of digital effects…):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ5SVDYBNrY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut1H4o_ie8c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4w9YGEiQ4c

Damn!, even Mothers Finest has been rocking since the
70s up until the 21st century:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxUmjLbG2Ko

So whatever happened to black rock? Are we doomed to
the piss poor sort of music that MTV and other channels
feed us, the i-m-angry-with-society sort of stuff, with
endless crappy rhymes over endless samples of Parliament
Funkadelic Bootsy Collins bass lines?

I’m sure that Black Power ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Power )
stood for more than bling and hoes. And in my point of view,
power doesnt come from the barrel of a gun (I’m an anarcho-capitalist
but I do know Mao); power comes from a Marshall amp turned to 11
and going full shred on a 6 string (with your weapon of choice,
mine being a Gibson Les Paul cherry sunburst, Ace Frehley model,
http://www.gibson.com/products/gibson/LesPaul/AceFrehley.html )

Luckily, a few brothers still havent been won over by the
the consensual allucination of the king-of-the-burbs-ghetto-revival:

http://www.blackrockcoalition.org/

— MV


07
May 07

Late Night Game Playing

Path: mv.asterisco.pt!mvalente
From: mvale…@ruido-visual.pt (Mario Valente)
Newsgroups: mv
Subject: Late Night Game Playing
Date: Mon, 03 May 07 03:45:21 GMT

Insomnia again, even with pills. No movies this
time, a bit of game playing…

Rez – www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4EFNWe4mCc
Vib Ribbon – www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yw0jDON0Fg

Except for Quakeworld and Enemy Territory, I prefer
weird games…

— MV


05
May 07

Key Generator

Path: mv.asterisco.pt!mvalente
From: mvale…@ruido-visual.pt (Mario Valente)
Newsgroups: mv
Subject: Key Generator
Date: Sat, 05 May 07 05:36:21 GMT

This night/dawn/morning, although I was flat tired,
while putzing aroung with some graphing software I
arrived at a set of four polynomial functions that
generated a set of 16 strangely familiar numbers.

This is the graph I got while playing around…

[Link]
http://mv.asterisco.pt/Images/keygraph.png

When I created a small python script to generate
those four polynomial functions and output them in
hex,it got even stranger. Here’s the code to see if you
can figure it out…

88
#!/usr/bin/python

def f1(x):
return 114.83333*x**3-925*x**2+2211.1667*x-1391.9
def f2(x):
return -66.5*x**3+1273*x**2-7992.5*x+16607
def f3(x):
return -13.666667*x**3+496*x**2-5871.3333*x+22845.1
def f4(x):
return -9.5*x**3+430.5*x**2-6440*x+31936
def tohex(x):
return ‘%02X’%x

key = map(f1, range(1,5)) + map(f2, range(5,9)) + map(f3, range(9,13)) + map(f4, range(13,17))
print map(tohex,map(int,key))
88

A friend told me that the results were similar to some
copyrighted string that was being posted all over the net.
I told him that weenies post strings; real men post code.

And I dont see how the output of a block of simple code
with 4 simple functions can be some sort of secret…

— MV