News
Interim in Terra
21 Dec 2014
Idol
5 Oct 2014
Take Back Love City
1 Dec 2013
A Letter of Complaint
23 Oct 2011
Dear Mr./Mrs. K. Biz,
There was a question in a quiz you produced last week (pictured here) that was both semantically and factually troublesome.
It was, clearly and without ambiguity, the logo for the popular 'Blackberry' line of products. Being familiar with this format of question, one confident team member immediately began to write this obvious answer down.
Before anything was actually put to paper, however, it was noticed that the question explicitly asks for the name of a company, and it was therefore decided that answering with the name of a line of products would be a ridiculous, foolhardy and ultimately point-haemorrhaging exercise. After a lengthy internal debate over how to interpret the words 'the' and 'of' in this context, it was decided that 'Research in Motion', being the name of the company that produces said products, would be the most correct answer.
Thus secure in our smug superiority, we continued with the quiz.
I shouldn't need to tell you how distressed SPACEGODZILLA were when we heard our quizmaster announce that the official answer provided was, in fact, 'Blackberry'. Needless to say, complaints were made, but we were advised to forward them to your company.
This is what I am now doing, and I would very much like to know what measures you are taking to prevent such oversights in future, and what you are going to do to redeem yourselves in the eyes of myself and my fellow SPACEGODZILLA members.
Yours Forever,
colons
SPACEGODZILLA
Alter Locus Stems
12 Oct 2011
In the spirit of the license under which it is distributed, I have released stems for all nine of the tracks in my bestselling chart-topper of an album, Alter Locus. A quick warning: these files are big downloads, and they extract to about double. Avoid them if you have bandwidth concerns.
Downloads
The GarageBand project for Home
Instructions
Windows/Linux users
Download and unzip the file, then navigate to the 'Media' folder inside '[song title].band'. The audio files are in that folder.
Mac users
Download, unzip and open the file in GarageBand.
Mac users with an aversion to GarageBand
Download, unzip and open the file in Logic.
Mac users with an aversion to GarageBand and Logic
Download and unzip, then ctrl-click on the extracted GarageBand project and click 'Show Package Contents'. The audio files are in the 'Media' folder within.
Notes
As with the main release, these stems are Creative Commons Attribution. If you use them for something, credit with a link to the album page. Also, be sure to let me know if you make something cool - I'd love to hear it, and I'll probably link to it from here.
These files will not sound identical to the final releases, as master and auxiliary effects have all been muted or bypassed in order to get the cleanest signal for your manipulation purposes. If, for whatever reason, you would like cleaner or further subdivided versions of any of them, get in touch.
Some of these songs have a track in them called 'sidekick',which is muted in the GarageBand project. This track, if present, is a signal that was used to feed sidechain compressors in that particular song, and should not be directly audible.
The vocals in Stones have a reverse reverb effect on them which, for the purposes of this collection, I have omitted. I also disabled the distortion on the vocals in the first chorus. Also; Stones sounds about one and a half semitones flatter than it is played, as the piano I recorded it on is beautifully out of tune. It was written in G# minor, changing into D for the choruses.
Stones and Terrans are not tempo-locked, and the tempo map is embedded as markers in the audio files. How you make use of this depends on your software, and it may not be possible in some cases.
If you would like this kind of treatment for other tracks I have been responsible for, tell me which and I'll try to throw something together.
Have fun.
Alter Locus
3 Oct 2011
In case you missed the big ol' promo on the top of the front page, here's the reason this website's been dead for the past year. It's £1 and you should go buy it. Or at least go listen to it.
ZTE Blade Disassembly
22 Aug 2011
I recently went swimming in a beautiful lake on Lismore with my phone, a ZTE Blade/Orange San Francisco, in my back pocket. Later diagnostics seemed to imply that, despite the completely dead screen, the rest of the phone still worked. I purchased another broken Blade on eBay, ripped the screen out of it and put it in place of my broken one. Voila! Working phone. As a celebration, and in the hope that others may be able to do the same, here's a disassembly guide.
Here is approximately where you should end up.
I'm going to assume that if you're following along, you know that you will be voiding warrantees and potentially breaking your phone. Keep the screws safe, and try not to rub your feet on the ground too much while you're touching the inside of the device.
It's also probably important to note at this point that I lost the volume buttons for one of the Blades, and the ones that I didn't lose are attached to the phone I used to take these photos.
I want my phone to be in pieces
The first thing you'll need to do is stick your fingernails into the little gap on the bottom of the phone and remove the back case. If you've not done this before, it will resist a fair amount, but you won't break anything by pulling too hard, so don't be afraid of giving it some.
These guys are holding the back on. Get rid of them.
Take the battery out and then remove the eight screws holding the back half of the case on. The one on the top right probably has a tamper-evident sticker over it - be sure you want to do this before you break it.
With all the screws removed, you can pull the back of the case off. It will resist even more than the back cover did, so show no mercy. If you have something plastic to lever it apart with, use that, otherwise use your fingernails. Screwdrivers and coins will gouge the plastic. Be careful around the volume buttons.
Here are some things to unplug.
The full glory of the ZTE Blade should now lie before you. The main board has a lot of stuff connecting it to the phone, so in order to remove it you're going to have to unplug a lot of ZIF connectors. They're a bit finicky, but you should be able to get your fingernails under the flaps to push them open. The flaps don't resist all that much. The connector holding the wide black ribbon on the left is the most awkward of the bunch - you may have to lift the SIM/SD board up a little in order to get the flap into the release position.
There's also a cable plugged into the bottom right of the board that runs down the side of the phone to the board underneath the buttons that sit below the screen. It should just pull out. Your phone should now look like this.
Before you lift the main board off, you will also have to detach the volume button membrane from the metal plate they are attached to. I messed this bit up, and my volume up button doesn't work any more, so be careful - take it slow and make sure you take both layers off at once.
This one thought he could hide.
There is one more cable attaching the main board to the screen below, but it's underneath. Carefully lift the board up from the bottom edge until you can get at it, and release it like the other ones. The board should now be separate.
The screen should now just lift out, leaving the digitiser and the buttons underneath.
Notes
There is more you can separate - the screen part can come apart in ways not documented here and the SIM/SD board can be removed from the main board. This is just as far as I needed to get to replace the part that was broken in mine.
To reassemble, you should just be able to do this whole thing backwards and end up with a functioning phone. There are a couple of things that might catch you out if you're in a hurry, though, so make sure you remember to put all the buttons back in where you found them, reconnect that sneaky ribbon underneath the board, and pull all the ribbons out from under the board before you put the volume button membrane sticker back on.
Post
All of these photos can be viewed in gallery form here.
This would not have been possible without this video from Techblog.
Did I miss anything? Please, get in touch with any corrections or clarifications.