So I haven’t updated in a while… sorry about that, I’ll work on it. Not that anyone really reads this but I do eventually plan to work on things and keep it updated regularly, perhaps even come up with a reason to come here.

So, I purchased an X-Box 360 last week and I’m in love all over again. I haven’t been this addicted to anything since I first found Flickr.

Around this time last year, I was really into Halo 2. I even wrote a few blog entries about it on my old site.

Admittedly I was obsessed… I had just purchase Major League Baseball 2K5 and was getting into that and Tony Hawk’s Underground then my optical drive on my X-Box unceremoniously stopped working. I decided it wasn’t worth investing in a new system and that I’d wait till I could get my hands on a 360.

So here I am, I’m back… and I’m addicted all over again. I’ve already upgraded to MLB 2K6 and I’m back on Halo 2 playing tons of maps and playlists that are completely foreign to me.. and I’m loving it.

My addiction though is starting to scare me. I think I have a problem. Since getting back into things I find myself downloading all sorts of X-Box widgets and programs to integrate the features of the system with my Mac.

As far as updating the site this has it’s ups and downs… It’s bad because I’ll have less time to write, good because I’ll have something to write about, and bad because… seriously who wants to read me ranting about xbox? Hmm I’ll have to work on that.

I promise though to work on this more and supply a reason to come here. For starters I plan to bring my old entries over to here and I also plan to integrate the page as much as possible with the other web services I use. You’ll notice on the right you can now find a link to my X-Box Live gamercard and an RSS feed of my latest Halo matches.

I told you I have a problem.

Anyway just posting really to say hello and that I’m not dead. So ‘Hi’

So recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Streetlight Manifesto and the earlier projects of their singer Tomas Kalnoky.

Tomas was the original singer / writer for the uber popular ska act, Catch 22, most notably on their ‘Keasbey Nights’ album which many will argue to be Catch’s best (or only good) album. Well back before Catch, in like 1995 Tomas was in a ‘punk’ band entitled: Gimp.

After Gimp disbanded one song by Tomas on their album, ‘Supernothing,’ was reworked from a slow ‘emo’ esq acoustic song, to a faster more upbeat version that appears on Keasbey Nights. The original really has it’s own merits as a version for being so different and is actually a favorite among many of their fans. Sadly the only copies of this album out on the internet sound like shit as they’ve been taken from tape recordings that it seems were never really good quality to begin with.

Tonight I had a bit of free time and I was playing around with Soundtrack Pro for the first time and decided to throw Supernothing into the program to play with and to see if I could do anything about the quality. I was surprised with the results. I managed to correct the volume problems and remove almost all the tape hiss / noise that was crapping up the song. I’m impressed with Soundtrack and how easy it actually was to do without distorting the audio in the song, and that someone like myself who is virtually tone deaf could manage to do something with it in a matter of minutes.

Anyway I’ll let you be the judge of my work.

You can checkout the original here:
http://skachilles.com/music/gimp/11-Supernothing.mp3

And my cleaned up version:
http://www.subism.com/audio/gimp/supernothing.mp3

The immediate difference is subtle but really evident at loud volumes, through a car stereo or headphones. The original has a strong annoying hiss from the tape and is recorded at a lower volume. Using soundtrack I managed to clean up all the hiss / noise and boost the volume to that of a normal recording which in my opinion makes it vastly more listen-able than before. I’m debating doing more of this type of thing with some other projects, including ‘Rules of the Game’ Catch 22’s pre Keasbey demo that is also only on tape, but I’d like some feedback on how people think this sounds first.

For those interested: the site is back up. Please note, the web address for the forums has changed to http://www.mediarebellion.com/forums/. Using the baloolapalooza.com/forums/ link will cause errors you must now use the mediarebellion.com one only. I figured this was as good a time as any to change the domain settings as we plan to phase out the ‘BaloolaPalooza’ name. Please adjust your bookmarks accordingly. Thanks for your patience.

So I figure I should put this out there for those wondering.

MediaRebellion.com, an entertainment / political commentary site I own that I run with my friend Bear and a few other very talented individuals I am proud to call friends has been on hiatus for a number of months and right now is down. This has lead many to believe that I have closed the site or that I simply don’t care.

The fact of the matter is this:
MR is supplied cheap hosting by 5-Towns hosting and one Mr. Jason Pearsall. Recently Jason’s business has been taking off (deservingly so too), and he had to move servers, somehow in the server switch things on the site have gotten a bit messed up and I have been unable to get them resolved. I apologize to those who regularly use the site’s forums and I hope to have the issue worked out very soon.

As for the hiatus, this site alone should be an indication of things to come, Bear, Sean and I have been in discussion about a few different ideas for MR and while I have no time frame for anything nor is anything set in stone, one thing we all agree on is it’s not going to close, and we all want to do something with it, we’re just not sure what.

If anyone has any questions or anything you know how to contact me, but hopefully this will put the confusion to rest, check back here occasionally for updates I guess.

..with not having a site.

This domain has been parked with a splash page for almost two years and it’s high time I did something with it. The problem is, I’m never happy with my work so I always put things on hold till I can get them “right”, and the perfectionist that I am, I can never get things “right” enough to please myself, so I never finish them.

Well I’m done with that. Starting right now the site is open… with nothing to check out.

Well that’s not entirely true. I took down just about everything that was on the server with the exception of my book. (Which like everything else in my life will probably never be finished.) I’ve also thrown up a bunch of cool links, and any out there relating to me that are worth checking out. As time goes on I plan to post some of my design work, as I really need to have an online portfolio to showcase my art/design skills if I ever want to do anything with my degree.

Right now I have a ton of creative ideas and thoughts that I’ve been toying with so I’m not sure what you can expect from this site full time possibly a podcast, possibly a webcomic or possibly just social-political ranting (most likely). Either way this will be updated soon and often.

That’s it for now, more to come soon tomorrow. (Maybe even a page layout!)