Tuesday 30 April 2013

Chemical System

This is epic, a song suite by CosMoBSP (by now I think we're getting accustomed to the most common style of Vocaloid music producers' professional names!) titled Chemical System and featuring a number of Vocaloid voices, both male and female.

The animated cartoon-style presentation works well in this context, and some of the sound is truly superb in its clarity – some reminiscent in a way of Jean-Michel Jarre's innovative use of such 'incidental' sounds for years now.

The whole thing lasts nearly twelve minutes. There are no English words provided as yet, but a few of us commenting at the YouTube page are indicating that they would be good to have, one day. In the meantime, it is still an enjoyable journey to take, just as it is...

For the Hatching Chick

Yes, it's Ga Gain again (!) but in completely different mood and style from the last offering I posted here. For the Hatching Chick is written in precisely that vein, and SeeU's voice is perfect for this perhaps unexpectedly touching song.

There are English subtitles again, and it is difficult to go through this and come out the other side without a warm, soft and fuzzy feeling – and perhaps in need of a hanky or tissue...

A-capella-cat-abra

I wrote it that way in the title to make it easier to read and to understand what it's about. It's really Acapellacatabra, with multiple uses of SeeU's voice providing all the vocals in this unusual unaccompanied track.

This was devised and produced jointly by Ga Gain (the composer of Arirang) and someone known as porifra of whom I as yet know virtually nothing...

Monday 29 April 2013

Tweet of the Day – 29 April 2013

From BBC Propaganda, in the wake of this evening's Dispatches TV programme...

"Royal Mail employees fired for theft:
  • 2007  364
  • 2008  401
  • 2009  345
  • 2010  340
  • 2011  309 "
I present this information just as it comes, as it is difficult to draw any concrete conclusions from so few statistical datum points. For example, does it mean that there is now a downward trend, perhaps from the change of national government sending a message that Royal Mail is no longer a safe haven for theiving employees? I think that's a tough one to justify, especially without the 2012 figure.

However it does show that it is an endemic problem within the Royal Mail, and has been for at least half a decade, probably a lot longer. As with so much in the public sector (though by no means all), it is at least perceived to be a 'soft touch' for the more dubious types, or they are more easily tempted, or there are inadequate safeguards. It is probably a combination of all of those things, and perhaps more besides.

I am personally aware of other issues that come more under fraud than direct theft, though with similar results, such as the Post Office counter (in a shop) that was paid to run two counters but almost never had more than one open and was pocketing the second salary. It was run by an obvious Labour supporter who had claimed to me that he 'always voted Conservative'. I was never fooled, not for an instant...

They eventually lost the facility and it passed to another shop in the same short road, where it has run successfully ever since.

Illumiroom

Another in the range of technological advances that are coming into living rooms this decade is Microsoft's Illumiroom concept system that uses one's own room as an extension of a television set, mainly for games enhancement but there are other uses too..

This five-minute video is so well put together that it describes and shows what it is and how it does it much better than I could, and is very interesting indeed...

Have a Break, Have a...

...Kit Kat! What else?

You can have this Kit Kat along with (left to right) Kiyoteru, Yukari Yuzuki, Iroha Nekomura (miaow!) and the rarely seen little Yuki Kaai (whose first name means 'snow'). This song is from the Vocalekt Visions compositional duo, Tempo-P (lyrics) and neutrinoP (song and video)...

More from the Elders

Those American seniors (as they are sometimes termed on that side of the Atlantic) whom I featured here recently recorded more than was in just the original video. Interestingly, in the less than two weeks since that was uploaded to YouTube, it has received almost twelve thousand comments, most falling into either the "I love Vocaloids" camp or the commenter's own reaction to the elders' specific remarks.

Here, then, is a video with two minutes more of their reactions to a Miku concert on video. There are some great comments, including a surprisingly perceptive one that perhaps the (hugely enthusiastic) audience were also not 'real'. On this occasion, they were real people, but we have seen on this very 'blog examples in Dreamy Theater where the stage is indeed a stage with a synthesized audience waving glow sticks.

Go ahead and watch this, I suggest. It's almost as entertaining as the original one...

Friday 26 April 2013

Good-bye, says SeeU

While we have one of tourbux's SeeU models with that orange-and-black (here it's orange and yellow) striped jumper in frame, lets watch her in a variation of that outfit – minus the cap and wearing slacks instead of the thigh-highs – at her first ever concert.

The song, Good-bye, is quite catchy. All it needs are the English words, which hopefully I shall find one of these days. In the meantime, despite the less than ideal quality of this video, it is still quite enjoyable, I have found, and I suspect most of us can live with it on this occasion...

Hare Hare SeeU

Hare Hare Yukai (Sunny Sunny Happiness) has always been a lovely song with a great – and very distinctive – dance routine, but put one of tourbux's excellent SeeU models in pole position and it becomes even better than usual.

Thanks to the usual top-quality motion we have come to expect with SeeU, this works really well, aided by two human dancers (no fellows this time) performing the full-length version...

Parish Notice 26 April 2013 – Oops!

I have been clearing out old posts, partly because my space allocations (primarily for images) was getting low, and because a number of links and embedded videos were no longer current.

I decided (on close inspection) that everything more than a year old ought to go: it was a hard decision, but picking and choosing would achieve little if anything of value. The older posts have served their purpose, and I and my readers can safely move on. Hopefully there aren't any remaining links in the posts that remain to any of those that have now gone; but I apologise in advance if I have missed any.

There has been an 'oops' moment, though, when – in one of those annoying (and all too frequent) Blogger jam-ups when one has to force a page re-load to get any response at all, the page of posts I was on switched back to the most recent. That's a bug (one of many in Blogger) as the page ID was clearly part of the displayed URL.

Anyway, as I had also just been interrupted by a courier asking me to take in a parcel for one of the other flats here, I wasn't quite with-it enough to realise what had happened. Therefore I have accidentally deleted the last three dozen or so posts – so, if you wonder where they have gone, that's the reason!

It's just one of those days today...


ADDENDUM: A few of the older posts were still bringing in fairly high daily pageviews, so were skewing current figures upward, which was misleading. I'd had a feeling about this for a while, having been mentally noting the page-views for each of the most recent few dozen posts and realising that my daily figures were too much higher than they ought to have been.

Of course there'd be some element of popular and more timeless posts contributing to current statistics, but not that much. Therefore this clean-out should henceforth result in more appropriate numbers, and I shall be watching to see just how much difference this exercise makes in practice.

UPDATE: I've just discovered that my original one Gigabyte limit has been increased to 5 GB, so I needn't have bothered with this exercise anyway(!)

Sunday 7 April 2013

Telling Our World

The quality of Vocaloid presentation just keeps getting better, with good, positive uses of technology that are infinitely more valuable to society than military applications. If only the world would sit up and listen, especially the idiotic (and Satanic) politically leftward-leaning and similar parts of this planet, such as North Korea and Iran among others.

If it came to a straight choice (and I am aware that it is unlikely ever to be that simple, sadly), which would you rather have: international nuclear war or something positive even if not considered all that highly significant in the grand scheme of things?

Well, at least Miku urges everyone to Tell Your World, with this superb video of one of her most famous ever songs. We have something of Augmented Reality behind this, though I haven't yet worked out the precise relationship as it obviously isn't being inserted into a live environment here.

As far as I have been able to discover, it (and more than we see here) was produced with that aim in mind, so that it could be presented in an Augmented Reality manner, similar to Vocafarre, which I have covered in the past...

Saturday 6 April 2013

Vocaloid Cinema Party 2013 Report

This year's Vocaloid Cinema Party featured '4k' videos on a suitably large screen, shown at the only venue in Japan that is currently equipped to handle the Ultra High Definition format that I have outlined recently. This fan-based event was held at Ginza in Tokyo on 9 March.

Here's a report from Miku's YouTube channel that includes excerpts from three of the videos shown at the event; and even though here they are in a maximum resolution of standard '2k' High Definition, the clarity of the imagery is still outstanding...

Drawing Miku – the Crilley way

The excellent illustrator Mark Crilley shows us how to draw Miku with just a couple of pencils, starting with an ugly blob-and-frame outline and transforming it into something special. We also learn what 'Vocaloid clip-atrons' are(!)

If you don't feel like going through the whole thing (in two parts, below), here's a two minute time-lapse video of the whole exercise...


Here's part one of the detailed and narrated drawing (which appeared a week ago), covering all the line placement...


...and this is part two, uploaded just a few hours ago, on how to make the shading work...

Happy Birthday, Lapis!

And to celebrate the start of her second year of existence in the world, this clip is depicted as being from her birthday concert, with a couple of familiar members of the audience. There is one design flaw in the video: the backgrounds are so white that Lapis' arms seem to disappear from time to time. I have left a comment at the YouTube page mentioning this.

Keep it going after the song ends, there's a little of what the Japanese call omake – extras...

Friday 5 April 2013

Nyan Cat

I happened to notice that local (to me) twitterers were discussing an on-line game called Nyan Cat – a name I immediately recognised. It was therefore no surprise, when I looked it up and visited the site, to find Daniwell's song for (and performed by) Miku NyaNyaNya as its background music.

It is good to discover that the Vocaloid scene is penetrating into the Medway consciousness, one way or another. Whichever way that might be, it gives me the perfect excuse to post this...

The End

That is the title of a new Vocaloid Opera (would you believe) that, from its trailer, seems somewhat strange.

Still, it's an audacious concept, and will break the ice regarding the broadening of Vocaloids into other art media formats. There is already at least one Disc Jockey (DJ) specialising in the music and visuals of Miku (and perhaps others) – I've seen a video of it, not really worth posting here but useful just to mention – and there are no doubt a number of other ideas just waiting to be imagined and put into practice.

Here, then, in the meantime, is the trailer to The End...

Tuesday 2 April 2013

Tweet of the Day – 2 April 2013

From Alex Wickham (also known as WikiGuido) whose reply here precedes (as per Twitter convention) the originator's tweet...

"So lying, then

RT : Good on Nottingham's Lab council for redefining two-bed council homes as one bed to get round the "

Monday 1 April 2013

Say Ta-ta to Teto

...at least for a little while. As the day of her fifth anniversary draws to a close, here's a very high quality representation of the lady in a short (two minute) video – no song, just an instrumental track. It's something worth seeing at least once in a lifetime...

The reference to '0401' is because of the number tattooed on her upper left arm, where the Crypton CV series have their numbers. The 'Twin Drill' reference relates to Teto's hair, which looks like a pair of drills at the sides(!)

This video seems to have been produced in advance of her voicebank being released last year, as far as I can determine...

Bespectacled Teto

Happy birthday Teto!

To celebrate a bit more than I have already done, here is a very good (as one would expect, with its creator's reputation) model by Lat of Teto in a song whose title I cannot work out. If I find out later I'll add it here.

Similarly, I have no English words to offer, as sometimes happens however hard I search, but as always with what I select (at least I hope it's always!) the material is enjoyable enough anyway.

I think the glasses suit her quite well – which isn't always the case with Vocaloid and Utauloid characters – but you can judge for yourself right now...

Medway (Easter) Monday 2013

It was interesting going out shopping this morning and returning soon after midday, to see how quiet Chatham town centre was – I'd say little more than a third its normal level of activity at that time on a weekday.

However, inside the Pentagon Centre, it was more like somewhere between half and two-thirds normal activity level, say three-fifths or thereabouts for a rough-and-ready figure. This includes inside Sainsbury, which seemed to be a little over half its usual weekday 'footfall' level at this time (around 11.30 to 11.50 am).

The only outdoor situation that closely resembled normality was outside a couple of the four pubs I pass on my way to and from the Pentagon, one of which has no provision for 'street patronage' (for want of a better term) anyway. In Military Road, though, the usual size gathering outside the Prince of Wales showed that some institutions are scarcely affected by the significance of the day.

Whether or not that is a good thing I cannot say; but there it is...

I have no idea what the other Medway town centres were like, but I thought this brief first-hand snapshot might be useful to place on the public record.

I Can SeeU – Most of the Time

There's a few seconds of blackout during this part of SeeU's live concert, but it's still very much worth it, even though this is just a video-recording from within the audience, and it shows. That still doesn't detract too markedly from this video, though, and it is really quite enjoyable, showing a different version of SeeU's character design.

Even with her hair cur almost as short as (say) Annie Lennox, SeeU still displays much of her distinctive femininity in this item, whose title I haven't even attempted to translate (after my disastrous effort to decipher the Hangeul for another title a few days ago – something you never had to see!) and it works well on stage too. At least we know the title: Good Bye...

April Fool and Teto Day

I have already seen a few April Fool jokes appear on-line, including Google Nose (don't ask!) but perhaps more significantly in some ways, it is also the anniversary of the release ('birth') of Utauloid Teto Kasane as a joke character.

Teto became so popular that her creators were effectively compelled to keep her going, including providing a proper voicebank for her...and here we are five years later, and it's all still going just as strongly.

Here's a kind of signature song, "Kasane Territory (Always Teto's Turn)" which is a bit of fun and nonsense with cartoon-style graphics and guest appearances from a few characters of whom everyone should by now recognise at least two. It seems entirely appropriate, and makes a lot more sense than some of the things I have been reading since midnight...