Reddit, Usenet, etc.

So far, three of my Blog-Posts were linked on Reddit. The first one was the screencast of the game I am currently (well, due to the lack of time, actually currently not) programming at. This was really motivating me.

The second one was a post about Clojure. I made fun of some „performance tips“. I never would have expected that anybody even notices this blogpost, but according to my blog-statistics, it was viewed more than 5000 times – the post about my game had only about 1200 views.

On the one hand, this shows, that the clojure-community is huge and active. Thats a good thing – well, Clojure is not my favourite language, but it has a lot of lispy concepts I like, and if it becomes famous, well, thats good. It is still one of the best programming languages I know – I dont like it, but actually, I dont hate it, but I hate many other programming languages.

On the other hand, it makes me sad. Seems like with negative comments you can gain a lot more attention than with positive comments.

Same with my recent post about Haskell. It was posted on reddit. Well, there were only a few hundred views, and some really nice comments. Seems like there are a lot of friendly people in the Haskell-Community. Anyway, the first comment on reddit is almost insulting (Well, my english is far away from being perfect, but is it really that bad that its the first thing to say about my posts?)

The positive things I said about Haskell were completely ignored by this person. I wonder why negative comments on languages gain more attention than positive ones. And I wonder why criticism or comments always have to lead to such discussions. Compared to much more interesting things linked on reddit, which dont get comments anyway.

I have also seen similar things in comp.lang.lisp. I follow the posts there, but do not send mails to there – well, it gets on ones nerves if you see yet another „better“ lambda-syntax or yet another person complaining that you cannot leave out „obvious“ brackets in lisp, but also there, any criticism about (common) lisp seems to lead to insults and flames.

Sometimes, to me it looks like though there are a lot of normal, friendly people out there, these boards are controlled by a kindergarten of trolls and flamers who just wait for their chance. Ok, I guess thats what the internet is about, but do boards about intelligent programming-languages really have to be like that?

Weekly Game Music #7: Kirby 64 – Zero Two

One of my favourite Bosses is Zero Two from Kirby 64. I already wrote about it, and well, there is a lot of Information about it out there, so I wont tell too much about it.

I like it because it is „simple“ in graphics and gameplay, but „epic“. The music used to be my favourite game music, and is still one of the melodies I like most.

Seems like I am not the only one liking it, while I only know of two „official“ versions of that melody, there are a lot of fan-remixes out there. So I thought, why not posting a few of them. All the videos I will post are not made by me and just found on youtube. And since there is Fan-Art-Material, I encourage you to click on this videos to go to youtube, and rate them! I like people producing fan-art!

So first, lets take a look at the original music from the game Kirby 64. Here it is:

I have never played Smash Bros. Brawl, and actually I dont think I will ever play it, and actually I dont like most melody-remixes from it which I found on youtube, as I dont like this one, but I’ll post it here anyway:

So, these were the two official versions I know of. Now I have found an interesting video, an „Orchestral Remix“ which sounds pretty good. The description sais that it came from a midi-file which was converted to mp3. Interesting:

Ok, so then we come to my favourite Fan-Remix so far. I cant say much about it, or why it is my favourite, but according to the number of views of the video, seems like I am by far not the only one who likes it:

Then one version that sounds sort of sad, therefore called „O2’s Lament“. Played with piano, percussion and a little synthesized (?) background-music:

Then – of course – there is a 8-bit-remix, if you ever wanted to hear how the music would probably have sounded on an NES:

When you are searching for video-game-music, you will find a lot of these 8-Bit-Remixes of new melodies. As well as you will find a lot of Mario-Paint-Remixes. Like this one. It is not quite the real melody, because the real melody goes over 8 octaves (if I counted that correctly), which appears to be too much for mario paint:

And now, you better turn the lights off, because we will enter the dark side of the Web. Namely, there are also two versions coming from two little Internet Phenomena.

The first one features Ronald McDonald, the mascot of McDonald’s. Dont even try to understand it. As most of the internet phenomena, you simply cannot – its just dumb! Well, it comes from a japanese (I think) ad for McDonalds, where Ronald McDonald behaves … „funny“ … which was somehow hyped and has got a lot of „remixes“. If you follow the related videos, you will find some of them. Here it is:

The second one features Morshu. Also dont try to understand it! Morshu is a character from an old Zelda-Game (which isnt part of the official canon of zelda games, but thats another story). He has two lines in that game (here is the original), one containing that „mmmmm“ sound which made it popular on youtube, and of which the remix consists:

Aaaah … thats so dumb it hurts!

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this listing of remixes. I like fan-remixes. There are a lot more out there. For many other melodies, too.