8-bit Nostalgia

Technology companies do not stop to amaze us with new products in the IT sector. And not always, these new items carry a some kind of the benefits, or an interesting solution. In any case, all these things are some short term toys and live to the next exit of "another killer of iPhone"... There is no magic in them. That magic, which is a subject of nostalgia for generation of 30-40 years old people, trying to find some calm in listening to vinyl records and tapes, 8-bit games and retro video clips.

But it is possible to go much further in this nostalgia, and try to recreate that magic manually.

Anticipation of the Year

If you do not mind to spend evening in front of the monitor screen, which broadcasts a good boxing match, then you, like me, probably wait for "the third episode" of "Pacquiao-Marquez" epic. I was also very curious. There more that many have bet on the total defeat of Marquez, but his last fights did not bode anything. Except for the hopeless defeat against Mayweather, where Marquez tried to jump above his head and climb up clearly not in his weight, in all other fights after meeting "Pacquiao-Marquez 2" Juan-Manuel defeated all his opponents, and someone even very brutally... I admire the talent of Pacquiao, but if you ever come to the gym, and were brutally beaten, but had the courage to go back there again, then deep in your heart you will always be impressed by such men as Marquez - people with mediocre natural instincts, but with an iron will and perseverance.

MPC or Laptop?

Recently I got some interesting music gadget: MPC-500 by Akai Pro. It is small sampler-sequencer with 12 pads, running on batteries and as well as from AC. I sat above it couple of evenings, experimented with built-in samples, recorded guitar through the entrance, made a house-pattern... But the more I turned the wheel of choice and pressed navigation arrows, the greater was feeling that it's a good old DOS-tracker, but for some reason in a separate box and at value of $500. I did not believe in the fact that somebody can completely finish project in this box, without any help of computer. May be I could not quite figure out all the features, but I didn’t feel intuitive understanding, at least as it was with Korg EMX-1 (although that is an awkward device too).