From the Brain of Matty

slashdot rent (22.04.06 1:52 pm)

Okay I'm doing it again, but Slashdot has a couple of cool new articles, which I'm going to relay. Since I'm sure none of my (many thousands of) blog readers are Slashdotters.

How The THX Noise Was Created

devilsbrigade writes "The blog MusicThing is running an interesting interview with Andy Moorer. Mr. Moorer is the man who created the sound called Deep Note, now heard in every THX-enabled movie theatre. The interview is originally from last year, but the tech-heavy discussion is still a timeless analysis of a great sound." From the article: "The score consists of a C program of about 20,000 lines of code. The output of this program is not the sound itself, but is the sequence of parameters that drives the oscillators on the ASP. That 20,000 lines of code produce about 250,000 lines of statements of the form "set frequency of oscillator X to Y Hertz. The oscillators were not simple - they had 1-pole smoothers on both amplitude and frequency. At the beginning, they form a cluster from 200 to 400 Hz. I randomly assigned and poked the frequencies so they drifted up and down in that range."

J.J. Abrams To Direct New 'Star Trek' Film

Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that Paramount has asked 'Lost' creator J.J. Abrams to direct a new 'Star Trek' film. The movie will be set at Starfleet Academy and will feature younger versions of James T. Kirk and Spock, chronicling their first meeting at the Academy and their first outer space mission. The movie is set for a 2008 release and will apparently be one of Paramount's biggest projects for the year."

Big news for all geeks out there, I'm sure.

In other news, last night we went to see a local production of RENT at the Civic Theatre. It was surprisingly decent, especially after their dodgy version of Footloose and The Full Monty. And they're finally working out how to do American accents (although I still here the odd 'w' as an 'r').

This morning I finished marking the CP1500 assignments. Yay! ...

Now I shall go home to my darling wife, and maybe mow the lawn (again..)

Be well, all!
Matty /<

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