First off, i should let you all know that the table repair for the Megatokyo forums IS in progress, and hopefully things will be back up and running tonight. Of course, we still need to dig in and find out what is wrong and work to fix that (which will probably mean some more downtime at some point) but with some luck we can attain some semblance of stability with the MT forums.
Oh, and as for the MGS:4 joke today… it was a natural. I feel kinda bad that we are all making fun of the slightly older, more mature Solid Snake. I mean, he’s still cool, right? 
Him chomping on a cigarette cracks me up. The mustache has got to go tho (shudder).
Had an odd revelation today, and found out about something i’ve been wondering about for years. I think it was back in 1999 that i connected to my first shoutcast station and started to discover some of the musical genres that up to that time i had had little exposure to. One of my favorite stations was Afternoon Nap (which was defunct for a long time but now i see is now back up again! (adds to playlist)) I really like Downtempo stuff, and the balance of things you will find between what is considered ‘downtempo’ and ‘ambient’ and ‘chill’. As with anything, you develop favorite tracks, and over time you will seek out the artists and the CDs to add to your collection.
MP3 tags are great, but sometimes, especially with tracks that have been around for a long time, they don’t contain a lot of info. One particularly quiet and moody track that i have always liked was one called ‘Trucker.mp3′. On many occasions i’ve tried to dig up just who the hell did this track and what CD it might be on. As you can imagine, searching for ‘trucker’ on google didn’t lead to much, nor did combining it with tags like ‘ambient’ or ‘mp3′ or ‘fredreallylikesthisone’. I had little choice but to just be happy to hear it when it came up in rotation on Drone Zone.
Imagine my surprise today when ‘trucker’ started playing, and when i glanced down to look at the itunes window:
Terre Thaemlitz - Trucker
Several years of wondering finally solved by the simple act of Drone Zone adding the right mp3 tag to a tune i’ve been listening to for years. Obviously, with the artists name it was pretty easy to find out more information about the artist, the track itself, and what CD it was on - Soil
Of course, my hopes were kinda dashed when i went poking around to see if i could find this CD anywhere… nope. Nothing on ebay, and none available from anyone on Amazon.com. There’s still hope, of course. Now that i know what CD it is on, i can keep an eye out for it, and over time who knows? Might actually be able to listen to ‘trucker’ whenever i want to. 
- pirotunes: Drome - Age of Affordable Retina -
I know precisely what you mean. There was a song I heard once while I was half awake on the radio. I’d hear it once in a while but it’d be one of those times where you miss who the artist and the name of the song was. I think I’d hear it every 2 years or so. All I could ever remember out of it was a couple words from the bridge. It was on my mind for about 5 years or so off and on. What I finally ended up doing was googling the words I know and lyrics. It’s by a band called Remy Zero. I don’t think it’s your style though.
The look on Largo’s face on the MGS4 joke was just priceless.
But yeah, the fact Snake still does cigs cracks me up. A friend of mine was actually joking that he might not be dying of FoxDIE but rather Lung Cancer.
Imagine THAT for a second.
And as for the “Trucker” thing. Who knows, you might be able to find it on iTunes like you could find stuff from NamNamBulu a while back.
As for Eric’s comment there… isn’t Remy Zero the guy who did “Save Me” for “Smallville”?
just to let you know, he’s still cool, he’ll always be cool and will forever live in our hearts!!
(saltue to Solid Snake)
I’m at a bit of a dispute… who’s cooler, Solid Snake or Naked Snake(a.k.a. Big Boss)
I just find it funny that you were making fun of his mullet before…There Largo commented “There are no more heros”…It’s very apropreate for the mullet head to be there now, concidering what the context of the coversation was. I found that very amusing, and I don’t have any idea what Metal Gear Soild is about…
Yesterday’s comic made me laugh the hardest I had this entire week. Largo’s expression speaks volumes, like his only hope for living just died before his eyes. It was great to immediately recall Largo’s last MGS saying “There are no more heroes” which just made the joke even more well done ^^ I’ve read other MGS parodies around the web comic scene, but yours would have to be my favorite. Mainly because the others go too deeply into the game’s premise that I don’t fully understand, but yours stays on track with the pacing of MT rather than throwing in references that only Players of the game could relate to ^^;
I totally know what you mean about wanting to find that one song you heard but have no idea who did it. I’ve had those moments many times with American tracks, but since 8+ GB of my HD is J-music of varied nature that I can find usually without much effort, those moments don’t happen like they used to. Feels so good when you finally find the song though..like uncovering a gem that’s only for you at that moment, ne?
there are allways programs where you can copy whats playing that way you will have a copy of the song until you find the cd to purchase. My roomate recently found a freeware program that hes been using, its a helpful little tool.
HOLY CRAP! JackoDaGreat,….u have no idea what MGS is? whoa. Well I guess it depends if your a gamer or not. Well if you happen to stumble across it, you should try it out if you have a game system.
As for fred, I know how you feel,….I have had plenty of times trying to find out who sings alot of songs. Sometimes i find out other times i do. ^.^
I suppose I’ve been spending too much time in the discussion forums, but my first tjought on seeing the MGS 4 picture was, “Wow, now we really can’t use video games to date when Megatokyo takes place…” It now being less than 2 months comics time between MGS 2 at a show and this MGS 4 ad. Junko’s reaction seems to show that she may have a thing for older men in addition to taking advantage of them.
“I’ve read other MGS parodies around the web comic scene, but yours would have to be my favorite. Mainly because the others go too deeply into the game’s premise that I don’t fully understand, but yours stays on track with the pacing of MT rather than throwing in references that only Players of the game could relate to ^^;” - Alexiel
Yeah, absolutely true. If I didn’t start getting into the series last year, I would never have gotten some of these jokes.
“Largo and I didn’t want the humor in Megatokyo to rely too heavily on what might be considered ‘obscure knowledge.’ The trick is to provide humor on several levels so that even if you don’t get all of the references, it’s still funny.” - Megatokyo Volume 1 page 15
Good to see you’re hanging on to that tidbit from the beginning Fred ^_^
Ambient and downtempo, eh? Well, I guess you probably already know about Boards of Canada then, don’t you? If you weren’t aware, they’ve got a new album coming out October 17th called “The Campfire Headphase.” Now, I can’t endorse music piracy, but I CAN endorse time travel, and I’m here to tell you I’ve traveled to the future and listened to it
I did a search on Froogle for the artist’s name and Trucker and came up with this:
http://www.bestprices.com/cgi-bin/vlink/720841000228BT?source=froogle
It isn’t “Soil” but it contains the track you want and it appears to be available. Good luck!
While I was in grad school, one of the local high schools ran an oldies radio station. When the kids weren’t around they just left the thing running under computer control. No commercials ever, it was great. The only downside was that there was almost never any DJ to tell you what song you just heard. I especially liked this one instrumental song that I heard come up all of two or three times, but it didn’t even have any lyrics to run through google!
I was later saved by the now defunct Chicago oldies station WJMK, which was running commercials for their latest theme weekend, this time instrumental songs. It played a quick snippet of the song and mentioned it by name. Joy! (Popcorn, BTW. Written by Gershon Kingsley and first recorded by the band Hot Butter.)
hmm that Ambient Systems CD is Out of stock so it might not be available after all. Closest I’ve found so far, though. **continues to look**
http://instinct-online.com/release_detail.cfm?CAT=AMB002
This page appears to have Trucker and other tracks on Realplayer format for listening if you have that installed.
…wow this has really turned into an alternate for the MT forums… Hahah, so randomn, off-topic comment time! Everyone here should watch or check out Densha Otoko, it’s worth your time and better than Genshigen!
On topic, Fred there are programs that allow you to record what is being broadcast and turns them into .wav or .mp3 files… forgot the name of the program though, sorry….
If you’re interested in recording what you hear on a Shoutcast station, there’s a plug-in for Winamp that will record a station for you. It’s called StreamRipper and you can find it at streamripper.sourceforge.net
It’s completely legal so long as you only use the songs for your own listening and don’t distribute them.
*pokes around*
A home page.. http://www.comatonse.com/thaemlitz/index.html
A cd..
http://www.artmetropole.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=shop.FA_dsp_browse_details&InventoryUnitsID=0FCEA6F5-102E-4E5E-939B-507C641A28FC&CategoryID=&sale=&new=1