Afterglow

An input test for a web site poll module I wrote:

Are you wearing pants?

1. Yes
2. No
3. Maybe. I feel a draft.
4. What are pants?
5. I don’t have any legs.

• Now Playing: Scott Walker - The Drift - 02 - Clara

Random link time:

• Isaac Asimov’s short story The Last Question
• Banned words from US school textbooks?
• How to not rid yourself of a bee problem
• How to not sell cigarettes
• Corporate rockets falling over rocket falls
• How to say nothing in 500 words
• “I’m going to give him my number.”
• Robot done right
• Preaching to the perverted

Why are victims of cancer always courageous? Black artists are soulful? White baseball players are gritty? Through the deceptive use of mirrors, do Tool t-shirts subliminally promote kleptomania? Radio rotations highlight my fear of The Other. Cold showers are a form of torture worse than waterboarding. You can always tell that you’re insane when you can’t find any pre-made bumper stickers for your cause. You should look both ways before crossing one-way streets.

• Now Playing: Hum - Downward is Heavenward - 06 - Green to Me

So, you can’t update your My5 with Rogers in Firefox. You get the oh-so descriptive error: AM002. That’s it. I was told by a rep in their eCare department to use Internet Explorer or Safari since they’re aware of the issue. How is a simple POST form submission a known issue that has been broken since I signed up two months ago? The Rogers Wireless web site is seriously the worst customer service portal I’ve ever come across. HTTP requests time out and information is so poorly laid out that it extends the user’s frustration in this timesink. Also, what’s the deal with being unable to check how many minutes/text messages/data you’ve used so far in the current billing cycle? Cingular/AT&T have been offering this in the US since, what? 2003 or earlier? Charging for incoming text messages? Refusing to offer unlimited data plans? Too bad Canada doesn’t have the population density to create enough competition that forces telecoms get off their fecking arse.

• Now Playing: Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die - 01 - DJed

Note to self: don’t finish reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, watching The Orphanage, and looking at paintings by Zdzislaw Beksinski all within the same day if you wish to maintain a positive outlook on life. But read this article.

I cleansed the palette by watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall, probably the funniest movie of the year so far. But was the penis really necessary? That is the question.

• Now Playing: Juno - This is the Way It Goes & Goes & Goes - 06 - Leave a Clean Camp and a Dead Fire

…condensing fact from the vapor of nuance.

Fact: the last book I read took me more than a year. After completing Neil Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon last June, I decided to backtrack in his catalogue to read his cyberpunk classic, Snow Crash. Problem is, if it’sn’t on a moving screen, I tend to lack the ability to focus. By sheer will and determination, I was able to overcome this obstacle. I’m going places!

Like Cryptonomicon, seemingly every character is a quick-lipped bad-ass to the n^th degree. You can tell it was written by a massive nerd for all the godlike abilities they possess, although it does poke fun at genre; mainly by calling the main character Hiro Protagonist. For being printed in 1992, its depiction of virtual reality (sorry, “Metaverse”) has a fair amount of accuracy when compared to modern MMORPG interactions. Of course, the holograms and private corporation Big Brother technology haven’t come to fruition yet in mass production, but it’s an interesting intellectual exercise to think about how this would affect how information flows in the future.

Somehow, he attempts to parallel ancient mythologies to the shift in modern man’s consciousness during the information age, which became a bit more fun (and confusing) when mixed together with a viewing of Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film, Youth Without Youth. The book does get complex when the names of mythological deities are thrown about as if they were common English verbs. A Mesopotamian mythology cue card cheat sheet might be handy when it comes to interpreting just exactly what analogy the characters are attempting to express.

Beyond all the silly high thought process nonsense, I must say that Neil Stephenson sure loves his sexual innuendo metaphors. One of the main characters is a fifteen year old girl that acts as a courier making quick deliveries by attaching a magnetic harpoon to cars to street surf in a process called “pooning”. Then there are gems such as:

“…shopping carts performing their clashy anal copulations.”

“…a vast U-shaped valley that was ground out of the rock, a long time ago, by a big tongue of ice in an epochal period of geological cunnilingus.”

Nerd.

My favourite idea in the book is likely the ruthless kayaking supervillian that has a H-bomb always to the immediate side, connected to his brain activity with a mechanism that’s set to trigger a ginormous explosion at the immediate absence of a signal. How’s that for a God complex? Think last season’s Lost’s finale gone extreme. Via kayak.

Now I’m a third of the way through Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

• Now Playing: Bison - Earthbound - 03 - Dark Skies Above

Cliff Martinez - Solaris
Lush sci-fi electronic with a numb feeling.

Peter Gabriel - Passion: The Last Temptation of Christ
Tastefully appropriating other cultures.

Clint Mansell (Featuring Kronos Quartet) - Requiem For a Dream
Haunting movements built for curling into the fetal position.

Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi
Repetition ascending to a chaotic swirl.

Ennio Morricone - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo)
“The Ecstasy of Gold”. That’s all you need to know

Shawn Camp had a 7.20 ERA last year with 7HR allowed in only 40IP. The addition of one measly pitch this year does not make him a fucking 8th inning setup man with only a 2-run lead.

Free Bonds.

• Now Playing: Oceansize - Effloresce - 11 - Saturday Morning Breakfast Show

I’m not slow. Just deliberate. Why did this fucking article take five months to write? Why is the only hip-hop is this list made by white men? Similar. Political. Different needs. Watch Once if you’re alright with losing a tiny chunk of one testicle. It’s heartwarming and bittersweet! Like a Jewish girl molested by her doctor (thank you, Sarah Silverman.)
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Hey, Jeremy Accardo, why don’t you throw a splitter? You know, instead of grooving 95mph fastballs one-after-another that professional batters can quickly adjust their timing to? Your split-fingered fastball is what made you an effective closer last year. Don’t forget your past. I know you’re reading, baby! Blogosphere.

However, it really isn’t comforting to know The Beej is back a year removed from Tommy John surgery when he doesn’t even seem to be topping 90mph yet. Oh, attaching yourself to a sporting event based on arbitrary geography! At least one nice part about the Internet is knowing there’s a Jays fan site that’s probably the best out of any Major League Baseball team. There’s a certain je ne sais pas that’s created when you combine self-aware misogyny, bigotry, and general hatefulness with excessive alcohol. I fully support a “Fuck the Wave” movement.

Since I’m a Canadian imbecile, don’t I have to make an obligatory reference to hockey? Well I, for one, look forward to our Les Habitants overlords.

• Now Playing: Cog - Sharing Space - 11 - Bitter Pills

Do you like Phil Collins? I’ve been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn’t understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins’ presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group’s undisputed masterpiece. It’s an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. Sabrina, remove your dress. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Sabrina, why don’t you, uh, dance a little. Take the lyrics to “Land of Confusion”. In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. “In Too Deep” is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I’ve heard in rock. Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your asshole. Phil Collins’ solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like “In the Air Tonight” and “Against All Odds”. Sabrina, don’t just stare at it, eat it. But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is “Sussudio”, a great, great song, a personal favorite.
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Where’s the official soundtrack to Danny Boyle’s Sunshine from John Murphy and Underworld? Yes, I realize the non-orchestrated version of “To Heal” appears on Underworld’s out-dated Oblivion With Bells and that somebody uploaded an edited audio rip from the film’s DVD, but I want something with decent quality for shite’s sake. Also, Candiria’s Kiss the Lie is still indefinitely postponed even though it’s been finished since 2006. It seems their label won’t release it unless the band tours, but the band won’t tour without their drummer… who left the band. Brilliant. Now for more gobbledegook culled from the unfettered wasteland of my mind.
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This multi-post article is late for many reasons, mostly slothfulness, since I scour other year-end lists to ensure I don’t miss out on anything important. OCD has its advantages. So I’ll cover some bands rediscovering their roots, art metal being described as “dirgy”, white men ripping off channeling Joy Division (yes, still), and some post-rock groups incorporating actual human vocals. That’s innovation !! I’ll run out of adjectives, make blatant misuse of semicolons, repeat the same sentence in each review via synonyms, and use every possible opportunity to fling U2 an interweb middle finger. I’m aware of these actions so it makes it all A-OK!
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If you ever use the deprecated PHP PEAR DB API for using prepared SQL statements that are portable across different database management systems (stop using the mysql_*() functions), I have a fun bug for you! It kept reporting the simple message “DB Error: mismatch”, which generally means the number of parameters you’re passing into the prepared query don’t match the number of markers you’ve made where parameters should be placed (i.e., the question marks).

/**
 * Retrieve list of categories that aren't under a given category,
 * at least one level deep.
 *
 * @param int $categoryId
 * @return array of BusinessCategory objects
 */
public static function getNotUnderCategory($categoryId)
{
	$query = "SELECT `businessCategory`.`id`"
	             .", `businessCategory`.`parentId`"
	             .", `businessCategory`.`name`"
	             .", `businessCategory`.`description`"
	             .", COUNT(`Category`.`categoryId`) AS `numBusinesses` "
	        ."FROM `businessCategory` "
	        ."LEFT JOIN `businessCategory` `ChildCategory` "
	               ."ON `ChildCategory`.`parentId` = `businessCategory`.`id` "
	        ."LEFT JOIN `businessCategoryEntry` `Category` "
	               ."ON `Category`.`categoryId` = `businessCategory`.`id` "
	               ."OR `Category`.`categoryId` = `ChildCategory`.`id` "
	        ."WHERE `businessCategory`.`id` != ? ”
	          .”AND `businessCategory`.`parentId` != ? ”
	        .”GROUP BY `businessCategory`.`id` ”
	        .”ORDER BY `businessCategory`.`name`”;

	$db = ElcDatabase::getDb();

	$results = $db->query($query, array($categoryId, $categoryId));
	if(PEAR::isError($results))
		throw new Exception($results->getMessage());

	$businessCategories = array();
	while($results->fetchInto($row, DB_FETCHMODE_ASSOC))
	{
		$businessCategory = new BusinessCategory($row);
		array_push($businessCategories, $businessCategory);
	}

	$results->free();

	return $businessCategories;
}

As you can see, there are two question marks and two parameters passed. After almost an hour of fucking about, I figured out that my dear “DB Error: mismatch” was referring to PEAR not accepting != as a boolean operator even though this is valid in MySQL’s syntax. So no, I had to switch it to <>. Way to go on those error messages. I guess this is why it’s been superseded by the more type-heavy MDB2. Doesn’t make up the fact that PHP is a terrible language to work with. I probably should actually get into frameworks at some point. This would require effort.

Please note, my final code is much cleaner; I just had to merge a few methods together to make this presentable in a post. Stop looking at me !!

• Now Playing: Bitcrush - Epilogue In Waves - 09 - Pearl

My original intention was to scale back this year’s list since 2006’s article turned into a 10,000+ word behemoth. I never even expended that much energy for upper-year university papers. A little bit shorter, a whole lot sweeter, so was the plan that was made to fail. I’m going to break up this year’s edition into more digestible chunks. Luckily 2007 was a much better year where I wanted to move most entries up the list rather than down, so mediocre Incubus albums won’t be allowed to bleed through. Now let me condescend your place in the world by using the collective terms “kids” and “folks”.
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When Jeff Atwood of the blog Coding Horror (which doesn’t have the same content as The Daily WTF, despite its name) doesn’t use the word “ecosystem” to describe the software world every fifth damn post, sometimes he brings up an interesting topic such as how to handle password input. I’ve personally experienced the frustration of users not knowing what the fuck they are typing when it comes to an asterisk-echoed password field. The past few versions of Windows have offered a bubble popup to warn caps lock is enabled, but some additional checks should to be put into account. Not to mention that it take five minutes just to get across the instructions to do a Start » Run » [type password here] just to ensure the keyboard is working correctly.

So I was kind of wondering whether Vista’s “display characters” functionality of a login dialog could translate to the web. Chiefly, can it be cross-browser compatible and what are the security concerns? The simple implementation I came up with was:

<label for="password">Password:</label>
<input id="password" name="password" type="password" maxlength="100" />
<input type="checkbox" name="showPassword" id="showPassword"
       onchange="swapShowPassword(this.form)" />
<label for="checkbox">Display characters</label>

function swapShowPassword(form) {
	if(form === null || form === undefined)
	{
		return false;
	}
	else
	{
		if(form.showPassword.checked && form.password.type == "password")
		{
			form.password.setAttribute("type", "text");
		}
		else if(!form.showPassword.checked && form.password.type == "text")
		{
			form.password.setAttribute("type", "password");
		}
	}
}

Surprise, Internet Explorer doesn’t allow you to dynamically change the type of an input box. So let’s try again.

function swapShowPassword(form) {
	if(form === null || form === undefined)
	{
		return false;
	}
	else
	{
		var parentNode = form.password.parentNode
		  , nextSibling = form.password.nextSibling;

		if(form.showPassword.checked && form.password.type == "password")
		{
			var newPassword = document.createElement("input");
			newPassword.setAttribute("type", "text");
			newPassword.setAttribute("id", "password");
			newPassword.setAttribute("name", "password");
			newPassword.setAttribute("maxlength", form.password.maxlength);
			newPassword.setAttribute("value", form.password.value);
			parentNode.removeChild(form.password);
			parentNode.insertBefore(newPassword, nextSibling);
			newPassword.focus(); // force IE to refresh page
		}
		else if(!form.showPassword.checked && form.password.type == "text")
		{
			var newPassword = document.createElement("input");
			newPassword.setAttribute("type", "password");
			newPassword.setAttribute("id", "password");
			newPassword.setAttribute("name", "password");
			newPassword.setAttribute("maxlength", form.password.maxlength);
			newPassword.setAttribute("value", form.password.value);
			parentNode.removeChild(form.password);
			parentNode.insertBefore(newPassword, nextSibling);
			newPassword.focus(); // force IE to refresh page
		}
	}
}

In Internet Explorer, you have to focus on an element other than the checkbox or its label in order for the input change event to be refreshed on the screen. So I just put that instruction in there to work around another stupid fucking piece of Internet Explorer functionality.

We can hope people have converted to LCD screens so we can be a little less paranoid of Neil Stephenson-inspired Van Eck phreaking to steal passwords shown on screen. A real concern is the form history usually saved by web browsers for all regular text fields. In Firefox, the password would show after the username is typed, although changing the field back to type=”password” on the form’s onsubmit event could possibly prevent this. Users can go through the Firefox menus Tools » Options » Security » Show Passwords to prevent their passwords from ever being shown, but that’s so advanced that it defeats the purpose of showing characters to dumbbell users. You ensure show password is always off by default on the page load, but the strongest worry is a user leaving their computer unattended with the form open. Someone can just walk along and click a checkbox to reveal their oh-so secure password of “iamgod”, which also happens to be the same as their banking login. I think these reasons alone indicate that the “display character” functionality just doesn’t work with the web.

Although I wished to have it on my iPod Touch when typing in WiFi or e-mail account passwords on that tiny fucking keyboard.

• Now Playing: Bitcrush - Epilogue in Waves - 02 - An Island, A Penninsula

Ever come across a form prompting for your e-mail address only to find out it won’t accept your perfectly legitimate handle, like romeo+juliet@shakespeare.ca? Theoretically you can also send mail to a user at an IP address instead of a domain name… so why are these false positives being thrown? Maybe it’s because the pattern to recognize a proper address is a complete retarded regular expression. When you factor in the escape characters of a programming language, who would want to re-implement this? Not to mention, there will soon no longer be a Latin alphabet stranglehold on e-mail addresses.

At this point, the most simple method is to check for a single @ sign with characters before and after. Perform the check in the web browser and also on server-side just in case JavaScript is disabled. In Javascript, the function will just look like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
function validateForm(form)
{
	if(!/^[^@]+@[^@]+$/.test(form.email.value.replace(/^s+|s+$/g, '')))
	{
		alert("No, just no.");
		form.email.focus();
		return false;
	}
	else
	{
		return true;
	}
}
</script>
<form ... onsubmit="return validateForm(this)">
...
	<input name="email" type="text" />
...
</form>

So why verify? You may break XHTML compliancy on <a href=”mailto:… tags? Prevent sending messages to multiple recipients by throwing a comma or semicolon in the input text field? Why are you even collecting the e-mail address in the first place? What will you use it for? Registration? I think I validate just as a matter of principal (also known as OCD) to ensure every bit in my database has integrity. It’s to the point where you really should just verify the address by attempting to fire off a message containing a clickable link to verify a hash saved to the database. Let your mailing API throw an exception if the address is invalid. Of course, when spam filters just kill the email, what’s the point?

This is where we have a web development existential crisis.

• Now Playing: Hybrid - Wide Angle - 06 - Snyper

Hip to be Square

In an endeavor to fill my empty soul with joy in the form of capitalist fulfillment, I embraced my consumer whore nature and purchased an 8gb Apple iPod Touch. The “I” stands for inflated sense of ego.

In early 2007, my CD/MP3 player broken and I never really got around to purchasing another device. A friend threw me a replacement in the form of a JSK Digital MP-407 USB thumb drive MP3 player (oddly, the manufacturer doesn’t have a web site), which had a measly 256mb capacity. I generally only listened when mobile on transit and I also stuck to the same artist for a week at a time, so it really wasn’t an issue only have two or three albums with me at any time.

The manufacturing defects of the thumb drive started to become exposed via random player reboots and the inability to lock the next track button leading to my pocket suddenly deciding on song changes. I decided it was time for a quality player, but resolved to not making it an impulse buy. My next plan of action? Impulse buying an expensive mobile music player. Of course, as a fashion accessory, it kind of is a thief-happy device due to the white earbuds. I didn’t even let those rubbish pieces of audio equipment leave their packaging. Instead, I’ve been using my dumpy (but adequate) Sennheiser PMX-60 pair which don’t attract much attention, although they supposedly leak a lot of sound due the open design… but nobody on public transit has complained yet. I dare you! I FUCKING DARE YOU! I tend to keep my iPod in concealed as to avert the questioning eyes of the young and the beautiful. That I must above all things love myself.

I’ll get right into the Negative Nancy.

It bugs me that controlling music volume or making a track change both require looking at the screen. So you can’t just throw a hand in your pocket to make a quick adjustment. No Adobe Flash negates the “full web experience” that Apple claims. It may be a strategy to avoid streaming video that isn’t YouTube or a method to reduce memory usage, but Flash is now a necessary component of the web. It isn’t just used for frivolous splash pages anymore. There is also no scrobbling through Last.FM to keep a record of all the music you listen to. There are workarounds and I imagine there will be a supported standalone app once the iPhone SDK third-party additions are allowed to be copied over through iTunes in June.

Now on to why the thing sells well. Apple sure knows how to throw a nice graphical layer or some simple, useful features. The user interface is pretty and responsive with its PowerPoint-style page transitions from menu to menu. My attempt at drunk Facebooking while sitting in the crowd at a Guelph Storm hockey game was luckily thwarted by the small touch keyboard, hazy vision, and my Man-Sized fingers. The next morning moved nicely into a session of hungover bed-chillaxing while checking the message history in a competition to see if I could delete possible items before recipients read their contents. It was as I remembered - nothing sent since I was too drunk to log in. Stay in school.

Some of the iPhone/iPod Touch-specific webapps are very nice, such as the aforementioned Facebook version, mostly since it doesn’t waste whitespace on advertisements (which I block anyway, on PC) and doesn’t require zooming on any screen. The zoom in/out finger strokes can get tiring when browsing the web, but once more sites create webapps, it can make the mobile Internet experience much more seamless.

I’ve yet to really use the features of the Touch other than music and email, mostly since I don’t want a jailbreak attempt to create a $350 brick. In all actuality, with my lifestyle, the WiFi features are simply a gimmick since I’m so often near or at a PC anyway. I probably soon will be buying a mobile phone, but the iPhone was never in my frame of thought since Rogers are fucking assholes about allowing their wireless service prices to even approach anywhere near the somewhat reasonable prices of US provider. This covers both their equipment costs and data plan options. Of course, the reviews of the iPhone for its phone functions haven’t been too praising, other than the visual voicemail feature. I’ll probably instead find an unlocked Sony Ericsson and be that annoying jackass double-fisting expensive technology while crying out for Nature as the disillusioned man-child he really is.

• Now Playing: I Mother Earth - The Quicksilver Meat Dream - 03 - I is Us

I was tasked with writing a Java app with client-side authentication, with the ability to save the login information. So I needed to encode the password when saving the configuration to disk and also before sending login credentials through HTTPS. You think getting that information is a simple one line method call to a Java API? Hells no.

I obviously started via Google search, trying one of the first MD5 implementation results using Java’s MessageDigest class. This code is just wrong. I came across a couple strings that weren’t encoded to the same hexadecimal as MySQL’s md5() function. A couple entries down in Google’s search return was a more concise chunk of MD5 code. However, there was still an issue since its returned string wasn’t a 32 character length string that could be used to compare against a MySQL md5() password column. Here’s a proper method, with left zero padding:

public static String getPasswordEncrypted(String password)
{
	try
	{
		MessageDigest algorithm = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5");
		algorithm.reset();
		algorithm.update(password.getBytes(), 0, password.length());

		BigInteger encryptedBytes = new BigInteger(1, algorithm.digest());
		// 16 -> hexidecimal notation
		String encryptedPassword = encryptedBytes.toString(16);
		// padding left zeroes for 32 length string
		if(encryptedPassword.length() < 32)
			for(int i = encryptedPassword.length(); i < 32; i++)
				encryptedPassword = "0" + encryptedPassword;

		return encryptedPassword;
	}
	catch(NoSuchAlgorithmException e)
	{
		return ""; // eh?
	}
}

• Now Playing: Agalloch - The White EP - 02 - Birch Black

The new Nine Inch Nails instrumental release Ghosts I-IV finally got music release methods down to the way they should be. By self-releasing five different packages choices, the consumer can make a decision on how much they wish to invest into the product. The higher-end selections are for the hardcore listeners that decide quality and support for the artist are paramount, while the digital download or 2CD set attract the casual listener. For any package, you get the immediate lossless, DRM-free download link so you don’t have to wait for your package to ship. You can even sample 1/4 of the release in a shareware-like plan to invite listeners to purchase more. This range of selection doesn’t devalue music, as I felt Radiohead’s deceiving blind 160kbps MP3 fiasco introduced and Saul William campaign represented for its fully-free download option.

Within hours of release, there was so much immediate demand that the web servers handling orders were down to a standstill. This, of course, exposes the limits of HTTP as a delivery platform; this is why the über-nerds prefer BitTorrent for data transfer. I bought the $10 2CD release however my FLAC download cut off at 161mb out of 608mb done due to the server overload. Now the best part about the new album is its licensing under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike, which means I can jump on The Pirate Bay to grab the album in full and it’s completely legal. The abandonment of outdated copyright law restrictions puts power completely in the consumer’s hands (hello to you, democracy). It doesn’t make the assumptive pretense that the artist or audience are a victim or criminal. They’re on equal ground and have the free will to define the value of a piece of art. I imagine in the next month you’ll find Ghosts I-IV is worth far beyond expectations simply due to the message its release represents.

• Now Playing: !!! - Myth Takes - 08 - Bend Over Beethoven

Flick of the wrist and a grip on your hips.

Three days ago I purchased Audiosurf after a mere 20 minute demo of the game. It’s kind of F-Zero meets Wipeout meets Tetris while being completely soundtracked by you. The premise of the game is to use the waveform of any music file on your hard drive to create a virtual racetrack that’s used as a basis for a fast-paced puzzle problem. This sounds like a Winamp visualization plugin gone wrong, but’s actually pretty fantastic. There are multiple modes available, one of which includes collecting blocks of multiple colours to attempt configuring a contiguous sequence. My personal preference is “Ninja Mono” where you attempt to collect one type of coloured blocks (the colour transitions based on the music’s tempo) while avoiding gray barrier blocks. It’s very fucking challenging on elite.

It’s the type of game you can jump right into without any instructions really. I made the mistake of using the keyboard for my first 15 or so songs but once I tried the mouse for movement, I quickly realized the err of my ways. The game is mostly single player, with a mode for two people to play on the same PC, but there is no online networking yet.

Since there are fairly low system requirements (1.6 GHz processor, 512MB RAM, 32MB video card, DirectX 9), trying out the five song Audiosurf demo is a no-brainer. It doesn’t quite have the party game appeal of Guitar Hero or Rock Band, but it’s available on Steam for only ten bucks, price including the attached Orange Box soundtrack.

I’ve tried a variety of music genres with the start/stop dynamic tracks having the best fit. Math rock (Candiria, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Minus the Bear, Q and Not U, The Dismemberment Plan), EBM/trance (Front Line Assembly, VNV Nation, Infected Mushroom), post-metal (Pelican, Russian Circles), and industrial rock/drum’n'bass fusion (Pitchshifter, Cubanate, Pop Will Eat Itself) all worked pretty well for the game’s fun factor. Check out that steadily increasing outro of PWEI’s “Karmadrome”! Just don’t try it with Venetian Snares unless you want to suffer from technology-induced epileptic seizures.

So in the future, musicians can use the following metric to decide on the quality of their music - is my song fun in Audiosurf?

• Now Playing: This Will Destroy You - This Will Destroy You - 07 - Burial on the Presidio Banks