cc: God? by John Mimbres
In the early days of Magellan's Log, we did a feature on eye candy, that being visual programs whose sole purpose is to put beautiful abstract images on your screen. At that time we were working with primitive computing power (remember Pentium 166's?), which severely limited our graphic choices. Recently we found a great deal at Best Buy and upgraded to the 1.5 gigahertz Pentium 4. (Because of the incredibly low price, we go around referring to the new system as "the Yugo of computers," but so far everything is still functioning nicely). Having submitted shamelessly to the Microsoft hegemony (yes, we are also now XP-ers), we figured we might as well enjoy our serfdom by pushing the new system to the limits (read: having fun). Regular readers will have noticed that we're pretty big on music around here. We still keep the whole publication on a low-bandwidth basis, --only midi files (no mp3's) on-line. Off-line, the aural sky (?) is the limit. Which led us recently to re-download the freeware mp3 player, WinAmp. We had explored WinAmp back in our prehistoric Pentium 166 days, and the old computer just wasn't up to the job. Our new hot-rod Yugo of a computer more than welcomed the computational demands of WinAmp. You might say it responded orgasmically. WinAmp, you see, not only plays mp3 files. It also does "visualizations" in time to the music (think cybernetic Fantasia, or the light show in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Furthermore, the geekigentsia around the world has created hundreds, nay, thousands of these visualization plug-ins for WinAmp. As with any human endeavor, 99.9% of the plug-ins are on the left side of the old bell curve. The other 0.1% are either messages to God or messages from God. Non-religionists may choose a different metaphor. How about: This stuff is not eye candy but eye acid? Beautiful streaming, flowing, shifting, efflorescent colors and shapes fill your screen and react to the beat and pitch of whatever music you choose. React, please note, with a sensitivity like that of the best sex partner you ever had. So there. And it's all free. You can get WinAmp from many sites. Its home is: Which is also home for a very large archive of free visualization plug-ins. As noted, you'll find lots of oysters and not many pearls, which of course just makes you appreciate the pearls even more. Four pearls we've turned up: Acidspunk Again, remember: to do these programs graphic and aural justice, you have to have a fast processor, lots of memory, a good video card, and robust speakers. If you've got that, get ready to approach the gates of heaven, or at least the opening doors of perception. END
Magellan's Log Copyright © 2001 Texas Chapbook Press |
Magellan's Log Copyright ©
2001 Texas Chapbook Press
www.texaschapbookpress.com