OPEN COMMISSION FOR CHIPMUSICIANS: BUILD ME A RINGTONE AND I’LL BUILD YOU A MEMORIAL IN YOUR CHOICE OF .GIF, .JPG OR .PNG (.PNG PREFERRED).
To any and all chipmusicians who read this post: I would like you to design me a ringtone, an alarm tone or any series of beeps that would be good for some kind of cellphone reminder thing.
Payment will be a piece of art I design on a computer with the content of your choice (cf. KC Green’s early commissions). If you need proof of my artistic merit, I invite you to cast your eyes over the sublime cover for “Fuck Freddy’s Drop”.
Things That Are Important For Ringtones
- I believe in loop-based ringtones that seem to sound continuously, but don’t feel you have to fulfil this.
- If your fucking tone doesn’t resolve I may be angry with it (payment will be delivered, nonetheless).
- The “beep” sound is really cool.
Things That Are Not Important For Ringtones
- You know how the modern ringtones are all .mp3s and shit and you can have actual songs for ringtones? Well, that’s bullshit. I don’t want a song for a ringtone. Songs for ringtones are stupid because you never get to listen to the whole song before voicemail kicks in. On my current phone it takes ages to change a ringtone because the phone insists on compiling a list of every sound-file on my phone before showing me the list with “Polaris” and “Email01″ on it. I have a 16gb memory card packed full of music (well, GBA roms and music) and I get mad when I have to change ringtones.
- “Covers” and “remixes” of songs that I already know. Fuck that. When I see someone’s chip cover of “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak I just go: “Why?”
- That stupid LSDJ glitch sound, you know the one. It happens when you legato down too far or something.
If you email them to zach@sleep500.com, I’ll upload them on the site somewhere so everyone can benefit from your blood, sweat and tears. Despite what I said up there ↑, I’m totally fine with a nicely tagged .mp3 file of your song.
If I get enough submissions (this is highly unlikely) I’ll do a compilation of them with some more mind-numbingly right artwork.
A HEART-WARMING STORY ABOUT ONE MOUSE ON THE WAY UP AND DOWN, JUST LIKE ALL OF THOSE GANGSTER MOVIES.
Written by the writer of A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible
This is how I will deal with this mouse.
A mouse is crawling between the wires beneath my computer. He hides behind the radiator for warmth. Why don’t you come out mouse? He can’t possibly hear what I’m typing. This will be my trick for him. The next time he comes out here I will offer him a recording contract he can’t refuse. Mouse women, mouse drugs, a tiny mouse limited edition sports car (how its small engine will throb!), drinks mixed in a nutshell, dark sun glasses made of movie film cellophane. Soon he will request to be clothed only in original scenes from classic movies. A dark suit jacket cut from The Sun Also Rises, a heavy overcoat from Double Indemnity, shoes from Gentleman Prefer Blondes, and a tie which will be a colorful ribbon from Diamonds are Forever. These extravagant tastes will soon outstrip his enormously tiny mouse fortunes, every mouse dollar, the sliver of a fingernail clipping, will be spent until his slim mouse model wife leaves him and throws paint over his precious possessions. Why? Because a reservoir of vengeful feelings jostles inside her as she moves toward the door, for all the things he did to her that she can no longer name. From those things, she has saved the anger.
He will come home from a hard day at the recording studio. He’ll push his roaring coupe up his meandering driveway to his art deco house lying atop a tubby hill. As he opens the glass door he finds the paint running from fine clothes made from fine films he’s never seen, and the note, and he knows she’s gone for good. His record collection floats in the swimming pool.
In the great room, beside a minimalist armoire lies an immense wooden panel. On top, a complication of wires is screwed in. There are strange red designs tracing lines around its edge. On its very tip a large soft block of something yellow lies. Its aroma has filled the room and reaches the mouse’s nose. He strips off his expensive clothing. His underwear, sliced from a delicate moment in The Great Gatsby, is the last portion of his outfit. The liberation he feels is enormous. He is finally an animal again. His bleary eyes come to focus on that block. His senses turn toward it. He knows where he must go and what lies at the center. He wants to be fulfilled again. He wants to be a creature that uses his legs and can fit into small places. He has a demand to be real, and insists on it. He creeps beside the device, scraping his claws along its edge. He pokes the thick block with his nose and a portion of its aroma is smeared there to overwhelm him. His white whiskers bend against it. What about caution? What about everything. He can’t feel himself. He can’t trace the thoughts in his head. He knows where he wants to be, and tilts there, like a skier on a hill. His small frame slides up the side and embraces the block. It seems brighter than ever. It seems like a new sun in the sky, filled with orange expediency, with a sense of place, and potential, and raw orange power. He knows it is what he wants and it is waiting there for him to be happy.
Just then, with a large THWACK, the metal wire is released smacking his body hard and heavily. His tiny rockstar bones break, his delicate flesh rends. He screams in tiny pain. His teeth ache with the scream. He can not settle himself. He can not get comfortable. He is numb but feels pains. He is excited and sleepy at the same time. He squeaks and squeaks. The pink space in his mouth is revealed. It spreads wide. Slowly, his dim vision grows dimmer. It blurs as if coming to a conclusion. He hears a distant sound. Where is the sound of what he wants to hear? There his thoughts smear with his vision. The dust in his brain begins to settle and the beam of sunlight that breaks through his curtain dims with a passing cloud. He dies, emitting no sound but the scratching of claws softly on the grain of that wood that is a percussion instrument played once, his final note sounding loudly.
This is how I will deal with this mouse.
dale
JUST SING THE WAY YOU SPEAK, IT’S NOT VERY HARD AND YOU’LL FEEL BETTER ABOUT YOURSELF AT THE END OF THE DAY (TRUST ME).
I’m sick of hearing New Zealanders sing like Americans and I’m sick of this song sitting around on my hardrive collecting corrupted sectors or whatever.
This is my debut rap release. It’s called “Fuck Freddy’s Drop” and I’ve released it as Never.
DON’T TAKE THIS AS RIDICULE, I JUST CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW OR WHY VEINS WAS WRITTEN.
A September, 2010 tweet from Drew.
VEINS BY DREW FUCKED MY SHIT UP. I HAVEN’T FELT LIKE THIS SINCE I HAD TO WORK IN NEW BRIGHTON FOR THREE WEEKS.
Veins is a novel by Drew (of Married To The Sea / Toothpaste For Dinner fame). I’d seen it kicking around on his websites for a while. I’d even been redirected there from Toothpaste For Dinner after a time period, which I think is a shitty thing to do, but GETTING PAID is important, so whatever..
Amazon bills it as a “tragicomedy novel about 22 years of a man’s life in the middle of Ohio… Dark, weird, and funny.”
My short review goes like this: “Veins is an utterly crushing, depressing snapshot of the life of a mentally ill man somewhere in Hell, U.S.A.” Drew writes excellent webcomics that are free and funny, and I’m going to need a solid evening of reading them because this book has made me feel really bad about myself and humanity in general.
Anyway, I finally bought the book (Kindle edition). Now, never, ever buy a fucking kindle edition of anything unless you have a kindle. Amazon makes you download the fucking kindle application which is a big piece of shit and it will just make you mad. If you are forced to use this thing, make sure you go to Tools > Options > Annotations and untick “Popular Highlights” because who gives a shit if twenty-two people on the internet highlighted some sentence about a dog being man’s best friend? It didn’t have anything to do with the rest of the book (thankfully) so the only purpose it served was to inform me that people from the internet like domesticated animals. I’m not retarded.
Which brings me to the “protagonist” of Veins. [ I wrote a bunch of stuff in here but none of it was worth your time reading.]
If you think it’s funny when sad, helpless, socially inept man-babies get crushed by everyone else in their pitiful lives, then this is the “tragicomedy” for you.
SOMETHING TO COUNTER THE MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT BELOW
Near where I live is the most metal church in the world:
NERD PRIDE SWELLS, GREAT NEW HEIGHTS ACHIEVED (18/08/2011). NOKIA E63 S60V3 HELLO OX V2.03 HACK.
This hack will let you install unsigned applications on Symbian OS devices. I’m using a Nokia E63 which runs S60v3 (FP1). This was current as of writing (18th August, 2011).
You’ll Need:
- To read over this whole guide before you start, OK?
- A Developer’s Certificate.
- This 874k .ZIP file: Hello OX v2.03 and an SIS signer of some description.
- If you’ve been desperately scouring the Internet for information on this I feel your pain. Read through this whole guide, ALL OF IT and you should be on the right track.
- A USB cord for your phone.
- (Optional) Depending on the trouble you run into you might need Nokia Software updater to reinstall or update your firmware. I needed this.
- Probably a windows OS.1
The programme you’re going to use to hack your phone is HelloOX v2.03. To use this programme you’re going to need a compatible cellphone/firmware. This list is a pretty good start.
If you don’t see your phone or whatever in that list HOPE IS NOT LOST! You’ll need to use the flashing/manual method. It doesn’t really seem much more complicated than what I went through but there are some more things to download and you’ll need to engage your brain. Here is an excellent tutorial which includes everything you need to download AND the author is active in the thread along with a dude called Rusnak (as of writing). Both of these people seem to be a great help, just be polite.
The Lowdown On What You’re Going To Do
- Get a Developer’s Certificate.
- Sign Hello OX v2.03
- Install Hello OX v2.03
If you’re here I’m guessing you don’t have a DevCert and since it’s after the 23rd of June ’11 you should read this (the first two paragraphs will do). What this means is that there are only two apps you can sign: Hello OX v2.03 and RomPatcher+. If your phone is in the list you’ll do fine. If not, you’ll need to use the other method.
Not v2.10, not v2.11, not v2.* ONLY v2.03.
I used the NokioTeca forums to get a DevCert. Follow these steps. You’ll have to wait a bit for your DevCert. Listen, I know it sucks. I know waiting for shit in the age of youtube/torrents etc is ludicrous but (as of writing) this is does work. JUST WAIT FOR A WHILE.
This is what happens: When the thread gets full enough the mods will close it and upload a small (<10kb) rar file with a DevCert that will work for all of the posters in the thread who put their IMEI in the appropriate field of their profile. I don’t know how this actually works, just that it worked for me. Timeframe estimates? The thread I was in got to 25 pages, but most of them close around 20 pages. If you’re a masochist you can sit around refreshing your page. I waited about two hours for mine but if you’re in those early pages you’ll be waiting longer. You could bookmark the thread, name the bookmark DEVCERT or something then clean your room and ring your mum.
Once you have your DevCert, get an SIS signer like the one from my .ZIP or elsewhere, I’m not sure it matters. Sign Hello OX v2.03. Install Hello OX v2.03. Restart your phone. Run Hello OX v2.03. It should map a drive, unpack a file, install a root certificate and then install RomPatcher+ 3.1 (or something like that order). The important thing is no step should take an inordinate amount of time and the whole install should be complete in about a minute. This didn’t happen for me. If it all works for you, click.
It seems that a common problem with the E63 phone (and some others) is that the installation hangs on “Unpacking files”. Various people recommend uninstalling, restarting your phone, installing, restarting and then running the application or hard resetting your phone and then installing, restarting etc but none of that worked for me.
If you can’t seem to get the install to work you’re going to need to reinstall the firmware. Now, this isn’t a big deal, it just takes a few minutes (and a ~100mb firmware download). Open Nokia PC Suite and do a backup of your phone. A firmware reinstall will wipe your phone but you can reapply your backup afterwards*. Google “Nokia Softare Updater” and install that. This is the programme that will update your firmware. Some forum kid recommended doing a hard reset of your phone before reinstalling the firmware. I’m not sure if this’ll help, but it only takes a minute so you might as well do it. MAKE SURE YOU’VE BACKED UP YOUR PHONE BEFORE YOU DO THIS BIT. Hold down the green phone button, 3 and * while turning your phone on. Keep holding them until the handshake thing comes up. Then set your country and date. Now run Nokia Software Updater with your phone plugged into the computer set to PC Suite mode.
* I didn’t apply the full backup for fear of overwriting the successful hack. More on this in a bit. Remember: Read everything.
When the update has downloaded and been applied the phone will restart. Go to your application manager > settings and change the “Software Installtion” to “All”. Put your signed Hello OX v2.03 into the PHONE MEMORY (this was another thing the forum kid said) and install it. BEFORE RUNNING IT FOR THE FIRST TIME you should restart your phone. Once back in, run Hello OX v2.03. It should install successfully and you’ll have both Hello OX and ROMPatcher+ in your Installations folder. Have a look in ROMPatcher+ and apply the patch if it isn’t already. Congratulations, your phone is hacked.
You can now install SOME of your backup. Because installing the full backup will overwrite some of the files on your new phone I chose not to apply “User files on phone” or “Settings”. This meant that I had to do all of the configuration that I did when I got the phone new but I’ll let you in on a little secret: I actually like doing that stuff.
Some Final Notes
It may look like I visited one forum and followed some nice tutorials to do this hack but that wasn’t the case. What made this hack rather hard was the amount of well-indexed, obsolete information on Hello OX2 et al, the Symbian OS (all versions) and the plethora of methods for signing a DevCert, most of which no longer exist or return limited functionality (like the symbiansigned/FFExplorer method).
There is a glut of information and programmes on i-Pmart. and their community is very active.
Something I found really useful whilst researching and executing this hack was Firefox’s Panorama function. It’s present in 6.0 beta (possibly 6.0 stable as well, that came out today). Ctrl+Shift+E should get you there, Cmd+Shift+E on those silver laptops.
FUCK YOUR SHITTY BAND FOREVER
This is the release of the year, nothing can touch this.
You can figure out what A art is about, I mean, it only takes a listen. “Each Word” and “Bloome” are my favourite tracks.
OK, I don’t like to define bands by other bands but if you haven’t clicked “download” or “play” or whatever, A art is what Postal Service would be if there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Pay attention: there are no cutesy duets (even though I love duets).
Transparency statement: A art is Dove, who is Futurnari, who I’ve whored before who is now a trans-Tasman friend of mine who played bass in my first two bands and who, with this release and Another Unlikely Hero II, has utterly crushed my desire to make chipmusic ever again.