Richard Peng

CyberSpeed Unleashed Review

rpeng — Sat, 28 May 2011 16:40:13 +0000

Sixteen years later from the original game, Mark ‘TDK’ Knight has released CyberSpeed Unleashed, a remix album of the music from the 1995 game CyberSpeed. And boy does it get your adrenaline pumping and make you want to race again, preferably in a more modern racing game. CyberSpeed’s gameplay was… hectic, to put it nicely, but it was Mark’s music that really made the game stand out. The original game disc could be loaded into your CD player to play the soundtrack which was awesome. I fondly remember overloading a couple sets of crappy speakers listening to the CyberSpeed soundtrack at max volume when I was a kid.

The new CyberSpeed Unleashed remixes add heart-pumping bass, upgraded instruments, and some very welcome complexity to the originals, making each track a lot more interesting, while keeping the original riffs I love. The new instruments sound great, especially the butt-kicking bass instruments. Both Cluffy Flouds remixes also have all the ambiance I loved from the original tracks. The new Cluffy Flouds 2 remix is definitely one of my favorite tracks. The Boggit Protein Accelerator is another great track and is delightful light-hearted. The original game included silly future-age commercials that would air between races and this was one of the background tracks.

Some things I didn’t really like about the new remixes were some instrument choices. The low-quality violin instrument in CyberSpeed Race 5 detracted from the environmental ambiance of the track. The notes played by the violin instrument also weren’t held long enough which hurt the flow of the music. The low-high “boing” instrument in the background of CyberSpeed Race 6 was also really distracting and was just enough to prevent it from being one of my favorite tracks. I also wish Mark had incorporated more of the piano riff from the original CyberSpeed Track 5 into one of the remixes. The entire second half of Track 5 was great and was one of my favorite original tracks.

All-in-all, if you’ve played CyberSpeed before, you owe it to yourself to give this album a listen. It has all the extra excitement you wished the original tracks had and more. If you haven’t played the game before, DON’T! Just kidding! CyberSpeed has one of the best racing game soundtracks out there and should definitely be in your game music collection. CyberSpeed Unleashed is a great complement to the original soundtrack. The original has a lot more atmospheric ambiance which I enjoyed, but the new album gives you a lot more bass and is so much fun to listen to.

Favorite tracks:
Cyberspeed Track 4
Cyberspeed Track 7
Cluffy Flouds 2
Boggit Protein Accelerator

CyberSpeed Unleashed is available for download at CD Baby and iTunes

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

rpeng — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 03:01:25 +0000

The Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was a great success. There were a couple hundred thousand people there in the name of sanity. Now that’s a cause I can get behind. Let’s make sure our politicians know that us reasonable people need our opinions heard, too.

“If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.”
- Jon Stewart

Maryland Renaissance Festival 2010

rpeng — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 00:36:55 +0000

Protected: UVA Alumni Weekend 2010

rpeng — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 06:04:45 +0000

Top Pop: Otakon 2010 Edition

rpeng — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:04:38 +0000

Here are some photos from the sugary game of Top Pop celebrating the end of Otakon and another year gone by. It was great seeing everyone and hopefully will again soon at Nekocon. Check out the videos after the break.
[See post to watch Flash video]
[See post to watch Flash video]

Convert Video for Flash Streaming

rpeng — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:51:18 +0000

This is a simple script I’m using to convert the videos I take on my Canon S90 for posting online using a flash player.

#!/bin/bash
# Convert videos from Canon S90 to flash-playable streaming format
for file in "$@"
do      
        filename=$(basename $file)
        filename=${filename%.*}
        # Convert the audio stream to AAC
        ffmpeg -i $file -vcodec copy -acodec libfaac temp_vid.mp4
        # Move the H.264 MOOV atom to the beginning of the file for progressive streaming
        qt-faststart temp_vid.mp4 $filename.mp4
        rm temp_vid.mp4
        # Create a screenshot
        ffmpeg -i $filename.mp4 -f image2 -vframes 1 $filename.jpg
done

            view raw
            s90tostream.sh
            This Gist brought to you by GitHub.
          

Final Fantasy Distant Worlds Concert

rpeng — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:52:48 +0000

This was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve always loved Final Fantasy music, especially all of the orchestral arrangements, but nothing had prepared me for the magnificence of experiencing a live performance of Nobuo Uematsu’s beloved music. I was so excited when the conductor, the renowned Arnie Roth, announced that, “yeah, actually we know a few more songs,” and conducted an encore performance of Terra’s theme, one of my favorite Nobuo Uematsu pieces, and then concluded the concert with One-Winged Angel.

After intermission, we were also treated to a special address from Uematsu to us the audience at Wolf Trap, recorded just days before the concert. He truly is passionate about his work and has a great sense of humor. Uematsu-san, I would definitely love a cookie!

Bowling

rpeng — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:59:47 +0000

Went bowling the other day. It was fun!

XBMC Boxee UI Switcher

rpeng — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:58:37 +0000

I bind this script to a button on my LIRC remote to easily switch between XBMC and Boxee on my HTPC. XBMC’s interface using the Rapier skin and fanart is much more attractive, but Boxee offers great social network integration (read: Youtube).

#/bin/bash
# Switch between XBMC and Boxee
if ps ax | grep -v grep | grep xbmc.bin > /dev/null
then
	echo "XBMC running, killing process"
	kill `pidof xbmc.bin`
	sleep 7
	echo "running Boxee"
	/usr/bin/runBoxee &
elif ps ax | grep -v grep | grep Boxee > /dev/null
then
	echo "Boxee running, killing process"
	kill `pidof Boxee`
	sleep 7
	echo "running XBMC"
	/usr/bin/runXBMC &
else
	echo "No UI running, starting XBMC"
	/usr/bin/runXBMC &
fi

            view raw
            switchUI.sh
            This Gist brought to you by GitHub.
          

Start irexec daemon

rpeng — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:55:28 +0000

#!/bin/bash
# Checks to see if irexec is running and runs it if not already running.

youruser=richard

# Test to see if IRexec is running first, if so kill it, then restart
if ps -ef|grep -v grep|grep -vi start|grep -i irexec
then
ps aux|grep -i $youruser|grep -i irexec |grep -vi start|awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill
else
# Do nothing
echo "irexec already dead!"
fi

#test to see if an instance of irexec is already running
if ps -ef|grep -v grep|grep irexec
then
# do nothing
echo "irexec already running"
else
# start irxevent
irexec -d /home/$youruser/.lircrc &
fi

exit

            view raw
            startirexec.sh
            This Gist brought to you by GitHub.
          