Fear not of man, my ninjas
Fear the predator UAV attack drones and their hellfire missiles though. Robot planes used to be a training tool, at most a reconnaissance droid—one that allowed pilots to remotely control planes without risking their lives. In these final days, however, they are used to attack America’s enemies hiding out in Central Asian mountains, where no average American dares to tread (or locate on an un-labeled map).
What Bush began in the glory days of your global war of terror, Obama has seen fit to continue, standing upon the shoulders of the proverbial beast that preceded him. But he hasn’t been standing there long, my ninjas. Oh no: he has quickly leapt from the shoulders of his svengali forebears into realms far beyond Bush’s feeble comprehension. From The New Yorker:
According to a just completed study by the New America Foundation, the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President. During his first nine and a half months in office, he has authorized as many C.I.A. aerial attacks in Pakistan as George W. Bush did in his final three years in office. The study’s authors, Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, report that the Obama Administration has sanctioned at least forty-one C.I.A. missile strikes in Pakistan since taking office a rate of approximately one bombing a week.
I don’t know about you, but after finishing this article I immediately thought of hooking one of these bad boys up to an xbox controller. I also immediately thought of Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi parable Ender’s Game, and was given visions of a future where tweens line up to destroy lives mercilessly for nothing more than the social validation of their peers and teachers. It was at this point that I once more shook my mighty robotninja brain at the folly of man and the inevitability of his annihilation at his own hands.
Luckily I maintain a small squadron of robot-dragons in case the government decides to strike.
better ready than deady
Ninja brethren of the leaf and root:
Beware the machinations of the leafcutterjohn. His new sampling software “Forester”, provides a glimpse into a world of spatial temporal awareness forbidden to mankind.
This trove of unspeakable musics derives its knowledge from whole folders of samples, or an entire CD worth of music (straight from your primitive earth-based optical devices), allowing even the most clueless of beatsmiths a chance perspective at musical creation several orders of magnitude beyond their ken.
Nonetheless, if we are to be prepared for the creations that this program will no doubt manifest, we must look into the abyss without fear, lest we fall victim due to our ignorance. Be sure you have something set up to reroute the audio signal, and learn to recognize the different life-forms within the forests of your fragile, human mind. Witness the effects on the r0b0tninja outpost, and despair.
Listen to the Flower
Spendthrift and frugal ninjabots,
Here at R0b0tninja I try to bring new synthesis and audio production techniques to the forefront of human liminal understanding, ignoring the bullshit and bringing only the juiciest gems for your consumption.
But I must make an exception in this one case: the Percussa audio cubes, midi controllers for such popular programs as Ableton Live and Reason, seem to your humble r0b0tninja the embodiment of an electronics retail industry run amok. I mean, what the fuck. Here’s the absolute greatest thing a site selling it has to say:
They look way-cool in a dark room. Physical interaction between the cubes. A very portable system.
Really? That’s why I’m going to spend 1300 US dollars? These things are proximity based midi triggers, finally bridging the world of boardgames to the world of music production. While I must admit a passing curiosity as to the inner workings of these wastes of space, I also can’t believe that anyone would find any real use for these chunks of stanky demon taint in the first place. Maybe if I wanted to impress a dozen japanese teenage girls, I would buy these and play some jungle beats or something, smoke machine going strong, lasers blasting off all over the place.
In fact, forget about the jungle and the lasers. I’ll be the smoke machine, ladies.
so serious, myninjas.
The norsemen over at Propellerhead have always made the earth tremble with their might, pillaging England and discovering America nonchalantly. But they continue to out-man their heritage by supplying us with their software Reason, and we thank them for that. What’s more, now they’ve granted mortal man the powers of the sun of Asgard, Odin’s beak, the All-powerful mangod Thor. They even show you some interesting shit about using white noise in this tutorial, and using Thors noise oscillators to manifest some pretty tasty jimmy-jams. Peep the sample page to sample Thor’s Hammer, no homo.
I like this graph, because it looks like a technicolor asshole and is to-the-point.
Sincerely,
Robotninja, spoken while dropping herbal smokebomb manuevers, but not read
Yes, myninjas.
The Ambrosia Software ninja-team has constructed a seamless and foolishly capable piece of software, which if left in the wrong hands, could easily lead to the destruction of all audio in the known megaverse. WireTap Anywhere allows users of Apple’s Core Audio to connect any audio source to any audio destination, allowing non-robotninjas to sample any sound their primitive computers can produce.
I always pulled a similar maneuver using an external digital audio interface–I’m prone to route my movies and other system audio out to a light=pipe usb connection. Also, any ninja with an mpc (or lesser hardware sampler) can do the exact same thing, all without having to pay out the ass for a soft version ($129). Still, if I were into podcasting and interviews, it would be nice to be able to record both ends of a skype call, say, or just an ill internet radio station (free of AD/DA conversion, no less).
…blessed are the robotninja–the robotninja will inherit the earth
Friends, robots, country-ninjas
For too long the realm of time traveling robots has been left to your Terminators, your Futuramas and occasionally your Time-cops. Now, in the year of our robot-lord, 2008, you too can experience the various paradoxes (paradoxi?) that robots and robotninjas alike have to face in our day-to-day lives/functions, thanks to the efforts of the good people over at Kongregate games.
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I personally use my time-travelling duplicates to intern around the robotninja office. Though sometimes our ego’s clash, we respect one another enough to get work done. Whenever problems arise, however, I am quick to dole out severe, crippling punishment to myselves, my superior orignal mind/body pit against itself in a feat of dualistic spectacle. Fighting against and defeating myself isn’t ever easy, but if anyone can do it, it’s me.
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And that’s where this game Chronotron can’t handle the reality of time-traveling ninjabots–in real life, I can simply slaughter any time-paradox creating ninja-droids at my leisure. In this simplified version of a multi-dimensional, quantum-state fluctuating robot’s life, one is bound by the actions/inactions of your past selves. This disgusts my robotninja sensibilities, but then again, so does nearly all of the works of man and beast. I therefore advise that you take my opinion of this single shortcoming of what is otherwise a fun and clever puzzle-game with a grain of the finest sand. Any of my other opinions taken so lightly, however, will result in the instantaneous and total annihilation of your dojo/laboratory.
ninja Robot, concern no is Time
From the Ninjas over at Ueberschall
Cometh the fundamental dub library for all to enjoy and destroy. I have no doubts that while this sample library offers “authentic” dub sounds, motifs and effects, it will inevitably be twisted in the scurvy ridden hands of the pirate-elite, the controllers of the world bank and the svengali of the Illuminati. From the site:
Reggae Fundamentals is a specialized sample compilation which includes 33 construction kits and 12 Drumkits sheltered in 2 GB of ready to work content offering authoritative most current Reggae environments. The kits are jam packed with everything you need to give your production the finishing touch: bass-, synth-, drum- and padlines also vocals, FX and atmospheres.
I dunno–I feel like dub is such a sample-reliant form that any ninja with a dub collection (which is to say, any ninja) could produce similar results in his modest, ninja laboratory (or ninjatory, if you will).
Robotninja dubulations soothe the savage beast
power the R0b0tninjas ecosystem. I’m a big DS nerd, and I like this musical performance video game. Much like dubselector, the purpose of the game is simply to make music. The rules are simple for each mini-game, using a variety of touch-screen soft-interfaces. Makes for gooooood samplin…
Robotninja, master of life and death.
For those times and places, myninjas, in which a synth could potentially save or destroy lives, now you can just bust this badboy out. If it’s as intuitive as it seems, this could turn the tide of any major conflict or ninja-police action you find yourself engaged in.
As always, the Robotninja chooses to dual-wield.
Most highest of all Ninja,First of all, let me start by saying that ninjas have to stay sharp—refining awareness through substance abuse is a sacred part of our cultural heritage, behavior that should never be emulated by lesser beings.
That having been said, abusing Absynth 4 grants the “user” various mystical powers, including but not limited to propagating new vibrations into the physical universe. Allow me to explain.
One new feature of this program is the Wave Morphing capability, which allows users to fuse two distinct waveforms together. This provides greater variety in initial sounds generated and provides more depth for the process of sound wave shaping.
The Sync Granular Mode modulator also adds a new dimension to your audio shaping, allowing you to use algorithms that mimic strumming or blowing through tubes to your sounds. Personally, I find its delivery a little too robotic to be considered life-like, but in terms of pure sound creation, this brings yet another palette of organic flavor to your attack and decay possibilities. Another new feature is the Audio Mod oscillator, which allows the use of outside audio signals as the modulation source, letting you use Absynth’s other sound shaping abilities as a brolic effects processor.
Underneath Absynth’s straightforward (if stylized) interface, lies an ocean of possible constructions. Even after getting past the initial, additive synth layer (where the user builds the raw sound wave), effects available on the back-end add yet another level of sonic manipulation to you. The pipe delay, which basically mimics the echo effects you experience in a tunnel, allows you to change the virtual source’s distance, decay, and spatial attributes with ease.
Absynth has true surround sound capability, allowing you to not only alter the position and number of your sound sources (8), but also have them rotate around your auditory self. Your R0b0tninja is tempted to buy some surround sound headphones, just to better enjoy what is already a dizzying experience.
But lets get down to basics, so you get a better understanding of this drug once before you get to drinking. The boxes you see in the picture above each correspond to an oscillator, a modulator, or a filter (top three rows). As you can see, the lines only converge when they reach the last row, which houses another modulator, filter, ending with an independent effects processor (I say independent, because the surround sound, pipe, and other effects come later on in the chain).
Unless you are well-versed with the synthesizer universe, let me suggest that you start by simply going to the instrument browser. The encyclopedic library of patches is effortlessly accessible, broken down into instrument type and sound quality. Take a minute and compare how the different sounds are constructed. Available to you is a vibrant and powerful sonic generator, complete with wave and envelope drawing capabilities. Even the R0b0tninja’s mightiest words can only describe absynth’s effects—until you can see the glowing green ninja-goblins yourself, they will remain encased in your subconscious, leaving you incapable of fully appreciating how vivid this synth’s sounds can become.
yours.truly
R0b0tninja
