PSA for bandcamp downloads

Alright, after the influx of downloads from Korean folks, I'm now completely out of free bandcamp download credits.  I've known for a while that 200 free downloads per month was getting unsustainable, and so I knew this time would come.  I'm not going to pay more out of my own pocket to enable the free downloads again as that's not really self- sustainable either.  So:

- All of my latest albums are now set to $1 each until further notice.  This includes all of my official albums as well as "Monthlies" albums from the current calendar year.

- Monthlies from before this year are still unavailable at the moment.

Obviously the latter point is not ideal.  I also don't think every single one of my albums deserves to be a paid album, for instance some of the albums that are a single track only, like the TwinkleShooter OST.

Moving forward I think there are two options for how to take care of these:

Option (A) is that I find a better way to host the music for free somewhere (I'm open to suggestions).  Dropbox unfortunately is not an option anymore since my monthly batch downloads are huge (worse when it's the FLAC version) and dropbox has bandwidth limits (20GB/day free 200GB/day corporate).  I could do amazon S3 or something?

Option (B) is that I start making mega-compilation albums as actual bandcamp albums.  There are no actual limits on sizing for bandcamp albums, so theoretically I can upload the entirety of Monthlies Batch Download 2013 as a single bandcamp album with individual cover art for each track.  Or I could even just do a $1 album for "all free material I've released in 2013" which could include things like the TwinkleShooter OST.  Seems reasonable...

Short and Sweet, The Adventures of Billy Anderson, KeyBlox, PatientBarrage, RelentlessWaves, GrooveNet, LoopMuse, One of a Kind, TwinkleShooter, Gulliver, World of Snow, Cosmic Melody, Minimalist MAYHEM, Marriage Quest, Hyper Furball, Match Girl, Ripple Runner, Rain...

Someday I will record a video stream of myself going through all of my different works.  A "speedrun" of sorts.

Even if I could reconnect with the past, would I?  To go back to the past and connect with it, to connect with the people there, would also mean to be changing it, to be changing both past, present, and future.  To change is to die.  Would I really want to "destroy" what I held so precious, just to experience it again?  To go back to the past does not mean avoiding loss.  To go back to the past, means giving up the present, and the future.  What really, is the difference, then?  Only that one is known, and the other, foreign and uncertain.  I guess sometimes, the past really is better than the present.  And it is that sense of regret that makes me, makes us wish that we could go in the other direction, to go back to what is known instead of being forced to do what is right, and look for a better place with our heads turned forwards.  Is longing for the past really much different than wishing for something that does not exist in the present?  Or hoping for a future that does not exist?

This weekend has not been a bad one, not really bad at all.  After that last post about Yasunori Mitsuda's music, I started to work on Rain (the game we'd been working on this summer) while my pot roast/stew cooked, and made good progress.  In fact, after continuing to work on it for most of the night, I'm really happy to say that I've just about finished!  All that's left is to square away some minor things to get it ready for release (mostly making sure the soundtrack is all prepped to go), and then it can be shared with the world.  It's been a long time coming...Rain has really been the fruition of multiple months worth of contemplation, planning, and execution, so it's really great to see it finally come together as a finished product.

I spent a good part of Saturday testing out the commons from Khans of Tarkir (the new Magic set) with my brother.  We've learned some useful things about the format, but of course it's limited testing and I do think that the uncommons and rares will change things significantly in some ways, yet I think our restricted environment was also fairly representative in other ways as well.  Aggro seemed really weak in M15 when we were doing our testing for that, but we turned out to be slightly off base, as it wasn't quite as bad as we thought it was, mostly due to the fact that we were testing it against the really good decks.  I think there is something to be said about the fact that sealed pools will generally lead to mediocre curves, so if your pool *does* happen to have a good low-curve deck with consistency and some removal to punch through, that might be a game plan.  But in Khans I'm still seeing that as more of the exception than the rule, just because there are all these guys with huge butts and huge guys that start coming down on turns 5 and later.  By that time all of your 1-4 drops get outclassed unless they have some sort of evasion.  The critical point here I think is that there is a distinct shortage of good combat tricks at cmomon, much similar to M15 actually.  Obviously when you compare to Gatecrash you can see the huge difference in that the Boros aggro decks in GTC had both aggressively-costed guys (wojek halberdiers, 3/2 for 2 and skyknight legionnaire, 2/2 flying for 3) as well as combat tricks that you could use to remove blockers (martial glory, some random white combat tricks, mugging, etc).  Even RTR was better in this regard because you had 2/2s, then 3/3 centaur tokens, and you still had combat tricks like giant growth, etc at common so that even if someone was trying to play some defensive deck with 4-toughness guys to hold back the fort, you can 1-for-1 trade them with a combat trick when they blocked.  I don't see that as happening in Khans since their blockers will be things like 1/4 lifelink, 2/5, 0/5, even 3/6 guys are common.  This means your 2/2 guys are completely useless unless you go super-wide with the goblin/warrior token deck I guess.  Maybe if you get a lot of removal?  RB splash w Mardu aggro might be a thing, I guess, since R has things like the arrow 4 damage sorcery, and black has stuff like the 2 mana -2/-2 which is great at taking out their turn 3 morph.  So you do something like...t2 hasty 2/2 attack for 2, t3 3/1 attack for 2, t4 kill their morph and play a 2/1, attack for 5.  Then you act of treason them and kill them?  The problem is that that plan doesn't really work as well when they play a 1-mana 0/4 and then some other dude.  Well, we'll see I guess.

Perhaps the only bad part of this weekend is that it's already 3:15 AM here and I'm yet to be asleep yet.  There are still many things left to be done, but that will have to wait until later in the week I guess.  I need to pace myself at work since I know that I'm at a point where if I start working harder than I should I'll just burn out, so I just need to work smart and work a normal amount.  We're already going in this weekend (bad timing because it's prerelease weekend), so it doesn't make sense to burn myself out before then anyways.  I also still have lots of things I want to draw using charcoal, I keep on thinking of things but no time to draw.  Bleh.  But again, Rain is done now, and that was pretty much the highest priority thing to get finished, so you can't really call that anything other than a victory.

Hah, I meant to start typing a blog post and started typing "xanga.com" into the URL bar.  Old habits die hard, maybe?  Probably just confused that I used anything else after so long...

Sometimes you don't need fancy sound design to evoke poignant emotions.  I have been wondering lately how I could compose music that has the same flavors of meaning.  Music that is not so much "cool" as it is meaningful.

Do you ever get the feeling that you don't know what to say?  Don't know what to write?  Don't know how to draw, how to make the right music, just don't know what you're supposed to do, how to do it, whether to go, how to be?

I opened this page multiple times already, thinking to write something.  But I turned away...I guess I'm just not as "secure" as I used to be, with my thoughts and feelings.  Which is okay, I think.  It's okay not to trust myself all the time.  Because it's true--a lot of the time, I won't always do or say or think or write the right things.  But I guess confidence and security is supposed to mean accepting that and understanding that it's okay.

Unrequited love.  I've had it for how many years now?  When will I ever see you again?  Why wouldn't you answer me?  And should I still keep on calling out?  Shall I just write you one last letter, saying "goodbye."?  Would I ever do that?  Would I ever actually do that?

I don't really know what I want to say here, or what I want you to think.  I think that's why I've been running away.