Alien Loves Predator!

My new favorite webcomic.

It even gave me my quote of the day: "I figure the less I open my mouth, the more of a chance I have to score." An alien said that. GET IT?!?! Haw haw haw!

Supreme Technical Chaos Accomplishment!

The new Nyarlathotep, The Crawling Chaos EP, A self-contemplating shadow, being a collection of five tracks inspired by and incidental to Caitlin R. Kiernan's new short novel The Dry Salvages is DONE!

I got the last two tracks from siliconedreamer today, and put the audio portion of the CD together in about...oh, two minutes. That was the easy part: mastering the tracks was simple, arranging them was simpler, and putting together an audio ISO via Nero was simplest of all. But then came the difficult part: creating the autorun/multimedia stuff for the CD as well. inmostlight helped a great deal with that, instructing me in the basics of using autorun.inf files and stuff like that, and aRvin helped a good bit too in helping me figure out the best way to put together something that a Mac will be able to deal with. Yet another reason why I think Mac's suck ass: they can't do autorun stuff. At least,not easily. From what I read on the Net to supplement what my homeboyz told me, the QuickTime feature that let you automatically launch stuff like, say, a link to a website upon CD insertion was deleted from the QuickTime code because of a virus outbreak or something like that....So, at any rate, the autorun feature on the CD which will automatically load a little redirect webpage that will take you to the actual website will own work on Windows machines--but Mac users aren't out in the cold, though, because you should still be able to navigate to the CD, find the autorun.html file, and double-click it, then off you go!

Man...figuring out how to create "CD Extra" or "Enhanced CD" types of discs was a PAIN IN MY FUCKING ASS. There are about 75 different ways to do it, and each method either involves some kind of ultra-expensive piece of proprietary software or some serious compatibility issues that would ultimately render the CDs damnear useless. Luckily, though, I stumbled across what may be the best way of producing such a CD easily and effectively on my third try. I don't know if it will actually work, yet, because even though I've tested out the master CD on every CD player and computer in my house, I still want to run it through a number of other systems this weekend to be goddamn 190% sure that it will play in virtually everything.

Then...off to the printers! By which time the actual companion website will probably be mostly done, as well.

So listen up, peeps: if anyone wants a copy of this EP along with the limited edition hardcover version of Cait's novel The Dry Salvages (which is so fucking awesome: it's like Supernova or Event Horizon rewritten by Lovecraft), get on over to the Subterranean Press Website and order one of the $40 limited hardcovers NOW. They are almost sold out! So strike now while the iron is hot.

On the other hand...if you just want to EP, copies should be available around town in about a week or two, so I'll keep y'all posted.

This EP marks somewhat of a change from the usual vein of Nyarlathotep, The Crawling Chaos stuff. It's a lot more ambient...a lot more mechanical and futuristic--which you'd expect, since it's inspired by a hardcore sci-fi novel--but it also marks a major leap forward in the Crawling Chaos sound since we've all been using new equipment to compose it and master it. Thanks to the wonders of Absynth, Renoise, Cubase SX 2, Soundtrack, and a shitload of softsynths, this is probably our most technically advanced and eerie work yet. The perfect musical accompaniment to floating in the interstellar void in a leaky spacesuit with only 17.5 minutes of air left....