Birdphex Twin

Birds tweet beautiful melodies, but they sing them too fast for us to hear properly. I slowed down some audio of birds tweeting that I accidentally recorded in my back garden to discover a lovely, simple, catchy melody hidden within. I don't know what type of bird it was, but it was singing the same melody over and over again, altering the pattern slightly each time. I slowed it down even further to find a haunting ambient drone. Whilst it is true that you can slow down almost any sound to get a haunting ambient soundscape, there is no denying the melody, that sounds almost too familiar, too coherent to be coming from a bird.

Radio Shit

Hey whore-O. How are you doing? Sometimes I forget you exist. You seem to serve as an outlet for stuff that isn't important. I like to separate my stuff into different outlet streams based on how important they are. In an ideal world I would post everything I do on the front page of fat-pie, I would be honest about exactly what I was up to and therefore be able to update all the time. But I feel this bullshit kind of pressure, like I need to live up to something, like I can't post something that isn't really that impressive.....and so we have Whore-O.

Today's Whore-O is about some radio bits. I have been filling some tiny little slots (15 minutes) on Ant and Jim's DOPPLER EFFECT: a show on Doncaster local radio. The first two shows are just like mixtapes really; a bunch of songs I chose, some strange sounds and a little bit of talking.

#1 - Psychedelic/Lo-fi/Fuzzy
#2 - Punk/New wave/Indie

The shows after this have been as WallerFM's GRAHAM and TERRY, a parody of local radio DJs.

#3 - Graham and Terry "Thanks"
#4 - Graham and Terry "Dry Mouth"
#5 - Graham and Terry "Crisps"

There will be a few more Graham and Terry episodes then it will go back to just me, as Crust is currently exploring the far east. You can listen to these each week live on the SineFM website no matter country you live in. Doppler Effect is on Thursdays at 10pm-midnight. Our bits are usually about 25 minutes in, but you should listen to the whole thing because it's a damn good show.

Expert Village Idiots #2

(Title stolen from the comments, thanks nomardll769)

If Expert Village were a garden tool, it'd be EVERY garden tool, welded together to create a gargantuan, tangled, metallic monstrosity. In theory, it would be infinitely useful, but in reality it is infinitely useless. Since the last entry, I have stumbled upon at least another Whore-O's worth of useful wonder, in fact there's probably enough material for another fifty.

For those unfamiliar; Expert Village make instructional videos for Youtube. They have posted hundreds of thousands of videos on every subject imaginable. People often ask me "are you sure it's not all a big joke?". It's a good point, it could be, but after nearly 140,000 videos, I think any comedy collective would be a little disappointed with the response and lack of comedic recognition.

For example, Elliott Kwong here is teaching us how to shoot a spit wad.



Elliott tackles a silly subject, but maintains serious throughout and gives some helpful tips. Expert Village know this is worthless, but it must make them money, right? Well, this particular video has 612 hits (over 2 years) which in youtube ads, equals less than £0.30p.

So what did I learn?: Expert Village don't refuse any videos, and Elliott's get rich quick scheme was a failure.

But Elliott needn't worry about money, because financial fear is a thing of the past, thanks to Emotional Freedom expert Jordan Savage:



It also works for headaches:



So what did I learn?: I deeply love and respect myself.

Now that you know how to spit, and are free of headaches, you probably feel like relaxing, having a drink, and pissing around with some boxes:



"It's not complicated, but can add a degree of complication to the routine." This man sure knows his stuff.

So what did I learn?: I learnt the phrase "if done big" which makes perfect sense if you think about it.

On the subject of lonely men with nothing to do; Matt Cail really likes Halloween. Using only experience as his guide, Matt solves the age old mystery: What if Trick-Or-Treaters can't get to your door?:



So what did I learn?: If I want stupid, ugly little kids at my door, asking for something for nothing then I have to fix my path and do the gardening. Doesn't sound like a great deal to me.

How many times have you been filling in a form or applying for a job, when a difficult question has arisen: "What's your life number?". You're stumped! There goes that job in upper management. You're disappointed in yourself and so you should be, because everyone has a life number, and all it takes is some birthday maths to make it magically appear. Assuming her audience is a slow child, Carmen Lynne explains:



So what did I learn?: Lou's boring and Carmen's been drinking cherry aid.

Digital lifestyle expert ROKOZXSCZ is very excited about his iPad. Being an expert on digital life, he teaches us how to unbox it. Don't watch any more than five seconds of this one.



So what did I learn?: I learnt so much that I couldn't possibly write it all down.

If you're wondering how Expert Village find all of these professionals, then you're in for a surprise. They're actually just robots, programmed for certain tasks. Here is an example of an Expert Village Robot that specialises in making crappy cardboard castles:



So what did I learn?: If you're rubbish at making cardboard castles and you have the most boring, monotonous voice in the world, you should combine those skills and call yourself an expert.

I've spent too much time over the last few days watching Expert Village and it does horrible things to my head. I find myself thinking in tutorials, speaking in my head as a Village Expert. This happens when doing the most banal of household tasks, and still I don't explain them well enough to be of any use. That's why this post must end here and never begin again. Most of the videos Expert Village release aren't laughably bad, they're just boring. Either that, or they're only funny if you know a lot about the subject in question.

So what did I learn overall?: Watching hundreds of Expert Village videos, and finding less than ten vaguely amusing ones isn't worth the time or effort.

Youtube's Auto Transcribe or "Confuse The Deaf"

I have to hand it to Google, not only do they provide countless unfathomably useful services for zero cost, they also continue to update these on a regular basis with futuristic new features beyond our wildest technological dreams. Google aren't afraid to release an ambitious new idea before it's been perfected, which is why we have "beta". The latest bullet of beautiful beta is Youtube's Auto-Transcribe system, which attempts to automatically subtitle videos using speech recognition. For anyone who's ever tried "Dragon Naturally Speaking" or other speech recognition software, you'll know that this is an area of technology man is far from mastering. Youtube's Auto-Transcribe system is no exception. It's a system so unbelievably flawed, so massively incorrect, what it comes up with is almost poetry.

The following of my videos have this option enabled. For the best results, mute your sound and click the CC button at the bottom right of the video, then select TRANSCRIBE AUDIO and let Google re-write the dialogue.

Burnt Face Man
Sock Lops
Men From Up The Stairs
Burnt Face Man 5
Music Mouth
Devvo!

This option doesn't seem to work for all videos. It couldn't understand Salad Fingers and didn't even try with Jerry Jackson. I do trust Google will improve it though, but until then, deaf people are going to be very confused.