Remembrance Day

Yesterday, our regular trip to Congleton to sing and play in the Good Vibrations morning in the library, then a drive to Knutsford and home late in much traffic.

I heard that my father had a lung infection, so Deb and I went to see him in hospital the evening. He was awake and aware, seemed quite healthy, more alert and able than the previous time I saw him. I thanked him for everything he's done for me over the years, the things I've never thanked him for; for showing me oil painting as a child. For showing me how to make Airfix planes, for showing me how to use the woodworking tools. For allowing me to use his easel from 2007 or 2008 - I didn't ask. It wasn't in use so I just appropriated it. There were more recent times when he might have found use for it, when, in his later Parkinson's years he once again started to paint, and where I ignored his working. I thanked him for this computer, an expensive 50th birthday present which has been transformational to me, to what I could do. I never said thank you at the time, barely a glance in return, barely offering any help with online forms or internet things that he needed help with. I did the minimum and grudgingly. I said sorry. I spoke many thanks and sorrows previously unsaid that I should have said before. I was lucky to have that opportunity.

Deb and I were planning on visiting this afternoon instead of last light, but we did so as well. Last night I asked if he'd like us to bring a radio, and he mouthed yes, even if he was unable to speak. We brought him a radio today but he was semi-conscious with a raised heart rate, seemingly too weak. We were unable to make contact.

My angers have turned into sorrows, my annoyances into guilt, and lost love.

This morning, I worked a little on the sheet music for Remembrance Service, the full title is Remembrance Service For Those Who Died Homeless Postponed. An album half of instrumentals, but suffused with memories, with remembrance of the unknown and unseen. For much of my life, he was that to me, despite us sharing this house for all of my life. He hurt me too much, so I ignored and avoided him in revenge. Yesterday was Remembrance Day. Today I know that I will mark his memory in ways my mother will not. At times I hated him, for long times. At times I think he knew this. How cruel and foolish I was. I wish he could know how much I love him now, and at least, when we spoke yesterday, I had the chance to finally say so. I can but hope that he knew this, that he knows this, too late though it was.

Owl Mask

A day of work on the owl mask. I fitted the elastics a few days ago, now to cover everything with a little plaster, then feathers, more paint, and a beak made from a triangular fold of plastic drinks bottle.

All of my thoughts, however, are of my poor father in hospital.

Argus v1.70

A trip, with my brother and Deborah, to see my father in hospital today. How lovely the hospital staff are, so kind and professional at every level. His condition is serious, his stroke devastating. The situation is so sad.

At home, worked on Argus, some reasonably big upgrades and fixes.

Amiga Music Videos Day 4

A full, 12-hour, day of work on the Amiga videos. First, rendering each in Argus. Each of the 38 videos took about 7 minutes. Then, converting those into 8000kbps videos for YouTube (Argus saves out only in images, a string of jpg files).

At this point I decided to file all of the tracks as an album, 'The Scorpius Games'. This makes sense as it's all music, and a complete collection of 38 tunes, neatly organised chronologically. Of course, this meant (and means, the process is not complete) more filing work, proper titles for everything (this helped unify the style), and assigning ISRC codes. I'll not release the album in any commercial way, not in the foreseeable future at least, but it's nice to have this large collection of music filed correctly.

Then, uploading each to YouTube, and checking the text and subtitles. Then filing the Argus files, and building 3000kbps videos for archiving. Each of these processes took a few minutes, so there was hardly any time to stop or pause.

The first video will become public on 21st January 2027. Music from each game will appear in chronological order, with new a game featured every Thursday and Monday at 18:00 GMT; thus music from the last of the 20 games, Blade, will appear on Monday the 29th of March.

Of course, at all times my thoughts are with my father. My mother has already started to throw away his things. My brother will visit here tomorrow.

Amiga Music Videos Day 3, My Father

Deb drove me to Castle Park Arts Centre in Frodsham first thing to deliver 3 paintings for their open exhibition, then to Tŷ Pawb to deliver 'Punishment of the Sun' there.

My mother was visiting my father at the time. It seems that he is in a vegetative state with sever brain damage due to his stroke. I've spent much of today reflecting on our relationship that never was, my memories, the past. The situation is so sad, but I feel stoic and calm. Fate deals its hand.

It's odd that I find myself, again, at this time of death and sadness writing about the computer game Zamzara, this time due to the Amiga game videos. The name of my game Arazmax was inspired by the title of that game, and my game Sentinel (also known as Hideous) was inspired by the game itself. The Zamzara music means, to me, the death of our former cat Felix, and I found myself listening to it, for the first time in years and by chance, when my father took an overdose earlier this year. Zamzara, from Samsara, the cycle of life.

Of course, my father knows nothing about that game, and knows nothing about me. We've lived in the same house for all of my life, 53 years, yet have never had a conversation. Occasionally he may ask me to do something for him, and occasionally I ask for his help, regarding a power tool perhaps, but we have never exchanged many words. He doesn't know, didn't know of even simple things like my intolerance of milk, which foods I like or don't like. He knew nothing about any of my friends, failures or accomplishments. A photograph of myself being awarded the Grosvenor Open prize was, is, framed and hung on the wall. My mother said he was proud of this, which moved me. I never really liked that photograph, I was nervous and in somewhat melancholy mood that day. Yet, his glimpse at the photo was perhaps the only point of contact we had. He saw the photograph in silence. He never in his like spoke to me about his parents, upbringing, family, or about anything at all really.

Generally I was and remain afraid of him, always anxious if he should be in the same room. Terrified even to make a sound near him, terrified of any sound he might make. I never sat in the same room as him. I started painting in 2004, when he had stopped, and used his easel. My childhood memory of his oil paints gave me no fear of them, a happy reminiscence. I wouldn't be the artist I am without him. For my 50th birthday he bought me this PC, something I couldn't afford and badly needed, a life-changing gift for me. I never thanked him. He never knew his much his gift meant to me.

I wrote some words about him this afternoon, then worked on the Amiga videos, created caption files and thumbnail images for them. All is ready for rendering, I think.

Amiga Music Videos Day 2

A full day animating the 40-or-so Amiga music videos. The first half of the day was customising the FFMpeg scripts and YouTube text. I've added quite a lot of interesting facts about each game, information that only I can supply. I could make this text a series of captions on the videos, as this is the sort of information that appears over music videos on pop-music shows.

The animation part consists of a series of variations on a standard scene of spinning cube, the faces textures with an image of the Amiga title screen, bordered by a second 'neon' cube, and various backgrounds. These have taken until 20:00 and could be called complete in a first draft, though I'm bound to want more changes. Many of these tunes were designed to loop, and thus end suddenly. I've decided to fade them out.

Amiga Music Videos Day 1

A full day of work on the music videos for my old Amiga games. First, I added a feature to Prometheus to export the notes (in float format: 0 for the lowest possible note, 1 for the highest), and volumes of each note. This might be useful for future videos.

Then created two new 3D objects, a top-less, bottom-less cube, and a cube with oversized faces which makes it easy to make a neon 'glowing' cube. Then, lots of experiments to get a look for these videos. One had a spinning cube object in the centre and web of hollow neon cubes, each inside the other. These spinning cubes lit up with each note on one of the four Protracker tracks. Alas, pretty though it was, it was also overwhelming and confusing. Many notes are trigged a lot, and some sustained notes are hardly ever triggered, so the images didn't really match the music, as well as being too bright and too flashy.

Simpler was better. I remembered the nice effect from 'Joy From a Machine Code Perspective'. This evoked the look of Protracker, so I re-created the look using an image from the Protracker I remember. I added a spinning cube in the middle with the game title page, and added a neon cage.

I can change the colours per title. The whole thing swirls and moves like a rollercoaster. It is pretty, but I expect it will be largely be the same for each tune. This is perhaps best, as 40 videos will be a huge amount of work if each is customised too finely. I also thought today that it might be better if these videos were on my music channel rather than my Cornutopia Software channel. This is primarily music after all, and perhaps a few people who remember those old games might discover my contemporary music. These are 'official' music videos, and there is no channel for Scorpius Software, so they may be out of place alongside my PC game trailers.

This means, however, that these videos must appear after Nightfood, so in 2027. This gives me more time to tweak and refine these. The raw rendering, conversion, uploading may take more than a day in pure computing terms, such is the effort of creating frame-by-frame Argus videos.

I have a lot of folders to create, a lot of images, a lot of Thumbnails, a lot of YouTube text to format.

My father remains in a distant hospital, still apparently sedated. The house feels eerily quiet. We are awaiting his transfer to our local hospital, which will make a visit much easier.

Prometheus v4.00, Owl Mask

Already a full day. First bought and fitted some insulation to one of the windows, as the winter approaches. Then updated Prometheus (to 4.00, something of a milestone number) to fix a change made in v3.98 which affected the import of sections into Argus. A minor change for such a big number, the 300th update actually, as the first version was 2.00...

Then sent a new Nightfood track to BBC Introducing, and added the album (and a few others) to my website. After that, work on the Barn Owl Mask for Fall in Green. It's now pretty heavy, loaded with Sculptamold, plaster and papier maché:

Ignore the stalk on top and pink object behind, the mask is resting on a plaster pumpkin, I had no other way to gently cradle its convex shape. Then, to town to get some elastic for it, as the original light elastic is clearly not adequate. Once back I attached two pieces, but this, alas, has partly destroyed the edges of the mask on that photo, so I'll need to fix and repair when its dry.

Watched Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure last night, for the first time in decades. Still wonderful. I've only seen it once before. I noted that Beethoven there was introduced as liking Mozart's Requiem, Handel's Messiah, and Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet. I agree, although the Messiah is boring, so I only have the requiem and Slippery in my collection!