Grimaceworks diversification

Hi all. Not been blogging much this last week or so because I've been ridiculously depressed and I didn't want to pollute this space with too much bile.

Good news today though: I have finally given 'Grimaceworks' a more coherent online presence. At the moment it's basically a list of some of my musical projects; I'm not sure how this will develop as time goes on - I'll probably stick something about my freelance availability on there too.

The hard bit was getting all the subdomain stuff working right. I have bitten the bullet and upgraded this site from Rails 1.2.3 to 2.1.0 (so I could use all the latest plugins, gitly features,and because if I can do it for the BBC then I can do it for myself) - I'm don't have many automated tests for this site, I'm ashamed to admit, so if you spot anything that's broken, please tell me!

Go to grimaceworks.com to see the new hub.

YouTube Parasites

I'm really starting to get sick of some of the stuff people send around on YouTube.

Today I was sent a video of somebody falling two stories out of a window, entitled "Idiot falls out of window playing wii". The justification for sending this video was "to celebrate the start of the Olympics we are trying to win a viral competition with this terrible accident".



Notice how I am deliberately not linking to this video. It wasn't funny, it didn't say anything, it was just a video of an accident.

Another one that recently wound me up was the Justice video for "Stress" which is remarkable only for utterly relinquishing any responsibility to any sort of morality - it's a nasty, ugly piece of ghetto tourism, promoting a bland, generic piece of music. But it was sent to me without caveat or comment, just because it was clearly 'different' in some way.



People, you need to start putting filters on this shit. Your attention is a very important resource, and one that can easily be infiltrated by parasitic rubbish. We should be teaching children how to protect themselves from memes that take attention without giving anything back. When you see something vaguely interesting on the internet, don't just blindly send it on to your friends, think about whether it deserves to thrive as a memetic organism. If it's just nasty just keep it to yourself.

Examine these things in terms of beauty, humour, strangeness, insight or whatever, but never send something on merely because it is 'remarkable'. Be a bit more sophisticated and think about what sort of remarkability you want to spread into this world.

Psychogenic Fugue State on CD!

I now have some CDs for sale. I have a limited stock of 200 - perhaps these will be significant some day... ;)














You can buy one of these via PayPal or Google Checkout now! :)

Buy with PayPal:

Buy with Google Checkout:

Let me know if the postage and packing price seems wrong - PayPal and Google are a bit fiddly to test!

Back to work...

I have just come to the end of three productive months during which I haven't had to worry about money.

I feel the need to summarise my progress before knuckling down with a bit of freelance programming work. So what did I do?

I finished two albums: a sad one, Psychogenic Fugue State, and a happy one, Majectical Electical (see my releases page). This included doing a fair bit of promotion and creative print artwork to get CDs produced.

I made a few videos (the Eraserhead remix, Clonie, Two Girls One Geek - see my YouTube channel).

I created a Max/MSP path to make my Korg MicroKontrol work like a nice drum machine when I play live.

I did a lot of work on L1na (see myspace.com/l11na) before some... complications... undermined the project's feasibility.

I met lots of new people to work with (Lisa Lore, Sputniko!, Rebecca Keatley, amongst one or two others).

I made a DVD of my best 'video compositions' and sent it around last week. Hopefully somebody will take notice.

I feel like I've done enough Michael Forrest stuff to be going on with now - I have plenty of recorded material to promote, although I suspect I will be more successful with something collaborative (and hence less perfectionist and earnest). I have lots more ideas for new projects anyway.

But now I must earn my rent.

The absolutely infuriating stupidity of negative thinking

One of the most important features of human intelligence - that which sets us apart from other animals - is our highly developed ability to imagine hypothetical future situations.


An exceptionally bad habit, and one to which I unwittingly subscribed for most of my life, is to dwell on unwanted hypothetical situations. By doing this, we apply the full force of our imagination to the pursuit of unhappiness. Even when things go well we get trapped in ideas that will ultimately undo us - the negative outcomes seem more compelling so we dwell and in doing so make those things happen.

"I never thought I'd fall in love again yet suddenly I have found woman of my dreams and she loves me like I love her and understands me better than I understand myself. She wants to make me happy. But it will probably rain."

By silently chanting "don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up" you program yourself to fuck it up. You can't define a situation in terms of what it is not. What is the opposite of 'fucking it up'? There isn't one! Only an infinity of possibilities. So explore those possibilities instead of programming yourself to do the one thing you know you definitely don't want.

If you stumble upon some convoluted way in which everything could go wrong, don't just stop there. Instead, think some more until you find a convoluted but equally realistic positive fantasy. And then focus on that. You're equally likely to make a happy fantasy come true. And it will be a more pleasant journey all round.

Listen To The Stereo.mp3

This is just me playing. No post-production ? everything as out of tune and out of time as when I played it. Still, it has jaunt.

GET FLASH	Listen To The Stereo.mp3

Two Girls One Geek (Michael Forrest)

http://grimaceworks.com/mf/twogirlsonegeek

What happens when two cute girls come to play my instruments? Why I video them and then use Ableton Live's video manipulation capabilities to make a track out of the footage!

I guess I'm just shy...

Getaway: A Story In Two Pictures