Hardly educational. Hardly a game.

Three full years since the release of his critically acclaimed experimental album This Binary Universe, BT made his highly anticipated return to dancefloors everywhere by unveiling a brand new single, “The Rose Of Jericho,” from his forthcoming full-length album due in fall. The single as well as some remixes are available to download at beatport.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve written music that I could feature in one of my Laptop Symphony sets. Not only is this track a floor-filling monster, it really features my current electronic music inspirations – minimal beats with big strong melodic and harmonic content. This track rips the A** off a dance floor. I’ve played it from Korea to Brazil, and it’s the biggest track I’ve had to play out for years.”

Rose Of Jericho Part 1 Rose of Jericho (BT’s Deus ex Machina Album Mix) Rose of Jericho (Sultan & Ned Shepard Remix) Rose of Jericho (Robbie Rivera New Juicy Music Mix)	Rose Of Jericho Part 2 Rose of Jericho (Adam K & Soha Remix) Rose of Jericho (Virtual Vault Remix) Rose of Jericho (Robbie Rivera Juicy Miami After Hours Remix)

BT, born Brian Transeau, is much more than a DJ. By consistently balancing creative and memorable songwriting, sonic innovation and the latest technology for a cutting-edge yet organic sound, BT has become one of the most revolutionary artists and sought after producers on the scene. His multifaceted career ranges from scoring Pixar films, composing intricate scores with eighty-piece orchestras for films like The Fast and the Furious, remixing classics for Madonna, Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos and Seal, and crafting perfect pop hooks for *NSYNC.

Follow BT at http://btmusic.com/

The next version of the award-winning Web browser just got released. If you have not made the switch yet, now is a great time to jump on the bandwagon. Its the safer and more featured alternative to Internet Explorer. Your bookmarks can automatically be imported to Firefox when you make the switch. There is nothing to lose, give it a try today!

Nvidia recently added support for Ambient Occlusion to their new drivers, and I have to say that I am pretty pleased. Ambient Occlusion adds realism to scenes by reducing the intensity of ambient lights on surfaces blocked by surrounding objects. It enhances depth perception by providing a soft shadow effect for objects based on their placement in the scene.

Standard lighting models compute the color of a surface based on its properties and the lights in a scene. Objects that are in the path of a light cast shadows, otherwise, their presence does not affect the lighting of other objects. Ambient occlusion improves this model by accounting for the dimming caused by objects that block out ambient light. An example of this is the junction where a wall and a ceiling meet; while no direct shadows are cast, the corner nevertheless appears darker. Ambient occlusion simulates this phenomenon, along with all other cases where objects are close enough to block out ambient light.

Currently only 22 titles are enabled with ambient occlusion profiles, but they managed to hit most of the games I am currently playing on the PC anyway such as Fallout 3, Team Fortress 2, and Counter Strike Source. Hopefully more support for other games will be coming soon.

The following 22 titles are enabled with ambient occlusion profiles:

• Assassin’s Creed
• BioShock
• Call of Duty 4
• Call of Duty 5
• Call Of Juarez
• Company Of Heroes
• Counter-Strike Source
• Dead Space
• Devil May Cry 4
• F.E.A.R. 2
• Fallout 3
• Farcry 2
• Half Life 2 series
• Left 4 Dead
• Lost Planet: Colonies
• Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
• Mirror’s Edge
• Portal
• Team Fortress 2
• Unreal Tournament 3
• World In Conflict
• World of Warcraft

I went to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last night with my friend, and decided to wait a day before writing a quick post about it. I wanted to see if my unfavorable gut reaction would change after having a little bit of time to reflect on it and discuss it with others. It has not.

Let me start off by saying that I really enjoyed the first Transformers film. It was an extremely entertaining movie with amazing special effects. Sure the plot was dumb, but it was based on children’s toys after all. I am totally capable of enjoying a dumb movie as long as the rest of it is entertaining. However, Revenge of the Fallen is so beyond dumb that it was no longer enjoyable. Scene after scene I found my self thinking “this is extremely retarded”. The plot, the constant dirty jokes, and the dialog were all very poorly done. Even most of the action scenes were insensible. But aside from all that, I think the greatest problem the movie has is that it has lost the charm/novelty that the first film had. All that the first Transformers had going for it was the crazy special effects and the “cool factor” of seeing giant robots fight each other for the first time, but all of that is gone now. The CG looks exactly the same as it did in the first film, no better or worse, but no longer special. Also, all of the action scenes had a very “been there, done that” feel to them. I just wanted the movie to show me something new and cool that would get me excited the way that the first movie did, and it eventually does at the very end. The final battle was spectacular, and blows away anything seen in the first film, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that up until that point I was barely entertained. In the end, I would have a hard time recommending this move.

On a bit of a side note, was anyone else extremely surprised by the amount of blatant racism in this movie? The most obvious example are the two “Jar Jar Bots” Skids and Mudflap who are disguised as compact hatchbacks, are constantly fighting, and talk in bad Ebonics about how dumb each other are. One of them even has a gold tooth, and when they were asked if they can read, they both say that they don’t know how to. There are a number of other examples, such as one scene that had a stereotypical bucktoothed black guy. I don’t think I have ever seen a movie that was so openly racist. I am honestly shocked that that sort of stuff can be in a movie these days.