December 6, 2008

Unter Null: The end of an era

Christian Decker wrote this in the early evening:
I’m a huge fan of Unter Null, and so I was sad today to hear that Erica is putting the Project on a hold:

I’ve decided that with this next Unter Null album, it will be my last foray into ebm/industrial/whatever (you may call it) music.

2009 is going to be the year of massive experimentation, and not letting problems like, oh, not having an orchestra at immediate hand, not having a multi-million dollar studio, not having an actual “band” but being a solo musician, hold things back.

I’ve sorely wanted to get away from this genre and scene for a while now. I support my friends’ bands, and there are a few bands I really really like in the industrial (umbrella term) genre, but it’s not the kind of music I listen to anymore or have for a long time. I don’t go to the clubs, not interested in club culture, and while a close-knit community can have its benefits, I am not enthused by the back-stabbing and horrendous “it’s a small world” of it all.

While Unter Null has been my main project for over 10 years, I’m definitely not quitting it, however my desire it to tread new grounds and explore new sounds and ways of creation.

My latest release with Stray has also noted a change in my desire for evolution and change. With the current production of the next Unter Null album, I’ve been finding it increasingly harder to maintain separation between the two projects because I’ve been finding myself drifting more towards “Stray”-like tracks – heavy on the melody and instrumentation, and less interested in the distorted 4/4 kicks and rahrah vocals.

Being my background is originally in classical music, I feel these days I’m somewhat losing touch with that and while music has always been grounds for catharsis for me, where I am at now is just not cutting it for me.

So, this is meant in no offense to any of my friends, to fellow musicians, or to my awesome fans. It’s just time to be moving on… to start the sound that has begun ;-)

<3 Erica

While this might not be the end of the Project yet, it means that we will be seeing a lot less of her :-(

*
Comments

July 19, 2008

Wikipedia frustration

Christian Decker wrote this terribly early in the morning:
Apparently I’m not the only one frustrated with the rules and relevance checks of Wikipedia “officials”:

The reason for my frustration is that I tried twice to add an article about a popular band in switzerland to the german Wikipedia version, but twice it was considered irrelevant. No problem so far, except that I was told that once they’d publish a CD and have 5′000 records sold they would be relevant… but hey, that’s bureaucratic germany… they can change their mind whenever they want.

So the article still isn’t online, though Des Koenigs Halunken have met all of the criteria to be in there… call it fair…

[Thanks for http://www.socialsignal.com/ for the Picture]

*
Comments

December 7, 2007

Nazi symbolism on Wikipedia

Christian Decker wrote this just before lunchtime:
This is typical for Germany. Always afraid to face their past and being in any way connected to it. Trying to hide it behind a hypocritical facade suing whoever gets too close and tries to discuss it:

There’s been no shortage of stories lately alleging that Wikipedia moderators have fascist tendencies, but a new case goes one step further. A German politician has filed charges against Wikipedia alleging that the worlds most famous UGC site promotes Nazism.

Katina Schubert, a deputy leader of the Left Party (Die Linke) told reporters that she had filed the charge on the grounds that Wikipedia’s German site contained too much Nazi symbolism with a particular fetish towards the Hitler Youth movement.

Schubert told Reuters (via SMH) that “The extent and frequency of the symbols on it goes beyond what is needed for documentation and political education…This isn’t about restricting freedom of opinion, it’s about examining what the limits are.”

Schubert went on to claim that there may be a Nazi plot afoot on Wikipedia itself: “There are signs neo-Nazis are trying to take advantage of such structures, and this needs to be stopped.”

Wikipedia Germany denied the allegations, saying that the imagery used was used for educational purposes. Use of Nazi symbols except for educational purposes is illegal in Germany.

And I’m not saying so because I sympathize with neo-Nazis, being german myself I’m convinced that we can’t just cover it all up, and prohibit everything, we have to liften the veil of secrecy the last generations have put on history. By hushing it all up we make the neo-Nazi even more attracting to young people.

*
Comments

November 12, 2007

Why am I blogging?

Christian Decker wrote this in the early morning:
This blog has been live for the last 2 years (it’s actually turning 2 next week) and I’ve been more or less active, posting new articles, trying to keep up with new events and trends and sometimes sprinkling in some personal posts. The blog has had it’s up and downs and sometimes I was successful with my publishings, especially in the more technical corner: And I think I can be pretty proud of most of them. Then again others weren’t as successful as I thought they might be… The problem is that after two years I’m starting to ask myself what the point in this is, take it as a mid life crisis for bloggers, blogging takes a lot of time, especially when you focus on technical articles and tutorials like I prefer to do, and I don’t have that time anymore. Maybe it will get better after the current semester, but the question is do I really want to go on and blog? Blogging has become some sort of obbligation, something I have to force myself into, it’s supposed to be fun, but as it is right now it isn’t. It’s more of a work.

*
Comments

October 25, 2007

Java, a retrospective

Christian Decker wrote this in the wee hours:

I’ve been a java programmer since it came out in 1995. My father discovered that I was writing small scripts for some computer games and asked me whether I was interested in learning a real programming language.

Java was easy enough that i could write programs for my day to day usage, my masterpiece being an HTTP-Proxy to be able to surf the web (remember the 56kbs modems? :D).

Java had a troubled story, loosing both the browser and the desktop as a platform it was soon banned to mobile phones and to the serverside, but it also brought us some great changes for which we should be grateful. For once they introduced a good set of standard libraries which i so sorely miss in other languages, and with java it suddenly was easy to put together great applications. ReadWriteWeb has a really good look at the history of java which i think everyone should have read, i certainly felt touched while reading it.

Java was and still is a revolutionary technology, so revolutionary that Sun Microsystems recently changed its Stock Symbol from SUNW to JAVA.

*
Comments