I mainly worked on 90s Japanese cars, I primarily had MX5s and 200SXs which were mostly alright to work with as they did have minimal electronics. However still getting into the world of management and ECUs was always more complex.

I’ve been out of the world of cars for more than 10 years now as I simply can’t afford to run a car and also afford rent / to eat these days which I have come to terms with but I would never want to work on these horrible modern cars where everything has so many sensors and electronic dependencies.

The Nissan NATS system could be an absolute bastard, yeh xD

Mine was both the most fun car as well as the worst car I owned.

It was a Nissan 200SX S14. It was around 320bhp SR20 with uprated turbo, external waste gate, screamer pipe that vented upwards out of the bonnet and would occasionally spit flames through, solid engine mounts, welded diff, stripped interior among other similar supporting mods.

It was well built and was an absolutely visceral driving experience, it was insanely fun and also scary at times to drive and I fucking loved it when it was working.

However the Nissan immobiliser would just randomly decide when it would and wouldn’t kick in. Sometimes it would start no problems at all and other times it took me and hour or more of cycling the ignition on and off. I got stranded places a few times where it would just refuse to start then I would have to return the next day and it would start first try no problems. It just had those electronic gremlins that I just couldn’t figure out the actual issue and it was insanely infuriating.

It was the epitome of a love hate relationship and without those starting problems would have been one of my favourite cars but I just never figured it out and ended up selling it on never having solved the issues. Was such a shame.

Something different - Lorn - Just listen to everything xD

To stay more hip hop

Cult of the Damned and all of their side projects, Lee Scott is a fucking son and pretty much everything he touches is gold. My particular favourite is the “Cult Mountain” side project.

Cthulu Nigiri maybe?

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

Journey - This game brought me to a sort of Zen, it is calm and peaceful and was just a wonderful experience that didn’t out stay its welcome. By the end of it I just felt like I had had a nice uplifting experience.

Fallout games - Yeh this may not seem like an uplifting game experience for most people and I would generally agree but on a personal level I do find them uplifting by the end of them for the following reason. I have always picked up the modern fallout games when I have been quitting one substance or another in the past. There is something about the desolation of the people and the environment within those games with mirrors the desolation I felt withing myself at these times in my life. Working through the stories draws me in and helps me forget about whatever it is my body is telling me I “need” even if it is only for a few hours at a time. Multiple times though these games have helped me get through those feelings and so therefore for me they have a certain uplifting quality, like a weird unexpected safe space.

Yeh fair enough, just thought I’d give some feedback from my perspective, I appreciate not everyone uses it in the same way.

Either way I’ll carry on posting occasionally :D

Pretty much. They still run bandcamp Friday too when the artists get all the money for sales so I generally stack up my wishlist and try to make my purchases on that one Friday a month.

I browse and occasionally contribute as you know but I really think the community would benefit from some organisation in the form of post title rules over there.

Having a standardised “artist - track title” format or even “artist - track title (genre)” seen as it is such a varied selection over there would really make the browsing experience a lot better than a massive list of just song names in my opinion.

I was going to make a post on the community about this but seen as I see you here I thought I’d just make the suggestion directly to you. I think it would be a positive thing for the community going forward :)

Despite being aware of it for a quarter of a century I have never used RSS although I probably should.

Bandcamp is slowly getting worse but depending on your core genre interests for me it is still by far the best choice.

I have a large list on bandcamp that I follow to try and stay up with as many releases as I can, also following relevant genre “tags” on there to get recommendations from artists I may not know about. The genre tags can be hit and miss though due to artists often being unable to tag their work properly.

I’ll also listen to shows on SoundCloud and will search out tracks and new artists I hear on there. I’ll also occasionally check the Juno charts if I have run out of new music to listen to and in the last year started building up a follow list on Spotify to check new releases there that I may have missed from all the other avenues.

No worries. If you want some more label suggestions or find something you particularly like and would like more similar please feel free to PM me and I’ll happily help however I can to point you in the direction of more!

Cool, thank you. I may try a Linux distro again soon and try to get Traktor DJ working but the last time I tried (admittedly quite a few years ago) the audio latency was far too high for DJing with so I had to return to windows.

I am aware of mixxx as a DJ software and I periodically try it out to see how it is advancing (my last try being a few months ago) but it is just not there yet for me. Hopefully one day!

Hey!

Sorry somehow I missed this response in my inbox!

Whilst I did listen to some of the old stuff around the time of its inception it wasn’t my primary music focus so I’m not too knowledgeable about things I can recommend for older stuff.

I would suggest having a dig through some of the labels that have been around for a long time. People like System Music, Deep Medi, Sentry Records or Nice Up Records to name a few.

The skream track you linked is more dubwise style having a heavier dub reggae influence which isnt really my jam either but Nice Up Records seem to concentrate more on that kind of sound so may be a good place to start.

If you liked the Mystic State album linked I would highly recommend checking out the label D-BLK, they have been releasing a lot of really good music that is just a bit different to everything else. This is one of my favourites from recently by Shu.

Sorry I can’t be more specific with any recommendations as I love to spread the dubstep love but I’m not so knowledgeable about the older stuff as I really started immersing myself properly in this scene more around 2016-ish.

I hope you can at least find something you like amongst what I have linked!

You could also check out Swamp 81 which is Loefahs label but that isn’t really dubstep, they put out a lot more 130bpm, left field bass sort of stuff, still some great stuff in there but again not my wheelhouse as much so I’m not as knowledgeable even though I do like a little trip into 130 every now and then :D

I have no idea what LTSC is but I shall have a bit of a search around after work to see if it is something I can benefit from. Thank you :)

I wish I could switch to Linux but sadly I can’t (one of the main things I use a computer for won’t work on Linux) so I’ll be using windows 10 beyond eol and forever into the foreseeable future and I don’t see native instruments making a Linux version any time soon. I email them at least once a year asking about it in the hope they one day fucking do it!

Nah I’ve never had issues with latency and don’t play anything competitive I’ve always just prefered wired to be honest. My favourite controllers were the wired 360 controllers that got rid of the massive bump at the back and were a really nice weight. I wish they did an official modern wired only version.

Yeh it was the text that was throwing me. I’ve customised my own controllers with different coloured buttons etc before so that part was easily explainable but the text is professionally added and I never knew that was a thing people did (seems like a waste of money to me)

Turns out it is a design labs custom one as per the other responses though. Learn something new every day!

Yeh this one cost me £4 and came with a recharchable battery pack. I’ve always used my controller wired (playing on PC) but now maybe I’ll try wireless!

Cheers man for the reply. Yeh it seems like this is the case I just didn’t know that it was a thing.

I’ve bought coloured buttons and modded my own controllers before but it was the text on the bottom that was throwing me as it has been professionally added! I didn’t know that design lab was a thing :)