|
home :
about :
rss :
spamgourmet
: otherdog studio
animals : anything : elsewhere : food : music : reading : restaurants : tech |
| drum test | 2010-02-14 00:36 UTC |
|
here's something made out of my attempts to [play and] record drums. Little scrap of sound
player goes here if you have javascript and flash
here's the mp3
|
|
| /music discuss (0) permanent link | |
| demon sheep | 2010-02-09 00:51 UTC |
|
Carly Fiorina's campaign ad is just too funny:
wow. Carly, I hate to say it, but we're not laughing with you... |
|
| /anything discuss (1) permanent link | |
| i have no desire to listen to music i have to pay for | 2010-02-03 14:43 UTC |
|
There, I said it - I haven't bought a CD (other than from an artist directly at a show) for ages and I've never bought a song on iTunes, but I haven't been making/downloading/listening to unlawful mp3s either - I simply don't have the urge to listen to music that is managed by record companies. Why?
1) I'm too busy making my own crappy music. I get a bigger thrill listening to a song that I just made (at least for a day or two) than I ever got from an album or CD, even if the song/performance/recording sucks, and it usually does. I'm also busy recording my friends and relatives, and occasionally, mixing stuff. 2) I'm too busy listening to *your* music - admittedly, when your music sucks as bad as mine usually does, I don't listen to it more than once (and for those tunes of mine which you are unlucky enough for me to post, I expect the same thing is going on), but some of them are really good, and I listen to them frequently, and you all say that's OK for me to do. 3) Somewhere along the line the identity factor of the musician (and the fans) broke down some for me - when I was a kid, Led Zeppelin could have released the sound of a turd hitting the ground and I would have loved it because it was from them, and somebody I or my friends had never heard of could have released *the best song ever*, and I wouldn't have liked it very much, because I hadn't heard of him/her (and neither had my friends) - this effect is still present a little for me, but not nearly as much. I dunno if that's age/experience, or a number of factors, including the complete distrust of the music industry (and acute disrespect for major labels, and, by extension, those who sign with them, at least a little). I'm not seeing it in my 15 year old son, at all, btw. 4) I spend all my money on recording equipment and instruments (even though I should be spending it on lessons) - much more than I ever dreamed of spending on licensing music, btw. 5) In summary, I spend all my music energy making/listening/discussing home grown music. I don't have time or energy left over to see what Universal/Sony/EMI/Warner have for me to buy from them - truly, they can stick it up their #*(*@. Do they have better musicians/producers/studios/engineers/etc. than me? You bet, and I'll never catch up! Do I care? Not really. (disclosure: my wife listens to Pandora and youtube videos, and I often hear what's playing) I just had to say it. I think it was the Emmy (oops.. Grammy) awards the other night. |
|
| /music discuss (1) permanent link | |
| the cloud | 2010-02-02 21:32 UTC |
|
wow - I haven't done a tech post in months...
I started this blog almost 6 years ago, and I was definitely late to the party with regard to blogging. I'm still doing it "old school" - using a largely obsolete perl program (blosxom) and hosting on my own (leased) server, where I have root access and directly control everything. I can back up (or not) as I please, and, without a court order (or breach of contract), no one can really shut down my stuff except me - not that they'd want to (or care enough to think about whether they'd want to). I've participated in more mainstream social networking sites/services, and they've been great - I've reconnected with people I thought I'd never touch base with again. A friend of mine from Omaha with a lot of energy cajoled everyone into signing up on friendster, and many old friends have had myspace pages for a while. I resisted facebook until another Houston friend talked me into it maybe a year and a half ago. Then I got my wife to sign up - more goodness all around. I've been reluctant to *do* much with the accounts on these services, though. It occurs to me that I don't have nearly as much control over the content that I create there as a practical matter, irrespective of what the applicable terms of service are (and they may or may not be all that friendly themselves). If this box blows up I can either a) restore somewhere else from backup or b) kick myself for not backing up regularly enough, but not so on these services, and of course, not so with any sort of "cloud computing" resource. I even resisted webmail for years, but finally caved and started using gmail (it's been a while now) - have you ever been locked out of gmail? I have - just for a few hours here and there - never sure why, and google won't tell you - they just quietly re-enable after some time. My guess is that there's an automated shoot-first-ask-questions-later sort of bot, followed on by a human review, which corrects its mistakes. When you're locked out, your stuff is gone... Google has an initiative to make it easy to back up information from their cloud - the Data Liberation Front - kind of old news - caught my eye immediately, but did I follow up? nope.. I will now, though. |
|
| /tech discuss (0) permanent link | |
| i hate books | 2010-01-22 14:56 UTC |
|
a confession: I hate books, and I always have. Not that they're a whole bunch of words, thoughts, stories, etc. compiled into one thing, and that they've been the primary means of developing and maintaining the collective brain of humanity across generations and distances, in large part creating the utterly kickass lifestyle that I enjoy today, when compared to the nasty/brutish/short existence of my forebearers - that part's fine. It's the physical aspect that sucks to me. You don't have to look too hard to find someone who revels in the paper-ness of books and savors holding them and smelling them and thumbing through them and all that - I just don't get it.
I didn't like them in the late 70's and early 80's when I did most of my paperback reading. I remember the frustration of holding the thing and keeping the pages from curling out of sight, especially toward the front or the back of the book - and as it got dark, I didn't like having to hold uncomfortable positions to keep the words in range of little night lights. I hated losing my place - either due to my bookmark dropping out in between reading sessions, or me dropping the book - and having to spend a minute or more to find it when I pick the book up. I didn't like textbooks in high school, college, or law school - a low point was when I slipped and fell with a backpack full of legal textbooks on an icy hill in Ithaca, NY, spraining my ankle so bad that I had a blood-drain-bruise-line around the bottom of my foot for a couple of months. I've done what I call coma-reading - going through the motions of reading several pages (or more) without paying attention at all, then realizing I either need to re-read from back where my brain stopped working, or just move on. I attribute at least some of that to the crappy physical features of the books distracting me -- of course, sometimes it has been the brain-crushingly-boring text itself. I started on electronic reading as soon as I could - even on CRT monitors. I picked up an HP 95LX handheld computer in, I guess, 1995, then got the first Treo when it came out in 2002. I don't think I'll get a Kindle (DRM bugs me more than books), but I've been reading on my G1 phone a lot. Holy crap - what an improvement! You can even set most of these devices up to scroll at a comfortable speed so you can read without moving at all (but to the extent that your preferred rate is variable, this really doesn't work). Backlighing completely removes the getting-dark problem, and all the issues that go with that. You start reading where you left off last time with zero effort. Coma-reading is a thing of the past. I could go on. (btw, a friend showed me her Kindle, and it's awesome in the areas I'm talking about - but no DRM for me - maybe I'll get a rooted one someday and read public domain stuff on it). What motivates me to write this is that a bookstore which has been under my office for the last 10 years (probably longer than that) is having a going out of business sale. Ack! I'm not going to miss it - it's true... I've been watching as the inventory thins and the prices drop, and it's been interesting to watch what sells and what doesn't as time bears on. Currently, they're near the end - 65%-90% off, and the fixtures are for sale - there are 4 days left (if you believe the signs), and not too many books left. I finally bought something - a probably useless coffee table book on Jazz - $3.25 with tax - down from a printed price of $22.95 on the back cover (it's soft cover) - there were lots more of them. Other things still around are Rob Zombie calendars, books on witchcraft, romance novels, self help books, and a lot of various other things - people's distaste apparently applies to particular genres, and then to particular titles in more favored genres. Anyway, if you want a big softcover book on jazz, act now! |
|
| /reading discuss (0) permanent link | |
