| See, the funny thing is this: Last night was the first time I ever saw the Archers of Loaf live (unless you count the time a few of them played the Great Cover Up, but lets not for now).
I've certainly listened to them enough. During my ten year tenure at WXDU I heard them quite a bit. "Web in Front" was a hit at the Five-O (there goes that bar again), but post 90's it sort of faded away. I ended up buying "Vee Vee" and "vs. The Greatest of All Time" and if you could wear out a CD I avoided it by ripping it and wearing out the bits in some sort of ephemeral way.
And it's funny, but all their songs - at least to me - feel nostagic from the very first play. So it was sort of exciting in a different way to see them last night: it was new for me, and yet familiar.
And it was super-packed with old people my age, and there's nothing like nostalgia to get people good and hammered. The bartenders were hopping getting everyone quenched, and there was a powerful thirst in the crowd. When you get to be my age (in general), falling down drunk is something you don't usually set out to do or exepct. There was a lot of the unexpected in Kings last night.
But what about the band, man? It was like they'd never stopped practicing together, not even for a few weeks. They were amazing, nothing short of that. Polished. Tight. Comfortable. Two encores. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| This process of radical purging of stuff has not left us much time for fine dining, or even healthy dining. Exhausted, we ordered pizza. With a nod to the future, we ordered it online. Dazzled by apparent plenty, we ordered "cheezy" bread sticks. Primed by objects and photos I hadn't seen for some time and loaded on bad food (and enhanced by L. discovering Pandora and rediscovering the 80's and 90's), I was instantly transported.
Almost twenty years ago I lived on Rosemary Street, behind the Reader's Corner, and I would walk to the Five-O on Hillsborough street on many evenings and shyly gawp at adorable women while hanging with dudes of a similar temperament.
But I needed dinner before beer, and I'd call ahead to Gumby's Pizza. It was on the way (originally around 3017 Hillsborough Street), and the cheapest pizza in the world (IN THE WORLD). I'd get cheese bread sticks, partly for the ease of eating, partly for the portability, and partly because I was too clumsy not to spill sauce all over myself if I was eating and walking at the same time.
So I realize that a few years of bad food and drinking habits do not a near-death experience make (a lifetime does, however), so if you were looking for a punch line to the headline I guess you're disappointed now. You're left just like me, with only memories and memorabilia.
Which is not to say those things aren't awesome, because they are. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| My grandfather on my Mother's side - my sole remaining grandparent - passed away this spring after a long ride with Alzheimer's / dementia. He served nobly and with distinction in the Pacific theater in WWII. He came home to a new daughter and packed away the war to become an excellent father and grandfather, owner of his own business, and all around stand-up, progressive, well ahead of his time guy. He had a fuel-efficient VW beetle, tolerated no littering, and told his daughters they could be whatever they wanted to be.
(I wondered once (not aloud, of course) that if he'd served in the European theater, he'd have had a fuel-efficient Datsun. We are the sum of our experiences.)
On the way up to my Grandfather's funeral, one of my high school friends - Allen Briggs - was tragically felled by a sudden heart attack. I found out the morning after in a hotel room in Newburgh, NY. My father, in the next room over, had taught Allen's wife in graduate school and currently lived near them in Floyd, VA. I went to go tell him directly. There was nothing else to do.
I traveled up to Blacksburg this weekend to pay my respects to Allen and his family at a Quaker service. You sit and reflect, and people get up and tell their stories, and you sit and reflect some more. Perhaps it's my vague Irish heritage that drives me to tell my stories in a bar and be quiet in church; it was a new experience.
Allen also had no small part in what I do for a living today. He curated a seminar at my high school that got me interested in more advanced programming concepts. He talked me into doing a particular co-op in high school. He probably had quite a bit to do with me getting my first computer summer job. I never thanked him for that, perhaps because he was not only subtle about it, but humble too.
(given his wicked sense of humor; I'd expect him to take either all or none of the credit for my current career)
I've got nothing really wise or insightful to wrap this up with. Everyone who is taken from us is often taken too soon, and it's important to remember the amazing people they were and the amazing things they did. We are the sum of our experiences. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| Maybe four of you care about this, but here’s the observations I’ve made about the videos posted that led me to believe it’s not true. Fox’s denial doesn’t enter into this, for what it’s worth.
First video (the purported hack):
The burst of what looks like TV channel change static in the video makes no sense. It’s true that many LED signs can do video, and it’s possible the Fox ticker can do video (it can do images and color, and the controller is video-capable), but it seems like the static burst is there solely to cue the viewer (you) that the sign has been “taken over”. It’s incongruous, like a record scratching sound on a CD. It’s even more anachronistic, given that most video transmissions today are digital and that’s clearly analog video static (fuzzy and slewy as opposed to blocky and jumpy).
Nobody in the video that’s not part of the video team is really reacting. Then again, it’s New York. That could go either way.
There’s a jump at around :30 where the size of the sign changes rather abruptly suggesting post-production overlay. Some more discussion about post-production evidence happened over at Daily Kos.
Second video (the attempted explanation):
There are a couple things here, and I won’t go over a point-by-point transcript, but just hit the highlights.
He’s claiming it’s obvious from the second video that he’s “good with computers”, even though all he’s really doing is using the webcam on his laptop. First he films through what looks like a water glass, and then it sort of looks like he’s doing chroma key (which could be considered “advanced”), but really he’s made a rudimentary mask out of postIts and cut out a picture of a woman’s face from a magazine to position in front of that. This shows advanced papercraft skills, but not much else. What’s he bragging about, exactly? It’s not obvious from either video that anyone is good with computers.
The structure he describes of the computer system running the ticker makes no sense. There’s a bunch of “servers” running one sign, and then people upload headlines to one of those servers which then somehow negotiate amongst themselves to talk to the sign? This doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense from an IT standpoint.
If I were building a networked LED sign, I’d have a single computer running the sign, and have people log into it to submit headlines to the queue. It sounds like he's cutting and pasting a description of how the Windows Desktop Fox News ticker works, but that could be coincidence.
His description of the social engineering process is good... he makes up a story that they're having problems with internal e-mail at Fox and so he has to call the LED sign people directly for support and through them gets a name at Fox that he can send a loaded PDF to someone inside Fox news.
Most e-mail firewalls stop infected PDF files, but maybe he got lucky.
Over 9000? It’s a reference to an Internet meme. Weak sauce, but not really a smoking gun (I’d use a Tor network, myself).
It all _sounds_ plausible, but it also doesn't sound definite enough. Like the man said in the Old Spice commercial. "If you've never had any of it, ever, people just seem to know." The first video made me suspicious, but I never would have looked for more evidence in the first video had it not been for the second video.
The real smoking gun, though, is this: Remember the “burst of TV channel change static” I mentioned above? Ok, so he talks about headlines being uploaded to servers and being able to now inject his own headlines. If that’s indeed the case, then the _most_ we’d see when the data source was changed was maybe momentary blankness. It’s a lot more involved to create a video of a crawler to inject into an LED sign (which is the _only_ way that burst of static makes sense), and you think one would mention that, instead of just saying that he substituted headlines.
Logs or it didn’t happen. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Here's what I sent to the Governor's Office today....
I read today with great dismay about your complete abdication of
responsibility on H.129, the so-called "Level Playing Field" (another
say-one-thing-do-something-else name). I know you're smart enough to
realize that this bill (authored in large part by entrenched
telecommunications industry insiders) will do grave damage to nascent
rural broadband markets, and will continue to allow the industry to
continue to exploit their monopoly over the consumer in many of our
urban markets.
You are smart enough to realize that, right? The statement from your
office made it seem like you were.
I realize we have many, many more important issues facing this state -
health care, education, unemployment, transportation - but this
symbolic, toothless dissent is ultimately telling me that you're going
to be on the wrong side (or at least completely ineffectual) in many
of the proposals crossing your desk. That's not what I voted for. I
voted for strong social and political leadership looking to the future
for all North Carolinians. I clearly didn't get it. You had the
power to do the right thing or the wrong thing, but ultimately chose
to do nothing.
This was on a bill with no religious or moral baggage. You couldn't
ask for a decision with less room for backlash.
In a certain light, it almost makes sense: I'm a well-off
professional, and can easily afford whatever asinine charges TWC
throws my way for their substandard service. I can either vote
Democrat and apparently get a raw deal by default, or vote Republican
and get a raw deal by intent, or vote Libertarian and not get a deal
at all. So you've got my vote as the lesser of three evils. The
people most hurt by this are folks who probably won't vote for you
anyway and listen to too much talk radio to make rational choices
about what benefits them.
So, congratulations for making the safe, politically expedient choice!
Personally, I was hoping for a leader with more vision. Maybe next
time around.
Jason Sullivan
Raleigh, NC | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| So Super Mash Bros. have a track called "Broseidon, Lord of the Brocean", which (besides having a totally catchy name) has a nifty harmonized female vocal in it. I thought it was pretty freaking awesome and left it at that.
Until I heard it unadorned in the outro sequence to CSI: Miami (sorry, can't find that but that's not surprising). Some googling led me to Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek". I almost bought the album but it turns out I might only like this song so off to Amazon I go at some point.
Anyway, this song was also used in the Season 2 finale of the OC (warning, violence), which I wouldn't have really known about unless I read the Wikipedia article on the song; but that in turn led me to the SNL digital short "Dear Sister" (more violence, in fact, everything after this really).
Which I can never forgive you folks for not telling me about. Seriously? Especially after it spawned imitation after imitation after imitation after imitation. This is like right up my alley. I cannot stop laughing, or get the song out of my head.
I still like it, too. Go figure. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I drive to work five days a week, and on road trips it's my car and I'm the driver (this isn't really de jure as much as de facto). I like music and maps and phone to be readily available. Snacks are good, too, but this isn't about snacks.
My phone can now do music and maps, and as a result I wanted to see how this could all work. I'd already hacked an aux input into my stereo, and plugged the phone in directly, but when you're running the maps app you can't really control the music app.
Enter the Clarion BLT370. It does all the audio profiles (headset, handsfree, advanced stereo) I need, controls the player just fine, and can even take somewhat reasonable phone calls (there's a microphone on the dongle). If my current phone's Bluetooth driver wasn't such a pile of crap, it would sound perfect. As it stands it sounds perfect with the occasional hiccup. I found it on Amazon for under half of what Clarion originally priced it at. One could also get a stereo with Bluetooth integration, but I will talk your ear off about why I wasn't going to do that.
The other toy I have is the Breffo Spiderpodium. I understand and empathize with the desire to have a custom, "clean-looking" dock. My car fits no custom dock (natively), that I like (no, I do not want to stick something on the window). I was a little unsure about it, but at $20 it could have been (at worst) a cheap mistake. Not a mistake at all! 30 seconds out of the box and it was in my car and holding my phone just right. I may have to get a few more at that price.
Maps and music now exist comfortably together in my car without a lot of fumbling on my passenger's (or worse, my) part. I can now even see who's calling when they call. Genius. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Much virtual ink has been spilled on the Dish Network - Blockbuster deal. Where Dish shells out something like $320 million smackers to buy... well... what? The worst system of late fees ever? An endless supply of Dreamcast games? A better logo?
No, no, a thousand times, no.
This is what I would have bought Blockbuster for: The ability to crush Netflix, Hulu, and cable providers simultaneously. Blockbuster has a streaming service in the works, and the deals with the content providers to back it up. Dish network has the satellites and is getting more of that from Hughes aerospace.
So, here's what you do. Create the largest centrally managed DVR system known. Frontend boxes in all your subscribers' houses. Every show that's ever aired available whenever you want to watch it. Every movie in Blockbuster's library available whenever you want to watch it. To top it off, A la carte pricing for everything. Charge more for no commercials. All this, and a network to get around any throttling and capping issues you might have with local ISPs.
Hell, I'd even put an OTA DV tuner on the frontend box itself. Why not?
Dish network, call me. We can do this. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| A better reviewer would lead off with talking about the similarities of the world of 1913 (when Stravinsky's Rite of Spring debuted) with the world of 2011 (when this arrangement was created). Like Nostradamus said: "wars and rumors of wars", but more closely related is the fact that the nature of music was changing. From within as the 20-century composers began to dismantle everything that restrained them (the debut of Rite provoked riots); and from without as recoding (and more importantly cheap playback) technology began to democratize the creation and appreciation of music. The early years of this century has brought us extremely cheap methods of music creation and distribution via computers and the Internet fostering the explosions of new forms of music (eg. mashups[1]). Like I said, a better reviewer would go into more detail [2].
This is pretty much the lens through which I was viewing last nights performance (despite trying to remove it for most of the night). Like revolution as to evolution, can something be "evelatory"[3]? My dictionary says no, but no riots were in evidence last night. That's not to say the show wasn't awesome. It was, in fact, awesome.
What I've taken way too long to get to is this: This was a "jazz"[4] arrangement of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring for the trio called The Bad Plus[5]. Several Duke graduate students in music composition had spent quite some time with the piece and the band to make this happen, and last night was the result of their efforts. The piece clocked in at about 45 minutes for both parts, a little longer than the original piece itself. The band played a mini-set, with one encore, to fill it out[6].
The arrangement varied between close reproduction and informed improvisation, and I'll confess I liked it best when the trio was allowed to venture a little off the page and find spots in the work to explore in greater detail. One particular part had a "new roots growing underground" vibe that was really intriguing[7], and there was a definite new swing feel to several other parts. I wonder how much the video part of the performance dictated the timing (more on that later).
The band was spot on. Because of my location (orchestra pit), I didn't hear the bass particularly well; but the chops of all the players were fantastic. The drummer, especially, seemed to be that type of controlled chaos where everything within reach of his sticks was fair game. It didn't have to be the top of the drum. It didn't even have to be an actual drum. It all worked (even the children's toys)[8].
The video. I don't really know what to say about the video. This first part of the (musical) piece covers the spring awakening of the earth, and the melting ice and warming soil were conveyed in both an abstract and concrete way, the tones of light gradually warming from winter to spring sunlight; frozen water giving way to flowing water. The second half of the piece is all about a human dance ritual and here the video seemed to lose focus, both thematically and materially. I think I even saw a Mac desktop background at one point[9]. I don't know how much of the video timing was fixed. If it were me, I'd allow for improvisation within the music to drive the video. It didn't feel like that.
They finished to a well-deserved standing ovation and hoots. No riot, but riots happen during revolution[10]. I feel a little bad saying "This was merely fucking awesome, and not world-changing.", because it makes me wonder what would be world-changing in music anymore. I think what is a world changing aspect is almost mundane: It's not a label or a band with an idea and a fringe album[11], it's the acceptance of this kind of thing as Serious Business. Does the fact that someone's got a doctorate in a conceptual style that I've long been a fan of make anything about the concept "greater" or "lesser" art-wise? Not to me.
It makes me excited to see what's next.
Footnotes
- You knew I'd get around to that, right? Seriously, it's almost all I listen to these days.
- Read a book!
- Equal parts evolution and elevation, perhaps? I dunno.
- Term used extremely loosely. The borrowed freely for just about every era of the form. Maybe "improvisational trio arrangement" is more accurate, but it ignores the historical weight of jazz that informed the arrangement.
- These are all things you can look up on the Internet without me providing you specific links, of course.
- And they were super tired at the end of the encore, except for the drummer.
- Actually, totally fucking awesome and bass and drums driven.
- Winding tinkling bell like rachety things. It made perfect sense at the time, and he had an almost subconscious feel for how close to get to the microphone with them.
- It was really jarring and must have been an accident.
- And in France. The French have a history of rioting over art.
- One of my favorite albums is "Dub Side of the Moon" a reggae take on "The Dark Side of the Moon". Awesome.
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