Here are some blurry photos from my phone from NYC… More updates and a new podcast are coming soon!
Archive for the 'General' Category
The lovely National Hotel, site of RHM…
…and the beautiful pool of the National. The MS suite was back about halfway down this photograph, on the left. Oh yeah, behind all the lovely foliage.
Taken on the Arthur Godfrey, looking North as we made our way to the inGrooves party…
…Which like all good parties should be, was held at a Mansion.
No, I wasn’t lying. I went on right after Lil Jon. I got this shot off while in the middle of getting set up. A few minutes later, I’d be simulataneously performing and answering Ableton Live questions from one of Lil Jon’s engineers. Fun stuff! Ask me more!
From a series called, “Let’s Go To The Beach Before We Drive Four Hours In The Middle Of The Night”
“Two Cubans To Go, Please!”
Into Philly tomorrow, requisite stress levels check. So busy with “real life” in between jaunts, I’ll have to catch everyone up at the end of it all.
In the meantime, read this - I would like to echo the point here, that while I’m am anti-censorship as a rule, I find something seriously repulsive about the billboards that were pulled. If we lived in a society where the abduction, torture, rape and murder of women (or children, or men, or puppies) was a fictional construct like the boogieman, then maybe this would just be “suitably chilling.” Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in - and sometimes we have to draw a line somwhere between art and advertising.
I’ll let Joss Whedon say it, much better than I can:
From: Joss Whedon
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 10:17 PM
To: Advertising
Subject: CAPTIVITY BILLBOARDS/REMOVE THE RATINGTo the MPAA,
There’s a message I’m supposed to cut and paste but I imagine you’ve read it. So just let me say that the ad campaign for “Captivity” is not only a literal sign of the collapse of humanity, it’s an assault. I’ve watched plenty of horror - in fact I’ve made my share. But the advent of torture-porn and the total dehumanizing not just of women (though they always come first) but of all human beings has made horror a largely unpalatable genre. This ad campaign is part of something dangerous and repulsive, and that act of aggression has to be answered.As a believer not only in the First Amendment but of the necessity of horror stories, I’ve always been against acts of censorship. I distrust anyone who wants to ban something ‘for the good of the public’. But this ad is part of a cycle of violence and misogyny that takes something away from the people who have to see it. It’s like being mugged (and I have been). These people flouted the basic rules of human decency. God knows the culture led them there, but we have to find our way back and we have to make them know that people will not stand for this. And the only language they speak is money. (A devastating piece in the New Yorker - not gonna do it.) So talk money. Remove the rating, and let them see how far over the edge they really are.
Thanks for reading this, if anyone did.
Sincerely, Joss Whedon.
Creator, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”
Is here. Anyone else going to be in Miami next week? Drop me a line if you want to meet up somewhere!
Steve Jobs has some very interesting thoughts on the iPod, ITMS and DRM…
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.
In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.
So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.
Dan Froomkin wrote this bit of commentary for the media, but these guidelines are worth reading and remembering by every citizen of any democracy:
You Can’t Be Too Skeptical of Authority
- Don’t assume anything administration officials tell you is true. In fact, you are probably better off assuming anything they tell you is a lie.
- Demand proof for their every assertion. Assume the proof is a lie. Demand that they prove that their proof is accurate.
- Just because they say it, doesn’t mean it should be make the headlines. The absence of supporting evidence for their assertion — or a preponderance of evidence that contradicts the assertion — may be more newsworthy than the assertion itself.
- Don’t print anonymous assertions. Demand that sources make themselves accountable for what they insist is true.
Continue reading ‘You Can’t Be Too Skeptical of Authority’
Spent yesterday lying feverish on the couch with some sort of bug not covered by my influenza vaccination. So, what do infirm Logickals do in these situations? Well, they start hacking away at Wordpress, that’s what. Two notable new little features - All pages will now give you a random Oblique Strategy from the V1 of those Worthwhile Dilemmas by Mssrs Eno and Schmidt. I hope that comes in handy for some of you that visit here.
Secondly, I finally added an mp3 player to the page, currently loaded with a few selections from Krushjob. I’m going to keep tinkering with that, as I’m not happy with the fact that it’s a bit of a chore to configure. If anyone has any Flash-based media players they are particularly fond of, let me know in the comments! Either way, expect more music to find its way into the player shortly!
A voice from Gitmo’s darkness - Los Angeles Times
I would rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed. I am hopeless because our voices are not heard from the depths of the detention center.
If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. Please remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo suffering the same misfortune. They have not been charged with any crimes. They have not been accused of taking any action against the United States.
Show the world the letters I gave you. Let the world read them. Let the world know the agony of the detainees in Cuba.
A teacher and light has passed - Hail Eris, Io Pan, Fnord! (Photograph by Dina Scoppettone from metroactive.com)
From rawilson.com
Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.
All Hail Eris!
On behalf of his children and those who cared for him, deepest love and gratitude for the tremendous support and lovingness bestowed upon us.
(that’s it from Bob’s bedside at his fnord by the sea)
RAW Memorial February 07
date to be announced
Yup - things have been awfully quiet around here… a little TOO quiet, no? Take a deep breath. Can you hear your pulse in your ears? Turn down your iPod, that might help.
Never fear, whee will fill the anechoic chamber with noise again very soon.
Some of you who have been actually reading this blog might recall a few mentions of the daevl.plugs collection released this Halloween. The brainchilde of musician/code wizard Vlad Spears, this is the coolest little collection of plugins I’ve run across in quite some time - full of esoteric sound bending capability, just the way I like it. I’m still working on the official review, along with a special episode of the podcast that will accompany it, but you can always visit the Daevl.Makr website and check the plugins out.
As a special added bonus, Logickal was chosen to be the first in a series of Artist features, which led to a very entertaining Q&A session and recording three tracks which prominently feature the plugins (Thanks, Vlad!). Has Logickal sold his soul to the Daevl?  You’ll have to ask the Gods of Rock.
So, head over there and join me as a Daevl in the Pale Moonlight!
Dwayne Goettel mans the keys during the Too Dark Park tour. Photo from Keith Mills’ website/collection - lots of good stuff there!
Bill Van Loo recently posted on the Ableton Live Forum about the USB keyboard he re-purposed as an Ableton Live. This is an awesome idea - the only drawback for me would be that I’d currently have to take my powered USB hub to Logickal gigs, something I try to avoid (but also something that could change in the future). You can check out all of the photos of the controller’s construction over at Bill’s Flickr set, and make sure to check out his Website, Blog and Music while you’re at it!
DJB has posted pictures from Buzz and Click IV - enjoy!
Big ups to The Witness Exchange for pointing out that one of my long-time IDM faves, Jake Mandell is still around and has released a boatload of music on his webpage. Head over there and check it out, or wait a bit and I’ll feature some on the podcast!
I know I’m a bit behind the times since CDM and The Covert Ops have already covered this, but Matt over at the great electronic music learning site Sonictransfer.com has put together a skin editor for Ableton Live. Live has had skins for a while, but the only third-party skins to hit the streets came from Robert Henke - there was no direct way to create a custom color scheme of your own. Now, this cross-platform editor will let you tweak Live’s UI for your own nefarious purposes, now that Matt’s been given the Ableton blessing to release it. Bear in mind that it is UNSUPPORTED, and the changes you make could very well be broken by future updates.
Ableton Live-focused sound designers and add-on purveyors extraordinaire The Covert Operators have updated their site and filled it with Live 5-6 tips, tricks and other goodness. Live users should proceed to their site, post haste!
Just here tonight, watching my Preds take on the Blackhawks to open the season. Checking out the editor at writetomyblog.com, which looks like a very full-featured web-based blogging client. I wonder how long it will take before there’s a plug in to really integrate it with Wordpress?
the 3kStatic gigs in Florida aren’t happening, due to circumstances beyond our control. It’s pretty weird to say that. As a kid, I always wondered what those circumstances could be. I’ve got a much better idea of that now.
Oh, well. What can you do? You can go play NYC again, that’s what! More details on that shortly!
