smokerblog

Blue-Fingered Nation

Reasonable people can disagree about the legitimacy of US intervention in Iraq. Reasonable people can even disagree about the legitimacy of the recent Iraqi election.

But no one can deny the symbolic power of the images of ink-stained-fingered Iraqis celebrating their first free election in 50 years. And as Harm points out, as stirring and inspirational as those images might be to us, they may hold an even more powerful, visceral impact for those watching events on al Jazeera.

The gesture you are seeing repeated over & over again--hand curled into a fist with the exception of the index finger, pointing skyward--is one of the basic gestures of Islam, on par w/ crossing yourself if you're a Christian. The posture, plus the sentence "there is no God but One God, and Muhammed is His Prophet" is the most basic declaration of Muslim identity--conflating it w/ participation in the election is the most effective way of negating the core argument of Islamicists, that democracy is inherently heretical.

Except, whoops! I can't find any of those kinds of images on al Jazeera. I wonder what's Arabic for "freedom of the press."

Don't Eat Your iPod Shuffle

I regularly check out the beautifully crafted prose over at erasing.org, but only when I have time. It's a site that rewards concentrated perusal, rather than quick skimming.

That's why it's taken me over a week to notice the seemingly endless stream of hilarious couplets about Apple's most recent "consumer" electronic device.

But before you read it, make sure you've cleared some space on the floor for rolling around and laughing out loud.

Wanda Shirk, Survivor

It's about time I've posted about this, seeing's how I've known for almost two weeks now: my old High School English teacher is going to be on the next Survivor.

Now I haven't paid attention to Survivor (this is the tenth series, fer criyin' out loud) since the infamous big, fat, naked guy was grossing everyone out, but it seems that there is still plenty of interest out there. There are zillions of internet forums about the show, and several devoted just to Wanda along with various biographies and linking sites.

Not that I want you to waste any of your time reading those forums. The consensus there seems to be that Wanda should get booted from the island based on her singing alone; although, those who have actually read her biography give her a better chance. Some even like her songs.

I myself remember sitting in class on the rare occasions that Wanda would indeed favor us with song. The same kind of unabashed glee came through in her expository style whenever she read to us from some text. We would sit in class cringing with naive, teenage cynicism at such displays, but deep down most of us respected and even liked Mrs. Shirk.

So I'll be watching Survivor on February 17th (not the 14th like I originally said [thanks, JP!]), rooting for that yearbook advisor, that lover of Dickinson, that sentence-diagrammer-extraordinaire: Wanda Shirk.

UPDATE: Seth's got a little something posted about Wanda on Cup O' Books (Jan. 27th entry).

The Three Muskestooges

Mom has posted a collection of Christmass snapshots, mostly featuring various nieces and nephews visiting Santa or being pulled on sleds around the iced-over pond.

There was one image that was too, ummm, good, or something, not to share here:

(Click for a larger, more hilarious view)

Random Music

So here's another one of those internet meme things (via Harm and Eppy):

1. Open up iTunes (or your preferred digital media player)
2. Using your entire music library, select the "shuffle" option.
3. Without cheating, note the first ten songs that appear on the list and post them on your blog.
4. I said: No Cheating.

The playlist from the home iMac:

• U2 - Best of 1980-1990: When Love Comes to Town
• Primus - Pork Soda: DMV
• Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party: Weird Science
• Ani DiFranco - Revelling/Reckoning: Prison Prism
• King Crimson - Heavy Construkction: Lights Please (Part 1)
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Best of: Nobody's Baby Now
• Einstürzende Neubauten - Ende Neu: The Garden
• 10,000 Maniacs - Our Time in Eden: Tolerance
• Boards of Canada - Geogaddi: The Beach at Redpoint
• Brad Mehldau - The Art of the Trio, Vol 1: I Didn't Know What Time It Was

And just for completeness, here's the playlist taken from my work computer¹ which holds a limited amount of what I consider to be good-for-background-listening music (except for that Parliament tune, that's more like get-up-off-your-butt-and-boogy² music):

• Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians: Section IIIA
• Medeski, Martin, & Wood - Uninvisble: Uninvisible (title track)
• Charlie Hunter Quintet - Right Now Move: Changui
• J.S. Bach - Rachel Podger, Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1: Partita No. 2 in D Minor
• Galactic - Ruckus: Tenderness
• Philip Glass - Kronos Quartet performs Philip Glass: String Quartet No. 5, #2
• Miles Davis - Someday My Prince Wil Come: Old Folks
• György Ligeti - Mechanical Music: Vertige
• Chemical Brothers - Surrender: Got Glint?
• Parliament - Funked Up, The Very Best of: Chocolate City

It's a little embarrassing to have three "best of's" on the list, but it could have been worse.

Rochester Blogger Meetup

It's kind of late notice, but over at mamamusings, Liz is announcing a meetup for Rochester bloggers at Panera Bread tonight at 7PM.

Unfortunately, I can't make it tonight, but I'll be checking for reports tomorrow on all the local blogs (see silandara's blog for what looks like a more complete list).

Music to My Ears

So I've mentioned elsewhere about my external hard drive failing and having to re-rip my cd collection to mp3 files. I mentioned this to the wallace-l smarties and a discussion started about whether ripping files to mp3 is or is not a Good Idea.

The Idea being, in general, to get your music translated (aka encoded) into a computer-friendly format so that you can do all sorts of nifty things like create mix cds or search for that one artist or song that you want to hear all without having to sift through a pile of cds.

The problem is that audio files are large, too large to be practical. Plus, audio files come in different formats, much like images do. Just as you can have a tiff or eps or jpeg image format, audio files come in wav or aiff or aac or mp3 (or ogg-vorbis, which I'm not going to talk about here). And hey, guess what? Two of those formats (mp3 and aac) offer file compression, solving the large-file-size problem. Except. They introduce a new problem: loss in audio quality.

Of course, the internet is rife with flame wars of proponents of different encoding technologies duking it out. But here's a good description of the problems faced in music compression. That article is long and pretty detailed, so if you just want the basics, I'll try to summarize them here:

Humans can hear a range of sound from about 20Hz (20 cycles per second) to 20mHz (20,000 cycles per second). CDs are designed to capture anything that falls in this range, plus just a little bit more. Humans generally have more difficulty hearing at either end of that spectrum (the really high notes and the really low notes), so when music is encoded and compressed, the software makes a judgment about what information to "throw away" to save space. If the software is well-designed, it discards only the sound that falls outside this range or is otherwise masked by the music that your brain pays attention to. Ideally, and in most instances, you would never notice the difference.

To optimize the results, each encoding format allows the user to adjust the varying levels of compression that can be applied (measured in kilobits per second, or kbps). Obviously, higher the compression means poorer quality playback, but less compression means larger file sizes. The trick is to find the balance between the two. Finding that balance depends on the following conditions:

First, depending on other features of your listening environment, you may or may not even notice the differences between encoding formats. Background noise, the quality of your speakers, the quality of the original recording, and the quality of your own personal ears will all have a limiting factor on your ability to even notice any sound degradation.

Second, the kind of music you listen to makes a difference. If your collection is entirely made up of punk rock, you probably won't care or notice. But classical or jazz fans are more likely to want to be able to hear the fine details of the performances. Plus, certain instruments, like the piano, seem to cause problems for most encoders.

Fourth, if you do not use Apple products, you may not be able to use the aac format; the mp3 format is still more of a standard. It seems, though, that aac provides a better quality vs. compression ratio when compared to current mp3 encoders (although there are new encoders coming out that should help narrow this gap).

Finally, be aware that none of this matters to anyone who is not a geek, and it matters only slightly to those geeks who are not members of the audiophile geek subset. Quick definition: an audiophile is someone who actually cares about things like equalizer settings, frequency response, positioning of speakers, etc. An audiophile would rather spend $300 on a pair of really nice headphones than invest that money in something else, like say, more cds. (I probably should have told you this part first, huh?)

So what do you do? Well, obviously, I don't know. For all I know, you might be listening to the Sex Pistols through beat-up, Kmart-special speakers in a shack under a highway overpass. Or, you may have built an acoustically perfect listening room with megawatts of surround-sound speakers optimally positioned. All you can do is run a couple of tests and make your own decision based on what you hear. Here's a test that I did:

"Launcho Diablo" by Stanton Moore, from Flyin' the Koop

• original, uncompressed aiff
• 128kbps compressed mp3
• 128kbps compressed aac

Now, if your computer can play all these, you might be able to tell that the mp3 file sounds a little "flatter" than the other two. For me, it seems to lose a little oomph in the bass and is maybe not quite as snappy in the higher registers (but that might be my imagination, I can definitely hear it more in the bass).

If you have super-deluxe speakers connected to your computer, you might be able to detect a difference between the aac and the original aiff. If you can tell and if you care, then congratulations! You may be an audiophile! However, I can't tell the difference. What this means is that I will bump up my encoding quality one notch just to be safe, and begin encoding my files in aac format at 160kbps from now on. If your eyes have glazed over by this time, you may just be happy with your encoder's default settings, which are probably either 128kbps mp3 or 128kpbs aac (this is the iTunes default).

Happy listening!

Winter Wonderland

As in, I wonder how bad the winter will be.

The weather channel showed a line of lake-effect snow parked over our house. Right now (11 PM), there is about 3 inches on the ground. The 5-day weather forecast looks like fun for the snow-shoers and cross-country skiers:

Today	Tomorrow	Tue	Wed	Thu
Snow High: 24° Low: 14°	Snow High: 18° Low: 4°	Snow Showers High: 11° Low: 10°	Snow High: 29° Low: 17°	Snow Showers High: 22° Low: 6°

And here's a really lame and grainy digital photo from the upstairs office window.

Looks like tomorrow morning will be my first real shoveling of the year.

UPDATE: (7AM) 6 inches of light, fluffy snow. The best kind. It was almost fun to shovel. (We'll see how long that attitude lasts...)

Full Service HTML

Now really. It's not nice to make fun of other people's websites, especially if those sites are maintained by small business owners who have more important things to do than keep their sites xhtml compliant (woops!).

But this collection of gas station websites can be useful in showing you what not to do when designing a site. My favorite is the Shell station that magically transforms into a Texaco station.

Plus, who's to say how much Charlie Daniels Band is too much?

Days Are Getting Shorter

And you thought that December 22 was the shortest day of the year? Well, yeah, but I'm talking about the total length of our 24-hour day. The recent earthquake in Indonesia has changed the shape of the earth so that the Earth now rotates 2.68 microseconds faster than before.

Seismic and climatic (and man-made) shifts in the Earth's surface have always affected the Earth's rotation, shape, and polar position. The general trend indicates that the Earth is becoming rounder (less bulging at the equator) and the North Pole is sliding slowly to the East.

And for those that think they need more hours in their day: relax. It turns out that, in general, our days are getting longer (but if you want to help slow the Earth down more, start digging a really big hole).

(via kottke, as usual)

Walking in the Rain

(Fourth in a series)

I didn't always share my wife's appreciation for neighborhood walks, but in recent years, I've become a fan. I've also become fond of walking in inclement weather.

In fact, I prefer it.

Not tempestuous weather, mind you, but something like a steady rain, or the falling of light, fluffy snow is nice. This is provided you dress for the conditions, of course. Getting caught in a blizzard without a scarf and mittens is anything but fun. It also helps to walk with a big, goofy dog who enjoys sloshing through puddles or bouncing in the snow.

For me, weather evokes emotions that can be fun just to try on for a little while. There is something bittersweet about walking in a warm summer rain. Morning mist is mysterious and hopeful. A stiff autumn breeze can be foreboding, but it's also exciting and invigorating. A winter afternoon's snowfall is often peaceful and cozy.

Walking in weather helps to calibrate your soul. It's kind of like running a self-diagnostic to make sure everything is still in working order.

Little Fluffy Counterpoint

So I recently had a hard drive crash which wiped out my entire collection of mp3s. Being a past-lame geezer who actually prefers to buy cds and rip the mp3 rather than simply download them, it wasn't a tragic loss as almost all of the collection was "backed-up" in the form of the original cds. Any mp3s that I did happen to download generally got burned to cd directly, so I was covered there as well.

Anyhoo, during the process of re-ripping one of the first electronica cds I had ever purchased, I became curious about the first track and decided to do some googling about it. The cd was The Orb's, Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld and the track was the seminal "Little Flufffy Clouds." I was curious about the spoken word part of the track, which I have come to find out was lifted by The Orb from an appearance by Rickie Lee Jones on Reading Rainbow. That's cool, I'm thinking, but then I read on:

It's only a song, albeit one that samples Steve Reich. It's a disposable early-'90s single with a low-rent video. "Little Fluffy Clouds" takes on strong meaning to many people.

Hunh? Steve Reich? I click the link and find:

The first time a track from the European dance subculture reached out and shook the pop mainstream by the throat, partly because it reached beyond the world of the Roland 303 and 808 for its hooks. But not to pop songs -- instead, it lifted a riff from Steve Reich's avant-garde composition "Electric Counterpoint" and cut up a bit of an interview with Rickie Lee Jones. It was a shockingly novel sound, and its subtext -- as an understated, abstracted AIDS memorial -- still gives it amazing poignancy.

Now I have no idea where the "abstracted AIDS memorial" thing comes from, but reading this sent me scrabbling for the mouse and clicking on my just re-ripped mp3 of Pat Metheny playing Steve Reich's "Electric Counterpoint."

So here they are; compare for yourself:
orb clip
reich clip

I'd never noticed that before! Of course I know that electronica is all about sampling other music, but now I'll be digging a little deeper with my listening habits, knowing that more such unexpected nuggets might lie buried within.

One Down, So Many, Many More to Go

Specifically citing John Stewart's influence and criticism, the new president of CNN has announced the cancellation of the long-running debate show "Crossfire." Jonathan Klein has also announced that CNN will be dropping conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, as a part of his network's shift from "head-butting debate shows" to "roll-up-your-sleeves storytelling."

Whatever that means, it sounds like a good idea to me.

(via Crooked Timber)

Fly Your Own Black Triangle

For those of you who...*ahem*, ummm....believe in this sort of thing, or maybe thought you had actually...ummm... "seen" something like this, you can now pilot your own TR-3B super-secret stealth aircraft via Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002.

And that's all I have to say about that.

(via kottke)

Bridges to the Future

I've been intrigued by the Millau Viaduct since seeing a clip about it on the CBS Sunday Morning News. Touted as the world's tallest roadway bridge, it certainly looks impressive. The previous record holder, the Kochertalbrücke, while just as impressive, lacks a certain flair* (but then, it was built almost 30 years ago).

For other bridges with flair, check out the short survey that Wired put together on current bridge technology. The five bridges displayed not only look good, they were engineered to solve some problem.

My favorite is the Leonardo Bridge Project.

Einstein's Century

(Following up on my recent post about the elegant universe:) The Economist explains the genius of Alblert Einstein, specifically, the genius displayed in a series of papers that he published in 1905.

He was not a particularly adroit experimenter or mathematician. His power lay in thinking more clearly about the physical consequences of experimental results than any of his contemporaries, or, indeed, than anyone since.

In separate papers, Einstein revolutionized the science of very large things with his special theory of relativity and launched the study of very small things with his pioneering work on quantum mechanics. For the rest of his life, Einstein worked to renconcile these two worlds, a puzzle that continues to vex scientists to this day.