Uncompatible Systems

Thu, 28 Sep 2006

Personal Kyoto Protocol Goal Meter

Enter your ConEd account number and this graph will tell you how you measure up to others in your area. After 12 months of data it'll tell you how close you came to what you would be required to consume with the Kyoto Protocol. Yea! Use less power! Kill yr idols!

P.S. Here's mine. No idea what kind of parties I was having in the apartment in May.

posted at: 19:58 | path: /green | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 27 Sep 2006

Keeping Multiple iTunes Libraries

So now that iTunes almost does everything I would like, I'm using it. Dark Side? Maybe but as long as I can keep using ogg/vorbis I'm happy. Here's the current challenge. How can I keep multiple iTunes libraries for different locations? The goal is to take my laptop with me and never have a busted link in iTunes since the bulk of my 50 gig music collection is on a file server at home.

I don't have a solution yet but I do know that there is only one file responsible for keeping the whole index in order. By default it lives in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml. Since it's XML, it would be possible to do some text parsing and make slight changes to the library and have multiple databases. Changing locations would be as simple as moving a file and replacing it with another. Of course the Mac wankers would want some fancy GUI with a plastic button that was labled "change library". Maybe some day but for now I'll keep you posted on the shell script I hack together.

posted at: 13:02 | path: /software | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 23 Sep 2006

Not Since Aphex Twin's Windowlicker

Has there been a video as funny in it's objectification of ass and titties. Dougal Wilson has taken Benny Benassi's "classic foam party club anthem", not my words, and set it to slippery bitches with power tools! Did I just say slippery bitches? Holy shit. That's the only way I can describe his music video.

posted at: 19:21 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 20 Sep 2006

Heart Breaking Prose

A gal I went to college with wrote an anti-suicide letter on her blog. It made me cry. E, your feelings are not in vain.

posted at: 17:41 | path: /antioch | permanent link to this entry

Boot Time As New Benchmark for Desktops

Since I have "switched" to OS X until Ubuntu patches their kernel for some of my laptop's hardware, I have noticed one thing above all in the performance arena. OS X's boot time is un-fucking-believable. This is compared to Ubuntu 6's boot time on the same laptop.

Booting has been a big topic of discussion lately. It seems that the "overall desktop experience" now depends on it. OS X must be doing some kind of on-demand init thing because the system gets from the bootloader to a login screen in literally 5 seconds.

My second favorite OS X boot feature is unattended suspend to RAM. I have to remove the battery often since the serial number is under it. I rarely turn the laptop off so I'm pulling it's last bit of power when I do this. Somehow someway, OS X knows to take that last bit of power, throw the contents of RAM onto the disk and power down. The laptop needs a cold boot but when it gets to the OS X loader, it will notice this little collection of RAM on the disk and throw it back into RAM. The results are the screen and programs are exactly where I left off.

Pimping OS X sucks. Unfortunatley, these kinds of power management issues are a constant problem with the Linux kernel on some kinds of hardware.

posted at: 17:18 | path: /debian | permanent link to this entry

Mon, 18 Sep 2006

Evil Podcast Updated

Add it or press that update button.

Added the rest of the Made Out of Babies record, a Rilo Kiley song and a Talking Heads song.

Mind you, this isn't an example of my musical taste, just an example of music I like that happens to be available online exclusively through Apple. I'm not posting anything I buy through emusic, allofmp3, share with friends or download from a band's web site.

posted at: 13:55 | path: /evil | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 16 Sep 2006

Dude, it's like wearing a raincoat in the shower

This post is totally stupid but I can't resist. I searched google for a keyword on an old blog of mine and found a really funny result. It's amazing how sex can be so boring if treated right.

posted at: 05:03 | path: /sex | permanent link to this entry

Fri, 15 Sep 2006

iTunes Music Store Booty!

As a reaction to the DRM on my iTunes Music Store purchases, I will provide a podcast of all the music I buy from iTunes until Apple or the artists tell me to stop. The idea is simple, I buy music, remove the DRM, you download that music for free. The fun part is subscribing to this podcast in iTunes But take note, the files I have cleaned are in the non-standard ogg/vorbis format. If you use iTunes, you will have to first install the xiph.org vorbis plugin for iTunes. After that everything should work as normal.

Have fun!

posted at: 16:42 | path: /evil | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 12 Sep 2006

Using Apple Products To Remove Apple's DRM

I'm a vocal opponent of any kind of DRM. But yesterday I discovered a wonderful band named Made Out Of Babies. I emailed them about buying their music online because I couldn't find it anywhere except through the iTunes Music Store. Sure enough, Neurot Recordings has an exclusive with Apple. So...I signed up for an account and paid them 99 cents to download the first track off their album.

Before I start with the details. I would like you to download this track for free from my web site. It is in the unrestricted ogg/vorbis format, despite the original format being Apple's "protected mpeg-4". And now...the irony.

I used Apple products to remove the restrictions from Apple's restricted format. Step by step:

1. Open iMovie HD and create a new project
2. Select the Media window and the Audio tab within that window
3. Find your restricted song in the Library section of the top pane
4. Drag the song to the bottom of the timeline
5. Select the Photos tab within the Media window
6. Drag a photo to the top of the timeline
7. On the timeline, slide the playhead to the end of the audio waveform and note the length of the song
8. Deselect "Ken Burns Effect" in the photo settings and make the length of the photo the length of the song
9. Click on the Share menu and select "Share".
10. Pull down the tab next to "Compress movie for" and select "Expert Settings"
11. Click Share
12. Pull down the tab next to "Export" and select "Sound to Wave"
13. Click Options
14. Pull down the tab next to "Rate" and select "44.100"
15. Click OK and click Save

You will now have a DRM free version of the song you purchased from the iTunes Music Store. It will be in the uncompressed WAV format, which you can compress using other non-restricted formats like mp3 or ogg/vorbis.

Granted, this is not a practical implementation for cleaning large amounts of ITMS purchases. Personally I would recommend not buying music through this retailer. Remember though, if you happened to buy some music in that format and would like to share it with a friend, or use it with portable players other than the iPod, this is one solution. The other (admittedly more simple) way is to burn the files to a CD-RW and rip that to another format.

posted at: 18:30 | path: /hacking | permanent link to this entry

Thu, 07 Sep 2006

Fun Things I did

Enough of the stupid burning man notes! Despite what you may think I really enjoyed myself. Each link under the picture is a video of the most fun things.

Flaming Lotus Girrrl's serpent	Riding on the back of Vector
Jesus kicking ass while being crucified	Plastic chimes with bling
Dust devils coming from the burning man

posted at: 22:49 | path: /burningman | permanent link to this entry

More Burning Man Notes

The link in my last post was some criticism of the event. To elaborate, Black Rock City is a city, but it's only one because people pay an entrance fee upwards of $200 and truck the city over the Sierra Nevada mountains in a motor vehical. It's an experiment in community that depends on the state.

But once in the city, there are lots of thing you would expect. A post office, toilets, roads with street signs and lanterns, a visitors center, a store to buy ice and even a cafe. This is the adventure. Just walking around the city as one would in any other more perminant place. It's not a rock concert or art gallery or theater or rave or bar, it's all of these things.

Procuring a bike is easy. There's a community bike rack. There is also a person in Gerlach, the closest town that will reclaim bikes and sell them for very cheap the next year. The playa is terrible for bikes. If you bring a good one, expect to have to remove the front chain rings, rear cassette, derailleur, cranks and indexed shifters. If not there will be a fine corosive dust rubbing on the metal.

So what's it look like out there? I took two panoramas.

posted at: 22:08 | path: /burningman | permanent link to this entry

Treehugger Sums Up My Feelings About Conservation At Burning Man

The devil's in the details. I noticed each point made in the article. The lack of solar and bulk of diesel generators was astounding. Fortunately, the LLC that runs the event is very transpearant about their finances.

posted at: 14:47 | path: /burningman | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 05 Sep 2006

It's Hot In The Desert

It was impossible to sleep past 10AM. The sun is directly pointed at my tent and there are no clouds to absorb the heat. There is zero moisture in the air. Yea! Leaving the tent makes it feel cooler but there's no shade, so walking around becomes extremely uncomfortable after a few minutes. Opening my eyes for more than a few seconds at a time was very painful due to the intense sun reflecting off the white playa. Take that eyelids! Goggles or polarized sunglasses are the only way to see for a prolonged time.

If you've ever met someone who's really into burning man, they will constantly rail on and on about The Playa. WTF is the playa, I wondered. Well, obviously it's a beach, but this version of "the playa" looks like white sand without a drop of water in sight. Turns out it's a real word for a type of alkali dust on a dry lake bed. The Playa is relentless. It will dry you and cover you in a white film at the slightest touch. I dropped my camera about 2 feet onto it and it took compressed air and a thin metal pick to get the lens to work again. If you touch water to playa, it becomes a dark yellow mud and drys almost instantly in the daytime.

I immediately began to think about survival in conditions like this. I wasn't officially camping with death guild, so I brought all my own supplies. Each drop of water need be accounted for, each ration and calorie is critical if you want to do more than sit in borrowed shade and piss off your neighbors. Pants, boots and even long sleeves can be very good if they are breathable. You'll get sweaty but whatever. The hippies with no clothes on must all go home hurting with sun burns on their ass, ankles and eyelids. A hat and goggles are required for any activity that involves looking around.

posted at: 17:36 | path: /burningman | permanent link to this entry

Burning Man. The Event, Logistics and Orientation.

There were many moments of specialness but whatever, this isn't trying to be another stupid "oh, burning man was so great, you'll never understand" story. I'll try and illustrate what made it special for me in a series of smaller posts in place of one big one.

From San Francisco the drive took about 6 hours. It's a straight shot over the Sierra Nevada mountains to Reno, then it's a spooky trek for another hour and a half through dusty desert roads with cattle crossing signs.

Arriving at night is very disorienting. The entrance is just a dusty road with some wooden lamp posts. The only sign telling you where to go is a spray painted piece of plywood. Nothing professional looking. The camp ground is a big circle with roads along the vertexes. The radial lines follow clock positions (12:00, 3:00, 6:00, 9:00) and the diameter lines are words (fear, anxious, hope, eager). The center of the circle is the man and his platform. The ring closest to the center is called the esplanade and is where I camped.

Since it was 1AM when we parked, there wasn't much activity and it was very dark. I walked out onto the esplanade and shot a 360 degree video to get my bearings.

I was astounded at the amount of electricity people bring with them. This is the middle of the desert with no public utilities or telephone service. There is some solar but the bulk of the power is from diesel tanks and generators. The smart people run their generators during the day to charge batteries to use at night.

I drank a few beers at the camp bar and went to bed, not really knowing what will happen in the morning.

posted at: 16:00 | path: /burningman | permanent link to this entry

Mon, 04 Sep 2006

I Went To Burning Man

Among other things, I rode on a car named Vector, fought in thunderdome and split my head open, and saw some amazing art (I'll be posting photos shortly, when I get the camera back).

So...burning man is not just for hippies and ravers. It was actually started by some really cool people who are into the desert and building impossible things with engines and pedals.

There's also lots of fire.

posted at: 21:21 | path: /art | permanent link to this entry

About

I work with communications, open source software, sound and video. I'm the most happy when I work on all of these things at once. Sounds, Systems, Robots, Rocking Tigers.

CV?
(.doc | .odt | .pdf)

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