MD love

By anders pearson 22 Nov 2002

last time i went down to DC, my diskman broke and i had to spend four hours on a greyhound with no music. that was a nightmare that i don’t want to repeat anytime soon. so i started thinking about a replacement.

i quickly decided that i would finally make the move to minidisc and ordered a <a href=”http://www.minidisco.com/minispecs/sonymzn707-hd.html”>sony MZ-N707</a>, which arrived in the mail today.

so far i’m pretty impressed with it. minidisc’s are just so sexy that it’s a real shame the technology never escaped its niche market. 1/4 the size of CDs, more rugged (you can toss a disk in your pocket without worrying about it scratching), rewritable, and you can use different quality encodings to record either 80 minutes of CD quality audio, 160 minutes of audio roughly equivalent to 168kb mp3s, or 320 minutes of lower quality on a single disk.

the question i keep getting asked is why i didn’t get an mp3 player like an iPod instead. there are a few reasons: 1) the ability to record from a microphone was a big selling point on minidiscs for me. 2) i haven’t found any really compelling mp3 players yet. the iPod is getting there but not quite (not to mention that i’d have to get a new computer to use an iPod since my current machine doesn’t have firewire support and i don’t have any more free PCI slots so i couldn’t add it). 3) i really like removable media. 4) iPods are still really expensive. 5) did i mention that minidiscs are <em>sexy</em>?

anyway, so far i’m pretty happy with the 707. it got some pretty good reviews and i can see why. the only thing i’ve encountered so far that i don’t like is that the display isn’t backlit. luckily you really only need that when you’re recording or titling tracks; everything else you can pretty much do by feel. the remote that comes with it is particularly well layed out and easy to operate by feel.

sony’s been pushing this <a href=”http://www.minidisco.com/minipages/netmdinfo.html”>NetMD</a>

technology. it basically gives you the ability to download audio to a MD player directly over USB very quickly (16-32x) rather than the usual realtime dubbing over an optical cable. unfortunately, sony’s been very closed about the whole thing and you can only use one or two proprietary applications to do it (sony’s openMG, and a few others) which reportedly are a pain to use and only run on windows. luckily some linux folk are busy <a href=”http://opennmd.monochromatic.net/“>reverse engineering it</a>. so far they just have some of the editting functions like track titling and reordering working and not downloading. but i’m hopeful that they’ll get that figured out someday. in the meantime i’ll just have to keep using the optical link.

live capsule markets

By anders pearson 21 Nov 2002

lani flew up to new york last night and then flew back to DC early this morning.

why would she do something like that?

to catch one of the <a href=”http://www.madcapsulemarkets.com/“>Mad Capsule Markets</a>’ four US shows of course.

the MCM’s are a japanese band who describe their sound as ‘digi-punk hardcore’. imagine something between fear factory and atari teenage riot with some surf and hip hop influences thrown in for good measure. then wrap that all up with super hi tech japanese video game aesthetics.

anyway, <a href=”http://www.giantrobot.com/“>giant robot</a> sponsored them on a limited tour of the US. by limited i mean 2 shows on the east coast and 2 shows on the west coast.

we caught the one at <a href=”http://www.northsix.com/“>north 6</a> out in williamsburg. lani was excited because the bar there had <abbrev title=”Pabst Blue Ribbon”>PBR</a> in cans. the crowd was pretty small but fairly lively for a new york crowd. the small size of the crowd was a little disappointing when you consider how good the music is but isn’t really surprising since they haven’t exactly gotten much airplay in the states.

the opening band, ‘the screw’ was strange and not really what you’d expect to see opening for the MCM’s. they were wearing weird homemade alien costumes. when they started their set, they warned the crowd “we just got out of art school and are very pretentious”. their music sounded like some kind of bizarre cross between the muppets and souxsie and the banshees. but they were funny so it was tolerable.

the Mad Capsule Markets were fantastic. very energetic and aggressive live. the sound was pretty good too. loud enough for a heavy band but not so loud that it gets distorted. about the only complaint that i could make would be that they pretty much just played their album OSC-DIS straight through. they only had two or three new (or maybe old. i’ve only heard OSC-DIS) songs.

the vocalist doesn’t speak much english so he had all his stage banter written down ahead of time on a piece of paper in his pocket. so between songs, he’d stop pull out the paper concentrate real hard and read off something like “yeah. how yall doing? yeah. it’s great to be here. yeah. you guys have been great. yeah. next we’re going to play a chillout song. yeah. a chillout song.”. it was hilarious. the bassist had a shirt that just said ‘METAL’ across the front. i need to get one of those.

holidays, etc.

By jere 18 Nov 2002

So who is doing what with whom over the upcoming holidays? Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice… and of course, New Year’s (hopefully you’re coming to see me and Raim….)

wipeout

By anders pearson 17 Nov 2002

prasanth is doing his rotations for med school this year. that basically means that every month and a half, he gets sent to a different hospital/clinic to get some first hand experience with a different branch of medicine. for the next month and a half, he’s at a clinic way out in Queens doing pediatric medicine. luckily, unlike residency, which he’ll have to do next year, rotations generally are pretty low stress and leave you with free time after your shifts. so he’s got his weekends free.

this weekend, he came over to my place and brought his ps2, which we then hooked up to the projector. we bought some beer, gathered up the delivery menus and proceeded to spend the entire weekend playing Wipeout Fusion.

i’m not much of a video game player. when i was a kid, my parents wouldn’t buy me a nintendo so i never developed that innate hand/eye coordination thing that other kids my age with consoles did. that meant that whenever i did go over to a friend’s house to play video games, i was at a serious disadvantage and would get my butt squarely kicked. since video games are much less fun when you consistenly lose, i basically have never gotten very excited about them since.

every once in a while though, i find them quite therapeutic and a nice little mental vacation. when i was doing my engineering coursework at columbia, i’d occasionally make it back up to maine for breaks. since i still had most of my friends at bates, i’d often find myself crashing at jP’s apartment with nothing to do while people were in class. jP plays video games like he breathes, so there were always plenty around his place. a few days spent plopped down on the floor of jP’s apartment with a 40 playing hour after hour of drunken Wipeout XL or Unreal Tournament and my mind was a blank slate, ready to return to the grueling engineering classes.

i still don’t plan on ever actually buying any kind of gaming system, because it would probably destroy me, but every once in a while it’s good fun.

There is always room for Jello

By Mark Boudreau 16 Nov 2002

Lani was kind enough to think of me when she made plans to go see Jello Biafra speak on Thursday night, and since the location wasn’t far from work, I met her for a night of good old anti-establishment rhetoric.

<p>I really didn&#8217;t know much about Jello other than he was the former lead singer for the Dead Kennedys and former target of Tipper Gore and the evil <span class="caps">PMRC</span>. After a two and half hour speech, I now know quite a bit more about Jello and his distaste for coporations, his former band mates, the goverment, the military, the police, the media, and the overly religious. The topic for the night was &#8220;Free Speech and the War on Terrorism&#8221; but it basically was a free flowing procession of ideas that ranged among the topics I mentioned above. When he wasn&#8217;t trying to scare his audience with the nefarious plans of Bush and his cohorts, Jello was busy making fun of anyone associated with the media/corporate/government establishment.</p>

<p>I had some problems with his speech, especially the humor that he was using. He seems like an intelligent guy, but he resorted to childish name calling (Ashcrack, Dumbsfeld, etc), making fun of people&#8217;s looks, the way they talked, or their beliefs just to get some laughs. It just seemed really mean spirited. He made fun of Laura Bush because he didn&#8217;t like her eyes. Maybe it&#8217;s my Bates training, but I found it quite odd that a group of lefties were just as vicious and narrow minded as many on the right.</p>

<p>For his message, I found that he used unsubstantiated rumor, guesses and facts together in order to weave what ends up sounding like a grand conspiracy theory. Basically, he outlined how the major players in government and their shadowy private connections are responsible for all sorts of horrible things going on the world. If you took everything he said at face value, you&#8217;d probably run to Canada. Because he jumped around so much, you basically ended up walking out of the room with this overall feeling that there is something evil out there more powerful than we could possibly imagine, without a real, solid logical understanding of any of it.</p>

<p>He&#8217;s a really paranoid guy, which is great, because so am I. The only thing is, he and I are in totally different locations philosophically. He is basically against the establishment, yet he&#8217;d want government to provide more services to society and regulate industry more. Is the establishment ok as long as it&#8217;s serving the needs of the people? I don&#8217;t get it. I guess he makes distinctions between different types of government power, which I guess I do as well. He wants government to serve people&#8217;s every need and I want government to just protect people from people who want to hurt us and take our stuff.</p>

<p>Well, I think I&#8217;ve babbled enough and I&#8217;m too tired to actually flesh this out into something coherent. If you want another opinion of the night, check out what <a href="http://www.juliansanchez.com/2002_11_01_notesarch.html#85680598"> Julian Sanchez (a Cato co-worker) has to say</a> about the evening. I think, in the end, I&#8217;d rather just hear Jello sing rather than hear him speak.</p>

aphasia

By anders pearson 11 Nov 2002

i went to a lecture tonight by <a href=”http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/faculty/kelley/“>Darcy Kelley</a> on Neuroscience (part of a <a href=”http://www.millertheatre.com/series/ideas.html”>lecture series</a> that <a href=”http://www.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/“>we</a> are involved with).

anyway, i learned that <a href=”markov.pl”>markov</a> is a remarkably realistic simulation of a person with <a href=”http://www.whonamedit.com/synd.cfm/1318.html”>Wernicke’s Aphasia</a>. neat.

praise the lords

By anders pearson 07 Nov 2002

well, what else could i do after a long day of webdesign conferencing than to go to a <a href=”http://www.lordsofacid.com/“>lords of acid</a> concert.

honestly, i can’t say i’ve really listened to them since high school, but prasanth is a big fan. so he and a couple of other old friends from mssm all came into town for the show (Jeremy, Pete, and Scott (although Scott actually lives in nyc now)).

if you’ve heard the lords of acid before, you know that their music wouldn’t exactly be described as ‘intellectual’. but they put on an entertaining show. they had pretty much everything you’d expect: leather, latex, bullwhips, blow-up dolls (and sheep), barely dressed dancing girls, and occasional outright nudity. an all around good time.

the opening act, DJ Redboy or something sucked. first of all, it was really bad house music. i’m not really a fan of even good house. and then they pretty much didn’t do anything. there was a mixing deck and turntables on stage and they were kind of hunched over them, bobbing their heads, but that was about it. we’d gotten there really late so luckily we only had to endure about 15 minutes of them. that was still way too much.

the Lords put on a pretty good show despite a small and not very excited crowd.

met the makers

By anders pearson 07 Nov 2002

yesterday, <a href=”http://www.columbia.edu/~zm4/“>zarina</a> and i went to the <a href=”http://www.meet-the-makers.com/“>meet the makers</a> conference.

since we got in for free, i’d say it was definitely worth the price of admission. i wouldn’t really have paid much for it otherwise.

most of the conference was product demos by various software companies like netomat, IBM, adobe, atomz, and macromedia. they all left me less than excited.

the panel discussions were ok though. they interviewed one of the developers who works on <a href=”http://www.zagat.com/“>Zagat.com</a>. he was pretty boring, but he was immediately followed by Joshua Davis from <a href=”http://www.praystation.com/“>praystation</a>. for the last few years, he’s been working mostly in flash and so i haven’t really been following his work very closely (since macromedia hasn’t released a flash 6 plugin for linux yet, praystation is just a big gray box in my browser) but i remember being blown away by his webdesign back in the day. Joshua is a former pro skateboarder, is covered in tattoos and loves to swear (afterwards i overheard him asking a friend “so, do you think i said ‘fuck’ enough times?”), so it was fun to watch him being interviewed by a guy in a suit.

the real highlight though was a panel discussion on web standards with <a href=”http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/“>eric meyer</a> from netscape and <a href=”http://www.zeldman.com/“>jeffrey zeldman</a> of the <a href=”http://www.webstandards.org/“>WaSP</a>.

there was pretty decent free food too. i felt a little bad though because, being the first day of ramadan, zarina was fasting and couldn’t enjoy any of it.

didn’t really do too much actual meeting of makers unfortunately. i did meet <a href=”http://www.pixelcharmer.com/“>tanya rabourn</a>, who is very cool. but she works for Columbia (in a different department) and knew zarina already, so i don’t know if that really counts.

Civic Duty

By Mark Boudreau 05 Nov 2002

Has everyone voted? Has everyone been as bummed by the choices they have been given on the ballot? Am I just unusually pessimistic and cynical or are elections really that bad these days?

<p>The two main parties are accusing each other of some really nasty tricks. It looks like there are going to be lawsuits deciding some of the closer elections.</p>

<p>Then, I have the bad feeling that no matter what party has control of federal or state government, the bureacracy is so messed up that it will make little difference for the citizens.</p>

<p>Can anyone turn my frown upside down and help me see a light at the end of the tunnel?</p>