Took time last night to see Banyan with Roger at Great American Music Hall. Pretty floatin’ show, though not quite as tight as last February’s performance. Kind of Laswell-like stew of atmosphere, jazz, funk, punk. Virtuosic, but somehow had trouble finding its overall groove. Still, how often do you get to hear Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” morph into Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme?” Sadly underattended - less than 100 people in the house.

Have been debating whether to go to this or to see Watt with Iggy and the Stooges in December. But that show is part of the Not So Silent Night festival, which includes a bunch of bands I don’t really care about (don’t have the time of day for Perry Ferrell, sorry, even though Jane’s drummer Steve Perkins is himself the heart of Banyan). And it’s harder for dads to go these longer performances, so Rog and I opted for something we could do quickly after kids went off to Slumberland.

This morning dreamed of parachuting/hang-gliding through an endless valley with Amy (but she was my fiance’ in the dream), through miles of craggy outcroppings, trees, lakes, contours in the land beautiful beyond all description, kind of a visual representation of last night’s music, I think. At one point my ‘chute got tangled on a tree, but all I had to do was hunch my shoulder a bit to lift it out of the branches.

Season 4 is out, and Amy and I started the yearly Sopranos binge a bit ago. Love to watch this way, three of four episodes at a time. We can consume an entire season in a week or two. Like learning a language by moving to another country, total immersion. Last night put Miles down and sat by the light of the Christmas tree, wind whipping outside, eggnog and rum, and sucked down the last three episodes of season 4. Heaven.

SF Chron: Thanksgiving week draws 40 million Americans into theaters — the same number of weekly moviegoers as in 1920, when the U.S. population was 1/3 what it is today. Possible because in 1920, we had no media choices. Radio probably, but no TV. In addition to being almost the sole source of audio-visual entertainment, the movie theater was also where people went for newsreels - the only moving images people got of the world outside.

That aside, it’s a trip just to think of the U.S. — or of the world — with 1/3 of its current population. Imagine any crowded scene, and visually remove 2/3 of the people from it. All those non-existent persons. All that elbow room. You don’t have to go that far back to be weirded out by population trends, either. There were 4 billion people on earth when I was born in the mid-60s. Today, 6 billion+ — the world’s population has expanded by 50% since I’ve been alive. Visualize 8.5 billion, which will be the world population by the time Miles is my age. Try 100 years ahead, or 200.

Person wearing iPod spies passerby wearing iPod. Walks up to stranger, unplugs own headphone jack, motions for stranger to do same. Both plug into each other’s iPod’s and dig 30 seconds of what a total stranger is listening to. Smile, unplug, continue on with their respective days. Apparently iPod jacking is a rising meme on college campuses, small communities, etc. Or maybe not so much a meme as a two-person happening.

Tell-tale white headphone cords mean iPod users are easy to spot, and I admit to sometimes doing that “biker nod” thing back at other iPod users, but so far I haven’t jacked anyone, nor have I been jacked. But I’m open to it.

If you see me, jack me.

November 28th is Buy Nothing Day. Protest the impact of globalism by ducking out of capital structures for 24 hours… if you can (or maybe Amy and I will buy our new car that day). In the U.K., BND is on the 29th, I guess so the time zones sync up.

The way language forms in toddlers, there’s a period where parents aren’t sure whether kids are talking or not. Sometimes experimental proto-syllables come together in ways that sound an awful lot like language, but aren’t. And there are clear attempts at full words that nevertheless still manage to munge a syllable or otherwise fail to make it out of the mouth fully formed. Miles is in that phase now, where we’re just not sure whether he’s talking or not, but know he’s definitely working hard on it.

He’s also a big fan of Pirate’s Booty, aka “baby heroin” (yes, he eats a well-balanced diet and no, he does not subsist on junk; but he still likes his Booty). The other day Amy made the mistake of giving him some Booty before his proper meal. Needless to say, the subsequent attempt to switch from Booty to beans didn’t go well, and he kept pointing at the cabinet where the Booty is kept and grunting. Suddenly, Amy says, he said, clear as day, “boooo - teeee.”

Seems too context-perfect to be accidental, so we think “booty” is probably his first word. Or at least that’s what I really want to believe :) So far he hasn’t repeated it yet (despite our encouragement), so I’m not going to try and convince myself that it was. I wouldn’t mind hearing a clear “Mommy” or “Daddy” first.

Birdhouse Hosting uses SpamAssassin in conjunction with CGPSA to tag all inbound email message headers and delete msgs that meet a given threshold for spammy-ness before they’re ever downloaded by customers. CommuniGate logs are set to roll over every 7 days. Wrote a simple script that queries the CGP logs for discard events and outputs the result count to an include which you’ll now find in the “Tech Crap” section to the right (and in this post). This number will grow as A) the proportion of spam in the wild continues to grow and B) the number of birdhouse customers using the auto-kill feature grows.

Spams auto-killed by CGPSA in the past 7 days: (refreshed hourly).

MP3.com’s was one of the largest public IPOs in history. Their database represents the largest collection of musical work by unsigned artists ever assembled - more than a million songs by a quarter million artists. Vivendi sold the MP3.com domain to c|net — the domain, but not the business. And now, for whatever reason, the entire collection is going to be destroyed Dec. 3.

Not sure how I feel about this. At least no one is trying to transfer rights out from under the artists, but I have to think there’s a better way than demolishing the collection, and the business model. Michael Robertson is pleading with archive.org to mirror the lot, but time is short. I think what makes me sad about this is the fact that MP3.com was the best living example of how to do an end-run around the music industry legally. How to let good, unheard music bubble up to the surface organically, by the will of the people, rather stars being manufactured by execs and spoon-fed to passive audiences. And it was the best example of artists selling music without getting ripped off.

Not sure if I’d equate this loss with the burning of library at Alexandria, but it’s a disappointment nonetheless.

Everyone has their favorite unexpected discovery from trawling the MP3.com archives. Mine is Bruce Lash. Try “I Went to Tea with the Elephant Man” or anything from Prozak for Lovers.

Just watched a noontime presentation by “America’s most fiercely independent journalist,” Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. Amy is a host at Pacifica Radio and producer of several documentaries critical of the marriage between establishment politics and establishment journalism. She showed Independent Media In A Time Of War, which I’ll now consider required viewing for anyone who feels the U.S. media gave us anything remotely resembling fair and balanced coverage during the war. Really incredible; I bought a copy to show to friends.

Point: FAIR analyzed 393 TV interviews held on broadcast media during the war, then tallied the proportions of pro-war and anti-war interviewees. Results: 390 pro-war experts, 3 anti-war. Mainstream media falls down completely in its job. There is no discussion, no debate. General Wesley Clarke was on CNN more or less continuously throughout the war. Would a fair and balanced media not give equal time to a peace expert? This is the marriage between military and media. Media’s responsibility goes unfulfilled.

If we can’t rely on our media for information, what have we got? Where do we turn?

The general case is that racists are stupid. But according to studies at Dartmouth, racism makes you stupid. The more racist you are, the more your brain power is taxed when in proximity to someone from another race. One of the researchers characterized the findings as a quantification of awkwardness, where people consume so many cycles trying to act natural that they can’t just be natural.

I think everyone needs to just chill the heck out.

The trouble with a job where you serve 35 masters is that each master thinks their priorities are more important than everybody else’s. My task list is carefully prioritized in a queue that stretches out approximately two years into the future (and you wondered why the J-School homepage looks as stylistically embarrassing today as it did the day I started).

Some needs are long term, while others are urgent/sudden, come out of nowhere, and have to trump other tasks in the queue. Case in point: A recent request from the Admissions dept to put a database-backed survey online for our alumni. Dozens of questions in mixed input types, thousands of respondents expected, immediate result tabulation required.

Oh, and I had 48 hours to get it online. Knew I wouldn’t be building this one from scratch. Surfed around and found dozens of survey systems, but it seemed like all the really good ones were in the $200-$300 range. I don’t have that kind of money to spend. I don’t have any money to spend. It had to be free.

The tedious part of making this sort of selection is that you have to spend real time with a system before you understand it well enough to reject or accept it. And you have to be confident enough in its longevity that you want to deploy it long-term (so you don’t end up with mixed CMSs, or mixed survey systems, etc.)

Finally landed phpESP via SourceForge. Its back-end is a bit finicky (not to mention ugly), but it’s very flexible and powerful. Mix essay questions with multiple choice, radio, combo, text field answers. Single page or multi-page. CSS-based styling. No limits. Very core. So good, in fact, now I’m considering replacing my home-brew quiz system with ESP. eWeek reviews ESP.

Once again, the hard work of total strangers saves the day.

Birdhouse Hosting welcomes battellemedia.com. John Battelle is co-founder of both Wired Magazine and The Industry Standard, as well as a visiting professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Battellemedia.com is host to a blog on his book-in-progress on the search industry. A 2nd blog on the site, Tonic, focuses on “health for grown men.”

Gadget lust strikes: SlimDevices have seriously updated the SliMP3 and renamed it “SqueezeBox” (apologies to The Who?) Now it’s got built-in Wi-Fi, digital outputs (coax and optical) and plays uncompressed WAV/AIFF). Hrmm… on the other hand, we haven’t hooked up the SliMP3 since we moved, which has encouraged us back into CDs and LPs — their own reward. Have to rethink the meaning of “essential upgrade.”

Slim is donating 10% of profits to the EFF - can’t argue with that. On a similar note, received an offer tonight, buried among the seemingly bottomless pile of credit card offers, to get a LinuxFund credit card; a portion of each purchase would go to funding open source programming efforts. At first I laughed. Seemed like hearing a Led Zeppelin song as soundtrack for a Cadillac commercial. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like Aikido; turning capitalist momentum against itself. Hrmm… the APR is same as mainstream cards, why not switch?

Needed to change a primary DNS server to one that would properly resolve .biz addresses, in order to keep the SpamAssassin plugin for CommuniGate from getting all choked up. But OS X client doesn’t let you alter DNS via ssh. Turns out that components of OS X Server work perfectly well when copied over to OS X Client and placed in a parallel path, problem solved. Wonder if this would work with some of the graphical/remote setup tools as well? Probably not without deeper surgery.

Must see BBC: Winner of the World Beard Championship (be sure to see the Follicle Wonders gallery … Can’t afford an iPod? There’s a cheaper way … Many amazing mechanical wonders at World Power Systems … Will Ferrell’s graduation speech to Harvard’s Class of 2003 … Worst album covers ever … You need an airzooka … Cardea : The body of Segway, the head of a robot (because the Segway has too many wheels) … The letter ‘E’ enlarged … Bob Log III had a telephone grafted to his face mask, plays guitar and floor tom at the same time, has boob scotch underwear for sale … Got PHP? Got an image? Build your own stereogram … Dubya has his own blog, and it’s nearly indistinguishable from the dullest blog in the world … Old Ziff-Davis buddy John Hargrave calls Apple support … Wish I was Japanese so I could use this gorgeous wooden keyboard … Robert Fripp offers a blessing … The power of Photoshop … If ever I were to admit there’s such a thing as a perfect car, the 1963 Fiat 500 Cinquecento Giardiniera is surely it … Jenny Holzer’s Truisms, including: “it is heroic to try to stop time” … mac breakdown at UC Berkeley … So wonderful to be reminded of the amazing Pippi Longstocking … Recently heard of people asking for change with cardboard signs saying “Help the ~/less” … Fo shizzle my nizzle.

Cute nag screen for MacRabbit’s CSSEdit:

Since healing up from the busted arm, I’ve ridden with a fluorescent orange safety vest while bicycling. The first couple of days, felt like a total dork. All “cool” goes straight out the window. Trade that in for becoming kinda sorta visible to cars. I use that word with caveat and caution, as I still proceed with the assumption that i am el hombre invisible. Nevertheless, there is this unfamiliar phenomenon: cars come to a complete stop 20 feet away, motion me through the intersection. I never know whether they think I’m law enforcement or “something official-like” on account of the vest, or simply that the vest brings out the dormant courteous driver in some people. But there’s no question it makes a difference in the way cars treat me. I also use a super-spazmodo LED flasher on the seatpost now, which arrests vision from the rear at 50 paces.

Bike aside, my whole attitude toward traffic is permanently altered. Since Matthew’s death, my accident, Mike’s accident, and the eerie confluence of accidents that have affected so many friends and family over the past year, I drive like an old lady. Smell death and damage around every corner. See every merging car as an incoming 2,000-lb smart bomb. Have no lingering youthful sense of invulnerability. Feel lucky to arrive at any destination intact. Freak at every arrogant cell phone using, fast-food-eating, lipstick-applying, radio-twiddling, inattentive driver.

If only people knew what a thin razor’s edge they ride at every moment on the road. An edge that grows thinner with every passing year, as culture accelerates, population explodes, courtesy vanishes.

I think of Matthew every day when I slip that vest over my head.

The Mozart Magic Music Cube is unique in the universe of toys in that its construction utterly resists repair via either crazy glue or duct tape. Oh, sure, you can try, but I promise your fix will not hold. The battery retention panel is severely weakened by the presence of a switch right in the middle of the plastic, which leaves it with almost no structural integrity to resist the pressure of the spring-backed, outward-pushing battery. There is so little surface area to which one can apply glue without permanently sealing the battery in place, and no place to apply duct tape adequately without disrupting the large side buttons which are, after all, the point of the toy.

A two-foot fall is all it takes to snap the battery retention panel. Miles broke Simone’s cube. All repair attempts failed (the only thing I can imagine working would be to encircle the whole unit with an old leather belt, but that would of course ruin the lines, not to mention the functionality) so we replaced it for her. Then Miles went to visit and broke the replacement in the same way within minutes.

Embryonics, you owe us $70.

Miles is crazy for drums, a passion sparked at or near his first birthday by the gift of an actual drum, and by a book called Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb, which is about all these beatnik monkeys (with sideburns!) who play crazy rhythms on drums they wear around their necks. Starts with a single monkey beating out a rhythm with his thumb, then evolves to a thunderous chorus created by thousands of monkeys all playing at once. The book itself has a great rhythm. All the way through, meter like this:

One thumb, one thumb,
beating on a drum
dum ditty dum ditty
dum dum dum

Amy and I have fun riffing on this. The drum mallets, of course, don’t confine themselves to the drum head. Mallets on sliding glass door, mallets on daddy’s head, mallets on other toys. Crazy rhythms everywhere.

He’s also way into climbing now. Started with small footstool, then climbing on the drum, now climbing chairs and surfing the arms, riding Simone’s hobby horse every way but the way it’s meant to be ridden, using his schooldesk chair like an acrobatics prop. Seems to be made out of rubber, and is an excellent fall-er. Some bruises, but they don’t deter him, and no really serious ow-ies yet. He’s also taken to upturning chairs (including his high chair) from below, just to hear them thud.

Now that’s he’s moved pretty much fully from jar food to finger foods, cleaning up after his meals has become a home improvement project in its own right. This task consists of the following subroutines: Shake foodstuffs out of his clothes and hair, then wash his his face and hands in the sink. Scrub down the bib, sponge out the high chair, use a broom and dustpan to clean up the wreckage of his meal in a 6′ circle around the epicenter, then sponge same area clean with the “dirty sponge.” Finally, put away all the components of his meal - bean container, cheese block, cracker box, melon half, and so on.

This is why Amy has hung a picture of the wreckage of the 1907 San Francisco earthquake above his high chair.

A previous post chewed on the vast discrepancy between a $300,000 Iraqi estimate to repair a particular bridge and an American bid to repair the same bridge at $50 million. Today, Gilbert sends along a Washington Post piece that helps put such cost discrepancies into perspective. It’s not that the American bids are without greed, but much of the cost difference is taken up in cultural differences. Americans see a bombed out cement factory and see the need to basically scrap it and rebuild from scratch. Iraqis, accustomed to doing a lot with a little, see a chance to clear out the rubble and get the darn thing online, even if at lowered capacity. The Iraqi improv may be more of a Band-Aid than a long-term solution, but still, cement does come out the other end. Then factor in things like insurance - Halliburton has had to waive subcontractor requirements such as hazard insurance, which isn’t even available in Iraq.

Everything is simpler than it seems. No, I mean, more complex.

Apple moved to CUPS (common unix printing system) for Panther. That’s all well and good, but in order to do so, they blotted out currently installed vendor drivers. That might have been all well and good, but some of the CUPS drivers aren’t as capable as the commercial versions. Which meant that Amy’s color Epson no longer had a gamma control, and no longer had an option to use black ink only.

Panther means nothing to Amy. She doesn’t care about a new Finder, doesn’t care about Expose, or any of the other “150 new features.” Things were fine in Jaguar, and now her printer was broken, while she was in the middle of a long-term printing project.

Operating system upgrades should add features not remove them. Apple could at least give you the option of using one driver or the other. Fortunately, I discovered that the old drivers do still work, but you have to remove the CUPS driver first. Here’s what I did:

Go into /Library/Printers/Epson and find SP890.plugin.
Ctrl-click | Make Archive to create a zipped version.
Delete the plugin.
Reinstall Epson’s downloadable driver.
Restart.

Back in business, but what a crock.

Lots of bitterness out there about how today marks the end of the all-you-can-eat $9.95 music download program at emusic.com. As of today, your ten bucks “only” buys you forty tracks/month, i.e. 3-4 albums.

I was turned on to emusic days after starting to poke around the iTunes Music Store, and quickly discovered that not only was emusic much cheaper than ITMS, but it also had a catalog more in line with my tastes. Like most emusic users, I went on a month-long download binge after the announcement that the business model would change to resemble something remotely profitable. Today we are returned forcibly to our senses.
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Just getting up to speed on the recent broadcast flag ruling, and it’s as depressing as I had feared. Nutshell version: Devices capable of handling HDTV streams or signals must incorporate an FCC-approved encryption module by July 2005. In other words, government-mandated and controlled PC and television design.

“the order “totally eliminates the ability to send that (HDTV) data over a PCI bus to a Firewire port or to a digital VHS recorder–except in analog format.”

This means you can’t use something like a Hauppauge card to record a digital TV stream to your hard drive — that would be giving the consumer way too much flexibility in the way they work with media.

And if you don’t care about HDTV, remember that this is a slippery slope. The consumer’s ability to work with recorded media is now regulated by the government, and enforced by hardware vendors. HDTV first, anything the entertainment lobbies want regulated next.

The question is, what exactly will happen to media in the presence of the broadcast flag? As I understand it, you’ll still be able to record, but that recording will only be playable on the same device that did the recording. That means no taping Trigger-Happy TV and lending the tape to a friend. You get the picture.

Get your HDTV receiver or capture card now, before they’re gubmint-crippled.

bIPlog has more.

Received and installed two 60GB Apple Drive Modules today — hot-swappable plugin storage for the XServe. My rsync backup scripts now write to the currently installed ADM; the other will be kept off-site for flood/fire/quake safety. Sexy little beasts, these can also be used in the XServe RAID, but we’re not there yet. Supremely satisfying.

Pardon the dust around here recently. Have been growing increasingly frustrated with the time it took to post a new entry — as long as 80 seconds, and around 60 for guests to leave a new comment. The latter was becoming a genuine problem because people would get impatient and hit the Post button repeatedly, so I’d end up with duplicate or triplicate comments.
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