Mile Zero
no matter where you go, there you are
Mile Zero is the personal website of Thomas Wilburn. All statements and opinions here are my own, and do not represent the views or policies of my employers at Congressional Quarterly, Ars Technica, or other publications.
Have you got a fever? And the only prescription...
...is more cowbell?
Rad Monkey Cowbells has the cure for what ails you. Not only do they offer the first ever electric cowbell, but they've got a preview up for the VLC800, which uses digital modeling to emulate 12 classic cowbell sounds. If only Gene Frenkle had lived to see this day.
(Yes, it is a joke. The same people created the Sonicfinger plugins, including "Virtual Studio Visitor" and the "Dead Quietenator.")
20:27 x Thomas x /music/tools/digital x link x 1 comment
This month, Wired includes an article on Channel Nine, Microsoft's initiative to create outreach through online video interviews of engineers and employees. Channel Nine led to the company becoming active with blogging, podcasts, and other grassroots communication initiatives. In a lot of ways, the result of Channel Nine was to humanize the company, as well as to give outsiders a better view of what it's working on.
I mention this, not only because I find the results fascinating--detailed information about the new audio framework for Vista was circulated a while back in a way that would have never happened through a press release, for example--but because I think it has personal relevance. When I first joined the World Bank's online video archive, B-SPAN, it was with the understanding that we perform a similar function for the Bank. We don't necessarily go out and interview staff, but we do let outsiders join in on some of the conferences and internal presentations that take place at headquarters. Hopefully, that isn't just a resource for learning, but it's also an opening into the current state of mind inside the institution, and that openness is very important.
Like Microsoft, the World Bank often suffers from an image problem, particularly a lack of transparency. Also like Microsoft, we have a lot of very talented and intelligent people here who don't get enough credit. I've often felt that while B-SPAN plays a role in the PR conversation, it would be a smart move for the Bank to also create a Channel 9, and to encourage its staff to start blogging. It would be good for our critics to see the institution as I see it: not a market-driven mammoth that stampedes across weak economies, but a collection of people who are sincerely trying to fight poverty. Likewise, it would be good for the Bank to open itself up to feedback and dialogue at many levels, both internal and external, so that when those sincere efforts go awry (as they sometimes do) we are more flexible and receptive to criticism.
Of course, I don't actually expect this to take place anytime soon, and certainly not while I'm still here. For one thing, the staff is not young enough to embrace that kind of technology or philosophy. There are very few people my age here, even in the Multimedia Center, and even fewer in the Bank at large. For another, it is hard to let go of control, and the Bank's nervousness at giving opponents more opportunities seems deeply ingrained to me. But I think that inevitably the World Bank will have little choice. The potential for spreading knowledge through blogs and other web resources is enormous, and other players in development are beginning to really take advantage of it. We can either be dragged, kicking and screaming, into a more open conversation with clients, partners, and civil society, or we can take this opportunity to make a new introduction for ourselves while the technology is still fresh.
20:22 x Thomas x /bank/analysis/pr x link x 1 comment
Bear McCreary, the composer for Battlestar Galactica (as well as a number of other shows and movies), has a blog where he explains how he adapted Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" for the season three finale (when it goes into the archive, that entry will be located here). Putting the song into the show was a bizarre--but fascinating--step. Too bad we'll have to wait until January 2008 before we can find out what it means.
McCreary's blog actually features a few other interesting previous entries, especially the ones on the instrumentation he uses, and where he actually breaks apart the small musical themes that are used to score behind each character. Did you know? That irregular, single-note beat that opens the prologue to the show ("The cylons were created by man...") is actually in 9/8 time, and is played on the Javanese gamelan. Now you know.
00:00 x Thomas x /movies/television/galactica x link x 0 comments
The problem with judging the Variax bass is that it really needs to be put into a live or recording context for a real evaluation. For one thing, the differences between the modeled instruments are often not entirely apparent at low volumes, so you need to be able to turn up the volume. Also, like all instruments, it sounds different in a band context, and that's really where the models come into their own. When solo'd, they tend to sound very similar, because at heart all basses are still just vibrating metal strings bolted to wood. But with other instruments, the individual attributes of the modeled basses start to come through--the bounce and snap of the Stingray's preamp, for example, or the thick boom of the T-Bird's humbuckers. At the very least, you need to hear these basses with drums. So to get a bit more of that perspective, I took the Variax to one of my band auditions this weekend. I don't think the band is likely to work out, but I'm happy with how the bass sounded.
The space itself was a small practice room, which tended to accentuate the treble a bit. On most active basses, you'd want to turn down the highs, and you can do that with the Variax on both passive and active models. Unfortunately, when you change models, the knobs reset to their saved positions. So the first performance lesson is that room-tuning has to be done from the amplifier--probably the best place to do it anyway.
The band concept this audition was a kind of funk/hip-hop/rock fusion, and the tracks I played with had lots of synth pads and samples already worked into them. The bandleader said he was interested in the kinds of extended-range bass that I do, but that kind of music (Tupac meets Prince, in his words) really calls for an old-school thump from the bass. I used the Thunderbird and the P-bass models for the most part, and was pleasantly surprised by them. I'm not entirely sure if they're accurate models, but they're both good bass sounds. They've got plenty of impact, and they cut through the mix to support it without really stepping out in front.
In fact, that tends to be what I find most interesting about the Variax so far, and also what I find disturbing. When my main axe was the All Star, which is a J-bass clone, I learned a set of techniques for getting different sounds on it: variations on where to pluck the strings, the interactions between the pickups, and the tone knob. I had to learn those, because a passive instrument doesn't really have much in the way of tone-shaping. On an active instrument, you have an EQ built in, which adds a new layer of versatility. The Variax actually models both the passive and active tone circuits of its basses, but I found myself using the models themselves as tone presets instead of spending much time with the treble and bass controls. Until I get to know them all better, that's probably how it's going to go: I've basically got about 10 new basses to learn, after it took me three years to really feel like I was wringing good stuff out of a single instrument.
We also played some of my own stuff, which is... interesting... when adding a drummer and guitarist. The Rickenbacker has rapidly become one of my favorite sounds on the Variax, and it sounded the way I thought it should. There's definitely some of that piano-ringing clarity to the sound that I would expect from a Rick. I also flipped back to my J preset, which solos the neck pickup, and got pretty much exactly what I'm used to, although it seems a little stiffer than the All-Star. It's so hard to do precise comparisons of these things, especially since they're not modeling my instruments (although that would be a nice touch), but a set of vintage basses that I've never touched.
Overall, it was a pleasant experience. The Variax never felt digital or artificial, although I didn't expect it to. I did find that the synth sounds, using my presets, came across as thin and weak, although with a little tweaking they started to stand out a bit more. But the bass sounds are solid, and they really do start to distinguish themselves a bit more in context. I don't think it's a good first instrument, because I think musicians need to learn (as I did) on something that makes them work a little harder and develop their technique to compensate for any limitations of the hardware. The Variax doesn't replace a great instrument, either--now that I've heard the model, I'm even more interested in a real Rickenbacker. But it does replace the instruments that players can't afford, or wouldn't play enough to justify buying. And it's definitely got value as a workhorse for people who only want to carry one bass, or who want to experiment with different tones.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/bass x link x 0 comments
Once again, DC gets close to having actual voting rights for its residents, only to have them shot down--almost literally, in this case, as the Republicans in the House are attempting to gut the District's gun ban in the process.
It's always a shame to be reminded that people living in our nation's capital have basically no representation in its government. It's one of those ironies that crop up in American life on a regular basis. But what I find more depressing is the "constitutional" argument against DC voting rights, which basically goes as the following:
Also, the Constitution technically says that these states shall "chuse" their representatives. Sounds painful. Let's remember that the constitution was drawn up in kind of a hurry, and as such contains a number of spelling errors and odd grammatical choices. Maybe we shouldn't get too caught up in the exact definition of a "state," especially since they let New Jersey in. Clearly, there's no accounting for taste.
But while we're at it, let's talk about the American system of locational voting rights, of which the DC area is only a part. The US not only owns fifty states, but also includes what are called territories, in both incorporated and unincorporated flavors. Puerto Rico, for example, is an unincorporated, organized territory. So Puerto Ricans are US citizens, and they can vote in federal elections--if, that is, they leave Puerto Rico, because no federal elections are held there. Nor does it get any representation in the electoral college system. It is, in other words, basically a colony.
There's something distasteful about the United States, itself a conglomerate of colonies that rebelled against their lack of representation in government, doing the same thing to new colonies of its own. But as labor activists know, the US doesn't just hold these territories for the sheer fun of it. In the case of the Northern Marianas Islands, they host sweatshop labor in brutal conditions. Because these are our territories, they still qualify for the "Made in the USA" tag, thus keeping costs (with the exception of human dignity) down, while consumers are fooled into believing that the goods are ethically-produced in the continental US.
Let's be frank. It's a shame that DC doesn't get a vote--it really is, and I believe strongly that it should. But I believe more strongly that the US policy of keeping colonies around the world for military or economic reasons, without granting full rights to those citizens, is a more pressing injustice. We should remember that the fight over the District's "statehood" is only the beginning of a bigger struggle, one which cuts uncomfortably close to our nation's founding values.
11:03 x Thomas x /dc/gov x link x 1 comment
I'm Putting the Band Back Together
I put an ad up on Craigslist the other day. "Unconventional bassist seeks equally unconventional bandmate(s)." I got a couple of replies, which I'll try to follow up on this weekend. One of them is a drummer, which amazes me--I thought drummers were rare as hens teeth around here. Maybe that's just good drummers.
Basically, I've run out of steam on the Four String Riot project. I'm sure I'll keep working on it, off and on, because I still really dig the concept. But I want to try challenging the skills that I don't necessarily use when playing solo: playing to a groove, working with a flexible percussionist, and writing songs with more variation and melodic change. I also want to start playing out semi-seriously--for all of my criticism of Western musical culture, I still miss the stage.
At the same time, I don't plan on giving up what I've learned. I'm not going to stop playing chords, taking solos, or using inappropriate amounts of distortion, and I plan on retaining at least some singing duties. That probably means no guitarists need apply, but I can live with that.
So if anyone in the DC area wants the opportunity to put up with my weirdness, or knows someone who might want to, get in touch. Let's hope this works out better than my last band.
12:56 x Thomas x /music/performance/band x link x 1 comment
I think I missed this the first time that CDM posted it, but Audiohead.net's tour of NIN's recording space is very, very cool. I listened to The Fragile again this weekend from start to finish while walking the dog, something I hadn't done since Tony Scott's hideous Man On Fire almost ruined it for me. The change from that sound to the more stripped-down aesthetic of With Teeth is striking, and Reznor's studio setup sounds like it lent itself to that process. Also: lots of gear pictures. What I would give for just one of those racks.
10:06 x Thomas x /music/artists/nin x link x 1 comment
I have no idea where it originally came from. Joystiq reposted it today, but it's all over flickr and ROFL CAT.
09:14 x Thomas x /gaming/media/online x link x 1 comment
And the results of the Great Nutella Blind Taste Test are:
Only three people out of six guessed correctly when asked to identify American and Belgian Nutella by their country of origin. Thus proving that, in this limited sample at least, people who claim that they prefer the European version either actually prefer the American or just can't tell the difference.
Extra points go to snobs who insist that the Romanian product is way better than the Belgian, especially after failing the test.
08:16 x Thomas x /culture/europe/belgium x link x 1 comment
If you want to know an era, you take a look at its pulp. That's where the subconscious peeks out. Horror movies, for example, track in interesting ways against mainstream culture of their time--the slasher films that rose with the sexual revolution, the nuclear-powered monsterfests of the 50's, or the nature-strikes-back stylings of the environmental 80's. It's not perfect, but you can get an interesting glimpse into the spirit of the times.
It occurred to me, yesterday at the L St Borders, that the same kind of thing applies to science fiction. It is, after all, a genre composed of what-ifs and daydreams, which is an easy way for social fears and needs to express themselves.
So what's playing at the Jungian Theatre of SciFi Monstrosities these days? Not cyberpunk, that's for sure. Looking over the selection (which is hardly overwhelming on L Street, but neither is it anemic compared to other chain locations), you could be forgiven for thinking that William Gibson is the only person who ever wrote in the subgenre, and he only rents space there now--you could argue that Pattern Recognition and the Bridge trilogy are cyberpunk, but I think that has more to do with Gibson's style and personal obsessions than anything else. It's particularly interesting for my zeitgeist theory that cyberpunk has quietly died, because when it emerged it was seen as a direct response to the privatization and post-Cold War fugue of the Reagan era. Apparently, those big Japanese corporations just don't scare us any more.
What looks to have replaced c-punk as a genre is self-conscious nerd fiction. No doubt this was always an aspect of science fiction--Robert Heinlein's stories of intrepid day-saving engineers with slide rules of steel are just nerdcore from the days when buzzcuts were geek credibility. But I actually saw a book the other day that had, as part of the back cover blurb, something like the following:
Imagine it read in the nicotine-roughened tones of a movie announcer for the full effect. Because seriously: the big dramatic device here is the product cycle? I know we can't necessarily assume that the back cover of a book is entirely an accurate representation of its contents, but I'd rather stab forks into my eyelids than read that. On the other hand, I'm not its target audience. People who do coding all day long and fit a very specific psychological profile probably find it riveting.
I know what that means: there's a market for that kind of cubicle fiction, and clearly there are authors writing about what they know. I'm less clear on why transhumanism has undergone such a renaissance in sci-fi lately. As typified by Alistair Reynolds, Vernor Vinge, John C. Wright, Charlie Stross, and a horde of wannabes, these stories concern people that are at least partly virtual, or manipulated by nano-technology, or other malleable aspects of data. The Singularity often figures prominently. Does it say something about readers that their fiction seeks to reject the boundaries of the human form? Or is it just a reflection of attention spans raised on instant messaging conversations and Boing Boing? Either way, it's another interesting counterpoint to the cyberpunk genre, which explicitly put its protagonists in the role of criminals, lower classes, and vaguely anti-establishment slackers. The transhumanist trend seems like a move back into the utopian technofetish of Golden Age science fiction, just with weirder devices and less emotional characters.
Anyway. The other interesting trend I saw on the shelves was the revival of the gritty "magical underworld" theme. Laurell K. Hamilton, Jim Butcher, and a few others pen books about wizards, werewolves, and vampires that are all around us, having really exciting adventures and lots of great sex. There are a lot of these books on the shelves at Borders. I'm not sure if it's a backlash against the geeky escapism of genre fantasy (is it the equivalent of cyberpunk unicorns) or just a coincidence that incorporates the intrinsically (if trashy) appeals of exciting adventures and sex. I can't really blame people for the latter.
00:00 x Thomas x /fiction/industry x link x 0 comments
A Half-pint of Disoriented Atomic Matter
The Nintendo Wifi system is not terribly effective. I had an elaborate introduction involving Web 2.0 to explain why this was the case, but then I realized that I would be better off saving that material for another time and getting to the problem more directly. Basically, psu writes at Tea Leaves that the problem of Friend Codes is not going to be solved any time soon, because Nintendo doesn't care about investing in the infrastructure it would take to catch up to services like XBox Live.
And psu has a valid point--the Friend Code system, which requires players to put in a different 12-16 digit number in each game in order to play multiplayer against a specific person, would require the company to put into place a lot of servers and centralized record-keeping services. It is nice to have this information, because people can mess around with it or use it to rank themselves. But it's also true that the Friend codes are not the end of the world, and they add a little bit of security, which can be helpful in a kid-friendly environment.
With that said, and admitting full well that this is not at all what psu meant to address, this is not the main reason that people dislike Nintendo's online service. It's not the reason that they're upset when it was carried over from the DS to the Wii. The reason that they're upset is because the service fails at the basic tasks of creating a good multiplayer experience, even without the bells and whistles of stat tracking and online ladders.
I've written before about how Nintendo has half-baked its Internet offerings online. They're unbalanced and easily exploited, and as a result I don't even bother to go online with Mario Kart or Metroid any more. But even if we set the games themselves aside, the matching service simply doesn't work effectively.
Say you're relatively new to gaming, and you want to play something online. So you load up a NiWiFi game, and you tap on the relevant icons. At this point, you wait. And you wait. And you wait some more. The four slots onscreen for other players--four players seems to be the maximum allowed, for some unexplained reason--will blink on, and then sometimes they'll blink back off without explanation. Eventually, the game will start, and then two minutes into the match at least two of the other players will disconnect when it becomes clear that they're not winning.
This is not a satisfactory process. It begins badly, it continues badly, and it ends badly. At no point is the player given any real information on what the system is doing, or why these players are being chosen. Moreover, once the match has been created, the game operates client-to-client, which opens up a whole new set of cheats and exploits, and lowers the ability for Nintendo to intervene with patches and quality control. It is not a coincidence that when Internet gaming really hit, it almost always used a client-server relationship, and it continues to do so. Servers create virtual spaces, gain their own communities and continuities, and give administrators the ability to slow down or kick cheaters off. Without those assets, we get to find out exactly how annoying most people online actually are.
Instead, Nintendo has basically chosen to go the cheapest route as possible, meaning that they rent servers from Gamespy for this crippled matching and pay for nothing else. I understand the impulse, but I think it's hard to claim that even the uninitiated are satisfied with this kind of system. Even casual gamers would like to see the people they're playing before they play them, and would like to spend as little time as possible waiting to connect. And it would be nice to have more options than just "random match" or "friends match," so that players can have some control over their experience. As it is, playing DS (and now Wii) games online is an opaque, frustrating hassle. Friend Codes are just an easily-grasped example of how messed up the system is.
16:35 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware/networking x link x 1 comment
This documentary of creating the Doctor Who theme is very cool. It shows how the music was assembled, piece by piece, using just analog synthesizers and a tape machine. What I love about modern recording, though, is that you can pack all the equipment required for the same kind of work into a laptop and a MIDI keyboard. When I write music for work, I do it almost exactly the same way, but it's all in software now.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/recording x link x 0 comments
So: about Belgium.
The conference was a success. We got a quarter of a million hits on the site in five days, maxed out the streaming server, and had visits from the President of Liberia and the King of Belgium. Since the video stream could only handle 300 users at once, we ended up turning to audio downloads of the speeches, meaning that my writing and recordings became the main feature of the site. I hope that'll look good as I keep prospecting for jobs.
Brussels itself reminds me of the older parts of Paris, although I'm sure that's partly because they're both French-speaking (the Dutch contingent is a distinct minority). The city's style itself also reminds me of France, particularly older cities like Avignon, although a few team members who had lived there assured me that most of Brussels has been destroyed and rebuilt at least once over the years. Regardless, it's a very walkable city, with lots of cobblestone streets. I didn't get to stroll around very much of it, being busy with the conference, but I did get to see some.
This church outside of the hotel was being remodeled. I like that the
scaffolding has a finished image of the church on it, almost as if someone
thought they could fool passers-by.
La Grand Place at night. This is one of the big landmarks of Brussels.
It's one of those city squares that's surrounded on all sides by these
incredibly beautiful buildings, covered in intricate carvings.
Here's the other side of the square.
And of course, a picture of me looking jetlagged in front of the other
side.
Walk past La Grand Place a little ways, as I did with a few team members,
and you come to this old shopping district. Slightly farther is a famous
bar that was once a landmark for the local bohemians, which shares its
name with its house brew: "Sudden Death." Very encouraging.
Many of the buildings in Brussels have a very art deco feel to them, like
this museum building. It used to be an insurance agency, according to a
sign outside the entrance.
When we first got there, the staff were actually still putting the
building together. They have a lot to do even now. Once you stepped
outside of this conference room, there were missing carpets, too many doors,
confusing exit signs--all the best parts of great planning.
But with that said, the conference room looked really good with 400 people
inside. This picture is taken from when the heads of the development
agencies first walked in, hence the photographers in the middle. The
moderator, Nik Gowling, stood in the middle--a decision meant to encourage
participants to talk to each other, and let him react dynamically to the
proceedings.
But with all the technology there, the one thing that nobody had was a
microphone stand, and I didn't pack one--I had enough trouble with
security already. I had to improvise. Classy.
00:00 x Thomas x /culture/europe/belgium x link x 0 comments
I'm going to be gone for a week, working on the Improving Governance and Fighting Corruption conference site for WBI. I'll be back in the USA starting March 16th.
Plans while in Belgium include waffles, chocolate, finding out if European Nutella is really better than the American stuff, and tracking down the Noisettes' What's the Time Mr Wolf.
Hold my calls.
20:37 x Thomas x /meta/announce/delays x link x 1 comment
I've added an excerpt of The Buzz, episode one, to the Audio section of my portfolio. I've been really busy on this the last couple of days, but everyone involved is very happy with how it turned out. I tweaked the intro music a little (the slap bass was overcompressed, I didn't like the synthesized horn section), and now you can hear it in context with narration, which makes a lot more sense.
00:00 x Thomas x /journalism/professional x link x 0 comments
These experimental games from GDC sound incredibly cool. They use sound input, either from a music file or live from the player, to generate and control the game. I'm especially intrigued by this:
I once thought it would be cool to make a rail shooter that worked in a similar way, but where the environment was generated from the wave--bass sounds might create the ground landscape, while treble would create enemies or obstacles. Barret's take is more interesting, because it lets the player trigger the music from a landscape generated from the sound file, thus giving the player a real investment (similar to the incentive of finishing a Guitar Hero song, not because of the score, but because you want it to sound good).
00:00 x Thomas x /gaming/design x link x 0 comments
Had an Ugly American Moment the other day.
You know what I'm talking about. One of those experiences where you find yourself fitting the American stereotype, that of the insensitive boor. My favorite example comes from a visit to Mexico when I was in high school. I was on a bus in Cancun with my girlfriend of the time, trying to be unobtrusive, when a southern couple got on the bus and rode for a few blocks. They were loud and obnoxious. Soon enough, they had to get off, and pushed the button by the door to signal the driver, at which point he (like every other bus driver anywhere in the world) took note but did not immediately screech to a halt.
"Push it agin," the woman said to her husband, at a volume that carried through the entire bus. "I don' think tha little guy heard you tha first time." That was my cue to try to look as not-American as possible. Which for me is a range that starts at Kentucky and ends at about Ohio, if we're generous, so I wasn't very successful.
I don't want my international readers to think they are getting off easy here. Other countries certainly have their own Ugly Stereotype moments. I'm just most conscious of the American variety. Surprisingly, considering the breadth of its workers, we have relatively few incidents at the World Bank, I think. Everyone is generally aware that A) at least one person in a given conversation does not natively speak English, B) it is much easier to extend the benefit of a doubt rather than take offense, and C) no-one wants to be that guy.
My transgression wasn't anything offensive, really. We were working on some documents for the conference in Belgium, including the commitment cards. See, one of the really cool things about this conference will be cards passed out to the participants, on which they'll write personal commitments to anti-corruption, ranging from the personal ("I will not buy gas from companies known to use bribery in their operations") to the organizational ("My company will not use bribery in our operations"). This is a brave move, all things considered, since we'll be collecting the cards and publishing selected commitments on the web site (that's part of my job there).
But the language that explains this was somewhat controversial--for example, the word "ambitious" was thought to have heavy overtones, and was cut. So while we're discussing the text, my manager commented on how this is really a way of making the political personal, as the saying goes. I suggested that we actually write that on the front. I think I said something along the lines of "We can get participants to realize how important this could be."
"Oh, that's very American," said another (American) colleague. "To the Europeans, it's going to sound like we're moralizing, and they'll just toss them." There were nods from a couple of people around the table.
I'm not going to say that I was hurt, really, but I guess I was surprised. While I know that Americans are considered "blunt" by many people, I had never really thought of this kind of assertiveness as being American. Or more precisely, it would have never occurred to me that such language was particularly assertive or self-righteous. I think for Americans, that kind of rhetoric is just considered a way to get the topic out for debate. In a way, maybe we automatically go for the hard sell. I had a similar experience with B-SPAN promotional cards that we placed in the cafeteria, one of which read (in reference to our mailing list): "18,000 NEW FRIENDS."
"But I won't actually get 18,000 new friends from B-SPAN," said one person.
"No," I admitted. "I guess you won't."
After we finished the conference card meeting, I mentioned this to a friend--the one with the interesting folk sayings. She compared my choice of language to her university professors in France. "They were very distant," she said. "We would never call them by their first name, or go to have a drink with them, the way that I can here. Americans were much more informal, and I kind of respected that. But it has its down sides, also."
Then the conversation turned to Walter Reed, and I guess we got off topic. The point for me is that, when we discussed this back in my college Communication classes, I had never really bought the idea that (interpersonally speaking) there are communal and individualistic cultures, but this event brought the lesson home for me. When I think about it, most of the writers and role models that I try to emulate share this kind of aggressive, almost hyperbolic use of words--and there's a real implication of individualism implicit in that. This is a new way to think about how I write professionally (or even casually).
Of course, being an American, I tend to agree with my coworker that I find these tendencies to be admirable. After all, isn't the problem with corruption too often that people tiptoe around it? Shouldn't our rhetoric be a little more aggressive?
Probably not, if it dissuades others from joining us. And in this case, that's what really counts.
00:00 x Thomas x /culture/america/usa x link x 0 comments
Sometimes my job is simply awesome.
This is my proposed intro music for the IFC's Business Enabling Environment Newsletter, nicknamed "The Buzz." The first section serves as a theme, while the second is a musical bed for the narrator to provide an introduction (that's why it gets a little monotonous and then ends abruptly). There are still mixing errors to fix--UPDATE: corrected!--but gives some idea of what I'm trying to do. I was told to make it "newsy" and I had to have the buzzing sound somewhere.
All bass and guitar sounds were created using the Variax. The slap bass during the first half is the Stingray model, and the second half is a pickstyle Rickenbacker. I also used the 12-string model through a Sansamp PSA-1 distortion plugin for the guitar accents, where it almost creates a doubletracking effect that I really like. The thing is a recording monster.
15:59 x Thomas x /bank/experience/personal x link x 1 comment
As a follow-up to my earlier post on how music companies should be selling (and we should be listening to) higher resolution, uncompressed recordings, CDM recently mentioned Korg's brand-new one-bit recorders. It sounds silly, but basically instead of running a set of filters to get a full multi-byte description of the waveform's state, these sample the waveform millions of times a second, checking only to see if it has gone up or down. The advantage is that they don't require filtering for noise that results from the Nyquist theory, which states that sampling may produce sine-wave artifacts at frequencies higher than 1/2 the sampling rate (thus the reason that CDs are set at 44.1KHz rates, which is slightly more than twice the 22KHz boundary of most human hearing). Instead, a one-bit digital-analog conversion is turned straight into voltage changes, for a theoretically cleaner sound--although they are vulnerable to extremely high frequency noise, well past the limits of perception but enough to mess with some older equipment.
Korg has a nice intro paper online to explain this in a little more detail, and to give context: they're basically selling these recorders as ways to hold onto mastered content in a completely lossless format. Sound on Sound reviewed the units in this month's issue, and they were impressed with them, although the mic preamps are apparently weak. I'm also unclear on why they're selling one of these in an iPod-style form factor, but I'm strangely tempted by them. Apparently you can get a whole 22 minutes of incredibly faithful audio per gigabyte of storage with one of these. I feel more exclusive just thinking about it.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/digital x link x 0 comments
Book review: Un Lun Dun by China Mieville
There must be a certain point in time when good SF and fantasy authors decide that they want to write children's fiction. Neil Gaiman, although not setting adult fiction aside completely, seemed to revive the trend in recent memory when he penned Coraline. Now one of my favorite authors, China Mieville, has written his own story for younger minds, Un Lun Dun. It's an interesting read, and I think I would recommend it to the target audience, but adult readers might want to pick it up at the library instead.
Mieville's previous books were mostly set in the bizarre world of Bas-Lag, specifically the city of New Crobuzon. Bas-Lag is a fantasy setting undergoing its industrial ages, instead of the gentle feudalism of most genre fiction, and it's influenced heavily by Mieville's Marxism. The books are also known for being grotesque and a little sadistic, or at the very least, grimy. For these reasons, it's hard to imagine him producing stereotypically saccharine children's literature. So while Un Lun Dun (pronounced so that each syllable rhymes with "run") does not reach the freakshow proportions of Perdido Street Station's man-on-insect-woman sex scenes or The Scar's self-mutilating Lovers, it's still not tame and lifeless. I thought it most resembled Alice in Wonderland, which is far more disturbing than those who have only seen the Disney sanitization think. And if he has reined in his more destructive impulses, Mieville has at least tried to redirect them toward an ever-escalating tour of oddities.
Un Lun Dun is about two girls, Zanna and Deeba, who find their way from London to an alternate reality, where Zanna is regarded as a chosen one who will banish the evil Smog by undertaking a quest across its surrealistic landscape. If this sounds cliched, don't be surprised. Mieville has consciously aimed this book at the Harry Potter-esque subgenre of wish-fulfillment fiction. He's aware that for most fantasy (adult or child), the main character basically serves as a Mary Sue, Potter included. Un Lun Dun explicitly takes aim at this hackneyed genre staple, as well as the helpful animal sidekick (replaced here with a milk carton named Curdle), the unhealthy reliance on tradition or authority, and reliance on story "tokens" to get characters out of a pinch.
In fact, Mieville actually has his sights set higher than just the genre. There are clear references, sometimes without even an attempt at disguise, to real-world events in the book. Without spoiling it, I can say that he's making a point about the Orwellian language that's been used by both governments and corporations to disguise their real actions. All I can say is that I warned you: the guy's a full-fledged Marxist and he doesn't care if you know it. I felt like it was a little unsubtle at the time, but looking back toward the end of the book, I can appreciate what Mieville's done in more context. Children's fiction is rarely subtle or subversive. By going against the grain, the end result is not a bad book, and depending on the audience, might even be a very good one.
00:00 x Thomas x /fiction/reviews/mieville x link x 0 comments
Wired's music writer asks the obvious question: if we've got increasing amounts of storage nowadays on our music devices (even the flash drives are multi-gig now, whatistheworldcomingto...), why are we still buying compressed music? Why aren't we listening to the 24-bit, high sample-rate masters that came out of the studio?
Because honestly: an 80-gig iPod full of .mp3 files will still be playing when the sun explodes and flash-fries the Earth into a crispy, carbon-based donut-hole. And yet you hear about people who are proud of this. "I've got 70,000 hours of music on my MP3 player," they'll say, and any relatively-sane listener should be asking, "Why? When will you listen to it? How much of it have you actually heard?"
And perhaps more importantly, given the length of those playlists, how much time do you spend fiddling with the scroll wheel instead of doing something productive, like digging your own grave?
My steady complaint about production trends has been the constant prioritization of "more music" over "quality of sound." It certainly started with the use of brick-wall limiting to create "loud" albums for CD and radio play, but it only got worse when digital compression started stripping frequencies out of the material, just because flash memory was small and expensive. Now that we have all of this disk space available, why can't we use it to listen to better-than-CD quality, instead of jamming it full of inferior noise?
And then people can ruin that high-quality music through a set of $3 Apple earbuds. But at least then I'll have something else to yell about.
22:52 x Thomas x /music/business/distribution x link x 1 comment
There are fourteen people "watching" my Cort bass on eBay. They've been there pretty much the whole week. No-one has bid on it yet. No-one has asked any questions. Maybe they just like to watch.
It makes me kind of nervous.
18:28 x Thomas x /music/tools/bass x link x 1 comment
Why I stopped playing Lunar Knights
Consider this a very personal, and massively unreliable, review:
I liked Boktai, the game that led to Lunar Knights, for its odd use of a solar sensor to tie the real and virtual worlds together. It was cute. It was also not terribly complicated, and I think that worked in its favor. For this outing, Kojima has displayed his typical sense of humor by including not only the climate and the "sun brightness" display on the top screen, but also the wind speed, temperature, and humidity. They don't do anything--it's more like he's joking about how the game no longer responds to the player's environment, but has to make its own in obsessive detail.
But I think this joke also reveals the big problem with Lunar Knights. Boktai was a fairly simple game, which was a large part of its charm. This is not. It has piles upon piles of complications thrown in--an annoying just-in-time block system that has to be mastered in order to survive combat, the pointless climate system, aiming lock-on (!!!) in an isometric game--combined with silly and lightweight writing. Simultaneously, there is too much and too little going on here.
00:00 x Thomas x /gaming/software/lunar_knights x link x 0 comments
Rule 1: If I leave for work early, the train will break down or be delayed.
Rule 2: If I leave late, everything will run with bizarre and uncharacteristic efficiency.
Either way, the Metro will deliver me to Farragut West at 8:54AM, almost precisely, every morning. Except when it doesn't, because either I exceed its ability to compensate or because someone leaned against a door and put the next 10 trains out of commission.
Worst underground system on the planet.
11:58 x Thomas x /dc/metro x link x 1 comment
I like it. But then, I like just about anything for three days or so. I've made an .mp3 of a few of the better models, complete with rambling narration. The executive summary is that the jazz bass sounds are pretty good, the Stingray's not bad, the 12-string is better than the 8-string, the acoustics are believable, and I really love the synthesizers. There are a few that I can see being useful--the Alembic is a good sound, but I've never even been near an Alembic, so I couldn't say if it's accurate. I think the weakest models are the flatwounds, the Hofner, and the Gibson EB-3, but the worst of all is the Jaco fretless imitation.
So far I don't feel ripped off. Let's see what I think next week.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/bass x link x 0 comments
