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I cleaned out a closet recently. That statement doesn’t adequately express the magnitude of the undertaking. This was a closet in my office/studio into which I would toss things when I couldn’t figure out where else to put them. I’d been operating in this manner for five or six years, and the closet had finally reached a sort of critical mass such that nothing more could be put into it, and nothing could be removed from it without a good deal of wrestling. Much of the contents seemed to be bound together with cables: audio cables (including instrument cables, mic cables, and eight-channel snakes of both the balanced and unbalanced variety), MIDI cables, RS-232 cables, AC cables, SCSI cables, VGA cables, Macintosh ADB cables, Ethernet cables, RJ-11 phone cables, and even the cable for the Lexicon Core Studio interface which I discarded some time ago.

I got rid of a lot of old computer stuff, including a 2x(!) CD-ROM(! yes, no writing capability) drive dating from the days that CD-ROM drives had those annoying little caddy things and were housed in their own cases. As I threw out dozens of yards of Mac ADB and serial cables (with their funny little mini-DIN-8 connectors) and SCSI cables and adapters (including an infamous “Weird-30″ adapter used by some PowerBooks) I reflected about how much electronics junk Apple had created in the world with their decisions to “think different” and use strange connectors rather than the ones that were already established (such as the DB-9 for serial ports).

In terms of volume, the largest amount of stuff I discarded was 3.5″ Mac floppy discs. I’d had most of these stashed on a shelf for over 10 years, untouched, retained on the “just in case I need them someday” pack-rat mentality. I decided that if that day hadn’t arrived in over a decade, it probably wasn’t going to arrive at all–particularly considering that I no longer have any pre-G4 Macintoshes on hand. I think I filled two grocery bags with the things. Here’s a subset:

They provided little reminders of my computing past. This trio provides a nice representation:

On the left we have the “System Tools” disc from my first Mac. That was from 1986, when you could fit the entire MacOS and some utilities onto one 800K floppy. Next to it is Netscape Navigator, probably from around 1999ish, at a guess. Yes, kids, there was a time in which you could obtain a web browser on a physical medium rather than downloading it from the web. (Why? Well, it’s kind of a long story. Fetch me my Geritol and I’ll tell you.) On the right is MS Word version 6. The label says “Install disc 13″. Remember when you had to stuff a dozen floppies into your machine to install an app? I imagine that version 6 was the last version of Word to ship on floppies rather than CD-ROM.

The discs that I lingered over the longest were the master discs for music software. Many of these were so-called “key discs” which meant that they served as the copy-protection mechanism for the (often fairly expensive) software that was contained on them. They usually permitted you to install the software only a few times, and getting them replaced if they failed could be something of a chore. (Yes, it was my experiences with some of these discs that contributed to my somewhat infamous disdain for PACE. These key discs were the predecessor of the iLok.) Hence their value was disproportionately much larger than that of most 3.5″ floppies, and one tended to keep them in special storage containers on a shelf, safely out of harm’s way. I assembled a small gathering for a final photo:

From left to right, back row first: Master Tracks Pro, my first sequencer and possibly the first commercial music software I ever purchased; the first version of Max published by Opcode (dated 1990); OMS, which I won’t even try to explain–you had to be there; the Digidesign Audio Utilities as published by Opcode, system software for their pre-Pro-Tools DSP hardware; and Galaxy Plus Editors, the patch librarian/editing software for numerous MIDI synths. Next row: a demo disc of M, one of David Zicarelli’s first products and still available from Cycling ‘74 (I think); a demo disc of Turbosynth, Digidesign’s non-real-time but extremely cool software synth; Steinberg’s ReCycle, the genesis of loop slicing written by the guys who went on to form Propellerheads; editing software for a JL Cooper MIDI fader box; and a very early version of Opcode’s Vision sequencer. Bear in mind that none of the sequencers shown here could record or play audio–this was strictly MIDI sequencing we’re talking about. Next row: Music Mouse, a sort of early “intelligent instrument”/software performance thing written by Laurie Spiegel (whom I spoke to on the phone at some point after buying it); Deck, as published by OSC, the first(?) multi-channel recording app for the Mac; the driver software for the MOTU MIDI Timepiece, the first(?) multi-port Mac MIDI interface; a demo version of Cubase (undoubtedly pre-VST, i.e. no audio); and Band in a Box (don’t ask) Front row: a later verson of Master Tracks Pro which still didn’t have audio; Deck, as published by Macromedia after they acquired it from OSC and before someone else acquired them; Bliss Paint, a sort of abstract animation app that involved scripting sequences of patterns–very cool but fatally flawed because the author didn’t tie the timing to any sort of hardware reference so your animations ran completely differently depending on how fast your hardware was; version 2.2 of Turbosynth, now almost real time because it could use an Audiomedia II card for doing the DSP; and UpBeat, another David Z. creation, as published by Dr. T’s who acquired it from Intelligent Music. (I had discs for it from Intelligent music on hand also.)

In other words, my pack-rat stash of floppies represented a lot of history from the music software world. It was kind of hard to let it go. After all, these programs were not only my tools of musical expression (more or less) but also in some sense the inspiration for Audio Damage and its products. Happily, some of them went to a good home: Turbosynth, UpBeat, and a couple other mutual old favorites are on their way to Chris, where they can sit on his shelf near his alphaSyntauri system.

Click here to see something nifty. No, I don’t know who did it, or how, or why.

Hey Brian–I’m not sure that I have current contact info for you. Email me or give me a phone call. No, it’s not an emergency; just wanted to say Hi. If you remember whining at Mrs. Woody, then you’re the Brian I’m trying to reach. (Come to think of it, I don’t know that many Brians.)

These have been up for a little while but I ran across them at about the same time and thought that the juxtaposition was interesting. I’ve always been kind of fascinated by how people envision the future and whether those visions turn out to be accurate.

The 1939 World’s Fair is probably the most famous past version of the future. Wired recently put up a nice photo gallery emphasizing its architectural influences here and an article about the General Motors “Futurama” exhibit here. It’s interesting to consider the influence that this exhibit had on the next few decades of this country’s economy and infrastructure when you consider that, at the time it was on display, most Americans did not own automobiles and there was no interstate highway system.

The other historical look at the future I found recently is a documentary entitled What the Future Sounded Like. It’s about the British company Electronic Music Studios, usually known by its initials EMS. I had the impression that EMS was sort of a British counterpart to the American synthesizer companies like Moog and ARP, but it turns out that EMS’s history is more complex in that it was a functioning music studio before the people involved started building commercial products. Strangely enough, one member of the organization apparently deserves credit for being the first individual to house a computer in a private residence. The documentary also looks at the change in public reaction to electronically generated music–which is something else which we now take for granted, consciously or otherwise. The official website for the documentary is here, and the entire documentary is now available on YouTube here, here, and here. (It’s split into three parts, probably because of YouTube restrictions.)

If I’d known that this was going to happen last night, I wouldn’t have bothered posting my previous “Springtime in the Rockies” entries:

The peonies are a little unhappy about this situation:

I don’t think that they actually froze, though, so they should be okay. Time will tell.

I just learned of this excellent site, an archive of reproductions of Radio Shack catalogs throughout history. I recognize most of the covers from the catalogs issued in the early 1980s, which makes sense since I spent a fair amount of time in Radio Shacks in the early 1980s. Back then Radio Shack was still cool, i.e. it was still a useful source of electronics parts, kits, tools, etc. Sadly, those times have passed, but now I can gaze with nostalgia upon oddly familiar pages of simulated wood-grain stereo components.

I’ve put up the last set of photos from our recent vacation in Japan. It’s a collection of photos of odd bits of Engrish, food, fashion, and other things which didn’t really fit in anywhere else. Just for the fun of it I’ll provide a guided tour here. All of these photos are hosted on flickr so you can click them to find larger versions.

Food

It’s probably obvious by now that I love the food in Japan, even if it isn’t really Japanese as such. Here’s a shot of Mister Donut, Kyoto-style:

This is the display case of a restaurant in Kyoto that serves desserts made almost entirely of berries and other fruit:

Those are replicas made of wax (I think) but they look pretty much like the real thing. Here I am enjoying some take-out gyoza and other delicacies:

That’s my favorite kind of bottled green tea, by the way. It doesn’t taste anything like wool. And yes, the humidity in Japan makes my hair go berzerk.

As far as I can tell–since I can’t read Japanese–this is a can of banana juice:

No, I couldn’t quite bring myself to try it. There seemed to be an unusual interest in bananas this year. We saw several TV commercials about bananas, and Vie De France, the purveyors of the wondrous Special Curry Donut, have some sort of banana-based beverage on their menu now. I think Dole is trying to break into the previously untapped Japanese market.

I love the enthusiasm expressed on this can:

Okay, if something says “Oreo” on it in big letters, and it’s a candy bar, and it’s made in Japan, it must be good, right?

Actually they were kind of disappointing. They didn’t really seem to have much to do with Oreos, other than being sweet and having some crunchy bits in them.

Engrish (particularly on signs)

If you’re old enough to remember that 7-Up used to be called the Un-cola, this will make you think a bit:

Imagine what this place would smell like if they didn’t have showers:

If you want to add a little adventure to your dining experience, go here:

If you can’t find your way to your table through the labyrinth, a mysterious figure clad in black will escort you, or maybe behead you or poison you with tiny darts.

This one I couldn’t quite figure out. At first I thought the one on the left meant No People With Three Legs, but then I figured out that it’s telling you to not stamp out your cigarettes on the street. The one on the right eludes me, however:

If you car isn’t sufficiently full of tecno[sic], take it here:

The next two are of the same poster in a train station. Parts of it are about being considerate if you’re smoking in public, but other parts are less obvious and even somewhat surreal:

If there’s an emergency, press the button–but no, we’re not going to tell you where it is:

If you’re going to abandon your dog, you’ll have to do it somewhere else:

Do you have a usual place for your medals? I don’t.

The next two are from the covers of program guides for pay-per-view television in hotels:

No, we didn’t watch any. The rest of the programs were printed entirely in Japanese and, like, we didn’t want to get the wrong core work.

Okay, yes, I have a juvenile sense of humor, but try telling me that you wouldn’t titter if you found this sign:

Fashion

I was tempted to crop this photo way down to draw the viewer’s attention to the subject at the center, but I didn’t so that you could see the pretty cherry blossoms on the left:

If you do click on it to see the larger version, you filthy pervert, check out the matching handbags. Now check out these boots:

Characters

Noppon, the Tokyo Tower mascot, is always popular with the ladies:

Well, at least he’s popular with the younger ones; the woman on the right doesn’t look quite so thrilled as the others. (That’s another nice pair of boot in that photo, too.) Tracie was thrilled to hold hands with this fellow:

This might bear a little explanation. He’s the official mascot of Nara’s 1300th anniversary. Nara was the first capital city of Japan, and is home to both some important Buddhist temples, one of which houses a huge statue of Buddha, and a number of sacred deer. (You can see my blog post about our visit there here.) As a result, the mascot for the celebration of the 1300th anniversary is a figure of a young buddha with deer antlers. Yes, really. There was some controversy about this choice, but apparently not enough controversy to prevent him from popping up in places like the JR ticket office in Kyoto Station, as shown above, or suspended from trapeezes in another part of the station:

Origami as a Cultural Bridge

This is possibly my favorite photo from the trip:

The woman is the proprietor of a small shop in Matsue. I wish I could remember her name. She came to our aid as a translator at the request of the proprietor of a neighboring shop whose English wasn’t quite up to the task of answering Tracie’s questions about the fabrics that she sold. Eventually it came up that I sell Japanese paper and do origami. This revelation generated a good deal of excitement and in the end I was given a package of paper, a little box full of small, square folded objects, and (at my request) a lesson on how to fold them. They’re thick squares folded from two sheets of paper and they’re used for a children’s game which is very much the same as the game played in the West with marbles. In the photo above she’s showing me how to fold them while we kneel at a couple of chairs in the hallway outside the shops. It was one of those rare, special moments in which two strangers from opposite sides of the world suddenly discover that they have something in common to share.

Thanks for reading my blog entries and looking at the pictures. I hope you enjoyed them!

I’ve put up a set of photos here taken outside of Sanjusangendo, one of our favorite places in Japan. Sanjusangendo is a Buddhist temple in Kyoto that houses 1000 statues of the deity Kannon. We first visited it a couple of years ago when Sid took us there as our guide. When he described it as a long hall with 1000 gilded statues in it, Tracie and I somehow formed the mental image of a bunch of smallish statues maybe a foot or so in height. (Tracie observed that perhaps that impression was influenced by our earlier visit to Hase-Dera, at which there are hundreds of diminutive statutes.)

Our mental image was erroneous: the statues are life-sized. They’re arranged in ranks on ten tiers, rather like people standing on bleachers at a softball field. At the center is a large and elaborate statue of Kannon with a small altar in front of it. The entire hall is illuminated by diffuse natural light which comes through paper-covered windows opposite the statues. There are a few other statues of various deities and other figures, including famous statues Fujin and Raijin, the gods of wind and thunder, respectively.

The overall effect is rather mesmerizing. You enter from one end of the hall so the statues stretch off into the distance. As you walk past them you notice that while they are all very similar, they differ in small details. They are complex statues since Kannon is said to have 1000 arms. While the statues don’t have the full complement, they do have a lot of arms and a multitude of smaller, auxiliary heads above their usual head.

Photography is not permitted inside the hall so I don’t have any photos to show. The Wikipedia article does have one old-looking photo, and a Google image search turns up others.

When we visited this year we saw something we hadn’t seen on our previous two visits. Some of the statues were being carefully dismantled, wrapped, and carried out of the temple into a nearby van. Apparently they were being taken to some other location for cleaning. An elderly Japanese gentleman oversaw about four younger assistants who did most of the work, while a visibly and uncharacteristically tense monk oversaw all of them. Imagine the responsibility resting on your shoulders as you carry one of Japan’s designated National Treasures, dated from the 13th century, over two railings, out of a temple, down a short flight of steps, and into a van. I took a few photos of them from a discreet distance outside the temple. The flickr set also contains many photos of the sakura in the the beautiful garden behind the temple.

One of the things that caught us by surprise upon our arrival in Tokyo was the new Tokyo Sky Tree. The Sky Tree will be the successor to the Tokyo Tower and will be the tallest free-standing tower in the world. It was about half of its final height of 634 meters while we were there, but according to its rather cool website it has reached 368 meters. We had a dramatic view of it from our hotel window, and the bellboy that showed us to our room pointed it out and described it to us with a obvious amount of pride.

Our friend Rafael, a resident of Tokyo, had never seen it. He exclaimed something along the lines of “WTF is that!?” when he came to our room. While this might reflect something about Rafael’s recent habits, I think it tells you more about how dense Tokyo is. The buildings are so tall and tightly packed that it’s very difficult to see anything beyond your immediate surroundings from street level.

By a stroke of lucky timing we also saw a sight-seeing zeppelin circle the tower a couple of times. I took a few pictures of it even though my camera’s lens really wasn’t up to the task. The set of photos, including several of the tower without the zeppelin, is here. The Sky Tree poses something of a challenge to photographers of the Tokyo cityscape since, even at half its intended height, it dwarfs the surrounding buildings.

If the very notion of making jokes about programming languages strikes you as incomprehensible, you won’t find anything at all funny about this.