Sigh. Another electronic music icon has died. Allen Strange died on Feb. 20. He somewhat literally wrote the book on analog synthesizers, back before we differentiated analog synths from digital ones because there weren’t any digital synths to speak of. His book, titled simply Electronic Music, one of the best references on both modular synthesizer programming and tape-based studio techniques, now changes hands for large sums of money. I first read it when I was about 15 and was reading everything about synthesizers that I could find. Later I was amused to discover that the binding on the copy in the university library was labeled “STRANGE ELECTRONIC MUSIC” with not quite enough space between his name and the title. I was lucky enough to find a copy for myself in a used book store some years later.
Category: Uncategorized
General blog stuff.
Communication
Tracie ran across a couple of interesting videos online recently. The first is here; it’s a CNN.com spot about an autistic teenager who uses a computer with text-to-speech software to speak to her parents. The second is here; it’s a brief article about an autistic woman who has made a video about herself and how she communicates. What they have to say, and the clarity with which they say it, is startling.
Future Shock: Your Picture Frame Might Be Spying On You
I ran across an interesting article about a nasty computer virus that’s coming into the country from China in the firmware of digital photo frames (those self-contained LCD things that display digital photos, which I guess are purchased by people who don’t have computers in every room of the house). This is the sort of thing that–as my cousin Ziggy put it many years ago–makes the world seem increasingly like a science-fiction novel. Go into Target or Costco, buy a gadget for your grandmother so that she can put her digital photos of you and her Pekingese on her coffee table, and zap, suddenly her computer is sending all of her personal info to someone in China. Sound farfetched? Read the article.
The Joys of Home Ownership #392
We had the roof replaced this week. A roof replacement has to be one of the least interesting home-maintenance projects one can do (or pay someone to do, rather). Don’t get me wrong: a good roof is essential, and a bad roof can be a nightmare. That’s why we replaced the old roof now, while it still had some life left in it, rather than later, after it had started leaking or something. But it’s really not very gratifying. It’s a noisy, dirty, expensive project, and in the end you have nothing other than a new roof. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t spend much time gazing at my roof. Roofs just don’t hold my interest. I guess having the water heater replaced a couple of years ago was even less interesting, but at least it was done in a few hours rather than in a few days.
Go, Stan!
One of my high-school classmates is headed into space today. Dr. Stanely Love is Mission Specialist 4 on STS-122, scheduled to launch today at 2:45PM EST. There’s live video coverage here and tons of info about the mission here, from which I grabbed this photo of Stan [I don’t know whether he goes by Stan or Stanley these days–I knew him as Stan, but that was 25 years ago] during training:
Our high school wasn’t a particularly nice place if you happened to not be in the “in” crowd, and Stan most definitely wasn’t in that crowd. (I wasn’t either. You probably guessed that.) Well, here we are, 25 years later, and Stan’s an astronaut, about to do what he’s dreamed of doing since he was a kid. I’d love to know how many of the “in” crowd are still in Eugene pumping gas or something. (Chris told me a very gratifying story awhile ago about returning to his home town a year or so ago and discovering that his high-school football champ was still pumping gas at the same place he worked when he was in high school.)
Nifty Electric Bikes and Cars
I happened to cross paths with the owner of Small Planet Electric Vehicles recently. The site offers for sale a number of electric bikes, electrically assisted bikes, and a couple of small electric cars. I’m fortunate in that I don’t drive much–my daily commute consists of walking down and up a flight of stairs–but were I buying more gas these days I’d certainly consider the alternatives.
Pee-Chee T-Shirt!
Some fellow left a quiet little comment on my post about Pee-Chees, but his creation seems worthy of special mention. He’s created a Pee-Chee T-shirt, made available from one of the numerous short-run custom-printing services available online. Click here to visit his page and see a photo of the shirt.
Abandoning WordPress–Or Not
Awhile back I wrote here about my intent to cease using WordPress and replace it with a static site generated with other tools. Since then, to state the self-evident, I’ve changed my mind and am stick with WordPress for the foreseeable future.
I changed my mind awhile ago when I was looking at my server logs and realized that WordPress wasn’t really the problem. WordPress seems to be pretty secure, and the anti-spam plug-ins I have in place do a good job of keeping spammers from posting. (The main plug-in tells me that it has blocked over 8,500 spam attempts since I installed WordPress, which gives you some idea of what a site like this is up against.)
“Mommy, what was a CD?”
If you buy music and/or make music, you might find it interesting to read this post and this post about Positron! Records ceasing to release music on CDs. This is relevant to me because Positron! releases a bunch of good music, including but not limited to everything recorded by Chris, my Audio Damage partner. It’s also the label most likely to release anything I record for reasons which should be pretty obvious.
Personally I’m somewhat ambivalent about the inevitable demise of Compact Discs. On one hand I understand the business sense it makes, and I admit to having hundreds of CDs on hand which I haven’t listened to in years and may never listen to again. On the other hand I’m enough of an old-timer to still appreciate getting something physical to hold when I buy music, along with a nicely printed cover and insert and stuff. I also think that I never quite got over the disappointment of CD packaging compared to vinyl-record packaging. Records were huge, relatively speaking, and sometimes people did nice artwork and extensive liner notes and stuff for them. But then records were fragile and difficult to care for and generally a PITA, so I can’t say that I miss them. Time will tell whether I miss CDs, I suppose.
Happy New Year!
I have a feeling that many more people read this blog than I suspect, so I’d like to take the first day of the year as an opportunity to thank all of you for your interest and attention. May you all enjoy a happy, healthy and prosperous 2008!
(Yes, the site has a new look. Like it? Hate it? Yes, I’m still using WordPress after all. I’ll post more about that soon.)