heisenbug: (Default)
1. The Police are going to play together at the Grammys and then (probably) go on tour.

2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released on July 21.

Well, I guess I'm still waiting for A Method For Madness and a real Pink Floyd reunion...
heisenbug: (Default)
Knight Rider: Season 1 -- I'd had this in my Wish List for quite a while, with low priority, but I had a feeling that my best childhood friend, the same guy I used to watch Knight Rider with back in the actual 1980s, would know that deep down I really wanted it. He finally got it for me this year, and it's even more awesome than I remembered.

Season 1 trivia )

Probably the best episode so far is the (first) one with K.I.T.T.'s evil twin, K.A.R.R. (Knight Automated Roving Robot). Apparently brilliant inventor and philanthropist Wilton Knight, who managed to create strong AI in complete secrecy in the early 1980s, was unaware of the first two Laws of Robotics and not clever enough to figure them out for himself. The first intelligent Trans Am he made was actually programmed to protect itself at all costs. Not that it's all that intelligent-- Michael defeats it by playing chicken with it; it bails out at the last minute to save itself, and instead plunges over a cliff, destroying itself (until early in Season 3, that is).

more random Knight Rider crap )
heisenbug: (Default)
I hope everyone's day was as good as ours.

heisenbug: (Default)
As part of my regular daily timewasting, I was looking at the web site of Rose Cousins, with whom I've played a few gigs, and discovered some pictures of me that I hadn't seen before:

pictures )

I also discovered that Rose played at Toad a few weeks ago. It would have been easy and cool to go, if I had known. I really need to start paying more attention to local live music.

I just signed up for the Toad and Lizard Lounge mailing lists for the second time. Hopefully this time they'll actually start sending me stuff.
heisenbug: (heisenbug)
Some of you, especially those who work in Kendall Square (which is an awful lot of you, these days) might have heard that the building I work in had a slight problem with being on fire today. I just wanted to mention that I and all my coworkers got out, and will be paying a lot more attention to evacuation routes in the future. My coat and sweatshirt got a bit saturated with foul-smelling smoke, but I didn't breathe enough of it to need treatment. I'll be working at home for the rest of today.

EDIT:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2006/12/one_dead_after.html
heisenbug: (Dork bug on wheel)
A very positive review of Dork (the 1-button game) appeared today on The Mac Observer, and it's already led to two purchases! Well, one and a half. Pretty cool. I hope none of the new Dork users need urgent tech support tomorrow, since I'll be on a plane all day. Normally I'm very responsive.
heisenbug: (Default)
Google's Code of Conduct says:

"We have nothing against cats, per se, but we're a dog company..."

And this is shortly after it says:

"Google is committed to maintaining a workplace environment free from discrimination..."

Hypocrites!
heisenbug: (Default)
http://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html

I got it on my own, eventually, which proves that it's not really "The Hardest Logic Puzzle in the World", but it's pretty hard.

Courtesy of the creator of xkcd. Read it.
heisenbug: (Default)
So, Peter Gabriel has been running a contest. He provided all the tracks from the original recording of "Shock the Monkey" as separate MP3 files for anyone to remix. The best ones will win prizes. I basically stand no chance against all the much more experienced people who did crazy and inspired things, but it was fun to try. My attempt is here:

http://www.realworldremixed.com/remix.php?remix_id=8j-gHX06FMMWzxll
heisenbug: (Default)
Those of you who won't be in Philadelphia on Saturday evening (and who live in this area to begin with) should come to Club Passim, where Edie Carey will be performing to celebrate her new CD. I'll be playing cello for a few songs. I (and violist Jennifer Grucza, who I've known since our MIT days) performed with Edie at a house concert back in January, and we all had so much fun that we decided we should work together again.

Edie's a sort of acoustic-folk-rock-pop type of singer/songwriter. She has an amazing singing voice. She frequently performs with just her acoustic guitar, but she'll have a full band with her this time (probably not on every song, but I'm just conjecturing). There are plenty of sample songs on her web site if you're curious.
heisenbug: (heisenbug)
1. The Au Bon Pain in Kendall Square has a sign up saying "Welcome Freshman!" I wonder which freshman they're welcoming.

2. Odd word: opioid.

3. Google interviewers are pretty hardcore.
heisenbug: (choo-choo)
How did I not know about this?

http://xkcd.com/

I highly recommend reading them all from the beginning. There are 149 as of today, but it doesn't take very long.

EDIT: Hint: there's almost always "alternative text" for the comic image, which shows up if you hover the mouse over it. If you don't get the joke, sometimes it gives you a hint. Or sometimes it's an additional joke.
heisenbug: (choo-choo)
I've got it! Someone should just go out there, grab some matter from Neptune or whatever, and add it onto Pluto until it's big enough to be a planet again. Problem solved.

Or, at least, this idea could be made into a movie. It would basically be a remake of The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill, etc., only sci-fi. With, you know, charmingly eccentric aliens and stuff.
heisenbug: (Default)
Songs that have been identified are in purple.

These are MOSTLY the non-instrumental songs that came up first when I put my entire ripped music collection on shuffle. Exceptions... )

1.
So I ran faster
But it caught me here
Yes my loyalties turned
Like my ankle
In the seventh grade
Running after Billy
Running after the rain


2.
Don't think me unkind
Words are hard to find
They're only checks I've left unsigned
From the banks of chaos in my mind


3.
Rose in early morning, as the light came through,
Searching in the ocean, did what he should do,
Seeking not adventure, just a way of life,
Sky above turned grey, wind cut like a knife.

4.
Crystal fountain springing from the hill
It irrigates his soul, you may drink your fill
Water of life carried by
One hand upon the gallon jar

5.
Lost my time, lost my place
In sky blue
There's two blue eyes, like your face
In sky blue


6.
Moving forward using all my breath
Making love to you was never second best
I saw the world crashing all around your face
Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace.


7.
I'd like to propose a toast.
Here's to the ladies who lunch.
Everybody laugh.
Lounging in their caftans and planning a brunch
On their own behalf.


8.
Zaphod Beeblebrox
He's the guy you want to vote for
When you get into that voting booth
Put an X next to his name.

9.
I got your Force right here
Seen lots of stuff that's queer
But no mystical field that could save my rear
Nonsense, nonsense
It's just simple tricks and nonsense
A blaster's your best defense
Nonsense, nonsense


10.
There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolution


11.
As I stand in the Shower
Singing Opera and such
Pondering the possibility that I
Pull the pud too much


12.
Paralyzed
Lips of ashes
Synchronized
Blue vein crashes
Touching
Touching you
Inside


13.
From here no lines are drawn
From here no lands are owned
13,000 and holding
Swallowed in the purring of her engines


14.
Stepped across the border
One foot after another
Think! Think! Think! Think!
Small steps to elsewhere
To follow the quick light
Knowing what I know

15.
He goes out at night with his big boots on
None of his friends know right from wrong
They kick a boy to death 'cause he don't belong

16.
Dinner table, chattering glasses
Tell us all we need to know
Like it, lump it, dig it, dump it,
On your late, late show.

17.
Not saying not charmed at all
Not saying that you weren't worth the fall
But I was alone when I knew it was real
Down the canyon, when I knew I had come

18.
I found a picture of you (oh-oh-oh etc.)
What hijacked my world that night
To a place in the past
We've been cast out of (oh-oh-oh etc.)
Now we're back in the fight


19.
Mr. Detective, you've been looking too hard
You should've started looking
In your own back yard.


20.
Renegade, come here boy.
There was this kid in our neighborhood
His Pop had named him Renegade
He lived up to his name
With all the trouble that he made


21.
A customer!
Wait! What's your rush, what's your hurry?
You gave me such a fright, I thought you was a ghost.
Half a minute, can't you sit? Sit you down. Sit!


22.
Look, he's crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he's up above my head
Hanging by a little thread

23.
I can't see you mama
But I can hardly wait
Ooh, to touch and to feel you mama
Oh, I just can't keep away

24.
The other ones are complete bullshit.
You want something corny? You got it.
There's a house on my street
And it looks real neat.
I'm the chap who lives in it.
There's a tree on the sidewalk
And a car by the door.

25.
This is the Central Scrutinizer. Meanwhile, Joe hears about Mary's naughty exploits. He falls in with a fast crowd and gets seduced by a girl who works at the Jack-In-The-Box, named Lucille, who gives him an unpronounceable disease.
heisenbug: (Dork bug on wheel)
Oh yeah... Dork for Mac is out. I released it late Monday. Yesterday I submitted it to Apple's third party downloads page, and they put it up pretty quickly, so I've been getting lots of hits from there.

Business is... well, it's not turning a profit, but I've made enough sales to pay for last week's advertising, which suggests that it could become profitable. I'm definitely going to advertise on Something Positive again.

Three real blog posts in one evening! I am unstoppable!
heisenbug: (Default)
Writing that last post reminded me of an idea I had recently in response to a stupid meme that seems to have swept the nation.

The stupid meme is the idea that kids in public schools don't need to be taught math beyond basic arithmetic. This position has been taken by some otherwise intelligent people who really ought to know better. Here is an example. I don't have time to go into exactly why everyone needs to study math, but here is the overly blunt and simplistic version: math is like lifting weights. If you can't do math, your mind is weak, and the only way to make it strong is to work on math until you can do it better. (I told you it was overly blunt and simplistic.)

Reading this kind of thing makes me feel like a slob, because I haven't done much math in the past ten years and I know I've gotten significantly worse at it. There's no reason why brain exercise should end when school ends. I need to start doing math again. And other kinds of mental exercise. Fortunately my job puts some demands on my brain, and [livejournal.com profile] flexagon and I do cryptic crosswords together, but overall my brain is not as fit as it once was.

And that's roughly what my recent idea was: what would be the mental equivalent of circuit training?

This goes back to something I thought of a few years ago. I think there may be analogies between different kinds of mental exercise and different kinds of physical exercise. Math, puzzles, etc. are like weightlifting; they provide resistance that you have to push against. Brainstorming and free association are like cardio; you let your brain go full out without much resistance. And meditation is like stretching; you try to force your mind into an extreme state of relaxation.

So in mental circuit training, you would rapidly go through a series of exercises designed to build strength, speed, endurance and flexibility all at once. Maybe warm up with ten minutes of free association, then alternate ten minutes each of math problems and crossword puzzles, maybe with two more minutes of free association in between each repetition. Then after an hour of that, you meditate for twenty minutes. Customize to your goals and time constraints.

Is this a good idea? Should I try to design more detailed routines? Any ideas for what to include? Has it been done already?

heisenbug: (Default)
We saw Art School Confidential Sunday night, and on the walk home we agreed that the drawing teacher let the students get away with too much individual expression. It seems more likely that freshmen in a drawing class would be required to draw realistically, to learn the fundamentals, before working on developing their own style. Except these students seemed pretty advanced, so maybe they were past that stage, but I'd think the teacher would at least want to see how well they could do with realism.

In my music composition classes in college, we had to write for a while in a classical style before we were allowed to get all modern and atonal and stuff. I think this is considered analogous to learning realistic drawing. Now, I do think music composition students should learn the classical style, but I think the analogy is only about half right. In art, you start out trying to draw realistically because you (and your teacher) already have some idea of how to evaluate the results, both from having observed reality and from having observed other realistic art. In fact, the human visual system evolved to make very fine distinctions among natural phenomena, especially human faces, which are usually considered the most important thing to learn to draw. You, and especially your teacher, could also evaluate your assignments somewhat if they were less realistic, but there is just not as much experience to go by, and comparisons would be more subjective.

In music, you will also have an easier time judging your music if it follows classical conventions, because you've heard a lot of classical music and probably understand it better than the modern stuff. But the classical stuff is still "abstract"; the "rules" are very well understood but are still somewhat arbitrary. (That is, they evolved over thousands of years, with the human mind as the selecting agent, but the human mind's evolution was also affected by music's evolution, and there was a lot of randomness, so the eventual forms produced were not an inevitable result of biology.)

A better analogy for realistic drawing would be studying and learning to imitate the sounds that the human ear evolved to hear in the first place: animals we can eat, animals that can eat us, running water, weather, and of course human speech. Messiaen and Rothenberg had a good idea studying birdsong. I'm pretty sure that other composers have studied the rhythms and harmonic structures of human speech, although I don't know who. But here's an interesting question: does the brain's speech center get involved when listening to instrumental music? Has anyone tried to find out?

Of course, for longer musical structures, nature doesn't help a lot, and classical music is probably the best reference, although other dramatic art forms should be studied as well (theater, film, literature, dance). Or maybe I'm wrong. What is the natural origin of "drama"?

heisenbug: (dork bug)
I've been tracing web hits back to the referring sites to see who's been sending me customers. Yesterday, with no Something*Positive ad, the #1 referrer was a LiveJournal user named [livejournal.com profile] woodwitch. She seems to have lots of friends. It's shown up on some other blogs and forums as well, a few of which have helped me to add to my collection of quotes to use in future advertising.

Which reminds me, if you feel like helping out, feel free to mention Dork in your blog, home page, or nationally syndicated TV talk show!

Here are the quotes so far:

"If I had time to waste, I would be wasting it playing this game... I am completely addicted to it." - a complete stranger

"amazingly fun. Who knew one button could provide so much entertainment!" - a beta tester

"This is a clever and fun game! I wish I had thought of it :) He obviously spent a lot of time polishing and tweaking. Nicely done!" - a video game designer at a major game company, who is a coworker of a friend of the above beta tester

"Download this and fuck off!" - someone named Pantsboy

Ok, so maybe I won't use that last one.
heisenbug: (Default)
Until today, if you had asked me to name the greatest living composer, I would have said, "I don't know, maybe György Ligeti." But I just found out that he died yesterday. Now I have no idea who it might be.

Business

Jun. 11th, 2006 09:28 pm
heisenbug: (choo-choo)
My ad at somethingpositive.net (which I had to reserve over a month in advance) is showing today and tomorrow. I've had over a thousand hits from it today, over three hundred downloads of the game, and one purchase. That one purchase is the first sale I've made to a stranger... it's not a lot of money but it feels like a major landmark.

The Mac version is almost done. I'm hoping to release it by Friday.
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