Categories
Audio Copyright

The end of the humble music CD

Damn, Mark Cuban is intelligent. I guess that’s why he’s a millionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. I’ve started reading his blog, and he’s got an interesting essay on the beginning of the end for the humble music CD.

Then it occurred to me, that I haven’t used my CD Player, portable or at home, in a long, long time. That I rarely, if ever see anyone walking around with a portable CD player anymore. They have all been replaced by MP3 players. If everyone is switching to MP3 players, whether they are iPods, in phones, in PDAs, in cars, whatever, then that means that everyone is going to have to go through a multistep process in order to get the music from where or how they buy it, to the place they want it.

That’s not good for the people selling music. Particularly retail stores…

This is something my Uncle Melvin would be interested in reading. I’ll have to point him there. The rest of you already know:

Categories
Speech Tech

See, If You Can Hear This.

I heard an awesome documentary on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks entitled “See, If You Can Hear This.” about a technology called “The Voice” that allows blind people to see with their ears. The Voice consists of a digital camera and a pair of headphones and the computer in between that translates the visual image into an audio “image”. It is up to the person’s brain to process the audio information as a visual image, much like is done with light patterns collected by one’s (working) eyes. Basically, researchers know that we form images in our brain, not in our eyes. The eyes are just used to collect the light. Sound and touch and our memories are then combined with the light information from our eyes to form a visual image. Using the Voice, the blind are able to take advantage of the same process. The image they can form is not the same or as good as with the eyes (the frame rate of the Voice is 1 frame per second), but a visual image is definitely formed in the mind. The blind woman featured in the documentary tells the story of when she first saw the mountains over the desert using the Voice. Incredible!

The entire documentary is featured in a downloadable mp3, so go have a listen.

Categories
WordPress

Working on the blog

Since the server crash, I’ve been working hard at putting my weblog back together. I’ve been trying to learn how the WordPress publishing system works, and later on I’ll work at customizing it. So for now, you’re stuck with the default look that comes with WordPress. It’s not bad, actually, but this site doesn’t feel like it’s mine because I haven’t customized it yet. Remember, I built the last incarnation of The Mad Philosopher by hand. I received a great idea from the ether for a new logo, so I’ll eventually design it and then choose my colour scheme and integrate it with the site. But for now, I’m still working on the content.

It turns out that the backup I recently made of the old site got erased because Bruce forgot it was there. I got very mad and couldn’t sleep well last night because of that, but I’ve let it go now. I’ve managed to find most of the missing files in various places on my computer. All of the blog entries were safely stored on Blogger, so it’s only the graphics and sound clips that I’ve had to dig up from various places. Most files I’ve been able to restore from a backup that I do have from way back in August 2004.

WordPress comes with a script that will import your blog entries from Blogger. It worked pretty well. Because I’m the careful guy that I am, I generated a list of my Blogger entries by title and timestamp and compared it to what got imported into this new system. I’m glad that I did because I found that two months got missed in the transfer. I was able to redo the transfer for just those two months. The entries from a year and a half at the beginning of the blog didn’t have titles, so I retroactively gave them each titles. While doing this, I read through what was imported and found that a couple of entries were truncated, so I’ve fixed that. I’ve also categorized half of the old entries and half of the new ones. There’s just a batch in between that I’ve yet to do. But it’s pretty cool to be able to browse my blog by category. See the sidebar on the right of the main page.

Once the blog is taken care of, I can add some pages of my old content, and fill this site out into a real website. Wish me luck. And thanks for reading and staying with me through the turmoil. Especially those of you on RSS. I probably broke your aggregators more than a few times!

Categories
Antiwar

Student Protest Stops CIA at NYU

From an article from antiwar.com:

A planned CIA recruiting event at New York University (NYU) was canceled after the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) called a protest demanding the CIA abandon its recruiting program at NYU… The [original] event—which was scheduled to include speakers from the CIA, a dinner, and a raffle for prizes such as an iPod Shuffle—was organized by students in an NYU marketing class whose classwork for the semester is to market the CIA to their peers at NYU.

…

Students plan to keep fighting the CIA presence and opposing the U.S. occupation in Iraq, which they see as intimately connected. “Bush says we’re bringing democracy to Iraq,” Wrigley-Field said. “But the history of the CIA shows the U.S. is the last country that can bring democracy anywhere.”

Categories
Copyright

No WRKP on DVD

For Chris and my sister:

WKRP in Cincinnati was one of the most popular television shows of the late ’70s and early ’80s, but it is unlikely ever to be released on DVD because of high music-licensing costs.

From the March 2005 Wired News article: Copyrights Keep TV Shows off DVD

Categories
Music Swing

AccuRadio’s “Swingin’ Pop Standards”

Cool. This latest I Love Radio .org post turned me on to AccuRadio, an internet radio station with some specialized feeds. Of course I went straight to the one with “Swing” in the title. Check ’em out. They even have a Chinese page!

Categories
Speech

David Sedaris’s “Santaland Diaries”

I just heard a great story entitled “Santaland Diaries” by David Sedaris, where he talks about working as an elf at Macy’s Department Store during Christmas. Hilarious. Apparently there’s a drug test to become an elf.

It’s part of a larger hour-long show, but it occurs near the beginning. Only a Real Audio stream, but worth sitting down and listening to.

Categories
WordPress

What’s up with this new site?

My webserver went FUBAR a few days ago and my administrator, Bruce, is AWOL. So I found a new hosting solution (which is how you’re reading this message now) and I’m trying to restore the site as soon as I can. Sorry for all the mess. And for those of you who have been paying attention, Mercury is retrograde again. 🙂

The new look is here because I’ve just installed the WordPress blogging system on my website. It’s not much of a website so far since the latest backup of my website is locked behind a bad behaving gateway. Once that gets fixed, I can restore my old stuff. But I want to explore WordPress and I’ll be working on converting my Blogger entries over to this new system. Ya know, make everything seamless.

Categories
Audio

All about Reel Reviews

There’s a great interview featuring Michael Geoghegan of Reel Reviews posted at blogcritics.org that really captures the essence of why podcasting is so cool. If you love movies, but never know what to rent, check out the Reel Reviews podcast. But start with the article:

Categories
General

Canada Tax Time help

[Maple Leaf]My brother-in-law, Wayne Hoover, is helping people process and submit their Canada Income Tax. He’s an accountant by day, super tax-fighting hero by night. If you want him to do your taxes, give him a call. He’s charging $25 for a basic return, and a higher rate for more complex returns. He’s based in Edmonton, but you don’t need to live there for him to work with you. (Hell, I’m in China and he’s doing my taxes.) Call him: (780) 444-8669.