zeruch.net (zè-rook)

The Linux User Group of Davis (LUGOD) will be holding its next meeting on:

Monday
September 15, 2008
7:00pm - 9:00pm

Edward J. Wickson Hall
Room 2120J
UCD

Presentation:

libcrtxy: Draw lines, Make games

Presented by:
Bill Kendrick

The CRT X-Y library (libcrtxy) is a new creation, built on top of
the Simple DirectMedia Library (libsdl). It’s purpose is to let you easily
write vector-based games, like those found in arcades in the late
1970s and early 1980s. (Space War, Asteroids, Lunar Lander,
Battlezone, etc.) It’s meant to be scalable from the highest-end
desktop (eventually supporting OpenGL rendering) down to slow embedded
systems that lack a dedicated math processor (FPU).

About the speakers:

Bill Kendrick is author of numerous open source video games for Linux
which often find themselves running on a variety of platforms,
including home game consoles and handheld devices. He spent much of
the past 4.5 years of his professional life developing games for
cellphones.

For details on this meeting, visit:

http://www.lugod.org/meeting/

In 1985, I didn’t really know the significance of Led Zeppelin, and I don’t recall making the inherent connection between Robert Plant and the Zep (at that point music for me was still largely something I was absorbing in many disparate fragments), but I do remember first seeing this video.  It was odd to see what was a rather subdued collage of pastoral England and a coterie of slightly gothic human props dancing about in farmhouses and across the countryside.

Totally of the era.

And even though it is very much an 80s sound, Plant still sings with a certain force, and the rhythm track is still great every time I hear it.  It is incredibly fun to play on drums.

Well, at least that is the alias he goes by on DevArt, but I think his real name is Brandon A. Dalmer:

the great mr. odd v3 by `zeruch on deviantART

I did this initially in mechanical pencil, then inked with a Japanese-made brush pen of unknown make, and applied flat color via Photoshop 7 (which I finally as of this evening finally upgraded to CS3, whcih I may yet come to regret).

So, the DNC Convention recently convened (which, like most of the staged political events, I ignore the up-to-the-minute coverage and flat speeches and wait for transcripts to sort out my own opinions) and over at Mashable it covers an act of utter stupidity:

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin was beset by a horde of self-described leftist anarchists not far from the site of the Democratic National Convention earlier today. The mob was lead by well known left-wing conspiracy theory radio show host Alex Jones, who was at the protest designed to (and I’m not exaggerating at all) levitate the Denver Mint so as to shake out all the money. The mob was organized under the banner “Re-Create ‘68″, with the goal of re-igniting the riots of 1968 around the Chicago Democratic Convention.

So I am no fan of Malkin, who I generally lump with other lightweights who try to pass off largely unsubstantiated or fact-selective histrionics as critical analysis of any measure (the differences between a Michael Moore and Michelle Malkin or an Alex Jones and Anne Coulter are minimal; its differently decorated tweaking heads making money at the expense of people who are either too easily manipulated or too bandwidth-constrained to push past the hyperbole).

The idea that there is anything positive (I do not mean politically advantageous, but at a more basic, civil level) in attempting to incite anything akin to the riots that happened in 1968 borders on insane. And frankly, the various supporters/detractors of both parties who have flooded UGC sites with video footage all seem to show the same thing: peoplebehaving unbeleivably badly.

If this kind of infantile, belligerent nonsense is the alternative to being an elitist (which in a lot of political discussions I get accused of), color me as aloof as possible.

• A top 10 dying languages list. Jeru actually sounds like it would be interesting to learn.
• “The son of one of the most revered leaders of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has renounced his religion to move to America and become an evangelical Christian.” Now there is something you don’t read about every day.
• Various games for Ubuntu you get can get right now. For Free. (Go)
• Scott Hansen’s design blog.
• “…the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.” Now that is something eremarkable, and economically closer in line to the idea of easier substitution, but I am not sold on the “carbon negative” claims, as I do not see any improvement in the byproduct of its usage (as opposed to its manufacture, which seems remarkably green).

Also, Richard Hartley of DevArt (aka Lolly) has left the fold of core staff (originally Director of Prints, he eventually was elevated to Director of Community Relations, as was a stellar performer; one of the few who understood both the delicate lattice of dealing with large, amorphous online communities, and with the business side of the house). He was the one, along with Scott Everingham, who was most responsible for my own eventual joining of the ranks for several years. Good luck in whatever comes next:

lolly II by `zeruch on deviantART

Seinfeld tries to be intentionally funny, but always fails, Microsoft Vista is such a failure its funny.  Now the former is being hired to help promote the latter, which will likely be funny unintentionally, when its not a woeful double-bill failure rationally.

Case in point:

Microsoft is reportedly paying Seinfeld $10 million for his role which will focus on the slogan “Windows, Not Walls,” and will stress the need to “break down barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting.”

Given the draconian nightmare that Vista has been repeatedly shown to be, the irony is the only funny part of the “Not Walls” portion of the jingle.  A phrase some marketing fellow thought was right catchy.  Of course its catchy…so is malaria.

OK, this post is not going to be about Fire and Ice or the details of dynamic linking libraries. At rather short notice, I made an appearance via phone to Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour, a long-running show on KDVS (90.3) in Davis, CA.

If the above premise sounds inherently odd, that is because it is. Dr. Andy is Professor Andy Jones, of UC Davis. From one of his bios:

Andy Jones has taught for the English Department and the University Writing Program since 1990. Originally trained as a poet and interpreter of poetry, Andy has taught classes at UC Davis on TS Eliot, [and] the Poetry of the Beat Generation, … Formerly coordinator of the University Writing Program’s Computer-Aided Instruction Program, Andy loves to teach in computer classrooms, and now also advises IET-Mediaworks and the Teaching Resources Center on instructional technology and recent research in adult learning. Committed to outreach and encouraging cross-disciplinary thinking, Andy serves as faculty advisor to The Voice, the campus Undergraduate Health Journal; regularly speaks before groups of students assembled by Student Advising, the McNair Scholars Program, Professors for the Future, and the UCD Medical School’s Post-Baccalaureate Program…

Yeah, I was kind of perplexed too, which made the experience of talking to this guy about -of all things- the recent Jacobsen v. Katzer decision handed down from the apellate court of the Ninth District, all the more fun. Basically we discussed the positive aspects for FOSS licenses, but also noted that the court fight itself was not just a simple defense of copyright, but one that involved accusations of libel, prior art for a software patent, and a lot of odd surfaces if you look at the whole shape of it going back to 2006 when this originally started showing up in places like Groklaw.

I find the decision to vacate and remand not as important as the manner by which the apellate court hammered the district courts apparent ineptitude at reading the fairly plain provisions outlined in the license in question (in this case, the Artistic License). The apellate deicsion is elegant in its clarity, and made clear points about contract and copyright. It also made some very pithy, insightful statements that showed better understanding of the concepts at work than I usually see:

Public licenses, often referred to as open source licenses, are used by artists, authors, educators, software developers, and scientists who wish to create collaborative projects and to dedicate certain works to the public. Several types of public licenses have been designed to provide creators of copyrighted materials a means to protect and control their copyrights. Creative Commons, one of the amici curiae, provides free copyright licenses to allow parties to dedicate their works to the public or to license certain uses of their works while keeping some rights reserved.

Open source licensing has become a widely used method of creative collaboration that serves to advance the arts and sciences in a manner and at a pace that few could have imagined just a few decades ago.

And it gets better. Extolling an essentially liberal economic view on the protection of property rights:

Traditionally, copyright owners sold their copyrighted material in exchange for money. The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration, however. There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties.

The emphasis is added by me, but Lessig distills the whole thing nicely:

In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you’re simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license.

Important clarity and certainty by a critically important US Court.

The friend of the court brief -all 38 pages- is also elegantly written and cogent, and appears to have had a profound effect on the ruling.

I also gave a plug to LUGOD and Open Bar, as the former is what brokered my presence on the show in the first place (read: Tuxpaint author Bill Kendrick) and the latter because they do good work (of which I am on rare occasion, involved).

• As someone with a general interest in intelltecual property, and one who both supports traditional rights as w3ell as the idea of the commons (especially the Creative Commons), the following resonates quite deeply with me:

The point isn’t that private property is a bad thing, or that the state should be able to run roughshod over the rights of individual owners. Property rights (including patents) are essential to economic growth, providing incentives to innovate and invest. But property rights need to be limited to be effective. The more we divide common resources like science and culture into small, fenced-off lots, Heller shows, the more difficult we make it for people to do business and to build something new. Innovation, investment, and growth end up being stifled.

• Relating to the above, the idea of the anticommons gets a good legal and economic analysis from researchers at the University of Ghent/University of Miami School of Law. Called Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together: Experimental Evidence of Anticommons Tragedies, which confirms in lurid detail the limits of moribund, stifling property regimes.
• In IP news of a worse sort, William Patry has closed his copyright blog, which I considered the best of breed. Too many idiots spoiled it for him (and by proxy, me).

In terms of more personal observations, I always find all manner of strange behavior at the office. There are a few members of an old breed of employee that seem completely fixated on hoarding information about systems and methods, as some kind of job security by obscurity. The tedium of this has led me to slowly building up both standard performance and HR dossiers on three specific people in three diffierent departments; as their public proclamations of martyrdom, combined with passive-aggressive obduracy has gotten tiring.

Really folks, if you can’t take not being ‘irreplacable’ by nature of the fact that you hold company knowledge hostage (and not because of any actual special skills), eventually people like me will find ways around that problem with openness and team building that obviates all that secrecy and cloak and dagger stupidity.

You are not clever, you are not subtle.

Just another recent work, I initially was not going to add any color at all, as I liked the stark black and white lines (which aped some Teddy Kristiansen in there I think), but then I looked at some Phil Hale and brought out the brushes. And so a simple thing became slightly less simple.

It is much darker than I am known for.  I generally veer away from gothic or otherwise prone to Hot Topic chic, but this turned out well enough. I actually initially was interested in the fact that the subject was holding his earrings in a manner that made me think of the three globes on the album sleeve for the 1987 Rush release, Hold Your Fire.

damumantis v3 by `zeruch on deviantART

Many years ago the first Linuxworld Conference and Expo occurred.  I met a tower of a woman working the booth for the then-new Linux Magazine (which went defunct this year).  I made the initial assumption that she was yet one of several random synapse-deficient boothbabes hired for the event, as she appeared to be color coordinated, practiced hygiene not common to the excessively geeky, and was 6 feet tall in flats.

Ends up she was a co-founder of the publication, along with her own design firm, and the national secretary for the Graphic Artists Guild.

We’ve stayed friends ever since, and she belongs to a small clutch of people who are part of the greater VA Linux alumni Delta Farce.

This month she gets hitched.  She asked me for a portrait of her and the fiance, so I produced something that -as I have been told- the recipients are happy with.  Yay for small victories:

Lara and Michael I by `zeruch on deviantART

Congratulations L & M.

• The headline ran Cher fan has his stereo destroyed, but the truth is both far more mundane, yet totally deserving in punishment.
• While many bemoan the luddites in government, Congress has at least one bonafide geek. Regardless of your political leaning, Rush Holt certainly is an interesting character to read about. A former assistant director to the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, he has such gems as “In our society, nonscientists steer clear of science, and that goes for their representatives in Congress too. I always find it so interesting that members of Congress don’t mind dealing with economics and international relations and other subjects in which they are not specifically trained. And yet when it comes to science, they will profess ignorance and just avoid the subject.”
• Isohunt -in a move I find not surprising and duly expected- has a growing cache of Creative Commons material for bit-torrentizimacation to your intertube connected device, amplified by a recent deal with Jamendo.
• The Splashtop product from DeviceVM has to be one of the moreexciting ideas I have seen lately. It also was somewhat unexpecte, given my possibly dulled view of many device makers ambitions.
• I have ionly dabbled a bit with the InternetPolyglot, but its a nice bit of supplemental material for those wishing to tackle or brush up on your language skills.
• Dubai seems to be the core of really maverick architecture and profit-bearing ecotech ambitions.
• Free book of the week, right from the Strategic Studies Institute: Baloch Nationalism and the Geopolitics of Energy Resources: The Changing Context of Separatism in Pakistan I know, myself and about four other people would be remotely interested in stuff like this, but then again, I am still trying to design a shirt with I’m in Ur Thinktankz, Lobbyin’ Ur d00dz. or I Wonk with Fonk.

So I was supposed to be at the DNA Lounge catching Kim Hill (ex-Black Eye Peas), Taz (Sa-Ra) and the unmistakable groove of Omar.

But, because of issues at work (including the antics of a block-jawed developer and her grumpy, uncommunicative manager…well, not uncommunicative, as much as substantively bankrupt unless you cajole the specifics of whatever you need out of him, at great personal expense in terms of time and blood pressure) I am instead watching the webcast, and pondering how much I find being up this late doing something other than sleeping or otherwise satiating my own pet projects is irritating.

But I at least put the cash of purchasing the tickets into the venerable DNA Lounge and to some good acts, so there is that.

omar v3 by `zeruch on deviantART

 Went and saw Bottle Shock, purely on the fact that it looked like a fun, slightly left of center film with Alan Rickman in it.  It ended up being a good-enough film, and had a few surprises (like a UC Davis reference), but Pajiba laid out largely my overall post-celluloid experience well enough:

 Bottle Shock, director Randall Miller’s take on the contest, presents a bit of a conundrum. It’s a likeable film conceptually and visually, with a largely excellent cast. It has the confidence to settle in and tell a tale on its own sweet time, without treating the viewer like an idiot regarding wine terminology. Bottle Shock never fully engages the viewer, however, due largely to a curious decision about the plot, some jarring editing choices, and an off-putting performance from one of the leads.

Basically, it should have been more about the culture clash, and the mounting stresses upon Rickman’s character (a totally compelling and understated mix of likable underdog and comical, almost Pythonesque buffoon), then the pedestrian interpersonal mechanics of the Bill Pullman clan.

And so, for every year except 2006, I have attended the West Coast (original flavor) LWCE. The first few iterations were heady affairs with extravagant parties (the most notable being the ones put together by my then employer VA Linux Systems), and a wild-eyed enthusiasm on the exhibitor floor and conference tracks that could only really be borne of people who felt like all their hard work was breaking them overground into history-making territory.

It was.

Now it is considerably less. FOSS is essentially mainstream (yes, it has plenty of potential, but we are far beyond where things were a decade ago), and especially after the dotbomb era, we have now settled into a certain pedestrian sameness. Boothbabes have returned, many just as unappealling as ever. Let’s face it, I love a pretty face and a nice figure as much as anyone, but in a technology show, when you have a brigade of dingbats who are too gaudy and clumsy to be enjoyable.

Also, to all those companies who hire ‘professional’ speakers to yammer at length with pre-cut, buzzword overloaded twaddle while flailing their arms like a human pinwheel and wearing a headset mic when they don’t need one because their speaking voice is already at 120db and so shrill it makes you want to jam sharpened pencils in your ears?

Stop.

In any event, this year I saw a few interesting bits of tech, including the stuff from Opengear and FusionIO (although the latter also had the most inane booth gimmick, with a mechanical bull dressed up like a harddrive — never mind), but most ws fairly mundane items.

The highlight of the exhibitors for me was talking to the folks at Creative Commons, who I gave the contact info for artist relations at DevArt, since I think there is s.ome complimentary effort at work (DA allows all submissions to be set under various CC licenses at will if an artist so wishes).

The real fun began after the show, when the annual VA Linux alumni Bucannal festivities begin. This is where a bunch of refugees from the various early eras of VA come together for banter and catching up.

It invariably is staged at Buca De Beppo, where large quanities of entrees and chianti are ordered, and hours consumed with eating and laughing and finding some comfort in the fact that despite being in different places now (Google, Slide, IDG, OpenBar, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs among them) we all still actually get along and still enjoy each others company.

I really do not think you can get that kind of interpersonal chemistry anywhere. You all have to have worked on something you invested some kind of personal capital into. VA was that for many of us. If anything it was the most interesting collection of people I have ever had the opportunity to work with.

Here’s to next year.

So years ago I used to go on an annual July 4th weekend trip to Lake Shasta with friends. Two or three hoursboats full of folks of various stripes, all eating, drinking and cavorting. On one of these trips was a hipster guy who decided to challenge me to a game of “who is the artist” for a wager of one whole dollar, believing that no one under 30 besides him would know who was on the radio.

I guessed right in less than 5 seconds, with no vocals. It was Isaac Hayes. It was from Hot Buttered Soul (although I cannot exactly recall if it was By The Time I get To Phoenix or not.

That punk still owes me a dollar ($1.40 with inflation actually).

Today, Isaac Hayes passed away. That is some sadness right there, as I think he had some great music still ahead of him. As much as I found the idea of him playing Chef on South Park amusing, I alwasy felt it distrcted from his real strength as a musician and composer. His over the top look and sexually charged antics in the 70s aside, the songwriting and performance of almost all his work from the early Stax years through his pseudo-comeback albums on Point Blank (Branded & Raw and Refined, the latter of which was the first album of his I actually owned) was worth some eartime. While his most famous track is still Theme From Shaft, that is only scratching teh surface.

Rest in Peace.

black moses by `zeruch on deviantART

So I think I did something to my back (I am yet a victim of bad posture at work, as I have a rather ghetto chair instead of the sublime Aeron I have at the home office). I have, for the first time in my life, discovered the sweet releif of Motrin.

With that in mind, I bring you a live performance of a band that is designed to bring all manner of things back into alignment, by nature of them whacking everyting including the kitchen sink into a heady, healing brew of sound. I am talking about the Yohimbe Brothers. Yohimbe Brother #1 is Vernon Reid, guitarist (Living Colour, Public Enemy, Geri Allen, Peter Gabriel, Decoding Society, you name it) and Yohimbe Brother other #1 is DJ Logic (Eye & I, Project Logic, John Popper, Bob Weir, Chris Whitley, you name it also). In tow is the lovely Maya Azucena (as a stand in for original female vocalist and lyrical tornado Latasha Nevada Diggs who always seemed to me to be in the same amazing range as Dean Bowman for sheer unique vision), as well as Jared Nickerson, Gaston, and Don McKenzie.

Not for the unadventurous, but fully rewarding to those who are. This starts with a freeform three minutes of Reid going through 18 genres of guitar styles, then culminating in one of the tracks from their debut album, Front End Lifter, which goes through numerous changes, coming back to a Zeppelin-sized riff as the center of a loping, funky motif:

Yohimbe Brothers - Psychopathia Mojosexualis (live)

So it has been just announced that Omar Lye-Fook will be doing a short US tour. I have been wanting to catch Omar since I first heard his third album, For Pleasure, at a Tower Records listening booth in 1994. I was still very much -as I am today actually- a fervent follower of acid jazz, rare groove, classic soul, or whatever you want to refer to it as.

Omar can sound over earnest at times, but his craftsmanship and his uncanny knack for a good hook makes up for that in spades. He has worked with a score of great talent: Stevie Wonder, Common, Angie Stone, Leon Ware and Erykah Badu being some of the bigger names.

There’s Nothing Like This was his first hit (in the UK his presence is much more substantial than stateside) and one which still gets airplay on smoothjazz stations for some reason (I say this for much the reason I feel the same way about Sade — I understand why they play her stuff, yet the material seems so much more substantial than 99% of the rest of the naff crud on those station program lists).

Personally, I wish there was a video for his great cut Painful Truths with Max Beesley, but:

And so a return to the Vinyl Remix series (whereby I take 12″ vinyl sleeves and use them as working canvasses - some adjustments being radical, others more subtle).

This is based on the 1975 release from Anthony Braxton, called Five Pieces (a quartet date with the great Dave Holland on bass.) Braxton is of no relation to R&B dullomatic plastic surgery debacle Toni Braxton, but is very much related (he is the father) of Tyondai Braxton, frontman for art/post rock band Battles.

Anthony Braxton himself is an anachronism: a bebop and blues influenced improviser who veers heavily into the avant-garde and third stream realms of composition and performance, who is an accomplished competitive chess player and titles songs in cryptic references to mathematics, mysticism and even as diagrams. His style morphs with each instrument he plays: flutes, woodwinds, and the entire saxophone and clarinet families.

Some of his stuff is very accessible, some of it will have you scratching your head for days; case in point, I reviewed one disc he participated on here, and a video of one of his odder works is here.

This is done on the vinyl sleeve directly, with acrylic inks and paints, goache, brush pens, pigma microns, origami paper, a sharpie pen, water soluable colored pencil, and digital post-processing/construction.

Vinyl Remix: 1 of 5 of Braxton by `zeruch on deviantART

One of the most compelling advantages of the Linux subnotebook trend is that it gives major OEMs a reason to care about Linux hardware compatibility. They can, in turn, apply pressure to the component makers to ensure that proper open-source drivers can be implemented. The process of educating vendors will take a long time, but Goodall and others who are working in the mobile space say that some vendors are already starting to get the right idea.

Certainly sounds like the right idea.

The driver problem is not a new one, but one that could easily be surmounted with vendors getting off their hindquarters.  I still remember the VA Linux/Nvidia/SGI episode with a mild form of irritation.

So, in lieu of the closely approaching Linuxworld Conference and Expo (which has become ever so staid from its heady early years) I am digging through some old WIP images I have of people in the Open Source community I have worked with. This week, I essentially finished Michael Jennings (aka KainX)

the mej v4 by `zeruch on deviantART

Some others include Tony Guntharp, Chris Dibona, San Mehat, ESR, and Uriah Welcome.

I found out Chocolate Genius had a MySpace page, or so it appeared. So I sent him a “thanks for all the great music, hope things go well” kind of note, expecting nothing in response. Lo and behold, less than a day later:

Sometimes it’s like dropping jeweled eggs into a well.

Nice to hear that there’s someone hearing them fall.

Who is CG? His real name is Marc Anthony Thompson, and he is one of the most slept on fellows in music these days. His work is a heady mix that hints at most points of any musical curve (think Radiohead meets Prince meets Tom Waits after listening to James Ulmer and Jeff Buckley all night). He’s worked with Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto), Bruce Springsteen, Meshell Ndegeocello, Sweetback/Stuart Matthewman (Sade), and Van Dyke Parks (Beach Boys).

His sound really is very much its own thing; very rooted in rock and pop, but layering all manner of eclecticisms upon it, without ever being overwrought and pretentious.

He writes great songs (occasionally observed as jewelled eggs). I doodled a little something a few weeks later from a blurry press image:

chocolate genius v2 by `zeruch on deviantART

Thank you Mr. Thompson.

On a recent walkabout downtown San Francisco, I stopped upon a Virgin Records, which kind of never really has anything I am looking for, but occasionally has a surprise. In this case, a Portuguese artist named Manuel d’Oliveira. He plays a standard acoustic instead of a 12-string Portuguese Guitar (which is closer to an Oud or Lute in tonality).

I make note of this because in the “world music” section (a stupid, stupid term), it is rare to find even something past female Fado singers, let alone Portuguese instrumentalists.  Of those you do find, 99.9999% are of the Carlos Paredes  guitarrista clone-type.  This is not necessarily bad -seeing as I love the sound of a guitarra portuguesa- but really shows how little people know what is available from that little place at the Western edge of Europe.

Amarte is a live disc with a mixed set of players; some tracks are solo performances, some with changing ensembles centered on a guitar/piano/contrabass/percussion/flute. Some tabla and Indian vocalizations here, some electronic atmospherics there. It all kind of flows together smoothly over the course of the nine tracks that comprise this debut.

The sound is something of an Iberian folk meets Maghrebi flow and some chamber jazz thrown in. It still manages to sound generally cohesive, since the core musicians seem to have a decent rapport with each other.

Nothing mindblowing, but definitely enjoyable and seems to stand up very well after repeated listens.

So I am playing with Inkscape again, having just upgraded to 0.46, and while I still find some fundamentally irritating things, the app continues to improve at a steady clip. Its potrace functionality (the critical part I use most often) has a much better interface (but still no progress bar), and the speed improvements are noticable.

Also, the help section automatically links to the second edition online version of the Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program, by Tavmjong Bah. Personally, I would prefer an in-app copy, since I do not always have wireless where I work, but if it continues to become a regular part of my creative ordinance, then I may simply opt to but the dead-tree version of the guide.

Probably the most obvious use was my rendition of Eric Raymond:

Postcard: esr by `zeruch on deviantART

The Pew Research Center has a News IQ test of sorts, to see how aware of current events a person might be.  The battery of questions is a whopping…12.

I scored 11 of 12 correct, and that put me in the 91st percentile.  That is somewhat saddening, since I thought all of the questions were fairly easy (which given my score would still appear to be the case), even the one I got wrong (I wasn’t that far off in my answer).

But what is really saddening is that the national average was 50%

50.

By their own numbers, this breaks down demographically where people >50 years old average at the 56th percentile and people 18-29 score at the 30th.   That is pathetic.

Now, the test is obviously not very conclusive; it has a very small set of multiple choice questions, and is limited by people who go online (likely seeking out tests like these…like me).  But with questions so mundane as what position Condoleeza Rice currently holds, who runs the DNC and what state John McCain represents, if the majority of the population isn’t getting >80th (and that accounts for people cheating on the test, which I am sure happens) then something is deeply awry.

Plain Trane by `zeruch on deviantART

In the contribution to the liner notes for this six-disc box set (the first of three by the Prestige label for their segment of the Trane corpus) Lewis Porter makes an often overlooked point:

Many writers refer to the Prestige recordings as Coltrane’s “early” or “formative” works. But he was no kid when he made them…While it is useful to notice connections to the later music, one should first acknowledge that the music here is often thrilling on its own terms, and it should be enjoyed that way, not as an incomplete precursor to something else.

Well put. And I mostly agree. I will always be more drawn to his classic later works like Naima, Giant Steps and A Love Supreme. They are cases where their legendary, gargantuan reputations are fully deserved and without a scintilla of being overblown. They are just that damn good.

But to deny that his Prestige period does not stand on its own is simply wrong. With some fantastic support players like Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Sahib Shihab, and a young, incendiary Donald Byrd among them, Coltrane laid down some rousing material.

The music does stand up incredibly well, and especially when you take note of how Porter sets it up; the music has all the building blocks of not only what would become Trane, but in terms of what was already there: his tone, his inventiveness and his kinetic drive.

That full, intense warmth that Trane could push, whether on simmering ballads or volcanic extended bop solos, is fully evident. His ability to adapt material to his conception is also evident; his version of Strayhorn’s Lush Life and Irving Berlin’s Russian Lullaby still sound so much like they were written for him than anything else. The latter comes originally from the album Soultrane, which was the first Trane cd I purchased.

The box comes with a full booklet of liner notes with fully annotated track listings. The sound quality is much better than the original issue cd’s. Most importantly, the playing is sincere, vibrant and original.

Dinah Shore: Do you think you influenced anybody?
Iggy Pop: I think I helped wipe out the 60s.

I recently saw the footage of the interview from which the above is taken. The contrast between Shore and Pop would be jarring if it wasn’t just the blueprint for every kind of Terry Gross-NPR dullfest that has ensued since.

And now, Iggy in his native element:

This is The Passenger, which was later covered very well by one Siouxie Sioux.

I first read about Chromeo in an issue of Bidoun which I picked up randomly. Claiming to be the “only successful Arab/Jewish collaboration since the beginning of time.” the French Canadians Dave Macklovitch (guitar and vocals) and Patrick Gemayel (keyboards and vocoder/talk box) are an entertaining mix of hipster bravado and sharp pop skills.

How I had not noticed these guys before I have no idea, as their electro sound is completely something I have had an affinity for since the sound was originally popular in the 80s.

Yes, I actually am the kind of guy who owns the original releases of bands like the Whispers, Timex Social Club, Roger and every other act that used excessive amount of synth bass and a Roland 808. And while Chromeo is a snarky club hipster take on that sound, the execution is just so impeccable I am still sold.

They are many flavors of awesome.

While all of their videos exude a generally low-budget style, the one for Bonafide Lovin’ actually goes meta-pop culture goofy with its overt foundation in the look of the Money For Nothing video from Dire Straits (which in 1985 was a revolutionary look, but now could be rendered on a dilapidated PSP without taxing the processor).

Get funky y’all.

this moment in time by `zeruch on deviantART

The full title comes from a Kate Bush lyric for her track from the Hounds of Love album, Jig of Life:

This moment in time, it doesn’t belong to you

Today I turn 35.

I have a lot of unfinished works which are starting to be finished, and this one is no exception. Done from components both new and old, the working title for this was Glenn Branca Mandelbrot and is a mix of fractal layers, Inkscape-based .svg vectors, and several layers of acrylics and screenprinting ink on bristol sheets.

So the OpenMoko FreeRunner is officially out, and boy does it look good. How will it play out? Not sure, but it certainly -at a surface glance- offers an immense amount of promise.

Dara Torres is at 41 likely more fit than most people half her age, and there is a lesson in that; allowing yourself to atrophy when you are capable of otherwise is totally your own bloody fault. I myself will be heading to the gym immediately after posting this.

The Pirate Bay goes and commits something deeply ironic, but probably under current legal and lobbying conditions - necessary.

It would appear that countries like Israel and Spain are far smarter than most in terms of eco-friendly house regulation; ecologically and economically. Yes, I am aware this is not completely suitable for everyone, but there are many places in the US where this would be a very sane option (unless you are an energy utility with a desire to gouge customers. As someone who survived the California debacle of afew years ago, to those Enron-esque fellows of industry…get bent).

I played earlier this year with Xebece and thought it had potential but a ways to go. Now Treebolic seems to be building on that in terms of data visualization. In my case, it may come in handy for both work and for art applications.

In the examples of repurposed edifices here, the bookstore is by far the most impressive.

And oh lookee, LegalTorrents.