I am miming my sadness right now. In memoriam.
URL: Mime legend Marcel Marceau dies
Monthly Archive for September, 2007
Checking some stats, this popped up as a traffic source.
[hint, check the second one and the url]
Hmmm. I think she’s hot but apparently there is another side to the story. I guess I just might be married to a porn star. Long way to fall for a good catholic girl.
Super minimalist video that covers the history and usage of one of the most recognized breaks in popular music. To the point and super slice of musicology as applied to pop music. A bit uppity at moments but really is a good look at the influence that samples have had on modern music and might be a glimpse of the lack of permutations of future art.
It begs the question of the true strangle hold some parts of copyright law have on what we do. What if this was enforced as derivative work (it apparently is by somebody other than the performer) and will a new Amen Break rise up under the current schema. Music is rife with “stolen” bits, see Bach, Stravinsky and Ives. All borrowed from other tunes and morphed them into new meaning in new works. The quote goes something like take from one source it is plagarism, take twenty it is inspiration. But what happens when the one source is filtered twenty times through a variety of filters and tricked out to essential born out something new. Isn’t that similar to inspiration. One idea begets twenty more.
But the another issue for me is the need for reference to the process and where we get things from. It is one thing to steal under the guise of inspiration but we need to call for the knowledge of where you come from, even ideas. A lack of history, reference or simply a simple bibliography for the bits and pieces we have spewing forth. It seems that the next generation may not even have awareness of the phenomena of this borrowing and the dues that need to be paid, at least in thanks and acknowledgment.
These is the line artist take when it comes to royalties and money owed. They want credit. If artist are looking for this then new media and new revenue streams will arise if you demand credit without creative killing payment. I am looking for the Winstons now on iTunes. It cuts both ways.
From the film: “A society free to borrow and build upon the past, is culturally richer than a controlled one”
[via Pixel Corps]
Technorati Tags: Amen Brother, break beat, Documentary, multimedia, music, technology
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Great story by Cory Doctorow (of Boing Boing) about the day google turned evil. Scary read and my bits of conspiracy brain flesh twittered with that is happening now kind of thought slush.
Last week ended on a definite up note. Then crapped out at the start of this one.
Managed to get the meeting required for the new Colonialtown identification signs. Now I just have to write up the rest and get some quotes. Thanks to a bit of last minute Word magic and Ramona’s advice I got some nifty spec designs for the peeps to peruse. It was positive and good turn out for an off-cycle month with bad weather.
Friday was Sam and dad hang out night. Christina caught some Cheesecake Factory magic with a girly friend while we chilled at home. Meanwhile, the Sam and I hit the bookstore. I was looking for “My Boring Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith”, Kevin Smith’s new book but I never checked the date it was coming out. Since he has hocked it unmercilessly on his blog I figured it was out. Nope. Bastard. The kind clerk at the “Ask Me For Help” desk rattled off the date. I would have listened but I was silently pissed and working on a worthless purchase to satisfy the need. So I bought the latest Macworld (sucked), Videomaker (sucked worse) and a Anthony Bourdain book that I immediately put down to reread [insert any Elmore Leonard title] for the 34th time.
We make it home in the standard Florida shower. Sam plays and I manage to make it thirty minutes into The Killing before a cranky Sam propelled us into bedtime rituals thirty minutes early. He crashed pretty immediate and I ADHDed into PTI catch up session. It was an early bed for the parentals when Christina came home.
Sam and Christina headed out for is probably the new Saturday ritual of Story-Time and the DT library. Lucky for me I have a good excuse to stay home. My productive plans were waylaid by installs and updates, so I did battle with the Evil Palm in the front yard. The bastard lays ripened dates to rot on the ground. If I were to miss a bit I would be able oto refer to the smell rather than the street names for directions.
I tugged out the garbage can and sliced them off into it for the easiest cleanup ever. Weilding a serated claw shaped cleaver, something that looks like it would be shouldered by a horse riding Hun driving their bloody pat through Middle Age Europe but is actually a tool purchased from the Depot strictly for this purpose, I attack while the sun was still low enough not to blind me. The palm fights back by throwing up saw dust, rotted crumbs from its “branches” and bugs and nasty crap that lives in the belly of the beast. This was a new technique, the whole garbage can thing. It worked fairly well. I felt pretty confident that what was missed would be acceptable collateral damage that my lazy, fat ass could ignore and not pick up. I made up for it by grabbing the larger, more visibly junk around the yard a a few good trims of the flora and fauna.
Christina and Sam come home and we clean (new Saturday ritual since we may have de facto fired the house cleaner(Doh!)). We packed the f-unit (family unit in the lingo) up for a round of B-day for Noah who is turning two. Nifty. I listen to Christina’s bad directions and we wander around, manage to toss one of Sam’s sandals out on the road and visit lovely Heathrow/ Lake Mary. Excitement indeed. Christina cries uncle and calls for the easy way in.
Lucky for me there is football. Swapping between Florida and UCF is fine with me. Better still there is rumor of cake! The cake lived up to expectations but UCF did way more. Covering my fears of a double digit blowout they went further and made it for a great game. Hell yeah. It was good enough that the Florida game was abandoned as well as a short sidetrack to the Yankee - Red Sox game (WTF, football on Saturday, bastards).
We kept Sam the man up way too long, so we limped off to get him proper. I hit the record on Sportscenter hoping for a little highlight action. We crashed early again. I think we are old.
Next morning we crawled out early to drop off stools for Christina’s parents. A cheapy Craigslist fare. I watched as they put together a grill. There was a burnt meat feast ad some Wii action afterward thanks to Ben, Christina’s brother. Dude, I am so spending a bit of bonus on that, if I can find one. Christina schooled me on tennis but still was about as old as me on the Wii Fitness Test. Ha.
Monday was shit. Git to work and everything was wacky. Printers printing randomness, if they were printing. Computers throwing themselves off the cliff, lemming style. Someone that probably shouldn’t be offering technical explanations suggested a bevy of electrical storms over the weekend. Since the smarter people had nothing better to offer, that is what story we adopted, voted on unanimously. Rather than catching up on a couple of delinquent projects (anyone know how to get wordpress to work on fucking IIS other than doing the smart thing and using Apache) I spend the day running to stand still.
Home means dinner but late. I was delayed by random crap at work. Figures. A little panzanella and I am tired and left trying to get a bit down for the blogorama and a little editing for Episode 2.
Tomorrow better not suck or…
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Detailed use of a HV20 on a “real” indie shoot. Excellent and simple instructs on how to trick out the manual to really use it. Focuses on using a 35mm adapter but might be useful for a straight shoot too.
For college football junk I tend to stick to 2 sites: Sportlines and Scout.com. ESPN has too much pay crap and I am too lazy to look for other stuff. Nifty thing this week is despite the nay-saying from almost all, there was a bit a love on the staff predictions report for this week:
3:30 PM Texas -19 at UCF
Fiu - UT Rich – UT* John – UT* Zemek -UT*
MB – UT WIS - UT Clucko - UCF PICK - UT*
The stars mean they believe that Texas won’t cover the spread. And you can see at least one gave us a chance of winning out right.
Me, personally, I am rooting for a at least a single digit spread. The Harmon Forecast has got us at a 13 point difference, can’t check the vegas line right now. Texas is good. They have been weak defensively in the last two games but their offense is doing well and I doubt the Knight defense will have the stamina to do much if they aren’t kept off the field by a better offense effort (a connected passing game).
Another nifty news bit, tickets are going for $100 on ebay last night and 95 to 125 on craigslist. Yeah, I think I will stick to ESPN2.
Oh hell yeah! This rocks. Better than EA’s hollow promise of games for OS X. This makes up for all the PC gamers with their nay saying “You can’t play any good games”. Screw you dude. I will have Guitar Hero III and you are going to like it. Plus I can eke a few more months of life out of my cube.Having fumbled with Frets on Fire, which is a pretty good and free version, the real deal with goods songs and great arrangements rocks.
Details out there is that it will come with a Gibson inspired guitar usb controller. Prices aren’t and the site doesn’t list system requirements. Song list has been out for a bit. They got hold of masters for some of these. The eighties was a bit lame but this looks rad. (yes, I wrote rad)
Slash and Bret Michaels make cameos as characters. Big surprise is Tom Morello doing the same. Does this mean his Red Card is shredded for capitalist participation.
Well, I am ready to rock baby!
Last Week
We spent last week pretty much the same as the week before. Work, home. Until Thursday. My email inbox delivered a surprise. A recruiter for a publishing company sent along a job to look at. This was nifty. This actually is the first unsolicited offer from any resume just floating out on the intertubes. I won’t go into the gory details but it sounded like a cool deal, a technology editor for textbook software. Mainly making sure it worked and met the right educational goals. Cool.
So I call the lady up and chat a bit. Then the nit and gritty. Pay is bad. Temp. 2 weeks to 2 years. No benefits. Up note is that she claims that just about every one that doesn’t get fired gets hired permanently. Still, I can’t quite run now with a BIG drop in pay (weird saying that considering I am talking teacher salary) without a benefits angle. Gotta have that if we are going to get Christina private next year. The recruiter tells me that it has been open for a long time. Reason being the wonderful offer she has to make, she knows it. But she tells me to apply any way, she’ll hold my resume and push for anything that might pay more. Cool.
Bummed a bit, I relay it to Christina who was way more jumpy than I was. A coworker has a sister working for the same company and confirmed the “hire them all” line. Game plan now is that come summer, if still there I will go for it. I get to have a couple months of paychecks over the summer that overlap and cushion the blow.
All of this is in the context of my finally considering going back to school. I just don’t want to teach any more. Done. Need something new. And with a music ed degree polluting the top of my resume I don’t seem to be getting anywhere
Christina rounds out the week with a bash of a meeting with uppity-ups in the county and manages to piss them all off, at least according to her. Sets up a special welcoming committee for Monday morning at the least. Office politics suck donkey dong.
To soothe her whoas, Christina stops for martinis while I get quality Sam time. Meaning he shakes random toys while I watch. We do run out of formula. Apparently it is needed to keep babies alive. So we head out to the Target. Pick up just the essentials, infant powdered milk, Anchorman and a Chipotle burrito
Christina comes home and we threaten to watch Anchorman but crash on the couch instead.
The Weekend
On Saturday Christina packs the Sam for a trip to story time at the Library. I earn a reprieve and man the fort.
I spend the morning mowing the 7.2 square feet of grass we call the lawn and trying to manage my latest web wonderness into 100 MB. Trying for the the videoblogging thing (sort of) spurred on by the purchase of a camera that I can actually use casually. But I seem to be stuck at an impossible 103.4 MB file size. Bastard size limitations.
Part of the issue is my insistence of using the HD even though I know that it is going to get mangled through the web optimization of [insert any free video hosting site]. Damn it, that is why I bought the camera, gonna use it. Besides, random crap is much funnier when you can see it really, really clear. Never mind that I am the only one that can see it that way.
I strike an impossible pose and manage 96 MB. I hear choruses in the background. 4 minutes is magic I guess, plus not forcing letter boxing seems to work, let them do that. Which to my surprise all that I uploaded to auto-letterboxed. Cool.
File down, I send it up. Using Tubemogul. Dude it rocks but more on that later. Only thing is I fumble through about ten uploads before I get it right. Power settings put things to sleep. Nothing works when its asleep. Ahh.
Christina rolls back in and we spend the day doing housework. Boring. We eventually wonder around a bit at the grocery but end up back at the palace, threatening to watch anchorman but just falling asleep instead.
Sunday was the church thing. Followed by glorious potato pancakes courtesy of Toojays with the Greg and Kathleen crowd.
Back for a nap. But apparently others have plans. We pick up bar stools for the Mogg parentals. Craiglist special. We veg out rest of the Sunday, managing to do nothing memorable or substantial.
Monday
It down lived up to our expectations. Enough said.
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