A new level of mashup. I have to assume that this DJ is also a talented musician. In my mind, this is the knockout punch against the argument that DJing isn't a musical performance.
15 May 2010
DJ Earworm - United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop) - Mashup of ...
14 May 2010
On the American-ness of Apple Products
At the introduction of the Apple iPad, for some reason that doubtless stems from some arbitrary event within the realm of professional journalism, people suddenly became aware of current global manufacturing conventions. The iPad is assembled in China, just like pretty much all competitively priced consumer electronics. Just like consumer electronics have been for many years.
The heart of this favorite media topic is the old “Buy American” [Uh-MRRR-kin] saw. If you don’t understand at a glance what’s wrong with this argument, then Sherlock Holmes infers that you passed macroeconomics with the help of that dumpy girl you strung along with smooth talk until the end of the semester; shame on you.
The dumpy girl isn’t impressed with news reports on Chinese assembly of allegedly American products [organist hammers on diminished chords as mustachioed villain appears]. And she is unimpressed with Larry-the-Cable-guy-in-a-Three-Thousand-Dollar-Suit union leaders issuing statements about the immoral, unethical theft of American jobs.
The parts in any electronic product featuring new technology come from all over the world, and the final product will be assembled somewhere where a laborer’s time can be had cheaply. That formula hasn’t changed much since the advent of the steam ship. If you’re wondering why iPods can’t be assembled in the USA, look into how and why unskilled labor has been legislated into extinction here. Apple didn’t create this environment - the whole of corporate commerce in its entire history isn’t solely responsible - Apple merely operates in this reality. And if they want to compete with e.g. Sony, they have to play by the same rules as Sony. Sony also farms out assembly of most products to Asian factories where people work much cheaper than would anyone in Japan.
The more interesting facet of the relationship between Apple users and our American-ness is how readily we are willing to accept a virtual universe that is ruled from the top down with a heavy hand. When I recently started teaching guitar lessons again I bought an iPod touch as a low-cost alternative to a new notebook computer. I was amazed that I had to bow on bended knee, pledge allegiance to iTunes, and give a credit card number before I could even boot the device. WTF?! More recently I bought a new motherboard and memory for my desktop computer. I went out of my way to get something based on the same chipset so I wouldn’t have to reinstall anything, yet iTunes informed me that I had used up one of my allotted 5 syncs, that I had a few left, and I had better watch it. And by the way, I had to start over with iTunes. This was the only piece of software that didn’t make the transition to the new hardware. I understand how this is done – iTunes is keyed to some piece of uniquely identifiable hardware on the mobo (probably the network card) and the new mobo looks like a new computer to iTunes – but that understanding does nothing to ameliorate the annoyance.
This is what bugs me about Apple – the audacity to dictate every little detail of how the hardware is used; you get the impression setting up your iPod in iTunes that the device actually belongs to Apple and you are allowed to use it at their pleasure. Even more it bugs me that it doesn’t bug others. And worst it bugs me that it didn’t bug me enough to immediately return to Best Buy for a refund. I am not used to cowing to someone else’s will for my stuff, be it guitars, cars, or digital devices. If I don’t like the way a guitar plays I will hack out the neck with a chisel and build a new one. If I want to quad-boot my computer to Ubuntu, XP, Vista, and the minimal OS that came with the motherboard, try to stop me. But with my iPod, so far I have been content to grab my ankles and suffer through. The iPod, unlike any other device I’ve owned, is actively resistant to any kind of customization. At all. Period. Stop asking if you know what’s good for you.
- You can’t get direct access to files on an iPod.
- You can’t write your own software (apart from the draconian approval process through iTunes)
- Assuming you go through the trouble of getting your software approved, you can’t move data on or off the device except wirelessly through HTTP
- iPod is suxxorz
I think my problem is that I object to everything about the iPod on principle, but I have such abundant disincentive to do anything about it. For one thing, I had very low expectations for the device in the first place. I basically wanted a looper and a metronome for guitar lessons, and nothing else. So when that much worked flawlessly – plus I found Beatmaker, 4 Track, and Xewton Studio, the Blue stereo mic and its software, not to mention all the useful apps and entertaining distractions that all run without issue – it became very hard to look at the iPod as anything but a great solution to a particular need.
It turns out that there is a way to open the OS and make the hardware available to yourself. It is called jailbreaking and it a software hack that gives you control over basic things like the filesystem and execution permissions. So it turns out the iProducts are American after all.
If I really wanted to burn through an entire afternoon reading tutorials and other documentation, then fiddling until it worked, I could jailbreak my iPod and I would be back in control. But I’m not going to, and neither are most iProduct users. I suspect that this is how things have always been; most Americans don’t hot rod their own cars or wind their own guitar pickups or hand build additions to their own homes. It’s probably always been a small percentage, and I take great comfort knowing that that small percentage is still beavering away iPods, hacking them until they are free and self-determining. And covered in bland, melty cheese. Wearing logoed T-shirts and baseball caps. And loud and fat and ignorant. So proud [wipes tear].
Read more...Lawnmowers, Plug Up
Two questions burning a hole in mind this morning.
Why are mower mufflers a single, ineffective layer of inline baffling when it would be relatively cheap and easy to bring the motor's sound down by 30dB with an auto type muffler? Are manufacturers really that cheap? Even higher end mowers have the same loud output. There must be a reason, but I can't find an answer.
WTF is with the substitution "plug up" for "plug in"? Is it regional? The first place I ever heard it was at the Monday jazz jam at the Blue Room (before I got my house gig up the street at the Juke House). I assumed it was part of jazz culture, but since I've heard it all over. What is its etymology? Who uses it? How long can I stretch out this research to avoid doing any actual work?
13 May 2010
Quebe Sisters Band halftime at Dallas Mavs
If there's anything NBA fans love, it's Country Music, Pre-Bebop Swing, and the early 1950's. The Mavericks cover all the bases with this halftime show.
Amazing ensemble singing, especially considering that they are on 3 separate mics. I wonder if they mic them the old fashioned way in other venues. Total time machine.
12 May 2010
LOC to Store All Tweets for Posterity
I heard a story on NPR outlining Library of Congress' plan to archive all of Twitter as an important source document of our time.
It occurred to me that what would be far more useful to future historians is some proof of our near-absolute inability to discern what is meaningful. A better source document to archive might be a short wire story with a headline like, "Twitter's Entire Archive Headed to the Library of Congress."
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/09/nation/la-na-twitter-20100510
18 March 2010
16 February 2010
Honestly, have you ever seen such a thing? If you are looking for a great time-killer at work, read the comments in Stryper videos. It's a complete universe.
03 February 2010
31 January 2010
Allen Hinds
Allen Hinds. I actually lost a job to this guy once - on my friends' CD.
Honestly he did a better job than I could have at the time. And he has only gotten better in the 15 years since. Check it out - so much soul in so much kickassness.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Finally saw "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." It absolutely owns. I had written it off as another POS constructed under the Poochie Paradigm, but after the 1M'th time I heard how great it was, I granted it 10 minutes' audience.
This animated kids' movie satirizes a lot of things that actually had it coming, from disaster movie cliches to mainstream news media. It even cannibalizes its own genre with touches like a sidekick animal that is a dumb animal.
It even kept getting better in the credits, which featured the following old school simple pop song. I think the one thing that stands out about the whole movie is that it is obviously guided by individual vision; it wasn't hashed out in a committee under the direction of Bad Taste Guy Who Signs the Checks. There are lots of gags that are just existentially funny that made it into the production, lots of touches that don't advance a rigidly formed three part dramatic plot or fit hackneyed joke guidelines - and this song is over the credits because someone liked it or commissioned it or whatever.
I suppose it is possible that this artist was channeled into the movie production as part of some entertainmedia superconglomero-vertintegrational-promosynergy stunt, but it still seems like a great complement to the movie - a real, old fashioned, sincere, goofy pop song.
