Rocket Bomber

Wild Cherry – Electrified Funk

Good Morning.

Music Business:
“Since incorporating sales figures from SoundScan and adding the activity of streaming services like Spotify and YouTube (also a streaming service, whether or not it brands itself as one), Billboard likely has the most accurate data it’s ever had. That doesn’t make the task of breaking out self-identifying fans and their favorite songs any easier. “
Fixing the Charts : The New Yorker

TV Business:
“Of the 47 new series introduced this past TV season by the major US broadcast networks (NBC, CBS, FOX, ABC and The CW), only 13 have been renewed for next year”
…
“Grappling with season-to-season ratings declines (only NBC showed growth this year), the networks are trying a new tactic: approaching their lineups as if they are summer movie schedules.”
Television is taking a cue from summer movie blockbusters : Quartz

I suppose this is only fair, after Hollywood went to the trouble of turning every nostalgia-laden TV show in to a movie back in the 1990s.
see also: Peak TV?

All Up In Your Business: ‘Frontline’ Doc Explores How Sept. 11 Created Today’s NSA : Fresh Air/NPR -audio at link

What?: Kenny G has become China’s goodbye music and no one knows why

Gaming: Following up on the Nintendo news links I shared on Friday –

How we’d save Nintendo : Ars Technica

“All of this feels eerily similar to the SEGA Dreamcast. An old, honorable company tried to do something special in the gaming space and failed. That company clung to first-party titles in the hopes things would turn around until they didn’t.”
The Wii U is Dead : SlashGear

Invoking the ghost of the Dreamcast… that takes me back…

The Birth of the $60 Billion Videogame Industry: Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros., and Sega’s war on Nintendo : Medium

The video game console wars have a surprising ongoing life in Japanese media, with not one but two ongoing fictionalizations:

• Hyperdimension Neptunia – see also: 1 – 2 – 3
• World War Blue – see also: 1 – 2

##

Today’s Book Recommendation is Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (middle initials are important) – which I obviously haven’t read yet (it just came out) but I feel fairly confident in the recommendation considering this pair’s previous two books, and after hearing them talk about it in their most recent podcast. [here’s a transcript if you don’t have your ears on] [Levitt & Dubner use the word ‘bacon’ 34 times in the podcast, you know it has to be good]
##

Diary entry for 13 May:
One thing I’ve been doing recently, knowing that I have a daily ‘deadline’ to write something interesting (for whatever assumed values I have for ‘interesting’), is going back to my notes.

I haven’t dug out the dusty Moleskines (yet). But there are a lot of started-and-abandoned drafts in txt documents on my harddrive, to say nothing of the random notes — files named Scratch, Whiteboard, Topics, Found, and Notes; folders with names like Sync, Misc, Queue, Arc, Notes (again), and the overloaded Temp folder; and assorted harddrive backups which no doubt have files I’ve since merged or deleted (or in rare cases, published).

What do I do with the list of headlines that were obviously meant to remind me of (one hopes at least) a short essay topic, but without any additional material? What to make of “Two Islands”? It’s on a list between “Business as Hobby” and “Wallpaper” — I actually remember what Wallpaper was supposed to be about*, and business-as-a-hobby seems obvious as well (likely a dressing-down of owners who go into business without thinking of the money, and making a plan; I’m sure I was watching Kitchen Nightmares at the time) — but “Two Islands”?

I can’t follow that anymore. And yet, I haven’t deleted it. (Who knows? Maybe I’ll remember, or come up with a new topic to go with it.)

Some of my drafts are pretty well along, but stalled — occasionally because I haven’t yet found all the sources to illustrate my points, sometimes because I can’t be arsed to properly edit it down from a drunken ramble, in at least one case because breaking news ‘stole my thunder’, but usually because I need one or two more really good ideas to make a proper post out of it. I don’t properly format these things anyway (topic, point a, point b, point c, conclusion) and maybe some high-school-taught outlining would be good for me — but that’s not how I think, or how I write.

Actually, my process is more like “Read All The Things!” — I mean, all the things, even stuff that seems off-topic — and then let my subconscious work on it until I’ve synthesized an original thought, something really interesting, a frickin’ revolution that I then can’t quite express properly in words, and I spend too much time looking for the words, and I get frustrated, or I post my literal best attempt at changing the whole world for the better and it gets ignored, or trashed.

…So probably just like everyone else’s writing process.

The backward-rifling through my notes hasn’t produced any diary entries yet (unless you count this one) but I haven’t despaired of finding some good ideas there. —M.

[image source: Randall Monroe, xkcd]

* and who knows, maybe I’ll actually write the “wallpaper” essay

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Super bass Punjabi style Dhol remix

Good Morning.

It’s a Monday. (I don’t know if I’ll do something special on Mondays with these posts, but I thought I’d float that as an idea and see how I like it in a week or two)

Tech: “All programming teams are constructed by and of crazy people”
Programming Sucks : stilldrinking.org

Media Diet: update your rss feeds as needed -
“That’s what this blog is going to be about. I’ll share some of what I learned for the book—with some stuff that I didn’t include. And unlike the book, I’ll be giving some of my impressions of drinks and bars, and maybe even a little bit of my own life in the kitchen, standing in front of homemade ginger beer or a shaker full of ice, wondering what to pour in next.”
Thinking on the Top Shelf: Welcome to Proof – a new Wired Science blog

Education:
“Charter schools benefit from a massive double standard, taking public money without being subject to the regulations or oversight applied to traditional public schools. That lack of regulation and oversight has a cost, in students’ educational experiences and in dollars. More than $100 million, as a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education shows.”
…
“While some of the most egregious cases are found out, leading in some cases to prison sentences …we have no way of knowing how many similar situations haven’t yet come to light.”
Weak charter school oversight leads to fraud and mismanagement

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Today’s Book Recommendation is The Noble Hustle, “Pulitzer finalist Colson Whitehead’s hilarious memoir of his search for meaning at high stakes poker tables, which the author describes as ‘Eat, Pray, Love for depressed shut-ins.’” – Whitehead has been making the rounds of NPR shows, which is where I first heard about his book – perhaps obviously I personally haven’t read it yet, but damn: that premise.

##

Diary entry for 12 May:
Yesterday I heard an amazing conversation on the radio (On Being, an APM production often heard on NPR affiliates) about fairy tales and modern storytelling:

Maria Tatar — The Great Cauldron of Story: Why Fairy Tales are for Adults Again

Lucky for you, the full audio is at the link.

“Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, where she also chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology. Her books include Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood and The Annotated Brothers Grimm.”

One could take the new TV shows Grimm and Once Upon a Time as just more (yet more) examples of originality-bankrupt Hollywood running out of ideas and resorting to recycling, and autolysis. Another interpretation: The TV networks were looking to riff off (or rip off) Willingham’s Fables without actually paying anything for it.

Myth and legend—and yes, fairy tales—have been grist for the media mill for a while, though — not just Diz ripping off Grimm in 1939 (and ever since) but also the Brothers Grimm: Jacob and Wilhelm didn’t write new stories in 1812, they traveled the countryside and wrote stuff down. Old stuff. I’m not sure if Los Dos Bros Grimm even knew (at first) just how deep the rabbit hole went [ha, heh]. They tapped into a deep vein of collective unconscious that both Freud and Jung went all, well, Freudian and Jungian on a century later. The tales themselves had been handed around for quite a few centuries prior. I’m not going to write a dissertation comparing Ovid’s Metamorphoses (itself 1st century AD compilation of older myths) with Grimms’ Fairy Tales, but I could see value in the analysis [and for you grad students out there: hey, free dissertation topic].

If we add on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey (the “monomyth”) and Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion — hell, now you’re writing with fire.

My own process involves a whole lot of reading — not just the theory and monomyth and metamyth (which might be the best way to describe the links in the diary entry up to this point) but also as much genre fiction I can cram into the limited reading time I have — after all, if all you read are books on how to write – the only ideas you’re going to get are how to write books on how to write books and you’ll be dragged downward into a recursive whirlpool between massive writer’s blocks [ref. Scylla & Charybdis] [too far, too smug, too cute?].

Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer is going to do more for your craft than reading Man and His Symbols, or Moses and Monotheism (no, really) — so don’t feel guilty about your ‘guilty pleasures’. Especially if you’re marathoning all of it. (while you’re at it, binge-watch Full Metal Alchemist).

A grounding in ‘theory’ is certainly worth pursuing — But be careful: if you think too much about storytelling, myth, psychology, craft, form, and art — you just might find the time spent learning gets in the way of time spent writing. —M.

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Elvis Presley – I’m Movin On

Good Morning.

Music: More Elvis in my usual Sunday music round-up — but it’s not all Elvis. The topic is actually American Music Studios and their house band, The Memphis Boys.

Books: The Night Library -
“Noticing that Shibuya lacked an accessible library that stayed open late enough for people who work full-time to be able to enjoy, book-loving Mori resolved to build his dream library it as close to the sprawling station as possible and invite like-minded souls to share it. With a unit already purchased and currently being fitting out with shelves, counters, and the facilities required to provide drinks to customers, Mori realised that he’d need a little extra help if he was to fill his shelves with enough titles to make it worth visiting.”
Books meet beer – Man achieves dream of opening ‘night library’ with help from crowdfunding site : Rocketnews24

Business: Books are always cheaper online – but it’s not about the books.
“This means book markdowns are extremely visible. Sellers can tout their low prices compared to what’s on the back of book covers, the price publishers want to sell it for. And that can be a convenient psychological device — especially if you’re a big retailer with lots of other stuff to sell. ‘When the customer sees a book at 40, 50 percent off,’ Teicher says, ‘the presumption is that everything else that that retailer is selling is also equally inexpensive.’ And books bring in some pretty attractive consumers. ‘Book buyers are good customers,’ Teicher adds. ‘They tend to be slightly more affluent, they tend to be consumers who shop and therefore are always in the marketplace for other products.’”
Why books always seem to have a discounted price : Marketplace [audio at link]

Tech: The deal is still just a rumor, though, right?
“Bona fide Beats are sold at a huge mark-up, making them immensely profitable but also irresistible to counterfeiters. The headphones—beloved by image-conscious teenagers but scorned by audiophiles—are easy to copy because the headphones’ appeal is largely based on brand rather than function.”
Why millions of counterfeit Beats won’t bother Apple : Quartz

The number-one factor that determines how earbuds sound is the fit — so even Sennheisers that run a couple hundred bucks are going to sound bad if the fit is too tight, or falling-out-loose, or just ‘off’ somehow—for you. It’s a very personal and subjective thing (which makes reviews of earbuds worthless, in my opinion). For over-the-ear cans, the actual driver (the speaker part) is more important than with earbuds, but build quality matters at least as much (I’d argue more) — padding with that thin, fake-leather crap that flakes away gets itchyscratchy fast, and foam that is too airy or too thin to matter means your cans are leaking sound (or letting the outside sounds leak in).

I live in my headphones (not, as some Beats owners do it, wearing them around my neck — but 14 hours a day and then all night while I’m sleeping ) so yes, I am picky about what I buy, but I don’t think I’ve spent more than $30 on a pair of headphones ever.

My current faves cost about $22 bucks and when I found out the style was going to be discontinued I bought 5 spare pairs and also used some heat-shrink tubing to reinforce the cord at the mini-jack (a stress point and most common point of failure in my experience) — I really like this model of earbud and as noted above, they’re so comfortable (in my ear, anyway) that I can even wear them while I sleep. Don’t even bother to ask me which brand they are though; there are still a few out there (even after being discontinued) and you never know, I might want to buy what’s left. (maybe I’ll buy myself another 5 spares for my birthday)

So anyway, short lecture aside, I never saw Beats as anything more than marketing (savvy marketing, but still snake oil) and given the many other options out there, I’d never shell out for a pair. However, Beats comes with a built-in, mostly young fan base (and that super-savvy marketing team) and maybe that is worth $3.2 billion to Apple.

See also:
What Apple is really buying with Beats : The Verge
Beat By Dre: The Exclusive Inside Story of How Monster Lost the World : Gizmodo

##

I’m throwing today’s Book Recommendation into the diary entry — keep reading.

##

Diary entry for 11 May:
The earbud-thing above is, I think, indicative of being a curmudgeon. By ‘earbud-thing’, I mean both my pickiness and my overuse/over-reliance on the unspoken social cue that’s communicated by wearing them in public. And by ‘being a curmudgeon’, I mean of course *me* being a curmudgeon. I’m getting older, and starting to sound like it: “New Things? Why should I try the new thing, I like my old thing… nothing wrong with something just because it’s old. You damn kids. Get off my lawn.”

Actually I’ve been a curmudgeon since I was seventeen. Or maybe sixteen. Or maybe ten. I’ve always been grumpy/standoffish — at first because I was shy, and throwing up a thorny exterior was (ironically) how I coped — and then later even after developing some social skills, because I found my own company preferable to needy, stupid people.

Over time, preferences become habit, and feedback structures develop that slowly turn a lonely life into an isolated one. I bring my laptop with me to the pub so I don’t even have to interact with other people in a social space. I wear earbuds in the coffee shop, while walking the neighborhood, even while shopping for groceries, because the earbuds are a visual cue to others that I want to be left alone (if not an actual deterrent) and also help me build my isolated personal space.

Working retail made the situation superficially better — but also much, much worse. Yes, as a bookseller I was out there, every day: dozens of interactions with the shopping public, and actual conversations — about books! Fantastic, right? No. Oh gods no. The shopping public (even in a bookstore) is an unremitting parade of stupid. The two or three moments of connection, the small rush you get when you have actually helped a fellow human being, quickly get subsumed and overwhelmed by all the other retail crap and one bad customer ruins not just your whole day, but often also the past week.

It’s not that I’ve become afraid to go out (enochlophobia would be a more accurate term than agoraphobia, but is also incorrect) — it’s that I now find I actively dislike people. All of you.

Oh sure, you are fine and in the proper context and a stress free environment – you will find I’m a pleasant conversationalist with a dry wit wrapped around an occasionally biting sense of humor and a near-encyclopedic trove of trivia. I can even be charming. But all those other people, the strangers, the masses? I hate people. I hate your kids even more. Damn kids.

I started out as an introvert. *Not that introversion is a problem or something that needs to be fixed.* Introverts get shit done. But now instead of merely being unsure and uncomfortable in social situations, I’m sure. I’m very sure. I’m sure I don’t want to be there and I don’t want to talk, and no I don’t want to talk about it, and no, just ‘opening up a little’ and being more ‘active’ isn’t going to help anything. I’m active: I’m actively introverted, almost violently so.

And one could argue that my choices — my grumpy, thorny outside and self-imposed isolation — are still just a coping mechanism and inside I’m still that same scared, nervous 12-year-old. Sure. But there’s internet access in here and I can suffer fools long enough to buy the occasional six-pack and when everything is said and done: I like it in here.

I’ll skip the Susan Cain recommendation; sure, Quiet is a fine book and a bestseller and all that, but is geared more toward making society as a whole more comfortable with the introverts among us. Today’s Book Recommendation is an older book, one written ten years ago, and a book not about introverts-in-the-world but rather about introverts feeling comfortable in their own skin : Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto by Anneli Rufus

And now, as it’s shaping up to a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I think I’ll pop down to the pub for a late brunch and a Guinness or five — alone, with my laptop, at the bar. ‘Cause that’s how I roll. —M.

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“American Sound Studio was a recording studio located at 827 Thomas Street in Memphis, Tennessee. More than one hundred hit songs were recorded there between its founding 1967 and its closing in 1972, The music for these hits was played by the house band ‘The Memphis Boys’, also known as the ’827 Thomas Street Band’. Artists who recorded at American Sound Studio included Elvis Presley, Merrilee Rush, Aretha Franklin, Neil Diamond, Dusty Springfield, B. J. Thomas, Joe Tex, Roy Hamilton and The Box Tops.” — wikipedia

Memphis Boys – The Story Of American Studios [playlist – 24 tracks]

This was the ‘soundtrack’ to a book by Roben Jones (9781617031991, U. of Mississippi Press, 2011)

Here’s a playlist, only 8 tracks, rounding up some of the songs mentioned in American Sound Studio’s wikipedia entry —

“Memphis Underground is a 1969 album by jazz flautist Herbie Mann, that fuses the genres of Jazz and Rhythm & Blues (R&B). While Mann and the other principal soloists (Roy Ayers, Larry Coryell and Sonny Sharrock) were leading jazz musicians, the album was recorded in Chips Moman’s American Studios in Memphis, a studio used by many well-known R&B and pop artists. The rhythm section was the house band at American Studios. The recording was engineered and produced by Tom Dowd.
“Three of the five songs on the album were covers of songs originally released by Soul music artists. ‘Hold On, I’m Comin’ (by Sam & Dave), who recorded at Stax records (with the Stax rhythm section), and ‘Chain of Fools’ (by Aretha Franklin) who recorded that song with the classic Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section at Atlantic Studios in New York.” — wikipedia

“From Elvis in Memphis is the ninth studio album by American rock and roll singer Elvis Presley, released on RCA Victor. The recording took place at American Sound Studio in Memphis, between January 13–16 and 20–23, and February 17–22, 1969, under the direction of producer Chips Moman and with the backing of the house band, informally known as ‘The Memphis Boys’. A direct consequence of the success of Presley’s 1968 Christmas television special and its soundtrack, the recording marked the definite return of Presley to non-soundtrack albums, after finishing his movie contract with Paramount Pictures.
“Deciding to leave his usual settings at the RCA studios, Presley was convinced by his entourage to record his next album at American Sound, a new and renowned Memphis studio that at the time enjoyed a successful hit-producing streak. On the production of the record, Moman and his arrangers decided to change Presley’s music from his usual pop sound aimed for older audiences, to a new sound to provide him of a new image. His early influences in country, rhythm and blues, and gospel were blend with soul, the latest music trend in Memphis. The arrangements were inspired by the Memphis soul, a use of the rhythm section with reduced use of strings, brass and woodwind sections.” — more wikipedia

see also: Elvis At Stax — but Stax is a past (and future) post

Listen to these instrumental tracks – unfinished Elvis masters:

Elvis – American Sound Studio, 1969 Tour Rehearsals (59 min)
* NSFW language warning – Elvis uncensored, and a little rough.

The Boys are still working, and touring – The Memphis Boys And Terry Mike Jeffrey, Live In Knokke : Part 1, 20 min – Part 2, 20 min – Part 3, 30 min – not the best audio quality, it’s an obvious bootleg—which is why it’s linked, rather than embedded—but a decent set to put in the background today.

Perhaps understandably (as a blogger, etc and et al.), I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently on the value of a link, and a share, and how this ‘economy’ of attention is actually running:

How often have you seen something shared via Tumblr or Reddit, and laughed, and maybe tweeted a link (or reflex-reblogged to your own tumblr) and then, after the quick grin or chuckle, forgotten about it?

[source: Wikimedia Commons – original image cropped]

Happens a dozen times a day, or more, per person. It’s a common behavior (habit, even) for a significant fraction of the 2 Billion or so internet users — if you’re reading this blog, then yes: both you and I do it.

But then a few days or a week later, you see the same thing posted to a different blog. You know you saw it first, but here it is again in a buzzfeed list, or as unattributed art on someone’s facebook. As it turns out: we all kinda-sorta all like the same things. It’s why some content is referred to as ‘viral’ — not just that it spreads fast, but that it gets spread from hand-to-hand and via many channels. When a meme or a trend really blows up, well a month later or so the video makes an appearance on some local affiliate or cable TV news.

But who gets the credit?

• The original creator? Sure, with luck.
• The ‘first share’? The person who found the ‘neat thing’ (whatever it is) and gave it the initial signal boost? – no, that’s usually lost (long lost) by the time *I* see something (your experience may be different)
• The professional sharer? We all have our favorite aggregators, some of which specialize in funny — but even a “serious” site can’t resist the temptation to share the best grinners, especially if they’re on-topic (or just that great, seriously, I mean click this link and go see cats being catlike)
• Buzzfeed?
• Facebook?

Hell, if it’s really good: about six months from now you’ll see it again via email from that one friend/relative who’s been sharing stale crap for years now – and thinks they’re a comedic genius for doing so. (Bad pixellated scans of newspaper-clipped one panel comics from the 80s? Re: RE: RE: re: FWD: Re: FWD: FWD: FWD:? Oh, hell yeah.)

Should we be worried about the provenance of our cat videos? No. And obviously, even in internet terms, a week or two isn’t really old.

But it seems like a small but loud portion of the internet is concerned with “credit” — and I have to put credit in quotes because it’s not a matter of creating content but rather who saw, and shared, it first. On tumblr, folks take an already funny TV show, pull out a flapping-mouth gif with the punchline as the caption, and then in all seriousness tag it, #mygif. Sure, the process of making gifs is non-trivial, but what part of that is yours, dear tumblerite? The original script? The performance of the actor? The copyright already owned by the broadcaster or production company?

I’ve noted this on tumblr because the .gif (however one pronounces it) is endemic (though not original) to that platform. 4chan, being older, is about static images (which have evolved into over-recycled jpgs with the ubiquitous allcaps impact-typeface captions that range from obvious to unfunny — the meme meme is stale) (which is why the reaction gif is taking over, I’m thinking) — reddit is about links (often a link to reddit-fellow-traveller imgur, where the meme or gif actually lives, but still a link means you have to craft a witty text headline — making reddit the spiritual successor of fark, even if most redditors are too young, perhaps, to be aware of venerable-in-internet-terms Fark.com) — twitter, to its credit, seems to favor the snappy one-liner or self-contained joke. OK, let me check and make sure all my parenthesis are closed…

So anyway, following the success of the social sharing platforms, along comes the opportunist — companies that take the same shared content, slap a bunch of ads all over the page, make our fun into their ‘product’ — and kinda spoil the whole thing.

Read this, from Rachel Dukes at mixtape comics : “After a discussion last week with several of my cartoonist peers (and at the behest of Steve Bissette): I want to talk about image theft and uncredited content on social media.”

When we talk about credit, what we really should be concerned about is authorship: who actually created the content that drives everything else. In the case of 4chan-originated memes, the point is moot (yes, pun intended) as everyone on the ‘chans is pointedly anonymous — that’s part of the joke, and the ‘charm’. Casual sharing is usually the same: “Ha! lemme link that…” – I don’t know and don’t care if you’ve actually clicked the link after I share it, because my interaction with the content was all of a minute (at most) and I’ve already moved on to something else.

But when you take art and ‘file off the serial number’ to post without attribution, that’s more than ‘kind of’ wrong (see: http://www.tumblr.com/search/art+theft ). Some sites out there steal content wholesale, in some cases using RSS feeds to scrape-and-repost carefully crafted articles in real time — several reviewers in my larger internet circles have seen this happen (and in the case of reviews: an already-minuscule income-trickle from affiliate links can disappear, as your intended audience is siphoned away without even knowing they’ve been re-directed).

[source: Wikimedia Commons]

There is little enough creative activity taking place [google “the death of originality”] but even in a post-internet world when the remix, mash-up, and photoshop have evolved into their own artforms, we need to take a half second to think about being responsible, and then take a half minute to cite sources.

I really meant this as a condemnation of laziness, as opposed to a call for action: I know all of my readers are responsible netizens. The lesson needs to be directed to the uncaring and thoughtless sharing masses who do this on a small scale (microscopic scale) just one mistake at a time — and the real umbrage should be targeted at the nefarious opportunists doing this on a huge scale for profit.

One step at a time, though; and change begins at home/we must become the change we want to see in the world/“I’m starting with the man in the mirror”. *

Broken Brass Ensemble – Peas

Good Morning.

Gaming: Oh yeah, we’ll be seeing all kinds of goofy stuff like this: Become a bird – see previously, Virtuix Omni [I’m waiting for true plug-and-play]

Business: Taking a photo against a white background? Amazon owns the patent on that : Quartz

Gov’t: Air Force discusses how it would respond to Godzilla : The Verge

Gov’t: The 40-year Tragedy.
“The report details a laundry list of negative results from the war on drugs, including ‘mass incarceration in the US, highly repressive policies in Asia, vast corruption and political destabilization in Afghanistan and West Africa, immense violence in Latin America, an HIV epidemic in Russia, an acute global shortage of pain medication and the propagation of systematic human rights abuses around the world.’ In part, the report finds that the drug war’s failings come from its high costs for low returns and the unwillingness of countries where drugs are produced to risk their own security with enforcement efforts.”
Nobel Prize economists call for end to war on drugs : The Verge
[edit: and around lunchtime I also saw this article on Vice: Legal Pot in the US Is Crippling Mexican Cartels]

The so called war is actually 43 years old and counting. I’m divided on whether Nixon or Reagan have done more damage to the United States. Equal blame is probably most appropriate but St. Ronald the Communicator gets the nod for being reliably bad in so many different categories, to say nothing of the massive disconnect between his corruption in office and the rosy-tinted icon that is venerated today.

Obviously I have opinions on the man, and the fallout. Outside of blind political affiliation, I can’t see how anyone could respect Reagan or celebrate his legacy — those that choose to do so are just as obviously entitled to their opinions, and of course I won’t damn a person for what they believe. …I just wish more people would educate themselves on the issues, even if that proves inconvenient to their politics. *massive sigh*

OK. Massive bummer needs a chaser:

Neat:
Visualizing London’s Evolution From Roman Times to Today – video at link (7.3min); I recommend watching it full screen

##

Following on that London link, Today’s Book Recommendation is London: A Biography by Peter Ackroyd – yes, at 848 pages (plus being a slightly oversized, 9.2×6.2 trade paperback) it’s a doorstop of a book, but each of the 79 chapters functions as a stand-alone essay, making it easy to read in small chunks — plus the book also incorporates plenty of illustrations and maps. I like having it on my nightstand; back when I was commuting by transit I also bought the ebook version to read on the train.

##

Diary entry for 10 May:
You might have noticed (assuming you click-through and read the things) that there are not just two, but actually four links to The Verge up top — which is more coincidence than anything else. The Verge is just one of [checking Feedly] 353 sources I follow (though to be fair, about 80 of those are food blogs that post excedingly sparingly – recipes weekly, at best)

…though to give them their due: even when all the other tech sites are reporting the same thing, The Verge often gets picked as ‘my’ link (the one I share) because their headline is better.

In my ‘media diet’ (which I glancingly referenced yesterday) The Verge is also one of seven tech/geek/news blogs that get read first* – in alpha order:
Ars Technica – Geek.com – Quartz – Re/Code – ReadWrite – Tested – and of course The Verge

[* let's be honest: the Webcomics folder gets read first.]
…and though this batch-of-seven gets priority, there are another dozen ‘tech’ sites I follow, alongside two dozen+ ‘bookish’ sites on publishing, ebooks, media, and reading (The Passive Voice and The Digital Reader deserve a called-out link here), a similarly-sized batch on urban studies, four dozen sites on politics and economics (one and the same subject, if you ask me), and oh… a hundred or so sites I’ve classed as ‘amusements’, ‘tumblish’, ‘fanish’, and my favorite folder: ‘skippable’.

At any point in the day, I have something to read (unless I’ve been too proactive in pruning) and I rely on my links as vital input for just about all of my other internet activity.

It’s not that I need confirmation or affirmation to form my own opinion, but if I am to pursuade (or to come across as an authority on whatever topic) having a ready link—especially to a long op-ed—certainly helps.

To mix my metaphors: the icing on this cake is a steady audio diet of NPR/PRI/APM, both over-the-air and streaming online. These inhabit my earspace much like many of you subscribe to podcasts — in fact I wish I had more time (or an easier way) for podcasts; since I avoid iTunes on philosophical grounds** there aren’t many podcasts in my media diet outside of a handful I’ve added to my rss feeds. YouTube is a more meaningful platform to me than iTunes.

[** I’d be much happier if iTunes was a website I could visit as opposed to bloatware I have to install on my harddrive]

In a final analysis: yes, all these bookmarks are messy. Relying on rss feeds is barely better; it’s still a mess. However, like many cognoscenti I’d rather get messy and wade deep into sources, as opposed to being hostage to a single aggregator or curator. Seen in that light, my own contributions (via twitter, and this site) are small and snarky by design — I don’t want to overwhelm, and I can’t cover everything so I don’t try.

And the real value of these posts lies not in the links (reblogging the reblogs of the rebloggers) but in the original opinions and insights — which is why I thought a daily diary might be a good idea. —M.

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Grand Funk Railroad – I’m Your Captain

Good Morning.

Business: (I’m tagging this one ‘business’ because I wasn’t sure how else to pitch it: OS? Platform? Computing?)

“Mainstream Chromebooks.” You never thought we’d be discussing Mainstream ChromeOS Anything, now did you?
The world’s largest PC maker now wants to sell you a Chromebook: Lenovo’s first mainstream Chromebooks start at just $279 : The Verge

ChromeOS doesn’t have the user-base of Android, and Chrome “apps” and extensions still need a lot of work — something about the form-factor and ‘vocabulary’ (for lack of a better word) of smart phones makes apps work on that platform in a way that doesn’t translate to bigger screens and web browsers — which to me is very odd, since even confined to a browser the laptop/desktop environment has a lot more potential and broader (dare I say it) application that can’t be matched by a 4” or even 7” screen.

ChromeOS (and its physical manifestation, the Chromebook) is an admission, or a realization, that very few of us need to run Photoshop or even Office on a daily basis and that from email to Facebook to Netflix, most computer users are spending 98% of their time in a web browser anyway. Without the need for compu-horsepower to run Call of Duty or Autodesk applications, you can get away with cheaper, underpowered chips — and when you combine that with plasticky cases and keyboards, and best-of-2010 (or maybe 2009) LCDs, you can push out a stand-alone web browser for under $200. (this widespread cheap-in-a-bad-way perception of Chromebooks is why Google put out the Pixel, of course. Not that anyone could afford one.)

With Samsung, HP, and now Lenovo on board, though, a Chromebook is starting to look viable. And as time goes on, the capability of Chrome apps and extensions will only grow. (finding the good stuff in the Chrome Web Store is another matter entirely, though. *Ugh*. That place is a swamp of bad implementations, spammy-and-spammish-seeming crapware, four year old early-adopters that are now sadly out-of-date and nigh-unusable, and other kruft that needs some serious curating. You listening, Google?)

Additionally: I still think Google should have pushed chromeOS for tablets, rather than android — especially on a 10” screen — but whatever. they make more money than I do.
A Chrome OS tablet? Don’t hold your breath : SlashGear

Gaming:
“We all knew it was coming, but Nintendo unleashed the bad-news bonanza late last night: It won’t make the 55 billion yen (about $520 million) profit it initially forecasted for this fiscal year, but instead it will lose about 25 billion yen ($240 million) due to weaker than expected sales of pretty much all of its products. It lowered this year’s sales forecast for the Wii U console from 9 million units to 2.8 million.”
Nintendo Loses Heaps of Money, Slashes Forecasts. So, What Now? : Chris Kohler, 17 January 2014, Wired

Nintendo is bleeding cash (it still has $10 BILLION or so in the bank, so this isn’t all gloom-and-doom) but with console generations now stretching into 7 or 8 years, losing out on a platform evolution (like, say, the Wii U is getting it’s rear-end whooped by PS4 and Xbox One) means losing out on a decade’s worth of profits and, more importantly, mindshare. When the gamers stop caring, you might find yourself shipwrecked on the shoals next to Dreamcast, Neo Geo, and 3DO.

As stated, though, Nintendo has a mound of cash — and a convenient ATM:

“Nintendo’s surprise reveal of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and Pokemon Omega Ruby was a bit vague to say the least. The company described the 3DS games as a ‘fresh take’ on Game Boy Advance entries Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire, while a brief press release mentioned things like a ‘new adventure’ and a ‘spectacular new world.’ So, just what are these games? Step in Satoru Iwata to clear things up, or at least a little bit. In today’s financial briefing, the Nintendo president described the games as ‘full remakes,’ which at least removes some of the confusion if not a lot of it.”
Joystiq

##

Today’s Book Recommendation is Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan — Nathan Yau recently revisited this book over at flowingdata.com and I thought I’d do the same (especially with the paperback available, as opposed to the $27 hardcover). Speaking of Dr. Yau, he’s written two books himself — if you like the nifty maps and graphs folks link to and gush over all over the internet, you should check out Visualize This and Data Points to see how the datamages put ‘em together.

##

Diary entry for 9 May:
I’ve been examining my media diet recently, as well as my writing process. The two tie into each other, actually — especially when blogging.

— aside: and by blogging I’m also referring to the act of using twitter, tumblr, and (to a much lesser extent) google+ – ‘microblogging’ in the parlance.

Even using folders to organize them, I find there is very little use to a browser bookmark. Bookmarks are obviously a necessity (unless you like typing in urls for the sites you visit every day) but for making notes and citing references in longer posts, it’s messy and still too easy to lose something. Worse, I occasionally find a month-old (or even a week-old) link and I have to stop and ask myself: well why did I bookmark that?

There is, of course, an app for that – several in fact. I’m looking at Google Keep (because google; despite my snark above I’m invested into chrome/android/and most-things-google) but leaning more towards OneNote or Evernote. I’m researching the issue — actively researching, as of yesterday, as opposed to the back-of-the-mind-itch that it has been for the last six months.

Oddly enough, I do my writing in a text editor these days — completely giving up on LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice having replaced OpenOffice which in turn replaced MS years ago. I think the last time I used MS Office was on my last desktop system (which I built myself); I’ve never installed it on any laptop that I’ve owned. So, um, twelve years ago I switched to open-source office? [edit: I made the switch with the first release of OpenOffice, 1.0, back in 2002 .] I still use Calc, as spreadsheets are a thing that are quite handy (to me) though for some of my projects I really should switch over to SQL or some other database implementation. (The now-neglected manga database has 10,000+ titles in it, just as an example)

I switched to a text editor, um, six years ago? …some of my oldest novel notes are in a .odt format (and spreadsheets; I’m that kind of author *chuckle*) so I know I used to write in Writer at least up to 2006 (when the OpenDocument standard was introduced) but I also have a very solid memory of writing for both ComicSnob [defunct] and Rocket Bomber exclusively in a text editor. My other notes and writing slowly but naturally followed suit.

Over time, it also became natural to write using mark-up language [em, strong, links, et al.] from the first draft — which further ossified and codified my process, now solidly entrenched in a text editor. [neither a recommendation nor a paid endorsement, I use Notepad++ – which has some features that really only apply to coders — but I do some of that, too]

Anyway, back to what I was saying about bookmarks:

I can either manually extract pull-quotes and build links in-real-time, as I browse, and file those in appropriate drafts or notes .txt documents — which is of course the better, more conscious method that I should always default to — or I can click the little star in the omnibar up top in Chrome, and maybe remember to select the correct bookmark folder while I’m at it.

You can guess which I do more often. Sometimes the first step in a draft is just going back through my bookmarks and figuring out what I was thinking. A regular reader (all dozen of you; and thank you) might have noticed that my analysis posts are link-and-quote heavy, going back a year or so.

I don’t know if switching to (for example) OneNote would help the process, though Microsoft would certainly want me to think so. I also found some glowing testimonials/tutorials online espousing the use of Evernote + Scrivener.

Like I said: I’m looking into it. I have to wonder, though, after years of working in a text editor, will I be able to make a switch? In an odd way, Notepad++ has become my Smith-Corona – a fetishistic part of my process. Different laptops and keyboard layouts come and go, but Courier Monospaced black in a plain white window remains constant.

This ended up being much more about my process, and not so much the media diet; something for the next entry, I guess. —M.

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Casiopea vs T-Square – Japanese Soul Brothers ~ Fightman

Good Morning.

Local: Attention Atlanta Radio listeners: Album 88 (88.5, Georgia State’s student-run station) will be switching it’s daytime format from music to news, in a deal with Georgia Public Broadcasting — so instead of college/indy music, there will be some mix of NPR/PRI/APM content. I, for one, will miss the music but I also like the idea of having NPR talk as an option during those crucial hours between Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
WRAS Album 88 switching to daytime news format with GPB
[link via @MaraDavis on twitter, who other Atlantians should possibly be following.]

Comics:
“Meltdown Comics and Collectibles opened in 1993 on Sunset Boulevard, in Los Angeles, less than two miles from the intersection of Sunset and Vine, right in the heart of Hollywood. More than 20 years later, the store is one of the largest in the country and has diversified its inventory from simply comic books and graphic novels into comedy, podcasting and pop culture. ‘Digital media is killing us, just like records stores,’ says co-owner Gaston Dominguez-Letelier. ‘People started downloading music, now they are downloading books and comics. … It’s not the same as it used to be.’”
audio at link: A comic book pioneer adjusts to the digital age, Marketplace (APM radio), 7 May 2014

Business: Some companies would rather just get rid of interns, than pay them
Quartz

Business: Activision is spending $500 million to make ‘Destiny’ the next ‘Halo’
The Verge

Gov’t: Why America’s about to run out of money for roads (again)
Vox

##

Today’s Book Recommendation is Brian McClellan’s Promise of Blood, and if you need a review, I like the one Howard Tayler wrote. I’m giving Promise of Blood the nod because the second book in the trilogy The Crimson Campaign, was released in hardcover on Tuesday.

##

diary entry for 8 May:
If I can find a topic, I’ll be doing a podcast — and by podcast I mean YouTube video because a solo podcast is a lonely thing, but for whatever reason people really connect with one-person and a camera video. There is even a word for it, “vlog”, which I hate at least as much as I hated the word “blog” eight years ago. (It took a while for the term, and the appellation blogger, to sound right to my ear. I’ve since embraced it.)

The thing about a video series and/or podcast is that people expect you to have a topic. I don’t want to cover publishing/bookselling, though I certainly have enough material on that one…

I’d be tempted to do music reviews, very much in the vein of what I’ve been posting recently but the embedded-video-with-commentary blog posts works exceptionally well for that (in my opinion) and adding my voice to it doesn’t seem like an improvement.

I may end up splitting the difference between bookselling and music reviews and do book reviews, though that is very hard to do on a weekly basis if you haven’t a process and workflow already. I also have a few doubts about my abilities there; I’ve never really felt comfortable as a reviewer. I feel some of my reviews are more like book reports (middle-school level) when I try to write more than three paragraphs on anything. In fact, my preference would be the ‘shelftalker’ — a few sentences at most recommending the book (selling it to you, as it were) — but that wouldn’t make for a very long podcast, would it?

I suppose I could string together several such (or perhaps, do something called “The Book Minute”. heh.) but again, I’d be worried about running out of content. As you might have noted, I can’t even manage daily blog posts.

So: still spitballing ideas for a podcast, and thinking about its ‘sustainability’ over a long haul. —M.

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[wikipedia]

The Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra was a group of Hollywood session musicians organized by Frank Zappa in 1967 to record music for his first solo album Lumpy Gravy. Some of these musicians are thought to have worked together in various combinations under the leadership of Ken Shroyer as far back as 1959. However, it was Zappa who gave them the name several years later.

In 1975 Zappa organized another group using the same name which involved a few of the same musicians. This group recorded music for the album Orchestral Favorites. Zappa’s Orchestral Favorites album was not released until 1979.

In 1983 soundtrack music for The Chipmunks was recorded by yet another permutation using the same name but organized without the involvement of Zappa or Shroyer. The last appearance by this later ensemble was on the Who Framed Roger Rabbit soundtrack in 1988.

“In its original incarnation, Lumpy Gravy served as an album of orchestral music written by Zappa and performed by an orchestra assembled for the album. Zappa conducted the orchestra’s performance, and did not perform any instrument on the album. However, MGM Records claimed that the album’s production and release violated Zappa’s contract with Verve Records. Lumpy Gravy was subsequently reedited by Zappa as part of a project called No Commercial Potential, which produced three other albums: We’re Only in It for the Money, Cruising with Ruben & the Jets and Uncle Meat.”
— Lumpy Gravy

Lumpy Gravy was Zappa’s 3rd album (following two releases by The Mothers of Invention, of which Zappa was the lead singer and principle madman) but is often cited as Zappa’s solo debut, which is interesting since he plays no instruments and doesn’t sing (content, I suppose, merely to have composed & orchestrated the work, and also conducting the Abnuceals Emuukha ESO in studio).

Full Album (1967 Capitol Records (the version without the spoken word segments)):

Frank Zappa and The Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Orchestra, September 18, 1975. Royce Hall, UCLA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollo_(Frank_Zappa_song)#Rollo

“Early in 1977, Zappa delivered the master tapes for a quadruple-LP set, entitled Läther, which he intended as his “swan song” for Warner Bros. However, Warner changed its position following legal action from Cohen, and refused to release the album, claiming that Zappa was contractually bound to deliver four more albums to Warner for the DiscReet label.
“During 1977 Zappa created the individual albums Zappa In New York, Studio Tan, Sleep Dirt and Orchestral Favorites by re-editing recordings from same batch of tapes that made up the 4-LP configuration. After Warner Bros. released Zappa In New York, they told him that he still owed them four more albums. He then attempted to get a distribution deal with Phonogram to release Läther on the new Zappa Records label. This led Warner to threaten legal action, preventing the release of Läther and forcing Zappa to shelve the project. In 1978 and 1979 Warner finally decided to release the three remaining individual albums they still held, Studio Tan, Sleep Dirt and Orchestral Favorites. As Zappa had delivered the tapes only, these three individual albums were released with no musical credits.”
— Orchestral Favorites

Full Album:

While Zappa was experimenting with the Abnuceals Emuukha ESO in studio, and fighting with his music labels in the courts, he was also (not quite simultaneously, of course) recording and touring with The Mothers of Invention:

“The musical content of Freak Out! ranges from rhythm and blues, doo-wop and standard blues-influenced rock to orchestral arrangements and avant-garde sound collages. “ —wikipedia

[edit: this is the better link to the whole album, but it is also a YouTube playlist rather than being a single file. just stick with it.]

“Absolutely Free is, again, a display of complex musical composition with political and social satire. The band had been augmented since Freak Out … This album’s emphasis is on interconnected movements, as each side of the original vinyl LP comprises a mini-suite.” —wikipedia

Zappa is notoriously, infamously, and incurably prolific — so I think it’d be best to stop here. Most people are aware of Frank as a pop culture icon but outside of the fanbase I don’t know of many people who’ve actually heard the music. These three albums, Freak Out, Absolutely Free, and Lumpy Gravy — complex, virtuosic, accessible in parts but also challenging — are an excellent place to start. Amazingly, these were Zappa’s first three albums.

I can’t find any mention — other than wikipedia — of a post-Zappa Abnuceals Emuukha ESO. (I’m very much tempted to say the wikieditor who contributed that trivia-nugget, without attribution or citation, is full of it.) Music for Roger Rabbit was composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri, and credited (on the soundtrack released by EMI/Disney) to the London Symphony Orchestra.

However, I’ll take the excuse, flimsy as it may be, to post this track from the Roger Rabbit OST: “Valiant & Valiant”. (We’ll miss you, Eddie.)