Cellist Zoë Keating

I like to think of it as a DJ scratch approach to the cello.
Zoë Keating

Another Radio Lab podcast highlight: Quantum Cello. Last season's War of the Worlds episode was live and cellist Zoë Keating provided the music. In this podcast, Jad Abumrad visits Keating to learn more about her music and listen to her perform a few pieces. Her music is really cool. There are certainly better adjectives than those, but that's all I can muster right now. Trust me, though, it's really cool.

As she plays, she digitally captures segments of her music which she loops back. As the loops are playing back, she plays additional layers over them. The result is sounds more like an orchestrated work than a solo one. What I though was especially neat is that she does this live. The loop capture is controled with foot pedals. In the podcast she performs three pieces live that sound more like studio recordings.

It's great stuff. Check it out if you get a chance.

Update: Here's a video of her performing live, so you can really get the idea:

Games' most ridiculous getups

Nothing says “I’m a competent combatant and a smart scientist” like a butterfly mask, tassels and matching G-string.
Winda Benedetti

A regular feature in the MSNBC gaming section is the Top 5 list. Many are what you'd expect: action games, strategy games, game villians, etc. This week's was a good one: Top 5 most preposterous getups in games. Reviewer Winda Benedetti channels Nina Garcia in choosing her top 5 examples of an "Absurd Outfit Obviously Dreamed Up By A Man."

In stunning 3-D!

"Ha! Is it come to this?" thundered the Stranger: "then meet your fate: out of your Plane you go. Once, twice, thrice! 'Tis done!"
Flatland:
A Romance of Many Dimensions
Edwin A. Abbott

A friend of mine is seriously into stereo photography, and he has begun posting his work online. You can see it for yourself here. His galleries utilize a Java stereo viewer that offers several different viewing options, and he has some viewing instructions on his site. I ended up using using the "cross-eyed" method that requires no special glasses and, if you can do it, offeres the clearest viewing options. His viewing instructions have a link to a really good explanation of the "cross-eyed" method.

His site doesn't tell you how he takes the pictures, but I got to see it first hand. He built his own stereo camera array out of a pair of fairly low-end Canon point-and-shoot cameras. Apparently these cameras offer a wide array of undocumented features if you know how to enable them. Luckily there are plenty of camera hackers online to show you how. I my friend's case, he was able to rig a custom remote that connects the the USB port on each camera, allowing him to trigger both cameras in unison.

The results are really cool. Check them out!

Book to the future

"Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That’s against the law!"

Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury

It occurs to me just now that Kindle is a pretty ironic name. You normally don't want to evoke fire imagery when dealing with books. Nonetheless, that's what Amazon.com is calling its new electronic book reader. Maybe somewhere deep in their product design offices, someone really does see the death of paper books.

Last week I read Newsweek's article on the Kindle, and I've been trading long argumentative comments with Rob on his post about the Kindle. You should read his post, but I'll go so far as to say he thinks the Kindle is not the right product for reading books electronically. I'm not certain that it is the device, but I think it's a lot closer to the mark than Rob. I find the whole prospect interesting on several levels.

First, I think the E-ink or digital ink technology is really cool. It's very efficient, requires no back lighting, and once the image is rendered, it no longer needs power. That last feature is particularly intriguing. Currently graphics processors everywhere spend countless cycles painting and repainting a screen thousands of times each second. A digital ink display opens whole new windows of possibility.

Second, I like the some of the ideas brought forth in the Newsweek article about the paradigm shift that can occur with eBooks (regardless of what device they're on). Possibilities like the automatic distribution of corrections and additions is cool. Imagine a new appendix suddenly appearing in your book. Also, books are never truly out of print. Bits take up a lot less space than books in a warehouse. I also imagine stuff like the newspaper you see in Minority Report, the one that changes on the fly with breaking news.

Finally, it will be interesting to watch the continuing evolution of our everyday electronic devices. I remember when a phone was not a ubiquitous handheld device. I remember when a personal music player held one and only one album at a time. I remember when calling up satellite imagery in the palm of my hand in the middle of New Hampshire was the stuff of science fiction. I wonder if I can even imagine what will be commonplace to my children.

Anyway, I'm interested in what other people think of this latest attempt to digitize one of the last mechanical mediums left....

Atari, Adventure, and when to ignore your boss

Somebody get this freakin' duck away from me!
Strong Bad

Last week Brenda Tremblay reported that the Atari 2600 game console was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. As a "Nationally Ranked Kaboom Champion," she was pulling for the Atari. It was my first choice as well, but not because of Kaboom. My preferred game is Adventure.

I love Adventure. I played it constantly, searching for and recovering the Chalice too many times to count. To this day I know my way around the various castles, rooms, mazes, and catacombs. I never cared that the dragons looked more like ducks and the sword was just an arrow. It was fun and addictive.

The game was created by Warren Robinett, and it is groundbreaking in many ways. Game elements we take for granted now, like a multi-screen world and objects you can pick up, were unprecedented back then. It is also the first example of truly autonomous entities moving throughout the game on their own, regardless of what you are doing. Left unattended, the bat will fly through the game moving stuff around forever. That Robinett could fit this on 4096 bytes of ROM and run it with only 128 bytes of RAM is a programming achievement in and of itself. (To put it in perspective, that's about 0.0004% of what the cheapest Dell comes with by default.)

There is great story behind its inception. Here's how Robinett tells it in one of several interviews:

I started in May 1978 and worked like a madman for a month. My boss, George Simcock, heard what I was working on and didn't think I could do it within the 2600 resources and told me not to do it. However I ignored him and had a prototype with screen to screen movement and dragons chasing you after a month of hacking.

There is another great story that lead to what is considered the first "easter egg." Although each game was typically written by one person, Atari did not give the creator any credit. Robinett decided he wanted to sign his work, so he found a way to sneak his signature in. He added a hidden object to the game, a 1x1 pixel dot that gives the player access to a secret room. In the room is the following text: "Created by Warren Robinett." This remained a secret long after the game's release. By the time Atari found out what he did, it was too late to change the game and he had already quit.

I have an original Atari 2600 "heavy sixer" with the six switches on the front, but the last time I tried it didn't work. Maybe I should get it out and see if I can get it working again. Then I'll be back searching once more for the elusive Chalice.

In the future

Exterminate!
Dalek

In the future, advances in nanotechnology will create tiny robots that fly around my house and kill all those frickin' moths.

We will be unprepared for the long term consequences of this technology.

Eventually they will become a threat to humankind.

It will still be worth it.

Is Net Radio the Future?

Transmitter!
Oh! picking up something good
Hey, radio head!
The sound...of a brand-new world.
Talking Heads

Awhile ago I mentioned that I've been listening to YRock on XPN. I still am, and recently I found something pretty cool. I have a Windows Mobile phone with Internet access. Out of curiosity I the listening YRock, and I was able to play the high speed stream reliably. What's more, it sounded great on the little ear buds that come with the phone. It's like a little Net Radio walkman I can use almost anywhere. This gets me thinking, is Net Radio the real future of radio?

The obvious alternatives are satellite and HD. However neither format's future seems secure. Broadcasters are really pushing HD as the successor to FM. Despite the big push, I think the jury is still way out. As for satellite radio, clearly people are buying it, but Sirius and XM are still losing money. They justify their proposed merger, in part, with the assertion that a satellite radio monopoly is the only way to keep the format alive. That's not a ringing endorsement of the technology.

Net Radio has a lot of pluses. It doesn't lock the consumer into a single provider like satellite does. It's more like traditional FM and HD in that respect, which is would seem to be a plus for broadcasters - they don't need to negotiate with provider holding a monopoly. Unlike FM/HD, they have virtually unlimited range. If you have broadband Internet, you can receive their signal. Therein lies the rub. Net Radio requires broadband access, and most of us need to pay for broadband. It will cost you even more if you want it on a mobile device like a phone.

Nonetheless, the broadband market penetration continues to rise even as the price of bandwidth decreases. Even the price of mobile broadband has gone down, and coverage steadily improves. At this rate, it won't be long before incremental cost mobile broadband will be less than the monthly cost of satellite radio (if not already). Other services like telephone and video are also moving online. There has to be a tipping point where broadband will be like cable TV or even telephone, and everyone will have it. At that point, what chance to other formats have against Net Radio?

No Internet media discussion is complete without mentioning podcasts. Personally, I don't see podcasts as a threat to the live radio format. Podcasting is great for downloading new/talk shows (e.g. Fresh Air, This American Life, Marketplace, etc.) and music shows (e.g. World Cafe or Echoes). It's not a great format to replace on-air or satellite radio, because most people don't want to pre-download that material for later playback and the recording industry would be too fearful. Assuming you can access the online stream, Net Radio is a much better fit.

Satellite radio scares broadcasters because it threatens to render local stations obsolete. Net Radio, however, does the opposite. Radio stations will no longer be bound by the size of their transmitter or the geography of their location. Local stations can reach their listeners even when they're travelling. Of course some stations will probably fail when faced with so many competitors. Still, a wider audience means you can find success by specializing. Niche market stations would become more viable because they can find enough subscribers among a worldwide audience.

This should bode well for broadcasters and listeners alike.

Update: I mistakenly typed XD instead of HD. I've fixed it. Thanks to Rob for spotting my mistake.

Sky coming Google Earth

A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars.
Carl Sagan

Google Earth is adding a new feature that will allow users to see the heavens. If this new feature, called Sky, is any bit as cool as Google Earth, it will be awesome. I can't wait. The story here.

Blenderific!

Me: They're not. No way
Friend: Way. Way way.

A friend sent a link to this:

There is a "Will it Blend" website with many more videos, including one with a can of EZ Cheese. The site was created by Blendtec to show off their blender. Now that's advertising!

Net radio in danger

Lights out guerilla Radio
Turn that shit up
It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here
What better time than now
Rage Against the Machine

I've started listenning to YRock on XPN at work. Whenever you first launch the stream, you get a message encouraging you to visit SaveNetRadio.org. Here's the deal: the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet radio's royalty burden by 300 to 1200. Most Internet radio stations won't be able to afford this and will either go offline, or be forced into deals with record companies giving them control of programming content. Particularly unfair is that Internet radio royalties are already twice that of sattelite radio.

I have to admit, I was totally oblivious to this issue until now. I even missed the day of silence when all Internet radio stations went intentionally dark. *Rob did put up a post about this issue as it pertains to podsafe music. Check it out.

Also, check out SaveNetRadio to learn more.

Click click click...

Don't care how
I want it now
Veruca Salt
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

So, are you a multiple clicker? If you're on a web page, do you start clicking a link over and over if it doesn't come up immediately on the first click? Do you engage in the online equivalent of pressing the elevator call button over and over, even though it's already lit? Just curious....

I encounter users like this now and then, usually when there is a problem in a program I wrote. I'm with the user trying to figure it out, and they just start clicking over and over. It's surprisingly frustrating. Here's my poor little program, struggling to do what's asked of it. Each click just adds to the load. I'm watching what's going on, maybe starting to see clues, tracing the path of the bullet if you will. Then "click click click click click" comes the virtual shotgun blast. Everything collapses and all clues are long gone.

Of course, my program should be able to handle it, and I've certainly done something wrong that needs to be fixed. That's probably why all those clicks infuriate me. They serve to further highlight the inadequacies of my creation. It's not like I don't do it, either. I've clicked away in frustration, fully aware that it does no good.

Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I was on a WebEx the other day, and the person driving the mouse kept doing it. I was reminded how much it bugs me, and figured it was something I could post. So there it is.

DST Dumb-asses

I oppose the bill for two reasons. First, it contains a number of highly objectionable provisions. Second, it simply ignores several of our most pressing energy challenges, such as our dependence on foreign oil.
Senator Hillary Clinton
regarding the Energy Policy Act of 2005

Par for course from the do nothing Congress of years past. Highly objectionable? Let me just say that I have found this Daylight Savings Time change extremely questionable. What a bonehead maneuver that was. What, Y2K was too boring? No major glitches? We needed to create a new issue? It's even got its own acronym: Y2K7. What a bunch of knuckleheads.

After spending several hours patching all our servers last night, I'm willing to vote for Hillary solely on the basis of her opposition to this bill.

Death by Conference Call

To mute your line, press star-6...
Automated conference call voice

Lately it feels like that's the most useful think I've heard on a conference call. I am on more conference calls these days. I'm starting to feel like my phone headset has become some psychic vacuum sucking my productivity away. It's like the bridge line is some malevolent entity that feeds on my life force. I hang up from these calls feeling drained. I look at the clock and wonder where the last ninety minutes of my life just went.

"After the tone, please state your name." "*BEEP*" "Please, kill me now." "'Please, kill me now.' has joined the conference."

Paging Mr. Murphy

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong
Murphy's Law

Let me first point out that I have configured and enabled the Microsoft Routing and Remote Access service multiple times. Each time the configuration worked perfectly, on the first try, with no adverse effects to the system or network. Why was I so successful? It had nothing to do with skill or knowledge, I assure you. There was only one reason: I was standing right in front of the server when I did it.

The most recent time I configured the Microsoft Routing and Remote Access service, the system I was working on was not right in front of me. It was not in a nearby room, not in the same building, not even the same state. It was, in fact, at a hosting provider in St. Louis, Missouri. It was also 8:30 PM on a Sunday night. Oh yeah, did I mention that this was on the database server behind our production web servers.

Three hours later everthing was fixed, but I'm left pondering the often quoted, more often ignored Murphy's Law. I decided to check out its origins at (where else?) the Murphy's Law Wiki Page. It turns out Murphy's Law is named after Maj. Edward A. Murphy, Jr., an aerospace engineer who worked on experimental rocket sleds in the 1950s. He is rumored to have uttered the adage after a subordinate miswired a bunch of sensors resulting in useless test results.

There are actually conflicting accounts around this event. Some stories suggest it was really Murphy's fault for poor planning, and that term was a less-than-subtle dig at Murphy. Others suggest that it was just a quip of Murphy's that became the team's way expressing the pragmatic doctrine of always expecting the worst. That is certainly what the expression became as it was popularized by Murphy's friend and next-door neighbor John Paul Stapp.

Stapp was known as the "fastest man on earth" for his runs on the rocket sled. He was also a collector of expressions and adages, writing them down in a notebook he kept. At a press conference he was asked how such a dangerous program as the rocket sled experiments could have so few injuries. Stapp replied that they always considered Murphy's Law and explained what that meant.

Which is why I can blame Murphy now, instead of my own carelessness.

Goin' Mobile

And we'll see how it feels
Goin' mobile
Keep me movin'
-Pete Townshend

Okay, I'm trying out blog posting from my PDA phone. Let's see how this works....

Banging my head

Why do I keep banging my head against the wall?
Because it feels so good when I stop.

Yesterday I spent the entire day trying to resolve a configuration issue on a new server. The site I've been working on runs beautifully in my office on the computer I develop on. When I tried to deploy to the production system, it would not work, not work.

Would... not... freakin'... work.

I hate problems like this. You know there is some little configuration change you need to make, you just don't know what it is. Some checkbox somewhere will magically resolve the problem turing a cryptic error into a happily running website. You just need to find the damn thing.

My day goes like this: I spend hours googling error codes and re-reading documentation (yes, I actually RTFM). In general, get nowhere. Every so often, I come across a potential solution. For a few minutes, I think I've got it, I feel like this is definitely it. I click refresh on my browser and mutter obscenities when the error fails to go away. I repeat this process. Over and over.

Of course, one of the potential solutions finally resolved the error. With no warning, clicking refresh suddenly yielded the desired (if not expected) result: a happily running web site. I took no joy in the success, though. I don't feel like I've solved a challenging problem or designed an elegant solution. I just feel like I've been banging my head against a wall.

And it didn't even feel that good when I stopped.

There be dragons here

Caution: There be dragons here
Programmers' caveat

It's been forever since I posted anything. I've mostly been at a loss of what to post, mainly because my job has gotten interesting again, and I've been somewhat engrossed by what I'm working on. It's a new web development project using ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Server 2005, and VS 2005 (those who care will know what that all means). Anyway, I figure if that's what's on my mind, that's what I should blog about. So, a few thoughts and observations on comments....

Comments are bits of text in a program that are ignored by the computer. They are there for the sole benefit of other developers who may need to look at your code (not to mention your own benefit, should you need to remember what the hell it was that you did five months ago). They're akin to footnotes in a book, explaining the stuff that may not be obvious to the reader. Good comments are a hallmark of good programming.

Notice I said "good" comments and not "abundant" or "copious" or "numerous" comments. That is because comments, like food, is best in moderation. Not enough, and your program becomes an incoherent shell. Too many, and it becomes a bloated mess. Good programmers try to write programs that other good programmers can follow. Yet sometimes it is necessary to provide a some additional clues as to why your, say, multiplying that number by 3600 (it's in seconds - you want hours). Okay, programmers our there are right now saying, "You don't need to comment that! Any fool could figure that out." You're right, bad example, but you get my point.

Most of the time, one line is all you need. "Make sure the number is not zero," for example. Every now and then, though, you need to do something in your code that's a lot more complex and potentially confusing. Maybe five lines are needed. Then, there's the odd occaison when even you are disconcerted by the confusing nature of what you have just written. Yet, you cannot find a simpler way of doing it. There are many reasons why this may be the case. Often the vendor tools you're using have boxed you into the corner, and this obtuse mess you've just created is the only way out.

When in such situations, you often find developers leaving the comment:

Warning: There be dragons here.

Sometimes, they'll go so far as to say, "serious dragons." Generally this is to be taken, "Read the following code very carefully, or you might screw things up royally." After this comes a detailed explanation if what's going on. Often, there is also some justification of why it had to be done this way. It's an admission that the code is aweful, as in, "I'm really sorry you have to deal with this crap. Truly I am. But if you were in my shoes, you'd have done the same thing and you know it."

I'm writing all this because I'm coming close to the "dragons here" threshold. I am expanding and enhancing an existing tool, so I can claim that, in large part, it's not my fault. I've also found myself cursing the tool's original authors who, IMHO, did not practice good commenting. Some of the code comes close to what I like to call, "Heart of Darkness" code. This is code that is so bad that, when you finally make you're way through it to the other side, you're left muttering, "the horror.... the horror."

It is not the worst code I've dealt with, though. The worst code was very early on in my carreer. I had to find a bug in an X-windows application call xterm. When I openned the first source file, I found this comment:

WARNING: This code particularly, the tty setup code) is a historical relic and should not be confused with a real toolkit application or a an example of how to do anything. It really needs a rewrite. Badly.

And let me tell you, the author wasn't kidding. But at least they had the honesty of saying so up front. I printed this comment out and hung it on my wall.

Shoe's on the other foot....

Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it

Here's a clear sign of success for Apple. The French lawmakers approved a bill that would force Apple to open their proprietary formats to competion. Read about it here. For years Apple has been everyone's favorite underdog in the fight with Microsoft. Meanwhile, governments all over were scrutinizing Microsoft's every move, the oft leveled criticism that they purposely designed Windows to lock out competitors.

I often had arguments with the Apple devoted about Microsoft. My supposition was that Apple was no better than Microsoft, jut not as successful. Apple consistently fought to keep out competition. Microsoft's success was, in part, due to the fact that they supported generic hardware. I was convinced that if Apple found a product as successful as Windows, they'd have the government breathing down their neck in no time.

Sure enough....

This won't work with that

Conceit is incompatible with understanding.
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

And Apple's DRM is incompatible with Microsoft's DRM.

Digital Rights Management is how digital media vendors are attempting to protect copyrights. In the latest incarnation of VHS vs. Betamax, two competing DRM implementations have arisen. Microsoft is pushing their WMA format and every digital media vendor supports it. Everyone, that is, except Apple, who has their own AAC format that is only available on Apple's iTunes. This is, of course, no surprise, but it's what's got me peeved right now, because I'm getting burned by the incompatible formats.

Compatibility is what drove my purchase of the iPod in the first place. Apple and BMW joined forces to create an adapter that allows you to plug your iPod in to your car, but control it through the factory stereo. Since BMW owns MINI, this option would be available on my Cooper and I went for it. I was a little dubious on the iPod because of Apple's history of locking you into proprietary technology, but I went for it. (I did make sure to rip all my music as regular MP3, so I can play it anywhere.)

Well, now I'm getting burned by the format war. My public library signed on with a statewide service that allows cardholders to download audio books. You check them out, just like a library book, and you have a limited period in which to listen to them before you have to release them. This is accomplished by using a time-limited license on the audio files you download, or in other words, with DRM. Of course, they use Microsoft's DRM. So iPod users can't use their service.

I'm annoyed at everyone in this situation. I'm annoyed at Apple for the way they resist standard formats in favor of locking you into their hardware. I'm annoyed at Microsoft for their monolithic approach to DRM, strong arming the industry. I'm annoyed at the software company behind this audiobook service for shutting out the largest segment of digital music players.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck forking over another $15 to Audible for a service I should be getting for free. Oh, yeah, I'm annoyed at Audible because they don't have Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books.

I'm just annoyed....

Find good beer

"He was a wise man who invented beer."

Plato

All over the web people are using the Google Maps API to develop their own map-based guides and services. Many of these efforts are chronicled on the Google Maps Mania blog.

For the beer drinkers among us, here are two great efforts:

• The Crooked Beat Beer and Music Map maintained by The Crooked Beat, a site dedicated to local music in the NY/NJ area. The page allows you to limit your search based on live music and the number of good beers available.
• The Beer Mapping Project does it on a national scale. It features maps for several metropolitan areas (including NY and Philly) as well as a nationwide map of breweries and brew pubs.

Now you have no excuse for drinking lousy beer.