index
archives
old archives
bio
gallery
about/email
| |
newer entries...
05-29-00 memorial day
05-27-00 in space, no one can hear you drool
05-21-00 GZ3 for you and me
05-19-00 tales of woe
05-18-00 like a bridge over troubled musical fish
05-15-00 might as well face it
05-13-00 got gundam?
05-09-00 I am Jack's rechargeable alkalines
05-05-00 gadgetation
05-01-00 you mock the Sardine?
older entries...
|
| |
|
^
memorial day |
| 05-29-00 |
Yesterday morning on the phone with my mom, I admitted to never remembering Memorial Day. Isn't it ironic, don't ya think?
Now I have a personal reason for never forgetting it again.
Nora Allen (whom GemStone III veterans may have known as Wanton) passed away yesterday afternoon. I don't know the medical details and don't think it's particularly appropriate to go into them now, but suffice to say she had been tenaciously fighting illness for 4-5 months before it finally overwhelmed her. Her husband Greg stayed by her side during the whole thing.
Both of them are stronger and less selfish than I am. In Nora's place, I would have given in long before just to escape it. In Greg's place, I would soon have had to get away by myself, and yell and cry and hit things to let out my anger and fear and frustration over the unfairness of it. In fact, I wanted to run screaming out of the tiny ICU waiting room packed full of grief-stricken people who could not believe that their friend and coworker has departed... and that was a matter of a few minutes.
I'm in awe of Nora and Greg, and their infant son Christopher already has my respect because he too will have the strength of his mother and father.
As Steph wrote, I have a lot of thoughts running through my head now that I don't think I need to share right now. Maybe later when the grief has had time to settle and I can talk about it more in the abstract.
I had other stories to tell today but they can wait.
|
| |
|
^
in space, no one can hear you drool |
| 05-27-00 |
 Sorry for the delay, but I've been on an interstellar cruise.
Not too long ago I was griping about games, and my personal lack of interest in most of them that I have or that have come out recently. That lack has been remedied. I've been playing the Jumpgate beta for an unhealthy number of hours in the past few days.
At first, I was both amused and frustrated. The interface isn't quite intuitive in places and I was trying to play without reading any more documentation than the in-flight keyboard commands. The communication system is really arcane and I'm still not sure I quite have the hang of it yet. But once I figured out most of it I started to really enjoy the game... until I got wasted by a pirate who wasn't aware that his organization isn't supposed to be killing newbies. I'm consoled by the fact that the missile cost more than my net worth, my cargo was nearly worthless, so he lost far more out of the deal than I did.
 That helped prompt me to join FTL, the Free Traders' League. It's one of a few "squads" in Jumpgate which is not a gang mutual defense society. Though they oppose piracy, the general rule is (A) act like a gentleman, (B) never fire unless fired upon, and (C) make lots of money. Their strength is in communication, information and occasional teamwork. Before I joined them I was making Excel spreadsheets with commodity information on the stations I visited, with current price and basic production info. Kind of a fun thing for a Seshat child to do. FTL's (confidential) information system is a good deal more sophisticated than that though, and in the slightly longer term is a far more valuable resource than the cash bribe that certain other squads give their new members. :)
For some reason though, the Cowboy Bebop theme music keeps running through my head, as well as a certain character's statements on total pacifism. :)
So, yup, that's what I've been up to. Playing, not updating my site. In fact I think I'm gonna wrap it up right now and go try and turn some profit...
Oh yeah. My sis now has a brand new web journal. Starting small, but who knows, it may become the next Slashdot.
|
| |
|
^
GZ3 for you and me |
| 05-21-00 |
 It had been a long 2 months since my last airsoft game, though my aching muscles are convinced it's been 2 years. My nose and my left ear don't hurt, I think pretty much everything else does.
It was a fun, though long, day of airsoft. David W did the scenario designs, and they turned out pretty well despite having been designed around Team pride. They were to play the outnumbered (but better equipped and better trained) US Special Forces. I kinda thought that was odd since GameMasters in our RPGs are expressly forbidden from building quests around specific people, to avoid favoritism and having to schedule it around those people... and as it turned out, they couldn't make it. But the games adapted well enough to those of us that showed up, who are not chopped liver. :) Zoha, Jeff, Tracy, and I from Simu, Mike and Tim from MWRAA, and a couple of others were the Columbian Narco-Guerrillas while David, Bubba and several others took the Special Forces role.
The new goggles did the job pretty well. They could use a little more padding at the bottom end, because they sat oddly on the bridge of my nose, causing me to breathe through my mouth more than I should have, which meant I dried up fast. Before the first scenario was over I had already drained my 64 ounces of Powerade. The fan on the goggles is nearly inaudible to anyone but the wearer -- there were times I had to turn it off to concentrate on listening to people stalking through the woods, during which the lenses would fog up again. For a while I had to choose between sight or hearing, not both.
Being low on ammo at the start of the day, I bought a bag of BBs from Mike of Valkyrie Air... and proceeded to dump most of them on the ground. Mumble. As it turned out, I didn't use very much ammo the entire day, probably just one full clip. In this thickly wooded (but not thorny, for once!) terrain I did a lot more cat-and-mouse stuff than usual. I also hesitated a bit too long a couple of times, trying to avoid friendly fire and getting shot or captured for my efforts.
In fact the first two times I was eliminated, I hadn't yet fired a shot. The first time I was trying to become one with a tree, waiting for the guy stalking Zoha and I to show his face, and apparently not fooling anyone. The second time I walked right into a sniper, probably the same guy. After my second resurrection I saw Jeff get taken out right nearby and I decided to just have fun and play Rambo, which earned me a sound thrashing by Bubba and David, an ugly welt right in the center of my head, and elimination from the scenario. Doh!
In the second scenario, we had to defend a clandestine drug lab (tent) and prevent the capture of our noncombatant chemist (Tracy). It went very well for our team, though I spent the majority of the scenario wandering around lost in the woods without seeing or hearing anyone. Apparently all the action took place right near the lab, and mostly consisted of one American after another getting taken out by our snipers.
The third scenario was my favorite. Our team had to transport a portable communications tower (several long PVC pipes painted silver, with eye bolts for attaching guywires) to a predetermined site, assemble it, and defend it from being destroyed (knocked over) for one hour. I carried the tower out there and Jeff and I hurriedly assembled it, certain that we'd come under fire at any moment. We knew the other team had a GPS receiver that would come into play during one scenario or other, and I figured this was it. Luck was with us though, at least for a while. We got the tower up and deployed ourselves for defending it, while a few scouts went ahead to try to find and harry the enemy. Quite some time passed without them getting anywhere near our tower. But they succeeded in making a second push and reaching the vicinity of the tower. I called out on the radio for assistance as they approached, but the scouts were too late to help out. The Americans made a suicidal dash for the tower, and though we mowed them down like wheat (I'm pretty sure I took out 3 personally in under a second) we didn't get their medic, who "healed" them for another run. By then I was standing right in front of the tower, out in the open. A pair of heads popped up, followed by a stream of BBs that boggled the mind. I didn't feel any of them hit me, but I called a hit anyway, assuming with that much crap flying at me I had to have been hit. When you're in the midst of an adrenaline rush and things are happening fast, you tend not to feel hits. After I went down, David threw down his gun and tore at the tower at top speed, clotheslining it while Jeff unloaded on him. If I had to guess I'd say Jeff probably did hit him before he hit the tower, but considering the force we were up against I seriously doubt we could have held out for the 10 more minutes left in the scenario anyway. As it was, it was a glorious finish for both sides.
Next was a plane crash scenario, in which both sides were out in the woods searching for several key pieces of wreckage. We won that by virtue of accidentally stumbling across a circuit board hung up in a tree as we were moving out toward their position. Again, I spend a lot of time wandering around lost, though I did get into one good firefight in which some or all of us may or may not have been out of bounds anyway. If I wasn't standing around waiting for my 60 second resurrection timer I'd have joined in sooner and the results would have been better, but that's the way it goes.
Dead tired from all my random hiking, I sat out the final scenario. Jeff and I listened in on the radios and tried to imagine what was happening. Mostly we didn't have a clue -- when firefights erupt, people don't exactly take the time to commentate on the radio. We need an infrared camera blimp or something to give spectators a top-down view of the action.
|
| |
|
^
tales of woe |
| 05-19-00 |
What's wrong with this picture?
Apparently Norton Antivirus is more fun than Starlancer, which was knocked out of the top five. I'm so glad I didn't buy it the other day. Unfortunately, I did buy Clans, a waste of seventeen perfectly good dollars. I was hoping for a cheap game to tide me over until Diablo II. No such luck. The main thing that's wrong with it is that (unlike a good therapeutic virus scan) it's just no fun.
In Rogue Spear I've taken to doing solo terrorist hunts in the Training Maze with a totally inappropriate sniper rifle and no heartbeat sensor, just for kicks.
Woke up this mornin' (a lot of blues songs start off that way) to the sound of somebody knocking on the door. 9 AM. How rude. Grumble. Finally curiousity got the better of me and I put on some clothes and opened the door to see if they left a note or a package. It was TCI@Home, disconnecting my cable modem for nonpayment. (OK, no blues song can involve cable modems so I guess I'm disqualified.) Eh?
AT&T, which owns TCI, has this policy. When billing fails because your credit card expired, they don't bother to contact you, they just shut you off. Even if it means someone has to be paid to physically drive to your apartment and disconnect you. Even if the card expired three months ago. So now, after calling the billing department, I have to wait 72 hours for the billing department to email the billing department to notify them of the new card number, and then they have to schedule somebody to come back out and turn it on again. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Heading out to lunch today, I stopped at a gas station to put some air in one of SqueakyCar's tires. The stem blew right off the tire and went completely flat. Grumble. I guess if you're going to have a flat, a gas station is one of the best places to do it. With Jeff's assistance I swapped it for the dubious spare, without it falling off the jack this time.
We need to think of some real stumpers for Bubba. He's far too good at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. I thought I had him with Steve Irwin, but he figures the guy was either on Leno or else the South Park parody of him counts (George Clooney --> ER --> Noah Wile --> A Few Good Men --> KB). Grumble.
|
| |
|
^
like a bridge over troubled musical fish |
| 05-18-00 |
I'm playing some new DHTML tricks, if your browser can deal with them. They don't break other browsers as far as I can tell, but correct me if I'm wrong. :)
Weird dreams last night. Not the dreaming-through-compound-eyes thing, but music and some recurring elements that reminded me they were recurring in the first place. At least, I think they were recurring. I may have just been dreaming that they were...
I was visiting the family in Florida and had my trusty MD recorder with me. Jasmine, the family cat, had turned into a fish and was singing sad little gurgling songs about it, which I dutifully recorded by dunking a pair of headphones into her aquarium and plugging them into the microphone jack.
When I went back to edit the recording (inserting track markers and stuff) it was a wide variety of stuff, from weird crackly ambient experimental music (the headphones rotting/shorting out) to haunting childlike melodies about fishiness, to full symphony orchestras. Hmm. If only I had real recordings of that music, 'cause some of it was extremely cool.
The recurring thing is bridges. Growing up on the Florida Suncoast, there were lots of 'em. You cross them leaving or entering town, you cross bigger ones to get over Tampa Bay, you cross tiny ones all over the place.  I've had recurring dreams about normal bridges, miles-long bridges that dipped in and out of the sea, crumbling forgotten bridges, crossing bridges by car or by crawling, driving off of bridges, riding in boats going under bridges... the only kind of bridges I haven't dreamed about is Lloyd Bridges (and I don't plan to, thanks).
Bridge dreams run in the family... my dad had dreams about the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, and at one time he had plans to turn them into a series of books.
The particular one in last night's dream crossed the Manatee River, which meant I was going south into Bradenton. Going back home. Except that it wasn't that bridge, it was wide and flat and so close to the water it may as well have just been a causeway. It was nighttime, with more stars in the sky than one could possibly see in that part of the world, and one section of town illumanted by this big huge beam. Like a mile-wide spotlight. Pretty nifty.
That's it. Nothing else happened. So much for the big buildup.
This question is something else that recurs, but in daydreams rather than dreams: how would a visitor from medieval or ancient times cope with present-day society? Even ignoring the language barrier and disease/immunity issues, would the simple act of riding in a car be more than they could handle? I often play this game, talking to an imaginary passenger who's trying not to lose his grip on reality.
People are pretty much the same from one age to the next. We may live better today than kings did 500 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or 3000 years ago -- but we're not smarter than they were. We just know a different set of things. If we were sent back to their time we might be uncomfortable and have a lot to get used to, but we could probably understand most of what went on. But I think anyone going the other way would be in for one shock after another. Things that are ubiquitous here -- not just cars and computers and electric lights, but such things as plastic and glass and sugar -- would range from wondrous to incomprehensible in the mind of an ancient. Everyday things would be completely beyond the scope of their imagination. Try explaining the MP3 controversy to somebody who doesn't know what a computer is and keeps tapping on the walls, looking for the secret room where you've hidden the musicians.
Would it be the same for us if we were sent ahead a thousand years? We can imagine today that absolutely anything can be accomplished with sufficiently advanced technology. I don't think Clarke was right when he compared it to magic. It's simply one thing leading to another, and another, and another, until it's diverged so much that someone used to the original thing wouldn't recognize the result. I think there'll be things in the far future that we just don't have the context to understand today.
There I go again, talking about the future when the focus of the game is really on the past... trying to explain things like traffic lights and Starbucks and Nine Inch Nails and Simutronics to someone from ancient Egypt.
|
| |
|
^
might as well face it |
| 05-15-00 |
The LA Times ran a rather sloppy article recently about online addiction. Specifically, addiction to graphical MMORPGS.
You see, those primitive, klunky text-based games just weren't as "mesmerizing" as Ev... I mean, as graphical MMORPGs. The whole phenomenon started 3 years ago, so one player's quoted claim that he's been playing for 4 years can be chalked up to the side effects of the addiction, and a certain company that claims to have been doing it for 13 years is simply deranged.
The article featured some random fragments about people whose spouses have lost them to Norr... I mean, to a graphical fantasy world, and people who finally realized they were playing too much and sold off their characters to buy a yacht instead. It quoted some statistics about the amount of time the average American spends online, which is about as much time as they spend eating. Of course the same statistics said that they spend as much time watching TV as they do working. But email, the web, games, etc. are harmful, while watching TV is something that everyone has to do.
The grand finale of this gem of an article is a general Internet Addiction Test. Which, of course, I will take right here online.
1. How often do you find that you stay online longer than you intended?
Never, I suppose -- I don't set a schedule before I log on.
2. How often do you neglect household chores to spend more time online?
As often as possible. Any excuse to neglect household chores!
3. How often do you prefer the excitement of the Internet to intimacy with your partner?
Ah, the classic division by zero bug... and if you turn this question around, it would work on a test about sex addiction.
4. How often do you form new relationships with fellow online users?
Too often... I better turn off my computer before I make a new friend! Eeek!
5. How often do others in your life complain to you about the amount of time you spend online?
Everyone in my life is online. Many of them complain that I'm not on AIM often enough.
6. How often do your grades or schoolwork suffer because of the amount of time you spend online?
It's not the Internet that keeps me from doing schoolwork, it's the long vacation I took after I got that "diploma" thingy.
7. How often do you check your e-mail before doing something else that you need to do?
Almost always -- most of my work assignments arrive via e-mail.
8. How often does your job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet?
Everytime our connection to the Internet goes down, I suffer a drastic loss in productivity.
9. How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone asks you what you do online?
Quite often... there's this thing called a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
10. How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the Internet?
How often do dentists block out disturbing thoughts about their lives with soothing thoughts of teeth?
11. How often do you find yourself anticipating when you will go online again?
I'm never offline long enough to worry about it.
12. How often do you fear that life without the Internet would be boring, empty and joyless?
Well, I might have to settle for a boring, empty and joyless job. Otherwise, hah.
13. How often do you snap, yell or act annoyed if someone bothers you while you are online?
About as often as I'd do it while I'm offline.
14. How often do you lose sleep due to late-night log-ins?
I spend more late-night time reading than I do online. But is it "losing" sleep when it's a fairly routine schedule?
15. How often do you feel preoccupied with the Internet when offline or fantasize about being online?
Almsot never, though when I'm online I fantasize about having a faster computer.
16. How often do you find yourself saying "just a few more minutes" when online?
It'll take me just a few more minutes to answer that.
17. How often do you try to cut down the amount of time you spend online and fail?
Never, but this is a pretty pointless question. Take two people who spend 80 hours a week online. If one of them tries to cut back and fails, is he more addicted that someone who never tries to cut back in the first place?
18. How often do you try to hide how long you've been online?
I'm not telling.
19. How often do you choose to spend more time online over socializing with others?
Well, let's see. Going online lets me play a game that thousands of other people are also playing. It lets me chat with dozens of people from around the world. It lets me send messages to my family 1500 miles away who I get to see twice a year otherwise. Is that not socializing?
Was this question borrowed from some other addiction test? How often do you choose to spend more time huffing gasoline over socializing with others? How often do you choose to spend more time eating Cheez Wiz over socializing with others?
20. How often do you feel depressed, moody or nervous when you are offline, which goes away once you are back online?
Depends on how funny the humor sites are that day.
Thanks to Metafilter, I found some cool wallpaper at Desktop Imperium and Vir2L. I just wish there was more emphasis on art and less on design... and that they didn't make logos and text the main feature of most of their works.
|
| |
|
^
got gundam? |
| 05-13-00 |
The reaction to Battlefield Earth is about as expected. I might go see it just for a laugh, if I could get in free. The comments have been entertaining anyway... my favorites have been "maybe travolta is trying to undermine scientology from the inside" and "I'm never going to get those two hours of my life back."
Instead of going to see BE, we watched Urusei Yatsura. Electrified alien babes in skimpy tiger-stripe outfits. Ventura, ventura, space people. Giant penguins. Black gold. Texas tea.
 We've been spending the last few days trying to find models, action figures, or something from Gundam Wing that hasn't been sold out. Apparently the geniuses at Bandai didn't realize Americans would like the series, or something... opening up wonderful opportunities for speculators on eBay. I can't believe some of the prices there. Thankfully I won a bid on a Tallgeese at a reasonable price (most people prefer the Tallgeese II or III but the original colors look less garish to me), and found that Anime Nation just got some in stock, including my favorite, Epyon. What's more, Bandai is showing a new line of GW action figures at E3, and will be releasing them this summer. A little late for Toonami, but that's life.
Now I simply await the word on when Endless Waltz (the Gundam Wing OAV) will be showing on Cartoon Network. My guess is, since they've started showing the series over from the beginning, it'll be sometime shortly after the second showing is done.
Though I'm preparing to hide my credit card for the next few months, and maybe sell some stuff on eBay to help pay them off, I went shopping today. Weather's starting to get warm, or at least it was up until a couple of days ago when it changed its mind again. But once again I am reminded that there are no cool clothes for us XXL guys. We settle for whatever's available, which just proves that we don't buy cool clothes, and thus the bell curve reinforces itself. Sheesh. I know I'll never be a fashion model (at least I hope not) but why do those nifty OD cargo pants with 5 different kinds of pockets stop at 36? Why don't the subdued moody t-shirts with the Chinese dragons come in anything larger than M?
I was going to write a sort of who-what-when-where page for the site, but I realized how big it could potentially get, and that my readers are smart people who can figure stuff out for themselves when they don't know what I'm talking about. What I should do is update the retro stuff, which I forgot about completely. Oops.
Lots of musical fun lately. Except for yesterday. When your $#@^! computer can't keep time, you know it's time to walk away and do something else. But I'll be back. ::tries out his best Daniel Day Lewis voice:: I will have quick little arpeggios in the background, I swear it.
|
| |
|
^
I am Jack's rechargeable alkalines |
| 05-09-00 |
That's it. I'm laying down an ultimatum for society. There are two options:
- Make a single, small, lightweight, wearable gadget that combines cell phone, pager, PDA, web browser, portable music recorder, digital camera, GPS, and anything else that could possibly be useful.
- Make it socially acceptable for men to carry a purse.
 I have too much stuff. I feel like a goober carrying 5 electronic things with me everywhere. But I can't picture getting rid of any of it either; it's all too useful and too cool.
My phone... I didn't use to have it. Life was just fine before I had a cell phone. But now that I have one, I find it really helpful. (Besides which, 2 weeks out of 5 I'm chained to a Simu cellphone 24/7 anyway and don't have a choice.)
Digital camera? I don't carry it with me often, but when it's at work I often wish it was at home, and vice versa. I also see things elsewhere that I want to snap pictures of.
PDA? I usually truck my Palm back and forth between work and home, but lately I've been leaving it one place or the other so there's one less thing to carry. It's nice to be able to jot notes, keep track of shopping lists, and enter in rhythms as I come up with them (and test them with doumbek rhythm software to make sure I captured it right).
And of course I've already babbled about the joys of a portable MD recorder. It fits in one pocket and 4 discs fit in the other, but there's still headphones to carry between work and home unless I buy another pair.
Watching Fight Club last night (finally), I knew exactly what was meant by the line "stuff owns you." It's a trap that you don't want to break out of. And the solution is to replace all that stuff with better stuff that does more stuff, and stuff like that.
I've occasionally entertained thoughts of getting rid of my car, and saving on payments, insurance, tax, gas, maintenance, repairs, parking annoyances, etc. Then I think about how little I like taxis, riding a bicycle in traffic, or walking more than a couple of miles at a time, and I forget about it.
Hm.
Gladiator was a good movie. Maybe not a Great Movie, but worth seeing. Probably worth seeing on the big screen, as there's some gorgeous effects and even more incredible armor... I'd love to show up at SimuCon in some of that stuff, maybe I should head for the casino right now. Not 100% historical accuracy there but it's better than one would expect out of Hollywood. Oh, and it's a good story too, though one almost wishes a certain somebody had read the Evil Overlord List.
Gundam Wing is cranking up to what better be a really amazing finale. The last few episodes have been pretty intense, bringing all the players back onto the stage (except for the dead ones) to decide the fate of humanity. I still hope Relena will shove Dorothy Of The Freaky Eyebrows out an airlock... in the interests of total pacifism.
Susan got me hooked on iwin.com. Lots of mindless games, and a remote chance of winning something too. I guess that puts it a step above the card games that came with Win95.
The NATO 3 weapon mod for Rogue Spear is out. It doesn't work on my machine, in fact it crashes it. At this point, I don't care enough to go through the whole rigamarole of reinstalling the thing for the 5th time. I've been playing the game for 5 months now, or is it 6? I'm starting to think about Half-Life again. Sigh.
You'd think there'd be some game out there on the shelves that strikes my fancy. Soldier of Fortune maybe, or Allegiance. I just can't muster the interest. What I want to play is Diablo II, HJ, perhaps That Other Project Which I Can't Talk About, and a turn-based mecha combat micromanagement strategy game that doesn't exist. I want that which is temporarily unattainable. The grass is always greener in the future.
|
| |
|
^
gadgetation |
| 05-05-00 |
Woke up too early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. So instead, I took back my Yepp, explaining how it locks up during song downloads and can only be reset by physically yanking the batteries. (I didn't explain that this only happens when you tell the software to download a song while it's already doing one, and thus can be avoided if you're careful... but honestly that is a defect in my mind, since it has a queue that works if you give it multiple files in one drag operation.)
 In its place, I bought a Sony MZ-R70 MD Walkman. It's not the coolest one available -- it's the budget version of the coolest one available. :) It's 2x9x2mm away from being the world's smallest, most of which is due to an odd lump on the back to make room for the single AA battery that powers it. In volume and weight it's not much bigger than the Yepp. A removable belt clip extending from the battery bulge seems like it would have been natural, but there is none.
It sounds better than the Yepp, which I assume is due to higher quality components and the Mega Bass option (the brute force approach to making baby headphone speakers sound like grown-up speakers). One $2 MD holds 74 minutes of music, which doesn't sound like much more than some of the claims for 32MB MP3 players. But I can fit all my Gundam Wing, Half-Life and Total Annihilation soundtrack MP3's (42.93MB) on a single disc and still have 25 minutes to spare. Then I can pop the disk out and put in another one. Heh.
Recording audio through the analog input works just fine with minimal noise. I'm going to look into the possibilities for digital connections just for convenience though. Titling using a keyboard or just using MP3/CDDB track info has got to be about a hundred times more convenient than cycling through letters with a couple of buttons. I don't want to spend too much on that though, since titles themselves are just a convenience.
I love the thing. I have no doubts that my money was well spent, as I did with the MP3 player. My ears are happy and my heart is at peace. What's wrong with crass consumerism anyway? :)
Going to see Gladiator tonight. Whoooo!
|
| |
|
^
you mock the Sardine? |
| 05-01-00 |
Me:
so what's a good title for my next journal entry? :P
Sardine:
Everyone Worship the Sardine :)
Me:
hmmmmmm.
Sardine:
Bow down to the Sardine?
Me:
wasn't that a NIN song?
Sardine:
Well yeah but, it was about me
Me:
Bow down before the Sardine
You're going to get a can of beans...
Bread like a bowl...!
Sardine:
Hmm
You mock the Sardine?
Me:
that works.
Good thing I had that whole conversation 'cause otherwise I'd have spent this whole entry moaning and whining and being vague. I've been kind of generally down all weekend for reasons unknown.
Saturday, thanks to a link on Slashdot to a do-it-yourself MP3 player kit, I started thinking about MP3 and MD players. Sis has an MD recording deck and a portable MD player, and it's cool. There are newer, smaller, cooler players out there which don't record and don't come with decks, and there are portable MD recorders in the $180 range.
 I asked myself why I wanted one of these things. The honest answer is partially the gadget factor, and partially that I want a convenient portable way to listen to music. I decided I liked the simplicity of just downloading stuff from a PC rather than making audio recordings, and that left me with a choice between a super-cool $280 Sony MD recorder that converts MP3 and even CD audio "files" to ATRAC (the standard MD format), a $170 MD recorder plus a $50 gadget that adds that feature, or a $150 MP3 player. I went for the MP3 player, a Samsung yepp'.
Goofy name, nice player. It looks nice, is one of the smaller and more lightweight ones, and works well enough. I went for the 32MB version, thinking it's easy enough to expand later, but I find myself wishing I'd gone for the 64.
For that matter, I find myself still wondering if I'd have been smarter to buy an MD recorder, maybe even that expensive one. I don't know if I should write the doubts off as "buyer's remorse" or what. As much as I worry about money sometimes, I can at least say it was smarter to buy this than, say, another airsoft gun. It's definitely nice to be able to listen to music on something you can fit in your pocket or clip to the the neck of a t-shirt (though as the Sardine would say, "And you would clip it to the neck of a t-shirt why? ;)") and not ever have to worry about skipping.
But what's not cool is loading it up with downtempo ambient spacey goth and then decide you'd rather be listening to swing. With an MD player that's just a matter of just switching disks (once you'd recorded them). With an MP3 player you have to hook it up to your computer and wait for it to transfer the files (and 32MB takes a while to shove down a parallell cable). And that means actually having the cable with you, not to mention the computer.
What with MP3.com losing the lawsuit to the RIAA, my dad figured it wasn't exactly a good idea to invest in the technology. I don't agree. It's "piracy" that the RIAA is concerned about, and that's just a fraction of what MP3 is used for. No more would we shut down DragonRealms because there are a few snerts in the world. The cool part of MP3.com isn't the "MyMP3" thing anyway, it's all the independent and emerging artists who voluntarily put their stuff up there available for download in the interest of promotion. And there's nothing illegal about me ripping copies of CDs I own in order to play them myself, so long as I don't distribute them.
The whole piracy problem could be greatly alleviated by the industry itself without getting all heavy-handed. Remember DAT? Most people probably don't, the closest they've gotten to it is "the digital tape" in an old X-Files episode.. The Evil Empire was afraid people would use it to make digitally perfect copies of music, and promptly squashed it. That's probably also why MiniDisc hasn't caught on very well in the US yet (though it's doing fine in Asia and may eventually pick up over here). But it's too late to squash MP3.
The book publishing industry doesn't have this problem, despite the fact that photocopiers have been around for decades, and scanners and OCR software are getting dirt cheap. Nobody "pirates" books though -- it's easier and cheaper to just buy them.
The recording industry has already tried to make copying difficult, failed, and not won any friends in the process. They need to look at the other side of the equation: make purchased music cheap but feature-rich enough so that piracy is disincentivized. (I knew I could use that word somehow.) In this, technology is their friend, not their enemy. They just have to come around to see it.
|
| |
|
regulars:
moo
third
chat
kimbered
logic
shades
on a whim:
orisinal
bilbanan
smurf
bang
lobster
yugop
skin
wood
rhythm
|
diarist.net