In 1984 Leonard Cohen, notorious singer-songwriter and all-around talented guy, wrote a now famous song called Hallelujah. While difficult to get released in the beginning (see CBC interview) this song went on to eclipse, if you’ll forgive the artistic license, every song except Happy Birthday and How Great Thou Art in interpretations and performances. I fell in love with this song a few years ago when I heard Jeff Buckley’s version, as recommended by a good friend. I had no idea of the rich and illustrious background of Hallelujah; but I did know that it would be one of my favorite songs for the rest of my life.

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A recent article by Computerworld reduced the much more newsworthy piece on the April 11th oil spill from the New York times down to the headline “Tech worker testifies of ‘blue screen of death’ on oil rig’s computer”.  My favorite quote from the whole piece is what I call the ‘insinuator’:

Microsoft declined to comment on Williams’ testimony and characterization of the crash screen. Transocean did not respond to e-mail seeking comment.

I realize that you may find this a grave thing; and because of you I have decided I can no longer remain silent. Now, in front of God and the American people, I would like to say that I know information about this oil spill. Yes folks! That’s right. I know what was really to blame! Read the rest of this entry »

I highly recommend reading the following bit of spam I received from “bbenjiluin@hotmail.com” (Note how it doesn’t match the email in the email). The best quote is “I want  to initiate dating with you”.

Hi!

I received a letter from dating site. And they informed me about your email.  They also tagged that you are looking for a partner. I was fond of your character so I want  to initiate dating with you and learn you more bettterr. We could send photos each other. How do you consider this?

My email is h_zdenek@yahoo.com .

and I will respond you gladly and I will send some photos too.

My name is Helen and i am from Turkey.

Senator,

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As a lover of the service known as Lala, this morning I was very saddened to receive an email that I hoped would never come:

Dear Raymond B.,

The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st.

In appreciation of your support over the last five years, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store. If you purchased and downloaded mp3 songs from Lala, those songs will continue to play as part of your local music library.

Remaining wallet balances and unredeemed gift cards will be converted to iTunes Store credit (or can be refunded upon request). Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st.

Click here or visit Lala.com/support for more information, or to view Lala’s Terms of Service.

Thank you.

Lala

This letter was probably written the day that Apple purchased Lala over four months ago. It further solidifies my disgust with Apple and the way they do their business. In this acquisition and destruction of a perfectly good company, they’ve literally promised services to me in exchange for my money and now backed out of our agreement. I currently have over $25 in store credit on Lala and over one hundred songs to which I’ve purchased streaming rights. Beyond that, I’ve given dozens of songs to friends and family on the service.

Lala was the most innovative approach to music that I’ve seen in years, and I was extremely excited to evangelize the service and partake in it like some sort of Dionysian zealot. Now that’s all gone because Apple saw competition, they wanted technology, and when they had it they didn’t want to share. If Apple wants to make me happy they can give me copies of my MP3′s at a loss to them or send me a check for $50. Until that time, I’m looking to warn others of what happens when a closed, heavily proprietary company in bed with numerous neerdowells. This closure makes me furious, and I’m eager to see significant blow-back from Apple’s consumer-base.

UPDATE: It would cost me over $155 to get MP3 copies of the music I’ve purchased. Screw you, Apple.

This clip is going to be my sample to demonstrate wave collision in music mixing.  Even on isolating headphones this sounds garbled in the middle. A quick snippet, from me to you. I think it’s cute, but a little weak.

Hey, Listen!

UPDATE: I was able to get a little better about using some of the reverb controls. Here’s something with two piano voices, and a warm bass.

Clouds on the Wing

Today, Steve Jobs released an interesting essay justifying Apple’s shut-out of flash in the iPad and iPhone market. Apparently, when you make your first jog toward the light at the end of the tunnel, you’re imbued with a natural inclination to blog more. Maybe I need one of my organs to fail? Anyways, my summary of the high points:

1. Open – Flash isn’t an open system, it’s closed source and Flash controlled.
2. Features – All those flash sites you claim are so important? Yeah, we’ve got apps for those…so shut it.
3. Security – Adobe has more bugs than a camel’s armpit, and twice as many security flaws.
4. Power Consumption – Because you don’t use hardware acceleration it winds up sucking more processor speed, and therefore power.
5. Touch – Have you ever used an iPhone? Yeah, we like touch.
6. Flash Apps – Yeah, we’re not going to let you get that foothold. You know how we do quality control. [BAN]

It’s largely concrete and controlled, but my favorite quote is the last paragraph where he unleashes the liver-fed lion:

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

I largely agree with everything that Jobs is saying here, with one giant caveat: he shouldn’t have said it. Thousands of other people can say things like this and have it actually mean it, hell….even Ballmer would have gotten some respect from me for this kind of publication. But it wasn’t Ballmer, it wasn’t Zuckerberg, it wasn’t Brin, and it wasn’t even Bezos…it was Jobs.

Apple[Jobs] has created one of, if not the, most closed environments in recent history, barring the PRC. Every developer who wants to play in their app space needs to obey the censors and keep their noses clean, in addition to paying annual fees to enter the market. They continue to be criticized over, over, and over again for their blaze approach to censorship; Jobs even went so far as to tarnish the character of those who dare buy from the enemy. To say these things may seem like a logical attempt to regain trust from developers that “Steve’s really got our backs”, but it doesn’t take a psychology degree to see what his intentions are.

Jobs does not have the user or developers in mind. He’s pushed his teams to exclude flash from the iPlatform because he doesn’t want to lose control of the AppStore reigns. In a nearly-open system one can make the case that singular exclusions of technological compatibility are in the best interest of the consumer. Even Hu Jintao doesn’t whitelist Internet sites for his people. This essay has done nothing but push me closer toward a Verizon store and my first Android phone. I might even buy one of those wacky, now-imaginary Couriers.

Amazing, Steve, just amazing.

When running the course of my undergrad, I thought I’d lock onto programming and do it for years and years. I knew I had the impulse to lead and direct, but I never imagined myself doing anything more than being a “programmer lead”. Heck, I wasn’t the only one. Most of my friends knew that I’d be slinging code for the better part of five years. I couldn’t imagine a world without intelli-sense or Eclipse, and solving problems without a compiler was simply impossible.

The first lecture of my master’s program was my first policy/engineering class, and my world was rocked. I was probably galvanized by the seething hatred that my peers seemed to have for this brand of security. Dismissing the pariah complex, I had an abnormal draw toward it, and the people that I began to associate with only pushed me further in that direction. When I chose my first full-time position it was pretty clear where I would lean. Now I’ve programmed less than 100 lines of code in the last 3 months, and 95 of those were from personal projects.

Work is filled with partial glimpses into projects large enough to crush a human, and everyone struggles just to make sure their documentation doesn’t accidentally expand their scope commitment into a new circle of requirements-hell. Most of the higher-level minds just try to negotiate the nether-space between clients and managers, hoping that satisfying one of them doesn’t piss the other one off. Quality engineers are overworked, and project managers mumble unintelligibly to themselves while walking the fine line between hyper-tension and deadline slippage. Great ideas are hatched in unreserved conference rooms and laughed off or, if particularly reasonable, are stabbed to death by managers and customers during powerpoint briefings. The only people who get great things done are the ones who play the field better than Kasparov.

And it’s all fascinating.

I had something fun planned for tonight, but WordPress ate it. You just get the raw bits now.

Basically, use this (amazingly short bit of python code) to wreak havoc on your mate’s computer.

'''
Created on Mar 20, 2010
@author: Raymond
'''
import win32api
import threading
class Beep(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self,frequency,duration):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.frequency = frequency
self.duration = duration
def run(self):
win32api.Beep(self.frequency,self.duration)
for a in range(0,200):
a = Beep(a*20,1000)
a.start()
a.join()


And no, I’m not even white-spacing it for you.

Here’s a fun mp3 (if you’re lazy) with picture of the audacity output. See, no volume change! Only frequency. I love science.

And the exe if you’re lazy and you don’t like to practice safe-computing.

In a previous episode, I took a stab at curried potatoes. Well, my misguided efforts turned out better than I expected. This time, I went classic on these potatoes (Yukon golds), and did them up in a conventional oven. Cooking time was about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  See the step-by-step photos after the break. You’ll need to reflect on the previous post for pictures of the sauce.

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