Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at October 29th, 2005

Kristen’s running the Grand Rapids Marathon tomorrow morning.

She’s run the Chicago Marahon twice. She ran her first marathon during the year following the miscarriage (at 22 weeks) of our first attempt to have a child. She ran her second Chicago marathon last year. Her account of running in the first marathon was actually published in the Salvation Army’s national news magazine. I may write about it (and what led to it) myself someday.

Each time, I’ve gone with Kristen to pick up the registration items. These usually include some information, the timing chip, and a shirt. At Chicago, this generally turns out to be a massive event with people from all over the world crowding an enormous room filled with booths and exhibitions. Chicago attracts 30,000-40,000 runners. Grand Rapids attracts approximately 1000.

The registration room was correspondingly smaller. The few vendors were in a separate room. Unlike Chicago, the only language I heard was english. That being said, Kristen and I were amused to run into Deborah Henson-Conant, a Jazz/Blues harpist who inexplicably performs in Grand Rapids every so often. She’s an entertaining musician, and as it happens, we’ve already got tickets to see her the next time she’s in town (November). Apparently she was in town this week and decided to run the half marathon.

In some ways, I would be less surprised to run into a musician I liked in Chicago than Grand Rapids. On the other hand, given Chicago’s size I would never have picked her out from the crowd.

I imagine that size affects this marathon in a number of ways. First of all, I’m betting that the runners will be running to achieve a personal best time as opposed to running in costume as Elvis, a mariachi, or as a cow (all of which I’ve seen in Chicago). Second, I’m betting it will be much easier to take pictures of Kristen here than it was in Chicago where she would often turn out to be one of hundreds in the street at a time.

Perhaps I’ll write more about it tomorrow after the race.

Posted by Jim at August 12th, 2005

A while back, I mentioned that I use Audioscrobbler, a music service that tracks your music use. Having recently undergone some changes, the services related to Audioscrobbler have moved over to last.fm.

One thing that’s cool about it is that you can listen to a stream based on your music choices. This is convenient when you don’t have your music collection immediately available. In my case this means that I can indulge my interests in jazz, alternative rock, ’70’s era progressive rock, blues, classical music and um… Japanese pop?

I don’t mind Japanese pop music, but it isn’t really an interest. One might reasonably ask how that would happen.

My best guess goes like this. Last.fm chooses what you listen to based on not just what you listen to, but also on what people with similar music interests listen to.

Though a genre with worldwide fans, Jazz is not outrageously popular in any particular place. Thus, when I look at the people in my musical neighborhood according to Last.fm, I find people from a lot of different countries: Poland, the Netherlands, the UK, and… Japan.

I haven’t run into much Polish, Dutch or current British music yet, but I suppose I might. We’ll see.

UPDATE: To my amusement, it turns out that there’s a last.fm player that allows you to listen to your preferred music stream. Not surprisingly, the Mac version isn’t done yet while the Windows port is. Strangely though, the FreeBSD port is available while the Mac port isn’t. I’ve never seen that happen before. Even odder, the Mac port is available if you’re willing to compile it yourself while the FreeBSD port is in instantly installable binary form. This will be quite convenient someday when I make my soundcard work with FreeBSD.

Posted by Jim at June 29th, 2005

I’ve read that listening to music through headphones is ultimately bad for a person’s hearing. I’m not completely sure why this is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that a person tends to crank headphones up to a higher level of volume. I know that the noise of the car engine tends to drown out an ipod’s drums and bass when I’m driving, tempting me to do exactly that.

Whatever the case, I’ve been interested in finding a way to listen to my ipod shuffle via speakers.

Kristen, in a combination Father’s Day/birthday gift, bought me Extreme Mac’s iPod Shuffle FM Transmitter. One might reasonably ask why I didn’t buy an mp3 player that included the ability to transmit to radio instead of the shuffle. The answer is simply that the main purpose for buying an mp3 player was to allow me to go running. The mp3 players with transmitters aren’t flash players. They have hard drives. Thus, they’re much more likely to break if I fall.

So now I’ve got an add-on to the shuffle that I plug into the cigarette lighter. It then transmits to the frequency of my choice.

I had a little trouble initially, but that was actually my fault. I wasn’t pushing it far enough into the cigarette lighter and it wasn’t getting any power. Once I figured that out, I still had a little trouble finding the frequency I wanted, but in the end, things worked.

As it turns out, the signal is pretty strong, even blocking out frequencies that a radio station is actually using. I don’t recommend that though. There is still some bleed through from the station. I tend to use frequencies that are pure static, preferably without used frequencies on either side.

Though the sound isn’t as good as it would be if I could plug the shuffle directly into the radio, it’s as good as most radio stations.

I’m actually curious as to how far out from my car it goes. Imagine finding a station only to find out it comes from the car ahead of you in traffic.

For the moment though, I’m happy to have the ability to inflict my musical preferences on my family. Nearby drivers are just a bonus.

Posted by Jim at June 20th, 2005

A while back, Audioscrobbler came out. Basically, it’s a service that allows your mp3 player to automatically submit the music that you listen to to a website. You can then find other people who listen to the same music, find out what sort of music people who like a particular group also listen to and generally learn interesting yet not immediately useful things.

Alas, audioscrobbler got so bogged down by people’s interest that a person couldn’t actually sign up to use the service (or even submit anything) until just recently. All you could do was download the plugin that allows you to do it.

Well anyway, it’s fixed now and everything works again. And I signed up. Thus, you can now find out exactly what I’ve been listening to lately.

Due to the fact that I ripped a bunch of Yes albums into mp3’s this morning, the picture of my listening habits is rather skewed. I’m sure this will be corrected over time.

Posted by Jim at April 20th, 2005

Around a year ago now, a few of my friends did blog entries that involved listing the next 10 randomly chosen songs on your mp3 player/mp3 library. I didn’t have one at the time and thus didn’t participate.

At the moment, I do, and have been ripping albums to my pc regularly for a while now. Thus this list of the next 10 randomly chosen songs:

Led Zeppelin: “Going to California” from Led Zeppelin IV
I’m undoubtedly one of the millions that happen to have this album (it’s got “Stairway to Heaven” on it).

Fiona Apple: “Criminal” from Tidal
Fiona Apple is one of the many artists I like but haven’t bought anything they’ve done. This is free from Apple’s online music store.

Charles Earland: “Westbound #9″ from Living Black
Charles Earland was a great Jazz organist who was based in Chicago. I’ve seen him live. He was incredible and now unfortunately dead. He was also highly admired by Ray Manzerak of the Doors.

Benny Carter: “Back Bay Boogie” from Wicked Swing
Classic Jazz.

Gigli Pinza Caniglia Stignani: “Lacrymosa” from Verdi Requiem
My wife got this. She may have sung in a production of it.

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones: “Illegal Left” from Don’t Know How to Party
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones come out of the Ska revival of the 90’s. I like them.

Louis Armstrong: “Hello Dolly” from “The Essential Louis Armstrong”
More classic (and in this case quite popular) Jazz.

Pat Methany: “Not to be Forgotten (Our Final Hour)” from Secret Story
I find this entire album rather creepy sounding, but it is good. Pat Methany’s a Jazz guitarist and composer.

John Lee Hooker: “Good Rockin’ Mama” from Boom Boom and Other Hits
Classic blues.

Ben Folds Five: “Where’s Summer B?” from Ben Folds Five
I don’t like this album as much as “Whatever and Ever Amen,” but I still like it.

Living Colour: “Flying” from Collideoscope
Living Colour was a hard rock band from the late 80’s and early 90’s. They had a few hit songs on their first two albums (”Glamor Boys,” “Cult of Personality,” and “When Love Rears It’s Ugly Head”). This song is from their most recent album. They got back together in 2003 or 2004. I’m not sure if they’re still together, but I’m betting not.

Well, there we go. Only a year or more later, I’ve finally responded. I can’t say that this is a completely accurate sample of my musical interests, but it’s as good as 10 songs can be.

Posted by Jim at March 17th, 2005

Cake is one of those bands that I do like, but haven’t quite gotten around to buying one of their albums. For what it’s worth, Terry Gross of NPR interviewed Cake’s lead singer/guitarist back in November of 2004. I meant to blog about it a while ago, but didn’t get around to that either.

Take a listen…

Posted by Jim at September 17th, 2004

Since the existence of Napster (and even before), people have been discussing issues of copyright as it applies to music and other forms of art (films, books…).

Basically, people have discovered that it’s easy to pass these things around in digital form. As a result of it being easy, people have passed stuff around and taken advantage of what other people are willing to pass on.

The music companies get rather steamed about this, arguing that this takes money out the hands of the artists (and not coincidentally, the music companies). In the meantime, many music fans have decided that they’ve got a moral right to pass mp3 files around.

I find that my position on the issue turns out to be (as ever…) somewhere in the middle.

I suspect the music companies are more right about the practical issues of getting the music for free. That is to say that legally people have a right to make a backup copy, but not the right to duplicate it for anyone who wants one. They also seem likely to be right that the artists aren’t getting money that they deserve.

Not only are the artists not getting their money, but neither are the truck drivers, warehouse workers, small record store owners and others who work as part of the system of distribution. That’s a big chunk of what makes a CD that costs a buck turn into $16 at the local CD shop.

On that issue the record companies are correct, but I don’t see them as entirely correct. For example, the record companies themselves have made an effort to pay artists as little as possible, sometimes deliberately cheating them.

This tends to strain the credibility of the idea that the record companies are sticking up for the poor artists of the world.

At the same time, advocates for unrestricted sharing argue that if you provide a piece of art for free, you’ll actually get more people interested in the artist’s works. An example of this is the Baen Free Library. Baen books provides some, but not all of their authors books on the web for free download. In some cases this includes recently published books. Some authors claim that this increases sales.

I don’t know whether this is true or not. I can only go on my own behaviour. I was introduced to most of the science fiction authors I like by borrowing their work from the local public library. No risk of wasting money there, but because I liked reading their books, I bought my own copies.

Similarly, some friends of mine recorded the entire run of Babylon 5. I (though I saw a few episodes when B5 was running) was mostly introduced to the show through that series of bootleg videotapes. I’ve since bought the entire 5 season run on DVD.

I’m pretty sure that Warner Brothers gained more money off that than they lost.

Downloaded music seems likely to work the same way. If there’s no risk of losing money, you can try stuff that you’d never buy and if you don’t like it, you don’t feel cheated. More importantly though, you probably will like and buy something.

What that amounts to in the end is free marketing.

Bearing that in mind, I’ve often wondered why the record industry doesn’t see it that way. Do they have information I don’t? Are they just too tied to the current business model to accept the fact that reality has changed?

I don’t have any contacts in the music business and so I don’t have any useful opinions about their beliefs. I do hope, however, that they connect with reality sometime soon.

Posted by Jim at July 28th, 2004

Much of the time I find the little bundled additions to stuff I buy to be unnecessary junk. Every so often, however, I’m sucked in by something I find kind of cool.

SBC appears to outsource it’s entire user experience (email, news home page, etc…) to Yahoo. Yahoo, in turn, provides piles of bundled useless junk in addition to their email service. One exception to this seems to be Launchcast.

Launchcast is Yahoo’s music service. I ignored it when it looked like I’d have to pay to use it, but since the full service comes free as part of Yahoo I decided to check it out.

I’ve often thought that the ideal music service for the internet would allow the listener to make a list of their favorite artists, albums, and so on and then the music service would actually play those albums. Plus it would ideally put in artists that other people with similar tastes also like.

That appears to be what Lauchcast does.

For those of you who would actually like to listen in on my musical choices, feel free. Much to my annoyance, it requires a player capable of taking windows media files, but one can’t have everything.

Posted by Jim at June 2nd, 2004

A few years ago, back when Ed was living in Chicago, I drove down to meet him and go see Yes in concert. It happened that people could go see Yes and Kansas for free if they went to “Taste of Chicago,” a festival at which Chicago’s restaurants sold food and people could attend a variety of musical events.

We walked in during the end of Kansas’ set (which we really hadn’t wanted to see anyway) and before the beginning of Yes.

Ed surveyed the crowd. It was noticeably different in ethnic make-up from the crowds near the food. “This is the whitest crowd I have ever seen in Chicago,” he said. He was probably right about that.

An exception to this rule stood about 10 feet ahead of us–an African-American man who obviously knew all the songs because he was singing along the entire time.

While listening to NPR today, I was amused to hear a commentary on Yes from one African-American man’s perspective. He loves the group and apparently his friends in the 1970’s did as well–to the point of renting two rows of seats to their concerts in Philadelphia and making black power signs and high fives when Yes started playing “Heart of the Sunrise.”

Strange and amusing.

Posted by Jim at May 6th, 2004

As Ed mentioned, we went to see Yes on Wednesday night. It has been a while since I’ve had time (or money) to see live music. Graduate school, children, and work combine to kill any opportunity to do stuff like that.

I was amused to note some fans waving their cellphones and pda’s after songs. Apparently not enough people smoke, so say good-bye to lighters.

In any case, I’ll give a general rundown of the concert:

The Band:
For those of you who don’t really have much of anything come to mind when you think about Yes, I’ll give you some quick background. Yes came out of the ’70’s prog rock movement. In their music you can hear hints of Folk, Rock, Jazz, Blues, Country, and Classical music. In short, they’re eclectic.

In the 70’s, their best known songs were probably “Roundabout” and “All Good People.” When they got back together in the 80’s, they came out with “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” a song that sounds very little like their earlier music.

The 80’s stuff sounded like pop music. There were even dance mixes of it. The 70’s stuff was sometimes 20 minutes in length and influenced by Igor Stravinsky.

Honestly, I was introduced to them with the 80’s version of the band, but I like the 70’s era band much better. Currently, after a series of convoluted personnel changes, they’ve got one of better the 70’s line-ups in place.

The Set:
Yes was known for the strangeness of its album covers, featuring the work of Roger Dean. Dean does surreal landscapes. He also designs Yes’ stage sets.

This one appeared to be inflatable and had a sea theme. The lights turned the vaguely crablike thing, a growth of seaweed, and a bunch of totally unknown, unidentifiable things green, blue, orange, and red.

For the longest time I could not figure out what the fishbowl-like things next to the drumset were supposed to be. According to Ed, they were drums. I spent the longest time speculating. Were they upside down mushrooms? The helmets of enormous, decapitated astronauts? I was at a loss.

The Songs:
You can get the song list on Ed’s blog, but I’ll just mention some of the highlights.

Ritual: This is from “Tales of Topographic Oceans.” That album consisted of four, 20 minute songs. I cannot imagine listening to the entire album live, but every time I’ve listened to a piece of it, it’s been great.

Rhythym of Love: Off of “Big Generator” from the 80’s, one of Yes’ worst albums. Live, at least, I liked “Rhythym of Love” to my great shock.

Turn of the Century: I just like this song. I’m not sure which album it comes from originally.

Songs they did not play (thank you!): “Circus of Heaven,” “Don’t Kill the Whale,” and “Hymn to an Arriving UFO.” All of these are off of the same album: “Tormato.” The cover art for that album included maps of tors and smashed tomatos. I don’t know why.

It would have been cool if they’d played “On the Silent Wings of Freedom” (also from “Tormato”), but I shouldn’t complain. They did play “And you and I,” one of my favorites.

Scary Drunken Yes Fans
You wouldn’t think that a band like Yes would have scary drunken fans. One time I went to see Yes (with Joe and Mike) we ended up sitting next to a guy who had evidently come to the concert already drunk. Even before the concert he was shouting about his enjoyment of Chris Squire’s music (”CHRIS SQUIRE RULES THE WHOLE FUCKIN’ WORLD!”) and insulting random passersby (”HEY! You in the green shirt! You think you’re cool, but you’re really a jerk!”).

While Ed and I didn’t have to contend with anything that rivaled that, we were both amazed to notice some people dancing. “How drunk do you have to be,” Ed asked, “before you forget that you can’t dance to Yes?”

I didn’t know. I’ve never been that drunk.

Still, it was a good night.