Arthurthefourth.com

Fuck Bush

Jul 30, 2003 outsideNews

I am disgusted.

My only consolation is that, as was mentioned to me this morning by a certain young lady, history has proven to be a very severe judge of bigotry. I can only hope that when this menace is finally removed from power, change will begin sooner rather than later.

And finally, as Ari reminded us this evening, please register to vote. Because things may be bad…but they could get worse.

Tuesday Morning Update #4

Jul 29, 2003 myMusic

Mmm. I slept for a long time on the D train on the way home, and when I came out, there was a very soothing gentle rain raining. It reminded me that there is more in the world than customers, computers, and late lonely nights.

I sang On & On by Erykah Badu at the Village Underground tonight. I was definitely more confident and technically skilled than I have been any other time, but I felt like people gave a lot less of a shit. I almost felt like it was like “OK, another good singer. Whoop-de-doo.” But I got some respect from various folks afterwards, and I got to talk to Adam the guitarist for a bit about what it’s like making a living as a musician. It sounds hard. Scrambling and shit. 5 hour wedding gigs and drop-of-a-hat trips to California. Maybe someday.

I put up a posting on craigslist and got a couple responses, one of which seems promising. I reconnected with Tim, another conflicted singer / songwriter type from college, and we’re gonna get together and workshop in 2 weeks or so.

I started on a sort of verse section for If We Were, and I tried to get some lyrics down for it, but I ended up with a little dream poem instead. Maybe I’ll share it some other time.

Lastly, today at work, I ran into Gabe, another dude from college who I took some music and interactivity classes with it. He told me he’s going to ITP in September and that Konrad, a fantastic jazz pianist with whom I sang on numerous occasions back in college, is now in New York, and will also be attending ITP. Hmm. Abstractly, ITP seems like it might be what I want in my life: mixing technology and art, discussions of paradigms and interfaces and whatnot. Something about it, however, rubs me the wrong way. As cool as Basic stamp microcontrollers and interactive instruments are, do I really need to get a Master’s degree in Professional Studies? I worry that I wouldn’t learn anything useful, and that, like my current degree in music, it would lead me nowhere. Then again, graduates seem to do cool things with themselves afterwards.

I usually alternate between unfounded optimism and despair. Today, I am at a point of mere confusion and tiredness. I am tired of being hopeful; I am tired of being hopeless.

Poo.

The Importance of Being Backed Up

Jul 27, 2003 thingsThatHappened

Just had me a little scare. My recent aggravation with OS X, specifically the uselessness of the Dock, and the lack of decent window management, caused me to try to go back to Yellow Dog Linux. I was using 2.2 back in the days when I still used my Powerbook, and I’ve been eyeing 3.0 ever since it came out.

The installation failed while extracting some package, probably because of a bad burned CD. When I started up my computer again, I got a big ol circle with a slash through it.

Can I Take Your Order?

Jul 27, 2003 programmingandInterfaces

More on the making money front. As graduate school can only happen at the earliest in September 2004, and that’s if I pull everything together, take the GRE’s, figure out where I want to apply, and get applications in by November, I still need to find some way to make more money in the next year or so.

I have tried to keep myself sharp in programming by teaching myself new languages: last summer I was working on C++, and recently I’ve been doing Objective-C. However, it would seem that anyone looking for a C++ programmer expects experience with teams developing Windows applications, or something of that ilk. Objective-C, on the other hand, is not going to get me anywhere, and, besides, I’m mad at OS X right now, so…I’m gonna delve deep into PHP. Gonna write a lot of it. Gonna know it cold.

Here’s where you come in. Code is only useful when it does something. So, the question for you all is what it should do? What kind of features would you like to see on this website? What kind of data would you like to see manipulated? Ratings? More magical Itunes trickery? Any and all suggestions are appreciated. I also encourage people to tell me I’m barking up the wrong tree and that there’s a much better way to get a new job, complete with explanation and the time I should show up at the interview.

Thanks.

Let’s Push Things Forward

Jul 27, 2003 keepingItTogether

As many of you may know, I have recently been very restless about my current position in life. Music is moving surely but VERY VERY slowly. My apartment situation has been less than pleasing, but I am attempting to remedy this situation by throwing money at it.

Money. The abstract idea that exists mostly in bank mainframes, and yet somehow runs the world, determining what I can do and when I can do it. This brings me to the problem of making more money, the most insidious catch-22 known to modern man.

I have a job now. If I lived in Iowa, for example, the money I make now would be a lot. I would have enough to buy the things I need AND the things I want. I would be able to save, and I would probably never get that drowning feeling I get right about the last week of the month when I know my next paycheck is going to cover my rent and only my rent. However, I live in New York, a city with one of the highest costs of living in the world, even for a solitude-craving, non-drinking, tuna-salad-eating, penny-pincher-not-by-choice-but-by-necessity like myself, and so none of these things are true. This begs the question: why not find a new job?

Tuesday Morning Update #3

Jul 22, 2003 myMusic

Guess I missed the morning.

What happened musically this week: big fat nothin’. I didn’t go out to the Village Underground because I was so tired and hungry after a 10-hour day of tech support and customer service that I almost dropped dead. I didn’t play much piano despite my hopes that I would. Plans to play conga in the park on Sunday just never really happened.

I did, however, get a chance to think about some stuff, and I’ve realized that I need a couple of things. A vacation. To decorate my apartment and actually invite some people over, as I have been living here since March. Not to be so hard on myself. And last, but not least, some more money. I accept cash, checks, and Amazon gifts.

MP3’s and the Modern Listener

Jul 20, 2003 adminStuff

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve started using Kung-Tunes to list what I’m listening to. It has a handy feature that lets you put together a list of recent tracks. However, like Metallica and others, I believe strongly in the power of the album as a complete work of art, and that’s how I do most of my listening – one album at a time. Neither Itunes nor Kung-Tunes, nor for that matter any other MP3 software I’ve ever seen, really supports this method of listening. If I just listened to three entire albums straight through, that’s not 60 lines worth of data. It’s really only 3.

Enter PHP.

Inkblot Security

Jul 18, 2003 outsideNews

Microsoft researchers have come up with a way to help people remember passwords – have them base them on pseudo-Rorshach-test inkblots. Turns out everyone sees and describes them differently, so if you string enough together, the description each person comes up with will be pretty difficult to crack. Take a look at the test blobs on the MS website. I’ll post what I saw as a comment, so it doesn’t influence you…

[via Slashdot]

Data and Information (a queixa.com rant)

Jul 18, 2003 programmingandInterfaces

The other day, when we were at Artbots, I mentioned to Evan that I was “obsessed with data.” This was brought on by the way most “interactive” art pieces function – they transform one kind of data into another: visual to audio, movement to movement, you name it to you name it.

But in another sense, this is an obsession I’ve always had. The information that’s available all around us could tell us MUCH MUCH more than we already know. First of all, there’s our own data – our e-mails, documents, etc. Zöe is a program I installed recently which is hard to describe. Its author describes it thus:

“So what is Zoë? Think about it as a sort of librarian, tirelessly, continuously, processing, slicing, indexing, organizing, your messages. The end result is this intertwingled web of information. Messages put in context.”

It looks like this:

Zöe only scratches the surface of what can be done with a small portion of our own data – our stored e-mails. We have a tendency to think in terms of limited paradigms: search, search by content, search titles, subjects, etc. We forget that there are patterns we don’t see: ways in which we can pieces of data to each other.

WikiWebs are another good example. People often refer to these as webpages which are freely editable by all, but they forget the coolest part – links everywhere that form automatically just by formatting your words in the right way! The data stored in the Wikipedia is not just a set of articles – it’s a whole intertwingular interweb! It’s what the WWW should really be all about! Not static sites with flashy designs! Content! With lots of relevant links to related content! And lots of exclamation points!

Tuesday Morning Update #2

Jul 15, 2003 myMusic

OK, so tonight was interesting. Village Underground as usual. Some good friends came down with me and stuck around till 1:30 cause I got bumped to the second set. Good people, good people.

I sang Purple Rain, and I got the smoke machine and everything. A little slow for my tastes, but I felt like I did a better job than the past two weeks. Had to leave pretty soon after though, cause it was late as hell…

I rediscovered an old friend this week: jazz piano. A certain young lady (I haven’t decided yet whether it’s appropriate to blow up the spots of non-public persons) reminded me recently that when we were living together back in New Haven, I practiced piano for three-four hours every day. EVERY DAY! If I get that much in a week these days, I feel like I’m something special! But I’m getting back to it – trying to play every day and whatnot.

I also discovered something new: for my birthday, I got a set of plastic tambourines, and it turns out that if I clip to the side of my conga drum, and use the sounds on the skin, the tambourines, and the sound of the wood, I’ve got a virtual one-man percussion orchestra right in my apartment. Dope. Fun and dope.

Finally, I’ve started reading The Artist’s Way. This book seems like it’s helped a lot of people get through creative blocks, which my incredible slowness in getting out lyrics and new material could easily be described as. I like it because it focuses on creativity and actively using your creative energy. We’ll see where it leads me….

All in all, fairly uneventful but inspiring week. Slow and steady….