Fabio vs. The Internet

Shut up and take my money!

2013-04-21T12:58:00-04:00

I’ve had this article on draft since the Instagram TOS debacle, but I didn’t finish writing it because of reasons. Life got busy and I lost the timing.

Anyway, the crux of it remains relevant. I won’t get into the whole “if you don’t pay for a service, you’re the product” thing since it’s been done to hell, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

So, I decided to move from Instagram back to Flickr when the TOS “controversy” was at its height. I didn’t have that many photos or thought they were good enough to be used in ads, but I was a bit pissed off when Instagram decided to pull out Twitter integration about one month before that.

I had reached the 200-picture limit on my free account a long time ago, but there I had a service that did way more, where I could store full-resolution photos, create sets, use proper geolocation and, on top of everything else, had proper social network integration. A Flickr Pro account costs 25 bucks a year, a very fair price for a full-featured ad-free cloud photo storage service.

Please let me pay for stuff

It’s a known fact that paying for a service makes it more serious. Paying legitimizes a commercial relationship; it gives you leverage when you have a complaint, it creates a proper binding contract where you have a say about the services you’re using. When you use a service for free, the company can always come back at you and say “I was being generous, you ungrateful bastard”.

A good example is Posterous. I’ve used it for a long time to post pictures and short text posts via email when I didn’t have a decent smartphone. Twitter bought them and now the service is being discontinued. They offered an easy way to download everything as a working website (which I’ve uploaded here), but it doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t exist anymore. If I want to post via email, I’ll have to look elsewhere.

Unfortunately, not all “free” services have decent paid options. The biggest example is possibly Google. While I can buy extra storage for Gmail, that doesn’t really constitute a proper paid account. Yes, I can sign up for Google Apps, but that’s way more than most people need and still lacks integration with a few services (Youtube, for example). What if I don’t have (or don’t want to use) a domain? Would it be so hard to offer a Google Premium account?

I have a non-Google email that I use for serious stuff precisely to have an “exit strategy” if Google ever decides to pull the plug on Gmail. Don’t think it can’t happen - remember that Google Reader had a loyal following, and was killed anyway.

So please internet, take my money. Use it to remove those annoying ads and create great services for users, not shareholders.

Divorcing iTunes from your media keys

2013-03-17T13:24:00-04:00

You’ve been there. Maybe you’re listening to your favourite song on Rdio, or maybe checking your Soundcloud stream. You reach for the play/pause key on your keyboard and BAM, motherfucking iTunes comes up. Don’t you hate that? I do.

Luckily, there’s a way to fix it. Open your terminal and type:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist

Voilà, iTunes no longer responds to the media keys. The only downside is that now iTunes doesn’t respond to the media keys at all. I couldn’t care less, but if you’re a crazy person who actually likes iTunes (poor you!), you can reattach the keys at any time with:

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist

One could conceivably run the detach script at login and write a small AppleScript launcher to reattach the keys and then launch iTunes. I’ll leave this as an exercise to the reader.

Ch-ch-changes

2012-12-25T16:52:00-05:00

In case you’re one of my 17 readers, you probably noticed the site’s design has changed recently. This is because we’re not running on Wordpress anymore, but on ~~sub-atomic quantum entaglement engines~~ Octopress!

But what exactly does that mean for you? Well, the site will load much faster, for one. It’s also very resilient against l33t h4x0rz, which is always a good thing.

For me it means I don’t have to worry too much about my site going down if I’m ever featured on HackerNews or Reddit, since there’s no interpreter between the files and what you see. Instead of being a dynamic blogging engine that reads databases and process templates on the fly, Octopress generates all necessary files before uploading them. All the webserver has to do is spit data in your general direction (and it does that really fast).

I also took the time to clean up the blog a bit; all photo-posts were removed, since I already had a copy of those on Posterous. This has left only posts with “actual content” (mandatory quotes, I fear), which should serve as an incentive for me to stop being lazy and write more.

And what will I write about? Well, taking from my older stuff, I’d say music, programming and random ramblings - In other words, a regular blog. A more focused portolio-like website will come soon, and I’ll probably comment on its development around here.

I know this sounds a bit like a new-year’s resolution thing (and I know what usually happens to those), but I missed having an honest, real blog instead of scattered posts on assorted social networking sites. Not that I’m abandoning them, but instead of linking to other people’s stuff, it’s high time I go back to making stuff other people would want to link to.

Oh, and before I forget: happy multi-denominational food and gifts holiday!

TRS-80 is the band I've always wanted to be in

2012-08-17T00:00:00-04:00

Enough said. This is where I ultimately wanted to go with Gerador Zero. I hope I can find the right people to do something like this!

No Step Live Electronic Jam @ Fountain

2012-06-02T00:00:00-04:00

This is happening! I finally put together a No Step live thing, and Fountain is the perfect place to try this out. I have no idea how it will turn out in the end, but THAT’S THE FUN OF IT!

See you there!

I'll be DJing this Tuesday, May 8th!

2012-05-05T00:00:00-04:00

What the video said.

Why vinyl?

2012-05-02T00:00:00-04:00

I used to get really pissed off when I heard people talking about how vinyl sounds better than digital recordings, independently of physical support (CDs, SACDs, audio files and so on). I won’t get into this matter in depth here; suffice to say, there is a mountain of technical evidence proving otherwise. If you want the most accurate reproduction, digital is the way to go. This is such an irrefutable fact that even if you buy the latest album from your favorite band on vinyl to enjoy that good ol’ analog sound, all the recording, mixing and mastering was certainly done using computers, plugins and ProTools.

Digital won, hands down. Deal with it.

So why are people still buying vinyl? Why go for such an ancient, impractical and mostly retired medium?

Besides the physical fetish - the album art really shines with more space, doesn’t it? - I only realized the real reason a few weeks ago, after Andrew Huang (of Songs To Wear Pants To and Team Andrew) replied me on twitter.

How could I have missed this? It’s not about the medium, but the act of listening to music. It took me a while to figure this out because I’m relatively old (36, thakyouverymuch).

You see, I grew up in an era when everybody had at least a half-decent stereo at home. I remember when CDs came out and everybody bought them, bragging about how the sound was amazingly clear, that you didn’t have to flip the damn thing to hear the B-side, that you could program the track order without having to drop the needle (causing that loud POP when you didn’t lay it down just right), and that scratches and crackling noises were a thing of the past. Yes, CDs were once the format praised by audiophiles! It’s funny how things change.

Anyway, fast-forward to 2012 and everybody consumes music in some sort of digital format. But where do you listen to it?

Crappy laptop speakers. Cheap headphones.

And when?

On the way to work, in a crowded subway or bus. During office hours, while thinking about something else. While you’re jogging, with an iPod or cellphone strapped to your arm.

So, again, why vinyl?

Because you’ll need a half-decent stereo to listen to it. Because you’ll have to stop what you’re doing, walk to the turntable, remove that big round thing from the sleeve and place the needle carefully. Because once you do that, you can’t really change the order of the songs easily without having to get up again.

Because you’ll have to STOP and LISTEN. Vinyl demands attention. It needs manual intervention. It comes with a long-forgotten ritual that a whole new generation is beginning to understand and appreciate.

Nevermind that it doesn’t sound as accurate as a digital recording, that you’ll need to replace the needle regularly and the record itself will wear down and eventually begin to crackle and pop. Years from now, when all music in the world fits into a super-dense nano-SD card, it will still make you stop and listen.

Vinyl carves a slice of attention span, pushing music back to the foreground - just like before iPods and computers slowly shoved and blended it with background noise, a collateral victim of multitasking. Since nobody came up with a technology with a built-in excuse to stop for a moment and enjoy music, vinyl sneakily stole back its place. Sweet karma.

BitBang! Update 4(-ish)

2012-05-01T00:00:00-04:00

The one where I say “basically” a lot and make a few announcements.

The Manual

2012-03-24T00:00:00-04:00

I’m rereading KLF’s The Manual and after all these years it’s still pure genius. Technology has come a long way and most chapters about booking studios and distribution are quite outdated, but the main ideas about music and how to put out a successful single are sound. Take for instance the Golden Rules:

Firstly, it has to have a dance groove that will run all the way through the record and that the current 7” buying generation will find irresistible. Secondly, it must be no longer than three minutes and thirty seconds (just under 3’20 is preferable). If they are any longer Radio One daytime DJs will start fading early or talking over the end, when the chorus is finally being hammered home - the most important part of any record. Thirdly, it must consist of an intro, a verse, a chorus, second verse, a second chorus, a breakdown section, back into a double length chorus and outro. Fourthly, lyrics. You will need some, but not many.

While nobody really cares too much about radio these days, successful pop songs follow those rules to the letter. Just look at the past #1 hits; it’s all there. Also, on originality:

It is going to be a construction job, fitting bits together. You will have to find the Frankenstein in you to make it work. Your magpie instincts must come to the fore. If you think this just sounds like a recipe for some horrific monster, be reassured by us, all music can only be the sum or part total of what has gone before. Every Number One song ever written is only made up from bits from other songs. There is no lost chord. No changes untried. No extra notes to the scale or hidden beats to the bar. There is no point in searching for originality. In the past, most writers of songs spent months in their lonely rooms strumming their guitars or bands in rehearsals have ground their way through endless riffs before arriving at the song that takes them to the very top. Of course, most of them would be mortally upset to be told that all they were doing was leaving it to chance before they stumbled across the tried and tested. They have to believe it is through this sojourn they arrive at the grail; the great and original song that the world will be unable to resist.

So why don’t all songs sound the same? Why are some artists great, write dozens of classics that move you to tears, say it like it’s never been said before, make you laugh, dance, blow your mind, fall in love, take to the streets and riot? Well, it’s because although the chords, notes, harmonies, beats and words have all been used before their own soul shines through; their personality demands attention. This doesn’t just come via the great vocalist or virtuoso instrumentalist. The Techno sound of Detroit, the most totally linear programmed music ever, lacking any human musicianship in its execution reeks of sweat, sex and desire. The creators of that music just press a few buttons and out comes - a million years of pain and lust.

We await the day with relish that somebody dares to make a dance record that consists of nothing more than an electronically programmed bass drum beat that continues playing the fours monotonously for eight minutes. Then, when somebody else brings one out using exactly the same bass drum sound and at the same beats per minute (B.P.M.), we will all be able to tell which is the best, which inspires the dance floor to fill the fastest, which has the most sex and the most soul. There is no doubt, one will be better than the other. What we are basically saying is, if you have anything in you, anything unique, what others might term as originality, it will come through whatever the component parts used in your future Number One are made up from.

The Manual is not only a timeless classic, it’s been proven to work numerous times. The Pipettes used it. Also Chumbawamba and The Klaxons, and many more who won’t admit it. It’s true that anyone who uses it will make disposable pop music, but what’s a #1 hit but precisely that?

The full text of The Manual can be found online in a few places, and since it’s been out of print for so long, nobody cares about the piracy (heck, the KLF would probably be for it). Just go out there and grab it.

New track

2012-03-20T00:00:00-04:00

And it’s a weird one. The main sound (right at the beginning) actually came from tweezers that I sampled and tuned. The whole thing is full of polyrhythms and it’s actually a waltz. Yep.

As always, you can buy it at nostep.ca (name your price! give me money!).

Latest productions

2012-03-05T00:00:00-05:00

First things first: here’s the latest No Step track, which is also my attempt at making something cute.

As always, all No Step tracks are available on a name-your-price model. So go there and give me some moneys!

And here’s a quick and dirty remix I made for a Jorge Ben classic. Free download!

No Step - Browncoat

2012-02-14T00:00:00-05:00

Another one of my “new track every two weeks” thing, dedicated to all Whedonites and Browncoats out there.

No Step - Typical 3am Conversation

2012-01-26T00:00:00-05:00

Another new track, keeping up with the goal of releasing a new track every 2 weeks.

As always, download/buy it (name your price!) at nostep.ca.

New year, new music!

2012-01-15T00:00:00-05:00

I already talked about this elsewhere, but in case you missed, I started a new music project (band?) called No Step. I’m pretty committed to make more music this year, so the goal is to release a new track every two weeks. Not all of them are going to be No Step originals - I’m giving myself the option to make remixes and edits too (still counts, right?).

I’ve released two original tracks so far:

You can download the songs (name your price!) at the official (gasp!) No Step website. Also, follow No Step on Twitter and check out the page over at CBC Radio 3. Soooo Canadian! :-)

Remixes

2011-09-25T00:00:00-04:00

In the same day I posted my entry for the She Wants Revenge Remix contest…

…I was remixed on CCMixter.

Valsinha (cdk Like Me… by cdk

Pretty good for a weekend, isn’t it?

New TV

2011-09-18T00:00:00-04:00

So yeah, we (me and Renata) finally got a new TV to replace the old tube clunker we got for free a few weeks after we arrived in Toronto. When I say TV I mean “big 40 inch monitor where I can plug videogames and assorted computers”, obviously, since we don’t have cable and couldn’t care less about it.

But we’re movie buffs and gamers nonetheless. We love Netflix to bits (yes, precisely because of the weird movie selection) and download a few shows and hard-to-find gems to watch. Oh and there’s that Nintendo Wii too.

To be honest, a new TV has never been a big priority; it took more than a year for us to bother replacing the old one. Meanwhile the prices dropped dramatically and every TV does everything except coffee and sorting out your laundry.

This means I shouldn’t be as surprised as I was with what we’ve got. The thing is basically a full-fledged computer. Besides having all the inputs and outputs you can imagine, it comes with two USB ports - one of which with enough power to spin up a small portable hard drive - and… a network port. Yep, you plug it on your router. Once you do that, it reads movies, music and pictures from any machine that makes them available through DLNA.

After installing a DLNA server on a Linux box (we chose Rygel if you’re interested - it’s pretty easy to setup), the TV found all the media automatically and played everything without a hitch. Pretty impressive.

Just to be clear: this is one of the cheapest 40” LCD TVs out there. The price before taxes was $549. It’s not the biggest screen out there, but it fits our living room nicely (plus I don’t have issues with the size of my penis to compensate on something else).

The only thing I haven’t tried yet is watching regular TV. But honestly, who cares?

Google+ is not a social network

2011-07-17T00:00:00-04:00

There, I said it. Actually I wasn’t even the first one to say it, but I strongly agree. While it has a rather strong social thing going on, Google+ is actually a really cool platform for personal sites and (micro)blogging, which happens to make it very easy to share stuff with your friends.

The strongest argument for this is the profile page. Before you drop to the comment box without reading the rest and/or go out shouting “but it’s just like Facebook!!1!”, step back and look carefully at the differences.

First of all, Google+ is a lot less noisy; there’s not much besides your posts, your name/picture and the circles. The profile page on Facebook, on the other hand, is a mish-mash of information about your friends, groups and updates from apps, all in small fonts surrounded by a heavy helping of lines and shaded rectangles. On top of that, your page is actually a “wall” where everybody and their dog can post (with your permission, of course).

On Google+ no such thing exists. Your content is front and center - and it’s only yours. You could actually use your profile as a blog, since get comment moderation and threading for free.

But the killer feature is the personalization that comes with the Circles. If someone you don’t know looks at your profile, s/he will only see your public content - just like whatever you post to Twitter or, again, a blog.

Now, if someone in your Extended Circles looks at it, a few additional posts will show. This is for people who have some idea of who you are, but with whom you don’t want to share much.

Finally, the people who are actually in your circles will be presented with different kinds of posts depending on their relationship with you. Everything is contextualized and truly - wait for it - personal.

This only works because everybody has a Google account these days. After all, Gmail, Picasa, Youtube, Calendar and Docs all share the same login. Most people are always logged in and don’t really think about it.

(If you work with information security, you probably just freaked out a little right now. I’ll give you time for the feeling to sink in.)

Because of all this, I doubt that Google+ will kill Facebook anytime soon. Sure, lots of people who don’t care about the games and pokes are going to abandon it, but this won’t change the fact that Google+ has a different rhythm to it, more akin to Twitter and Tumblr than posting updates to your wall.

If I had to bet, I’d say that Twitter and Foursquare have a lot more to lose, since it’s pretty quick and easy to post short updates (with pictures, even) and check-ins (there’s no mayorship yet, but most people never cared about it).

So what about Hangout and Huddle? I see both almost as separated “products” that are available firsthand through Google+, but will be present in other places soon. They’re both improvements to Google Talk, pushing features that were one-to-one into a group context.

(Also here, if you want to +1 me.)

Oh Rogers...

2011-07-05T00:00:00-04:00

I’ve just got a new modem from Rogers and updated my connection to the next tier (Hi-Speed Extreme - gotta love those names!). So far, so good… but!

I only managed to do this on my own because I’m a geek. See, the modem is a router too - a wireless one, at that. If I left it unattended, I would have an open wi-fi broadcasting my connection to everyone around and no control at all.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the manual included with the modem contains incorrect information. I needed to login to the modem’s admin to change its settings, but there was no mention of passwords at all - actually the manual instructs you to leave it blank! I had to google the password and then navigate through the modem’s admin interface to disable wireless and make it a “dumb” bridged modem instead of a half-assed router (compared to my Netgear running DD-WRT, of course).

Again: I’m a geek. I knew where to poke to make things right. Novice users would end up with a wide open network if they just plugged the modem and went on with their lives.

Scary stuff.

On the other hand, I’m apparently getting more than I paid for in terms of speed. Let’s hope it stays like that!

Playing with NI Maschine

2011-06-15T00:00:00-04:00

This is me making a beat in real time with NI Maschine, pure and simple.

Aside from adding titles, I didn’t edit anything. Actually I didn’t script it either. This is an honest product of “I have nothing better to do right now”. :-)

New remix

2011-05-31T00:00:00-04:00

I always loved this song, and after the intentionally bad remix I made for ‘Nothing’, I thought DM deserved something better.

I started the remix while learning how to use Native Instruments’ Maschine (which kicks major ass, by the way). All the sample-chopping and filtering was made on it. I might still play around with the mix, but this is pretty much the final version.

Enjoy!