Strings of my incoherence

The view from my new room (made with AutoStitch).

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:41:37 -0600

The view from my new room (made with AutoStitch).

staff: By popular demand: J and K now jump between posts on...

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:01:41 -0600

staff:

By popular demand: J and K now jump between posts on the Dashboard.

Works great with endless scrolling.

This is probably my favorite of all the new additions. I wonder if it works with autopagerize…

"Historically, very little has been accomplished by being cynical (maybe some broken hearts have been..."

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:20:40 -0600

“Historically, very little has been accomplished by being cynical (maybe some broken hearts have been prevented, but at what cost?).”

- Paul Constant Reviews Twitter - The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper

AJAX on Rails (via @ReinH:@thomasfuchs:@sstephenson)

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:02:46 -0600

AJAX on Rails (via @ReinH:@thomasfuchs:@sstephenson)

Barenaked Ladies - Brian Wilson (live) I remember all the...

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:50:00 -0600

Barenaked Ladies - Brian Wilson (live)

I remember all the lyrics even though I haven’t heard the song in probably 8 years.

Not So Fast With Those Electric Cars

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:45:45 -0600

Not So Fast With Those Electric Cars:

sds:

hilker:

“A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.”

this has always been my problem with electric cars: they simply rearrange the origin of pollution instead of reducing it. the article also mentions the problems with increased demand of lithium, a potentially more harmful pollutant.

hot air also notes:

” Obama wants the US to decrease its electrical demand over the next several years as a means of conservation as we switch away from coal and other fossil fuels as a source for power. Transferring cars from gasoline to electricity would vastly increase demand for power at the outlet, which would conflict with the decrease Obama wants to mandate. The result would be prices skyrocketing even higher, and people unable to use their vehicles from a lack of ability to pay for recharging them.”

The reason electric car development is important is not because of the impact it will have tomorrow, but the impact it will have after that. By switching to a centralized energy source (such as power plants) as opposed to portable ones (like gas or even hydrogen) we make the process of changing energy sources very easy.

Changing the infrastructure from gas to natural gas or hydrogen would be extraordinarily hard. We already have a grid in place to transport energy across the nation. Right now most of that energy is produced from coal, hardly an improvement on gas, but in the future high efficiency fuel cells, solar cells, or nuclear plants could replace coal. When these changes are made no infrastructure changes will have to follow. The infrastructure is already there in the grid. We could rapidly develop new technologies and roll them out simply.

Look at browsers and HTML5. Right now HTML5 has a lot of great features that would be beneficial to everyone but to get HTML5 into the public infrastructure changes must be made; everyone must upgrade their browsers. Think my concept as the changes being made on the server side rather than the client side.

The biggest problem with electric cars is still not the fact that carbon emissions are differed to a different point in the energy chain but where the energy is stored. We currently have no good energy storage technologies (batteries). Lithium ion based technologies are the best but they are expensive, toxic, and have short lifespans.

Electric cars are the future but that future cannot start until battery technology advances. One of my worries as an American is that the US is not devoting enough resources to battery development. That is the next great breakthrough. All solar, wind, and nuclear development will be evolutionary from now on. There’s no great aha moment to be had there. Battery technology still has the chance to be a game changer and that’s an opportunity for America to remain the leader in future technology.

Currently I fervently believe plug-in hybrids are by far the best solution to the problem. Fuel cells will never be appropriate for cars (although they can make a great power plant) and like I said electric isn’t there yet, I am confident we will be there before long though. Even solutions like natural gas are probably not viable due to what will probably be very small uptake from the consumer population.

Plug-in hybrids offer a great stop-gap solution until battery technology matures. It provides a situation where our underdeveloped batteries can function in an environment while still having a backup of gas (a great energy storage medium).

I’d love to hear feedback and more discussion on this topic because it’s extremely important and very sensationalized by the media.

Right on Trent

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:00:45 -0600

bijan:

Trent Reznor from the Nine Inch Nails has some great advice for young, unknown artists trying to make it.

via Trent:

Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.

To clarify:

Parter with a TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this - give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people’s email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special - make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan. Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions (for sale at a reasonable price) and include the download as something immediately available with any physical purchase. Sell T-shirts. Sell buttons, posters… whatever.

Don’t have a TopSpin as a partner? Use Amazon for your transactions and fulfillment. [www.amazon.com]

Use TuneCore to get your music everywhere. [www.tunecore.com]

Have a realistic idea of what you can expect to make from these and budget your recording appropriately.

The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact - it sucks as the musician BUT THAT’S THE WAY IT IS (for now). So… have the public get what they want FROM YOU instead of a torrent site and garner good will in the process (plus build your database).

The Beastie Boys’ site offers everything you could possibly want in the formats you would want it in - available right from them, right now. The prices they are charging are more than you should be charging - they are established and you are not. Think this through.

The database you are amassing should not be abused, but used to inform people that are interested in what you do when you have something going on - like a few shows, or a tour, or a new record, or a webcast, etc.

Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace - it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don’t autoplay). Constantly update your site with content - pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any - Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

If you don’t know anything about new media or how people communicate these days, none of this will work. The role of an independent musician these days requires a mastery of first hand use of these tools. If you don’t get it - find someone who does to do this for you. If you are waiting around for the phone to ring or that A & R guy to show up at your gig - good luck, you’re going to be waiting a while.

Fantastic advice. That’s exactly right.

The only thing I would add is that I wish Trent would get a blog instead of posting in the NIN forums. And naturally, I would recommend using Tumblr just like Ra Ra Riot recently did :)

kjohnson: There was life before text messaging? Seriously not...

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:16:33 -0600

kjohnson:

There was life before text messaging?

Seriously not something to be proud of.

Good bye Sakic. We’ll all miss you a lot.

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:08:24 -0600

Good bye Sakic. We’ll all miss you a lot.

Bought

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:29:00 -0600

Bought

This will happen again, coincidentally exactly 100 years after...

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:52:05 -0600

This will happen again, coincidentally exactly 100 years after this one, and shockingly 100 years after that.

myownmelt: dweeler: byepolar: peterwknox: xstevemurphy: shawnblog: monkeysays: actnatural:kentrock

Google OS: Who cares?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:48:47 -0600

There’s all this crazyness around the Google Chrome OS. I don’t understand it. This sort of OS has been predicted and thought up by lots of people (even Arrington is doing it with the crunchpad). The only thing that’s different is a reputable company is backing it.

This is hardly shocking news and it’s something that has been inevitable for a while now. Will this kill Windows? no. Will this kill the iPhone? no. Will this put a dent in netbooks? probably. It’s something that’s necessary but hardly major. It’s only an accessory that will probably be less versatile than an iPhone but has one important feature: a larger screen.

Bottom line, I’m looking forward to it but it’s hardly a game-changer.

I’m gonna be watching TV at 1pm EST today with a sliver of...

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:01:52 -0600

I’m gonna be watching TV at 1pm EST today with a sliver of hope that everyone is premature on Sakic’s retirement. The fact remains that Sakic will almost definitely retire and it will be just another blow to the Avs faithful.

When the dust settles this will be a sad day for all of hockey and sports. Sakic was possibly the classiest professional player to ever play at the caliber he played and will end up as one of the best hockey players of all time.

applearts: Interior design room Need

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:29:21 -0600

applearts:

Interior design room

Need

"Unlike the New Deal, when the government put people to work producing valuable projects that people..."

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:18:00 -0600

“Unlike the New Deal, when the government put people to work producing valuable projects that people can readily appreciate while walking around cities today, this stimulus is largely directed toward prettying up corporate balance sheets. This strategy creates two problems. First, finance does not produce many jobs. Spending $1 million on infrastructure creates many more jobs than an equivalent expenditure propping up financial businesses. Second, one of the strategies for rescuing finance is to subsidize consolidations, such as Bank of America taking over Countrywide Financial Corp. (former titan of subprime mortgage lending). These consolidations result in job cuts, besides making future regulation more difficult - in part because of the concentration of corporate power.”

- Michael Perelman (via southpol)

I’m as liberal as they come but I definitely have some strong reservations about this bailout.

The haul from my car.

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:11:32 -0600

The haul from my car.

A nest fell out of the tree in front of my house.

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:33:20 -0600

A nest fell out of the tree in front of my house.

Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate - Ars Technica

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:47:46 -0600

Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate - Ars Technica:

Basically they’re saying that H.264 is the superior format but there are concerns that MPEG will begin to levy larger fees for its usage.

The primary concern with Ogg is that it will be impossible to improve it without hitting the wall made by patents from other codecs.

And in the end it doesn’t matter because Microsoft won’t support until 2025, when MPEG’s copyrights are set to expire.

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-7-5)

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:01:30 -0600

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-7-5):

Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz

I Have You Now (via Balakov)

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:00:48 -0600

I Have You Now (via Balakov)