Thanks to Slashdot for bringing this to my attention. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a story last week from Cary Sherman, head of the RIAA, where he lambasts students using Internet2 for file-sharing, claiming that the music industry and artists everywhere are in danger of going under because 42 students traded thousands of mp3s with each other on the high-speed backbone.

In response Roger Dannenberg, one of my favorite professors at CMU wrote his own letter which was subsequently printed in the Post-Gazette. I only wish he had more column inches.

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So for all I know about my friends, I'm farily oblivious to their less mainstream musical tastes. I for one am really into ambient, techno, trance, and trip-hop, in addition to more mainstream musical tastes, but these passions are typically only realized within tight-fitting headphones or my car (which I suppose could be seen as one big tight-fitting headphone). As a result I don't know who this announcement would interest, and so to the blog it goes.

Amon Tobin, techno DJ extraodinaire, is spinning a performace at Bimbo's 365 on Friday, February 25th ($18), and I'm itching to go with friends who are similarly interested. The last (read: only) time I've gone to Bimbos was to see Jolie Holland give a great performance which, very likely is the antipode of techno, so it'll be interesting to see the space in such a different way. Who's interested?

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After such divine inspiration, I couldn't help but come up with a few of my own sequels to one-hit wonders:

I get to third base with myself

Love Plus Two

Fuck Happy, Time to Worry Again

Pump Up the Bitrate

Me So Pregnant (me hate you long time)

(we partied) Like Y2K was actually a threat

176 lines about 88 women

Actually somethings don't count (hanging chad remix)

How to be a Billionaire (dotcom remix)

Awkward Love Rhombus

Girls just want some quiet and three Advil

Facing that you need too much love (Step 1 of 12)

Cruel Fall/Cruel Winter Medly

Oh that's who that girl is (Nevermind mix)

After Rosh Hashanah, I find that my feet harbor less guilt and have regained a modicum of rhythm

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Well, not so much a 'review' as a testament that Rachel and I saw it last night and thought it was really good. Naturally, it's not the same kind of movie as the original (sequels so seldom are), but it's good in a different way. Strike out character development and use the saved time for more cameo in-jokes and oblique (and overt) movie, cultural, and fairy tale references.

The movie never lets the audience rest, but in a telling example, Rachel and I want to go see it again after a few weeks because we lost several lines because the audience was laughing too hard.

The soundtrack is also great. Any animated piece that has both "I need a hero" (sung by a fairy godmother) and "Funkytown" has gotta be worth a look-see.

Anyhow, today we're off to North Beach (San Francisco) with Ali and Mark to see if we can take so many pictures that we have to use my new Belkin iPod media adapter to drain the 1 gig card and fill it up again.

After that, we're all going to see Dido in concert at Berkeley High School. It should be a pretty full day.

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For your filkification: Once More, With Hobbits.

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A woman in Memphis killed her boyfriend by striking him with her iPod 40-80 times after he admitted to erasing the 2000 songs on teh device. Apparently he accused her of downloading music off the net illegally for months and the only copy of her tracks was on the iPod.

Of course, if she'd been buying her tracks off of the iTunes Music Store, she might be similarly mad because she'd have spent $2000 on the music, and Apple won't let you re-download.

Lessons to be learned:

• Don't kill people.
• Don't steal music.
• Backup early and often.

(yes, it's a spoof)

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You know you've hit the big time when they write a song about you.

So spot-on, funny, yet critical, I link you to The Orkut Song (1.3meg MP3) by the Mighty Mighty Spatchtones. [mirror]

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Apparently Eminem is suing Apple, Chiat/Day, MTV and Viacom for using one of his songs without his permission in an iPod ad. To quote his publisher, "Eminem has never nationally endorsed any commercial products and ... even if he were interested in endorsing a product, any endorsement deal would require a significant amount of money, possibly in excess of $10 million."

Funny, I'd think a rapper who changed his name in order to ape that of a popular candy has lower standards of commercial endorsement.

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Brighthand talks about speculation of a new Apple handheld possibly to be announced at next week's Macworld Expo.

Now naturally I would wish that the rumor is true and this turns out to be the long-awaited iPad, but I'd be happy enough if it turns out to be mini iPods, based on Hitachi's 1-inch, 2- and 4-gigabyte drives. Toshiba's new 0.85" microdrive might be used in later models, but probably won't be ready in time for this quarter, or possibly even this year.

While I'd love for Apple to come out with an iPad, it'd be harder for me to justify buying one right now than it would be for me to get a smaller (cheaper?) 4-gig iPod for Reaver.

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After getting such positive feedback last year, and a reminder email today from a reader (as well as from my mom, one of the singers) I'm happy to remind folks that the Verdugo Hills Showtime Chorus will be delivering live telephone singing holiday cards this holiday season.

The deal is that for just $5-9 (local, long distance, or international), you can have a group of professional-quality chorus singers call whomever you wish and sing them holiday wishes. These are live (and very nice) people, who enjoy giving holiday wishes as much as your friends and family will enjoy getting them.

All of the holidaygrams will be sung on Saturday, December 13th, and they're happy to sing on the answering machine if your recipient isn't home. Actually, some recipients prefer that so they can listen again and again.

Happy Holidays!

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Sometimes you have to willfully resist anthropomorphizing technology. I wanted to see if Men Without Hats's new album (their first new work in a decade) was on the iTunes Music Store, or any of their old stuff, for that matter.

Turns out the iTMS not only doesn't know any of their songs, but it even insults them!

(click to enlarge)

I got the new Dido album, Life for Rent (admittedly not from Amazon, but from the Apple Music Store which, by the way, open to Windows machines next week!) and I love it. I haven't gone gaga over an album for several months, but I just love this one. It's so rare that I love an artist's first album, and then have them follow it up so well. Mmm... Music.

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My 30 gig iPod came today, just in time!

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Yesterday Steve Jobs gave a presentation to 150 representatives from independent music labels, offering distribution through the Apple Music Store. CD Baby! has posted their notes from the event.

It sounds very cool, and very well thought out. It even opens the door for small indie labels to become clearinghouses for 'ultra-indie' musicians, lowering the barrier to entry even further than it is now.

The thing I was most impressed by is Apple's claim that they will always refuse money for preferential placement. Those big banners touting the 'band of the moment' are created by Apple, solely by what the Apple music specialists think is good and worthy, not by big promotions contracts. One of the label reps was dubious, asking how they can be sure it will always be that way, and an Apple exec responded that Apple's been in the OS business for 20 years, and they've never sold an icon on the desktop like other companies have. (Is this actually true? Did no money change hands for System 7 or 8, when IE was on the desktop, or when the 'Connect to the Internet' icon drove you to an Earthlink sign-up page?)

Since the 'bestselling songs' are calculated on a rolling 24-hour basis, even a small relatively unknown band can get on the chart by organizing its fans to get friends to buy music on the same day, pumping it up in to the list, where it will either fall the next day, or stay high by virtue of the music.

Indie stuff should start appearing on the site within 90 to 120 days. I can't wait.

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So I've been thinking (always a dangerous sign). With Apple's new Music Store, they enforce digital rights management (DRM) by apparently encrypting the songs they download to you with a key to ensure that only a computer registered to you can listen to the music. Other bloggers have verified that the actual content portion of the song is changed, not just some identifying header, having purchased the same song under two IDs and otherwise identical conditions, and finding no similarity to the data within the song files, though they play identically.

Under Apple's digital rights management scheme (which, by the way, for all the evils of DRM, is the least evil I've seen), an Apple Music Store customer can play their purchased music on a Mac that has been linked to their account, and at any time up to three macs can be so linked. At the same time, any song from the Apple Music Store can be played on any iPod, which brings me to my thought: How does the iPod get around the DRM?

What I mean to say is, if the song file is protected, presumably through some sort of encryption, so that only computers in possession of a decryption key linked to the user's account can decrypt a song, how are the iPods exempt?

It seems to me that there are four possible solutions:

1. The files are encrypted by the user's personal key and that key is actually included inside the song file, so that iPods can decrypt any song. Mind you, any other application that knows about the key could decrypt any song, too, unless the key itself is encrypted by another key that is stored somewhere in the flash rom of every iPod so that iPods, and only iPods, can decrypt the key in the song, then use that key to decrypt the song. I believe this is similar to how DVD encryption works, though I could be wrong.
2. Similar to #1, perhaps when a mac uploads a song to an iPod, it tacks on the user's personal decryption key along with the song so the iPod can decode it. A way to test if this is the case is to take a protected song to someone else's mac (that can't play the song because it doesn't have the key), then try and upload it to an iPod and see if the song plays. If it doesn't play, then it means that songs have to be loaded on to iPods from 'permitted' computers.
3. When uploading to the iPod, the mac might completely decrypt the song and then upload it, obviating the need for any kind of decryption on the iPod side. In this case, as in #2, only a 'permitted' computer could successfully upload a song to an iPod. The difference here is that if two people purchased the same song, then uploaded them to iPods, then copied the song back from the iPod, using command-line copying or another third-party iPod tool, then the two files should be decrypted, and identical to each other. Incidentally, these files would likely be playable on any AAC player, effectively removing the DRM without sacrificing quality.
4. Maybe the files aren't actually encrypted at all, and are just made to look different by inserting a small amount of random noise, or a digital signature, to the original waveform prior to encoding, so that the files can be tracked, and playability on different computers is solely regulated by a weak honor-based system within iTunes.

With a little time and two Apple Music Store accounts, it should be easy to tell which of these systems is being used (unless it's something other than the possibilities above). I might do it if I have the time in the next week or so, but I'm really just more curious than anything else. I don't feel the need to go around trying to break Apple's DRM and be a new EFF poster child fighting the DMCA.

For now my main hope is that TiVo sends out an update for its Home Media Option so that it can play my Apple-bought music, especially since Apple's courting independent labels today, and many more cool bands could be in the store in the next couple months.

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While I was in SF a couple weeks ago, I heard a NIN cover on the radio. I think the song was 'closer' or 'hurt' (I forget) but it was done in a completely different style, by a completely different artist you'd never expect to sing NIN. (I want to say John Denver, but of course it's not, his being dead and all.) Does anyone here know what I'm talking about? I kept expecting it to be a joke and stop after a few bars, but they wang the whole song. Very funny...

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You know, I have about 30 DVDs, and I rarely go through them and sit down to watch one. I guess with a few exceptions, most don't have replayability for me...

Most of them I'll want to see again maybe every two years or so, even (sometimes especially) the movies I really, really love. Tonight I pulled off the shelf one of my top ten, that gets more interesting each time I watch it.

Pump Up the Volume should be watched by everyone who's ever kept a weblog, or wondered why we do. It predates the web by a good long way, but the message is powerful, and more than anything else I've read or seen, gives a convincing why to self-publishing on the web. I won't try to explain here.

If you haven't seen it, go rent it. If you have seen it, but it was a while ago, watch it again. You might get as much of a retrospective kick out of it as I did when I watched Tron after 10 years and the onset of an internet revolution, only to find it more relevant (and relevatory) than ever.

Does anyone else have a movie that they watched a decade later and got something completely different out of it? Is this the place where you can finally admit how much more sense The Big Chill makes now that you're older?

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Angel - Sarah McLachlan

Spend all your time waiting
for that second chance
for a break that would make it okay
there's always one reason
to feel not good enough
and it's hard at the end of the day

I need some distraction
oh beautiful release
memory seeps from my veins
let me be empty
and weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight

In the arms of an angel
fly away from here
from this dark cold hotel room
and the endlessness that you fear

You are pulled from the wreckage
of your silent reverie
you're in the arms of the angel
may you find some comfort there

So tired of the straight line
and everywhere you turn
there's vultures and thieves at your back
and the storm keeps on twisting
you keep on building the lie
that you make up for all that you lack

It don't make no difference
escaping one last time
it's easier to believe
in this sweet madness
oh this glorious sadness
that brings me to my knees

In the arms of an angel...

You're in the arms of the angel
may you find some comfort here

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I was going to write this specifically about iTunes, but I think it applies to most mp3 players. If any mp3 players have this functionality, I'd love to hear about it, regardless of platform.

A predefined playlist is just that, a queue of songs whose composition and order has been set up manually. Set on random shuffle, the order is mixed, but the contents of the list remains the same. That's all fine, but it's not how Iusually work.

A lot of the time I use music as my background, but to let it fade in to the background, I need one of a smaller subset of songs, almost like you need certain conditions to fall asleep, but once there can tolerate a lot more.

What I want is to be able to insert two songs or five into the playlist queue, even if it's on random. I want to be able to say "play this song now, then that one, then go on to your normally scheduled randomness."

I can do this already with a single song by finding the song, playing it, then unfiltering so that everything is visible, but first, that limits me to a one song push to the queue, and second, that song has to be in the same playlist that it will be going back to after that song.

I want a 'current song queue' box where I can drag a few songs in, order them around, and then at the end of my little list, drag in a playlist's icon, so as to say "and when you're done, keep playing from this playlist.'

With this system, more advanced functionality could be to specify "Play three songs from ths playlist, then 2 from that, then al of this playlist on random shuffle, before emptying out into a random play of the entire library." All this would be possible with a little interface work.

What would be even better would be a system that gets rid of playlists altogether but relys on markov chaining to create song queues that meld well fro one song to the next, gravitating towards one or another style of song. This is similar to something my group created in our 'home MP3 player' assignment this semester, but I'll talk more about that once I put the work we did online.

In other news my graduation present is coming few weeks early. Let's just say I need to find some more mp3s to fill the rest of the 30 gigs. ;-) (Thanks Dad!)

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I keep hearing the same numbers all over the net about the Apple Music Store. 99 cents a track, $10 an album, 200,000 songs in their library, and 275,000 songs were purchased in the first 16 hours of operation.

I thought of a couple more interesting numbers...

First, about the new iPods. 10, 15, and 30 gigabytes. That's a lot of space. With the 30 gig iPod, that's 21 days of solid music with no repeats.

7,500 songs in your pocket they say. $499. Pricey for a music player, but not out of this world.

Nobody ever mentions that at $1 a track, it would cost you $7,500 to fill up your 30 gig iPod. If you opt for the economy $299 10 gig iPod, it'll only cost a paltry $2,500 to fill it.

Of course it costs more if you actually bought CDs at $15 each and are ripping them to MP3.

On the other side of the equation, the massive 200,000 song library, ostensibly representing the crown jewels of the big five record labels, fits nicely on one third of a single Xserve RAID box.

So, looked at with a hand on the cynical stick, you can put 7,500 songs in your pocket... for the cost of half a Honda, or you could fit the whole collection in to 1U (3 inches) of rack space for half the cost of a typical San Francisco house (or a couple beautiful homes in Pittsburgh).

It reminds me of the pre-CD era Adobe Font Folio that service bureaus could buy for $30,000 and they'd throw the hard drive in for free! I wonder if they'll have a deal where where when you buy more than $3,000 at the Apple Music Store you get a free iPod to put the music in?

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After a brief discussion of Poe's "The Raven" in Game Design today, discussing how the raven represents a manefestation of the linear passage of time, I started thinking: Is the They Might Be Giants song "Older" really a reinterpretation of The Raven?

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Digital rights management (DRM), when applied to music, makes no logical sense for at least the next decade.

When dealing with the medium of audio (music), where it is assured that new releases will continue to be made available on compact discs for at least the next decade due to the embedded market of CD players, embedding DRM protections into digitally downloaded songs will do absolutely nothing to decrease unauthorized copying and playing of those songs.

The reasoning goes like this: A new song or album is released both online in DRM form, and on compact disc. Even if 80% of the purchases are of the online DRM file (thinking to how the world might be in 15 years, but not as it is today, where online downloads reflect about 0.05% of an album's sales), even if 8 of 10 buyers have 'inert' versions of the song that can't be played anywhere but on devices they own, the other 20% can still rip an mp3 (or aac, or ogg) of the song, and inject it into the sea of P2P file sharing spheres.

To look at it another way, if there was an extremely virulent disease, (music just wants to propagate, after all) and 50,000 people were infected with it (people buying an even moderately popular album) but DRM acted as a prophylactic, preventing 40,000 of those buyers (or 25 of those buyers, using today's ratio) from spitting into the well, but the other 10,000 (49,975) buyers are still free to do so, anyone who wants to get sick can still drink from the well.

DRM's success is contingent on its universality. If a single unprotected digital source is available to the public, then getting an unprotected mp3 into the P2P world is trivial.

Look to DVDs for a more successful example of DRM. True, they can't prevent you from sharing your DVD with others (yet, though it's been tried (ahem *DivX* (I mean the other DivX))), but it's more convoluted (and less DMCA-friendly) to encode or copy an encrypted DVD.

The point here is that new digital music download services, and I'm specifically talking about Apple's new venture, have no need for DRMs, because they still represent the minority distribution channel.

DRM's useful as a tool of restriction only if its use stops someone from getting the file by other means, but DRM-ing songs sold online won't stem the flow of ripped mp3s. that won't happen until every CD player is replaced by one with DRM technology in it, or at least as many as are needed before the labels see it as more profitable to stop making 'open' CDs, forcing people to buy new players.

That transition hasn't even begun, and if the transition from LP and cassette to compact disc is any guide, it'll take at least 15 years from beginning to end.

Most importantly, until that end is reached, and the last 'open' CD is pressed, applying DRM technology to purchased digital downloads does everything to hamper fair consumer use, while providing no benefit to the music publisher.

With 5 days before Apple's unveiling of 'the next big thing' in music, let's hope they're smart enough to realize this, and even better, smart enough to have convinced the major labels as well.

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Looks like you can now buy replacement iPod batteries along with installation instruction. Just the thing for a year-old iPod with waning battery capacity.

Very cool. Damn them for making a $50 product that may be a viable alternative to purchasing one of the new iPods to be released in a week.

Now that this nut has been cracked though, I suppose it's only a matter of time before someone comes out with higher-capacity batteries, possibly with a new backplate, so a 10-gig iPod could have a 30-hour battery that's slightly thicker, with a 20-gig iPod's backplate to accomodate the additional thickness. Triple battery life would be far more useful to me than double the song capacity...

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Back in Pittsburgh, after three weeks away in various corners in and outside of our nation.

In a meeting with my project team yesterday, Liya told us she had a hard out at 6:30 because she needed to get a good spot for the They Might Be Giants concert.

"Oh, where are they playing?" I asked, miffed that I wasn't aware back when tickets must have gone on sale.

"They're playing on the Cut [one of the two lawns that form the backbone of the CMU campus]. It's free. Why, do you know them?"

Hah. Know them... Am I living in a bubble? In Kevinland, everybody knows TMBG.

So off I went. Rachel had a play to go to at 8, but was going to try and come for the beginning of the 7pm concert. As it turned out, they moved the stage indoors, into the gym, for fear of rain, so there were lines and such, with enrolled students getting priority, though I think everyone got in. As it turned out, Rachel didn't go because by the time all was said and done it was almost time for her to leave for the play anyhow, and as it turned out there was a warm-up band that played for an hour first, so TMBG didn't hit the stage until 8:30 anyhow.

Oh, and when I say gym, I don't mean Pauley Pavilion or Haas Stadium, with seating for 12,000. I mean three basketball courts side by side. No bleachers, no terraces, just a big honkin' stage that took up one corner of a building where acoustics, if they were considered at all during the design process, were made extra-echoey, as if to pump up the spirits of a practicing basketball team by making them sound like five teams.

TMBG was the perfect band to play this gig. And we were the perfect crowd to see it. People in front of me and in back of me, waiting in line to get in, were practicing their bouncing. If you love TMBG, then you know what I mean.

Okay, so I was bad and bootlegged a little. First off, so you know I'm not kidding about the acoustics (though admittedly I was using my camera's audio record, so high fidelity isn't its primary feature either).

The show was a lot of fun, though I had to leave about 2/3rds of the way through. I was about 40 feet from the band, which I had to remind myself would be absolutely amazing if they were playing, for example, at Shoreline, or any mainstream venue. At 40 feet they're just some talented guys from New York, which is exactly the kind of image they want to express, so that all works.

Nostalgia pang, wishing I was in San Francisco, when they burst in to their first song: Istanbul (not Constantinople). Oh how I wished I had seven of my Irish friends in the room. There was plenty of room in the back for a polka (oh, a whole 200 feet from the stage) and it was all I could do to not ghost seven partners right then and there. Considering the aforementioned bouncing audience, I don't think anyone would have noticed. Ammy, you were missed.

Oh, set list... I don't remember the order, except for the first song, but they played:

• Istanbul
• Birdhouse in Your Soul
• Older
• Doctor Worm
• Particle Man (yay!!)
• Cyclops Rock
• Why Does The Sun Shine?
• Bangs
• James K. Polk
• Fingertips (yay!)
• She's Actual Size (thought of Benjy)
• SuperTaster (hadn't heard that one before)
• Obligatory Drum Solo Requests
• ...and more

Which reminds me... while waiting in line for the show, I was IMing Benjy (from the sidekick), telling him (the biggest TMBG fan I know) about the surprise free concert. He told me about how TBMG was coming to the Bay Area and he bought three tickets for $90 and change. Then he told me about how TMBG promised that each of their bay area concerts would be different. It didn't dawn in me for a few minutes that he bought three tickets for himself for the three different shows. Truly a big fan. I'm sure he won't be disappointed.

Anyhow, I've got work to keep my up all night for the next four days, so I should get back to it. So much for a 'micro-review.'

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Kerry and I saw Tori Amos in concert last night, and the performance was fantastic.

After acclimating myself to the fact that I was about eight years older than the average audience member, and that smoking appeared to be legal inside the auditorium, we sat down and enjoyed a truly impressive show.

Held on the campus of Duquesne ('Doo-caine') University, there were probably fewer than 3000 people in a half basketball arena where they clearly stuffed in Tori's stage and lighting grand enough for a crowd five times that size.

The show was all about the music. Bassist and drummer in the rear corners, and Tori nestled between a full grand piano and a stack of synth keyboards on the other side, I don't see how people on the ground seats off to the side could see her through the instrument racks, but second row balcony worked very nicely.

The lighting for this show was spectacular. Tori's all about communicating emotion through song, and light effects were used to augment the emotion. Rich colors, patterns that silhouetted each head in the audience giving them golden halos, and multi-spectrum spotlights turned the hundred-foot high cube of smokey air into a visual sensorium that James Turrell would have been proud of.

Each song went the same way. Notes would start, small cheers would rise, the song would wander to the main theme when it became clear to the rest of the crowd which song it was, and the cheering would rise threefold, then die down as people just watched, rapt.

The ground floor folks were standing in front of their seats the whole show, just watching. Entranced.

Tori's a flirt, but didn't talk much. She's inches away from becoming a Diva if she wanted to and she knows it, but she holds it in check. Still, this didn't stop her from performing a beautiful solo of Madonna's "Live to Tell" that showed that even new, voice-trained Madonna can't hold a candle to Tori's raw talent.

In short, I really enjoyed this concert. I wasn't star-struck, but it was a great emotional experience. Somewhere between Ani DiFranco and Enya, every song floated with no-holds-barred emotion. I saw an interview with Janeane Garafolo on Conan O'Brien the other month, where she complained that artist are realizing that sex can substitute for talent, and there's a direct relationship between the lack of clothes and the lack of talent in most pop stars today. All I can say is seeing Tori powerfully and expertly playing a Grand with one hand, an synth behind her with the other, and singing in perfectly pure tones with a big smile on her face, she's the real deal. Just amazing pure talent.

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(or "I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves...")

I'm beginning to think that I always have a song going on in my head. True, it's not always at the forefront, but I'm convinced that a part of my head is always singing along to something. This morning, walking tot he bus stop, I noticed my iPod was on zero bars of juice, and I hoped I could at least get a few bars of music, so I could have a song in my head then thought, wait. I don't have one already? And of course I did. I just wanted something else.

I want to write a program, or otherwise find some non-cyclic reminder that asks me what my 'currently playing' song is several times a day. I want to see whether I'm ever without song, and what kinds of music my inner DJ spins for me over the course of days and weeks.

Maybe if you send me email asking me "what are you listening to right now?" I'll reply, and then post the log with times after a day or two of responses.

Just to get the ball rolling, it's 2:29am, and my inner DJ is playing "Haunting Me" by Stabbing Westward.

Somehow that just fits...

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Short story: The music industry has been found guilty of fixing prices of CDs, tapes, and records between 1995 and 2000. If you purchased any of these during that period, you're entitled to money back. The amount of the settlement depends on how many people file claims, but should be between $5 and $20.

Want yours? Go to the settlement site and fill out your online claim form before March 3rd. You don't need receipts; you just need to assert that you made a purchase in that time window (and who hasn't?).

I'd suggest using the money to buy mp3s from small, friendly labels, but that's just me.

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Wow. After a 12 year hiatus, it looks like Men Without Hats just put a new album to the presses, for sale online later this month, and in the stores this Spring.

I find it funny because I thought today "I wonder whatever happened to Men Without Hats?" (probably the only person on the planet today to think that) and decided to find out. In other news, they're looking for two new band members for live shows, so if you've always dreamed of being in a new-wave '80s band, it's not too late.

Oh, and I should note that ths post prompted me to create a new topic category: only I care.

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(If you're looking for the piece on my mom's chorus and the singing holiday cards, click here.)

So this is the last week before finals. Of course, I only have one final exam. The rest of my work is finishing final projects for my courses. On Wednesday our final report is due in HCI Methods class, worth nearly a quarter of my grade, to be followed next Monday by the course final, which will be worth more than a quarter of my grade.

On Thursday I'm presenting my final project for Computer Music, a set of code (written in at least three languages) which takes in a logfile and outputs music. I'll be writing up more about this once the project is done, but it's pretty cool.

Later on Thursday I'm turning in my notebook for Communication design Fundamentals (damn I keep wishing I'd posted a lot of the work I've done in these classes as I went along. Just too busy, and now's no exception, but soon I will have a lot more time...), a notebook showing my creative process for each of the assignments I've done over the course of the semester.

Monday the 9th is the aforementioned Methods final, and the following Tuesday and Thursday are presentations for our interactive programming final projects; in my case that's a Director project along similar lines to the computer music project: visual and aural representation of a logfile for easy cognition, only this time augmenting the sounds with some kinetic typography and realtime controls.

The long and short of it is that I'm insanely busy, but just for the next week and a half. Oh, and I'm coming back to the Bay Area for Winter break on December 12th.

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(Executive summary: Internationally renowned women's chorus (and my mom) sings holiday greetings to the persons of your choosing, anywhere in the world, for $7-10)

I probably don't post about my family as much as I ought to, and I keep meaning to write about how proud I am of my sister for becoming a foster parent this year, or the rest of my family for their wide-reaching accomplishments, but today I'm writing to tell you how proud I am of my mom, and to let you know about a really cool gift you can get for your loved ones. Yes, this is a plug, but it's a really worthwhile one. If you think so too, I hope that you'll tell your family and friends, and/or post it on your own weblog. These nice folks deserve all the exposure they can get.

My mom's a member of the Verdugo Hills Showtime Chorus, a member chorus of Sweet Adelines International. Along with about a hundred other accomplished vocalists in her chorus, she regularly performs in large competitions. I had the privilidge of hearing them perform at the Buckeye Invitational competition in Columbus, Ohio last August, where they swept all the award categories. They're really good.

Okay Kevin, cut to the chase:

For the past several years, every holiday season, the girls have done singing holiday cards. You give them the name and phone number of the person you want to serenade, and the best time to call, and on December 14th they'll call that person up, anywhere in the world, home, cellphone, whatever, and they'll sing your choice of one of ten holiday songs (repertoire includes Silent Night, Jingle Bell Rock, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, the Hanukkah song, and others listed on the order page). No recordings, no canned anything. The real deal.

The lowdown: Twenty-five singers performing live in four-part harmony (barbershop style): tenor, lead, baritone and base, singing specifically to your recipient. People really love it. It has a very personal touch, and won't be a throwaway gift that'll gather dust in the closet, but a memory that they'll keep with them.

So how much does it cost? Just $7. Less than you'd spend on a doohicky they'd never use. If your recipient is outside of Southern California, it's just $8 (long distance charges included in the price). International is only $10.

Renting a philharmonic orchestra costs $70,000 a day, so having a chorus of highly talented singers spreading holiday cheer for one ten-thousandth of that is quite a deal!

I recommend ordering early. The order deadline is December 11th, as long as they don't fill up before then. If they get enough interest, they may add have a second day, but there's no guarantee.

So that's my plug. They're really great folks, and their specialty is spreading holiday cheer, and they even accept PayPal. I'll be giving singing holiday cards to a slew of my friends this year. Also, they have no advertising budget, so this is all spread word of mouth. If you agree that this is a cool gift, please pass this permalink along to family and friends (weblogs, etc), as my testimonial gives a lot more detail about the service than their order page provides.

Happy Holidays!

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Hey y'all! Continuing in the three-year-old thread of writing bots for AOL Instant Messenger, I've written an applescript interface between AIM and iTunes.

While offices can use it to let anyone at any desk control the office iTunes jukebox, and stores can use it to control their music from computers in the front of the store, I wrote it so I could control my stereo from my couch, using my hiptop's AIM client.

Anyhow, it's getting pretty polished and I'd like to know if any folks out there use AIM and use iTunes, and would be interested in doing a little usability testing and QA on it before I release the first full version next week.

Interested, or know someone who is? Drop me a line!

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On one hand, I'm stressed because I didn't get to sleep until 4am, and had to get up at 7:15am for class this morning. I have work due in three classes that I need to get done by the end of the day (Communication Design Fundamentals, Computer Music, and HCI Methods) along with 7 hours of class. Ugh. I just want today to be both over and done with. Actually, I'm pretty excited about the Computer Music project. It's my final project for the class (an interim report is due today), and as soon as I foist off today's shackle, I'll talk about it on here. It's only fitting: in a roundabout way, you're all a part of it.

Helping me get through the day (in addition to the anticipation of new powerbooks tomorrow) is this which, at this moment, is here.

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Like the ultimate Jewish dilemma (see above re hammy part), I just got a spam from an artist who's composed his own 'inspired by Lord of the Rings' soundtrack, and it's available on mp3.com. I don't know whether to be happy about the distribution of small, unlabeled artists, or to be annoyed by the spam. I think I'll do both.

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So as I've been mentioning, the air's been getting colder, and along with that, it's been getting drier and windier. No biggie, a fine chance to enjoy my wool overcoat while thinking that soon I should shop for a good winter jacket. I'm thinking along the lines of REI, except the nearest store is 5 hours away, but that kind of thing. Something lightweight but good down to 0 degrees. You know, leveraging the space-age fabrics we invented over the last 30 years instead of making jetpacks and helicars.

But I digress...

What I meant to post about was the effect this weather is having on my music listening. No, no. This isn't some monotribe about listening to "Winter Kills" on endless repeat or anything. It's all about the static.

So I use my iPod all the time, putting it in my pocket, with a ling headphone cord stretching from there to the in-ear Sony earbuds I use. These headphones are great. They block a lot of external noise, have great fidelity, and with three different sized sets of plugs to choose from, they don't hurt your (err, my) ears with prolonged use. The in-ear part is all rubber, and the only but of metal is on the outside, where it doesn't touch the skin at all.

Herein lies the problem...

It seems that with the dry, cold wind whipping along the headphone cord between pocket and ear, it builds up quite an electrical charge (and I'm sure the 5400rpm drive inside the iPod probably isn't helping much either). Something about the way the headphones are made seems to necessitate that the charge is not balanced between the two earbuds. so the charge builds up until, after about seven seconds, click-ow! a tiny spark leaps around from the metal bit on the earbud, questing for something grounded, until it finds my ear, two millimeters away.

Both ears...

...at the same time...

...every seven seconds.

It only happens when I'm walking outside in the cold and wind, and the clicks are just annoying enough to be annoying, but not tear-it-out-of-my-ear-and-kill-it annoying. Personally, I'm just wondering how this kind of thing makes it past testing.

So now it looks like I'll have to turn to an alternate set of headphones, depending on the weather, or tape tinfoil from the earbud to my ear, so that the current flows cleanly, instead of arcing periodically.

In effect, I need to ground myself for listening to electric music...

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Spoiler Warning: If you haven't seen this week's Buffy and plan to, then read no further!

Okay, now for the rest of you... If you did watch Buffy, and you enjoyed it as much as I did, (and there really was so much to enjoy this week!) and you were geek enough to download the Once More With Feeling mp3s floating around last November, and buy the OMWF Soundtrack this month, then you're probably lusting for Selfless's two OMWF bonus tracks.

You know I think too much, and I don't really know how Joss would feel about posting the MP3s but, since the're taken straight off the airwave broadcast, hopefully UPN and Mutant Enemy won't mind too much (note to Joss: Look how much I love your work). Just promise that, if and when these tracks are available commercially, you'll buy the album, just like we all bought OMWF when it came out.

He Got the Mustard In.mp3

I'll Be Missus.mp3

Oh, and if you want to link to these files, please link to this post, instead of directly to the files.

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Props to Robert for coming through with today's Buffy Tidbit: Apparently, for those too impatient to wait three years for Season Six to come out on DVD, you can plug that burning hole in your pocket and bid for a few rare DVD copies of "Once More, With Feeling" on eBay.

It seems that (quite rightly) Joss has chosen this episode as one of the two each series is permitted to send out to TV notables, hoping for Emmy nominations. As a result, hundreds of copies are out there, and naturally some of them have made their way to the common market.

On a parallel tangent, I've been TiVo-ing the late night and early morning reruns of Mad About You. I've got a jonesing to catch "Met Someone," the flashback episode where Paul and Jamie meet for the first time. Checking out the schedule of shows for the next two weeks, I came across another M.A.Y. episode entitled "Once More, With Feeling." Is this a trend, or an homage?

PS: for those non-Buffy fans out there, give it a try. You've probably noticed that your friends who rave about Buffy aren't those who you'd think would go for cheezy stupid TV like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and you're right, they don't. The show's a wonder, and I really truly hope OMWF gets an Emmy because honestly, it so richly deserves it.

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Okay, follow me on this one, this is great:

One of the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA, passed into law in 1998 as house resolution 2281) is that not only is it illegal to circumvent content-protection schemes (for music, CDs, DVDs, anything) but it's also illegal to distribute such circumventions, even if the circumvention mechanism in question can be used for legal purposes, such as making a personal backup of a piece of software or encoding a CD to mp3 to listen on your portable player.

The most famous test case for this was regarding DeCSS, a small software app that allowed people to copy and decrypt DVD movies. Within weeks of the software coming out, the developer was sued, and sites hosting the software were ordered to remove or face prosecution.

The most notable site refusing to remove the program was the hacker site 2600. 2600 was sued by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) where the judge found in favor of the plaintiff, and 2600 lost [pdf]. To be clear, they were breaking the law because they were, through dissemination of information, enabling people to circumvent a content-protection scheme.

In a similar case, a Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, was detained while attending a trade show in the United States because of his participation in creating a program that circumvented Adobe's content copy-protection scheme.

After Adobe customers staged significant protests at Adobe's San Jose headquarters, Adobe asked that the charges against Sklyarov be dropped. Since it was a criminal matter, not a civil matter, Federal prosecutors had the option to continue with the charges against Sklyarov if they so chose. As of May 8th, a federal judge has declared that the law is constitutional, and that Sklyarov and his company must still stand trial to determine if they violated it.

...

A few months ago, Sony started manufacturing audio discs with a copy-protection scheme which inhibited their being ripped into MP3s by making them incompatible with the Audio CD and Hybrid CD formats in such a way that most audio CD players could read them, but CD-ROM drives could not. (Pioneer, the developer of the CD format, claims that Sony can't call them 'Audio CDs' because they don't conform to the standard for that designation.)

The protection system works by making a 'hybrid CD' that looks like it contains both an audio session (with the music tracks) and a data session. While an audio CD player ignores the data portion entirely, a CD-ROM drive will check the data session on mounting the disc, to determine what it should do with that data. On Sony's disc, they place corrupt header data on that session, so that the CD-ROM drive rejects the disc, audio tracks and all, and refuses to mount it.

Some smart folks figured out that this was how Sony managed their trick, and they scribbled over the data session portion of the disc with a black marker. The data portion is visible as the matte ring around the edge of the CD, while the audio tracks make up the matte circle from the inner edge to nearly the outer edge of the CD.

Covering the data track prevents it from being read in the first place, and thus the CD-ROM drive sees a simple audio CD, and operates normally.

Okay, well and good. Except that by the letter of the DMCA, this is a circumvention mechanism and it is therefore illegal to make this modification to the media you purchased. Further, disseminating instructions on how to circumvent the copy-protection mechanism is also a criminal violation of the DMCA.

So yesterday CNN publishes a story about the circumvention technique, spelling out in the introductory paragraph exactly how to defeat Sony's copy protection mechanism.

According to the DCMA, ratified by Congress and upheld by the federal courts, CNN appears to be in violation of the law, and should face criminal prosecution (as should I for this very post).

It's irrelevant that Sony might not want to press charges against CNN. The federal government's refusal to grant Adobe's request to drop the charges against Sklyarov demonstrates that, as a criminal matter, the decision on whether to prosecute doesn't lie solely with the alleged victim.

The trouble is that the only person who is helped by this prosecution is the consumer. The entertainment industry would rather not have this trial come to court for fear it would expose the DMCA's protections as going beyond reason and restricting a free press. CNN would rather not get prosecuted. Actually, I hope I'm wrong and CNN would welcome the constitutional challenge, but with so many media outlets being owned by entertainment corporations in favor of the DMCA, it's questionable how likely CNN, or other sizable media outlets would be to test this case. A smaller outlet probably wouldn't want to risk the legal consequences of losing.

It's important to realize that bringing CNN to court over its story sounds stupid and childish, and it absolutely is. sadly, it's what the DMCA demands, and I dearly, dearly hope that it happens to show that the copy-protection-protection laws in the DMCA go far beyond what is reasonable for the protections they seek to provide, and that this case may be the method for stopping the next Sklyarov, or any person simply wanting an mp3 of the album for which they've purchased an individual license.

I'm sending out a few emails tonight. Further news will follow if any of the people in positions to do something about this get back to me...

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So I saw it again (already) and I was able to focus on some of the details.

This film is so interesting because it's so deep and shallow at the same time. I'm still not ready to write my full review, I want a little more distance, but I do want to express astoundment at exactly how rich the environments are in Clones, and how stunning it is that the foreground action is so stilted.

For someone who styles himself as a storyteller above all, George Lucas simply doesn't create a compelling story. As I said before, talking about Phantom Menace, there's no anchor. There's no character you cling to and identify with, and hope good things for. This is a movie about other people, and it's really hard to care about them.

That said, the movie's a real tour-de-force visually. That and there are a couple commercials for C3PO and R2-D2, and one for Jar-jar thrown in.

Slight spoiler kvetch

I've got a long list of kvetches, but I'll sit on them for a while...

On second thought, do you even care? I'm starting to realize that everyone and their dog writing reviews about Star Wars movies is a little like telling everyone exactly what you were doing when an earthquake hit. If we've all been there, how interested are we in everyone else's gripes? Well, I'm interested in yours, so have at you.

(It's probably best to assume that the comments thread for this post will have spoilers, so you've been warned...)

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MSN: Point: Global CD revenues fall another 5% in 2001 due to music piracy.

Blogaritaville: Counterpoint: Music labels have increased the average price of a CD by 16% in the last five years, despite a 60% drop in fabrication costs.

The IPFA's analysis of international 2001 music sales places blame squarely on piracy, despite a lack of a geographic correlation between sales drops and internet access (the UK's music sales increased this year, and the US's music sales fell less than the international average, despite a nationwide recession).

Also, they point out that sales of CD singles dropped by 16% while ignoring the fact that the number of CD-single titles published in 2001 dropped by a greater percentage, as record labels try to drive people to buying full albums.

Unlike entertainment industries, consumers don't have a united voice, and as a result the media reports whatever the PACs and consortiums feed them.

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So I spent the evening (and, err, morning) compiling a CD.

The MetaFilter Cd Swap project is a list of a few hundred MetaFilter readers who are making custom mix CDs and sending copies to the five randomly-selected people from the list that the MeFiBot spits out at them.

I got my first CD yesterday, and it was such a kick that I got into gear to make mine. Here's the Album cover I made for mine, with the track listings sorted into the album's three distinct flavors.

Anyhow, I'd like to share with all of you, and so I'm opening up my meager home bandwidth to make a shoutcast streaming MP3 server playing the CD on infinite loop.

My server's playing at a paltry 40Kbits (128Kbits is CD quality). At that rate my bandwidth will support three simultaneous listeners. Heck, better three than none. have at it! Click here to listen to the CD in streaming mp3 and be sure to comment to tell me if it's working for you or not!

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Roger Ebert posted a great article on upcoming 'copy-protected' Audio CDs that, among other things, won't play on Macs or DVD players.

It got me thinking about a world where music was able to reach every corner of the world without people having to buy it, where they could experience new music they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. Oh yeah, it's called radio, and the labels love it to death. It's how they make their stars.

Radio listening at work has been dropping in favor of internet streams and personal music collections on CD or MP3 for a decade. As digital streams and MP3-CDs continue their inroads into car stereos, I wonder when the labels will realize that radio is no longer the best way to publicize their artists, and that to push awareness of new music to those with the financial resources to buy new albums, they'll have to turn to the net, even if they can't instantly monetize it.

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I get songs stuck in my head all the time. Heck, I've been known to get entire soundtracks stuck in there.

Still, my greatest torture came today when songs collided and all that would run through my head this morning was this.

The first part, which I really like, is Dido's Hunter (thanks, Em, for turning me on to this. It seems particularly appropriate to my mindset at the moment). The second comes from the most infectuous flash ever (work safe, but with sound).

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According to CNN, record companies are doing away with the single, in order to get people to buy full albums instead.

This comes at the same time that they complain so loudly about music piracy. Here's a quiz: Do you think eliminating singles is going to make the listener (A) More Likely or (B) Less Likely to obtain the song they want in a way that gives money to the record label?

Personally, I think this is a long-term ploy to increase piracy and decrease record label revenues so the RIAA can have some teeth when it tries to show Congress that music piracy is killing their industry.

It reminds me of when my sister used to bite her arm and then run to mom, show her the teeth marks and tell her I did it. Funny how that stopped working when I lost my front two baby teeth and she kept trying it...

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I'm a packrat. Given the options of tossing junk or storing it in a box or closet on the off chance that I might need it one day, I almost always opt for the save. Mostly it's a fear of needing something a month, year, or decade down the line, and the possibility of frustration, remembering having tossed it out.

It's funny, because I let the future possibility of discomfort lead me to store telephone records from 1994 and peripherals two technological generations removed from my current computer (make that three. I found my thunderscan and macrecorder in a Mac Plus carrying case yesterday, (looking for something else non-tech, and very much wanted, which, ironically, I seem to have lost (but not thrown out. you don't throw out your favorite bedouin cloak you got in Morocco three years ago, but I digress.))).

Anyhow, I save and store to prevent the possibility of future frustration, yet I ignore the fact that dedicating two closets to boxes of what, until I have a sudden need for it, is crap, carries with its own discomfort, a discomfort that is certain, and is there every day. (Anyone watch Friends last week?)

Anyhow, with the prospect of moving, either across town or across the country, I'm finally consolidating and purging. 95% of what I use on a weekly or monthly basis represents only about 50% of my stuff, and I'd like to see how much of the remaining 50% I can find permanent homes for, be it gifting to friends, donating to charaties, setting out on the curb, or simply tossing.

The first thing I'm doing is consolidating my music. I'm MP3 encoding every CD I own, no matter how often or rarely I listen to it (I'm over halfway through, and the number looks to be around 240 discs). Those that I don't listen to often I'm going to burn to MP3 CD (so, 12 CDs on a single CD-R). Actually, I'm going to burn all the CDs onto MP3 CD-R, for archival purposes (yes, irony noted. Thanks.) and then get rid of the rest of the bulk. I rarely use single CDs anyhow. somethng about picking one artist that I want to listen to for an hour... I love surprises that come from the random shuffle of what will be when I'm finished encoding, a library of 3500 songs. I also like being able to carry that literal 9 days of music around in a single 12-cd case, or about a third of it in my iPod.

The next job is to get rid of all those 'old tech' audio CDs, and officially begin to lighten my worldly load.

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I'm listening to my iPod on the train, and "Under Your Spell" came on (the 'Tara and Willow get it on' song from Buffy: The Musical). It took me a second to realize, but for some reason the song was playing at half speed. It sounded completely normal, only it sounded like it was being sung by a drag queen with a drawl. Strange, that.

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Cake is playing a webcast concert in Yahoo's FinanceVision studios, which are literally two floors directly below my cube here.

As Dinah so eloquently put it, "You've got Cake under your butt!"

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Kudos to How Stuff Works for a timely, useful, and informative article about Digital Satellite Radio (aka XM-band radio).

Just like the net is starting to move from the ever-weakening advertising model into subscription services (Salon, Yahoo! and Slashdot are prime examples), mainstream media is following suit. HBO is a purveyor of fine serial content instead of just movies, people pay monthly fees to ditch commercials via TiVo, and streaming ad-free audio in your car is available now, and will probably be everywhere in the next 18 months, with low hardware costs, designed to lure you into the $9.95 monthly fees.

Anyhow, an interesting article. Hope you enjoy it, and that your Thanksgivings are going well!

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For those of you who missed it, heard from raving fans after the fact, or who just want to see it again, don't forget that Buffy: The Musical is airing again tonight (Friday) at 8 on UPN.

I'm setting up my VCR to make a nice, clean tape of it, and I'm setting it to record Iron Chef USA immediately following, just for the heck of it (and to study).

After watching, don't forget to swing back online to pick up the MP3s and lyrics of all the songs, so you can get them stuck in your head, possibly helping you to deal with relatives next week.

(For those curious, four days of no-Buffy-listening has finally succeeded in getting the songs out of my head, but it did take four days. I'm driving to Lake Tahoe this morning, and I'm pretty sure I'll eventually resort to listening to it on the drive up, as I'm going alone.)

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Check it out; Michael Jackson is actually Skeletor!

For a nice side-by-side comparison, check Davezilla's post.

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Experiment for the week: See how many days of adamantly not listening to the soundtrack for Buffy: The Musical it takes before the songs stop running through my head. This is actually starting to get annoying...

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Buffy The Musical Songs in MP3

There is a god.

Updated link.

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Buffy: The Musical was amazing. Joss Whedon wrote all the songs himself, and it covered so many Broadway styles from ragtime through swing, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s (though not much 90s), with what I perceived to be stylistic nods to Les Miz and Into The Woods, and Rent, as well as several others.

An excellently well told story and, unlike so many other 'aberration-style' episodes from other shows ('a very special Blossom', etc.) this one was actually a highly pivotal arc episode, setting the path for huge changes for nearly every person in the show.

After last season's 'Body' episode going without so much as an Emmy nomination, I don't have any expectations, but I do have high hopes for this one come next September. It seems that once a season Joss creates an absolutely amazing work ("Becoming - Part II", "Hush", "Body" and now "Once More, with Feeling").

It just keeps getting better.

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New music video: Cool weird or freaky weird?

You decide.

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I've been thinking about the interesting mix of functionality credits and deficits of the iPod, and I knew there was something off regarding the use models people follow and this device meant to facilitate them. I think I just figured out what the problem is:

The iPod lets you store 1,000 songs. That's 4,000 minutes, 66 hours, or 2.7 solid days of uninterrupted, unrepeated music. The battery lasts for 10 hours. As sold, the iPod can only be recharged by connecting the firewire cable to your computer, and incidentally, your music collection. An AC adapter, presumably for travel yet unusable on an airplane, costs $50 and takes up approximately as much space as the iPod itself. (Can you say 'road trip'? The iPod can't, but that's beside the point.) [My bad. the iPod does come with an AC adapter. Extra adapters are $50. -KF]

So, in the ordinary use case, a person synchronizes all 4.6 gigs of their music to the iPod, but can only listen to around 10% of it before having to plug the device back in to the computer to recharge, at the same time giving it access to the computer's master music collection again.

Essentially there are only three rationale for the extra 90% of the storage space. First, if you want to listen to specific songs or albums in the ten hours, but you don't know what they are when you're at the computer. Second, if you're using the iPod as a portable storage device in order to copy data to other computers, and the ability to play the extra music files is superfluous. Third, you use the adapter 9 times for every one time you plug your iPod into your Mac.

While it's an attractive idea to have all of your songs in your pocket/hand/bag/jacket, for that moment when you have the inspiration to listen to that one specific song, I have to speak up as a member of the crowd that's big on genre playlists and random shuffle within them.

To me (and your mile