Blog Archive: January 2018
SotD: White Flag
Here we have a sweet sad love song by Dido (full name Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong) who was born in 1971 and is thus younger than many other Songs of the Day. It was a huge hit, hardly obscure (the album Life For Rent sold 10+ million copies). Its OK to be mainstream sometimes, and White Flag is more than OK, its brilliant. An Australian story A dozen years ago we went on a camping trip to the southeast corner of Australia with a dozen or more people, including a few kids. One evening, the little ones were asleep and we were sitting around the fire enjoying a few well-earned drinks when the partys three pre-teen girls wandered in out of the dark and said theyd been working on a song.
More network monitoring issues
Into the office today to find a strange looking graph of the network link stats: What went wrong there? It started at midnight, the time when my log files wrap round, so it seems reasonable to think that I broke something in my updates. But no, the log files looked normal. It took me quite some while to realize that this is the way it should look: connectivity 5 at all times, and packet loss 0. It just looked so strange. So what changed?
SotD: If I Had a Rocket Launcher
Bruce Cockburn is sufficiently Canadian that his name may ring no bells. But I think If I Had a Rocket Launcher made a few waves back in the day and may jog a memory. Hes an interesting guy, and this is a nice, lilting melodic song about wanting to kill people. Cockburn (rhymes with flow-burn ) is Christian, political, a dazzling (mostly acoustic) guitarist, and a decent singer and songwriter, with a pleasing throaty baritone. Hes been doing it for a long time; when I was the part-time University stage manager forty years ago, I put him on several times, and every show was a highlight.
Podcast: The Man Who Sold the Moon, Part 03
Here’s part three of my reading (MP3) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015’s Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It’s my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my... more
More network monitoring
Yesterday's network monitoring experiments took a while to show results: I needed to gather the statistics. This morning things looked better, but it became clear that there was still significant packet drop, and that 5% steps just didn't cut it. So I did a bit of tuningping -c 100 instead of ping -c 20and came up with some graphs that looked a lot more reliable: But why so much packet loss (scale on the right)? It goes up to 10%! That should cripple the link, but in fact it wasn't that bad.
Rebooting
First thing this morning was to reboot eureka, which had been down for one of the longest periods ever. Things came back pretty quickly, sort of: connecting to the National Broadband Network failed first time round, and I had to stop and restart dhclient. This has nothing to do with yesterday's caching issues: this was the same interface and thus the same MAC address. And then officephone.lemis.com, my VoIP ATA, couldn't connect. Examination showed it sending registration packets to the SIP server, but getting no reply. Dammit, why do these things happen when I have other things to do? Spent a lot of time trying to contact the server.
SotD: Canones Diversi
Almost a month in, and we havent had a visit with J.S. Bach yet. Long past time, and well be back a lot too, if this series stretches out much. Were going to start out with minimal Bach; well get around to thunderous Bach, passionate Bach, and show-off Bach in later installments. Today well sample from a small series entitled Canones diversi super Thema Regium, part of a larger work called Musikalisches Opfer, or in English The Musical Offering, composed in 1747, BWV 1079. Today well take on the Canon a 2, per augmentationem, contrario motu and the Fuga canonica in Epidiapente.
More network pain
Why does it take such a long time to download files from German TV stations? In general I can't get more than 500 kB/s, and though it's intended to be viewed online, the speed can't keep up. Today, though, things were much worse. Downloading the Tagesthemen ran at about 30 kB/s, and firefox gleefully told me that it would take 6 hours. Where's the bottleneck? Looking at my network statistics showed a familiar sight: 1517106263 10.1182 4 ftp.netbsd.org # Sun 28 Jan 2018 13:24:23 AEDT 98.832 ms 1517106277 10.7967 4 www # Sun 28 Jan 2018 13:24:37 AEDT 92.621 ms 1517106291 4.23026 4 ftp.netbsd.org # Sun 28 Jan 2018 13:24:51 AEDT 236.392 ms 1517106306 4.5556 4 ftp.netbsd.org # Sun 28 Jan 2018 13:25:06 AEDT 219.510 ms That shows 4 minutes in a row with at ...
SotD: Slavery Days
I sure do love me some reggae; my island-music tastes are mainstream, but once you get past Marley, the names are fading from memories. Maybe I can reverse that a bit. Lets start with Winston Rodney; his first band was Burning Spear, then he just adopted the name for himself. His music is a little deeper, his singing a little edgier, his horn arrangements excellent. Slavery Days has all of those things, and deserves to live forever. When you consider Mr Rodney, you have to take Rastafari (the religion, I mean) into account; hes serious about it. Its a strong flavor in a culture that produced a whole lot of really good music.
SotD: Beck + Call
I run a lot of old music but Im not someone who really thinks it was all better back in the day, or is all trash now. So from time to time, the Song of the Day is going to be something I liked on the car radio while I was driving around today. Today, its Beck + Call by July Talk. Who knows if itll still have listeners decades from now like most of the selections here, or even centuries like some. Who cares? Its a nice tune, neednt hang its head in the current company, and July Talk are hot stuff live.
Im speaking at UCSD on Feb 9!
I’m appearing at UCSD on February 9, with a talk called “Scarcity, Abundance and the Finite Planet: Nothing Exceeds Like Excess,” in which I’ll discuss the potentials for scarcity and abundance — and bright-green vs austere-green futurism — drawing on my novels Walkaway, Makers and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. The talk is... more
SotD: Habanera
The full title is Lamour est un oiseau rebelle ( Loves a rebel bird ), a big soprano aria from Carmen, written by Georges Bizet in 1875. Thats right, an opera! Were into scary territory here, at risk of chasing away followers of this quixotic New Years Resolution. But bear with me, its quite a song. No, Im not really an opera fan. It has problems: pretentiousness, a lot of the music is lame, it encourages a hard vibrato-heavy voice that usually repels me, the male singers bellow, and they care way too much about the costumes. But, I go see them sometimes; Lauren and I subscribed to the Vancouver Opera for a few years, and really enjoyed it.
SotD: I Thank You
Mr Moore and Mr Prater dropped their last names and were big soul stars as Sam & Dave between 1961 and 1981. That kind of music has been pretty far off the charts for a lot of years, although they got some help from the Blues Brothers. Theyve got two or three performances that belong in this series. I think that I Thank You was the first ever soul song that penetrated my consciousness, and is maybe still my favorite. It feels somehow wrong to write about Sam & Dave recordings, because their live performances were essential. They were seriously cool dancers and had the best horn-section orchestration I ever saw.
SotD: The Heart of the Sun
In full, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun by (the very early) Pink Floyd. While Floyd written some beautiful music, if you want something thats new to, well, anyone, you pretty well have to go way back in time to before Dark Side of the Moon. Set the Controls is an easy, pleasing, soaring listen, with or without the help of hallucinogenic drugs. The album version of Set the Controls is unique in that it has input from all five Floyds, notably featuring guitar from both David Gilmour and Syd Barrett. Thats on Floyds second album, Saucerful of Secrets, but I hardly know it because Im a huge fan of the live take on Ummagumma; not surprising since I like live recordings generally.
Valvoline web site pain
Our Holden Commodore has low power steering fluid levelin fact, I could barely find any at all. Problems, or normal leakage over several years? Hard to say, but clearly the first thing to do is to refill and see if it stays that way. Chris Bahlo can sing a song about that with her Toyota Landcruiser, which is old enough to have voted in the last three or four federal elections. She carries fluid with her at all times. But is it the same fluid? She sent me a photo indicating that it was part number 8631 LB8631, though maybe there was a different indication on the other side.
Nvidia responds
Not one, but four messages from Nvidia today. The first two confirmed receipt of the report and that it had been sent to the Linux Support group (why, when they call the driver a Unix driver?) . The third told me: You can submit a linux bug by emailing [email protected] There is more info here: http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/384.111/README/addtlresources.html It seems difficult to get it across that this is a FreeBSD installation. But yes, with some searching, I found the corresponding page for FreeBSD, which told me: If you believe that you have found a bug or have a problem that you need assistance with ...
SotD: Visions of You
Jah Wobble grew up in East London with the Sex-Pistols-to-be, and his handle comes from a drunken Sid Vicious attempting to pronounce his real name (John Wardle). He joined John Lydons post-Pistols Public Image Limited and then formed Invaders of the Heart. Visions of You is the lead-off track on the Invaders Rising Above Bedlam disk, which I often play end-to-end. Its a lightweight pop song with an icy slow-funk background, a real treat for the ears. Wobble is a talented, dub-influenced bass player, and any time youre listening to his music, you want to deploy the biggest speakers you have access to, ideally connected to a whole lot of amplifier wattage.
Reporting the Nvidia bug
Yesterday I got round to entering a bug report on the Nvidia X driver. Normally that's the difficult part. All I need to do is submit it. But how? I've been through this before, most recently yesterday. They don't seem to have a web-facing bug tracking system. OK, the least ridiculous way to submit it appears to be by chat (thus giving an idea how ridiculous the other options are). Where's the chat? It's mentioned here, along with a big, green CHAT NOW button that takes me to a site custhelp.com, which proves to be run by Oracle. OK, worth a try.
SotD: Lust For Life
I suppose that in 2018 Lust For Life is an obscurity, something you might have heard on the radio or in an ad. Thats insane, its obviously one of the great rock songs of all time, and has given Iggy Pop, who co-wrote it with David Bowie, a performance vehicle that hes taken a long, long way. Im a hopeless fan of Iggy Pop. Hes a hardass rocker who never for even one on-stage instant is giving less than 100%. And a fine singer, always in tune. And, go read a few interviews; Iggy is an articulate, well-informed, pleasant dude, not at all full of himself.
My keynote from ConveyUX 2017: I Cant Let You Do That, Dave.
The Internets broken and thats bad news, because everything we do today involves the Internet and everything well do tomorrow will require it. But governments and corporations see the net, variously, as a perfect surveillance tool, a perfect pornography distribution tool, or a perfect video on demand toolnot as the nervous system of the 21st... more
nVidia driver bug report
After searching in vain for an online bug reporting system for the nvidia X driver, I've decided to report it here. nvidia, feel free to contact me and explain where the bug database is really located. Title: nvidia Unix driver loops identifying display Description: The current nvidia Unix driver (version 384.98) identifies certain flat panel displays correctly, but continues to log identification information at the rate of up to one or two times a second. This causes performance degradation. Severity: Moderate. Driver works, but performance is degraded and motion is jerky. Operating system: FreeBSD, though others have reported the same problem with Linux.
Reporting nvidia bugs
I have a regression issue with the nvidia graphics card driver: the current version 384 loops identifying the TV at frequent intervals. I've found a workaround (revert to version 340), and I'd like to submit a bug report, but I can't find out how. I searched the Nvidia web site without success, but Google pointed me at this page. But that's only for people developing software based on the drivers! It states: For end user issues this is not the correct forum. There is http://forums.geforce.com and http://www.nvidia.com/page/support.html.
David Newall visits
David Newall and friend Julianne along to visit this afternoon. It's been over 10 years since I last saw him. Much active discussion about all things technical, including the new TV. David came up with a good way to report bugs about products with no clearly defined bug reporting mechanism: Facebook or Twitter. That sounds interesting. I suppose I should try that. They were also surprisingly interested in my photographic equipment, particularly the field monitor, which I discussed in some detail on 5 December and 10 December: ACM only downloads articles once.
Server down again!
Into the office this morning and found a surprising lack of mail. Where did it get stuck? Connected to the external server and found: === root@www (/dev/pts/0) /home/grog 2 -> date; uptime Sat Jan 20 22:31:38 UTC 2018 10:31PM up 12:27, 1 user, load averages: 0.24, 0.24, 0.25 So the machine had rebooted yesterday evening. Why? /var/log/messages only showed: Jan 20 08:55:08 www qpopper[63737]: Stats: yvonne 0 0 1 1066 180-150-113-90.nbn.mel.aussiebb.net 180.150.113.90 Jan 20 09:00:01 www qpopper[63806]: (v4.1.0) TLSv1/SSLv3 handshake with client at 180-150-113-90.nbn.mel.aussiebb.net (180.150.113.90); new session-id; cipher: AES256-GCM-SHA384 (AES256-GCM-SHA384 TLSv1.2 Kx=RSA Au=RSA Enc=AESGCM(256) Mac=AEAD), 256 bits Jan 20 09:00:05 www qpopper[63806]: Stats: yvonne 1 18788 1 1066 180-150-113-90.nbn.mel.aussiebb.net 180.150.113.90 Jan 20 09:00:10 www qpopper[63808]: Stats: yvonne 0 0 1 1066 180-150-113-90.nbn.mel.aussiebb.net 180.150.113.90 Jan 20 10:05:15 ...
SotD: Cry Me a River
Occasionally, the Song of the Day idea starts with a Greatest-Hits record that has multiple candidates, and I pick based on which turns up the best live video. Todays Greatest Hits are those of Julie London, and it was a tough choice, but what a beautiful piece of singing Cry Me a River is. It was tough because Julie, in my opinion, also owns the best-ever recordings of A Taste of Honey (the Beatles version pretty well sucks, while Martin Denny and Herb Alpert are only pretty good) and also of Light My Fire (the Doors version doesnt suck, but Julie brings a hundred times as much sex which in popular music trumps great instrumental breaks.
Rebooting teevee: finger trouble
The first time I rebooted teevee, I saw, half a second too late: it was eureka, my always up machine! AAARGH! But there was nothing to be done with it. On my way to the office to watch the reboot, I thought of David Newall, who, years ago, once unnecessarily rebooted www.auug.org.au, in the days where the site still meant something. I ensured that wouldn't happen again by renaming the shutdown command to something that wouldn't be chosen by accident: === root@eureka (/dev/pts/5) ~ 4 -> mv /sbin/shutdown /sbin/shutdown-if-you-must As if that wasn't bad enough, the system wouldn't come up again!
nVidia bug cornered
On today with my attempts to stop the nvidia driver from reconnecting to the TV one or two times a second. One of the suggestions I had seen (where? lost the URL) was to revert to an older version of the driver. OK, I can try that. Currently FreeBSD has three versions in the Ports Collection: === root@teevee (/dev/pts/1) ~ 13 -> pkg search nvidia-driver nvidia-driver-384.98 NVidia graphics card binary drivers for hardware OpenGL rendering nvidia-driver-304-304.137 NVidia graphics card binary drivers for hardware OpenGL rendering nvidia-driver-340-340.104 NVidia graphics card binary drivers for hardware OpenGL rendering I had nvidia-driver-384.98 (the latest) installed.
SotD: Israelites
The summer I turned fourteen, Israelites by Desmond Dekker and the Aces was the biggest hit in the world. I thought it was the best song of that summer and maybe the next summer too. Id go to the beach, where everyone had a radio, and as you walked along youd hear Israelites coming at you in super-stereo from a dozen directions; it sounded so great. So, what is it about this song? Maybe the razor-sharp proto-reggae beat, maybe Desmonds virtuoso singing, so deep in the beat hes a rhythm instrument, could be the cool baritone harmonies, or just maybe its a really great tune.
Samyang 135mm F2
What happened was, I stumbled across Why you should own a 135mm F2 lens in DPReview (another Amazon property, hmmm) and boy was it ever convincing, so I clicked over (to Amazon, natch) and picked up the Fujifilm X-mount version. DPReviews piece opens with: Image quality, weight and value for money. Well, two out of three aint bad. Its actually hard to find the lenss home page behind the barrage of reviews and retailers, but I managed. And if youre another click-through-to-Amazon type, here ya go. You gotta respect Samyang for shipping all those mount options: Canon, Canon M, Nikon, Pentax, Sony , Sony E, Fujifilm X, Samsung NX, µ4/3.
NBN: the experts
Yesterday I added a link to the National Broadband Network web site in the outage article. I check all links, of course, but I wasn't prepared for this one: What an advertisement! And what grammar! ACM only downloads articles once.
SotD: Travelin Prayer
In the mid-Seventies, a women we found with a classified ad moved into my student house, and of course brought her record collection. It included something called Cold Spring Harbor by a guy Id never heard of, Billy Joel. We were pretty well a heavy-music joint that didnt listen to fluff without guitar solos, so Billy got no respect then, just like he gets no respect now. But, in among the cheesy ballads there was this song that got way under my skin, and still does: Travelin Prayer. Its great, pretty well flawless. The problem with Billy I earned my living most of my way through university by stage-managing the rock shows the student council put on, and then eventually the classicoids and jazzbos the University booked.
NBN outage follow-up
Call from Will at Aussie Broadband today, following up on my problem report yesterdayafter 24 hours! I would have expected a more timely response, but as it was, of course, the problem went away without help from Aussie or me. Interesting discussion, in which he asked for more information, including MAC address (why?) and confirmation that the interface was configured for autonegotiation. All that comes from the ifconfig output, and of course we were able to confirm that it was correct. He also considered the possibility that the issue was congestion. That's possible, of course, but it would have had to be between the ODU and the POI (National Broadband Network-speak for Outdoor Unit, the antenna on our roof, and Point of Interconnect, where they connect to other networks).
SotD: No Woman, No Cry
Bob Marleys been gone a long time; longer than most people reading this have lived, I bet. But more than most deceased musicians, it feels to me like hes still out there; a quiet dub track woven into the universal quantum background hum. Try to prove me wrong. No Woman, No Cry is a good first entry for reggae in Song of the Day; Warm-sounding warm-heartedness; what could be better in a Northern-hemisphere winter? Reggae, its got this dark sweet warm pulse like molasses for the brain, but its not simple at all. I saw a documentary once about Marley and the Wailers breaking into mainstream music.
Flaky networking
Into the office this morning to find a surprising status on display :0: 1516142279 0 4 ftp.netbsd.org # Wed 17 Jan 2018 09:37:59 AEDT 1516142293 3.33714 4 www # Wed 17 Jan 2018 09:38:13 AEDT 299.658 ms 1516142350 0 2 freefall www.freebsd.de ozlabs.org # Wed 17 Jan 2018 09:39:10 AEDT 1516142353 14.044 5 # Wed 17 Jan 2018 09:39:13 AEDT 71.205 ms 1516142426 18.4199 4 ozlabs.org # Wed 17 Jan 2018 09:40:26 AEDT 54.289 ms 1516142428 4.41454 5 # Wed 17 Jan 2018 09:40:28 AEDT 226.524 ms 1516142522 3.9794 2 www www.freebsd.de ozlabs.org # Wed 17 Jan 2018 09:42:02 AEDT 251.294 ms 1516142547 3.80602 3 www.freebsd.de ozlabs.org # Wed 17 Jan 2018 09:42:27 AEDT 262.742 ms 1516142572 4.06215 3 www ozlabs.org # ...
SotD: Pärts Cantus
Since Ive been rocking the house the last couple of days, lets do serenity instead. Specifically, Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, for string orchestra and bell, by Arvo Pärt, one of my musical heroes. Heres how good this is: It just about got me killed, the first time I heard it. Which was on a rented cars radio in England, heading up the M3, where they drive fast; I was jet-lagged and I caught myself closing my eyes at 85mph to savor the fading tones of the church bell. Arvo Pärt is an Estonian, elderly but still active. He Believes In God, big-time, and knowing this may help you enjoy his music.
SotD: Clampdown
Yesterday, I used the phrase best Rock song ever recorded . Well, why not two days in a row? Because another fine candidate is Clampdown from the Clashs wonderful London Calling album. That record was a highlight of 1980 and Clampdown was a highlight of the record. I think a listen is in order now in 2018 if only for the lyric In these days of evil presidentes& need I say more? Great tune, strong words, hot playing, fine production. People hear that loud raw sound and might foolishly think that its easy to play. Clampdown, like a lot of their songs, is fast, and keeping that kind of thing together at that speed, particular with the lousy on-stage sound most rock bands have had to deal with, is a big deal.
The Man Who Sold the Moon, Part 02
Here’s part two of my reading (MP3) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015’s Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It’s my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my... more
SotD: Day Tripper
If someone asked me what the greatest rock&roll song of all time was, I wouldnt be able to pick. But if they kept asking, and you got a serious conversation going, Day Tripper would be in that conversation. Yes, I acknowledge that this is two loud-and-fast-BritPop Songs of the Day in a row. Its worth noting that Day Tripper is musically weird; to start with, theres a slow backbeat behind the fast rhythms. The chords veer from major into minor and back. And if you talk to people who really care about this kind of stuff youre apt to hear a lot of Wow& that tambourine! (Ringo BTW).
Google Memory Loss
I think Google has stopped indexing the older parts of the Web. I think I can prove it. Googles competition is doing better. Evidence This isnt just a proof, its a rock-n-roll proof. Back in 2006, I published a review of Lou Reeds Rock n Roll Animal album. Back in 2008, Brent Simmons published That New Sound, about The Clashs London Calling. Heres a challenge: Can you find either of these with Google? Even if you read them first and can carefully conjure up exact-match strings, and then use the site: prefix? I cant. Why? Obviously, indexing the whole Web is crushingly expensive, and getting more so every day.
The positive side of HDMI
I may have cursed the HDMI cables that I was playing around with this afternoon, but one person found them convenient: ACM only downloads articles once. It's possible that this article has changed since being downloaded, but the only way you can find out is by looking at the original article.
Cloud storage
Spent some time looking at cloud storage options. This article looked promising, and so did some of the prices. I need about 250 GB at the moment, and it seems that I can get up to 1 TB for $10 or so a month, maybe cheaper. Or, as the article puts it for the first two, with adventurous exchange rates: Price: 2GB free. 1TB for $10 a month (£6.58, around AU$11) with Dropbox Plus Price: 15GB free.
Server outage, day two
Yesterday's server outage was finished by 15:00: === grog@www (/dev/pts/1) ~ 3 -> date; uptime Sat Jan 13 03:56:04 UTC 2018 3:56AM up 1 min, 2 users, load averages: 0.57, 0.22, 0.09 Or was it? Today we discovered that mail was not working. Why not? It was in fact working, just rejecting everything: Jan 12 23:51:35 www postfix/smtpd[41627]: connect from unknown[60.168.180.5] Jan 12 23:51:36 www postfix/smtpd[41627]: lost connection after UNKNOWN from unknown[60.168.180.5] Jan 12 23:51:36 www postfix/smtpd[41627]: disconnect from unknown[60.168.180.5] UNKNOWN?
SotD: Missionary Man
If I actually had any serious musical talent, I would have chosen rock&roll over all other professions. I guess I havent been running that many pure simple rock songs here, and thats wrong. So lets turn todays space over to Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart, and Joniece Jamison of the Eurythmics for some nice polished passionate BritRock. Since theres not really much to say about Missionary Man, let me pass on a little bit of Rock and Roll Theory, which most of you will know, but for those who dont: What is Rock&Roll anyhow? Three ingredients: 1) Blues chord changes, 2) electric guitars, and 3) a backbeat.
Shopping in the Internet era
At dinner this evening we discussed the Delacombe Town Centre with Chris Bahlo. Somehow the idea of building new shopping centres doesn't match what is going on elsewhere, as I noted last week. And even in Australia we have the recent failure of Masters Home Improvement to think about. Chris observed that there were still some things that people needed to do on site, like hairdressingexactly what I had noted earlier this week. And we discussed the opportunities for people delivering food ordered locally (with the example of us buying in Ballarat and having it delivered to Dereel). Yvonne considered that she would still go shopping, because she would want to choose her melons, grapefruit or papayas.
System down, won't come up, customer screaming for blood
When I came inside after installing the water pump, Yvonne had a message from Chris Bahlo: The server is down, whatever that means . Really? Yup, www.lemis.com was off the air. Off to investigate. The system is run by RootBSD in North Carolina, and there's VNC access to the system console. But that didn't work either! Something serious? I was able to access their ticketing system, which reported that all was well, and so I entered a ticket, at 2:55:12 UTC. But then I looked at the existing tickets. One issued just yesterday: Greg Lehey [email protected] 2018-01-12 05:14:32 You are receiving this message because you currently have services on our old VM infrastructure.
SotD: Gravitys Angel
Possibly you havent encountered Laurie Anderson, and possibly if you did you wouldnt like her, because shes pretty far out there. Gravitys Angel is at the near end of out-there, a simple-ish song with a lovely tune and a cool arrangement; a good place to start. What happened was, in the mid-Eighties Id heard O Superman on campus radio and then Laurie was coming to town and a couple of people whose judgment I respected said You really have to go see her so I did, never having bought a record, no idea what I was getting into. It was easily one of the top two or three musical experiences of my life; I got giddy in the middle of one of the songs because Id been holding my breath, because you had to.
Everybody hates Twitter
It's no secret that I don't like social media. But I thought I was relatively alone until I read this statistic from Statista: More people want to kill Twitter (that's the bluebird without text in first place) than keep it alive! I wonder if that has something to do with Donald Trump. ACM only downloads articles once.
SotD: Please Dont
I mean Baby, Please Dont Go of course, the blues chestnut to end all blues chestnuts. Nobody knows who wrote it, although apparently Muddy Waters first made it a hit; Wikipedia offers several plausible backgrounds dating from slavery days up to about 1925. The version Im chiefly recommending was recorded by Lightnin Hopkins in the early Sixties. That recording is on a collection called Prestige Profiles Lightnin Hopkins, its really pleasing. The audio is brilliant in that they apparently pointed a couple of good mikes at the musician and got out of the fucking way, an approach now unknown to the music business.
Birdcage liners
My new year?s resolution was to give up on reading Twitter and Facebook. Read more "Birdcage liners"
Birdcage liners
My new year?s resolution was to give up on reading Twitter and Facebook. Read more "Birdcage liners"
Internet future: on track?
I've seen a number of things lately related to my essay the future of the Internet. One thing I didn't get quite right (yet) is the demise of the fixed line telephone network. I claimed that it would be replaced by VoIP, but this statistic from Statista tells a different story: That's definitely a perspective problem on my part. I don't see (have) a need for mobile phones, and my $15 recharge keeps me going for a year. On the other hand, calls to mobile phones make up the bulk of my call costs, so I try to avoid them.
SotD: The Other 5:15
No, Im not talking about the Who song from Quadrophenia (though its a fine tune), Im talking about the song by Chris Isaak. No, Im not talking about Wicked Game either, which I may feature here some day. Im talking about Chris 5:15, one of the several excellent songs on San Francisco Days, one of the several excellent albums Mr Isaak has released. Chris even had a TV show for a while, which was funny and, because Chris is funny, generally a good entertainer. Chris plays an enjoyable guitar, with a big relaxed slow twang, but hes mostly about the songwriting, and singing with one of the truly golden voices.
eBay: 1 point up, 1 point down
Returning my terminally broken roll holder proved more difficult than expected: the seller strung me along and kept trying to compromise ( we'll refund $12 and you can keep it ). So this morning I asked eBay to step in . And that they did. I don't know how long it took them, since they don't give me copies of this kind of request, but it must have been less than 10 minutes. One point to eBay. And of course the seller got negative feedback. Finally he reacted: could you please revise the negative feedback for us,as it is very bad to my job and our account, i am just a customer service here and i may loss job because of the negative feedback.
SotD: Troy
I bought Sinéad OConnors debut, The Lion and the Cobra, because Mandinko was on the radio and I liked it. The first time I played it, not having looked at the track listing, I noticed some meditative crooning about Dublin in a Rainstorm ; the next time, a gut-grabbing throaty chant: You should have left the lights on ; and then another time a howling declaration about rising, a phoenix from the flame. It took me a while to notice that all of these were from the same track: Troy. Its a hell of a song. Its a hell of an album too; other highlights are Never Get Old and A Drink Before the War, which inspired me to a grief-stricken piece on the eve of the Iraq war.
With repetition, most of us will become inured to all the dirty tricks of Facebook attention-manipulation
In my latest Locus column, “Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention,” I suggest that we might be too worried about the seemingly unstoppable power of opinion-manipulators and their new social media superweapons. Not because these techniques don’t work (though when someone who wants to sell you persuasion tools tells you that they’re... more
SotD: Temporary Ground
This is the best song from Jack Whites 2014 Lazaretto album, and it was the centerpiece of the show last time I saw him play. Its mostly acoustic, thus has to stand on its own sans bombastic guitar flourishes. Dont get me wrong, I like Jacks bombastics, but its good to let a song speak for itself, and Temporary Ground has a lot to say. Gosh, I do seem to write about Jack White a lot; in particular about his recent recordings and a recent concert. Heres why: He shares a lot of my ideas about how songs should be written, how rock&roll ought to be played, and how to record it.
Buying a new kitchen roll holder
The seller of the kitchen roll holder that I got last week is stringing me out, but the real issue is to get a new one. They're either expensive or ridiculously expensive in postagethe most expensive postage I have seen was ¬ 99. And then I found one from a company called ibuys. Also not cheap, but in total round $55. So I tried to buy it, fighting as usual the stupid web forms that all these companies have. This one had an additional trick: it refused my email address. Why? I don't know. I couldn't complete the purchase. So I tried their contact page.
Spam writer's network?
Found while cleaning out my spam folder today: From: Janet Rogers <janet@your-rv-lifestyle.email> Dear Editor, My name is Janet and Im a writer at Your RV Lifestyle. I was doing research on things to do in England and just finished reading your wonderful blog post: http://lemis.com/grog/diary-oct1968.php In that article, I noticed that you cited a solid post that Ive read in the past: http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Details/Default.aspx?id=92788 I just finished writing a guide that is even more detailed, updated and comprehensive on the 100 best things to do in England. It is over 10,000 words and packed with practical tips and advice.
SotD: Voodoo Runner
Todays song is Miles Runs the Voodoo Down, from Bitches Brew. In the series intro I said I wont be recommending abrasive free-jazz jams& and well, this is kind of abrasive and while it might not be free jazz, its pretty loose. But its wonderful improvisation and production, full of deep musical intelligence, and if you like anything at all in the electric-jazz space, youll probably like this a lot. If youve never checked the space out, this might be a good place to start. I am not gonna invest the ten thousand or so words it would take to even summarize Miles labyrinthine path through the genres, even the ones he invented himself, and explain where Bitches Brew fits in.
Interview with the National Science Teachers Associations Lab Out Loud podcast
Back in 2010, I appeared as a guest on the National Science Teachers Association’s Lab Out Loud podcast, and this year, they had me back as part of their celebration of their first decade; they’ve just published the interview, (MP3) which was primarily about my novel Walkaway.
SotD: Solveigs Song
Hey, there are songs in Classical Music, too! Maybe you think you dont like that stuff? Stick around and give this one a listen. This Song is the last movement of Peer Gynt Suite #2 by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, dating from 1876. Its exceptionally beautiful, one of the great melodies of all time. I encountered it some decades ago, when my cello teacher assigned it to me, and it works well on that instrument. I loved playing it and now I love listening to it. It turns out there are a lot of ways to perform this; while I mentioned cello, its often played as a piece for orchestra; the version I happen to have is from a 1989 Karajan/BPO outing and its lovely, but Im not going to claim that its definitive, Ive seen rave reviews of Beechams 1957 (!)
Erase that link!
A while back I became interested in house prices round Newton Abbot in Devon, where I spent a lot of time in the early 1960s. And somehow I'm now on a real estate mailing list that gives minimal information about properties. Today another one arrived. Things have changed a lot since I was in Devon. In May 1969 I considered a houseadmittedly not in the best conditionfor sale for £300. Now it seems that something (they didn't divulge what) in the Newton Abbot area sold for round £200,000, roughly what we paid for our current house. OK, enter the address into Google Maps and take a look.
SotD: Petes Blue
This is a minimalist guitar instrumental by Roy Buchanan (1939-1988). Genuinely obscure stuff, but Im pretty sure youll find it worth seven minutes and seventeen seconds of your time. Back in the day, Roy had a real following among electric-guitar devotees, including the Rolling Stones, who offered him a spot when they lost Brian Jones; he passed. I wasnt a huge fan, finding his playing often overwrought and overdecorated. But the B side of his debut album went straight to my heart; Petes Blue is the highlight. I still put that scratchy 45-year-old vinyl on sometimes, and smile every time. Nice-looking album cover, too.
Mobile phone fun
Petra Gietz along this morning with her phone. She tells me that despite the new radiation tower, her coverage was no better. Charged the phone for her and confirmed that it worked fine. It seems that she had thought that the Dereel tower would cover Enfield as well. That raises the question: where is the tower that services Enfield (13 km away)? They used to have better coverage than here. While we were at it, got her to call my phone to confirm that we had coverage, and also to capture her mobile phone number. I didn't hear the phone ring.
Smart TV usage
Finally got hold of Danny at The Good Guys in Ballarat, and told him of my pain with the TCL 60"(152cm) UHD LED LCD Smart TV . No, he didn't know that the thing didn't have a microphone. He also didn't know that Android TV relied on it. That's good for me: it means that nobody warned me that it was incomplete. Danny was happy for me to return it for a refund or exchange, so that's fine. But why didn't he know? My guess is that nobody uses Android TV. Certainly I find it pretty useless, and the fact that the manufacturer offers a castrated version seems to suggest that it's basically a box to tick on the spec sheet, not something that somebody uses.
A Hopeful Look At The Apocalypse: An interview with PRIs Innovation Hub
I chatted with Innovation Hub, distributed by PRI, about the role of science fiction and dystopia in helping to shape the future (MP3). Three Takeaways 1. Doctorow thinks that science-fiction can give people ideas for what to do if the future turns out in different ways. Like how William Gibsons Neuromancer didnt just predict the... more
SotD: Cannonball
Music comes in lots of flavors, most of which Id hate to have to live without, but the ones closest to my heart involve well-played electric guitars, female voices, and raw rock energy. The Breeders Cannonball has all three ingredients. Unlike many of the daysongs, this one has no personal back-story at all; Until I started writing this I had no idea who The Breeders are/were, I just liked this tune a whole lot when it came on the twentieth-century radio, and still do. Hm, it turns out they have roots in the Pixies and Throwing Muses and have been on-and-off over the years but are apparently still on.
SotD: Ooh La La
This by The Ditty Bops, from their self-titled debut album in 2004. Id never heard of them before, nor have I since; but this is a remarkable song and more than one friend, hearing it in the background, has stopped talking and asked Whats that? The Ditty Bops are a female duet with (on this album) tight harmonies, tuneful tunes with singing that is athletic and graceful. They sound very young. Ooh La La is fast and tight and a torrent of words hurtles by: Was it the fighting was it the fist / Was it adventure with a jealous twist / Was it desire for another's kiss / What brought the house down?
The future of retailing
Four years ago I participated in a Coursera course about the history of the Internet. One of the assignments was an essay on what the Internet might be like in 20 years' time. I've been following it ever sinceit's amazing to think that 20% of the time has already elapsed. Today I read an article in the Washington Post about the shutdown of the last department store in Hermitage, PA. Hermitage has a population of about 15,000, and the nearest larger town is at least 50 km away. This will probably kill off the Shenango Valley Mall as well.
SotD: Identikit
This is from Radioheads recent A Moon Shaped Pool, which Ive been listening to a whole lot, and oh my goodness what a beautiful song. I came to Radiohead late, missed them completely on the way up. For years all I knew was they were the band behind the OK Computer hits on the radio, but I guess Im a fan now. I like pretty well all of Moon Shaped Pool, and its an absolute production triumph, the kind of thing I put on when people ask why I still have a big hulking old-school audiophile system down at that end of the room.
Podcast: The Man Who Sold the Moon, Part 01
Here’s part one of my reading (MP3) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015’s Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It’s my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my... more
DevOpsDays New York City 2018: Register now!
DevOpsDays NYC is only a few weeks away: Jan 18-19, 2018! Please register asap. We could sell out this year. With this awesome line-up of speakers, tickets are going fast. https://www.devopsdays.org/events/2018-new-york-city/ Or... this handy shortcut: http://dod.nyc
SotD: Western Stars
Nobody, and I mean nobody, brings more to a performance than k.d. lang. But shes not on the road that much, so you might have to settle for recordings. A good recording to settle for would be Shadowland, featuring production by country-music legend Owen Bradley and guest appearances by other divas-with-twang. This is probably the best song on Shadowland. This is part of the Song of the Day series (background). I actually saw k.d. last year, on her Ingenue tour, in which she played that breakthrough album end-to-end, then a bunch of hits. The place was packed, mostly with the gay and/or grey-haired.
How to friend strangers
A few days ago I received a fairly typical message: Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2017 07:48:05 -0800 From: Facebook <[email protected]> To: Greg Lehey <[email protected]> Gloria Maria Rivera Rivera wants to be friends with you on Facebook. Guia at Travel By México, Guía Turística de México 1 mutual friend · 2,276 friends - 19 groups A tourist guide in México? I don't know her. But we have a mutual friend. Who is it? A very well-known member of the Internet community. How did he get to know her?
SotD: New Years Day
Back in the late Eighties, for a few months I went to aerobics class, and once every session the instructor put this U2 chestnut on and every time my beats-per-minute cranked right up. Not in the slightest obscure, but worth revisiting at least once a year, ideally on this day. U2 are pretty well dinosaurs now, but then I am too. And when they stomped the earth in the late Eighties, it shook. They brought a whole lot of musical intensity to the stage, and the best live bass sound Ive ever heard. And passion: I recall a hot summer night back, then an outdoor show; Bonos arm was in bandages and a sling because hed fallen off the stage a few nights earlier.
Happy New Year!
Best of 2018 to you. But this isnt a real blog post, its a placeholder to debug a subtle Unicode bug in my comment system that doesnt appear on my staging environment. *sigh*