So, I finally have two hard drives at home for the same purpose – to hold music.

One is a 250gig the other is a 500gig. The plan is to copy the music on the 250 over to the 500, and then bring the 500 back to work, so I can listen to my music collection there as well.

I will be going over my entire collection to make sure that EVERYTHING that is on CD is on the 250, so the copy process will be as complete as possible.

The plan is this: at work I listen through tiny little computer speakers – so quality is not much of an issue – mp3s are fine. At home, MOST of the listening we do is of a background variety – dinner time, reading books or magazines, watching the fire, hanging out with friends, etc. Detailed listening is different. We have the gear (our stereo system is very very good) so if we feel the need to listen to something in some detail, we can go upstairs, collect the CD or LP and haul it downstairs for listening. But most of the time, we don’t care “that much”. It does need to sound good, but a CD ripped at 192 playing quietly in the background of dinner conversation will sound Just Fine Thank You.

The drive will be hooked up to a small laptop which then goes to our sound system.

Done.

The eventual plan is to replace the mp3s with FLAC files. If Apple would simply realise that no one really gives a rats ass about apple lossless codec (ALC) and that FLAC is the smartest and simplest way to go, and SUPPORTED FLAC IN iTUNES, it would make my life a lot easier.

Why is FLAC so important? Because most people I know use a Windows machine, and FLAC is the high quality audio of choice among MS Windows users.

Example as to relevance:
I happen to have Lizard by King Crimson on LP. Now, I can record the LP (which I paid $6.99 for at Sam Goody’s back in 1975 – which in inflation adjusted dollars would be $26.66!!!), scratches and all, to my hard drive. Or, I can go to Amazon and get it for $13.99 plus shipping, making it closer to $20, and then rip the CD to FLAC. Or, I can get the FLAC files from my neighbour. Now, if it was just one particular record, I wouldn’t care, but I have THOUSANDS of records, and I want them in FLAC. So, I can rip them from CD myself and have to re-purchase a bunch of music I already own, OR, I can do the obvious thing and share drive data with my neighbours, saving me the crazy hassle of finding every last record and ripping it to FLAC.

And some of it will not be “rippable” as some of it is out of print. This is a big and pressing issue with my vinyl collection. It is also a problem for some of my CDs as well – I have the CD of “THIRST” by Saqqara Dogs (awesome record) but the CD itself is now filled with microbubbles and no longer plays – I only have it on LP and 192 mp3 now…

In short, I want iTunes to get on the stick and fully support FLAC. Because it doesn’t, I will have to eventually buy some miniature laptop and an extra drive for it and dump my FLAC files there, and that laptop will NOT be an Apple laptop. Ya hear me Steve?

iTunes exists to sell Apple Hardware – iPods and computers. Because iTunes does NOT support the industry standard of high quality audio, FLAC, they are and will continue to lose out. This is especially important as people gravitate away from files and go more towards internet radio hybrid systems like Rhapsody and Pandora and similar developments.

Personally, I prefer files. I don’t like the idea of missing a payment and being cut off from music.

So, today, I will move mp3s to a drive that will eventually house FLAC, and another step is made toward developing the Warwick Digital Culture Archive (music, video, etc.)

When the kindle costs $100, I’ll get one…

10 MAR 09 Edit:

…for some reason, comments aren’t showing correctly, even when I approve them…. Sigh. I’ll have to fix that. Anonymous Student asked: How can someone have 250gigs of music? It’s pretty easy. Just do the math. Your average CD is not filled to the brim, so the average CD is 500megs of data. Compressed to FLAC, make it 250megs each. Now, over a period of a few decades, collect 1000 CDs. Bingo! There’s your 250gigs of audio… Easy peeeezy.

Now, 250gigs of MP3 is a LOT of music. I have about 2500 recordings (About 1100 CDs, 1000 vinly LPs, and the rest in cassettes, and digital files from iTMS and elsewhere). Each compresses at 192kpbs to about 80megs per record or so. So, that comes out to about 200gigs. Of MP3s. So, again, it is easy to fill a 250gig drive with tunage.

best, HW

The audio section is working.

http://www.henrywarwick.com/audio

It’s still uneven and wonky – CSS sucks – but I’m doing what I can to fix it.

Imaging also has a lot of fixes in it, but there are more to come…

Slither down the greasy pipe so far so good, you will be like your DREAMS TONIGHT.

Joe the Lion, Made of Iron.

so, the quizzes are ready. Tomorrow big day. Yay.

Today we went north and hurtled down a snow covered hill. Fun. I also worked on some of the pages for this site. It’s coming along, SLOWLY.

I now officially hate CSS. There is no reason why it couldn’t be handled like Illustrator or (the long lost and sadly missed) FreeHand. But, no. Why? Because it was designed to keep people away from web development, and if it was too easy, it was destroy the wages of CSS developers.

Bah. humbug.

Tomorrow I prep for the quiz on Tuesday, and go to a curriculum committee meeting. Yay.

Now Playing: Calvary Cross by Richard Thompson.

Lots of work to do. Set up the quizes for my lecture class. They’ll be ready Monday. Made a bunch of calls re: permanent residency.

Dinner was brilliant. I made salmon pinwheels of feta and spinach, roasted brussel sprouts (with garlic and olive oil), buttered rice, and a spinach salad odf spinach, walnuts, avacado, and balsamic vinegar. Washed it down with a nice Pinot Noir. Dessert? TIM BITS!

aaaaah. the high life.

I worked from home today because I’m broke. Earlier this week, the cat had a tummy ache that cost $800. Then my car decided that it required immediate attention, and that resulted in the disappearance of another $870 from my bank account. I have about 87 cents in my pocket. Thankfully, tomorrow is pay day….

Today was a long day. My most interesting writings were:

from the LEV list:

> so it is true, there still are people who do genuinely believe in
> society being malleable….
> i’ve always taken that for sentimental gossip…

Gee, you sound like someone who’s too cynical to believe in nihilism…
Pity that.

1. You don’t have to “reform” society – it reforms on a daily basis, it changes all the time. Repetition is a form of change. All you have to do is stand up for something and go for it. But if you twiddle your pomo thumbs you’ll just sit there. Twiddling your pomo thumbs. Also note: 100 years ago cinema was black and white, silent and passive and insanely expensive. Now performance cinema is in colour (often lurid, but that’s another issue) with sound, it’s active, and the means to do it are little more than a keyboard, a laptop, and a projector… Society changes. All the Time.

Also: in the early 1900s there was a strike at a mine in Colorado. People wanted to work only 5 days a week. The governor, who was in the pocket of the mining interests, called out the State National Guard Units and had them move on the camps. they fired into the strikers tents. All the men were at the mine, picketing, so the soldiers shot 24 women and children DEAD.

They died so people in the USA could have a 5 day work week.

There is absolutely nothing sentimental about brutal blind slaughter. People dying in order to change the world is not “sentimental gossip”. The hand wringing attitude that it is such only serves the interests of the likes of the crypto and not so crypto fascists who are presently running things.

2. Performance cinema must stand on its own, claim its own intellectual space, with its own theory and aesthetic. This must be articulated and the articulation must reflect the diversity and complexity of the the source material.
You can either help or hinder. I’d REALLY like it if you could help. I’m running myself broke to put this symposium on – (so far) no company has stepped in to help, no government has squeezed its teat to make this happen. This makes its free and open and very low budget but also of the highest possible integrity and purpose.

3. As performance cinema stands and articulates itself in time, our media culture will be that much more vibrant and interesting, and Bog only knows what will be born from it.

Got a note from Kim Cascone – hope to have lunch with him and his family this coming weekend. It’ll be good to see him.

Completed recording post audio for SEI down at Chris Tann’s digs in S. San Jose. He has a wonderful home theatre set up. Someday I will too…

Elizabeth is in swimming camp this month. She’s a sweetie bump. She showed me how to pronounce Montmartre. It sounded more like MonnnMarrr. God bless the good ship FAIS and all who sail with her.

The recall effort to remove Gray Davis is well underway. Ariana Huffington wrote a typically miguided article on Salon.com about it, and I felt I had to respond. I mailed the following, under the name “Ralph Spoilspot” to the Salon editors.

Huffington on Davis Recall

This is simple, and predictable and sad.

This is what will happen:

The sour grape Republicans at the behest of the idiot likes of Tom DeLay will push through the recall.

No Democrat with even a nanogram of party loyalty will step in the way of Davis. It is likely that the Republicans will field more than one candidate.

The Democratic voters will (again) hold their noses and vote for Gray Davis, and the Republican vote will be divided and lose the election.

A total waste of time and money.

And the worst part? A mental image that fills me with inertia: Gray Davis Gloating.

I’ll vote for Gray Davis, simply because I can’t see surrendering the governorship of California to the reptilian likes of Bush & Co. But frankly: Davis sucks. And the saddest part? He’s the best outcome of this whole sorry mess.

This is not a good time to be in California.

(2009: note to reader, Schwartzenegger swooped in and won the election.)

Today is another day. I don’t know what today will bring. Beth actually drove to cupertino to be at work today. she’s going out of town several days later this month for some training in Irving, TX. We have a friend, “Red” Nelson, who lives not far from there, so Beth will have someone to hang out with.

I’m planning to re-set up my studio after ripping it apart yesterday to do the recording at Chriss Tann’s place. Right now my studio is such a mess, I don’t know if I’ll get to it – I might just spend this morning cleaning the place, and then work on the cover for Dennis Young’s new CD, “Old Dog, New Tricks”.

I grew up with Dennis – he lived several blocks away from me, and his grandfather lived even closer. We were in some of the same classes in grade school, and our fathers were both on the volunteer ambulance squad. I remember playing in his grandfather’s backyard with him – some of my few really happy memories from childhood. Dennis is the percussionist in the group “Liquid Liquid”. They had a hit back in the day with the song “Cavern” which was sampled by Grandmaster Flash in the monster hit “White Lines”. That super bass/drum/percussion line is striahgt out of Cavern. Dennis is a great guy and I urge everyone to collect his music. It’s nothing like mine: he’s very involved with striaght ahead groovy funky beats w/ smooth vocals and soaring guitars. Really nice stuff. And *I’m* doing the cover for the CD… Gotta get cranking on that today. I did a rough a few days ago when I got the CD, but I want to present him with several alternatives, so I feel comfortable that he’s comfortable with what he’s getting. His pressing plant sent me the Quark Templates they use, so that will ease the development of the artwork considerably. I enjoy doing CD covers. I do them well…

Dennis Young’s WEBSITE.

Last night, after putting Elizabeth to bed I scampered down to Dimension7, (D7) to reconnect with the people there and get some more movement on the symposium. Sometimes I despair for performance cinema. There was some really nice wallpaper stuff there – abstract washy lines and forms that gently evolved into other, ummm, washy lines and forms – zero “content” but beautiful to look at. I missed the main attraction at 8pm. supposedly it was pretty good. Grant of D7 had some really striking stuff looping for a while. Gave me a few ideas about what I can do with SEI. One guy (I forget his name) showed up with a keyboard and laptop and Arkaos, and performed clips (processed in real time) of some guy dancing. Badly. It sucked. I have nothing against “VJ” work, but damn people : THINK before you project something… life is SO much more interesting than the lowest common denominator – it’s why I’m busting my back on this symposium!

Speaking of the symposium, So far I’ve received some nice stuff, from all over the world. I’m getting very excited about all this…

Once I put my studio back together, I’ll be editing SEI back together with the new audio tracks. This late afternoon will be spent web – job hunting.

Unemployment is at the highest rate since 1983. No shit. A friend of mine says it’s because the Republicans are trying to wring all the wage gains of the working classes out of the economy, so as to improve the short term profits of the Republican overlords. He might be right.

Spent the morning writing a response to a jackass on the levList. I haven’t sent it in yet – I’m refining it a bit to make sure it is what I want – a delicate balance between positive explanation and toasty flammage. I detest cynics. It’s fundamentally reactionary and self-serving. Yuck.

Well, the weasels are out again. Gov. Dean has shown that he has something to say, and so the mainstream and even so-called liberal press is out to sabotage him. The stirling example of this is Salon.com, where today the ONLY candidate discussed for the past two days has been Dean, and only in the context of how his “liberal” positions are not likely to win an election against the likes of Bush.

Frankly, I think Dean could easily win against Bush by simply speaking the truth about what’s really going down in this country, and mobilising people to vote (on the one hand), while demonstrating to the independents that his position is vastly more in line with their actual interests. If the economy continues to tank, it should be fairly easy for Dean or any Democrat to win.

The Democrats that I think are least likely to win are the ones anointed by the DLC: Edwards, Lieberman, Gephardt. Edwards needs a personality transplant, Lieberman’s a fool, and Gephardt is too compromised from his wishy washing in Congress. Of the remaining, Kerry’s not so bad, but could be better, and Dean has his value. I think if Dean was willing to be #2 on a ticket with the likes of Kerry, or even (eeewwwww!) Edwards, I think he could really bring the race into focus for some people and we can actually vote Bush out. With Dean as #2, it’s like Bush41’s choice of SpudBoy for VP, only from a reverse angle: the right wing will tend to leave a democratic president alone if his running mate is even father to the left. That I should even be concerned fills me with despair for this country.

It’s not like the USA had a great start: some landowners didn’t want to share the spoils with King George. Slavery, a lack of franchise for women, the open slaughter of Indians, etc. A real horror story. But the ideals they cooked up back then are high, and it’s to those ideals that this country should endeavour, and not shirk from for the sake of some idiotic notion of security. The USA needs to abandon its empire, and resolve to live as what it is: 6% of the world’s population, no more, no less.