Tuesday August 26, 2008

Outside Lands

I attended Outside Lands over the weekend. Overall I thought the event showed some cracks in the organization. For two of the headliners there were serious sound issues. The sounds boards on almost all of the stages were setup to block the stage from a good part of the fields. The overall bathroom situation seemed to run out of steam each night as the number of reasonable clean bathrooms approached 0 before the headliners were done. The drink options were limited and overpriced. Other things seemed to work well. Bands seemed to get on and off the stage on time and the sound besides the headliners was good. Their was a wide range of reasonable priced food options for such an event.

Friday evening:

• Beck - This was a mob scene. I came in the entrance right next to Beck and not being enough of a Beck fan kept on going. The bathrooms in the walkway between Lindley Meadow where Beck was playing and the Polo Fields was jam packed and a fence by the bathrooms had been knocked down just before I got there. It doesn't seem to me like this was well planned.

• Manu Chao - A little too mellow for me.

• The Black Keys - I like these guys. Maybe almost too unstructured for me? Is that possible? Seemed like everything started out as jam-noise and progressed from there.

• Lyrics Born - I like this guy. One of the better underground Hip-Hop/Rap types. He can turn a phrase nicely and the band he had rocked.

• Radiohead - I don't get these guys. I listened through their whole set. I guess they rocked. They dealt with the sound dropping out twice pretty well.

Saturday:

• Sparrow Quartet - I went to go see this band because of Bela Fleck but I think they all rocked. I think I would classify it as folk or old-time music although there are some bluegrass elements and they seemed to have been strongly influenced by Chinese folk music.

• Everest - eh? I don't get it. According to their bio 80's indie with some jam/prog influences. Seemed pretty generic to me.

• Galactic's Crescent City Soul Krewe - I like Galactic. This ended up being Galactic with part of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band part of the time and one of the Neville brothers the rest of the time. They are funky. They are good. They are fun. That fun aspect to live music is one thing I think some of the young bands miss.

• Steve Winwood - Nice set although he still comes off as too produced to me.

• Regina Spektor - I had my 16 year old niece pick out a few bands she would go see that I didn't know. Most of what she thought was cool were bands I'd seen and would probably pass on. But I like Regina Spektor. I couldn't get close enough to see her perform but I liked what I heard. Lost of tempo and crazy lyric changes with a lot of energy. I would have liked to see the show as it seemed like she was probably pretty entertaining. A conversation the next day on the bus confirmed that was true.

• Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals - I almost didn't go see this. I'd heard them before but not seen them. This was another one of my niece's recommendations. I still am not entirely hot on Ben's music but he is a good showman. I'm glad I went to go see them.

• Primus - I've seen Primus before and really like them. Les Claypool always seems to do things I like. But this time I thought they fell flat. OTOH I was pretty tire by this time and wasn't really into it.

• Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers - Pretty standard set running through more tunes then I thought I knew of Tom Petty's. But I knew them all. Nothing over the top here. The sound dropped out twice during this set and they had to take a 5 minute break to work on the PA but it seemed like the band dealt with it well. I ended up leaving before the last few songs but the walk out was long enough that I heard the end of the set.

• The Mighty Underdogs featuring Gift of Gab, Lateef and Headnodic - I meant to start the day off with ALO but got the schedule confused. I listened to a few songs an then left. Unlike Lyrics Born this is too "rappy" for me.

• ALO - These guys hit a nice groove. They didn't blow me away but I enjoyed the part of the set I heard.

• Culver City Dub Collective - A little too ambient for me. I needed energy at this point and these guys were not providing it.

• Stars - Also too mellow for me. I did get a nice nap near the end of their set.

• Andrew Bird - This guy is cool. Very talented. I would have never guessed what a "whistler" really was until I hear him. Nice to hear the violin mixed in as he did.

• Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings - Old school fairly high energy blues was a good thing at this point. It had been a mellow morning and I needed a pick-me-up. Nice instrumentals, nice voice, nice showmanship on Sharon Jones part.

• Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - I'd hear these guys open up for Mule at the Fillmore earlier this year. I thought this set was more mellow and didn't quite meet my expectations. But they still sounded good. I didn't make much of this set as I'd heard them before.

• Widespread Panic - I first saw WSP in May '91 in LA. I've been an addict ever since. They had a 90 minute spot but they ran over by 20 minutes or so. The set is high energy from the beginning. In the middle of Henry Parson's Died is a great Green Onion's jam (Sorry to whomever I tried to convince afterwards that was a Ventures song and not Booker T. an the MGs). The later third of the set they had Ann Marie Calhoun on Violin. I thought there was some really nice interplay between Jimmy Herring an Ann Marie during several jams. WSP was the band that made me really want to come to Outside Lands and they delivered. Too bad they could only play 1/2 a show.

• Mike Gordon - Mike Gordon played a set with a keyboardist, drummer, and a guitar player. The set seemed tentative to me. But I was a little burned out from Panic an I think WSP going over might have shorted Gordon's spot (they were on opposite ends of Lindley Meadow).

• Jack Johnson - I was burned out by this point an Jack is just too mellow for me. I listened to about 1/2 of his set an then wondered on home.

Thursday August 21, 2008

iPhone 3G

I dumped my Treo 650 the other day for an iPhone 3G. The Treo was way long in the tooth and the 3G and the GPS receiver on the iPhone 3G made it irresistible to me. A few years after I graduated from college I worked for Pactel (later Airtouch) Teletrac and the concept of location tagging data has since been of interest to me.

A few things (none of them surprising) which are big hits are:

• App Store - Great idea. What a PITA it was to get applications onto the Treo.

• Use of Location - I'm somewhat surprised at how well some of the base applications use location.

• Physical properties - This phone is the perfect size for me.

• Number of free applications - Given the restrictive environment there are a lot of free applications which are more then toys. The Movies application by Jeff Grossman is a wonderful example of a fairly simple but really well done application which just rocks my world and uses location in a very natural way. The MarbleMash game by Jirbo is a neat game which uses the accelerometer nicely.

• Quality of non-free applications - With most of the prices being below $10 I was surprised there was much of a difference between the free and non-free applications. I really like Absolute Fitness by Aqua Eagle. What a nice application which dovetails with the kinds of things I want to do with my mobile platform.

• Keyboard - I'm very surprised at how well this works. I thought the lack of tactile feedback would make it really painful instead of just a learning curve.

And there are some things which are not big hits:

• Battery life - I feel like I've taken a 1/2 decade step back. I have to worry about having a charger with me on day long trips. Turning off 3G isn't really an answer in my book. First off it doesn't seem to save me much. And if I didn't want 3G then I wouldn't have bought the phone.

• Camera - A toy at best. At least as the software works at the moment it is primarily for associating pictures with contacts.

• Multitasking - The platform appears to be underpowered for some of what it attempts to do. Having the App Store exit when you start a download is an interesting way of keeping you from continuing to try to use the Internet but that is pretty much a bandaid. Let the stuff I'm focused on get the machines resources and queue up the download to happen as possible. I vaguely remember Jobs commenting on their multitasking model as being superior during the launch of this product. That is just spin.

• Visibility into failures - I just upgraded the system software to 2.0.2 (5C1) and the system seems more stable so this has taken a back seat. But before that I regularly would start an application and it would just exit. I would have no clue why. At one point I only had a few GB of storage left so I deleted a movie and one application started working again. If it was really just running out of storage somehow then it would have been nice to have been told that.

• Keyboard - yea, it works better then I thought it would but you still don't get tactile feedback. I'll get use to it.

• Lack of free applications - Above I was surprised at how many there were but there are still a lot missing. It was easy to find a free database application on the Treo. iDB Datamaster by Evince Technologies seems to me to be the closest but the list of data types supported is limited. They seem to have a bunch of complex types but not some of the simple ones I need (e.g. lists of strings). The killer to even trying to application was that when I sent them email they didn't answer.

• Ability to Demo non-free applications - I understand this is an Apple limitations. Seems like a natural feature for a closed environment like this. It would have meant I tried iDB Datamaster and if it sufficed I would have bought it.

• Programming environment - I want to write one off applications for my phone. Give me some basic scripting ability ala {Basic,Python,TCL}/TK or the like. I'll write my own specific database. I'll prototype things which I might then write natively for the platform. I'm going to San Francisco's Outside Lands this weekend and the Crowdfire concept looks neat. The capabilities of the iPhone 3G could play to trying to prototype an application around Crowdfire. But the startup cost of developing on this platform makes that impossible for me.

for those that can't last untethered

So American Airlines announced Internet for those that can't work offline while flying. Well, okay, they announce some form of expensive cripplenet:

Aircell’s Gogo will be available to customers as a fee-based service in all cabins. Aircell will charge $12.95 on flights more than three hours, which include American’s Boeing 767-200 flights. Each paid Gogo session includes full Internet access. Cell phone and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services are not available.

"full Internet" 'cept for those services we might wish to charge extra for later. Not sure what "Cell phone" has to do with that but being able to use VOIP is well withing the definition of "full Internet". Sadly I doubt most will realize the duplicity in AA's statement.

I wonder how many people really need to be connected for the flight time? I guess if it kept me from buying expensive drinks it might be worth the $12.95 an hour. Barely. I suspect it will be slow enough it might actually increase my tab. ( Aug 21 2008, 03:05:03 PM PDT ) Permalink

Wednesday May 07, 2008

Ferrite Male Build bitchin' battle armor and leave the seat warmer out? R would have never made this mistake. And there would have been plenty of cup holders to boot. ( May 07 2008, 12:49:07 AM PDT ) Permalink

Tuesday January 08, 2008

Stiletto 2

I listen to a lot of music. When I was younger I would listen to music while working but over the last decade or so I've found that difficult. Attention wonders with words, thoughts, rhyme, and rhythm. Recently I've found I'm able to work to house, trance, and symphonic music. Until I discovered that my mechanisms for listening to music have been focused on either going to shows or listening to music in the car. I don't tend to listen to music when hiking as I like listening to nature. With my newly rediscovered interest in listening to music while working I was stuck with an old 20 GB Zen stuffed with music from another era in my life, a Zune I picked up sometime ago that I never really liked, and a 80 GB IPod I inherited from a relative which I'm slowly putting interesting music on. Over the past few years I have gotten really use to having Sirius satellite radio in my car. Those drives along 50, 88, 95, or 395 contain a lot of dead spots for conventional radio. Just in time along comes the Stiletto 2 Sirius portable satellite receiver. So far due to a wee bit of snow I've spent the last few days mostly inside. But one of the cool thing about the Stiletto is that it has a wifi interface that allows for easy access to the Sirius Internet feeds. Now I can work, wonder around the house, run on the treadmill, and, after changing my wireless router, shovel and snowblow to the end of my driveway while listening to whatever makes me happy at the moment.

Now that I've made it sound perfect I should mention that I havn't really used it receiving from a satellite yet. I tried at one point while snow blowing at a relatives house but the trees, cloud and show cover appeared to be too much. I really don't like the power indicator. Its a simple bar style indicator. What I really want to know is how much more time I can listen. The Stiletto will recharge via its USB connection but thats slower then slow. Even if its powered off that can still take a significant portion of the day. It recharges quickly via a power plug but usb cables are so much easier to carry around. I think it also uses a fair bit of energy while on standby (paused). Maybe thats the wifi? If you look at the list of stations when receiving from the satellite you will see the current song or program. But when receiving over the Internet you don't. Thats lame. Even lamer although expected in our current RIAA slavery you can't time shift off of the Internet stream. ( Jan 08 2008, 09:20:52 PM PST ) Permalink

Sunday January 06, 2008

memories AND adventure

There are many reasons to like music. I often see it as fleeting. As soon as a note is played it is over. A Phil Lesh quote would suggest that he and Jerry Garcia would have agreed:

Jerry put it the best, as he frequently did: ‘Let ‘em have it. When we play it, we’re done with it.’

The other day I was walking out of a Van Morrison concert at the Grand Sierra Resort talking with a friend about the show. It was the first time that either of us had see Van Morrison and while we had both enjoyed the show we were amused at the "curtness" of the show. The set started and songs came fast and furious and then Van walked off the stage with no encore. As we stood outside of the venue (inside the GSR) waiting for some friends we started chatting with another concert attendee. She was really disturbed with the show. Van hadn't played much that she had known and she had listened to all his recordings. My friend and I commiserated with her for a few moments and then moved on. At first I had been a little startled by our acquaintances reaction but then I realized that she saw live music as a way to retrieve memories where as I saw it as adventure. I have a pretty extensive collection of live and studio recordings. I see about 25 live shows a year. I don't want to hear what I can hear at home. I want/hope/expect that the band paints a sonic landscape that is another step beyond that which I've already heard.

I got a Stiletto 2 recently. That has reopened my interest in listening to varying types of music. My current presets include: 17 (Jam_ON), 19 (Classic Hard Rock), 20 (Pure Hard Rock), 27 (Heavy Metal), 28 (Faction; Punk, Hip-Hop, Hard Rock), 29 (Punk), 32 (Grateful Dead), 33 (Trance), 63 (Outlaw Country), 65 (Bluegrass), and 80 (Symphony). When I first started listening to Sirius in my car I had a limited number of presets and felt that the music silos were limiting. One of the things I liked about radio as a kid is that you were exposed to music you didn't know. Looking through this list I can see a lot of memories (I just shoveled my upper deck to 19 listening to nothing less then a decade old) but I hope I don't ever end up in my friend aboves state of never looking for the adventure in music. ( Jan 06 2008, 07:05:12 PM PST ) Permalink

why There are many reasons to live here. Even with all the hard work days like today are one of them.

( Jan 06 2008, 06:19:00 PM PST ) Permalink

Saturday January 05, 2008

glad I don't have to drive This is the reason to keep up with your snow blowing (roughly 36 hours into this storm sequence). But a little snow blowing and shoveling and at least we won't have to work so hard tomorrow!

( Jan 05 2008, 07:04:37 PM PST ) Permalink

Thursday December 20, 2007

adjusting to the playing field If you coping strategy involves the use of drugs I can see allowing their use in competitive situations. Adjusting your brain chemistry to be something closer to optimal is something that you can do throughout your life unlike adding more time to every situation. Still, most of these chemicals have had very little real time in the market. Buyer should be careful. ( Dec 20 2007, 09:43:01 AM PST ) Permalink

Wednesday December 19, 2007

Leveling the playing field? I was recently talking with a neighbor who mentioned that his youngest child in college was getting extra time on tests due to his ADD. This was an attempt at "leveling the playing field". My first reaction was to wonder how many of the resumes I'd recently looked at included this bias. You don't get to dumb down the smart guys or slow down the fast guys or even the playing field in any business competition. I think helping students build coping skills in the real world especially before college makes a lot of sense. But college is a time of learning how to be independent and learning how to deal with the real world in a somewhat softer environment. Reducing the amount of competition seems like a poor tradeoff to me. I found a fewlinks which cover this issue. This article gave me a better feel for both sides of the issue. ( Dec 19 2007, 10:49:46 AM PST ) Permalink

Monday December 17, 2007

Security Feelgood? While ordering things for Christmas I had a few large items sent directly to the recipient. One vendor requested that I contact my credit card company to put an alternate address on file. Neither the vendor nor the credit card company seemed to be able to do much in support of this procedure other then to mutter "identify theft". Now, if I was going to steal using a credit card I would think having the items send to a residential address wouldn't be so smart. It leaves a pretty easy to follow trail and to do any real damage would mean a pattern of purchases that would be easy to detect. Does the public at large think this increases their security by the same amount that it costs the credit company and ultimately the consumer? ( Dec 17 2007, 04:13:55 PM PST ) Permalink

Monday December 10, 2007

quick My current project team conducted a two day intensive review. We have team members in Ireland, the east and west US coasts, and Beijing. Generally we use a combination of email, phone, and irc to make this all happen. For this review we used a morning component that including our developer in Ireland. I took notes during this part of the meeting using Sun's externally available wiki. We then spent the afternoon annotating those. While we slept in the pacific timezone we got comments from our engineers in China and our engineer in Ireland did some additional annotation. And then we repeated it all. I'm sure there are better integrated tools to achieve this type of collaboration but these simple ones worked well for us. ( Dec 10 2007, 02:31:38 PM PST ) Permalink

Sunday December 02, 2007

not a cribbage board... I went into the liquor store at the stop of Kingsbury grade this evening and saw a sign stating they had poker chips for rent. The hand written sign didn't state a price so I asked the attendant. He said $4 per night. He followed that up with a comment that they had requests over a period of time so they had brought in several sets for purchase. Those wouldn't stay on the shelves so they decided to rent instead. Not sure I quite follow that as this liquor store mostly services local vacation rentals so I'm pretty sure you could squeeze people for a lot more both on markup and rental fee. I commented that people were probably too lazy to just go down to the casino and buy some chips to use for the evening. He didn't seem to get it stating that sometimes casinos discontinue chips. ( Dec 02 2007, 09:56:26 PM PST ) Permalink

Saturday November 03, 2007

cool stuff inside only Kudos for driving the economies of scale and some neat concepts in software in producing a 200U$ computer. Thats a price point that people are comfortable buying game systems at. And even without MS there is an impressive amount of functionality in this box. But to really make this grab the consumer it is going to have to look a little better then a cheap whitebox. A PS3 or Mac Mini form factor would be orders of magnitude better. I'm sure the chicken and egg issues of creating a market and having the resources to do the miniaturization are part of the issue but given the already existing industry in mini-itx and like cases that the gamers and others like that seems like a weak decision. ( Nov 03 2007, 06:15:51 PM PDT ) Permalink

Online Attitude After having not played any online poker for months I played a few sessions lately. Low limit NLH ring games, PLO8 ring games, or NLH tournaments to get my feet wet and see how the environment has changed. One thing that hasn't changed is that people still act in ways they wouldn't in meatspace. Its amazing to me that you could get interested in a competition like poker in which you gain from your opponents mistakes and be unable to not lecture your opponents when they make a mistake. In an amusing moment I misclicked between two windows and an action intended for one game ended up in another and then I ended up sucking out. For whatever reason these are the only times I feel a little remorse. The rest of the suckouts are just part of the lack of complete information and chance in the game. But before I could say oops my opponent started "helping" me with my game. Remorse gone. ( Nov 03 2007, 05:32:03 PM PDT ) Permalink