In case anybody was wondering, the iSight is still … well, pathetic in low light, even after the 1.02 firmware update. Oh well. Maybe in another year we’ll get another firmware update that might fix this, or maybe iChat will let us jack the gain in software like evocam can do.
https://dreness.com/isight_vs_ibot.html for pictoral evidence.
cheers :)
*update: 12/14/04: now there is iGlasses. Woohoo!*
New York Times:
President Bush created a bipartisan commission on Friday to investigate the quality of the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war and to address problems posed by weapons proliferation.
zanesvilletimesrecorder.com:
Bush said Thursday he still would have invaded Iraq if he’d known no weapons stockpiles existed — adding a new element to the much-debated question of whether the United States went to war based on faulty assumptions.
whitehouse.gov:
Saddam Hussein AND HIS WEAPONS are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people. (emphasis added)
I only have one thing to say about all that.
“Ladies and gentlemen, THIS… is Chewbacca…”
this is rockin’ my socks.
Various Artists – WAP100 EP 9.99
Black Dog Productions – Bytes LP 9.99
^ that is tonight’s purchase. 184 MB of high quality VBR – sounds better to my ears than what the iTunes store has to offer, I’ll say that much. Of course, the big attraction is the catalog… lots of things which are not so easy to find in hard copy. Certainly not easy enough to be had without getting out of my chair (well, legally anyway).
Aw yeah :) Nearly as elegant as iTunes… about as close as one could get with a website. The preview controller is also super slick.
In the spirit of the holidays, I want to make sure that every drives safely :)
andre@core[~]cat <<EOF >> ~/.zshrc
echo "are you drunk? y/n"
read drunk
if [ $drunk = "y" ]
then
alias rm="echo 'you drunk bastard, you should not delete'"
alias mv="echo 'you drunk bastard, you should not move'"
fi
EOF
Nothing important has happened, don’t worry ;)
-Letting the beard out
-Rocking panther server. I am gearing up to start a web log centered around panther server. Tips/workarounds/potholes/how-to’s… the usual
-Traveling incessantly to portland and back to teach apple’s various tech training courses. I think this is the 4th week in a row.
-Tonight I had Wendy’s and a few slugs off a large bottle of white zin. Oh boy.
Does anybody else notice themselves getting scanned via icmp pretty often?
20:11:44.728258 amjm28qpy50e.bc.hsia.telus.net > pimp.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 64810 20:11:46.955269 amjm28qpy50e.bc.hsia.telus.net > bish.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 24363 20:12:01.861614 as53-p02-wny-037.modempools.net > pimp.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 49398 20:12:02.770763 as53-p02-wny-037.modempools.net > bish.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 8951 20:12:18.349973 bc174212.bendcable.com > pimp.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 41242 20:12:20.429096 aojg55l6y48yc.bc.hsia.telus.net > pimp.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 61774 20:12:21.062071 bc174212.bendcable.com > bish.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 795 20:12:21.260151 aojg55l6y48yc.bc.hsia.telus.net > bish.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 21327 20:12:55.027293 bc16597.bendcable.com > pimp.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 39934 20:12:58.014062 bc16597.bendcable.com > bish.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 65022 20:13:17.568386 ca4-216-229-40-129.cos.pcisys.net > pimp.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 65068 20:13:20.545880 ca4-216-229-40-129.cos.pcisys.net > bish.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 24621 20:13:53.362273 216.233.144.112 > pimp.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 9439 20:13:59.755391 216.233.144.112 > bish.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 34527 20:14:53.225594 216.233.192.58 > pimp.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 952 20:16:14.908692 216.233.224.24 > bish.dreness.com: icmp 72: echo request seq 21547
Wow, what a great show :)
Vibert played a nice long set with no break… just a bit over two hours I think. I arrived just as he started. I’m pretty familiar with much of his released work, so I was delighted to hear lots of original mixes and sequences. Some of the stuff was unlike anything I’d ever heard, such as very interesting sequencing of vocal phonemes, set to classical arpegios… occasionally with heavy downbeats underneath – very engaging :) I always dig the classical / jazz infusion.
His demeanor was relaxed throughout, and it looked like his main tool was a 12″ powerbook. I think he had some sort of manual controller / button box or something, but I didn’t get a look at it. Anybody who rolls a j and smokes it during his set gets props in my book :)
He also mixed a lot of key squarepusher tracks, including two of my personal favs (red hot car and schizm #2 – had an awesomely long lead in into schizm #2, but it’s one of those that you can feel coming from a mile away :), along with a great variety of other things… there were some extremely great retro sounding 8 bit sections; there was even a brief period of 60s sci-fi movie sound-track feel (eg. Barbarella)… I was pretty blown away :)
Then squarepusher came on. I expected just a dj set, so I was very pleased when the bass came out. Apparently, I was greatly mistaken regarding which parts of his music are sequenced and which parts are played on his bass. From a tonal perspective, much of what he plays sounds like a synth due to the effects he’s running the bass through; but add to that that he’s an *amazing* bass player, and you get extremely precise 16th note runs even with the very fast tempos that he’s pushing – I was pretty floored. Really fast, aggressive breaks and insane but almost robotically precise bass playing plus effects is an amazing combination.
There were some brief audio problems which puncuated the set; a few dudes scurring around with flashlights looking concerned. Tom was very appologetic, and seemed like a pretty nice guy. He kept saying hello to the crowd and giving thumbs up and such throughout the evening; more than any other act I’ve seen.
About half past 1 or so, he stepped off briefly, then came back and played some more. The encore was mostly solo bass stuff; I was totally ecstatic when he dropped into Chameleon, a jazz standard from Maynard Furgeson with a very characteristic bass hook. He played it close to the original tempo, which is somewhat slow (as it’s a funk chart)… comes in with a measure or two of the hook, then it’s 32nd note insanity all around it, back to the first part of the hook, then blast off again into improvisation… even though it only lasted a few minutes, it was the best cover of Chamelon I’ve heard. Lights came up, but he kept going… eventually they just turned him off, heh…
Two great acts in one night :) I sorta wish I’d gone to the afterparty, but I was hot and tired, plus I didn’t want to be too wiped out for the upcoming travel (I leave in about an hour).
That is all :)
Returned from Portland… enjoyable trip, nice and relaxed. Tomorrow night is a squarepusher show I’ve greatly anticpated… exciting :)
Got asked today if I could teach for apple in Cupertino next week, presumably filling in for somebody (generally they give more than two days notice). I have nothing on deck for next week, plus I usually like hanging out down there, so I of course agreed to do it :)
only problem is, two weeks in a row on this 500 ibook wears me down… I’m starting to look at possibly trading up, seing as how the trade-in values offered by my company aren’t so bad, and there are refurb ibooks and such to be had…
apparnetly NG took it upon herself to clean the cruft out of this place, so that’s cool :)
went out to dinner with verso and meanwhilepdx thursday night… good times, as usual :)
for now, I’ll enjoy a comfortable evening at home and rest up. the tv in the hotel kept me up past 12 each night, so I want to catch up on the sleep a bit :)
I’m here in Portland again, teaching another ACTC class this week. Hopefully I’ll get to see at least 1 good show, and hang out with verso as well.
Other items:
Been slowly adding stuff to a community website I’m maintaining for our IRC channel. Specifically, I wrote a little perl script to parse the BitchX.url file… check it.
Got two of my articles published on afp548.com today (they are apparently having some network problems lately). Horray for having content 4 clicks from www.apple.com ;) (macosx –> server –> resources –> afp548.com)
Finally, I may be co-authoring a book about Mac OS X. Details forthcoming :)
