one hour news: "What Happened to the Cap'n?"

Steve and Adam (that's me) present: one hour news, a television news magazine focusing on hard-hitting investigative journalism. The idea is to get the filming and interviewing done in one hour flat so we can deliver it to the public that is so hungry for real news as quickly as possible.

one hour news will be continuing this tradition of asking the right questions of the right people at the right places. But we need your help. We need to know: what are the issues you are interested in? What are the questions you want asked? And basically, who should we harass for your entertainment's sake?

Comment on this post to help us determine what issues one hour news should look into in the next few weeks.

But please, do this after watching this edition of...
one hour news: "What Happened to the Cap'n?"

In this show, we look into a startling trend in American food: the disappearance of Cap'n Crunch from an increasing number of shelves. We ask the tough questions. We get real answers. And we use big words!

Killing Time (but in a humane way)

Hmm.. I must use this opportunity to my advantage. This post is allowing me to prevent myself from writing a VERY boring paper (it is definitely a boring paper as shown by my use of caps). This use of my time is so well spent that maybe I should try to extend this post (after all it is my first). Oh I know! Now no laughing since this took me 5min to translate: "Estne volumen in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?" "Is that a scroll in your toga, or are you just happy to see me?" Anyways, that is about all I got, I'm serious, completely drawing a blank right now. Well I did manage to delay my fate for about 10mins, so thanks.

No. THIS is fun.

Ha ha. I just realized I didn't provide the first link I meant to in the previous post. What was supposed to be "fun" was this -- Flash ping pong! And it is. (Fun) What is funny about it is that I did what I usually do when I'm making a post and I don't have the URL off hand. I just create an empty hyperlink tag with just a "" rather than a "http:// etc..." But empty quotes in a link tells it to link to the current page -- so I just linked you to mathcaddy.com and said "This is fun." When I realized it, I could have fixed it, but I think it actually makes sense that way with the post. Whatever. I'm done with this. But does it win?

This is fun. This is not.

This is fun.

This is not: we had a pageload size of 220k yesterday because a couple of the thumbnails were over 30k! One was even 90k! Using PhotoShop, I was able to reduce the size of the page to a sleek 31k. Please adjust the quality to medium or low for all thumbnails. If you don't know what I'm talking about, figure it out or ask. Or, at absolute minimum, email me if you're posting something that's large. I can usually fix it in less than a minute... if I know about it.

Also, if you're a contributor and you'd like to be able to put pictures on the sidebar, just let me know.

Crap. I think I've caught VB.

Or at least that's what it feels like. Getting it was marginally fun, like play...but getting rid of it is another story. I'm afraid I may be stuck with it for an as-yet undetermined length of long weighty time. I can't quite say, but I'm pretty certain that I wish I had never gotten into Visual Basic.

Don't misunderstand me though, the program I'm working on will surely help my research. The goal is for it to consolidate 4 other programs (written in various languages - Fortran, C, QuickBasic, Japanese) into one, slower, bloated piece. But nevermind that - the real stitch comes in trying to prevent crashes by anticipating every stupid thing a user could do. Like entering letters in a numeric field. Or feeding a sandwich through the drive door. I'm still working on the first one.

It's rather strange though. I can't get anyone at Tech to admit to using VB, though the guilt can be clearly seen spread across their promiscuous faces. Filthy bastards. I'd switch to a different language if it wasn't already too late.

And in preparation for my trip to Japan, I've taken on learning one indispensable Japanese word each day. Today's word is:

admonishment - kyoukai

googled to death

I wanted to try out Google's simple search tool, and I got it up and running with very little effort. Horray!

But... the problem is that it uses the information google stores in its system.... and it has indexed the old search archives, meaning that the whole stupid site is missing! You can't click on a link older than about a week ago without getting a 404 error.

So... if you want to use the search, the simple solution is to look at the cache for now. I will soon have a perl script search that will run on our server and search the text of this site. Hopefully soon. If only I could find one! Arr. Any help would be greatly appreciated. (Unless you can't provide any helpful help, in which case, keep it.)

statscaddy

For anyone thinking I might have been exaggerating about the flood of traffic to mathcaddy.com over grey tuesday, you can check out site stats here, updated a couple of times a day. And if you ever feel the urge to check the traffic, you'll find a handy-dandy "site stats" link listed at the bottom of the left sidebar, in addition to a "top searches" link to see what crazy stuff people typed into search engines that got them here.

And one simple rule for the future: please, do not mock the traffic. Ever.

...

Okay, mock away.

songs/albums

In no particular order...
"What ever happened" by the Strokes
Chutes to narrow by The Shins
Anything by the Long Winters
Oistad and Davis "These Walls are Thin" (my first album)
alaska!
BRMC

...to be continued

Friday Fun

I hope that this post doesn't get edited as well, because it's important that we importantly understand the importance of a game that involves penguins and landmines. Comment with your top score to see who wins (even though we all know that Steve always does...)

Yellow Thursday

I have to make this update to Eric's earlier post -- we at mathcaddy.com are no bearers of misinformation, so let me set the record straight.

The new article in the NY Times on Grey Thursday should be out tomorrow (based on what the reporter said). His article would be the second he has written on the subject and would primarily be a follow-up of what effect the protest had. I was not interviewed and as of now do not expect to be, but my name is listed among those who are willing to have their identities and statistics quoted. So, there is a chance that my bandwidth could be maxed out after all... but who knows?

Mathcaddy Radio Session 1

With apologies to Acts of Volition, mathcaddy.com launches Mathcaddy Radio.

Anyone with a microphone is weclome to contribute their own four to eight track radio show playlist, but the mp3 file must include commentary on each track and be all one file.

So... here is Adam's Mathcaddy Radio session 1: [37 mb]

If you have problems, please understand it was thrown together hastily just to try it out quickly. There are a number of things that will be improved for session 2 (if there is a session 2). First, I will use better recording and mic technique. Second, I will arrange my comments ahead of time regarding each track. I figured it would be easier than it was. I had a hard time not just saying, "this was a good song," or "that was a great track" all the time.

After hearing it (if you choose to) please leave a comment-- yay or nay: is it a worthy thing to keep trying to do? and if so, what are your thoughts? if not, then why not?

Now featuring Mathcaddy Radio Session 1.1, with better sound and better (?) commentary. (Well, at least better sound.)

back to content...

I have been listening now and then to what I think is a really good idea. It's a radio playlist with commentary by Steven Garrity of Acts of Volition, just done straight off of his weblog. I think it's a great idea. In fact, when I play his show on my iPod in my car, I have this really great "fresh radio" feeling. It just makes listening more fun when it seems someone else is randomly picking songs they like. The whole radio show thing sounds like it would be pretty fun. Maybe if I can get a good microphone I might do it on a fairly regular basis.

The weirdest thing about the few songs that make Garrity's radio playlists is that there are so many that at different times were incredible stand out songs to me: Counting Crows - Angels of the Silences, Ben Folds - Brick, Foo Fighters - Hey, Johnny Park!, Poor Old Lu - Ring True, and a couple more.

On another note, it's back to the old standby: I invite any regulars to share your current top 10 albums or songs that they're listening to. I will consider mine and be posting something sometime this evening.

It's over.

The links are now dead, for our visitors joining the party a little too late...

And now we wait to see the real response and effects of this landmark day of online protest.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled web site. We will no longer be gray, despite what had been suggested previously. I got a little tired of the absolute lack of color. I just kept expecting to wake up, surrounded by farmhands and saying, "You were there... and you were there.... and you were there!"

Long live the Copyright Reform Movement!
See also:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Larry Lessig: "Open Culture" [Flash lecture]
Larry Lessig: "What I Thought We Knew" [Real Video]
Robert S. Boynton: "The Tyranny of Copyright" [NY Times article]

These are just a few sites, articles, and lectures that I've found very interesting reads in the past few days. Of them all, Lessig's "Open Culture" is the best and most interesting. I highly recommend it, although it will take some time, as it is an actual lecture.

Beginning a New American Revolution

As pretty much everyone knows, mathcaddy.com is participating in Grey Tuesday, which is today.

Why am I taking part in this protest?

Because I believe today is the copyright equivalent to the Boston Tea Party.

EMI's cease and desist letter makes it sound as if Grey Tuesday is about infringement and theft. It's not. It's about copyright reform. And the internet provides the perfect platform for such a protest. Just as was dumping tea into the Boston harbor, this is a symbolic protest. It is ridiculous to believe we are really contributing toward infringement on a significant level. If the demand for this album is there on the internet, people can already get it on many different p2p applications. We are putting the album on our web sites because it makes a dramatic statement. Practically as significant as dumping tea into a harbor.

The people who are taking part in Grey Tuesday are not only protesting for the right of musicians to sample. They are also standing up to the RIAA's general oppression of freedom as well as their attitude that demands absolute control of all copyrighted works, and - most importantly - the fact that they are so large and so rich that they will get what they want. Unless, of course, the people stand in their way. (You know, the "people" referred to in "We the People...")

On a larger level, Grey Tuesday is about the freedom to peaceably assemble in order to protest something we think is wrong. It is about whether our government values more highly the rights of the people with the rights of the corporation. The supreme court and many other lower courts are constantly attempting to balance rights, weighing the freedoms of individuals against the protections given to copyright holders. However, in my opinion, a victory of EMI in any of the potential lawsuits against protesters would be a clear statement that our country no longer values the rights of its citizens.

This is the cutting edge of a new American Revolution. Where a small percentage of people once took it upon themselves to speak out and act out against Britain's attempts to undercut the rights of colonial citizens, a small number of people are beginning to light a fire that has been quietly flickering in many hearts.

Make no mistake. Due to the financial and legal might of the record companies, this is not a majority revolution. Nor was the first American revolution. In fact, only a third were for it (a third were against it and a third were indifferent). While the colonists were afraid for their lives, people today are afraid for their bank accounts.

Fear is a reasonable emotion, especially given the fact that we do face corporate entities that could will any of us into bankruptcy through sheer brute force.

But I believe in this country and the foundation upon which it was built. And if corporations wish to subdue the freedoms of citizens of the 21st Century in the name of profit and control, there are a large number of people who are willing to fight them for every square inch.

Flash

After seeing a site like this I start to wonder what is keeping me from learning Flash. If a monkey can make stuff like that, why can't I make a circle that stops when it hits a wall? HUH?? WHY AM I NOT A WINNER? I also need to find something that is funny besides repeating the phrase 'but does it win?' all the time. But then you have to ask yourself a question, would the new phrase really win? I think not.

Grey Tuesday Collected Updates

Update: Read the legal response to the c&d from downhillbattle.org here.

Update 2: It appears the law firm sending the c&d not only represents EMI, but a whole host of other very large corporations, including (but not limited to) BMG, Sony Music, Clear Channel, Coca-Cola, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures, JC Penney's, AT&T, IBM, Major League Baseball, the RIAA, and the fricking Empire State Building. Oh yes. And American Girl doll company.

And, if you're interested, here's a pic of Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman's "Hottie of the Month", who also happens to be the lawyer Mr. J. Christopher Jensen, himself.

Update 3: mathcaddy.com gets a high-profile mention from downhillbattle.org in relation to this post on mathcaddy.com. See the note below their statement in their reply to the cease & decist email.

They see you!

The lawyers have a very powerful zoom on their binoculars... They see all! You cannot escape! Muhahahahaaaaaa!

Little Piggies

I received this cease and desist today.

And this is my response:

have you seen the little piggies
crawling in the dirt?
and for all the little piggies
life is getting worse
always having dirt
to play around in

have you seen the bigger piggies
in their starched white shirts?
you will find the bigger piggies
stirring up the dirt
they always have clean shirts
to play around in

in their sties with all their backing
they don't care what goes on around

in their eyes, there's something lacking
what they need's a damn good whacking

- The Beatles: "Piggies" (From The White Album)

We've come a long way, baby

Using a great application of permalinks, take a look at this cute little chart from almost exactly a year ago.

1076 hits a month? Was I on crack being that excited? Mathcaddy gets that in a day now! And usually more like 2000! Sheeeesh.

But does anyone know if it wins?

Permalinks work!

Woo! We now have permalinks.

Next major site addition is a "search archives" feature. There is also a slight chance that this site will move to movabletype instead of using blogger. Movabletype is a server based blogging app, meaning you would actually log in to a page on mathcaddy.com to add stuff to this site. Please let me know what you think. I may set up a demo site for you to review movabletype.

goin' grey early? so is mathcaddy.com

Okay, it's not Tuesday yet, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to go grey for a whole week, so Monday through Monday is Grey Tuesday at mathcaddy.com.

Evan's Shtuff

I'm a big fan of my buddy Evan's music. Especially some of it.

For example, this track and this track are awesome.

About a month ago, he headed into the studio and recorded this little album, which he labeled "Evan's Shtuff" on the cd he gave me. You can check it out below. I don't even have his permission! (Although I really doubt I'm going to get a cease-and-decist letter, which I may be getting anytime now for this or maybe even for this.)

Evan's Shtuff
01 Free
02 For You
03 Waiting For a Girl Like You
04 I'm Here to Sing You a Song
05 Leaving on a Jet Plane
06 Blackbird
07 Waiting for a Girl Like You [alternate]
08 Leaving on a Jet Plane [alternate 1]
09 Leaving on a Jet Plane [alternate 2]
10 Blackbird [alternate]

Digital Cameras

I don't think that this applies to most people, or even anyone else, but I have noticed an interesting trend in my family's use our digital camera. Basically my sisters run around all day taking pictures of the cat doing silly things that the cat does every day. My Mom takes the occasional picture on the even less occasional family vacation and my Dad doesn't touch the camera unless it is to hide it from my sisters. Now sure these are all fine things to take pictures of, but where do all of these pictures go? They certainly don't stay on the camera, we need to delete them on the camera to take more pictures of the cat. So instead they are dumped in random places all over the computer. But where do they go after they are dumped on the computer, if not lost? They go to the recycle bin of course! I mean, where else would they logically go? Print them out and put them in photo albums and cherish them in old age? Nawwww, that would be the smart thing to do. All of this results in a cataclysmic system failure and a huge gap in my family's photographed life. I am bad at ending posts, but do I win?

Links & Crap

* This dude seems to have picked up Eric's trick from Jr. High of sneaking a peek for winning bottle caps (originally discovered in Coca-Cola's Barcelona Gold CD giveaway in 1992). The funny thing about that is I knew about 10 people who collected all five? four? of the CDs because of this trick.

* If you're interested in Microsoft AND profanity, you'll probably enjoy this.

* Whee! Yahoo wants Google's assterik.

* Break out the beats! Drummerworld.com features drum solo video & audio clips for all (or both) of my brothers who happen to be drummers.

* And if you read the article from a few days ago regarding the stuff growing in your shower, you'll want to check these cute little cuddly stuffed microbes!

GreyTuesday.org launched

RIAA protest site downhillbattle.org launched greytuesday.org tonight. This is the central site for a civil disobedience campaign planned for next Tuesday against the record company involving DJ Danger Mouse's "Grey Album" (which is awesome). mathcaddy.com will be participating in this protest, which involves turning the whole website grey and posting all tracks from the album for download on the website.

See post from February 14 for more details and links regarding the album.

Man... permalinks would be really nice about now. I keep referring to other posts. I sure need to build that into the website. Well, I guess I better just announce it and then I'll be forced to make it happen.

ANNOUNCEMENT: mathcaddy.com will feature permalinks before 11:59 p.m. Monday night.

Arguably the BEST Movie Ever

I just saw an amazing movie. I am going to convince as many people to see it as I can. It is not showing in very many theaters and will only be showing at locations where communities can get 500 people to sign up to come see it. It's an independent movie, but this is no "Blair Witch Project". We're talking high-quality stuff. In fact, there are even some disappointed that the movie didn't get an oscar nomination. It was really that good. It was so powerfully moving that I turned to the people sitting next to me at several points and expressed the sheer joy I felt in watching the film.

It had action. It had drama. It had suspense. It had romance. It had comedy. Oh yes. It had all of those and more. Plus, it had Mormons.

Nope, I'm not kidding in the slightest because the movie that I saw was, in fact, THE BOOK OF MORMON MOVIE. And that is actually how it is titled: all in caps.

And I'm really not kidding about anything I said. It is actually quite well done for the small budget (apparently about $1-2 million).

And it is also drop-dead hilarious. The acting is actually pretty good. There are a few kind of silly parts, but it's not too bad at all.

But the script and the costuming and the way everything plays out is just so bizarre that I couldn't help but laugh hysterically throughout the movie.

If there had been other people in the theater, they would have assuredly been Mormons. And not wanting to insult them, I probably would not have laughed if they were there, but they weren't. So I laughed. Out loud. A lot. Actually, a ton. I laughed like crazy. I highly recommend it.

It really isn't like other movies that are enjoyable for being "bad. You can tell how hard the team that made this movie tried and it's just sometimes they tried a little too hard or didn't have quite enough cash or talent to pull off their ideas.

The movie isn't badly made, it just has some unintentionally hysterical moments. And watching with the sole purpose of anticipating those moments makes it even more fun.

I really am going to get it on DVD. I really will show it to several people (either at home or at a late - and empty - showing).

You can read an article on it here.

note: If you are Mormon and you take offense at my comments, please understand that you would not take offense if you had also seen the movie. It's really that much fun.

The RIAA Strikes Back; Grey Tuesday tonight

Most of you have read that the RIAA sued another 531 file sharers.

But... in looking on the RIAA's website, I found an interesting little tidbit.

Another factor commonly overlooked in assessing CD prices is to assume that all CDs are equally profitable. In fact, the vast majority are never profitable. After production, recording, promotion and distribution costs, most never sell enough to recover these costs, let alone make a profit. In the end, less than 10% are profitable, and in effect, it's these recordings that finance all the rest. (Find this quote here.)

What they're saying is that their business model is crap.

Now before you take this thought anywhere, I'm fully aware that this is not a surprising or startling fact. Book publishers operate by a similar principle and I am more than glad that they do. But e-books have yet to make the dent in book reading habits that MP3s have made in music listening habits, but trust me, when we have a way to do for books what was done for MP3s (which is much more difficult, of course) - watch out. The book publishers will be in the same sinking boat that the RIAA is in now.

But the RIAA's business model is crap. Why? Because if they were wise, they would see that MP3s open the opportunity of INCREASED profits. No middleman. Less production costs. Less distribution costs.

If they really have a problem with piracy, then offer a way for people to have what they want in the format that they want it in. No, iTunes is not good enough. I can't find more than a tenth of the songs that I woud want on there because this is just a way to look like the RIAA is offering an alternative to piracy.

They're not. They're faking it. All of their efforts as a united group of corporations are poured into stalling their own death rather than offering new and creative alternatives. Anytime a business results in suing its best customers, they are going to die a horrible and painful death. And they deserve it. (Yes, their best customers.) And forget what they say. Album sales are at an all-time high.

But the issue isn't about sales anyway, as Max Liebman points out (5th down, comments section on plasticbag.org).

I think the thing that terrifies the music industry most is not that album sales as a whole will decline--which, it seems, they aren't--it's that they no longer have any control over WHICH album sales are increasing.

And this is the reason that playlists on radio have shrunk so much. They are seeing less and less profitability not because of piracy, but because not dying is their main goal in life.

That's not much of a goal.

Time to die!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In other news: Grey Tuesday site will be launched by downhillbattle.org tonight at greytuesday.org. See a later post for details.

Wow. "Hide the jewels!"

I just read the weirdest article. This guy swallowed around $650 worth of coins and jewelry.

“When he was invited and came in some homes, he liked to steal coins and eat them,” Francois (his doctor) said.

I especially like the arrows pointing at the large mass of coins in his abdomen. Do you really think we could miss it? Sheeeeesh.

Poertry!

I have a laser printer.
It prints things all the time.
If I didn't have that printer,
I'd have to write out everything
And people would tell me,
“You really have the crappiest
handwriting I’ve ever seen.”
And then they’d ask me,
"Why didn't you just print this out?"

I have a CD Player
It plays CD's just fine.
The funny thing about it is
It really isn't mine.
I borrowed it from my brother.
He said that was okay.
He said "Hey, you can't keep it."
But I did anyway.

I have a Far Side calendar.
It says "ninety-eight."
Now I get everything mixed up;
I don't even know the date!
My trusty Far Side calendar;
I bought it at the mall.
I thought there was a discount,
but there wasn't one at all.
That good old Far Side calendar,
I took to the cashier.
He said, "You want to BUY this?
This isn't the right year!"
I thought the man was stupid.
"What could this guy know?"
But I guess I'm not the bright one,
that only goes to show.

I have a bed to sleep in.
It also isn't mine.
I stole it from a flower shop
Where flowers get arranged by mimes.
The funny thing about the mimes
arranging flowers there
Is when they ring you up to pay,
you can only pay with air.
(but not the counterfeit kind.)

Sorry that I suck at this.
It really could be better,
but the problem that I have right now
is that I can't find the letter "v"
I think I lost it between the bracket
and the widgety little ~ thing.

I have two thousand staplers.
They call me every night.
I tell them that I love them
and they tell me I'm weird.
Good night.

50th Anniversary of Easter

It's that time of year again, the time that comes right after Valentines Day. As soon as Valentines Day is over stores are allowed to rip down their loathed valentine goodies and put up their Peeps selection. This year is also the 50th anniversary of the delectable marshmallow Peep. In honor of this amazing 50 years the Peeps company decided to release special Valentines Day peeps. I suddenly lost an interest in writing this post. I am sorry. Peeps site.

Do NOT "shake it, shake it, shake it like a polaroid pitch-ah"

See here.

Meet the Prez

Man, I miss the daily show. Maybe I'll actually start watching it again. Then I wouldn't have to miss it. (That link is actually a clip from the daily show that is actually funny. Actually.)

Death to the Heathens! (Recording Industry)

Haven't you always just wanted to just yell 'Death to the heathens!" as loud as you possibly can? Well I haven't. Anyways, I read a super duper cool idea for Apple's new iGarage Band. I know that it isnt really called iGarage Band, but I think that it makes the program cooler by putting your own name in the title. I also know that 'I' is not my name, but I also want to eat some honey nut cheerios right now. Well I think that you have had enough of my nonsense so here is the article.

Links R Us!

Woo! Skateboarding bulldog! Right here, folks.

Just when you thought Mary Poppins was right, we hear this.

"Friends: The Most Overrated Comedy Ever." It's been confirmed... finally.

A Trendy Guy Am I?

My wife (Kristi) says I'm a really trendy guy. She doesn't mean this to say I'm really "hip" or "with it." She means that I follow little personal trends. And she's right. I wish I could think of the correct phrase to describe this personality quirk now that I've actually come to agree with her.

For example, right now I'm way into web design. In two months, who knows?

Or... take every time I've set out to "Konquer Linux!" I mess around with several distros for a few weeks, start tweaking stuff, rememember a little bit of whatever it was I had forgotten, and then move on to something else.

Or... I can get completely into playing my guitar and learning new songs. I will literally play until I can't play because it hurts.

Or... I will get a new album or a specific song and play it until I love it and then continue to listen to it until I cannot stand it.

Or... every year whenever Madden NFL comes out for the PS2, all I can think about when I come home is trying to turn my peice of crap Bears into "Champion Calibur Champions!" And I'll stick with that for a few weeks, maybe a month.

Or... I can get thrilled to death about playing MLB Showdown (baseball card strategy game) to the point where I keep stats and play with several different people... and then one day, it's just not as fun.

Or... for weeks on end, I am obsessed with reading new books. Or reading old books. Or writing. Or organizing everything in my room, my office, and my life. Or waking up very early and staying up very late. Or going to bed early and getting up late. Or drinking coffee forty times a week. Or eating at Bruchi's. Or whatever.

Maybe I should just label myself something neat and sound authoritative about it. Then I can just be confident about this oddity in me.

I think I'll call it MADD. ("Macro" ADD) But MADD isn't that badd. It's more just odd. And it drives my wife crazy, which may be its most useful attribute.

...Kidding! (Ow!)

ALSO REJECTED!!!

msnbc.com reporting.

REJECTED!!

This just in from msnbc.com. No kidding.

This one goes out to you, John

I'm not too sure how current anyone here keeps up with the comments, but I have a very special announcement to make to a very special someone. This person has gone above and beyond the call of their duty to read out posts and has not only followed a link that Adam posted, but has also commented on it! Now to me, that just shows absolutely phenomenal effort put forth by both the poster and the reader of the postageness. Keep it up guys, and come back soon John.

Your shower is going to kill you.

I'm not even joking. It's all right here.

WHAT in the WORLD is this??

weird.

E-machines

My E-machine is crazy! It tends to restart when you randonmly close a program. I have no idea why it does it, but I don't enjoy it. Ok, I lied. I love it. It's like winning the lottery.

The Grey Album

DJ Danger Mouse took the instrumental track of the Beatles' White Album and the vocals from Jay Z's Black Album and created a bunch of angry folks in the record industry.

Along the way, he created The Grey Album, available here at illegal-art.com. The full album is there in mp3... at least until legal action is taken against them, as was threatened against the original site that posted it, waxy.org.

And who took the legal action?

Not the artist, but the record company. And not the artist's recording company, but the Beatles' recording company. Not Ringo or Paul, not Jay-Z, but the Beatles' recording industry.

Is it really likely that Beatles fans are going to purchase this hip-hop album with a Beatles background instead of the White Album? Doubtful. So what's the deal? Just punks, I guess.

You can read the whole account by Eric Olsen (not to be confused with Eric Owl) at blogcritics.org here.

By the way, the album is pretty good. Rap is not typically my favorite -- with the exception of Jurassic 5 -- but mixing it with the Beatles' instrumentation made Jay Z's album very attractive and, in fact, enjoyable to me. "December 4th" was my favorite track, using the Beatles' "Mother Nature's Child." for its backbeats and sample track.

And speaking of sampling... "Hey Ya, Charlie Brown!"

Bad news for Yankee Haters

Nooooo! It can't be!!!

Photo Mojo

I was browsing through the index of images on the server and found Adam's last Photo Mojo selection. The picture with Kristi being held by two other guys. It was called kristi skank.jpg. I just thought that that was silly.

The Record Industry Must Die -- Part II

Downhill Battle gives The Reasons to Get Rid of Major Record Labels. Woo! I agree! (See my post from Feb. 12.)

Oh yeah -- unrelated -- 867-5309 is for sale.

"Angel Pumping Gas"

I was getting some music by the Postal Service a few months ago and in the middle of that picked up a song on Kazaa that doesn't appear to be the same people... because it's totally different style.

The Postal Service is a collaborative effort between Seattle indie-rock band DCFC's Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello of Dntel, which is just straight electronica. What they produced together was named by many critics one of the top albums of last year (and I agree).

Anyway... their tracks are great, but I also had thrown in with them a song by "The Postal Service" that's clearly not by the Postal Service put together by these guys...

Anyway, it happened to get played in my iPod the other day... and suddenly, I was saying, "who is this? this is great!" And it is a pretty catchy, well-done song.

It's called "Angel Pumping Gas" and I can't confirm whether or not the band's real name is the Postal Service or not. I think it appears to be a garage band that happened to have the same name, but I can't find out much about them.

Listen to the song: "Angel Pumping Gas" [mp3]

If anyone knows who this is (as in, where they're from, how old this song is, or anything else about them), please leave a comment below.

Update: We now know that the band is called Lindsey Pool. They have a pretty good selection of music (including this song) available at their web site [mirror], although they don't seem to be selling CDs.

Holy crap, I'm old.

"Uhh.... I'll be... um, 25 in June."

It's a standard question asked of most people. "How old are you?" I always thought that it was when you were about 39 that you started freaking out about answering that question.

Nope. It apparently starts at 24. At least for me it did.

At first, I was freaking out because I couldn't remember how old I was.

But then I was freaking out because I remembered.

And what I discovered later today didn't make me feel any younger. While I was sorting through and trying to organize the mass of Word documents I've accumulated in my "My Documents" folder, I came across a 21 kb file called "A Prepared Speech Upon Weirdness."

It was something I remember very well. I even remember the day I wrote it. I was 12 years old. My dad had just brought home a new computer - a 386 with a beautiful 15 inch monitor and running Windows 3.11 with Microsoft Word pre-installed. Well, I was so thrilled to move up from our 286 that I fired up Word and wrote the following, which appears (based on the title) that I thought I would be giving as a keynote speaker at an Amway conference. I'm simultaneously proud, embarassed, and convicted by this little peice. And in a strange and sad way, it still seems like the best idea I ever had. Here it is. (It's painful to watch, by the way.)

A Prepared Speech Upon Weirdness by Adam Brault
The biggest problem today is that not enough people indulge in insanity. Has it become almost unheard of to be weird? I have looked deeply into this subject and concluded upon the fact that nobody has any fun any more. To be weird is not a curse it is more of a gift....a talent if you may. After injected with the "miricale" medicine of fun, you can truly experience life without having to worry about what others think of you. You can look at things nobody else could EVER see. If you just daydream and let your mind run through the field where Kevin Costner is you just may find the answer to a problem. Once loosened up, you can then go about solving your problems in a more enjoyable fashion. If people in this world were to lighten up and see through the media's negative poison and goof off a couple hours day, do you know how many people's lives would be saved?...how many wars would be stopped?...how many starving people could be saved? How can you know unless you allow yourself to kick back and relax an act like a total moron, but not worry about it.

Yeah. I misspelled "miracle" ("miricale?" sheesh!)... but to me today, those are actually some powerful thoughts and I really like the fact that I wrote them when I was 12. But they just kill me today.

Why? Because I am not the person who wrote that anymore. I'm so boring in most situations that if I happened to stumble across myself at that age from some parallel dimension, I would probably kick me in the shins. Hard. No kidding. Well, maybe not kick me in the shins... but I'd certainly throw tic tacs at myself, perhaps from under a table.

Yup, I'm still a weird guy to those who know me very closely. But I realized recently how much that's not me anymore when I heard two people in one day say to me, "Man, Adam, you're always so serious."

Crap. What do I say to that?

I don't want to be serious. I wish to death I could be 15 again and just hang out and do the craziest stuff with guys like my cousin Steve, my ultimate hero in more ways than one. (He's not only the most brilliant, creative and weird guy I've ever known, he's also amazing at Flash animation! Okay, I made that part up. Sorry, Steve.)

Anyway, sometimes I get these bursts that just run through me from my socks up to the tips of my ears and I feel like I'm 14 or 15 again. And at a creaky-jointed 24 and three quarters, I long for the days of my youth when the most exciting things in life came out of spontaneous explosions of creativity that were about as weird as they come.

But that's just fiddle faddle! I'm going back to my newspaper. Harrumph.

MP3s: two links and a rant

This article says that web "piracy" (particularly referring to "unauthorized" mp3s) will basically disappear when widespread high-speed mobile web access proliferates, when price-fixing ends, and when the music industry actually opens up its full catalog online.

He says most of the current online music stores are more of a "wink-wink, nod-nod" than an attempt to actually create a viable business solution.

But the most interesting (and dead on!) point he mentions is this:

"It costs $20,000 to fill an iPod from iTunes Music Store. Quite simply, no one looks at a 40 GB iPod and thinks, "it will cost me $20,000 to fill it". It's a polite fiction. It's a looking the other way."

...

PC Magazine's John Dvorak has another great take on this subject. Read it.

...

Here's what burns me.

Whenever I get into an argument with any "adult" over mp3 "sharing" (or whatever euphemism you want), I will regularly mention the small share of profit that an artist gets, the huge amount that the record company takes, and how many people take chunks out of that pie.

To which some have responded, "You can't fault a distribution channel! There have to be middlemen! You don't go down to a farm and buy your tomatoes, your apples, your cow, so you can take it home and save money. The people in between save you time and you pay them money for that!"

Sure. That's reasonable.

Except the entire idea of digital music is that it absolutely eliminates the middlemen. It absolutely hacks the distribution channel down from 20 guys with their hands on it to (potentially) two. And when you get that close, profits get a lot slimmer for everyone on the distribution side, because the real authority then belongs to the artist.

The recording industry should die.

We don't need a seven-mile long distribution channel. The internet has proved that.

What we truly need is a worldwide music-level combination of amazon.com and ebay with in-depth comments from individuals and a way to track what is good that's out there, as well as the right for people to pay what they're willing to pay for something -- and paying it straight to the artist.

What I'd like to see is artists take back the responsibility for marketing and sellling that music. Of course, that means MTV and corporate radio would have to die to create a level playing field... but I'm more than okay with that. It's just too bad that the cream doesn't rise to the top of the music charts... just whatever is dictated to be (over)played the most on radio.

There is a reason that the non-payola/plugola college music radio stations have a completely different sales & popularity chart than corporate radio. (See CMJ's charts vs. Billboard's charts.) And it has absolutely nothing to do with college students' tastes. And, truth be told, mainstream hits do make it on college radio as well. (See Outkast's massive successes on both independent and corporate radio.)

The difference between independent (usually college) radio and corporate radio sets the standard for the entire music industry. On one side, it's about diversity of ideas, styles, and personalities. (Kind of like life, which I heard is what art imitates or is it the other way around?) On the other side, it's all about profitability, and there sure is a lot more profit to be made from selling a million of one album than ten thousand of a hundred different albums. And so the playlists shrink. You don't hear it, you won't buy it.

I love music to death. The recording industry loves money to death. Money ain't dying any time soon. And music ain't dyin'.

I know that I will die. And so must the recording industry.

There's nothing wrong with the recording industry dying. If the corporation is legally viewed as a person, as these guys illustrate can't a corporation or an industry get to a point where it just dies? I mean, people die all the time. Yeah, you're darn right it's not fair! Death sucks! I'm certainly not looking forward to mine! But who died and guaranteed everlasting life for the corporation?!

Sorry.

I have no sympathy. If you don't like it, go invest in the movie industry! Oh, wait...

Hey I'm back!

So, I know I haven't posted in a while, but then the thought occured to me: I'm a dork! So, I thought that I would post the most fun thing that I have done on the internet in a few months. Please promise me that you will play this game. However, be warned that it is addicting.

http://www.alwaysneat.com/site/graffiti/online/graffiti-game.html

That's it for now. Come back after you have played the game for a second time. Anyone else find it as addicting as I did?

Guitarness

I have decided to learn how to play the guitar. So far I have taught myself how to play the intro to 'Come As You Are,' but that is about how far my self teaching will probably take me.

Mozilla Firefox BURNING IN FLAMES!!!

Although firefox is a great program and I absolutely love it, it crashes a lot! Specifically whenever I am watching movies with it. But that is the only thing that I don't like about it and im sure it will soon be, if not allready, fixed.

Incredible Postageness

Wow! 5 posts in one day? You are really out doing yourself Adam. Are you maybe making up for all of your previous false promises to post more? Well anyways, the site looks great! Now I just need to get around to actually doing something with my subdomain.

They've taken the "Christ" out of Superbowl?

Real Live Preacher, who I've been reading for about a year now and who actually is a real live preacher, talks about his reaction to the holidayization of the Superbowl. I agree. It's weird how much people see it as one of the biggest holidays of the year.

For me, the Superbowl is mostly just super hyped, super long and super drawn out. More like watching someone play 27 rounds of cribbage than a national holiday.

like wireless web? here's good news:

Opera (browser company) says it signed a contract with Motorola today, which will give Opera the exclusive rights to develop its mobile browser technology for Motorola phones.

Having used the first couple of renditions of Opera's mobile web browser on my old Sharp Zaurus, I think this is the coolest thing I've heard on the web-enabled cell phone front in some time. Mobile Internet Explorer can't match Opera's incredible small-screen rendering technology. It's just amazing how good sites that were formatted for large screens look on this little browser. Opera's system works by vertically stacking images, links, and content, requiring zero horizontal scroll like you get by the bucketful using mobile IE.

It's actually a little hard to describe how significant the difference of the experience is. Mobile IE leaves most mobile web users less than thrilled about using the web on their cell phone. Mobile Opera, by comparison, um, is, uh.... GREAT! Honestly, I believe their design does for mobile web what the iPod did for mp3 players.

You can see a demo of Opera's technology here.

oh yeah -- totally irrelevant, but: Water balloon popped in zero gravity

CSS: coming soon to a website near you.

XHTML. CSS. ASP. PHP. XML.

Holy crap! Those words scare me to death. I'm just a web hick! I've been plowing tables, planting linebreaks and harvesting horizontal rules for three quarters of a decade now.

But... I have decided to dive right in to the present (and future) of web design. I believe that web publishing skills are unbelievably useful and I have come a long way from when I first started in the mid-90s. (Man, that was a long time ago.)

So, this week, I'm diving into beginning to learn some more advanced web design (thanks to simple and straightforward resources at W3Schools.com. I've already picked up a little... and I hope to pick up speed on what I'm learning.

What I found out is that XHTML is not that scary. It's just better HTML.

What I found out is that CSS doesn't make things more complex. It makes things simpler.

CSS is actually unbelievably exciting. It separates layout and design from content, which is just sweet from my point of view. I can't describe how frustrating it is to try to edit content and style simultaneously. So XHTML and CSS will surely be welcome additions to my web skillz, even if they take me a little time to poke through and learn.

ASP? PHP? Uhh... I'll get back to ya.

iSuit

Well, folks, it seems that the inevitable has happened.

Some people have initiated a class action lawsuit against Apple for its iPod's short battery life.

Well, I can't wait to get my $2.33! Boy, it will sure make up for having to spend $100 + shipping to have Apple replace my battery!

What the heck is breakfast for?

My friend Sam keeps giving me a hard time for not eating breakfast. He says, "it's important to start the day right! You've gotta get yourself some protein - some eggs, some bacon... a good breakfast will get you goin' in the morning!"

And he says it in such a convincing and authoritative manner! And I start to think: maybe I, too should eat breakfast. Maybe I could use a little extra boost to start my day off right! Maybe I could actually make the time necessary to make breakfast!

And then on one side of my head, I think: just what the heck is breakfast for, anyway?

And then I hear a loud shout from the other side of my head, yelling, "It's for eating, that's what it's for!"

And on the other side of my head, I go, "oh. right. never mind."

Firebird fans, start your fox.

to all my pals out there using firebird, mozilla just updated firebird. It's now called firefox and it's available here. Did the best browser out there just get better? I'm about to find out.

Update: yup. it rulez.

mathcaddy.com pictures how-to:

Soo... I got "PhotoMojo" and "Do You Hear What I Hear?" working (see below), and I figured that I needed to give the guys who have theirs set up a little bit of a runthrough on what to do.

PhotoMojo:
1. Upload thumbnail: Upload a file (using blogger) to: /httpdocs/images/yourname_.jpg (ex: /httpdocs/images/steve_.jpg) You will need to make the thumbnail 120 pixels wide (just crop it in photoshop or paint...). Height doesn't really matter that much, but I recommend keeping it a square 120x120.

2. Upload picture: Upload a file (again, using blogger) to: /httpdocs/images/yourname.jpg (ex: /httpdocs/images/steve.jpg) You can make this picture as huge as you want. Clicking on this picture will show the full version of the thumbnail.

do you hear what I hear?:
1. Get the album: Go to amazon.com and pick which album you want to include. Download it.

2. Resize the picture: It's important that you don't use their 300x300 pixel file. The site will shrink your file but a 300x300 pic just bloats the load time of the page. Just like the PhotoMojo thumbnail, resize this to 120 pixels wide.

3. Upload album cover: Once you've resized your pic, pload the file (again, using blogger) to: /httpdocs/images/yourname_music.jpg (ex: /httpdocs/images/steve_music.jpg)

Regarding pictures in general on the web site: Please upload all pics (even in posts) to /httpdocs/images/ because uploading them to /httpdocs/ creates a huge amount of clutter in the html directory. All you have to do is just tack on that /images/ part to the upload, since /httpdocs is already there.

If you have any questions on how to post pics with these new features or have any other problems or suggestions, let me know.

Note: if you're a mathcaddy.com contributor and you want your own spot to add to the PhotoMojo pics or the "do you hear" section, just email me and I'll add you.

Happy Anniversary, mathcaddy.com!

mathcaddy.com has a new design and a crapload of new features.

A whole lot of messing around gave us our own javascript comments section -- allowing people to comment on an individual post rather than using the web page as a whole to comment on past postings -- this gives greater clarity as to what you're referring to, and adds more interaction from non-members.

Probably my favorite is this sweet javascript random image generator I built. It keeps it pretty fresh. Most of the pics are from "the wall" and done at a cropped resolution.

Brand new hosting (cheaper, too!) took me from 100 mb of storage and 2 GB/month transfer all the way to 2 GB storage and 60 GB/month transfer.

This is obviously quite a huge change. Because of it, we can now feature way more cool stuff. Steve is going to be developing his flash skillz and hopefully sharing kustom kool krap with us. I will be bringin' it with some quicktime short films every now and again. And we have the storage and bandwidth to create a shared ftp server for exchanging "stuff."

Adam, Eric, Steve, and Dan now have their own individual username.mathcaddy.com subdomain sites (optional, of course!) Anyone else (within reason) who wants their own site is welcome to it. I just gave them first of all to the top four posting people from the last year.

For those of you who have a subdomain, I think the best way to go is using a blog - because it allows easy updating. It's very easy to use blogger's setup for your own personal web space. I can give you the server info to plug into blogger. If you have no interest in maintaining your own area, please let me know.

And if you want comments on your subdomain sites, tell me and I can hook you up with that, too.

Oh yeah! My new hosting gives me unlimited pop or webmail accounts, plus unlimited forwarding accounts. Email me if you want one.

And more stuff is coming:
- PhotoMojo pictures portion of main site done.
- "Do You Hear What I Hear" listening pic list done.
- permalinks (hopefully)
- thewall.mathcaddy.com
- and any other ideas? Tell me.

That's it! Some of the other new features - particularly the PhotoMojo and "Do You Hear What I Hear?" sections - should be up this week. I just need to finish "beta testing" (read: fixing massive issues)

By the way, IE sucks. I had this page well designed four times in Firebird / Mozilla / Opera / web standards and could not get it to look right in internet explorer. And every time, IE just looked like crap. It still has a bit of a problem -- but I'm not going to resolve it. If you want this page to look not like crap, get firebird or mozilla. (Firebird is frickin' awesome.)

Was I on crack?

Okay -- here's living proof that the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence.

Apparently I can confirm that I seem to desire the opposite extreme of whatever temperature I am experiencing. Oh well. At least I haven't gotten frostbite yet.

(But the question is: if I did, would I wish for heat stroke?)

Pepsi $10,000,000 Music Giveaway BONANZA!!

I have no idea how the Pepsi music giveaway works, but I think that it would work something like going to the iTunes website and typing in a code under your cap bla bla bla... What I wonder is if it works like this, would there be a way for someone to create a serial number generator and let people get free songs. I am just theorizing, I have no interest in stealing from iTunes or Pepsi, I still get my music from Kazzaa.

Good to see people posting again.

Pikachuroshiyoshimu! Hai!

I've just found out that I will be sent to Japan this summer for about 6 weeks. Why? So I could be Dan the Man from Japan. Riiiiiiiight. Actually I will be working on the explosion compaction of Ni-Al powder composites. As everybody knows, if you need something explosively compacted...Japan's your man. But since I'll be in Japan, and since I'd ordinarily be your man, I suppose I would be Dan the Man from Japan. Hai! Anyhoo, so that's the news. More as I get it.

samoshuruhato piku piku! Hai!

Just one week...

Feb 10, 2002 was the initial date that the mathcaddy.com domain was reserved.

Feb 10, 2003 was the date mathcaddy.com went from static to dynamic content.

What will happen Feb 10, 2004?

I don't know. But I hope I find out in a week. Okay, I have a couple of ideas... but nothing to set in stone. It's coming though.

Just one week 'til the all-new mathcaddy.com. Busted wide open with new features, new design, and new in honor of our one-year anniversary. (Hint: one of the new features involves me actually posting things.)

Do I sound like I'm promoting a new game show? Good. I am. No, I'm not. Someone should make me stop talking.