dreams

I once dreamed an entire song about a woman I had recently moved in with.  The song was very dark in content; the woman had led a terrible life and we had bonded over music, so this seemed like a very proper response to our relationship.

Are dreams a way to store our feelings in memory, using nonverbal symbols?

It might also be the opposite, that is, you are "storing" a feeling and your brain is building a visual (and in this case, auditory) story around the feeling.  That's kind of art in a nutshell, isn't it?

Using NIS/ypbind with Linuxmint 13 (and probably Ubuntu 13)

I finally got it working, more or less.  I eventually put restart directives for both the ypbind and autofs processes in /etc/rc.local.  It works, as long as I wait about a minute after the machine boots up before trying to log in.  I don't know why it has to be kluged like this; bug reports for problems like this are opened for EVERY Ubuntu release, and no one ever feels any need to fix it.  At least, with Fedora/RHEL, I can be assured that NIS will work out of the box.

Jobs

I'm so, so disappointed by "Jobs". It had nothing in it that I wanted to know about; nothing about the visit to Xerox PARC, nothing about his spiritual journeys, nothing about NeXT. Going by the movie, Jobs was nothing but an ungrateful SOB with no talents and nothing interesting in his life. I thought Kutcher did a fine job with the part, so to speak, but surely there was enough to Steve Jobs' existence to make a movie that was worth seeing other than as an hour and a half impression of him by Ashton Kutcher.

All right, I'm a bit of a fanboi, but you know, there was no other personal computer that made your room a little prettier, a little more interesting, just by being in it. I don't think it's overstating it to say that Jobs played a major part in making computers into household appliances. I was getting ready to enter the world of law in 1989; instead, because my boss had several Macintoshes around the office, I'm in tech instead. And now, I'm taking an iPad to band rehearsals and plugging my guitar into it, and then plugging a keyboard into it. This movie barely gives us a hint as to the good things that he was responsible for. Why?

McCartney at Outside Lands

My God, three hours of McCartney ... he sang lead on every song, and simply kicked ass for three hours straight. He seemed genuinely excited to be in San Francisco (well, who wouldn't be?). The band rocked like mad. OK, the whole show was rocking, but ... after 2 and 1/2 hours, he played the last song and left the stage. You'd think he'd be a little tired, but no, he comes back and does fucking Helter Skelter. And wrecked it. Later he came back for the 2nd encore, and it was the the medley from Abbey Road, starting at "Golden Slumbers". That was just a deeply satisfying show, from beginning to end.

Getting compiz to work on Linuxmint 15

Woo boy, this is getting more and more difficult.  Compiz and especially comizconfig seem to be so spotty right now.

I installed all the compiz packages, but compizconfig would explode whenever I enabled anything until I installed dconf-tools as well.  Now, I can enable things; I have my beloved "Opacity, Brightness and Saturation" working (which means I can make windows transparent with a key-click) and "wobbly windows" (which always amuses me).  However, if I then close compizconfig and open it again I lose all those settings.  It's better than compiz just crashing, but annoying anyway.

I have yet to get the cube working, though.  Working on it ...

Analog versus Digital Multi-track Recording

I have quite a few musician friends who say they like the sound of analog recording better than digital.  Well, yeah, and there's a reason for that, but the price you pay for it is not worth it, in my opinion.

Yes, of course you can hear the difference between digital and analog.  The point to digital is that it doesn't sound like anything; it's supposed to sound exactly like what you put into it, no more, no less.  (how close it gets to that is a different, complicated question, but I think it is not really debatable that analog might be MORE "accurate" than digital).  Whereas, using analog THESE days (when something better is available ;) ) is actually because analog doesn't sound transparent, and doesn't sound like what you put in.  It's the equivalent of turning an amplifier up until it distorts at bit.  Yeah, you might like the sound, but it's distorted just the same.  And once it is distorted, you can't un-distort it.

Also, keep in mind that, unless you are going to listen to your recording on a 90 min cassette or on your old turntable, you are going to be listening to "digital" anyway, or at least a hybrid of analog on backend and digital on the frontend, whether you listen to an mp3, to a CD, or stream a song online.

I contend that it is quite possible, these days, to make a digital recording that sounds "warm" in the way that an analog recording sounds.  Hell, you can make them sound "warm" in any way you like!  Want the "warmth" of a Neve recording desk and an Otari multi-track?  Or maybe you'd prefer SSL and Tascam?  There must be plugins for this, but in any case, it can be done.

And digital has so many other advantages:

   * digital is much cheaper, in every way
   * quick, easy and safe cut and paste of songs.
   * non-destructive post-mixing eq and other manipulation
   * did I say cheaper?  You replace the thousands of dollars in buying and maintaining a recording tape deck and a desk with a few hundred dollars in an analog to digital converter.  You also save the space.
   * your digital recording may last forever, with proper backups.
   * copies of digital sound files are identical to the original.  copies of analog masters are yet another generation removed from the pristine quality of the original.
   * analog recordings degrade EVERY time you play them.  Imagine your turntable needle being pulled through the soft, hot vinyl of a record, or a vinyl tape been pulled over a magenetic tape recorder head, over and over again.  Digital recordings are not degraded by playing them.
   * analog recordings must generally be played back on the same type of machine that created them.  You are out of luck if your tape machine format is no longer manufactured.  Whereas digital data is just bits; converting that data to a new format is just a matter of writing a program to do it.
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The Next Right Wing Anti-Global Warming Meme

The new right wing anti-global warming meme will be (my prediction): it's too late.  That even if we stop with the massive man-made CO2 emissions completely, right now, global temperature will still continue to rise and we will reach many of the "drop dead" temperatures that will lose us many low-lying cities and communities (and sometimes whole countries), and which will cause mass extinctions of vulnerable animal species, etc.

Here's the thing: it's not true.  Technologies exist, right now, to pull unwanted CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it where it can't hurt anything.  But all such technologies will work much better and do less of their own kinds of damage IF they are not competing with increasing CO2 at the same time.  When the time comes, when we are not increasing atmospheric CO2, we WILL be able to clean the current over-enriched CO2 out of the atmosphere.

WE CAN FIX THIS.

AS LONG AS WE DON'T GIVE UP.  AS LONG AS WE DON'T ALLOW VESTED ENERGY INTERESTS TO CONTROL THE DEBATE.

If you believe in God, you must believe in a Woman's Right to Choose

Do you believe in God?  God put women in charge of their babies, right from conception until birth (and, arguably, afterwards; try taking a woman's baby away from her!).  If a woman wants to kill her baby she can do it, even if it comes down to suicide and both dying, it's still all in her hands.  If you believe in God and the perfection of "his" designs, then you have to believe that women are in charge of the zygotes, fetuses and babies, because God put them INSIDE of her.  That's all there is to it.

Google Earth 7.x on 64-bit Fedora 18

I finally got Google Earth 7.0 Free to work decently in Fedora 18 running on my Mac, running the proprietary catalyst drivers


kmod-catalyst-13.1-2.fc18.4.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-13.1-1.fc18.x86_64

The error was:


libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
libGL error: Try again with LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose for more details.


Info:

1. Despite the fact that I installed the 64-bit version of the Google Earth RPM, it's actually 32-bit and needs 32 bit OpenGL drivers
2. With the proprietary ATi drivers installed, the default libGL.so library (/usr/lib/libGL.so.1) is incompatible with the display, yet this seems to be what GE is trying to use.
3. GE will use anything in it's own directory FIRST, evidently
   /opt/google/earth/free

So, I ended up copying /usr/lib/fglrx/fglrx-libGL.so.1.2 to /opt/google/earth/free, and made symlinks to it as libGL..so.1.2, libGL.so.1 and libGL.so in the same directory.  Now it works.

I really, really wish that Google would get their shit together with the 64-bit versions of Google Earth.  I'm running fast, clean 3D graphics on this workstation every day, and no other programs ever seem to have problems like this.  Why in god's name does it have to be so picky about where everything is located, and, well, who runs 32-bit anymore?

Bandaids

When washing your hands, there is no way to avoid soaking the bandaid on your finger, so don't try. I think that's a lesson for life.

Rush Limbaugh's Job

Rush Limbaugh's job is to convince ignorant xenophobes that the world and it's browner people is complicated and scary not because they themselves are cowards, with shrunken little hearts, too lazy to do their homework, but because of conspiracy; it is all someone else's fault.  It must be quite a relief.

Benghazi is the anti-Bin Laden

Ah, I finally get the right-wing freakout about Benghazi. Remember, it's always been the strategy of Karl Rove and his horrible acolytes that, if your foe is heroic in some way, you don't avoid that, you attack it, you reverse it. So war hero John Kerry becomes, through swift-boating, a coward.

President Obama got Osama Bin Laden. How do you counter that? Why, Obama must be responsible for Americans killed at an embassy in the Middle East! And lied about! It's perfect.

Bio science ... eww.

I really ought to get over my aversion to biological science. It's the next frontier; we're going to learn so much in the next century! The science of living things is so much more sophisticated than our current technology that ... we don't even know how much more sophisticated it is. That's how much more sophisticated it is.

 Still ... ewww.

The Romney Campaign (not)

I have to admit I have found Romney's campaign mystifying, but I think I have it sussed: he campaign's exactly like he does business, there's no strategy involved, it's all for short term gain.  Just like during his time at Bain Capital, where he changed the business model completely to leveraged buyouts because they paid off faster, so does he pivot to the sensibilities of whoever he's talking to at the time.  If he needs conservatives, as in the primaries, he's "severely conservative"; if he needs crossover voters, as in the debates, he's a moderate who sometimes even agrees with the President on policy.

I couldn't wrap my head around the long term game he was running, but that because he wasn't running one.  After all, the people he's really working for, the people who finance him and use their influence for him, already know exactly what he is; they found out in boardrooms, or on the golf course.  He doesn't need to convince them of anything, and he doesn't bother.

The ACA and political "cover"

(quoted from my own post on Facebook, regarding the political process at the beginning of the Obama presidency)

 The ACA is, in fact, a good example of the whole process. No one, not even conservative Republicans, believe that the American health system is in good shape. Even Republicans that believe that our health system is "the best in the world" (it's not) know, if they bother to read the projections, that the system is not sustainable in the long run. Almost no one believes it shouldn't change. So, Obama and the Democrats took a CONSERVATIVE healthcare insurance proposal (Mitt Romney's own, in fact, which was originally a Heritage Foundation counter proposal to the Clinton's health care proposals) which was actually written to make necessary changes while avoiding even a whiff of "socialism", and tried to get bipartisan support for it. The Republicans would have none of it, even though guys like Romney and Bill O'Reilly now say that much of it will need to be re-implemented after it is repealed (evidently the main problem with it is that it is Obama's). So, the Democrats in the Senate passed it, and then the House used that passage to pass it themselves with a bit of budget trickery, and the Democrats and the President took complete responsibility for it, despite the incredible political danger of it, because it HAD to be done. And now, we will cover a much larger group of people, and save a lot of money in the long run, in SPITE of the Republicans, but Obama might lose the election largely because of the ACA (which people hate, until you describe the things it actually does for them, and they find that they like all those things).

 Do you see now why Obama (and Reid and Pelosi) didn't just try ram a lot of stuff through when they had the votes? But now we know they should have, because the Republicans put politics above what is good for the country, to an extreme never seen before. about a minute ago · Like

Iran and Us; kiss and make up pt. 1

All: Iran has no nuclear bomb and isn't working on one , according to both US and ISRAELI intelligence. Also, historically, Iran doesn't start wars. We are mad at them for the hostage crisis, which was a reaction to our deposing of their democratically elected leader, and saddling them with a US supported dictator fOR 3 DECADES. For God’s sake use your heads.

Iran and the US; kiss and make up, pt. 2

I'm going to go farther out on my Iran versus US limb: if the United States made peace with Iran (and we should, we're the ones that deposed their elected government and both made them an enemy and set back their democracy by at least six decades) then Israel would probably, if not gain a friend, at least lose a large and powerful enemy in the Near East. Iran doesn't care about Palestine; Iranians don't particularly care for Arabs. The Iranians are enemies of Israel because Israel is OUR friend. It's absolutely insane to pressuring Iran for the sake of Israel; Israel would be much better off if we left Iran the hell ALONE.

Why do Conservatives Hate Social Security?

Republicans and conservatives hate Social Security because of the word "Social".
"Social", to them, means Socialism. This is why some of the more disingenuous on the right tend to compare Liberalism with Nazism, simply because the Nazis used the word "Socialist" in their party name. And "Socialism" means "Communism", in their minds. The Republicans are literally still fighting the Cold War. They're like the Japanese soldiers from WWII who were never told about the end of the war and kept fighting decades later. And they believe that everyone except their own leaders are secretly commies themselves, but in reality their leaders are capitalists, and it's in their financial best interests to keep the "war" going, so they never tell their troops to stand down.
This is why the George W. Bush administration was taken by surprise on 9/11; they were still only concerned about the "Rooskis"! Condoleeza Rice was supposed to make a report on the defense of the United States on 9/12. She never got to make it, obviously, but the content of that report has never been released. Those who have seen it, though, tell us that there was nothing about terrorism in it; it was all about Russia as a nuclear power and Star Wars.
But let's be fair to Condi; she wasn't quite as ignorant as all that; she'd hedged her bet. After the Al Queda-coordinated bombings at our embassies in Africa Clinton had decided to destroy Al-Queda. He asked Richard Clarke to come up with the plan for this. The plan was ready to go just before Clinton left office, but rather than hand Bush a war they decided to give the plan to the Bush administration and let them handle it. Rice was impressed with the plan, and with Clarke, and kept him on the new administration and slowly, very slowly, went over the plan and moved it up the ladder towards the President's signature. After 9 months, the plan had finally been approved by the last group before the President would see it; that was on September 4, already far too late to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
Do you remember Condi Rice ever telling us about the Al Queda threat? Neither do I.

The 10th Floor

I decided to go to college at the last minute, and went to Oakland University in Michigan because they had a “commercial” music program, which I figured would be as close to rock and roll as college could get, and because they offered a scholarship. Since it so late in the season, most of the dormitories were full. The only rooms available were in a 10 floor building. I asked for the 10th floor, because I always want to be on the top, and because “shit rolls downhill” as they say. What I didn’t know was that the 10th floor was an unofficial athletic special interest floor, which had been 90% booked by athletes. The booker didn’t know that either. So, I roomed with Pete, on the 10th floor, surrounded by 6 foot plus, 200 plus pound guys; I was a little intimidated, but the guys were all pretty nice to me. The 9th and 8th floors were all women; it was explained to me that they were “athlete” special interest floors, the 8 floor being women who didn’t have the seniority of those on the 9th. They were also very nice to me, if a little taken aback by my presence on the 10th. On my second day up there my roommate told me I should get involved in some of the 10th floor activities. That night we went through one of the yearly rituals, this one to introduce ourselves to the ladies on the lower floors. This consisted of stripping down to our underpants, pulling our undies up into our butt cracks, and then going from door to door on the lower floors until the ladies came out and said hi. Kind of exciting, really.

Let's Improvise Some Guitar!

Shall we improvise some guitar?

The bass player is playing a low G; what shall we play? We could play a D; that would leave the third undefined, and the listeners' minds would fill in the blanks with whatever they feel right now. Or we could play an F; down low or up high it would create a tension, suggest moving to a comfortable C along a bluesy highway.

We could play a B flat, take it minor, make it a little sad. Or a B natural, move it to a positive feeling, if that's called for. Or an A; the tempered A is a little out of tune to the natural A, but it's still clear enough to suggest harmonic movement. Or an A flat, which would create an almost unbearable tension, and suggest an incompetent punk or a masochistic free jazzer.

But let's keep it simple, and also play a G. Reinforce the bass note, up an octave or two. The note becomes more powerful; perhaps we're rocking out a bit. We could play the open G string: the lowest of the unwound strings, it has the most complex audible harmonics, and might suggest a folky flavor. It sounds almost comical compared to the other open strings. Or we could play the G on the fifth fret on the D string: it's wound, and has a very different sound than the open string, darker, blending better. Or even the G on the A string at the 10th fret; towards the middle of the string, it is full of odd harmonics, and emphatically more bassy, taking us towards a jazzy feel. Or we couFOR GODS SAKE SOMEONE HAND ME A COWBELL!