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Media

Shut-Ins

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources had a media tour of Johnson Shut-Ins today, and I obtained permission to attend to take photographs. The members from DNR were wonderfully informative, courteous, and helpful. I also spent time chatting with an AmerenUE employee who I found to be very informative on how the company and specifically the company engineers view the event.

I’m in the process of downloading the photos and when finished, I’ll be posting a story with photos from the event. I’ll also include photos from before the flood, for comparison purposes. At times I tried to orient myself to take photos that I knew matched those I’d taken in the past, but the park has changed so much in so many places, all I could do was an approximation.

The media was out in full force–rather impressively so. The small parking lot was so full of satellite trucks, I wondered for a moment if George Bush was visiting. As more arrived, I then began to wonder if Bill Clinton was visiting. From what the other reporters said, people want to know how the Shut-Ins are doing, and not just folks from Missouri.

All in all, it made for a long day and combined with being under the weather this week from what feels like the beginnings of a pretty severe sinus infection, I’m very tired tonight. However, as soon as I have something to show, will post.

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Critters Media

Tinhat time

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I spent the morning taking my cat into the vet. Poor baby has a thyroid gone awack and will either need pills, radioactive iodine, or surgery. At the vet’s she tried to burrow into my arms, hiding her head inside my coat and shaking. Right now she knows I feel guilty, so she’s asking for yet another treat.

This afternoon, since my internet connection was funky, and the day was nice, I decided to visit the Butterfly House. I’ll write on this later, with photos, but will say now that the trip was enchanting, and I hope my camera’s delicate electronics have survived the humidity.

Catching up on reading tonight, Scott Reynen mentions a flooflah about iTunes and a new mini-store feature. I was reminded to check for software updates, and there it was, in among updates for Quicktime, the OS, and so on. I immediately downloaded the update so I could see for myself Apple’s dastardly doings.

Once updated, since I’m still on a Jelly Roll, urh, roll, I double clicked one of his songs. In the bottom of the song list page, another frame displayed other albums by Morton, a listing of music others bought in addition to Morton, and links to a Morton biography. I’m not surprised at the list of albums I can buy–iTunes is first and foremost a music store. I am pleasantly surprised, though, by the link to the Morton biography.

Okay, so I’ve seen the feature. Now, what’s the uproar?

The Ziff-Davis boys compare the MiniStore to Microsoft’s Passport. (I would have made a comment on this at the site, but you have to register first, and I was too tired, and to uninterested to fill in all those fields.)

Rob Griffiths at MacWorld wrote the following about data being transmitted when a song is double-clicked:

In order to do this, the music store must obviously know what you’re listening to. It learns this information via a packet of information sent each time you play a song via a double-click. This data is sent without your explicit permission, and as far as I can tell, there are no Apple privacy policies that cover that transfer of information. It’s also unclear exactly what data is being sent. (Is it just song and title? Or does it include your Apple music store ID, which would tie the song info directly to your personal data?) And although Apple now assures us that the data is not collected, that information is not made clear to users when they begin using iTunes.

However, this isn’t about the MiniStore itself. It’s about Apple’s attitude in rolling this change out to the millions of iTunes users, without as much as a peep about what’s going on behind the scenes.

Oh my Aunt Matilda’s bunions. Consider with me, if you please, a scenario:

You open iTunes. You double click a song. While the song is playing, additional information about the song, singer, other albums you can buy, and so on is displayed. You bring your hands to your cheeks in astonishment.

“Oh my gawd!”, you cry out. “How could iTunes know what I was going to be playing next?!”

You then call out to your significant other, who is currently fetching toast out of the plugged-in toaster with a fork, “Jimmy Joe! Jimmy Joe! You’re never gonna believe this one, sugah! This here iTunes read my mind, honey bug!”

At that point, having been saved from certain death, Jimmy Joe enters into your room, looks at the screen, scratches his belly in puzzlement and replies, “Sweet lips, I do believe you’re rauuught about that there iToones. It read your durn mind.”

A sudden thought dawns on Jimmy Joe, causing him to exclaim (as well as fart), “You know, the same thing happened to me the other day! I was out getting my email at gmail when I realized, golly, the ads looked familiar. I was writing about chain saws, and lo and behold, the ads were about chain saws.”

“No!”, you exclaim.

“I wouldn’t lie to you sweet cheeks. And come to think on it, when I wrote about the new Dukes of Hazard movie, the ads were about the Dukes of Hazard.”

You look at each other in wonder. You then wrap your arms around Jimmy Joe, exclaiming, “Honey bunch, you know what this all means?” Jimmy Joe shakes his head no. “We’re psychic!”

I wasn’t going to write on all this sort of stuff this this year, but the temptation was too strong. There was a little pulse that kept beating, “do it do it do it”. But you already knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away from the lists didn’t you? Yes you did. And you know what that means, don’t you…

Why honey bunch, you must be psychic!

Categories
Media

Music to my ears

Thanks to a recommendation in my Debate on DRM post, I signed up for a free trial at emusic.com. Unlike iTunes, eMusic allows you to download music into a standard format, mp3.

With the free trial, I received 50 song downloads. If I continue with the subscription, 9.99 US dollars a month buys me 40 song downloads. This makes the service very inexpensive–about .25 a song.

I looked to see if the service had the music I’ve recently downloaded from iTunes, but it didn’t. eMusic does not have as good a selection of music as iTunes does. However, moving away from looking for specific songs and focusing on genres, instead, the selection is good enough. In addition, the royalties are paid for the music, and the downloads are legal–both of which are important to me.

I found and downloaded the 1922 release of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings with Jelly Roll Morton. This is classic oldtime jazz and ragtime music–important for being released before the infamous flood of 1927, which had a major impact on jazz and blues music.

This album was one of the first mixed race jazz albums released–significant because most white jazz bands ‘pretended’ that the black influence on jazz didn’t exist. The downloaded songs feature the scratches and pops of the old vinyl, but you’ll never hear this type of music again. I listened to it last night during my walk, and it was pure joy.

There is also a compilation of Jelly Roll’s piano solos, released in 1923, which I plan on downloading later today. In the meantime, I also downloaded Shirelles album, which will accompany my walk today.

Once I downloaded the music, it was simple to add the songs to my iTunes library, which were then picked up by my iPod the next time I synched. I even copied the album art into the iTunes music.

I told my roommate about Jelly Roll’s music and he was curious, so I burned him a CD to listen to in the car. I liked the ease with which I could import and export the music, in and out of iTunes. Also thanks to the DRM debate thread, I found there are additional utilities I can get that will make this process even easier. Unlike that silly Google Video, with its operating system restrictions and foolish purchase policies, with eMusic and iTunes there’s no lock-in.

Inexpensive….selection of music…artists paid…legal…simplicity…no lock-in… These are what matter to me when downloading music. Everything else, is just tech.

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Media

Three Quarks

Knowing my interest in New Orleans and the history of the area, a friend sent me a link to a thoughtful, intelligent, and well written alternative approach to rebuilding the city: Rethinking, Then Rebuilding New Orleans by Richard Spark. I’ll return to this writing later in an essay on this subject I’m currently writing, but today I wanted to point out the site that originated this link: 3 Quarks Daily.

3 Quarks Daily is a community weblog that features original writing and links to articles on science, art, and literature. I’m sure I’ve heard of this site before, but there are so many that cover art and literature and sometimes one tires of New Yorker clones and therefore I hadn’t checked it out, at least enough to remember doing so. After reading this article, though, and checking out other offerings, I subscribed to the site and now I find it to be one of the first sites I check when catching up on my reading.

So far this week, I’ve read about the James Agee revivalreturning to the moon, a Smoking Gun investigation of James Frey (upon reading of which left me going who would want to buy this book regardless of factuality?), and Reductionist versus Pluralist view of cancer. I have about a dozen articles still on my to-read list.

It really is an amazing site, and addictive. Liking the site is unusual for me because normally when I’m faced with a publication that describes itself as covering ‘art and literature’, I find that after keeping up with the site for a time, my butt tightens, my nose raises into the air, and I start thinking with a Harvard accent. Not so with 3 Quarks. Thank goodness, too, because I can now keep up with my more well read, cosmopolitan, and erudite friends, without risk of losing my inner hick.

(Note to the editor, S. Abbas Raza: Consider bringing on more female contributors. I can recommend one to start: Yule Heibel.)

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Media

Saturday matinee: It’s a raging squid!

I watched the Japanese movie The Calamari Wrestler and it meets or exceeds all expectations when you consider the premise: wrestler dies and re-incarnates as a giant squid and goes on to challenge all comers in the ring.

There is no pretense about the creature–it is obviously a man in a squid suit, with eyes that move about (though they sometimes stick, which is a bit unnerving to see). He has his arms inserted into two of the tentacles and then waves them madly about. All emotional expression is managed with body movements, and the exaggerated nature of mannerisms typical in these types of movies works rather well.

Favorite quotes and scenes from the movie:

“I have no giant squid friends!”

The giant squid seated in zen meditation. The giant squid getting out of an elevator. The giant squid making love (what was all of that in the background?) The giant squid wrestling. The giant squid.

“Joint locks don’t work on an invertebrate. They’re too slippery.”

The giant squid has a wet dream, and it literally becomes a wet dream. Nothing like a sweaty squid.

The giant squid trying to be incognito by wearing sunglasses.

“You want me to date a giant squid? But he has been banned from wrestling–how could he support me?” (Not exact wording but close.)

The scene where the romantically rejected squid is dejectedly walking home, tentacles waving about, back-lit by the setting sun was a kicker. But not as much as watching the squid skip about with the woman of his dreams.

Is it a ‘good’ movie? Define ‘good’. From what Cinema Strikes Back writes:

Right up front, I have to say Calamari Wrestler is not a “good” movie. The budget is miniscule, the acting is broad, the plot meanders, and, obviously, the whole movie is completely ridiculous. However, none of that stops this from being a great piece of entertainment.

The writer went on to compliment the costumes of the creatures, and I agree: they weren’t real, but they were art (something lost in today’s hunt for ‘realism’ in fictional works.)

The Calamari Wrestler is both spoof and a commentary on the Japanese Professional Wrestling association, and from a wrestler featured in the movie and other scenes, must be as truthful and believable as our own American form of the sport. It is a silly movie, but played straight; increasing the entertainment value and the humor in my opinion.

However, there are some other aspects of the movie that seemed quite serious and I wondered how much of it reflects underlying Japanese perceptions and attitudes. For instance, Japanese professional wrestling is seen in the movie as the wind behind the wings of spirit (if I remember the term correctly) that gave heart to the Japanese when they were occupied by the US. No, the ‘hated’ US was the term used.

The movie also had, I thought, overtones of race and class differences–subtle, and not so subtle–such as the health of the giant squid being a measure of the ‘whiteness’ of its skin. I wish I was more familiar with Japanese culture and history because this movie is (for all its Saturday matinee cheesy monsters) subtly nuanced. I think the director targetted more than just Japanese professional wrestling with Calamari.

Do I recommend it? Yes! But only for those people who get to the end of this post and think to themselves, “I have to rent this!” If you do, don’t suspend belief with this movie; you’ll enjoy it so much more if you accept it completely at face value.

Next week: the matinee movie Dogora