December 2005

OK. Here it is in as short a manner as I can manage: the Truth behind the whole silly argument. Well, it?s actually only my opinion, but it reflects both the hard science in my engineering brain as well as the Godly love that I feel in my heart. As I see this fight playing out on the nightly news, I lean back and wonder what the fuss is all about. What if everyone is right?

Start with a kaleidoscope. You played with it as a child; it was a single cardboard tube with a mirrored insert, plus assorted plastic beads and colored glass bits that produced complex patterns as you rotated the tube and looked through one end of it. As you kept on rotating the tube up to the light you delighted in the unique, non-repeating patterns that you observed.

Now think of the Universe as God’s kaleidoscope. He puts in a ton of hydrogen and free energy and starts rotating the tube. Fusion ensues in the hydrogen eddies pooling in some gravimetric nooks and crannies of space and starts producing the heavier elements and eventual carbon that coalesces into the known worlds and you and me. The amino acid laden primordial soup that created life was but a stage in this turning of the tube. The background radiation that resulted from all the burning plasma in the Universe and which jump-starts the initial combinatorial changes in the chromosomal pool is just another bit of plastic and glass that resided in the tube.

And the continuing evolution of Earthly life in its many forms is just a pleasing pattern of Creation that was started so long ago.

Did God create the tube? Definitely. Can you explain where all the matter and the initial energetic deposit came from, otherwise? And it was a pretty large deposit, too. Does God know that we were coming when the kaleidoscope was put together and started turning? Definitely; that?s one disadvantage of omniscience, you can never be surprised by the Future.

So what is the point of this exercise, this eons-long turning of a cardboard tube? It is pleasing to God and He derives the greatest measure of satisfaction from it (I also enjoy watching crystals grow, but I certainly don?t have the patience for a longer endeavour). But unlike a child watching the ants crawling around in the Ant Farm?, the Creator interacts with His Creation and knows the name of His creatures. We are not pets, but part of the Creator?s family and given part of the family inheritance. Does this violate the Star Trek non-interference rule? I don?t know that God would limit himself to the laws of nature and physics that He himself created. He decided in which direction Time?s Arrow would point, and He can change the infinitesimal characteristics of the tube?s contents when He desires.

So to answer the burning question: Creation or Evolution? I can say ?both.? One does not deny the other. We can acknowledge the mechanism and the Creator of the mechanism. To those that propose the randomness of the process I can only say: It?s random because our small minds cannot grasp the larger pattern. If we had a fast enough computer and limitless storage memory, we could predict tomorrow?s weather. God?s memory is large enough to hold and to view and influence the eventual fate of His Creation.

So heres the deal.
For those of you who don’t know (or care to remember), I have two kids. Boy-Girl twins. They are almost 5 and getting closer to a cool age where toys are fun for the both of us and video games, well, let’s just say I’m going to teach them Tetris and Street-Fighter AND BLOW THE PANTS OFF OF THEM. (I’m too immature to be one of those caring dads that can let their kids beat them at stuff.)

Soon, I will be forcing, er um, I mean hoping that they will follow the same industrial and punk influences that I do.

BUT FOR NOW it’s just non-stop nursery song stuff, which brings me to today’s rant.

We watch the Noggin channel or Nick-JR A LOT. There are a few shows that actually have decent tunes on them.
Take “Lazytown”.
All the music is written in a “I’m a Barbie-Girl” dance/pop style. It’s not bad at all. (For childrens music. Give me some credit.)
Then there’s this chick Lori Berkner who has some good jams between shows.

So what’s my problem? You want to know? Really?

It’s that none of these songs will be remembered 20 years from now! Who the f*ck made the rule that only certain songs, written 200 years ago, are allowed to be passed on through the generations.
Examples?
I got dozens and you know them all too.
“London Bridge is Falling Down.”
“I’m a Little Tea pot”
“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (grossly plagiarized by the ABC song, yet no lawsuit… WTF?)

THESE SONGS ARE BAD. HORRIBLE.
Some are even sung purposely off-key. Example “On top of Spa-get-teeee”
Shoot me.
No, not me.
The moron who came up with that one. Shoot him.
If I could go back and see that song as it was being written. Maybe by some lumberjack taking a break, back in 1810. I’d swipe it from his hands. Read it out loud, so that he can hear how stupid it sounds, then rip it up and tell him to get back to choppin or you’re fired.

What’s aggravating is, that you can’t stop it.

When my kids are 25, I’ll ask them if they remember a show called Lazytown and maybe, after thinking for a second, they will get a vague picture of the show BUT the music will be lost to them.
YET if I we’re to start singing “There’s a hole in the bucket, Eliza Eliza…”
They’d be slappin’ their knee and singing right along with me.

I understand the physics that explain why high-quality analog audio/video cables are a good thing. Ok, at least I understood it in college. Bottom line is that they lower distortion. But I also understand there is a law of diminishing returns, which is governed by the limitations of the human ear and eye and the quality of your A/V components. Long story short, you want decent speaker cables and component or S-Video cables.
     But digital cables don?t need to be super high quality. When you think about it, they?re just computer cables. I?ve been around computers my whole life, and have troubleshot a lot problems. I think the cable has been an issue twice, and it is always a source of amazement, and the last thing you?d check. (This doesn?t include the times when you attempt to pull out a FibreChannel cable by the wire instead of the tiny plug, and the wire comes out but the plug stays there, and you?ve broken it just like the 8 admins before you, because they are the worst designed cables ever.) The point is that all those cables carry the same type of digital signal that your digital audio, HDMI, or DVI cables carry. It?s bits of data, 1s and 0s, on or off. Nobody in the computer industry sweats over cable quality, because if the system can?t tell the difference between on and off, you probably don?t have a cable, but what we call a resistor. Don?t use those.
     Agent Assassin has some A/V components that the average Joe would describe as terribly expensive and high quality (and what his roommate ? your truly ? would call ?good enough for the time being?). He has researched the living daylights out of these things, and the consensus among the smart people is to get stuff from Blue Jeans Cable. They make really good stuff, but don?t rip you off. (Like Monster Cable allegedly does. Not that you heard that from me.) Their website is also educational. There is a catch, though: you have to attach the plugs/ends to the wire yourself. If they do it, it’s $27 per cable, including the connectors they sell for $3.50/pair. It’s like they really hate doing this, so they’ll charge you an exorbitant fee hoping you’ll say no. It does seem like a pain, but so does shelling out $100 for them to do it for you.

Not too long ago, I saw a girl on Santa Monica’s 3rd St. Promenade wearing the shirt from a Boy Scout uniform. It was at least a size too small, and appeared to be missing the first few buttons. Here’s the shocker: it was sexy! I know, I know. You’re thinking, “Take a cute girl and put her in an ill-fitting man’s shirt? Eww. Yuck. No thanks.” But as counterintuitive as it seems, it looked great. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one.
     Then it hit me. Did all us Boy Scouts look that irresistible in our tan shirts? As irresistible as that poor girl on the Promenade who couldn’t even afford a bra to go with her thrift-store shirt? I bet we did! And that’s why you’ve had all those problems with camp counselors wanting to play “pitch the tent”, “log roll”, and the ever-popular “Buggery: The Board Game”. It wasn’t their fault, it was those damn shirts. They should be putting Boy Scouts in those brown shirts the Girl Scouts wear; you never hear about problems in their camps. For some reason, though, brown shirts have gotten a bad rap. But I bet if you really looked into it, you’d find there’s no historical basis for it - just simple intolerance!

When I have more money than I know what to do with, I’ve decided that instead of burning it for warmth, I’ll buy a stable of famous movie cars. I don’t need them to be the ones that were actually filmed (although that would rock), just be the same model. Therefore, every car in my list was once a production model. No Batmobiles or Death-mobiles, unless someone decides to mass produce them, and I doubt we’ll ever get a street legal Death-mobile. Besides the Pinto and Corvair.
     While I’m waiting to win the lottery or invent some perfect stock scam, I’ll be writing a series of articles to commemorate them and educate you on why I’m so damn cool. In researching these cars and movies, I found a few cool sites:

IMCDB
The Internet Movie Car Database. Thorough for some films, completely lacking for others.

Hemmings Motor News
These guys have an excellent classifieds section, both for cars and parts. The parts listing in particular is very extensive. They also sponsor(ed?) the TV show My Classic Car with Dennis Gage, which apparently is only on Speed now.

Motorbase
British database of cars. They also have auction listings and past results.

Collector Car Trader Online
Part of the “Trader Online” sites.

duPont Registry
You won’t find any candidates for restoration here, they deal exclusively with cars you can’t afford. All classics are restored, at least as far as I’ve seen. It’s also the standard for selling your used Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Rolls, etc.

Upcoming cars:
Animal House: 1961 Corvette
Better Off Dead: 1967 Camaro
Cruel Intentions: 1956 Jaguar XK-140
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: 1962 Ford Anglia
and more!

Getting a little fed up with cleaning up spam on the blog (although MT Blacklist helps a ton), I whipped up some SQL to turn off trackback pings and comments on older blog messages. I figure if nobody comments within 90 days of a post, it probably won’t happen by anyone I care to hear from. I’m using MySQL 4.1 and Movable Type 2.661, and this is what I did:

mysql> use your_mt_database_name;
mysql> update mt_entry
-> set entry_allow_pings=0 , entry_allow_comments=2
-> WHERE DATE_SUB(CURDATE(),INTERVAL 90 DAY) >= entry_created_on;


Just change the 90 in the WHERE clause to shorten or lengthen the comment/trackback grace period.

Oh, and don’t forget (like I did) to do a Rebuild of all files. Sometimes I forget this is static content.

When I was in college, I was a database of certain types of music. Mainly alternative, especially industrial. I’d actually keep handy a two page typed wishlist of albums to get, if I could find it cheap/used. If you mentioned bands or songs you liked, I’d be right there with, “well, if you liked that, give this a listen.” Since college, I’ve backed off a bit (and I have a theory that most people’s interest in music peaks when they’re in college). However, with a wide variety of net radio stations available (and working on a screenplay that involves, in part, the music industry), my interest is again rekindling, especially with indie music. So I could really use a music geek to advise me, based on stuff I know I like.

Enter Pandora, a web version of said geek, but without my endearing arrogance. Give it a song or an artist, and it creates a radio station filled with similar music. It’s powered by the Music Genome Project (I hadn’t heard of it, either), which catalogs musical attributes of songs and artists, so it can find similar ones. It also accepts your feedback to help sculpt the station; if you don’t like a song it plays, it’ll never play it again on that station (but it might show up on another). You can also combine artists/songs on one station to create hybrids. For instance, I’ve combined Elliot Smith and Jon Brion to form a station I call Pop Genius. For the record, I am not a genius. Just brilliant. Anyway, I also created a KMFDM station, which has so far played Static-X, NIN, and Rob Zombie. Hmm. I wonder if I can recreate AOL’s WB channel by entering the best tracks from the Smallville soundtracks. Uh, not that I’d want to… What? No, you’re gay!

The interface is Flash, and is quite smooth and intuitive. You can pause and skip tracks, but not rewind. The sound quality is excellent! I listen to a lot of net radio, and this is probably the clearest, cleanest feed I’ve heard, even though others are also listed as 128Kbs. I have a hunch that the ones I’m accessing through iTunes are streaming 128K MP3, whereas Pandora might be using a variable bitrate format utilized by Flash. It is currently commercial free, but they warn they’ll be ramping up the advertising. I don’t know if this means radio commercials or not, but they’ll give you an ad-free version for $36/year. That seems reasonable, and well under the $10/month Rhapsody/Listen.com charges (although you can directly choose songs and albums with those services, whereas Pandora you can only “steer” the selections with feedback).

The only issue is whether they’ll be able to keep up with cataloging new and old music. Obviously, if a song’s attributes haven’t been cataloged, the software can’t really recommend it. They claim they don’t pigeonhole artists, which is good considering the range some of them have (how I miss Leeb and Fulber, who created a new band for every variation of industrial they tried: Front Line Assembly, Delerium, Intermix, and a few others). However, their catalog is 10K artists, and 300K songs, so you’ll probably be good for quite a while.

Stay tuned, I plan to experiment with some software that may complement Pandora frighteningly well, as well as necessitate that MP3 player I’ve been eyeing for a while now…