I shoulda did this upgrade a long time ago…. Though, the G5 is still crunching away as a media center host. It does that VERY well.

Kevin Rose posted on his website over yonder, a quaint little list of products that he thinks that he couldn’t go without, or it’s absence would adversely affect his life, as of right now, in 2010. And it really got me thinking to what kind of things would I say the same thing about. So I made my own.

Apple Computers / OS X

Logic Studio

Microsoft’s Xbox

Gmail

Gibson Guitars

Marshall Amplifiers

Clearvision Contact Lenses

Korg Legacy Collection

Korg Kontrol49

Translink’s Skytrain

Shaw Canada Broadband

iPhone 3G

Twitter

Foursquare

The bit I really liked about this idea was to compare and see how many of these products or services were digital or virtual in comparison. It’s probably more than you expected.

Here we go, let’s see if this works.

LISTEN TO ME

I wiggle my mouse, letting a laser sensor detect movement and send small electrical impulses down a copper cable via the universal serial bus into the front of my Apple PowerMac G5 where two IBM built PowerPC 970MP processors detect that movement and jolt to life together in unison, propelling my desktop computer to 2.0GHz per processor as it cycles through billions of calculations a second to frantically run the UNIX foundation that supports Mac OS X as a platform that flexes it’s muscles and hosts Core Audio that can detect my M-Audio audio interface over the universal serial bus and supply the electricity needed to not only power that input/output interface, but supply the extra 45 volts down it’s cable to my Nova where it powers the electronics and diaphragm of the microphone so it can receive and interpret sound pressure levels emitted by my Marshall Valvestate S80 amplifier who listens for the signals made by my Gibson SG guitar.

Where my hand and pic grazes the strings of it that vibrate at different frequencies depending on where I restrain those strings on various points along the guitar’s fretboard. the dual, plated humbucker pickups below the strings sense those strings vibrations with electromagnets wrapped in copper coil that generate small electrical signals that are routed inside the guitar, being coloured by the density of the wood and the coil of the strings as they pass through volume and tone filters that I could control with my hands with knobs on the face of the instrument and zaps on out through a 1/4 inch cable into my solid-state amplifier where those signals are sent through semiconductor circuits that use a combination of valve and solid-state technologies that create a unique overdriven sound and route it out to a pair of 12 inch speakers in a cabinet that continue to shape the sound before it expels outward as waves of particles and energy through the air and collides with my Nova microphone where it is then converted once more into electrical energy and is blasted down, through my I/O’s analog to digital converters that change electrical signals to digital information so my Macintosh’s Core Audio engine can read those packets of information and allow Logic Studio to route and record that information to my hard drives that are spinning at 7200 revolutions per minute.

All of this happens behind a graphical interface that allows me to modify, warp, change those recordings into a coherent “mix” where the guitars are spread out over a wide stereo spectrum and it’s harmonic content controlled with multi-band equalization so that the drum kit, who is a interface and algorithm with over 20,000 different samples of a given drum kit that interprets how I play my midi controller into different drum recordings, in real-time, to arrange different percussion patterns can eventually get mixed and summed with the recordings of my guitars in a mathematical algorithm where it is then converted, compressed and saved as an individual MPEG-Layer-3 coded file that I then upload over the TC/IP network that spans the entire fucking globe to a website that I own and run for a small-as-shit fee, so that anyone on the infinitely accessible internet can decide if they have the time to listen to what I had just spent the time creating or read what I had just self-published. for free.

EVERYONE.

everyone takes everything for granted, all the time.

and as much as I find the possibilities of what can be done with our technology inspiring and truly amazing.. I find it sad and very disheartening that nobody knows that it’s there. or what it actually does. or the effort it took to get it to where it is. or that they can do these kinds of things if they took the time to look into it.

It’s taken me about a month of looking (not really that hard, though. Damn, b-movies.) but I finally got that tone and mic placement redisovered from back before I moved. Man, that was a bit of a task.

Always remember: document everything. Even when you think it’s more fun to get another beer and continue to rock out. You just may regret forgetting how you came across a sound or setting you just created.

Play Me!

Jen and I went out for some quick shopping early in the day and the olympic media personell and visitors to the city are starting to show up. The crowds evidently are starting to get  larger as we discovered, coming back up Granville  St:

I can only imagine how the next coming weeks are going to be like, downtown.

It had been a while since Jen and I had last gone to see a movie in the theater, so we took this evening off and went to see Avatar in 3D and then hit up the pub for a drink afterwards. It was pretty fun, and was the first chance either of us had to see the city center all done up for 2010. I managed to sneak a few shots in the dark of the Robson area. It was a nice night out.

I had to make a post about this. There’s no two ways about it. The single most jarring thing about moving in with a woman (I mean, a woman I’m dating after spending a few years on my own… not like my sister or my mom, like back in the day when I lived at home) is the bathroom. And it’s not like how it’s layed out or anything like that, I could care less… it’s just the sheer magnitude of potions, lotions, creams, smears, rubs and witches’ brews in contrast to my, like, 5 guy essentials (deodorant, toothpaste, contacts, cologne & shaving cream)
I mean, look at this:

That shit is black on top and then goes WHITE ON THE BOTTOM. and all it says is that it’s a “Youth Activating Concentrate“. I am not kidding. For fucks sake! Jen could be a working as a tertiary agent for Torchwood or somehow owed Hellboy a favor and is keeping this freaking thing in my bathroom. I know it. One day I’m going to be getting ready for work and some squad of scary looking dudes are going to pile in from the windows and throw me up against the wall and scream “where is the concentrate?!?!?” and I’m going to have to go “fuck, duuuude, I dunno! god, look at this apartment! does it look like I do anything other than make music and movies?! fuuuuck!”

That, or it’s just an anti-wrinkle cream that’s really freaky lookin’ and I don’t have anyone here to bounce my ideas off of and I end up with a wacky idea of post-war supernaturalism.

One of the two, I’m sure.

Man, the RIAA are really barking up the wrong tree, it would seem. Yes, mininova has gone legitimate but that doesn’t mean that this will affect download numbers between casual music listeners.
If you want to see CD or iTunes sales pick up, you have to take down P2P networks that the clear majority of music theives use, or at least their widely known clients such as Kazzaa, LimeWire, so on, so forth.
Why do I say that? well.. because bootlegging has become TOO easy, now. And it shouldn’t be. Finding rare, and unknown works from obscure artists should be a task that consumes more than a 10 minute index search and it should have an element of risk in it.
Once single moms and grandparents get on a specific file-sharing bandwagon, you know it’s time to move on to something new.

So I’ve  moved back into the city, this week. It’s been a long, long time since I had a place to live where the high-rises of downtown Vancouver were something I could look out over my balcony and marvel at. In fact, it was the apartment on Haro St with my Dad, would be the last time that happened.

I’ve since had a place in White Rock, and two in Burnaby and…  they never really felt quite, completely right. Granted, my bachelor pad I just moved out of was brilliant but that’s probably because I was truly self-sufficient and on my own for the first real time. No room-mates, no family, just me and myself and however I could make ends meet. I completely recommend just diving out on your own with no extensive plan or experience and just getting a small, cheap apartment and going at it by yourself for a while. Completely. The freedom, is delicious.

BUT, I’m back in the city and it’s about time I got down to work. You can expect to hear some singing from me and a friend of mine in the next few months, and you can expect the drum kit and electric guitar will most likely be left out of the equation. Once I get a new mic stand… since the one I have doesn’t hold the Nova quite right…

In any event, here’s a thing I did the other night, inspired by all of this. Hope you like it:

Untitled Idea  by  Dizavin