This page contains all entries posted to Manufactured Environments in February 2004.

XD38 - Nexus Personality

This is interesting. Somebody wrote a website that describes people such as myself. If you want to know more about me in the abstract, check this out — XD38 - Nexus Personality. [via MeFi] I suppose this is the type of stuff that gets covered in Personality 101 over there in the psych dept, but it’s still cool.

Had lunch with J. yesterday. We headed over to the River Room. Careers was the topic of choice this time. Almost had lunch with J. today (a different J.), but I had to cancel. We went to a concert tonight that was fabulous. The first group was from a local synagogue performing Yiddish tunes. They were great. The second group was a local gospel choir, and they were fabulous. There were 18 or 20 singers, and they had the most tremendous volume. The music sent chills up my spine. They were really good.

It got me thinking though about the saying that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. That’s probably true.

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RSS Feeds

Great article via the Associated Press on RSS feeds here. [via Scoble]

In related news, my favorite free RSS newsreader for Windows, SharpReader, just got an update that includes Atom 0.3 support, which is a relatively new syndication format available on this blog and others.

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Technicolor

Okay, after Grey Wednesday, Manufactured Environments is back to full color glory. The Grey action in general got good press here, here, and here and it raised awareness of the issue of sampling and copyright.

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Grey Wednesday

As promised yesterday, today is Grey Wednesday here at Manufactured Environments. We’re protesting the heavy handed approach that Capitol has taken to DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, which is a remix of Jay-Z’s The Black Album using only samples from the Beatles’ White Album. The original protest day was yesterday, Grey Tuesday, but that seemed totally whack since it was Mardi Gras of all days. Time for celebration and color, in my opinion. So today, being Ash Wednesday, seems like an appropriate day for GREY WEDNESDAY.

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Grey what?!

Some people are marking today as Grey Tuesday in the fight against the copyright cops for DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album. I’ve already linked to online sources of said Grey Album, but it’s whack to make today Grey Tuesday. In case none of noticed, it’s Mardi Gras! Fat Tuesday! Today is a day for color and celebration! Me and J. are headed downtown in his Jeep, and YOU KNOW what music is going to be jamming.

So I’m making tomorrow Grey Wednesday. And in case you didn’t hear, that’s a chance to make your website gray for a day. Copyright cops be damned.

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Red House Painters Tonight

I’m listening to Red House Painters Retrospective. It’s a great album—actually it’s a double disc collection; the second disc is filled with various demos and rare takes.

And yet as I sit here listening to the music I wonder if the Retrospective is really quite as good as their 1993 self-titled album Red House Painters. It always seemed to me that the 14 tracks on this CD were along a story arc. The songs hung together well, and together were greater than the individual parts. Red House Painters are something of a guilty pleasure for me. I usually don’t play their music when other people are around—they’re a little bit too much down the road of introspection for the pleasure of company in my opinion. It’s the kind of music I listen to on my own, when I’m in the house alone. There are many, many great songs on that album, but I think if I had to chose a favorite I would go with either “Down Through” or maybe “Rollercoaster” even though that’s one of their more played songs. This line in “Down Through” always gets me: We’ll have a house/on the shore/that showers my soul./Washes away the violence/that runs in my blood.

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Welcome!

Welcome to the new home of my blog, now appearing on ManufacturedEnvironments.com.

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free iTunes songs

Here’s a Pepsi/iTunes hack. This one’s for pooter who has been buying a heck of a lot of Pepsi to get some free iTunes songs.

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Yet Again — Lawsuits

I have been dutifully reporting when the RIAA files against blocks of individuals. Well, oops, they’ve done it again. As cited in Edupage via Educause:

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed another 531 lawsuits against Internet users accused of illegally trading copyrighted music files. Because of a court decision last year, the RIAA can no longer subpoena the identities of alleged copyright infringers without filing a lawsuit. The RIAA’s strategy to deal with the potentially enormous cost associated with filing so many suits is to file individual lawsuits against groups of users who appear to be customers of the same ISP. Thus, in January, the RIAA filed four lawsuits against 532 individuals; this time the group filed five lawsuits. This approach appears to be effective, as the courts have so far approved three of the four suits filed in January, allowing the RIAA to subpoena the identities of users targeted in those suits. The RIAA has now filed more than 1,000 suits in 2004. CNET, 17 February 2004

Be careful out there people.

BoingBoing is carrying a story that one of the people sued is bringing a RICO suit against the RIAA charging that the RIAA is effectively engaged in extortion. Read more here.

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The Grey Album

Everyone’s been talking about The Grey Album. DJ Danger Mouse took Jay-Z’s recent The Black Album, and entirely remixed it with samples from The Beatles’ White Album. Copies of the Danger Mouse remix are circulating around the Internet. At the moment, you can find copies of it here and here.

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Limited Edition Mix

Limited Edition Mix - 15 February 2004

A mix for the ladies.

TRACKS

1. Land Hobo/Monkey Dancer Need New Body
2. Bucci Bag Andrea Doria
3. I’ve Told Every Little Star Linda Scott
4. 17-18-19 Grrrls Juliana Luecking
5. Lover’s Prayer Myrtle K. Hilo
6. Move Your Body Marshall Jefferson
7. Discotraxx Ladytron
8. Time To Make You Mine (In My Dreams Mix) Lisa Stansfield
9. The Flower of Carnage Meiko Kaji
10. Untogether Lush
11. You Keep It All In The Beautiful South
12. I’ve Got To See You Again Norah Jones
13. In Your Eyes Peter Gabriel
14. Twiggy Twiggy / Twiggy vs. James Bond Pizzicato Five
15. Put Me To Sleep Rainer Maria
16. Action Saint Etienne
17. Miss Modular Stereolab
18. Das Unglück muß zurückgeschlagen werden Tocotronic
19. Scraps Bonfire Madigan

Running time: 79 minutes, 22 seconds.

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Valentine’s Day Tomorrow

As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow. If you’re like me, you’re a little slow on these matters. But it’s not too late. You can still give your special someone a card. In fact, there’s some good yet oh-so-quirky ones here. Note the high-resolution PDF downloads at the bottom of the page in case you’re serious about using one of these.

{ link via Rebecky }

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Listening to this tonight

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mozCC & Firefox 0.8

Creative Commons is reporting that there’s a plug-in for Mozilla-based browsers called mozCC that allows you to read Creative Commons licenses embedded in websites such as this one. It’s available here. When the browser comes across a CC endowed site, a CC button automatically appears in the toolbar, which you can click and view the license information.

I’ve upgraded to Firefox 0.8 (formerly called Firebird) as my default browser both at work and at home. Firefox is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It’s a great browser and doesn’t come with the bugs that Internet Explorer 6.0 imposes. Very nice. This is especially noticeable on sites like Dale Keiger’s, where in IE6.0 a bug causes the left column to be truncated to the length of the right one, often cutting off the Scribbler’s entries in mid-sentence.

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Problems with The Patriot Act

The Onion has a handy infographic examining the Patriot Act’s problem parts. The last item on the list sums it up nicely.

[link via EFFector]

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Starb*cks redux

Since I was writing about Starbucks arrival in Iowa the other day, I thought I should point out the potential benefits. (Quicktime Req’d.)

Update: It looks like the clips at Turnpike have been password protected as of this evening.

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Musical Awakening

Dale Keiger writes about a musical awakening he had at the age of ten seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. There is certainly something about that age that makes one receptive to new experiences. I remember being in the fifth grade and having a similar musical epiphany.

We didn’t have cable in my household, because my parents didn’t like television. MTV was new at that point; it was the early 80’s. So we didn’t get to see the new exciting music channel. But there were a few video shows on other channels at that time. There was one on late Friday nights for a couple of hours, and another one on a different channel on Saturday mornings.

I can still picture the scene. My brother was lying on the floor watching. And I was standing at the entryway to the room with my father, when a video came on. It was the most fantastic thing I’d ever seen or heard. There were robotic mannequins jerking about. The music was heavily electronic — beats and scratches. Wow. It was great, and I’ll never forget it. Today that early glimmer still jibes with my interests in high technology and electronic music.

The video? Rockit by Herbie Hancock.

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My Subscriptions OPML

For those of you who use RSS newsreaders to read your favorite websites, here are my current subscriptions in OPML format. I recently hit 90 feeds, and it shows no sign of stopping.

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Surreal Spam Poetry

Seems like the spammers are getting slightly more creative with their emails. The following was tagged as spam correctly by my filters this morning, but for some reason I peeked at it anyway. It amused me. Enjoy this little prose poem:

Furthermore, recliner near gets stinking drunk, and industrial complex from cyprus mulch prefer paycheck near. Unlike so many taxidermists who have made their crispy corporation to us. When you see trombone behind, it means that onlooker of trembles. A few cups, and pine cone behind) to arrive at a state of garbage can And trade baseball cards with the dark side of her bartender. Johnie, the friend of Johnie and goes to sleep with cream puff of.

Kottke noticed a trend toward interesting names in his spam.

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Over at Misbehaving.net tonight

I think Danah is getting worked up over nothing. Women are the fairer sex. That’s a fact of life. For a straight man to express that is not to objectify women or demean them, but rather more simply to say that he appreciates beauty. Using the terminology “improve the scenery” does not equate a woman with wallpaper but is a round-about way of saying that someone’s face is pleasant to his eye. It’s not the most elegant phrase, but it’s obviously not used with misogynistic intent. To appreciate beauty is not the same as appreciating objects, and I don’t think the two should be confused.

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Eastern Standard Tribe

Cory Doctorow’s second novel was just released. It’s called Eastern Standard Tribe and is available from Amazon here. Of course, the entire book is available for download under a Creative Commons license. Check it out.

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College Radio Streams

After reading Mike’s post about streaming radio feeds from WMSE in Milwaukee, I got to thinking about my days in college radio. I spent a year in grad school working as a DJ for the local student-run university station, KRUI 89.7 FM. You can listen to their MP3 streaming feeds via iTunes or WinAmp here. Another great station from the University of Iowa is KSUI 91.7 FM, which plays classical music, and stream their feeds in Real Player format. You’d think radio stations at the same university would agree on formats, but I don’t think KSUI and KRUI talk to each much. KSUI is a professionally run station with a paid staff, and KRUI is strictly student-run. At any rate, check them out.

And many of you know that I cut my radio chops at KWLC 1240 AM at Luther College. I was a DJ and the music director there in the early 90’s. I would love to listen in on the station, but they don’t have any streams unfortunately. My friend Faust has a radio show again this semester there, but I’m not sure what time it’s on. Not that it matters because unless you happen to live in the bustling metropolis of Decorah, Iowa you’re not going to hear it. C’est la vie.

Before I headed off to Iowa for college, we used to head down to Milwaukee on Sunday nights to dance at Club Marilyn, which had all-ages night on Sundays back then. But when we were driving down, we’d always listen to WLUM 102.1 FM in Milwaukee, which had a killer alternative show on Sunday nights. I mean, really, they played the best music. During the day they were an urban music station. I think they’ve since changed formats to rock at some point, but anyway they used to be cool, and maybe they still are. I just remember that they used to play Adam Ant’s Stand and Deliver every damn week. It was awesome.

This is perhaps something you’ve noticed if you’ve traveled from coast to coast: FM radio stations east of the Mississippi begin with a W—- and west of the Mississippi they begin with a K—-. Now you know.

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Starb*cks has arrived

Last fall, they opened the first standalone Starbucks in Iowa. In fact they opened two in the Des Moines area. And now Starbucks has opened their third store in Iowa here in our fair city, Iowa City. Yesterday, I went to the new coffee shop to check it out. I had a grande caffé latte, which I must admit was pretty good. Not Terrapin good, but good. It’s a small shop, but I brought along some reading material so I could spend some time there. After glancing at the 20 page booklet explaining how to order coffee, I thought it appropriate that I had brought The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz to read. I don’t suppose I’ll be going there much. There are at least three local coffee shops closer to where I live than Starbucks. But it’s something new. Starbucks is something new.

I know my coastal friends are choking down their grande, quad, ristretto, nonfat, dry cappuccinos as they read this, but isn’t it weird that Iowa is good enough for John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards, and the rest of the Democratic contenders but wasn’t good enough for Starbucks? It’s as if someone had to be bribed at a very high level to bring the coffee chain to Iowa. Or maybe it was simply that after putting 133 or so stores in New York City they were out of ideas, and someone said, “Hey, what’s that state in the middle?” And someone else at the meeting replied, “Ohio.” And someone else said “Idaho.” “No you idiots, it’s Iowa.”

Or maybe Starbucks got scared of Midwestern Big 10 college towns after people were putting bricks through the windows of the State St. Starbucks in Madison. Who knows? Anyway, I had the coffee, and it’s good. It cost me $3 + tax for my grande latte, which is about par for this area. For better or worse, Starb*cks has arrived.

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