out of the blue

code reference: Charles Stross's Diary

if( inPortland && haveTime( TODAY + 1 ) )
{
    go( powells );
    see( charles_stross );
    feel( EMOTE_HAPPINESS );
}
else if( haveBook( halting_state ) )
{
    feel( EMOTE_SADNESS );
    read( halting_state );
    feel( EMOTE_HAPPINESS );
}
else
{
    feel( EMOTE_DEPRESSION );
}

*sigh*

A few excerpts from a very interesting article/interview with Alan Moore on comics, sexuality and life:

… The restaurant has rather low, vaulted ceilings and Alan Moore is very tall; he seems to loom in the confined space. It is, however, an entirely affable, unthreatening sort of loom….

… [Gebbie had] sat in comics conventions alongside men who were considered the best humorists in sexual satire, and heard them say that women have no sense of humour and no sex drive. 'And I disputed both those things. It's just that women's sexuality is far more aesthetic and subtle, and that guys just haven't gotten there yet.' …

… The root of Moore's magic is the belief that the world of the imagination is as real as the material world, but real in a different way. He worships Glycon, a Roman snake god, not because he believes in Glycon … but because what he represents to Moore is real and important. The things Moore pays attention to – magic, pornography, Glycon – can often make him seem more than a little mad; but the things he refuses to pay attention to – London, literary fashions, Hollywood, consumerism, money – make him seem completely sane….

… 'The Magic Theatre' is a virtuoso demonstration of what an Alan Moore comic can do that novels and films can't get near – provide multiple strands of simultaneous narrative and visual information that wind around each other in dizzying fashion, echoing and commenting on each other….

… [Alan Moore on:] LIFE 'It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography, if you're lucky.' …

And just as I've always predicted, DRM schemes are falling apart left and right. In April, Apple's iTunes became the first to offer DRM-less mp3s from a major label (EMI). They offered those clean mp3s at higher quality, for $1.29 per song instead of their traditional $0.99. Amazon announced in May their new DRM-less mp3 store, which launched in beta form about a week ago (also with EMI being a primary partner). Prices there range (for the most part) from $0.89 to $0.99, although Amazon doesn't seem to offer the quality jump, but that's okay. This is how online downloads should be done. After all, it is less value for a lower price — no physical item, lower quality, no liner notes. No ridiculous crap like paying more for DRMed versions.

Microsoft's Zune Marketplace will offer about 1/3 of their songs in DRM-less format. Amazon has an entirely DRM-less mp3 store. Apple offers higher-quality DRM-less versions of much of their stock. I'm sure there are others that I haven't noted or noticed. DRM schemes are falling like flies. Now we just have to wait for the rest of the industry to catch up.

Next step: decriminalize "piracy".

Oliver Sacks has a new book coming out on October 16th. I want to read it. It is titled Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (amazon). It is a set of case studies in the vein of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, focused around music. When Sacks is asked in an interview with Wired Magazine about whether music is hard-wired into the human brain, he responds:

It's not a question that we can resolve easily. One would have to look for aspects of music which have no equivalent in speech. This certainly seems to be true of the regular beat or pulse. Speech has its own rhythm, but it doesn't have the fixed metrical quality of music. There's spontaneous synchronization with rhythm in all human beings, even in childhood. You tap with it, nod with it, and even if you don't, the motor parts of your brain move with it. There's an auditory/motor correlation in human beings not found in any other animal.

Here's a link to the interview.

I, for one, plan to find this book soon after it comes out. I should renew my library card.

woot

Charles Stross, author of Accelerando and Glasshouse, is one of the most interesting people writing science fiction today. If you are familiar with and interested in concepts such as the singularity, post-humans, AI and economics 2.0, you should read Charles Stross. He is going on a book signing tour in the NW of the United States. This means Seattle and Portland (and apparently San Francisco). He has a reading and signing at Powell's City of Books downtown on October 11 at 7:30 pm. I would go if I weren't in Spokane. Unfortunately, I am. So I will miss out on it. But that's no reason those of you who are still in Portland can't attend and taunt me with your proximity to one of my favorite writers.

Charles Stross's blog entry about the tour: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/09/signing_tour.html

I usually just put on the top shirt and pair of shorts in my drawer. It isn't uncommon for the shirt I pull out to look just like the one I just threw in the laundry bag (in other words, to be the same color; there are no differences in cut from shirt to shirt in my wardrobe). Sometimes I notice, and switch it out for another color. Just so people won't assume I'm always wearing the same thing.

Two-fold purpose, here. First, to show off a pretty picture of Sarah.

Second, to demonstrate the power of Photoshop in editing photos, I made a tiny web page: Phone Sarah – before and after

We went to Seaside, Oregon for the Fourth of July fireworks display, and a surprising number of my pictures turned out well. I felt in the mood to string words together in a pretty manner, so I wrote interesting descriptions. It ended up taking a somewhat absurdist turn somewhere in there, but I like it. (Beware, it's a little over the top at times).

Okay. I admit that it was silly of me to claim that it would be difficult to one-up myself. I just did.