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Like electronic music? Got a day to kill?

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Then you’ll love Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music.

A bit out of date, as it was last updates sometime in 2005, Ishkur’s guide still links to literally hundreds of electronic genres. If you ever thought electronica was the same as techno, which is the same as trance, by all means go to the guide and find out.

Packed with thousands of samples from songs, the guide is a great way to discover the history of electronic music and how each genre is linked to the others. It’s also a fantastic way to find new music. I nearly guarantee that you’ll find SOMETHING in there that will get your feet tapping or your iTunes store loaded up.

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World’s tallest building nearing completion, breathtaking photos

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Via Gizmodo, here’s a high-res picture of the world’s tallest building nearing it’s completion:

While the final height remains a closely guarded secret, estimates put it at about 800m tall. For comparison, the US’s tallest building, the Sears Tower, tops out at a mere 500m.

This, in the middle of the freaking desert.

If you’re at all interested in skyscrapers, architecture, or the rise of an improbable world-class city, you’d be wise to look up all you can about Dubai. It’s a developer’s playground; world-class malls, attractions, housing, and commercial development. The world’s largest airport and seaport. 25% of the world’s crane supply being used for construction. An indoor ski lodge. All in the middle of a tiny principality at the edge of the Persian Gulf, a moderately oil-rich emirate that realized that the black gold doesn’t last forever.

Outrageous.

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LAST MINUTE INVITATION - Ann Arbor Zombie Walk

Friday, August 15, 2008

Yeah, so sorry for the late notice. I kept meaning to post this earlier but kept forgetting.

There’s going to be a “zombie walk” up in ann arbor today in celebration of punk week. It’s free, it’s “live performance art”, and all are welcome.

Basically the gist is you dress up as zombies (torn clothes, blood, makeup) and shamble along as a group throughout Ann Arbor, “terrorizing” the populace. I think some years they put “victims” along the route to “eat” and “dismember”.

Bring your own makeup and blood. Everyone’s meeting at the Raw Haus, 715 Miller St. at 7pm. According to Google Earth it’s right across the street from West Park.

See you there maybe?

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Checking your facts during the election.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

We’ve all been forwarded the endless smear emails on both sides of the political fence that insinuate this, that, or the other thing about our national political candidates. Obama’s a Muslim! McCain is older than God! McCain hates your face! Obama’s a black terrorist leader!

And so on.

The problem is, because of the nature of the ‘net, fact-checking is becoming very passe’. People simply parrot and/or forward these emails without a second thought, and then bring up these “facts” in political debate over the dinner table or at the pub as if it’s a God-given fact.

The problem is, most of these emails, most claims you hear around the water cooler, is utterly crap, on both sides.

But where do you go to find out the reality?

One possibility is the non-partisan FactCheck.org, a website that does nothing except refute all the inaccuracies both Obama and McCain’s campaigns come up with during campaigning and politicking.

Another is Snopes, which targets those forwarded emails a much more directly. It’s also a good resource for debunking non-political forwards, too.

Education and awareness is key to any strong electoral system. Don’t base your votes on hair color, email forwards, or blind partisanship.

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Improvised Kitchen presents: Chicken and potatoes

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

I’m a horrible cuisine monster.

2 chicken breasts, roughly fileted (take a knife and cut about halfway into the breasts every couple of inches or so on each side… lets the flavors seep in)
3 large potatoes, washed and cut into 1-2 inch chunks
1 stick butter
generous dash of cilantro
couple tablespoons of olive oil
lots of chili powder
generous dash of chili oil
5-6 whole garlic cloves
2-3 tbsp peanut butter

1 small onion, chopped finely

Potatoes:
Put stick of butter in a frying pan on low/medium heat, let melt. Drop in potatoes, onions, dash in a bit of olive oil. Put in a few of the garlic cloves whole, cover the whole works with cilantro. Close the lid (bonus points if you have a lid that seals fairly airtight… you want the potatoes to be moist and soft). Cook 20 minutes or until potatoes tender to the fork.

Chicken: put olive oil in medium heated pan, enough to cover pan. Put in peanut butter, stir around olive oil until melted. Drop in garlic cloves, whole. Drop in chicken breasts, apply liberal amounts of chili oil and chili powder. Cook covered for 20 minutes, flipping chicken over once to cook the other side. Check for thorough cooking, but make sure you don’t overdo it; it’s easy to get dry chicken from olive oil.

Serve together, pass out from food coma.

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The Fair!

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Ah, the fair.

The throwback to the concept that we’re still a farming community (nevermind that the county has 130,000 people in it). The place to see all the corn-fed steer, pigs, and chickens (forget for a moment that only one of those animals actually naturally eats corn in a healthy manner)

And the food! Where else can I pay 5 dollars for a piece of fried dough covered in custard?

From the rigged Demolition Derby to the orverpriced food fare and broken rides, The Monroe County Fair has it all!

Okay, obviously I’m being a bit inflammatory here. But Fair attendance has been falling steadily the last decade or so. Is it the changing demographics of the community? Is it the hot weather? Is it “kids these days?”

When I was wee, going to the Fair was the first step in the grand social game of public school. Every year before classes, the Fair was the place to run into everyone, catch up on the latest hearsay, rumors, and scuttlebutt, who was doing whom, and so on. The Boardwalk, with all the loud games, yelling carnies, video games, and food was a perfect place for middle and high schoolers to mill around in a big circle, checking everyone out like some grand Elizabethian-age intrigue play. Do they still do that? Or are they all texting each other through summer instead?

When I got older, obviously the charm of running into your friends faded (as they invariably left for greener pastures, only to come back with grand tales of how much better they’re doing than you stuck in Monore), but still I went. Eventually I’ve settled into the fact that I go to the fair for two reasons: The greasy, unhealthy food and the Derby.

I’ve been going to the Derby since I was six, the first year we lived here. My parents had ticket-buying down to a science, ensuring that we had the best seats. My first year I hated the noise, clasping my ears the entire time. By the second year my natural boyhood joy of seeing large things demolish themselves took over. Ever since then, every year, by hook or by crook, I manage to see the 9:00 show.

Of course, now that I’ve seen the steady pattern of 25 years of the same three families winning the derby year after year, and the introduction of smaller and smaller cars (I’m fairly sure I saw a Tempo last year), and the natural wane of interest in seeing scrap metal on wheels annihilate each other, the joy is wearing off a bit. And yet I’ll still go, it’s tradition.

And of course who can forget the fair food? Everyone has their staple “musts”: For me it’s greasy tacos, sugary lemonade, custard-caked elephant ears, and vinegar-doused french fries that are too hot to touch and too messy to eat. For others it’s the 4-h building, maybe the ribs, maybe the hot dogs, maybe even the “Chinese” food or the low-quality two dollar Slider burgers.

We eat this stuff, and we pay through the nose for it. On the surface, for an impartial observer, this has to be absurd; the food being served to us is almost universally fried, low-quality ingredients, fattening, and grossly unhealthy. This, served in a situation where flies and bugs and dirt and sweat mingle freely in the air. Had I OCD, I’d be spraying my eyeballs. We wouldn’t eat this stuff in our home, or at least I hope not. Deep-fried Coke? Deep-fried Snickers? Deep-fried dough (aka elephant ears?) Such nutritional horrors have their place only at the Fair. Serving these to your kids for dinner on any normal night would probably be grounds for neglect.

So why do we go? Is it tradition, then? The yearning to go back to when we were kids, carefree, riding the bumper cars and the Tilt-a-Whirl, chasing the girl you thought was cute in class last year? Is it the connections to the farming community, still here even as subdivisions and homeowner associations wipe out the best farmland? Do we worry that our children and grandchildren will never see a County Fair, and thus must preserve it in memory?

Why do you go?

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Review: The Dark Knight

Saturday, July 19, 2008

See it. Immediately.

A direct result of the comic book publishers getting more control over their creations, DC’s The Dark Knight is a masterpiece of superhero moviedom. The second film in the new series, meant to “reboot” the movie franchise into something a bit less cheesy, everyone’s favorite tortured moralist goes up against The Joker.

We all know this, we saw the previews. The thing is, the previews don’t do The Joker (Heath Ledger) justice. He is the id unhinged, a violent, random psychopath, pinballing around Gotham City as he sees fit. Whereas most supervillains have an “evil plan” complete with intricate ways to catch their nemesis, the Joker does whatever the hell he wants to, all the time. As a result, he’s completely unpredictable, has no rhyme or reason for his actions, and completely baffles Batman, who considers people have a justification for doing what they do.

Ledger’s performance is haunting, a little scary, and dare I say it, almost heroic. It is a complete rebellion against society, against morality, against rules. The Joker rejects everything, mostly because he can. The character Harvey Dent also makes a stunning performance.

Batman continues being a flawed moralist, becoming paralyzed by his inability to go beyond his mental blocks. He’s a much deeper character than the other badass in DC, Superman, whose character development is best described is “Superman Smash Do Good”.

The movie would have been much better rated R, in my opinion; there were a bit too many camera cuts and weird angles during fights and grisly encounters, that made it fairly obvious the directors had to maneuver around the insanity of the Joker.

In short, it’s easily the best superhero movie of the year, and that includes Iron Man, which was another completely awesome movie.

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Living Unplugged

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Most of you don’t know me personally, but if you did you’d get the gist that I’m a big fan of technology. My house has enough tech scattered around to make me a poster child for the 21st century. iPods, Xbox 360, a media server to stream movies to my tv (well, through the Xbox anyway), wires going this way and that, a pile of laptops that need fixing.

All in a day’s work for a geek, I suppose.

And yet every once in a while I get a huge hankering to go camping. Not RV camping, which I never saw the point of (if you’re trying to escape life, why put it all on four wheels and drive it around the country?), but proper tent camping.

My fiance’ and I tried REAL tent camping a year or so ago, which merely ended in failure; we drove up to North Manitou Island, which is a state-run park/wildlife reserve that is secluded from civilization; you take a half-hour ferry ride to the island, and then they come back 3 days later.

Sounds great, except we overpacked. A lot.

We’re not very good campers.

This year we toned it down a bit and stayed at Harrisville State Park, on the coast of Lake Huron.

I made a conscious effort to avoid bringing too much tech, resigning myself to an iPod and my cell phone to direct my other friends to get there.

I had no contact with news, blogs, events, politics, anything. It was pretty nice. The only concerns I had were about the campsite itself (how do we get wet wood to catch fire?), or how big we can make our stone sandcastle (pics later).

Sometimes it’s necessary to unplug your life from the hectic ebb and flow of our modern society. Leave your Blackberry at home, stop checking your email 8 times a day. Get a tent, and go somewhere.

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Throwing an old computer away? STOP!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

As is common from time to time, eventually the family computer grinds to a halt. A virus, perhaps, or maybe it just beeps at you when you turn it on. These things happen; technology isn’t infallible, after all.

Invariably, at some point the error messages and clicking noises make you throw your hands up in the air and buy a new computer. Your old computer, now considered “junk”, gets tossed away.

Well, stop! :)

Most family computers made after 2001 or so are still perfectly able to do what most people need their computers to do: Surf the web, check their email, even organize digital photos.

Most computers I’ve seen that get deep-sixed from family rooms are older machines that simply get overrun with viruses or spyware, or otherwise just get full of crap. Unable or unwilling to get it checked out by a resident geek, most folks take the easy way out and buy a new one. The old one isn’t even given to a young child, it’s simply tossed in the rain when trash day comes.

The fact of the matter is, most computer problems that people face are software-related. Software is the programming bits and bobs that people interface with; Windows, Internet Explorer, iTunes, and so on.

Hardware is the actual physical desktop. Unless you’re hitting yours with a sledgehammer or driving into it every morning, hardware failure is rather uncommon, especially when compared to software.

It’s much, MUCH easier to have software fail. It’s trivial to get spyware nowadays (software that spies on you and slows your computer down with ads), or a virus (an important-looking email from your aunt turns into a nightmare..), or even just badly-designed software (RealPlayer can bog a computer down big time, for instance).

Fortunately, software problems are relatively easy to fix, if a bit Draconian. If the usual clicking about and running anti-virus doesn’t work, there’s always the “wipe and reinstall” method: Re-installing your operating system (in most people’s cases, Windows XP) and wiping the hard drive clean; this is called Formatting.

But even then, people run into problems. Computers usually come with recovery cds that help with the process, but they’re very easy to lose. Normally the only other solution is to buy a Windows XP cd, but Windows XP has recently been discontinued, and the new version of Windows certainly will not run on your 2001 Dell.

Some enterprising folks have designed an operating system that’s fairly easy to use, lets you surf the web, organize pictures, check your email, and so on. It’s constantly updated, about every six months or so, with new features. It’s designed to run on older computers. It comes with tons of software, games, office programs, and more.

And it’s free! The name of this amazing, super-duper package? Ubuntu.

Well, what’s the catch?

Well, the catch is that there’s a few catches:

1) Re-installing an operating system is an arduous task for most folks. It’s sort of like doing maintenance on your car; unless you’re a mechanic, you don’t want to fiddle with all the bits in your car, do you? Ubuntu makes it fairly easy, even letting you “test-drive” it before you install (by just putting it in your CD drive, generally), but it’s still a scary process for people.

2) The operating system isn’t Windows-based, meaning that most, if not all, of your purchased programs and games will not work.

3) Because it’s free, support can be dodgy at times. There’s a wonderful community built around Ubuntu, but you generally have to know what to ask.

4) Also because it’s free, it’s a bit rough around the edges. Although not often, sometimes it can be necessary to dig into some pretty weird files and techniques to get things to work. Every update to Ubuntu usually makes these excursions less and less common, however.

So what, you say? It’s a weird operating system (whatever the hell that is), I’ve never heard of it, and this guy on the Internet is telling me all sorts of stuff I don’t understand! He’s going to give me a virus and steal my thoughts!

Nonsense! Ubuntu has a lot of good things about it, too:

1) Free. Free free free! Free updates, free programs, free games. You can even get suitable replacements for the things you use most: Firefox for your web browsing (which you should be using anyway in Windows; it protects you from spyware and ads in the first place), OpenOffice for your productivity suite (Powerpoint, Excel, Word, and so on), and literally dozens of programs to replace iTunes (and some are even compatible with your iPod!)

2) Really easy to install. Really. Ubuntu is designed from the ground up to “just work”. Anything it needs it tends to download from the ‘net automatically. The interface is very familiar to most people, being a bit of a cross between Windows and Apple. The installation process is very friendly, and is something I’ll go over with in a future blog post.

3) Virus-free. Seriously, no viruses to worry about. No anti-virus to install and buy, no weird programs to worry about. Linux is a “secure” operating system, meaning that it’s alot harder for a program to hijack your system. And because it isn’t based on Windows, you can actually accidentally download Windows viruses (from your infected aunt) and have nothing happen. You still shouldn’t download them, but at least you’re safe.

Tossing Ubuntu onto a computer you’re bound to throw away would be a great secondary computer for a child or tween who wants access to the internet or for school projects. Saves you money and headaches!

Easy, free, saving you money. Good things!

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Mashups

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

For years, artists have used other people’s works to express their own thoughts, and sometimes to create an entirely new piece out of other artworks. Go to any modern art museum for plenty of examples.

In music, artists have generally relegated themselves to two things: Covers and remixes. Covers are, of course, simply playing someone else’s song with your band. Some artistic slant can be afforded, or entirely different genres can be deployed (Hayseed Dixie is a bluegrass cover band for AC/DC, for instance).

A remix, generally more common in rap, hip-hop, and electronic/dance music, is similar, although generally a beat is swapped out or a new singer is added, or the parts of the song are re-arranged to change the feel of a song.

In the last couple of years, a new type of musical expression has arisen out of the underground clubs. A shambling combination of cover, mixtape, and remix, a Mashup is essentially combining two or more songs to create an entirely new song. While the fundamental concept isn’t anything new, the proliferation in the club scene (including entire albums smashed together, see Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album combined to form DJ Dangermouse’s “Grey Album”), and the ease of use in creating them (a 50 dollar piece of software and an mp3 collection is essentially all you need) has seen them explode all over online.

Or, as my friend Kohler says, “A mashup is like listening to the best parts of two songs at once.”

And yet, quality ones are hard to come by. Designed almost on purpose to be disposable, mashups routinely combine popular top40 songs with each other, or with another pop standard (Nelly’s “Country Grammar” with Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”). Furthermore, they tend to be played only at clubs; hearing them on the radio is unheard of due to the questionable copyright these works have. Searching for them online is hit-and-miss, due to the aforementioned copyright issues. Good luck finding them on peer to peer services, too: most are misnamed, if you can find any at all.

The only website I’ve found that hasn’t been taken down or deleted is the artist known as Party Ben, who routinely spins at some club in LA and inserts mashups to much fanfare. His musical selection is well-done, and many of his mashups make better songs than the originals, in my opinion.

If you find any good ones, let me know!

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