Thoughts are like fishes

Rupert Neve is a name that people who read audio engineering magazines will have seen. He's responsible for developing some expensive electrical stuff that makes music sound pleasing.

The following quote is from an interview with Mr Neve in Audio Technology and it's interesting in light of the shift we've seen toward digital audio formats:

"The Japanese showed some time ago that the brain produces electric radiations in the presence of different emotions and emotional stimuli. If you listen to an analogue music signal that is good quality, with no crossover distortion and no digital sampling, in can be a very satisfying experience. And as you start listening to it, you do the the thing which us older ones have done for a long time -- you come home after a long, hard day, put a long playing record on, and put your feet up. Even if the record is a bit scratchy, you can listen to it and enjoy it and relax. But you can't do that any longer…[because of the distortions of CDs and cheap transistor circuitry.]

"The Japanese have shown, and in fact a lot of us are accepting quite happily, that these distortions -- first of all the lack of music-related frequencies above 20kHz, and secondly the presence of the switching transient noises above 20kHz -- actually produce a different form of brain radiation. They produce the kind associated with discomfort, frustration, even anger. I am wondering whether we can't blame the CD for some of our social problems."

This makes sense to me because I've grown up with CDs and find I rarely listen to them to relax. I mostly enjoy music to be energised but sometimes for background noise.

For a while I'd listen to music while falling asleep and chose laid-back albums but there were only a few where I could actually fall asleep while listening to them. One time I put one of these albums on repeat to play through the night and found myself awake in the early hours of the morning feeling really angry at this mellow sort of music and couldn't understand why.

And MP3s must be even worse as they have an even narrower frequency range and often more distortion.

How ARIA?

Thought this comment on judging the ARIAs was illuminating:

Upon joining the judging panel for the ARIA awards, I asked for all of the CDs for which engineers and producers had been nominated. My contact at ARIA was perplexed by this request. Dumbfounded, I patiently explained that I couldn’t possibly judge the quality of engineering and production work without listening to the recordings themselves. This was a perfectly reasonable argument, of course, and a box of 40 or so CDs landed on my doorstep shortly afterwards. Likewise one year later. But on the third year they objected, saying I was the only one of a dozen or so judges who asked for the CDs. I don’t know how the other judges made their decisions, but it sure as hell wasn’t from listening to the recordings – unless they happened to be extremely keen fans of Australian-produced music in all shapes and forms, and already owned every CD on the list. Considering the scope of music covered by the nominations (everything from hard rock to soft baroque), I found that highly unlikely. Other factors were obviously at play in the judges’ minds; perhaps basing their decisions on chart figures, sales success, or even less relevant and/or less honest means. Whatever the case, I rapidly began to lose interest in the whole thing. And when five engineers won the same award simultaneously, I knew the system was screwed.

Floods and pestilence

2011 has been crazy but I've gotten off lightly so far.

Locusts:

Floods:

And now mice:

I hate mice. They really stink but I can't decide if their corpses littering the streets are good to see or morbid and disgusting.

Weaver Hawkins' Jitterbugs

While hunting through some old photographs I found this snap of a painting I admired while visiting the NSW Art Gallery.

You can see a scan of the original here.

The Cubist style is put to great use conveying the frantic movement of the dancers.

Deadly desk jobs

According to recent studies, your chair is your enemy as sitting for extended stretches of time may be considered a lethal activity. While the mainstream media has demonised television, the response from internet geeks and bloggers might usher in a new era of standing office furniture.

People who sit too much may be shortening their lives, concluded the author of a study by the American Cancer Society who tracked the health of 123,000 Americans between 1992 and 2006. Epidemiologist Alpa Patel found that men who spend six hours or more per day of their leisuire time sitting have an overall death rate about 20 percent higher than men who sit for three hours or less. The death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40 percent higher.

An Australian study published last year looked at nearly 9000 Australians and found that each additional hour of television a person sat and watched, raised their risk of dying by 11 percent. Author David Dunstan analysed a range of unhealthy habits before concluding that “age, sex, education, smoking, hypertension, waist circumference, body-mass index, glucose tolerance status and leisure-time exercise did not significantly modify the associations between television viewing and all-cause...mortality.”

Many bloggers have moved to using standing desks in response to these studies pointing to the dangers of extended time in front of a screen, whether it’s a television or a computer.

Lifehacker.com founding editor Gina Trapani wrote that she uses a standing desk as a way to burn calories and improve her posture:
“When I’m sitting at my desk, even in a fancy ergonomic chair, I tend to slump, with my back curved and shoulders forward, which closes my chest and makes my breathing more shallow. When standing at a desk where my forearms are at a 90 degree angle on the desk surface, my shoulders go back, which makes my spine concave and opens my chest. Besides the initial foot pain and muscle aches of engaged thighs and calves, it feels great.”

Bloggers warn the new desk arrangement includes a brutal first three days as feet and legs grow accustomed to providing extra support. “I have a foot rest rail going around the bottom (of his standing desk) -- this is pretty critical for long term comfort,” wrote Benjamin Palmer on the popular blog boingboing.net. “I also have a stool I sit on for maybe 1/4 of the day, but the rail is really the key thing.”

Palmer also suggests that a very cheap way to get started with a standing desk is to buy a cheap coffee table and put it on top of your desk. “It’s usually just the right height, and you can get them in a wide variety of sizes and finishes to fit your gear and match your existing desk.”

Update: the contents of this blog post served as the subject of a presentation I did for the 2011 Local Government Web Network Conference in Sydney.

Vita-weak

Vita-weat launched a rice cracker earlier this year and, being something of a rice cracker connoisseur, I was curious to see how they compare because the different brands all manage to do something different with the format. My favourite rice cracker is Sakata, especially the wholegrain varieties, but sometimes I like the sweeter brands with their fluffier biscuits, like Fantastic and Trident. However, it would be nice if a company would produce a plain cracker that was actually plain and not covered in salt since I usually dip them in something which also has salt in it.

Anyway, the Vita-weat cracker is quite satisfying. The sesame seeds add a nuttiness and the brown rice has a denseness that seems filling and gives them a very crunchy texture.

As the supermarket reduced the biscuits and then heavily discounted them as they passed their use-by date, I wondered if they hadn't connected with shoppers. They were asking more for Vita-weats than the other rice crackers but the "100% natural" branding suggested they were looking for people who want to pay for good quality. So why not promote being GM free or low GI?

Also I was surprised that Arnott's thought to extend the Vita-weat brand into the rice cracker market. They mightn't spell wheat properly and there seems to be only a minuscule amount of wheat in the rice cracker yet it's enough so they aren't free from gluten. In comparison the original Vita-weat crackers are 85% wheat.

Eye love you

Hiding behind a rock at the beach

Valla Beach after a shower

Stones

Further dicktation

Even more dicktation, this time from the NSW central coast.

Petrified troll's head

Casablanca is propaganda

Should Casablanca be considered one of the greatest propaganda films as much as one as of the greatest romances?

This is the question that will be offered, along with award-winning Lillypilly Wines and canapés, to those attending a screening of the film as part of the Leeton Art Deco Festival on Friday 1 April from 7pm at The Roxy Theatre.

A critical success on its release, Casablanca continues to entertain audiences and appear in lists devoted to the greatest films and deservedly so. The Warner Brothers Studio talent of the day includes Humphrey Bogart in his first romantic lead and five-time Academy Award winner Michael Curtiz directing a film that captures the hallmarks of Hollywood studio film-making.

Casablanca is known to film buffs for its midget actors in the airport set and Bogart's improvised lines, including the oft-misquoted "Play it!" The film should also be known as propaganda and it has been argued that it played a role in US President Roosevelt's decision to end America's relationship with the Vichy government of Nazi-occupied France in 1943.

The original script had been written as a play by Murray Burnett in 1938 after he saw Nazis discriminating against a black piano player in Vienna. Warner Brothers producer Hal Wallis had been convinced to pay a record $20,000 in January 1942 for the unproduced play titled Everybody Comes to Rick's and the film had been rushed into production after Allied forces (but not yet the US) had occupied North Africa in November 1942.

Scriptwriter Howard Koch identified Casablanca as part of a trend of films with social themes in his memoir:

"Since Warners was leading this trend, it was natural that many of its writers were politically conscious. To one degree or another they were involved in the struggle against fascism, in whatever form it appeared, and in working for a more democratic society, economically and racially. Today the label applied to us would be left-wing, but all labels are suspect; the word we used at the time to define our political activities and organisations was progressive, regardless of differing party affiliations or lack of them."

The progressive politics of scriptwriter Koch would see him 'blacklisted' as a result of criticism by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951. His role in the development of Casablanca saw the setting shifted from Lisbon.

If you ignore the romantic developments, Casablanca's plot sees Rick, whose “American” cafe is effectively an embassy for those fleeing occupation, become politicised against the Nazis. Near the beginning of the film Rick ignores the arrest of those actively resisting the Nazis in his bar, yet by the end he actively assists a Resistance leader modeled on Charles de Gaulle to reach the United States.

Academic Richard Klein has written that US President Roosevelt screened the recently released Casablanca for guests on the eve of 1943. Ten days later he became the first US President to travel by air while in office when he flew to Casablanca for a historic meeting with Winston Churchill. In August of 1943, the US shifted support from the Vichy-led government of Nazi-occupied France to the French National Committee of Liberation chaired by Charles de Gaulle.

Whether Casablanca influenced Roosevelt in his negotiations is an unresolved question but this can be seen as a key theme in the politics of the film. With the perspective offered to contemporary viewers by subsequent decades, it's interesting to see the US joining the fight against Nazism in 1943 as the start of a campaign that continues to this day as the US media continues to produce propaganda focusing on bringing freedom to oppressed people throughout the world.

Leeton Art Deco

Here are some pics from a photoshoot tonight for the Leeton Art Deco Festival.

Mozzie snap

Seen at Google.com.au/news

Thinking of Metropolis

I like these David LaChapelle photos of Lady Gaga.

Metropolis

A free screening of the film Metropolis will be held in Chelmsford Place on Saturday 2 April as part of the Leeton Art Deco Festival. "If you haven't seen this classic, then this is a great opportunity to see a film that is the 1920s equivalent of Avatar," said organiser Jason Richardson.

Released in 1927, Metropolis has had an influence on science fiction films like Star Wars and Bladerunner. In 2001 the film was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register and in 2010 Empire Magazine ranked it at number 12 in a list of The 100 Best Films of World Cinema.

The film bankrupted the UFA studio with a budget of over five million Reichsmark, estimated to be worth over $200,000,000 today. "Metropolis was possibly the first cult film," explains Mr Richardson, "as it had an underwhelming response at the box office on its release and took many years to find an audience but is now screened widely

"Metropolis and Avatar share in common is their criticism of contemporary politics. Where Avatar can be viewed as a comment on the US-led invasion of Iraq, Metropolis can be seen as criticising on the rise of the Nazi party in Weimar Germany, as well as promoting unionism and the achievements in establishing modern working conditions.

"It's a Romeo and Juliet-type story that's complicated when the Juliet-character, a community leader, is replaced with a robot manipulated by the Romeo-character's capitalist father," said Mr Richardson.

The silent movies were never silent, cinemas of the 1920s and '30s would have an organist or maybe even a full orchestra to accompany screenings. For the Leeton Art Deco Festival screening, Metropolis will feature a soundtrack drawing on the work of Duke Ellington.

Duke Ellington is one of the foremost figures in American jazz music, with a career that began in 1923 and ended with his death in 1974. "He is arguably the greatest composer of the twentieth century and the Art Deco period was known for big bands, like the orchestra Ellington led," said Mr Richardson.

It's sure to be a great night. "Bring chairs or a blanket to sit on, pack a meal or fill your Thermos and see a film that continues to resonate with audiences nearly 75 years after its release."

Metropolis is rated PG and will start around 7.30pm on Saturday 2 April, projected onto the main water tower in Chelmsford Place as part of the Leeton Art Deco Festival.

Dancing lesson with James Brown

Big W is a rip-off

These appear to be identical 40-litre flexi-tubs. The prices for flexi-tubs in these two catalogues are not identical.

Lions International

Serve the public trust

Earlier this month the Mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing, used the social media service Twitter to canvas ideas for reviving the US city.

Among the suggestions sent to Mayor Bing was a ‘tweet’ from user MT that as, Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky, Detroit should consider a statue of Robocop, titular character from the 1987 film known for its violence, black comedy and vision of a future where the police force has been privatised.

Mayor Bing ‘tweeted’ back that “There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop” and thanked them for the suggestion. However, the idea proved to be very popular and a statue of Robocop standing in Detroit looks likely to become a permanent fixture.

As of 2pm on Monday 28 February, 2442 people have contributed nearly $63,000 toward constructing the statue, which was expected to cost $50,000.

This is one example of the ‘crowdsourcing’ trend first identified by Wired journalist Jeff Howe in 2006. The crowds are typically online communities who pool skills and resources to reach a common goal. Wikipedia is one example of a crowdsourced project, an online encyclopaedia that is the result of volunteer editors and contributors.

A critical part of developing a crowd ready to support Robocop was the response of John Leonard who, upon learning of Mayor Bing’s decision, created a Facebook group that galvanised support. From here a profile was created on Kickstarter, a website which solicits funds for crowdsourced projects.

Kickstarter’s website describes their service as “A new form of commerce and patronage”:

This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work. Instead, they offer products and experiences that are unique to each project...

Projects are big and small, serious and whimsical, traditional and experimental. They’re inspiring, entertaining and unbelievably diverse.

It’s somewhat ironic that a film about a privatised police force should have a role in a community-led plan, yet as social media websites like Facebook and Twitter have recently played starring roles in changing governments, perhaps a statue of Robocop could be much more than a pet project for a bunch of geeks?

An alternate view of the so-called ‘wisdom of the crowd’ is that groups of people seem to be easily swayed by novelty, for example the US city of Austin’s decision to put the name for their new Solid Waste Services Department to a popular vote. Based on current polling, it looks like it will be named the Fred Durst Society of the Humanities and Arts!

The heart of the Riverina

Not Another Bank?

Recently an Australian bank has been promoting itself as unlike other Australian banks.

Personally I can't understand how they're Not Another Bank but at one point I thought it was worth having an account with them and I haven't closed it yet. Anyway, this week I undertook a survey on their website and was surprised by the third question here:

"Much more fuss is being made about air and water pollution than is really justified"

Are they evaluating whether there's an advantage in portraying themselves as green?