Tag: crap

The hipbone connects to the wristwatch.

This weeks thing is a practical example of how distraction works: I get home early in order to sit down with an animation I’ve been mulling over for a couple of weeks. Before starting up Photoshop and getting to it, I check my emails. Huh looks like I ought to send some work invoices out, so let’s just get that out of the way first.

— Oh, hang on, the formatting of the invoicing hasn’t been updated with my latest info, I better just go into the template and fix that. Well, I be danged, the template function of Billings is utter complete shit, so if I’m going to wade through the documentation just to do the update I might as well just redesign the whole thing — how hard could that be?

— Let’s see, where did I put that logo I made a while back, that could go on there… A little bit to the right… Maybe left? Now to select typeface. Oh, and the logo has a burned umbra colour, wouldn’t that look dandy on the invoice headers? Hang on, my email is too long compared to the rest of my address; I know, why not register a new domain! Ooh, nice, my surname is still available, I’ll just go ahead and register that and set it up. (Might as well ask my brother if he wants to be setup with a forwarding address as well)

— Ok, now we’re rolling, but how the hell does Billings handle calculating the numbers and fixing the tables and totals and such? “Randomly and like a idiot leper, shitting itself” you say? Where was that documentation? There’s none except a few flaky videos, only visible if you search the Marketplace support page source code? Well that’s rather off-putting! Ok, but perhaps I can just copy-paste from a working template? No? Ok, I feel a headache coming on, let me get something for that.

I’ve just spent six hours trying to create a new template for my invoice software — a software which I use very sparingly now that I’m employed – and failing miserably. I’m now looking to spend more on another software which isn’t such a hideous bloated corpse of a thing, just so that I’ll be able to have my own design. This is not effective use of time, and this Sunday has been wasted, and no project will be posted today. Goddammit!

RP: I thought the whole theft / not theft debate was settled?

Crossposted from Metafilter on the subject of todays court ruling against The Pirate Bay in the lower court. Let’s see how it all will play out. In the mean time, I tried to formulate a few thoughts – They’re mostly rehashings of what has been said again and again by people a lot smarter and visionary than I, but what the hell is a blog good for if not self publishing? Check out the mefi thread for the discussion.

Copyright infringement is a violation of someone elses monopoly on exploiting whatever it is that falls under “intellectual property” and isn’t covered by patents or similar legal devices.

If I download an unathorised copy of a book you’ve written, it doesn’t follow that I’m causing detriment to you. Of course that could be construed as a cop-out — “Oh, I wouldn’t have bought that anyway” — but it’s a valid argument. Also, I could maybe even profit from it, (one of the charges levelled against tbp) but this does not automatically constitute detriment to you, unfair thought it might seem. (Big corps fucking over small time artists is a familiar theme)

I might enjoy your book, but that is a weak argument since it’s about moral right more than financial or other damage to you or your ability to make a living as an author. It’s saying “only if you pay me are you allowed to enjoy my work” which seems reasonable but is about your feelings and convictions more than detriment caused.

There are technical aspect to consider in this as well; If I use Bittorrent and seed as much as I leech, I might aid someone else to your detriment (Oh I don’t know. It’s an unedited copy and it’ll garner you a negative review. Or that other person is someone who otherwise would have bought the book. Whatever.) which of course has a bearing on your argument. (Difficult to measure though.)

But you need to differentiate between purely moral arguments which are founded on your thoughts of authorship — originality, uniqueness and the “creators” right to his/her own “work” — and more practical and pragmatic convictions and policies (A majority of our population believes musicians should be able to make a living off of music) and the implementation thereof.

Regardless on what side you come down on, the very way the Internet works forces the issue of copyright infringement to come head to head with other interests. It’s not fair, but in this case I don’t see how you can imbue technology with morals or a material model of scarcity.

Every decision that has been made lately (In Sweden as elsewere) regarding laws online, have eroded the notions of right to privacy in favour of political and financial gain. As much as I like having such a plethora of music, books and film to choose from, I’d rather have my privacy.

But until the fear and shortsightedness is beaten out of people by one fifteen year old with time on her hands after another, let’s put the same broken record on once again, shall we?

Hello world! Again!

Ouch. I managed to lose a months worth of writing, and migrating the server is a pain in the bumbum. Nothing works as it should at the moment, so bear with me while I sacrifice a chicken and do some voodoo over the backups.

I guess it’s time to learn who cron is and why I should befriend her. Some sidebar stuff is gone, nothing I can’t reconstruct except a few witticisms that are gone with the wind. Oh well, each crash is slightly less dramatic than the previous one. Optimism is the word of the day.

Sound art, performance, perserverence and endurance

My new years resolution (Technically, I came up with this a couple of days later, when Anna asked if she should sign me up for a reality tv show) was to say yes to things rather than my hitherto standard replies no, hell no and the occasional how much would you pay me to perform that?.

So I joined some of my newly made friends from the sound course to Musikens hus here in Gothenburg to watch three bands have an improv night.

I’ve always had the nagging suspicion that “improv night” meant “you have to be a musician to enjoy this, ’cause ours is a music for the brains, and you have an oh so tiny brain”. I wasn’t totally proven wrong.

I came in late for the first group, a three man jazz combo that played with a lot of umpfh. The band after that was called ‘Boogie’ (what’s the matter with the bad taste in naming things here in Gothenburg? Two days ago I listened to a classical music quartett called Kvart i ett which is a pün or play on words, meaning ‘a quarter to one’ and sounding like ‘kvartett’! Don’t your sides just split in despair over this?) and consisted of a drummer and a singer (and assorted bells and whatnots). When they didn’t improvise it sounded kinda like Coco rosie, which is double-plus good, and when they improvised it sounded like improvisation and bells and whatnots, which is un-good.

Anywho. It was nice and my simple mind could appreciate the beats and the singing. Short break, I go smoke, finish my beer and sit back down, and listen to 25 minutes of this:

[audio:Recording3.mp3]

And this sort of combined three elements of stuff I really can’t deal with:
* Performance
* Live show
* Experimental sound art

I don’t like performances on principle. It has something to do with my gut reaction of “what the hell made you think this was a good idea and how come no-one stopped you?“. Then again, I can’t watch embarrassing moments on TV either, so it’s probably just me being squeamish and such.

I don’t like concerts ’cause it’s so seldom that the music coincides with my fancy at the moment (When I’m sulking, I’d like to have Nick Cave standing by, but at other times I probably wouldn’t appreciate him as much), so most often I’m just not in the mood.

Finally, I’ve listened enough to experimental sound art to know that what they were doing had been done in the 70s and was abandoned because after the dust settled all you were left with was a bunch of noise that could only be appreciated while on drugs or heavy theoretical academia. Yes some people can probably relate to it. Yes it sorta pushing the boundries of how we interpret sounds and musical narration.

It’s just not very interesting. And it really doesn’t matter that those who are playing are very talented within their fields – There are a whole bunch of people who are really good at what they are doing, but what they are doing is shit.

Anywho. The three bands are going on tour. They hit Oslo next, and then Stockholm.