Tag: technology

Surrounded by sound

I tried to watch TV just now and found myself listening to Richard Gere’s Robin Hood while watching an old episode of Saturday Night Live, featuring a faux Kim Jong-il. It was interesting juxtaposition, but not what I was after.

Yesterday we’d been happily watching Moulin Rouge on DVD on this same TV when the picture simply disappeared.

It shouldn’t be so hard to do something as lazy as watching television.

It seems especially wrong to be churlish, though, when these troubles are all the result of really nice work anniversary gift Jean got, of a BluRay DVD player and surround sound system. Since the only place we currently have an LCD television is in the living room, it made sense to set up the BluRay there. This is also provided surround in that room, where previous we merely had stereo sound.

Plus, then we were able to move our older sound system into the kitchen, which we will also, eventually, have surround sound. In the meantime, I have better stereo sound, and can now hook up the iPod in that room, rather then from the bedroom.  Particularly handy when it decides to randomly play a song that is a complete mystery to me (I have a lot of songs), compelling me to look at the iPod screen to see what it is. That task no longer involves stairs.

All nice things. Except that it really is bloody complicated watching television now. You have to turn on the three devices: PVR, TV, sound system. No big deal, right? Except that every one of three remotes tries to control all the devices—sort of. So you turn on one, and then you grab a second remote to turn on the next, and that one turns off the first while turning on the second, and so on… Then they’re finally all on and you accidentally press some Power button again, and oops! They all go off again.

It’s enough to make you think maybe you should just read a book.

Then, the settings. Of course, the sound system needs to be set to right option–Sat / Cable,  not TV, and of course not DVD, FM, Audio, or any otheir subsettings… One day, the only way I could find to get sound from my record player was to turn the TV on and change its source input. What?

Yes, the TV also needs to be set to be on the right source. Now is it HDMI1 or HDMI3? Or maybe BD (BluRay disc) system?

If things still are synching up correctly at this point, it may be because of the switches. We do still have a TV downstairs, but only one PVR now (the older having collapsed and died a few weeks ago). We’re kind of proud we figured out how to hook up two TVs to one PVR, but it does mean setting various switches to the right position depending on what you want to do (watch upstairs or downstairs, watch live or recorded). Not to mention the strange kind of voodoo dance you have to do downstairs in front the remote control signal, trying to successfully get the signal wirelessly upstairs. But when you finally hit that sweet spot, it’s exciting!

Sigh. But I will say that high-definition picture really is very pretty. And, it really is great to have both the pretty picture and surround sound available in one room, instead of having to choose one or the other.

What we still haven’t achieved? Hooking up the computer to make it easier to watching streaming video. We tried with our really old computer (which had been in the kitchen), but it frankly could not handle being projected onto such a big screen. So despite Toronto Life’s interesting article called “Honour among thieves”, which made it sound like practically a patriotic duty to steal your content from the Internet, we can still only do that by downloading, putting that content on a USB, and popping that into one of the DVD players or the TV.

Which remains slightly more onerous task than turning on and watching the TV. But only a just.

High Tech / Low Tech: A joint project

I have friends who are really interested in photography, and one of the challenges some of them follow is this Sunday Stills idea, a weekly blogged photo challenge. A week or two ago the theme was High Tech / Low Tech, which resulted in two contrasting photos of eReader vs books: Robin’s | January’s.

That led me to thinking it would be interesting to do that with music: LP > CD > iPod. Main problem was, I’m really not interested in staging or taking photographs. Fortunately, though, I live with someone who is. So the following is a joint effort. I picked out the items. Jean staged them, took several photos from many angles, selected the best ones, edited those to be better, and here we are:

The iPod is just so little, isn’t it? Dwarfed by the five albums it contains, not at all obvious that it contains thousands more.

Yet, the LP lives on as well, and I think this also shows why. So big. So tangible. So warm, as they say. With every new LP you buy today, you also get a code to download a digital copy. The best of both worlds.

The Wilderness Downtown

OK, this was cool.

My current favorite band (at least in subcategory: Best years are not decades behind them), Arcade Fire, has this interactive video on their website for the great song, “We Used to Wait”.

You enter the street address of one of your childhood homes and images from that place get integrated into the video. I was skeptical that the fairly obscure Timmins street where my parents live would be included, but about four characters in, it came up as an option.

The multi-window resulting video was really neat, especially on the big monitor I have at home.

Requires the Google Chrome browser.

Then you can try out your the address of your choice at http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

The story of my stuff

You’ve seen The Story of Stuff, yes? The fairly enlightening, partly animated video about how we North Americans all have too much stuff, and why that’s a problem? It has made me think. (99% of what I acquire is discarded within 6 months? Really?) But so far, I don’t think it’s really made me change my behavior.

It’s just so ingrained. Just watch this beautiful justification for why two people having three television sets just isn’t enough….

********

Many television series ran their course for the season back in May or so, but we’ve been getting by with season 1 of True Blood (never did develop the love, though), season 1 of Californication (whereas I really did get caught up with all these flawed people), and even finally finishing all my PVR’ed episodes of Flashforward. (And the TV critic who claimed the last episode was confusing and open-ended was an idiot. The last episode wasn’t in the least hard to follow, and the series tied itself up very nicely, leaving some areas open for the future, yes, but hardly to a frustrating extent. The whole thing is recommended for all who like sci-fi, physics, and philosophical questions of will vs. fate, as presented by pretty people.)

But now all those are done, too, so Jean and I have near run out of shows we both like to watch. This is a problem, because we both tend to like to settle down around 9:00 for a bit of TV. What to watch, what to watch, when all I want to do is catch up with So You Think You Can Dance (nestled there on the PVR) but he’s already engrossed in an action thriller on AMC?

What, you only have TV, you ask? Well, no. But the thing, we only have one TV in a location where it’s actually comfortable to sit down and watch it. The second one is in the kitchen, where your only seating option are the high stools at the breakfast bar. Fine for catching the news while preparing and eating dinner, but not so great for settling in for a long watch. (Plus, being that close to the food also leads to way too much snacking.)

And the third? If you can even call that a TV, given that it’s–and I’m serious–a Commodore 64 monitor. So it’s very old and therefore prone to some flickering, and also very small. And, it’s in the exercise room. Being an exercise room, there are no seats in there, unless you count the big weight machine chair. So it’s a great place to play exercise or other videos while exercising. But if you just want to watch TV, you’re kind of stuck with a yoga mat on the floor as “seating”.

This, combined with the grumpiness that comes with the heat and humidity of late, that has led to us arguing over our respective television preferences, and who is to be banished to the uncomfortable upstairs. Adding insult to injury, upstairs person also loses PVR access. Stuck with live TV, with its many, many long commercial breaks (all telling you that you suck and need to buy more stuff)…

So, clearly, we need to put a TV in the living room.

Much like TV in the bedroom, this is something I’ve always resisted, with some idea that the living room should be about “higher” culture like books and music and paintings and conversation.

But one has to be practical. Fact is, it is the only other room in the house with couches and chairs.

But we ain’t putting a TV cabinet in there. So, the thing will have to wall-mounted. And, it’s the living room; it’s going to have to look good. So there’s no question of moving one of the existing extra TVs into that room (and besides, we need them where they are!). Clearly, we need a new TV.

A lovely, sleek, new flatscreen television.

************

See how that works? And the lovely new television will, in turn, lead to justifications for high-definition TV receivers and service and PVRs, not to mention BlueRay DVD players and discs. And won’t that mean some sort of sound system upgrade? …

And hence we demonstrate our value in this culture of consumerism.

Odds and sods

I’d mentioned to some that the SD card from our trip had cracked right in half when inserted into the computer. Well, it turns out that Windows 7 has a feature to help you recover from such a thing. To access it, simply remove the card, reinsert it, and accept the repair option. In the end, we lost very few photos. (And I’ve finally managed the finish the web pages about the trip.)

Too bad it took us a few weeks to figure that out.

*****

Have a new iPod classic. Well, new to me. I bought it used on Ebay. It’s in excellent shape, though; looks brand new. I was mainly after greater storage capacity, and boy do I have that now: 120 GB. Given that it’s taken me 5 years to get to 30 GB, that should be enough for some time. It’s also black, which is somewhat cooler-looking than the white. And it has a better screen, a “cover flow” feature (which I’m not entirely sure of the point of, but is weirdly compelling to look at), more information displayed about each song and playlist, and the ability to create Genius playlists on-the-fly.

The Ebay experience was a little stressful due to uncommunicative seller, but to his credit, he was very fast in shipping it out. So fast, in fact, that he didn’t even bother to remove his 60 GB of music first. So much music, so little I have any interest in. To start fresh? Click that scary, never-before-used “Restore Factory Settings” button.

*****

More nice tributes have come in for Pete Quaife of The Kinks, including an obituary in the Globe and Mail on July 1, by one his former—but post-Kinks—bandmates. Also very beautiful was Ray Davies’ dedicated rendition of “Days”, the most perfect song to sing to a departed friend (and a song he’s often associated with Pete in the past). Ray almost loses it on the opening lines.

Magnetic North magnificence

Another thing I like is having Good Seats when I go to any kind of live performance. It’s to the point where I will avoid going completely if I Good Seats aren’t available—or are outrageously priced. Because I’ve tried, and I just know that being too far from the stage really does diminish my enjoyment.

Hence it was that we ended up at a performance of Norman last night.

Norman was playing locally as part of the Magnetic North theatre festival. I had never heard of this festival before, but apparently it’s been running for a number of years now. Every other year it goes to a new Canadian city; otherwise, it’s put on in Ottawa. This year is Kitchener-Waterloo’s turn.

When I heard about it, it sounded like something interesting and that I wanted to support. I was especially excited that Rick Mercer was doing a show as part of the festival. But when I finally remembered to try to get tickets for Rick’s show, the seats just weren’t that Good. Row M, kind of off to the side. It was dimming my enthusiasm.

So I looked through the program for what else might work, and Norman sounded interesting:

Most of us grew up with the work of Norman McLaren. Between slick Saturday morning cartoons or on clunky classroom projectors, McLaren’s mesmerizing work slid unexpectedly into the lives of generations of Canadians.

In the internationally acclaimed Norman, ground-breaking projection technology allows a performer to physically interact with the cinematic universe of award-winning Canadian film pioneer Norman McLaren. Join us as they delve into the vaults of Canada’s National Film Board to combine technology, animation and theatre in an unforgettable visual experience.

Seats were not actually being assigned for this, which made me think they weren’t expecting a big crowd. Smaller crowds always greatly enhance your chance of Good Seats. So I got tickets for that.

The performance was at 7:00. We arrived around 6:35 to find the Centre in the Square looking eerily empty, with maybe 10 other people there at that point? So yeah, no problem getting Good Seats!

As the performance approached, fortunately, more people showed. The crowd was still one of the smallest I’ve seen at the Centre, but at least had swelled to filled all the best seats in the house (though all the bad ones were empty).

I wasn’t terribly clear on what we were about to see, Jean even less so—he had no idea who Norman McLaren was, and had been telling people he was going to something called Daniel that night. After a short announcement, which concluded with the reminder to turn off your cell phones, the lights dimmed, all went quiet, and…

Someone’s cell phone started ringing. Couldn’t believe it!

That is, until I realized that this was part of the show. The single performer, dancer Peter Trosztmer, talked on the phone on his way to the stage, then addressed us about his obsession with Norman McLaren.

The 90 minutes that followed are really hard to describe, but were completely riveting. Peter would talk about McLaren, show parts of his films, but also interact with them in dance movements. He would dance between the intersecting lines. He would bat away the assembling and dissembling balls. He pulled away Norman’s chair in the well-known Chairy Tale, then interacted with his own. He became one of the dancers in the beautiful Pas de Deux.

I don’t know how they did it all, but it was absolutely brilliant.

Intersected with these film/dance pieces were documentary bits, in which holographic images of various people who worked with McLaren spoke about him. Also shown were some interviews with McLaren himself. It all gave me a much deeper appreciation of McLaren’s genius, particularly his skill at making music visual. It makes me want to go watch a bunch of his movies—which, fortunately, the NFB makes easy to do. (And isn’t it fabulous that staid old Canada funds a film board where an eccentric genius can spend a lifetime producing abstract short films?)

Much as I was taken with the whole thing, I wasn’t sure how Jean would react, but I needn’t have worried. Though he opined that it could perhaps have been a tad shorter, overall, he was in awe. He loved it.

So thanks to all you people who quickly snapped up the Good Mercer Seats, thus leading me to one of most intriguing live performances I’ve ever seen.

(Waterloo Region Record review of Norman)

Random Internet experiences. (Or are they?)

Jean’s been away camping at Algonquin this weekend. During our thunderstorm, followed by our crazy wind storm, I realized that:

a) I have no idea where we keep flashlights in this house. (Perhaps Jean took them all camping?) In case of evening power outage, I would just be stumbling around in the dark. Or playing with matches. (Fortunately, no power outage occurred.)

b) If it was also happening in Algonquin, that would make canoeing really difficult. Since I did have power, though, a web search seemed to indicate that Algonquin was not in the wind warning region. Snow was a definite possibility, but winds were moderate.

Yep, the Internet is certainly great for finding out stuff. And for getting stuff. Like, I wanted to get a new audiobook for an upcoming trip. I went to Audible.com to see what I could find.

An aside: I used to be a member of Audible.com, but in recent years I’d realized that everything they had seem to also be available on iTunes. And cost less. But the Audible.com website it still a far superior place to go when browsing. It has categories, it has reviews, it has recommended lists. By comparison, shopping for audiobooks on iTunes really sucks.

After poking around for a while on Audible, I settled on Lori Lansens The Wife’s Tale. I wanted to read it anyway; it had great reviews; I thought Jean would also like it; it had a bit of a travel theme…

I did find it a bit odd that it wasn’t available in iTunes, but figured I’d just get it direct from Audible. I filled in the form, credit card number and all, clicked Submit… And was told I couldn’t have it, because I live in Canada.

Lori Lansens, of course, is a Canadian author. But apparently her Canadian publisher, unlike her American one, doesn’t want to bother making an Audible version of her novel available. Sucks for me. But also sucks for her, because after ranting and fuming for a while, web searching to see if there was any other obvious way to get the Lansens audiook (not that I could find, and was surprised to that library audiobooks are sometimes listed as not available? I guess it’s part of the deal of them being free that only so many people can access them at once?), I ended up purchasing the audiobook Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked instead.

Then today I got to wondering if software existed that could create sheet music from a song on a CD. Because there are some songs I’d like to play that I don’t have the sheet music for, and I’m really not good at playing by ear.

I wasn’t able to find software quite like that, but I was able to find software that would take a MIDI file and “notate” that. So I downloaded a trial version of that. And then, in two clicks, I was able to find a free MIDI file of exactly the song I was wanting to play, even though it was a fairly obscure album track.

The software will take a little figuring out, but it’s fairly cool. It reads in the file intelligently, then allows me to make some modifications (add lyrics, hide the drum score). Now I seem to have a pretty decent score of this song. Assuming I continue to like this app, I’ll buy it once the trial period ends, as apparently my being Canadian does not prohibit me from owning this particular piece of software.

Though I don’t think it’s directly connected to this issue—I don’t understand it all well enough to say—the apparent randomness of what digital files I am permitted to access (even when willing to pay) nevertheless reminded of this post I that also read this week:

Canadian Prime Minister promises to enact a Canadian DMCA in six weeks

What a goddamned disaster. The Tories have shown — yet again — their utter contempt for public opinion and Canadian culture and small business when these present an inconvenience to more windfall profits for offshore entertainment giants. Remember: thousands of us responded to the Tory inquiry on copyright law, and overwhelmingly, we said we did not want a US-style copyright disaster at home. Remember: hundreds of thousands of us wrote and called our MPs. Remember: Canadian artists’ coalitions fought against the imposition of a DMCA in Canada. Remember: America’s copyright war has been an absolute trainwreck, with tens of thousands facing lawsuits, competition and innovation eroded by DRM, free speech challenged by copyright takedowns, and no improvements for creators or creativity.

There’s only one thing stupider than being the first country to enact the DMCA, in spite of its obvious shortcomings: enacting the DMCA after the first country has spent a decade showing how rotten and backwards this approach to copyright is.

Unequal access to information

I’ve been noticing this trend…

On the one hand, it seems, corporations feel they can use our personal information for whatever purpose. For example, Facebook declares that privacy is so passé, and why should anything stand in the way of them selling us stuff? And insurance companies decide they can run credit checks on their clients, and raise their house insurance rates accordingly—without any prior consent.

On the other hand, governments and related agencies have to be fought tooth and nail to release information in the public interest:

  • The Conservatives would not release files on Afghan detainees to members of Parliament, our representatives, until ordered to do so by the house speaker.
  • All media coverage of court appearances related to Victoria (Tori) Stafford’s murder trial has been banned. (Apparently, even commenting on stories about the ban has been banned. So don’t comment on the ban here, please. I guess.)
  • Though ordered to disclose the files on Ashley Smith, the young woman who killed herself as guards at the correctional institute watched, Corrections Canada has refused, saying they will appeal. In this case, note that Ashley Smith herself first requested her own files, and was supposed to get them within 30 days. Corrections gave themselves a 30-day extension from that, but didn’t meet that deadline, either. 123 days after the request, Ashley Smith died.

So corporations can use our personal information however they see fit, but we are not allowed to know what is being done in our name by our politicians, military, courts, and corrections.

Seems like someone should get upset about this, or something.

Catching up

OK, so instead of owning the podium, we just rented the top floor.

I have to give a CP reporter the credit for that quote.

Wasn’t that fun? The Olympic withdrawal is going to be tough. It’s been the framing device around all events for the past two weeks. Furthermore, that’s been true of almost everyone else. What else does that anymore? Not the Oscars, not the series finale of Lost, not the Superbowl, not even the Stanley Cup.

Big eating weekend

I described last weekend (Feb. 19–21) as my “big eating weekend.” For the Friday, well ahead, we had arranged to meet up with friends at Verses. They were particularly pleased to have meat there. “We’re coming off a month of veganism,” they explained. “If you think vegetarianism is hard? Try veganism.”

Then on the following Saturday, our neighborhood association held a wine tasting dinner at Solé. Solé generally does an excellent job with these, and the featured wine was from Rosewood Estates, which we really like. So we had to sign up for that as well. We ended up sitting with the owner of the winery, who proved to be a very interesting guy, with rather strong opinions about wines of different price points, and the marketing strategies of various regions.

And it was a great meal. It started with their Sémillon, which I judged reminiscent of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, so was pleased when informed that’s what they were going for. It was delicious, as was the smoked trout served with it—amazing stuff, the food highlight of the meal. The main course was chicken with wild mushrooms, and it was served with a Meritage wine. (I was hoping to get their Pinot Noir again, but the 2007 is apparently all sold out.) Dessert featured honey wine, served with an apple caramel tart.

Olympic-wise, that was a pretty quiet weekend. That’s when there was all that grousing about Canada’s performance being somewhat disappointing, which I mostly found irritating. But since we don’t really know our neighbours (and besides the wine people, that’s who was there), it was very handy to have that to talk about.

Shall we dance?

Despite some moments of mild panic—me on the “hockey stick” step (seriously, that’s what it’s called) of the cha-cha, Jean on the intricate shaping of the slow fox—we’re fumbling our way reasonably well through our ballroom dance classes for people who had taken a seven-year break. This week’s class coincided with the Russia-Canada hockey quarter-final, but late arrivals reported on the already lopsided score involved there, and we stopped worrying about that too much.

But our dance instructor wanted to talk about another sport: ice dancing.

Continue reading “Catching up” →