~jg3

Do You Work Here?

August 29th, 2008

At one time in my life I worked in a job where I had to wear a nametag and a tie to work for an hourly wage.  After some time I inspected my world and decided that I would make it a goal to never work a job for which I was required to do those things again.  Truth is, occasionally it is still necessary but not on a regular basis and if I do submit, I get a decent free lunch out of it.

Working retail is hard.  Not heavy lifting hard (well, usually it isn’t), but having to deal with the general public on a regular basis while wearing a funny costume is a certain kind of hard.  It isn’t designed to confound and confuse you and crush your soul, but it is designed to squeeze it until the sound of cracking ribs can be heard.

There is a vicious cycle which everyone who walks through the door of a retail establishment is involved with.  You automatically have to assume that any employee falls into one of three categories:  too stupid/lazy/stoned to work anywhere else and thus probably too stupid to provide any help beyond pointing me to the right aisle for the products I’m looking for. Then there is the slacking underachiever who is plenty smart but battles the spirit-crushing pressure with turtle-speed apathy.  Finally, we have the first job-er who has yet to be completely beaten down and has yet to identify which of the two other groups s/he will eventually fall into.

A situation so familiar and so horrible is ripe for laughs and the comic strip Do You Work Here? delivers well.  It is clever, it is simple, it isn’t fancy but it gets the point across well.

Another relatively new entrant into the webcomic race, DYWH has only been around since the beginning of the year, so the quantity is still fairly low.  While you could argue about the quality of the drawing or site, or even dismiss it because the subject matter is so obvious and easy. But don’t, because the subject matter is so obvious and easy and nobody else, as far as I can tell, is doing it.

Filed under: about me, Friday, webcomic

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Generation Bass

August 27th, 2008

Just a few days ago when I was talking about how electronic music has finally broken out of stagnation for the better part of a decade, Mary Anne Hobbs (MAH) has put out a follow up to her sound-breaking Dubstep Warz program, Generation Bass.

I first experienced dubstep by downloading a recording of Dubstep Warz and, honestly, it didn’t leave the CD player in my car for weeks.  It was new.  It was nasty.  It was funky.  It was breaky.  It was rump-ramblin’ low.  It was intelligent and listenable, too.  I knew the drought was over.

And, as usual, I was late to the party.  I pulled that down in early ‘o8 and it was recorded in ‘o6.  Now, last week to be exact, MAH has produced a follow-up program that has the dubstep world vibrating.  Generation Bass follows a little different forum than Dubstep Warz.  Where DW brought seven keystone dubstep producers to demonstrate dubstep for about 15 minutes each, GB brings those same now legendary producers back to the decks with some narrower rules:  pick one new artist and showcase their work for a quick set.  So here the musicians are far more important than the selectors, execpt in the amount of trust that is assumed to the selectors.  No doubt that several of the producers picked artists from their own label stable, but somehow I’m not cynical about it.  These new producers are largely unsigned and the label owners are looking to get new music for themselves and pick up skilled new folks to roll with them.

So, as I write this I am only halfway through the Generation Bass special and I have yet to form a complete opinion but I think that it is a notable event in the world of experimental, electronic music.  And for anyone who loves their subwoofer.  If you’ve got any curiosity and two hours, give it a rip.  Be warned, though, the selectors tend to talk over the tracks big-up’ing them in that UK style, which doesn’t usually fly stateside (eg, with me).

Enjoy!

Filed under: music

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SECORE update

August 23rd, 2008

It seems that things are going well for Mike and the team down in the Puerto Rico. The tropical storm largely missed them, just gave them some overcasty days.  They are reporting 1.5 million coral babies and that the spawning and diving part of the trip is over for this year.

Check out the SECORE weblog for more information and photos and even a little quicktime movie of what spawning elkhorn look like.  As an aside, I’d just like you to ponder what the egg collectors are doing: SCUBA diving is quite an adventure.  Doing it at night you can lose spatial perception easily.  Diving near coral, especially in the shallows, requires care that you don’t get scraped against the reef.  Now, while doing all that, hold the camera still and take video.  Nice.

Now that they’ve collected all this, the real fun work begins.

Filed under: adventures, enviro, Real Life

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testing wp audio

August 23rd, 2008

axel_f
This links directly to the file and your browser handles it in whatever way you have defined locally (likely a quicktime browser plugin).  It is WordPress’ built-in method for handling audio files.

This, which requires a skosh more work on my part also links directly to the file, but allows you to continue to browse this page while you listen to the music.  This option is handled by a plugin called audio player written by Martin Laine.  Another advantage is that it does not show you the URL to where the file is stored, offering a modicum of protection to the composer.

…hmm, it seems that there’s a new beta of that plugin available.

Filed under: audio, weblog

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Blip

August 22nd, 2008

Here’s another great webcomic for another great Friday:  Blip.

Blip started at the beginning of this year and the story line is just starting to pick up steam.  It is a little more comic-y than I normally go for.  With sci-fi good v. evil and witches and all that, but it is adorable in its way (or maybe i’m slowly becoming a comic nerd).  The characters are beautifully consistent in their, well, character.  And the language is so very right now (if a little crass, but that’s the vernacular reality).

Important:  you’re going to be very lost unless you start at the beginning.  Don’t worry, there are only eighty something strips so far, so you should be able to get up to current in less than an hour.  From there you could, maybe, do something productive despite it being Friday or just drop the ruse and take off early.

Filed under: Friday, webcomic

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Red v. Blue

August 21st, 2008

To quote Ludacris:

Hawaii to D.C. it’s plenty women to see, so if
Yo ass don’t show up it’s more women for me, Heyy!

Filed under: audio, local, Real Life

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muxtape

August 13th, 2008

The simple elegance of this site blows me away.  It works like this:  each person (as defined by their unique email address) gets to make their muxtape by uploading up to 12 .mp3 files.  They can be rearranged or deleted to make space for more to keep your mix fresh.

You get a unique URL (your username) and you can give your muxtape a title/subtitle .. any of which can be changed at your whim.

What’s left?  The music, and sharing it with friends.  How simple.  Wired but not mired.  Check it out, post the link to your muxtape in the comments!

Filed under: music, The Internet

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SeCoRe

August 12th, 2008

So the problem, essentially, is genetic diversity and the solution is get ‘em while you can.  Mike is being a go-getter.

The planet’s coral reef’s are under an immense amount of stress at the moment and much of them are collapsing and bleaching for various reasons, not the least of which is pollution.  [Note: I should come back and update this paragraph with links and figures so you don't think I'm just blathering.  For now just believe it, Earth Is Going Nova]

Key to building a reef are the large, hard corals that create the foundation that support the soft corals and build a permiable shelter for reef animals that current and waves can flow through.  One of the primary species of these large, hard corals is the Elkhorn.  Only, these guys are retreating with a quickness.  They’re dying off and collapsing all over the place and that’s bad for them, the other corals they support, the animals that they support, and the animals that they support.  Follow this far enough it leads back to you, bucko.

So, in the event of  a thourough collapse what are you going to do?  Propagate what is growing in the tanks of aquariums and zoos worldwide and re-start this population.  Sure.  Only, reef-heads are some of the most conservative (in the environmental sense of the word) people out there, so they don’t go grabbing chunks from the seafloor very often.  They typically propagate corals from chunks broken off in friends’ tanks (or stores’ tanks).  That’s great, but that means that what’s floating around in the hobby and trade has very little genetic diversity.  So how to you increase genetic diversity without breaking off chunks of the small percentage of remaining elkhorn?  Besides, elkhorn is a challenge to species to manage in captivity. Adult fragments — in addition to not wanting to disturb an already stressed ecosystem — also have a dismal survival record.  Most fragments die shortly after arrival to the aquarium.  So, establishing a captive population with adult frags really is impractical.

Easy, you gather fertilized Elkhorn coral eggs and raise them to adulthood.  Wait, easy?  Not quite.

Elkhorn spawn just once a year.  At night.  In the water (duh).  So collecting eggs is slightly more difficult than climbing up a tree and stealing them from a nest.  And once you’ve collected them you’ve got a whale of a problem with keeping them alive until they decide to settle out and start growing.

So Mike is participating in the SECORE project again this year, going down to Puerto Rico to do all that.  You can follow the action on the SECORE blog and read about the science behind all this in much more detail over on their website.  Go get ‘em Mike!

edit:  misspelled propagate; expanded on the difficulty of managing adult elkhorn. Thanks, Mike!

Filed under: enviro, Real Life

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Electronic Explorations

August 11th, 2008

Here we go a 3-in-1 post that should get your groove on for at least a week.

#1  Electronic Explorations podcast

The world of electronic music either stagnated between about 1997 and 2007 or I was busy doing other things.  At any rate, that season is over and interesting sounds are beginning to sprout up again.  And the best source I can find for the best new music first is Rob Booth’s Electronic Explorations podcast which appears every week for 1.5 hours or more and includes a mix from one of the scene’s best.  The other two points I’m about to make are descendents of that point because he had a pretty fantastic show this week.

#2 Amon Tobin bends a new joint monthly

Even people who don’t self identify as electronic music fans seem to really enjoy the sounds of Amon Tobin.  I thin it has a lot to do with the way the sound he creates is rooted in the organic world.  Heavily processed, sure, but palatable.  Currently Mr. Tobin is releasing a series of one “joint” each month via his website.  I highly recommend you get yourself some of these.  Here’s a quality-reduced version of the June joint called Delpher:

There’s something in this that creates pictures in my head of a machine that only Stanislaw Lem could properly describe.  Hard without being dark.  Exacting, patient.  Optimistic about the result.  Willing and able with the effort.  Slow.  Sloooooooww.  Unf.  Ungf!

At any rate, you should stop by AmonTobin.com just to experience what a website could be.  While you’re there you can download high quality versions of a bunch of his music, including the Delpher track sampled here.

#3 Sick Rebel

I have had a vision of the future.  A child conceived this month is 13 years old in the year 2022.  A time of life when outer space and video games fascinate young minds.  A history lesson requires this student learn what the Apollo missions were all about and solve any one of the Mario series of games produced before the year 2003.  For historical perspective, of course.  Try to understand why this child finds the Mario portion of the assignment so boring as you imagine what kind of music will be in the background of the games they normally play, in 2022.

Dubstep producer Sick Rebel creates a collage of music that takes you there on this track called Apollo, from a forthcoming EP on Blood Tribe records.

Filed under: audio, music

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