Interesting Monkey

YahZarah

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:27:26 -0600

Rdio has been great for me to help discover new music. I like to follow “similar artists” starting with artists I know I like. The latest I’ve found is an artist named YahZarah, who used to be Erykah Badu’s backup singer. Her latest album, The Battle of the Purple Saint James, is great. It reminds me of Janelle Monae’s last album that was my favourite album a couple of years ago. It feels very much inspired by 70’s R&B, Stevie Wonder, and Chaka Kahn. Real instruments, diverse stylistically and lots of soul.

Here’s my two favourite cuts of the album: The Lie..

.. and Why Dontcha Call Me No More.

Treme, David Simon and Professor Longhair

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:01:58 -0600

I have finished watching Season 1 of the David Simon show, Treme. Simon is the creator and a writer of my favourite show ever, The Wire. His current show, Treme, does not disappoint either. It follows the city of New Orleans, post Hurricane Katrina.

I love Simon’s style. He writes in a way that captures the deeply intertwined and dependent nature of real life, coming at a topic from the angle of many different characters, while also varying the “level” of the perspective. If he were to write a television show about baseball, he would spend an entire season each, from the perspective of good players, crappy players, managers, and general managers. As he would move on in the seasons, he would keep characters from the previous seasons so that we can see how the decisions at the higher levels affects the lower levels, and vice versa. It becomes this layered gigantic puzzle, where there are a hundred characters all intertwined.

Somehow Simon has a way of demonstrating how messed up the world is without exercising any viewer’s adrenaline. You do not get the standard, “something good happens”, then “something bad happens”, then “something good happens”, etc.. in a non-stop cycle of ridiculousness. It does not feel as though you are being “had” as a viewer, by taking the easy route to establishing a story line, through layers of coincidence. When you watch his shows at first, the things you expect to happen next usually don’t, because we’ve been trained to expect rare coincidences in television. If there is a 1 in 100 chance of something happening in real life, it is sure to happen on most television shows. The nemesis will walk in that door at the worst possible time. On a David Simon show, it won’t happen 99 times out of 100. It’s refreshing. Life is certainly complex and layered enough to cut out the coincidences, although it takes more effort and time, and is more common to books than television.

On Treme, music plays an important part, as it does in New Orleans. It’s full of live performances (and like the Wire, zero background music). The musicians are largely not actors, but real musicians playing themselves in this show. So let’s see, a David Simon show, that focuses on music.. Safe to say, it’s currently my favourite show.

Here’s one of the real artists featured on the show, Professor Longhair.

Art forms are computationally equivalent

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:18:08 -0600

(I found this post from my old blog years ago, and I liked it enough that I thought I’d bring it over here. The old blog was getting spammed too much, so I had to take it down).

Check out this youtube vid:

Non-traditional art, sure. But to me, it just goes to show that essentially any two art forms are computationally equivalent. You can always find an algorithm to encode one inside another. They are all equally complex.

When I was younger, my father used to say that dirty jokes were inherently inferior to non-dirty jokes, and that it was easy to come up with dirty jokes.. and that they were not as complex. I would say that this was not true. There is a really easy algorithm to convert any arbitrary non-dirty joke into a dirty joke. Just add the word ‘poop’ to the end (or whatever comes to mind). Then the new joke is dirty and just as complex as the previous joke. How do I know it is just as complex? Because all the information from the original non-dirty joke is in the dirty joke. If you have the dirty joke and my algorithm, you can even uniquely recover the non-dirty joke.. so it must be as complex.

I think the same can be essentially found between any two art forms. Probably you can even turn staples and bulletin boards into an art form just as complex as any other. As a drummer, I’m always a little bit sensitive to hearing that ‘it is easy to play drums’.. Well, maybe it is easy to play badly, but that does not mean it is easy to play well. You can work on it to the extent that it is just as complex as playing any other instrument. It’s not as if they reach a point where they stop getting better.

For example, let’s take a piano piece.. the piano has rhythm, dynamics and melody. Certainly, the drums has rhythm and dynamics. Melody? Maybe.. but let’s ignore that for now. There are only 88 keys on a piano. It is really easy to encode that information in the drum part. We will map every 16th note or the piano piece to a 1/2 note of the drum piece. Play the first 16th note with the proper rhythm and dynamics of the piano piece, then the next 7 16th notes with a rhythm uniquely determines by the melody of that note (note 2^7 = 128 »88). There! We’ve encoded the original piano piece into a drum piece. It is just as complex as the piano piece! Again, all the information from the piano piece is in there. I can uniquely recover the piano piece from the drum piece. This may not be the ‘most pleasant sounding’ encoding, but you get the idea.

(Aside: for any mathies out there, this type of argument may remind you of the proof that natural and rational numbers have the same cardinality… even though the rationals have another ‘dimension’ to them, it does not mean they are more “complex”. Or a Turing Machine with a 1-dimensional scratch tape is computationally equivalent to one with a k-dimensional tape..)

Because of this, I try not to say that one art form is inferior to others. It might be that the famous people who do this art form suck, or that I haven’t taken the time to appreciate an art form, but that does not say anything about the art form inherently.

Chaka Khan or Plants vs. Zombies

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:37:41 -0600

Here’s a cut from the game Plants vs. Zombies. Listen as the song progresses.

Here’s Chaka Khan:

Sound similar? Heavy bass on both, plus the synth in the background as the songs progress. A lot of the Plants vs. Zombies soundtrack reminds me of this Chaka song.

(Note: Chaka came first).

second favourite TV show theme song

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:48:17 -0600

I’ve already covered my favourite.

Here’s my second favourite.

Tito!

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:19:13 -0600

As I sit here waiting for a website for work to load, I enjoy time by listening to Tito! Tito!

Alexisonfire

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:06:15 -0600

Since I didn’t look for too much new music the last ten years, anything from the last decade that I find seems new to me. And Alexisonfire falls into that category. I do remember seeing some of their videos around 2000 (yes, videos on TV, as this was around the last time I had access to cable television), but I never explored further, and they never got played on any radio that was near me.

They’re really good. Super hard music, but it’s great. Definitely syncopated and melodic too. And I have no problem with screaming. Plus they’re Canadian (so I don’t feel so bad about Nickelback or Celine Dion). So far my favourite album is “Crisis”. Here’s a good cut, but they’re all good. I don’t think there is a dud on this album.

open links on a Mac

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:53:00 -0600

I’ve always been on the lookout for a really quick way to send links from iOS to the Mac. I almost always just browse the web on an iPad or iPhone, which I usually prefer to a full PC. But periodically I’ll come across a site that would be better to read on the Mac, whether it be because of a Flash video, or just slugginess of some sites with the lesser CPU.

I’ve tried a number of different utilities for this problem. I tried the iPhone app Pastebot which is pretty nice, and also ClipTwin. These are both dedicated to exchanging clipboard contents between iOS and the Mac. But I find them to be too clunky overall. There’s too much clicking at both ends of the transfer just to open the link. I found myself never using them because of this friction, even if I stuck the apps on my homescreen.

There are a couple of other clever apps that are nice at opening links from the Mac in iOS by sending the clipboard contents as push notifications. But almost always, I want to go in the other direction, from iOS to Mac. You can use the whole “read later” thing built into Safari and it will sync between Safari in iOS and the Mac, but I find that to be slow to sync, and requires too many clicks on both ends again.

I came across a new (free) Mac app called Send2mac. It’s a tiny Mac app (so tiny it has no interface, just running along in the background). On iOS (or maybe any phone/tablet/PC at all?), you just install a special bookmark with a unique identifier in it. There’s no app on this end.

Then, every time you click the bookmark when a webpage is open, it immediately opens that page in your default browser on the Mac. There is zero clicking on the Mac. It’s just there. If your Mac is asleep, it seems to open as soon as it wakes up. I like this whole “no clicking” thing. I think this is almost the perfect level of friction for me to actually use it.

yet more Wonder

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:04:00 -0600

My Stevie Wonder kick came in a couple of years ago, and I can’t shake it. He’s the best. Been digging his live album Natural Wonder.

Queen - Flick of the Wrist

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 10:24:54 -0600

One of my favourite Queen songs:

Beck - The New Pollution

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:38:00 -0600

Love the melody floating on top of the fast rhythm. “She’s .. al .. one .. in .. the … new .. pol .. lu .. tion”.

Jaco

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:42:00 -0600

Love the arrangement on this one. Gotta love Jaco Pastorius.

Blue Jays offense in 2011

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:07:58 -0600

The 2011 season is almost over for baseball, and as has so often been the case, the Jays will likely finish just a touch over .500. This is ok, but not good enough to compete in the AL East. Optimism is high in Jays land however, as GM Alex Anthopolous has made some clever moves, by exploiting some inefficiencies in baseball. This thread at Bluebird Banter does a good job of discussing those inefficiencies. Many of his moves seem to centre around some of the following ideas:

trading for young, high ceiling talents who have worn out their welcome with their current team, usually having something to do with “attitude” or personality conflicts,
collecting draft pics, by letting free agents walk, or in the case of Miguel Olivo, deliberately acquiring (buying really) someone, with the sole purpose of getting their draft pic when they sign elsewhere,
signing international free agents (usually very young kids from the Dominican, Venezuela or Mexico, who aren’t currently included in the regular draft),
signing reliever free agents during the off-season, which all tend to be one year contracts and very cheap (probably undervalued), followed by trading them mid-season to contenders who desperately need bullpen help, in exchange for “more expensive” talent.

This has left the team with almost nobody left on the team who was with them at the start of 2010. From the opening day of 2011, only 4 of their starting 9 position players are still starting with the team. That’s huge turnover within the season. The team is now much younger, and there is a much richer minor league system than perhaps at anytime previous in the history of the organization. Of the Jays 7 minor league affiliate teams, 5 made it to their playoffs this year, and 2 won their leagues (including AA ball).

As of September 19, the Blue Jays sit fifth in the AL in runs scored. That’s pretty good, but it isn’t as good as Boston or the Yanks in their division. But the Jays spent most of the year with the likes of Juan Rivera, Corey Patterson, Rajai Davis and Aaron Hill and Jayson Nix getting everyday playing time. Now they’ve got Colby Rasmus, Eric Thames, Brett Lawrie and Kelly Johnson playing. Even though Rasmus and Johnson are having down years (why they got them both cheaply), they have very good career stats, and Rasmus has huge upside at 25.

In an attempt to project the current starting 9 position players across a season, I calculated the average OPS of the current everyday starters. The average Blue Jays OPS for the starting 9 players this season is 796. For comparisons sake, the same average OPS for the Yankees this season is 800. If we use career OPS instead of this year, the current Jays starting position players give an average OPS of 798, compared to 836 for the Yankees (all stats from baseball-reference). Here is what the stats look like per player for both teams:

player	career OPS	2011 OPS	age
Escobar	766	782	28
Thames	751	751	24
Bautista	843	1071	30
Lind	787	756	28
Encarnacion	796	791	28
Rasmus	765	605	25
Lawrie	970	970	21
Johnson	782	705	29
Arencibia	718	734	25
average	798	796	26.4

player	career OPS	2011 OPS	age
Martin	756	727	28
Teixeira	904	827	31
Cano	842	877	28
Jeter	831	726	37
Rodriguez	954	843	35
Gardner	724	722	27
Granderson	840	935	30
Swisher	826	824	30
Posada	849	717	39
average	836	800	31.7

There are some problems with this data. In particular, Brett Lawrie only has 6 weeks of playing time, and Thames has only played half a season, significantly impacting the data. But even if Lawrie’s OPS ends up being 100 points lower, that only changes the total average by about 11 points or so. And I suspect Thames’ OPS is essentially minimal given the Jays outfield depth. And the team being so young, leaves more room for the offence to improve, rather than the opposite. Indeed, the average age for the Yankee’s starters is 31.7 versus 26.4 for the Jays. There is a definite downward trend to the Yankee’s OPS with this age, and there is not for the Jays. Posada probably won’t play much longer, and has been receiving less playing time, but it is still difficult to reverse trends with ageing and longterm contracts.

I think the Jays offence is “close” to competing, but there is of course still room for improvement.

WWDC 2011 predictions

Fri, 27 May 2011 12:38:18 -0600

The annual conference WWDC is coming up in 10 days. Which of course means predictions. I figured I’d give my predictions for what I expect this year, based on rumours, plus my own educated guesses. Here’s what I expect:

iCloud - This is potentially the name of the music streaming service. The speculation is that it will scan your iTunes library and allow you to stream this music to any of your devices, and their own high quality, and it will work even if you didn’t buy the music from iTunes. I’m guessing this will cost $3 per month. It will also be able to sync all your music to all your devices wirelessly, eliminating part of the iTunes syncing. An interesting thing about this streaming model, is that it extends much more easily to a Spotify-like subscription model than the current iTunes. It could be just the regular streaming service, but now you can stream absolutely anything. I’m speculating that there could be $10 per month to stream any music Apple has on their servers (idea courtesy of @lo_fye). I would love this service.
OS X Lion - We know that this will be discussed. I don’t think they’ll discuss it too much, but it sounds like it will be available through the App Store to install wirelessly. I’m guessing $50.
iOS 5 - We know this will be discussed. Here is what I’m predicting.
- Background polling - I suspect that there will be a new type of background processing. This new type will be to provide apps with a type of network polling/downloading in the background, on a schedule, but perhaps only when plugged into power, and connected over wifi. So, if you subscribe to a newspaper or a podcasting app, it can download all the newest material overnight as long as it’s plugged in to not drain the batteries. Then all your new material is waiting for you in the morning.
- Icon updating - I suspect apps will be able to change their icons based on things that are happening in the background (more than just the badge that can currently be overlaid). For example, right now there is no way to know if Skype is running in the background. Or whether a podcasting app is downloading podcasts in the background. Or whether my note syncing app is fully sync’ed and up-to-date. If the icon has a progress bar on it though, or a sync checkmark, then it is clear what it is doing in the background. If you are logged into Skype, then it should change the Skype icon so that it clear it is running. This also is really a new form of notification.
- Some type of non-modal notifications, perhaps that pop out from the top of the screen. In this vein, it seems possible that the notifications can collect in a list on the lock screen somehow.
MobileMe - There will have a free variant. For free, one can get over the air, calendar, contact sync, and Find my iPhone (which is already free). This further reduces the reliance on iTunes sync for most people.
iOS wireless updating - The iPhone will be able to update itself over the air on wifi. If you do this however it won’t backup the device. However, backing up will partially be possible over the air, using a combination of the new iCloud music syncing, and also in the following way:
MobileMe will have a way for data to sync and backup from iOS and OS X and Windows to the cloud, and between devices. There will be enough space available to store documents, preferences and instructions for downloading bigger things off the web. So if your phone crashes and you need to restore, there is at least enough information stored in the cloud to either contain all the information for the app, or to have the information to download any information needed for the app to recover. There will be some folder on the Mac/Windows that syncs these app specific folders. If I were to guess, Apple will give 50 MB for free for each app (and each person) you have installed.

I don’t think much else will be announced. This is already a full show.

Love is Eternal Sacred Light

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:47:34 -0600

Can’t contain my excitement about the Paul Simon album coming out tomorrow.. Hey, he only puts out an album every five years or so, and he’s been my favourite songwriter since childhood. I’m allowed to get excited.

I’ve heard the whole album already, and I think it’s great. Here’s another great one.

Foo Fighters

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 20:53:43 -0600

Foo Fighters have a new album coming out the same day as Paul Simon next month. I don’t always love Foo Fighters albums, but I’m always hopeful. For the most part, they have four really good songs on every album, and the rest aren’t as strong. They are most certainly a tight band, and they’ve always put together a good live show.

I’m hopeful for this one. The new single is really great. It features Taylor (drummer) on vocals during the verses, and shows off his real drumming style better than almost all other Foo songs. It’s loud, hard, but tasteful. The guitar at the end has a Queen quality about it. I think I like this song better than any on their last album. (I suppose I should address that question after I’ve heard it 100 times).

So Beautiful or So What

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:58:45 -0600

Oh boy, I can’t wait for the new Paul Simon album out next month. The songs I have heard so far have been awesome, and the reviews seem to be outstanding. Here’s the title track.

Monk

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 11:06:59 -0600

Love this song. Rhythmically crazy, but still feels like it could be the background to a Bond movie. I don’t think I could ever play it though. (Sorry, Flash only. Youtube’s new Flash detection really stinks).

Bird of Beauty

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 09:47:00 -0600

Another great song from Stevie Wonder…

Mac App Store

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 09:21:55 -0600

The new Mac App Store

On Wednesday of this week, Apple announced that it is going to open a new Mac App Store, similar to the iPhone App Store. The new App Store will undoubtedly be a huge deal, and the implications of it will be far reaching, and not just to Mac users. There has never been anything like this on a desktop OS before. Only nerds currently install desktop software, but that is not true on iOS. The average iPhone has installed 40 third party apps. It makes it so easy to download, update, and pay for software (without giving unknown companies your credit card number) that regular people do it. This means that there is more software that becomes available, the pricing goes down, and it is better for both users and developers, in aggregate. This will certainly have an effect on the desktop app market, which is relatively small, especially for the non-big software companies.

One question that immediately comes to mind is exactly who will put their products in the store and who will not? It seems certain that independent developers that can relatively easily conform to the guidelines will put their apps in the store. There is simply too much opportunity for them to pass up. What about the big players, Adobe and Microsoft? My first instinct was that Adobe and Microsoft products wouldn’t put their apps on the App Store. They like to install things in weird locations, they pocket 100% of the proceeds instead of 70% in the store, they already have their own update mechanisms to keep people up to date, and their licensing is different (licensing on the Mac App Store will be just like iOS, where you can install it for free on all your Macs, legally).

But, the App Store is the first thing you’ll see when you get a new Mac. What happens if you open the App Store, and you don’t see Microsoft Office, but you do see Pages for $20, and it works for all your computers? The alternative is to find Office which is not on the store at all, costs $200 and only runs on one computer. Many are going to take the risk and try to get by without Office (and most will easily be able to do so). There’s little question that Microsoft will take a big hit in this scenario. It turns out that Microsoft only really makes profit on two things: Windows and Office. And, a lot of that money is on Office for Mac. This article from 2007 indicates that 20% of Office purchases are Office for Mac. I don’t have updated numbers on that, but according to the latest figures from the keynote on Wednesday, in the last 16 quarters, Mac growth has outpaced all other PC growth. Among all the Windows to Mac switchers, a reasonable percentage of those are buying Office for Mac. Not having Office on the App Store would be a real danger to their profit. I think eventually this will force Microsoft’s hand and they’ll go into the store.

I suspect the same will be true with Photoshop, and other Adobe products. At first they may resist putting their apps in the store because they don’t want to give any money to Apple, and they don’t seem to like pleasant install/update experiences. But then users will see Acorn or some other, almost as powerful for most people, not as well-known, and far cheaper alternative for $30 in the store.

The bottom line is that if an app is not in the store, and there is an alternative that is, the one that is not is in trouble. I see this as being a massive change in the desktop world as it evens the playing field between small and big app makers. It’s already the case on iOS but not anywhere on a desktop.

The hypothetical future Windows App Store

With this precedent, it seems almost certain that Microsoft will eventually do the very same thing and build their own Windows App Store. I’m not sure how good a job Microsoft will be able to do on a store because of worse problems of backwards comparability, other companies bringing their own drivers, etc. But if they do a good job, it could be even more important than on the Mac. I don’t have any numbers on this, but I suspect that on Windows, the small app makers are making even less than on the Mac (likely as a percentage of the total software bought on that platform, but perhaps even overall). Most people on Windows turn only to the web browser as alternatives instead of native apps. The big names make money, but I don’t think there is currently much money for independent developers.

From the perspective of Apple, a Windows App Store could hurt Apple if it creates a rejuvenated “Windows lock-in effect”. Apple has benefited from the turn from native Windows apps to the browser, as that can occur just as easily on a Mac. It’s easier than ever to switch to a Mac.

What about Apple’s products for Windows? Even if iTunes does not end up in the Windows App Store, I doubt that would have any impact as I suspect most people who use iTunes are people who have already bought a piece of Apple hardware such as an iPod, and will search out the software just so they can use their hardware, and because it’s free. I think there is little risk here for Apple. Apple makes money on hardware, but not much on software.