Wish Fulfilment

I have just started studying for my Maths degree again, so haven't had much time to write (at least, no the kind of complex, in-depth stuff I have ideas for). I don't want to wait until the Autumn to write again, so I'm jumping back in with something a little more light hearted.

Today I'm going to list and explain some of the things I would like to do, given the time/money/support, in an ideal world. Some of them are obviously more realistic than others, some are only slightly possible and rely on a whole load of things out of my control being possible. These are the things I dream of doing if I had essentially infinite resources...

Design a Better House

I hate modern houses and pretty much any type of house that's part of a wide-scale affordable housing project. They all seem to be based around some kind of one-size-fits-nobody design; inappropriately sized rooms, awkward layouts, poor lighting, looks boring, generally as energy inefficient as they're allowed to make them.

Outside:

Inside:

Pictures from http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/architecture


What I would like to do is get together a group of people/companies and design a new template. The brief would be; it needs to be modern and stylish - I want something that looks like a modern bespoke style-led house. It needs to have good lighting design, that's also efficient (my job - I'm a lighting designer). It needs to be cleaver on the inside, so the space is well used (basically, no rooms partitioned off with hallways etc - these take up space that could be used otherwise - and rooms appropriately sized). I would like some kind of micro-generation. I would like super-efficient insulation and a new kind of central heating. It would need to cost about the same (or even less) than existing projects. It wouldn't necessarily take up the same amount of land though - if we could spread them out a bit for the same budget that would be good.

I don't know why, but I'm pretty sure that if someone really tried they could make this happen. There just isn't the incentive though - designing and planning something new takes time and property developers just want to put up whatever they can make the most money out of as quickly as possible.

Start A Youth Centre

Where I live in Hastings. I would base it around the adventure playgrounds so prolific around where I used to live in West London (Fulham, Holland Park and Battersea were the ones I frequented regularly). It would be a not-for-profit co-operative. It would make income from membership fees (with means-tested free memberships), and also supplement this with adult/corporate hire - laser-tag/paintball type of thing. Also with some kind of simple studio and other hi-tech kind of stuff that disadvantaged kids don't always get to enjoy (another revenue steram from those that can afford to pay to hire). Cheap, but nutritious, meals.


Develop a New Graphene Processor


I am sooooo excited by graphene!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9491789.stm

 I would love to lead a research project to develop the material into the next generation of CPUs. They wouldn't necessarily be faster/smaller/better - I would aim for cheaper. I would also aim to keep the manufacture within the UK and make patent use approvals based on working standards equal to our own.


Set Up a 'Khan Academy' Free School


I love the Khan Academy videos (thank you Robert!). Then I saw this video of how they're making it work in the states:

I would love to set up a new free-school, using the method in the video - I would have all the 'lessons' and tutorials set as homework in the form of videos. Activities would be available online for home pratice if kids want to. Then in the school time what teachers would do is discuss any issues the kids are having, do the 'homework' of doing problems, where the teacher could then (being freed of having to lecture the class) spend a small amount of quality time with each pupil, answering their unique questions and problems. I do believe it is the education of the future - let's get there first!

Someone did point out 'what would families without access to computers/internet do?'. Well, all the videos are available for download for free and these could be distributed. Then facilities could be provided after-school for any remaining kids that have no DVD players either. They manage to teach children in third-world villages this way.


Start a Cafe/Restaurant

Since it would be vegetarian, this is possibly the least likely! Not enough veggies, too many meaties are put off by vegetarian-only eating-out. I do think it could be possible though - especially if the food was well cooked, reasonably priced and interesting. Hugh Fernly-Wittingstal managed to go veggie for a year, so maybe the time of veggie-friendly rhetoric amongst non-veggies is upon us! However, it would not simply contain a proliferation of veggie-alternatives to meat. Except maybe sausages - what the hell is the difference to animal protein mashed up with bead and flavourings in a tube and vegetable protein mashed up with bread and flavourings in a tube anyhow?!

When is a Dj a cheat....?

I meant to put something substantial together on the weekend, but didn't. I was helping with baking for a children's party on Saturday, then mixing on Sunday; putting together a mix for Planet Angel *Chilled* in a Field (haven't got a gig there yet, but fingers crossed! That's what the mix is for). Anyhow, I do have some thoughts about Djing and the technology involved and wanted to talk about them.


I have been having an internal battle with myself over what exactly constitutes 'cheating' as a club-style Dj. I never had this problem when I was Djing with vinyl, or a combination of vinyl/cds - either you're good at all the skills and you sound good, or you're not and you don't. No-one realises how precise you need to be with a mix to make it sound good until you hear someone who isn't, then the cacophony and discord is enough to make most people wince (at least, most people who're likely to be at a rave/club/party listening); the beats need to be matched to within a significantly small fraction of a beat (anything less than almost perfect leads to either flanging of the beats, or occasionaly the phase of the beats cancelling each other), the tempo needs to be matched (less important, as it is possible to make corrections once you get good at hearing how it's wrong) and the bars/groups of bars need to be matched (nothing sounds as awkward as two overlapping songs 1/2, 1/4 or 3/4 of a bar out. Not matching groups of bars sounds nearly as bad). I haven't checked, but I suspect our hearing can pickup much finer mistakes in sounds than our eyes can in pictures, mostly due to how our vision works in practise - it actually only 'sees' the very middle portion of your vision in detail and colour, then the rest is filled in by the brain.... maybe I'll expand on this in the future...


Anyhow, I never had this existential issue until I started Djing 100% digital. I did this for two reasons; primarily, one of my decks broke. They're expensive to replace and I am poor. Secondary to this, vinyl has a tendency to sound a bit shit played along side digital formats. I think this has more to do with budget/low-grade vinyl pressing and bad audio mixing than the limitations of the format (I actually have a record where the bass was set too high and it clips/distorts?!). In addition to this I was buying most of my new music digital, then burning to cd. 'Fuck this' I thought, 'I'm gonna save myself the cash and arse-ache, and just Dj digital', and apart from the fact that I have now given up on ever becoming a 1st-class turntableist (I was never gonna be anyhow since I never practised and am unlikely to ever have the time) I have no regrets about it.


Now, this is where I get to the point; in any Dj software I've ever used there has been a 'sync' button. All this does is automatically shift the pitch-slider to the correct position so that the BPM on the deck is matched with the other deck. I never used it; 'This button is cheating', I told myself, 'no real Dj needs to have a computer beat-match for them' and I got on with doing it the old fashioned way. As time went on though I found that the software was practically never wrong when it came to the tempo of a track (not always, but I reckon I have less than 10 that are awkward) and increasingly I was simply manually moving the pitch-slider into the position that the BPM counter matched on both decks - I was basically taking longer to perform the task that the sync button does instantly. I started feeling pretty stupid, like someone who refused to use the automatic suggestions on a spell-check and insists on looking up the words in a 'proper' dictionary. I felt like a Luddite who refused to move on with the technology, eschewing a large selection of the extra features of the software, clinging to the last remnants of what it means to be a vinyl Dj...


Around about this time I simply started using the sync button. Mostly I just accepted that this was pretty much all I was doing anyhow - looking at the BPM counter and matching it on both decks. I wasn't fussed if anyone would be more impressed with my skills if I manually moved the pitch-slider instead, I'd just think the person was a bit too easily impressed and a bit stupid for not realising that both actions are essentially the same thing - matching the BPM counters - only one is done manually and slowly, and one is done automatically and instantaneously. Partly, it was simply that I am for the most part a bedroom Dj - I'm not hungry for a career as a Dj, I'm not chasing gigs, I have other stuff I'm interested in, so it isn't as if it will actually effect my life. In addition to this, I knew I could mix without it, so I felt secure in my skills. Also, I came to realise that it wasn't the sync button that was the issue - it was the BPM counter. What was I supposed to do? Stick blu-tack over the BPM on my monitor? Find some way to change the settings and turn it off? Find some other way of deliberately crippling the software so it was more vinyl like?


Crippling, that was what it would be like. I would be deliberately crippling the tools I use in order to make it harder. Like a Snooker player cutting off the thumb he rests his cue on. If simply making it hard was all it was about then why have any technological advancements at all? Why have software with two players in, why not two separate players or computers? Why include practically all the same features on the top-end cd decks when they're not 'meant' to be used? In fact, when you get right down to it, why have a pitch-slider at all?! Surely it would be supremely skillful to Dj well with the only tool available to get records matched was your finger manually keeping the tempo!



So, still feeling slightly like a cheat, I continued. And I found something out; by removing the tricky (if skillful) song-to-song drudgery of beat-matching I had begun to excel in other areas of my mixing. My timing was getting much better, so I was dropping tracks in more accurately. I started to concentrate on the mix more, playing with the levels and eq and etc. more, making the mix sound a bit more dynamic. I was managing tight and swift mixes that before I would never have achieved due to time constraints. I was actually becoming a better Dj. I started feeling (having also thought about the idea in the previous paragraph) pretty fucking pleased with myself. But I was still thinking about it...


For starters, there is obviously a point at which you are cheating - using MixMeister to pre-mix a set and then simply letting the program run is not Djing. But then, letting a computer do the playing isn't necessarily wrong (IMO), else how would dance music be made? With no sequencers? So what is that point? Had I already passed it, but simply rationalised it away to myself?


I would hate to say I have the answers to this, but here are my own thoughts on it - please feel free to leave you're own:


This is my starting point. For starters, a Dj is not primarily there to be really fucking cleaver and skillful. They're not there to show off loads of cleaver tricks, especially since most people wouldn't notice them, being either; too high, too engrossed in conversation/dancing, or just not giving a shit. In fact, at the end of the set most people probably won't remember half the songs that were played. Well so what. That's what a Dj is for; playing great music for people to dance to. Taking people on a bit of a journey with it, sure, but it would be better for the Dj to go completely unnoticed than for him to be doing so much cleaver dick stuff that you never get in the groove of a set and the crowd notices too much.


So point one - Dj is there for the crowd's enjoyment, not their own self-publicity.


They are, however, a performance. They're there primarily for the crowd, but they're also supposed to be bringing a live, human aspect to it. Otherwise a club could just play a mixed cd - hell, that way every club could have Fatboy Slim play simply by popping on 'On the Floor of the Big Beat Boutique'! So you do need to bring something new and unexpected, and to do it live. It is still supposed to be a special journey (this takes us back to it being for the crowd).


I suppose you could compare this (loosely) to singing; it's fine to have a polished studio album, using all the bells and whistles in a studio's repertoire, but any singer who doesn't sing live is undoubtedly a cheat. Worse, every gig would be the same and there would be no point in doing anything except listen to a recording.


So, to my mind, a good Dj is one who plays good (appropriate?) music to the crowd's enjoyment. That's it. They're only a cheat if they don't play live. That's it. I came to this opinion listening to some people play - they're skills were perfect, but the music was dull as dishwater! I realised I would rather hear someone with no skills at all, who simply faded quickly from one song to the next, but played really amazing music. Everything else is just for Djs (and enthusiasts), not for the crowd. The Dj is the evangelist of music - searching it out and putting it forward for the crowd's consideration.


The only bad Dj is one who plays crap music. Or tries to pull off Dj tricks they really can't and ends up sounding messy (they should just fade across, but I still might forgive them if the tunes are good enough!). That's it.

iPad Review, or How I came to See that Steve Jobs is in Hell Right Now, Sucking the Devil's Scrotum as Payment for the Apple Business Model

So, my boss got an iPad for the office. I told him it'd end in tears, but we had credit to use up and he thought it'd be good for some stuff. Secretly I was concerned that having the thing in my hands I would be taken over by it's fiendish glamour and I would mutate in to just another carbon-copy iPerson. I needn't have worried.


First, let me declare my loyalties; I am ideologically a linux user - open-source is for me where we are going, regardless of what happens before that. However, since I use a great many specialist software packages, I am practically a windows user. Would love to be 100% linux, but it just isn't viable. Not that I haven't tried Apple products, but precisely because I have tried them! Two events really rammed it home; 1) someone had an eMac to learn from home. We wanted to add music from a folder to iTunes and we spent hours working it out! Just works my arse! 2) When the same computer had a fault with the HDD changing it was approximately a millions time more difficult than any other kind of computer... Bit like the iPhone battery I suppose...


Anyhow, my fear was that my appreciation for the slick technology would overcome my abhorrence of the business model. Never fear.


First let me say some nice things; it is a very nice, very sophisticated, piece of tech. Well designed GUI, stylish case and easy to follow start-up. Smooth interface with a slick auto-rotate animation/transition. App icons do a cute little jiggle when you're editing the desktop. Unfortunately these are no longer the preserve of Apple and I can get such eye-candy other places - Apple lost the uniqueness of their GUI idea as soon as Microsoft released windows, so now there needs to be a bit more substance than this.


So, rather than talking about it abstractly, let me talk about what I was actually doing. There is no mobile device that can actually do the kind of specialised lighting calculation or run the lighting software we use, but we do need to show our models and designs to our clients. Normally we would take along a laptop (normally also with a laptop operator - yours truly) and 'walkthrough' the model, with much pausing and fussing and fiddling to get the correct views. Often there will be presentations in Powerpoint with hardcopy for the client. One of the recent improvements to our lighting software has been to include a video option. I will not go into detail on the pros/cons of the system, but the bottom line is we can export a video of a walkthrough. Along with associated material, this can all be read on a small, easy to use, tablet type device. No laptop. No laptop operator. My boss looks like he has his finger on the pulse and our clients are suitably impressed.


I started with the video; I already knew that the primary way to put 'content' onto iStuff is through iTunes, but I didn't want iTunes on my PC - if only because I was worried about accidentally cocking up the 'pairing' of the devices and deleting some of the stuff on the iPad (I have heard of people accidentally doing this). I don't really understand how it works and really I wanted a way to get files on it without resorting to integrating iTunes into my life. Dropbox! I thought it'd be the solution! Set up an account, downloaded the App, set it all up, synced videos in some of the folders, BANG! I can access the videos.... but wait, there is no 'save to drive' or similar option. I am expected to stream the content from the server pretty much every time (it does hang around for a little while after loading, but not long). Fine if you have a wifi connection fast enough, or a 3G connection and time to waste, but my boss (who is likely to be using this) can barely get his head around closing a window after he's finished 'in case he needs it later' and often has his computer crash when he has the maximum number of PDFs open that Adobe will allow. Is he really going to be able to set up wifi connections all the time? Let's hope so. Is there always going to be a wifi connection? Not necessarily.


So, I thought, what about the iCloud I've heard so much about? Surely I could just upload the video to the iCloud and access it from there. Apparently not. I appears that the iCloud is not quite what I expected; I had imagined an online storage folder tree with multiple ways of accessing and uploading files. I went to the iCloud website to see how to upload something, expecting to sign in and maybe browse a file through an online uploader, maybe download an uploader program, maybe having a sync folder (a la Dropbox). What I was actually faced with was a bland blank catalogue of uploaded documents in three flavours; Keynote, Pages and Numbers. Each flavour had a page to itself with very large buttons to buy the appropriate iOS programs. It had very few instructions, but I finally found the upload option in the top-right of the screen in the drop-down menu of of the 'settings' icon. Brilliant.

The other thing I would like to point out is that it seems that the iCloud only works with three Apple software packages and is not some general cloud-computing solution, but I guess this may change. Either way, not so good for accessing a video - unless I want to have it as an insert in a presentation....


Dropbox, although this is less than perfect. There do appear to be a couple of other options that I haven't tried out; apps that network and access files that way and (the most hopeful) drag'n'drop into the only system folder accessible on the USB connection - the DCIM folder. Hopefully this last will work, but we shall see....


I expect that there are some that might wonder why I have ranted about a file transfer problem that is really a problem I've created for myself by not using iTunes. But for me, this is the fundamental flaw of the iCrap range. A tool is to be used as the person using wants to, usually in a way designed, sometimes in some unusual way. At no point does the person selling you the tool have a say as to how you use it after you have paid money to own it; imagine if you had to buy iHammer that could only be used on iNails in certain circumstances, unless of course you mess around with a range of different third-party attachments. You just want to be able to grab a nail and hammer, not mess around with the iLoader to prime the iNails that will only work on iHammer approved walls. There is no actual reason to restrict how a consumer transfers content to a device they have paid money to own, but they do.


But I can see the person who all this is designed for. It is the person for whom browsing through folder trees is too techy - they like all their stuff laid out in simple categories and until recently always viewed their folders with extra large icons. The person for whom actually learning about the technology they use is somehow below them - they are more important than this, it is a waste of their precious time, they want it to 'just work'. For them it just might (for a while at least). All this seems to be designed for the iPerson; the person with a PowerMAC at home, a MacBook Air, an iPhone and now the iPad - which is essentially just a hardware GUI extension of the rest of their Apple universe. This person will enable iCloud on everything and never go anywhere without wifi or 3G and so find all their documents ready and waiting, there on their device, without ever having to learn how to sync folders or transfer files. It's all organised to be a sleek, interconnected, but (most importantly) isolated island in the sea of technology. It is not cross-platform compatible. It isn't meant to enable wide and interestingly divergent development, but to keep developmental direction in the hands of Apple - take it or leave it. It all links together out of the box and the consumer never need worry their pretty little heads about how any of this actually works - it just works. Right up to the point that is doesn't, and then you're screwed...


......




All this wouldn't be so bad, but selectively breeding people who can operate computers without understanding them is most certainly a large step in the wrong direction. There were two news reports in a 'Digital Literacy' series this week that caught my eye, first was this one that talks about a new cheap programmable computer (should eventually cost around £20ea) called 'Raspberry Pi'. The part that caught my eye was:

What [Eban] Upton realised was that schools weren't teaching pupils the basics of computing any more – they were just teaching them how to use software. "Children were learning about applications, which are pretty low-value skills. They weren't being properly equipped to think about how computers are programmed, about how they're built and how we make them work."

The other article was this one on how generally our Computer Science courses in this country aren't up to scratch, with game design oriented courses having only 12% of graduates finding work within six months.


We need to have computer literate people in our work places, from the boardroom to the mailroom. How many hours, how much money, is essentially wasted because people do not really understand their technology even at the most basic levels? This is a joke (source - XKCD):

But shouldn't be. This should be common sense, but is not (else this joke wouldn't work). And the way the iCrap is going it won't be anymore - either it will just work or it won't and there will be no menu items to try. Things will either work together or they won't, and there will be no route for a person to configure/adjust/meddle with the way their devices/programs work.

What I would like to see is a few steps backwards in some directions; flashy GUIs (which I will go into in more depth sometime), single use devices, cross-compatibly, upgradability/repairability. Apple is going the wrong way (IMO) on all points. It is an evolutionary pressure towards dumbing-down our ability to comprehend how the technology we use works. It is undoubtedly doing the devil's work of making us into more compliant, more cattle like, less thinking, iPeople. That is why Steve Jobs is now repaying his debt for the inspiration for the Apple business model sucking his scrotum.

Hello

My first blog. Feels like a big step - putting my thoughts out there.


Let me tell you a bit about myself - I am a deviant. I do not mean a sexual deviant (well, not most of the time), I mean a cultural deviant. I deviate from the norm. And for the most part I'm completely happy with this state of affairs; I never wanted to be normal (lucky really - I had no hope! Two Mums, two Dads, all taking various drugs and living various alternative lifestyles, plus I was home-schooled!) and rather enjoyed being different. I usually find myself being different even amongst people who one might naturally assume I'd fit in with completely. I guess the other point is that I'm very much a cultural hybrid and I've taken views on subjects based on my own understanding of them (as opposed to because they are the views held by whatever clique I happen to feel I belong to. No-one owns up to this, but it does appear to me as if it goes on an awful lot), not always necessarily the view you might expect. This has led me to hold views and opinions that are not necessarily usual bedfellows; I believe in environmentalism AND support nuclear energy. I'm (broadly) a socialist AND a libertarian/anarchist. I love Bach AND I think dubstep is the best thing to happen to music since the invention of the 303. I love maths and am working towards a degree in it AND I'm an amateur graffiti artist. I hate the TV and all the crap it's brought AND I love TV because there really are some wonderful programs on. Cognitive dissonance - you soon get over it. 


I am aiming to publish at least one post a week. I would like to point out that I really am not expecting many (if any) people to read this. I'm mostly using it as a warehouse or repository for the thoughts and ideas I have, on any of the subjects I'm currently interested in. That said, if you are reading this (and you must be) I hope you enjoy it. If you want to contact me feel free.


Blue skies x