Archive for the ‘the senses’ Category

Buying music online, part 1 (bleep.com)

Friday, January 25th, 2008

Over the last few years I’ve purchased music online from a variety of sites. Aside from wanting files that sound good, a hard requirement is songs must be DRM-free. Yep, that mostly means the iTunes store is out.1

Bleep.com

My favorite place to buy/download music is bleep.com. There are two reasons:

  1. very high quality, DRM-free tracks
  2. an awesome music preview system

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  1. I did buy one DRM-free track via iTunes when iTunes-plus launched (as a vote of support), but I have yet to find any other iTunes-plus tracks I’m interested in. Seriously, every time I look for an album it’s only available wrapped in iTunes’ DRM. With the advent of amazonmp3.com, I’m probably going to stop checking the iTunes store at all. More on that later.

Pussyfinger at Robotspeak

Monday, November 12th, 2007

On October 28, I heard/saw Pussyfinger play at Robotspeak‘s 5th year anniversary party. They were completely awesome. Here’s a 30s clip I shot with my point and shoot camera:

YouTube Preview Image

Reminding myself where I live

Wednesday, October 24th, 2007

Alamo-Haight near Sunrise

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Yeast After Me

Sunday, November 27th, 2005

For some reason, a couple of lovely artists decided I could taint their show, Repeat After Me, with an attempt at Art (more likely, art). Being in love with the science of complexity, the topic of self-replication has come up more than a few times. Fortunately, my original, colder, less fun idea wouldn’t come to fruition in time for the show, so I’ve been forced towards a more seasonally appropriate goal: the creation, recording, and imbibing of beer.

What better way to say “self-replicate” than helping billions of fungal organisms live and die, drinking their waste in celebration? This is a sound art project whose name is still undecided (though my collaborator Søren and I have a few good ideas). We’ve field recorded the brew cycle and will be conjuring the sound pieces into an audible reflection of the process. We’ve got one month to do it. Yikes!

Tonight was the first I’ve played with the samples. If you are bored and I mean really bored (it’s really boring), you can listen to the first exbeeriment. It’s here solely as something to look back at when we finish the final piece. Our work (including the crap linked previously) is licensed under the Creative Commons Sample Plus license.

Buckwheat Maki?

Tuesday, January 25th, 2005

There is no respect for the sushi roll. While trying to whip up something quick and macrobiotic inspired I refound the buckwheat grains (why have i not touched these all winter!!). They were toasted and cooked into fluffy comfort (steam smelling feeling like a large easy chair in a mahogany study).

Into the grain went carrot and avocado and I made a sauce by mixing tahini and the world’s best shoyu (Osawa� Nama Shoyu). A leafy something or other was in need, but the avo, carrot and shoyu were screaming “Maki! Maki!” Could I?

The nori came out, the contents of the pot was mixed and thrown down off-center seaweed. Add a bit of umeboshi paste and sprinkle gomasio, roll, seal — hot damn, it’s good! A side of oshitashi would make this complete.

Looking for suggestions on a ginger drink. I’m making a strong ginger juice using a soy milk maker, but i’m at a loss for spices to add. Ginger juice and sweetener are good, but I know this can be made really good.