Lisa Housman and Dave Falk make up the folk band, “Sweet Wednesday”. I found Lisa playing solo in the Park Street subway station the other day. She was supportive of the compiliation CD idea and said she’d heard of a similar project that was done in New York City recently. She seemed to be a fan of the compilation CD in general as a way to get people exposed to new music.

She had a 14 track CD, “Wherever You Go” for sale which I picked up (It sure feels good when you know more than a few pennies actually go to the artist.) She very kindly allowed me to post a song here. So here is track 1, “Mid-Morning Rain” (4 MB MP3)

Lisa and Dave are also the most web savvy buskers I’ve met so far. They are hip with the Internets. You can find out more about them and their work, including additional song samples, on their numerous web sites:

• Lisa and Dave’s web site
• Sweet Wednesday web site
• Lisa Housman web site
• Dave Falk web site
• Their blog with stories of life as a street musician

When it rains and your dog needs to play, you invent a game like “Tweensies”. The objective of tweensies is go between Ketzel’s front and back legs before she walks away. The score since tweensies was invented two weeks ago is currently: Jared 2. Corin 1.

A few more photos in the Redjar Gallery.

I found Jermaine Carter playing percussion on plastic buckets, pots, and an oven rack in Boston Common. He told me his old equipment disappeared so he pulled together this assortment from an ally and was raising money to buy some better stuff.

Jermaine also tells me he was featured on a video game. Apparently ESPN filmed him after the Red Sox won the World Series.

Here is a 3 minute 38 second live recording of Jermaine playing percussion. (3.3 MB MP3)

OK Go’s most recent podcast has an interview with Jonathan Goldstein. From their podcast page:

The band interviews Jonathan Goldstein, host of Wire Tap, the best show that’s ever been on in the history of CBC radio. Listen in as this venerable broadcaster insults Damian and Tim, and is, in turn, insulted.

Here’s a direct link to the MP3.

We used to make crepes with Nutella, Strawberries, and fresh whip cream. That turned out to be too much work, so my new favorite dessert is just Nutella and Strawberries.

How long will PowerPC based Macs be first class citizens? That is, how long will the OS be released for both platforms, and how long before Applications start to be Intel only.

Facts and Factors:

• Apple has said their entire line-up will be Intel based by the end of 2006.
• Mac OS X 10.5 is due near the end of 2006 beginning of 2007 (I’m predicting will be released November 24, 2006) Apple has stated that both Intel and PPC will be supported. If you look at the most recent release cycle, 10.5 will likely be the “current” release for about a year and a half. That means PPC will be supported until somewhere around June 2008.
• The first PowerPC based mac was released on March 14, 1994. The first version of Mac OS that did NOT support the older 68K macs was Mac OS 8.5 which was released on October 17, 1998. That means 4 years 7 months and 3 days elapsed while 68K macs were officially supported.
• Despite grumbling from consumers, Apple has managed to only add new features to the very latest iPod generation without making the feature work on older generations… even though in most cases there is no technial reason to do so. (They could use a similar approach to their computers.)

Unknowns:

• Once an App cleanly works as a Universal Application, what future modifications will developers have to make for it to continue to be a Universal Application?
• How much additional work is it for Apple to maintain PPC support for the OS, their Applications, and their Development tools?

I don’t think Apple will support PPC as long as they supported 68K macs, but the real event that will make the PPC based Macs second class citizens won’t be Apple. Rather it will be a third party that creates a whiz-bang peripheral that lots of people will want, but the company won’t bother writing PPC drivers for it becuase they don’t think it will make financial sense.

Taking everything into consideration, and then disregarding most of it, I think it won’t make sense to own a PPC based Mac for just about everyone once Mac OS X 10.6 is released. I predicted that to be around June 2008 which is almost two and a half years from today. So if you are in the market for a new Mac and plan to use it productively for more than 2.5 years, buy an Intel based one. And if you want a consumer laptop (iBook or whatever it will be called), that means waiting… probably until Spring.

Wiretap - A Listening Ear (10.8 MB MP3). From 2006-01-27. Host Jonathan Goldstein

Update: I’ve fixed the mp3 link, I linked to last weeks show by accident. Also the plug-in which makes it so this doesn’t show up on the front page works, except, it still shows up in the main RSS feed. Oh well.

Audible recently opened up their Podcasting system Wordcast which allows anyone to use the Audible DRM to provide paid podcasts. Unfortunately they forgot to tell anyone… probably because it isn’t quite ready. But the potential is huge thanks to the fact that their DRM’d files work on the iPod unlike all other DRM except Apple’s FairPlay.

I’m not sure how much they have implemented but they’ve promised an integrated ad system and detailed metrics.

Sunday night we went to see the New England Conservatory Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. Two of the boys who live in our dorm were performing. There were over 70 string musicians and around 30 percussion, brass etc. A live performance with that many musicians is a completely different experience than listening to classical music, even on the best sound system. The performance was very impressive. However, I’ve gotta say that no matter how talented the musicians are, three hours of classical music is just too much. A Hollywood movie can spend millions of dollars and struggle to keep my attention for two hours. It is just impossible to keep a human sitting and focused on the same thing for 3 straight hours.

Here’s a very low-fi (from my digital camera’s crappy microphone) sound sample of the last piece they played. Symphony No. 5 from Dmitri Shostakovich (0.7 MB MP3)

The second street musician (or busker as Pam has taught me) I came across in Boston was Aaron Burnett. Aaron was playing his saxophone on a street near Boston common. He is a junior at the Berklee School of Music.

Like Augusto, Aaron was very friendly and generous. He tried to wait paitently for me to attempt to explain my project. He also allowed me to record some of his sounds and provide the sample here.

This audio contains street sounds here and there, which I’m still up in the air whether add or ditract from the music.

Aaron Burnett playing saxophone (2.6 MB MP3)

According to Aaron, he recently recorded some music with a bassist, but has yet to get the final product. Hopefully I’ll get to post some more of his work in the future.

After a slight lull in gallery activity, I bring you not one, but four galleries of fun filled photos:

Candlepin Bowling	Anna, Corin, and Ketzel put things on their head
Ketzel with friends on a play date	Boston Musuem of Science visit

The gallery even has its own RSS feed if you are in to that sort of thing.

Wiretap - Childhood’s Promise (10.9 MB MP3). From 2006-01-20. Host Jonathan Goldstein

I hit the street last Friday to seek out street musicians, try to explain to them my idea of compiling a CD of Boston street music, and see what their reaction was.

My first stop was Downtown Crossing where I found a friendly guitarist named Augusto Garces. While I failed to clearly explain my idea (it isn’t even clear in my head), Augusto was interested and very cooperative. He was also a good salesman. He sold me the CD that he created with his son Kevin who plays the drums.

Augusto was so nice, that he’s given me permission to post one of his songs here. So here is track 9: Y Que siga La Rumba (4 MB MP3) Augusto on Guitar. Kevin on Percussion. J. Russel on Piano.

Corin and I spent last night at the Coolidge Corner theater. They were showing Christopher Sykes‘ documentary on Richard Feynman. The documentary was “No Ordinary Genius” which aired on the BBC and WGBH several years ago. Mathmatica inventor, MacArthur award winner, and all around smart guy, Stephen Wolfram spoke about his interactions with Feynman. I was’t even aware that this documentary existed. Apparently you can only get it by asking Sykes directly.

I expected there to be about 10 people there… after all it was Monday night and a film about a scientist. I called ahead and the woman recommended I buy tickets in advance via their website. I did so. We got a nice Boston Musuem of Science Members discount (thanks Matt and Pam!)… but they, like other on-line ticket sellers, charged a dollar per ticket service charge which seems bizarre. A transaction that involves no human on their end costs MORE? Buying on-line turned out to be excellent advice. We arrived at 7:00 just as the showing was about to start. There was a line down the block (which was thankfully for people without tickets) and when we got in to the big theater it was packed. I know Boston has a nerdy population, but who knew they actually get out?

Weird. On my ubuntu breezy box this works:

rawrec -s 44100 -c 2 -t 5 -d /dev/dsp foo.raw

This doesn’t:

/usr/bin/rawrec -s 44100 -c 2 -t 5 -d /dev/dsp foo.raw

Identical commands except that the second is a full path to the binary. This page seems to confirm the same experience. It simply displays the list of options rawrec takes without any further error message. My only theory is that there is a bug parsing the arguments.

I sent an email to the developer, but rawrec hasn’t been updated since 2002, so I suspect it is no longer being maintained.

It isn’t a big deal, but I’m still on the look out for yet another alternative. (I’ve already passed on mpegrec and sox)

While in a Radio Shack the other day I noticed these USB cables. $20 for a three foot USB cable? $25 for a six footer? And now, printers mysteriously don’t come with a USB cable included.

Not to be left out, it is the same deal with Ethernet cables, stereo/video cables, etc.

Seth and I ran into this a couple months ago when we needed some ethernet cables. We went to CompUSA and MicroCenter. It wasn’t even our money but I refused to spend that much money on a little plastic and copper.

I figured we’d just buy it on-line. I went to NewEgg and the cables were cheaper, but in many cases the shipping was more than the cable itself. Take this cable for instance. A 6 foot Cat5e cable for $4. Shipping is $5!

I understand that the public is just willing to pay $20 for a 3 foot USB cable, partly because they don’t know any better, partly because who wants to shop around for a cable… but why isn’t some company swooping in with lower priced cables? It smells fishy.

Just about every day I pass at least one street musician during my commute. They range from a homeless guy pitifully blowing on a recorder, to a guitarist with a professial looking CD for sale and a website. They are all interesting in their own way, but I’m always in a hurry to catch a train.

For the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about these musicians and a project sprung to mind. Why not compile a bunch of songs performed by these street musicians, make an album, sell it on CD Baby, iTunes Music Store, etc. and give any profits back to the musicians. Maybe even collect interviews of the muscians and tell their story.

After asking around and doing a few web searches, I haven’t found any similar project. However, I’m very far from the music scene, so I’m sure someone must have tried something like this. If anyone has seen a similar project, please chime in.

Wiretap - I Can See You Through the Radio (10.9 MB MP3). From 2006-01-13. Host Jonathan Goldstein

Two notes:

I didn’t intend on continuing to post Wiretaps here.  Back in April 2005 I sent an email to the CBC to see when archives would be available on the Wiretap website.  The anonymous repsponse said: “Wiretap is not available for downloading or distribution on CD yet…But we’re working on it. Please stay tuned. Thanks for writing.” Posting them here is getting old, so I’m hoping they’ll get an archive together soon, at which point I’ll remove the archive.
Continuing these posts has however inspired me to install a WordPress plugin called ShowOnFrontPage.  It allows one to choose whether each post should be promoted to the front page, or just to the category pages (it is slightly buggy under WordPress 2.0 so we’ll see how it goes).  So unless there is something particularly relevant or interesting about an episode, I won’t promote it to the front page and it will only appear on the Wiretap Category page.

While I sit around not buying a MacBook Pro, I’m trying to fathom why Apple decided to dump a widely known and perfectly good name, “Powerbook” for a terrible name like MacBook Pro. During the Macworld Stevenote, Jobs stated, “Today we are introducing a new notebook computer that we are calling the Macbook Pro. Its a new name because we’re kind of done with Power, and because we want Mac in the name of our products”. Huh?
The first Powerbooks did not have PowerPC chips. According to EveryMac, The Powerbook 100, 140, and 170 released on October 21, 1991 had 68HC000, and 68030 chips instead.  The PowerMacs did all have PowerPC chip, but that (PowerMac 6100) wasn’t released until 1994. So it is too long ago for me to remember, but I suspect the Power was originally part gimic and part naming scheme for designating products for Power users.

So something deeper is obviously going on with this stupid name change.  My guess is a cosolidation of the iBook and Powerbook lines into one line.  Maybe Apple doesn’t think they can create enough of a differentation to have two lines?  The Macbook is the lowend portable, and the MacBook Pro is the high end?

I guess it is another reason to sit tight and not buy.

The IR Blaster arrived today. Got it running in a few minutes, and I’m happy to report it controls the Sirius Starmate ST-2 radio perfectly (with the config file I created earlier.)

I need to make some tweaks (get the module loaded and LIRCD started at boot, etc) but it looks like it is going to work.

One problem I’m having is that sox (or some combination of sox, lame, and my script) for some reason is stopping the recording after exactly 3 hours 22 minutes and 54 seconds. Some sort of buffer or something must be filling up. Sox is sort of overkill, and doesn’t take an argument for number of seconds to record, so I’m instead going to try rawrec. In the days of Linux 2.2 I used mpegrec which worked like a champ. But I don’t think it builds on 2.6. So I’m hoping rawrec will do the trick. For some reason, after playing with it for 5 minutes, all I’m getting is nasty static. I’m not sure what is going on as all my arguments look good to me, but I’m tired and will try again tomorrow.
I’m not aware of any other stripped down utilities that will send line-in audio to standard out for handling directly by lame. Anyone?