Woz Comes To Sydney

Does This Mean Sydney Has Hit The Hi-Tech Big Time?

Whoah!

Yes, that Steve Wozniak is coming to work and live in Sydney. He wasn't kidding when he said he liked the NBN so much he wanted to live here. I thought he was being flattering and nice, but no, the man who started Apple Computers with the late Steve Jobs is coming to Sydney.

Apple co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak is set to join the University of Technology, Sydney, in December as an adjunct professor. 

He will become a key part of the UTS "Magic Lab", the university's centre for innovation and enterprise research, which conducts research into robotics and artificial intelligence. 

Mr Wozniak has harboured intentions of moving to Australia since 2012, when he said he was going through the process of becoming an Australian citizen, according to Gizmodo. 

"I am under way to becoming an Australian citizen. That's a little known fact," he said. 

"Turns out that I get to keep my American citizenship and I intend ... to call myself an Australian and feel Australian and study the history and become as much of a real citizen here as I can."

I have to tell you this news makes me feel great, and I don't know why. It has absolutely nothing to do with me, it certainly won't stop the Coalition Government from trying to dumb down the NBN, but hey, it's Steve Wozniak! It's so cool!

Welcome to Sydney Mr. Wozniak!

View From The Couch - 15/Oct/2014

The Storm

The banging rain against the window kept me up most of the night. It turns out it was once-in-a-hundred-years sort of weather event. I'm beyond perturbed in experiencing once-in-a-very-long-time weather events in my time. I've certainly witnessed more than my fair share. Living through them a couple of times makes you realise that the increasing frequencies of these things are telling us that the rare has become common and mundane. This much is according to the prognostications made about weather evens on the extension of climate change trends. We're now living to see those predictions borne out but of course global warming doesn't exist according to the Abbott 'Denialista' Government.

Not that one should expect to hear anything sensible out of the government. Facts and reality don't figure into these people's 'thinking'. But you knew that. You knew I'd write that. It's only been a year and it's already tired. Writing all that just feels hackneyed and tired because plenty of others have made these observations - and they all knew nothing would change. And it hasn't.

The evidence is more than in. We are well and truly into our climate dystopia.

People Complain Too Much

A little over a month ago, Apple released its new iPhone 6, and with it came an automated download wherein just like that we were in possession of the latest U2 album. Rather quickly it turned into the pinyata-du-jour as everybody with a mouthpiece decided to deride the album's appearance in people's iTunes. It was unseemly if you ask me, because it is ungracious to complain about a gift - which is essentially what Apple had done.

Today Bono apologised for the whole thing.

"Umm, I had this beautiful idea, [we] might have got carried away with ourselves, artists are prone to that kind of thing."
He could have stopped there, but Bono wanted to clear the air and explained that a little insecurity may have been behind the move. 

"[The reasons were a] drop of megalomania, touch of generosity, dash of self promotion, and deep fear that these songs that we poured our life into over the last few years mightn't be heard. There's a lot of noise out there. 

"I guess we got a bit noisy ourselves to get through it."

It's been a long time since U2 were the 'it' band. Of course at the moment they reached that pinnacle, they put out 'Rattle and Hum' which immediately showed they were not quite as savvy as the monolithic rock gods of the 70s before them. They seemed to arrive there by careful marketing rather than the sort of galvanising generational shout. The predominantly Gen-X audience stood up to be counted as U2 fans because there simply had to be a somebody like that and nothing else was going. Through the Live Aid years and Amnesty International concerts, rock became mainstream and super-tame. Even Johnny Rotten went back to being Johnny Lydon. In short, the once wonderful, amazing, historic, profound, meaningful sort of Rock music, decayed into commerce. What we loved so much sold itself out so hard to so many people it lost its power.

But U2 were there. Still earnest, meaningful and energetic. That had to mean something to somebody, way back then.

U2 did go on to achieve quite a bit more in subsequent forays but they stepped back from owning the mantle as rock's-biggest-something-or-other'. The artistic maturity obscured them and allowed them to drift out of the glare. It's a bit sad that quarter of a century later, that all that stature got squandered to the point where, when they gave people a free album the people complained.

You've Got A Platform, Have A Swing!

Freshly minted Man Booker prize winner, Robert Flanagan took his shot at the Federal Government.

"I'm very saddened because Australia has the most extraordinary environment and I don't understand why our government seems committed to destroying what we have that's unique in the world," Mr Flanagan told the BBC.
When asked about Prime Minister Tony Abbott's comment earlier this week that "coal is good for humanity" Mr Flanagan said: "To be frank, I'm ashamed to be Australian when you bring this up." 

Mr Flanagan was also critical of the Tasmanian government's recent decision to abolish a forestry peace deal between environmentalists and forestry companies that was four years in the making. 

The end of the deal meant 400,000 hectares of native forests that were to have been protected were instead reclassified for potential future logging. 

"I genuinely believe that people of Australia want to see these beautiful places, these sacred places, preserved, [but] the politics of the day is so foolishly going ahead and seeking to destroy them when there isn't even an economic base to it, when there is no market for the woodchips that would result from the destruction of these forests," Mr Flanagan said. 

"I think it's unnecessary and I think it's just politics being used to divide people that could otherwise be brought together on all that is best and most extraordinary in our country."

Such joy. The first time an Australian wins the prestigious prize in a very long time, he wins it with a novel about the Burma Railway in World War II. I can hear the whippings and beatings from where I sit. Well, I guess I won't be reading that book, lest I ruin a weekend.

Anyway, it's a still good thing that he's taking a hack at the Federal Government. He bloody well should take his hacks because you don't often get given platforms from whence you can launch meaningful attacks on bad government policy- and by that I mean any policy from a very bad government. 

It's hard to get any kind of meaningful platform. Just look at this miserable blog. So when you get one, just flail away, I say. Good on you Richard Flanagan, tell them what for!

Music Life

Joaquin Phoenix Quits Acting For Music

For some reason known only to the man himself, Joaquin Phoenix has announced he's quitting acting to take up Music.

Phoenix is apparently giving up acting to pursue music, a passion of his since he learned to play guitar to play the role of Johnny Cash in 2005's "Walk the Line." According to Billboard, Phoenix is working on an album with Tim Burgess, frontman for the UK group The Charlatans. Burgess said, "Once he learnt guitar he found that he had quite a lot of demons inside himself that he wanted to expel through music.

Phoenix appeared at the charity event on Monday with his brother-in-law, Casey Affleck. Affleck is married to Phoenix's younger sister, Summer. In explaining his retirement decision, Phoenix said, "It's Casey's time now."

Affleck confirmed for E! Online that Phoenix is telling the truth when he says he's leaving the acting profession, saying, "I guess he's getting into music. He's putting out an album." But both Affleck and Phoenix hurried away from the cameras without elaborating.

It's all a little nutty if you ask me, but what do I know?
Drummer Bill Bruford once said that if there is a choice between playing music for a career and something else, then there is no choice at all, you become a musician. That's probably what happened to Joaquin Phoenix, based on a bunch of guitar lessons so that he could play Johnny Cash.

What I'm In To Right Now
Tom Waits. Just send me more Tom Waits stuff.
I can't do that stuff, but I'd like to incorporate some of that vibe into my future work.

What I'm Looking For
There's a bit of cognitive dissonance in my own wanting-more-instruments thing. For a start, I don't know if the instruments I want necessarily dovetail with the music I'm playing.
For instance, I would like a fretless bass. Why? Because I'd like to seriously noodle around on a fretless bass and do some mellow stuff... I think.

The reality is that I'm more likely to get more use out of a grunty bass with round-wound strings than a fretless with tape-wound strings. I'm not really a jazzer, so why fake it?

Another instrument I'm more than passingly interested in is the Micro Korg with a vocoder. Why? Because I think I'd like to play around with some vocoder stuff. Of course, when I stop to think about it, I could do that stuff within Logic because it has a vocoder tucked away somewhere in its many little nooks. The thing is, I'd just like to play with a vocoder. Not necessarily turn myself into a late 1970s techno outfit.

I mean realistically, I'd probably end up doing a version of "Machine Messiah"'s vocoder section and never use it again. So why get it? - But I still would like one.

Then there are the constant sirens inviting me to the sea of indulgence... guitars. Wont go there today, but the call is eternal. Would like a Double Humbucker Fender Jaguar, I keep thinking... but I just can't justify it to myself.

Ditto with the digital piano. Would like one, but then where do I put it? And I might end up just doing a bunch of covers of things like 'Hey Jude' and 'Let it Be' with it', and what would be the point of that. But a digital Piano is something I'd like to have. You can never have enough good instruments with which to make noise.

Another thing I'd like to get is a really good electronic drum set. Why? because I'd like to play drums. Yes. At this point in my life, I want to learn to play drums. I've even bought a book on how to do basic stuff like paradiddles. Yet, it seems like a distant goal. Do I really want to be taking up drums at this point in my life? Yes I do. Can I afford it? Not yet.

This is why I...

Bought Another iPod
When I bought my 60GB iPod in Jan 2006, I thought it would last me a long time. I guess 2 months short of 3 years is a lifetime in technology terms. I began to reach capacity a little while ago and decided I needed to get the 160GB iPod classic. What is this need for capacity? I don't know. My own music tallies up to 17GBs of information because I carry it around as .AIF files, which is sort of unwieldy-huge enough that all my stuff won't fit on a 16GB iPod Touch. Bummer.

Recently Walk-Off HBP handed me another 19GBs of music, which just doesn't sit on my iPod with the rest of the stuff I want to have at hand, so I've been listening to that 19GB in piecemeal. It's not much fun. So the need for capacity has grown exponentially in the 3 years, as Moore's Law implies. besides which, Brew's Law says nothing succeeds like excess and 160GB is nice and excessive... until they come out with a 250GB iPod, one would think.

Then of course Apple updated their latest series of iPods and the largest-capcity iPod classic in the new range only goes to 120GB. The Apple shop in Chatswood said they'd sold out the 160GBs.
"No-no-no-no-Nooooooooooh!"

That's me screaming in my own head as I checked out the new 120GB iPods. Yeah, it's got new features and stuff, but being short-changed 40GB is no mean thing. Do the maths! It's a 32GB iPod Touch plus a 8GB iPod Touch's worth of capacity they're short-changing you. Yeah, that's 40GB all right, and it's more than the 30GB that was the second biggest iPod when I bought my iPod Video back in Jan 2006. Nobody's going to sit quiet at that 40GB of capacity not being there.
The guy in the shop shrugged and said, "Yeah well, these are slimmer."
Slimmer? What's he talking about slimmer, like it's some selling point? Who gives a shit about them being slimmer? This isn't exactly super-models or starlets or hookers, it's iPods! They still weigh like bricks!

Thus I thought the 160GB models were all gone, and felt further bummed out.
Then by accident I found out there were still four of them lying around at Dick Smith at Macquarie Centre, so it was time to go and score one for myself. By the time I arrived at the DS Power House, there was just one black one left. They had sold 3 of them that very afternoon. All of which goes to show that other people were on my wavelength and scrambled to score the left-over 160GB iPod classics over the new, slimmer 120GB models.

Of course I found out today that Tony Fadell, the dude in charge of iPod development has left the firm. He probably got shoved out of the door for coming up with the 120GB model after the 160GB model, and then claiming it was a good idea. It's not, dude.

BTW I got my new car, a Mazda2. It's hardly musical, but it's still pretty cool.

Logic Studio

Audio Engineering In Your Own Home

The big box of goodies finally arrived in the post this week. I've spent a day playing with a remix of Pony The Orangutan'. Why this song? I don't know. Maye because it has enough technical challenges to make the learning curve more interesting. So far I note that everything sounds a lot more pristine in Logic than it does in Garageband. There are nuances to things that were totally absent in the playback for Garageband that are suddenly there in Logic. An A/B test shows that I'm not necessarily imagining it.

I used to run a version of Logic on the PC. It took a lot of nursing as it was designed for Win98SE. It meant constant de-frags of discs and forever burning backups on to CDs and so forth. And in the 18months I had it running, I think I managed to record and mix 6 tracks to varying levels of dissatisfaction. They were the first 6 tracks of the 'Escape From Satellite City' set. I also recorded guitar parts for the first Coelacanth project on that platform.
When my PC finally died, I just shrugged and let the whole Logic thing go. It was just too painful. In retrospect, I was asking a Wintel Box to do just too much.

Because I've been working in a rather unorthodox way, it's refreshing to come back to a platform where it's nominally meant to be laid out like a recording studio. This incarnation of Logic is really heavy. Things take a lot longer to mount up and run on Logic than they do with Garageband, and Sound Track Pro. It means there are a lot more details in what you can do, and the fact that the mixing page for a project is laid out like a mixing console is just a joy. Having bus lines to effects! Fancy that!

The day I spent trying to get my head around this current incarnation of Logic was pretty tedious. I guess I hate spending time figuring out new bits of gear when I could be just doing more stuff, but I imagine this is part of modern life. We all have to learn newer and more versions of the same software just to keep current. It all takes time.

Sound Track Pro 2

I've been a big fan of the Sound Track series of applications since they first one came bundled with Final Cut Pro 4.5. What makes Sound Track so appealing is that as a mixing tool, it is just sophisticated enough to give you the kind of options you need regularly, while being a start-and-go kind of application like Garageband. What it has is a simplicity in 'operability' that dwarfs many serious DAWs, but it still does all the little things right.

It's been my work process to record sound and arrange parts in Garageband, then export out each part and then mix in Sound Track Pro. Part of the reason I moved to Logic is because I got sick of this work-flow. Why can't one application let me do it all? As such, I don't know if I'll be doing so much mixing with it as I have done in the past.

This new version comes bundled with the whole Logic Studio package. It's pretty remarkable that Sound Track has grown up into this surround-sound-capable mixing machine. I'm not sure the rendering on Sound Track Pro 2 is better than the previous as of yet; I am sure that they've beefed up this application significantly, what with all the extra things I've had to install for this upgrade.

I can remember the very first DAWs. They were minimalist in design and allowed you to do fairly crude kinds of operation on the audio. The Fairlight MFX2 was a $300k box that gave you 24 channels in 16bit 44.12kHz sampling. It was amazing technology. Well, I've been able to do that and more on my Dual G5 Mac for about 4 years. Heck, now with STP2, I'm able to mix a Surround Sound movie in my own house if I just add a few bits and bobs. It's nuts.