Ben’s posthaven

1. Load up boingboing, one of the more interesting blogs on the internet, to see what they've scared up recently.
2. Notice an article on the holographic projection of sea-life on a recent Diesel fashion show. Sounds interesting...
3. Follow the link over to youtube, to get a look at the effects
4. You're a sucker for distorted vocals and dirty beats (see Vitalic, Battles), so you immediately notice the first song on play in the video, and suddenly you must know the answer to the question: who are these people?
5. Search for some of the lyrics. Nope not good enough. Try again. And again.
6. Bingo
7. You ask yourself, who the heck is this "Walter Meego" guy?
8. Look up "his" wikipedia page.
9. Oh it's actually a them (who thought up that band name?). And they're from Chicago. Independent until recently, only E.P.s so far. The person who wrote the "style" section is laughably amateur, not at all in wikipedia style. This means the page doesn't get much traffic. Not surprising considering the other facts.
10. Hop over to their myspace page, looking for more music to sample. They say they are working on a full-length album, good for them. You're much more impressed with "Romantic," the song from the video, than their other stuff, but that's life. Hopefully the eventual album is more in that style. Not touring much at the moment, unfortunately. You've discovered them just a bit too late to reasonably tip-off your NY-habiting friend about their show there that very night.
11. Check if youtube has any videos of theirs, to get more a feel for their style
12. First up, a video which appears to have been made in a dorm room, and includes a synchronized dance scene ala the macarena. The whole thing is kind of flippant and uninteresting. Okay okay they're independent, you get it. You just have such high expectations after seeing such great stuff from other bands.
13. Second up, for the song which tipped you off, is a video involving ninjas playing in a theme park, playground, rollerskating, and getting rejected by the girls they make advances on. This is, put simply, an abomination. It runs totally counter to the song, trivializing the depth and sorrow of it in again, a flippant way. A commenter captures this in more than one language:

    I don't like this video. I love the song. I'm just so frustrated I'm gonna say this in swedish because I'm way too frustrated to think right now. Videon gör inte låten någon som helst rättvisa! What were you thinking? You've made light of the song and yourself with this video! C'mon u guys got some serious potential! Silly video and so's the other one.

14. Disappointing, yes, but not a deal-breaker, after all, it's just the music you're there for. Still, someone needs to give these guys a talking to. Competition in the music industry is fierce, and videos are one of the best ways to spread the word. If your talent doesn't translate into the visual realm, find someone whose does.
15. Head over to Amazon to pick up an E.P. Think twice and go to the band's website. They probably keep more of the money that way.
16. Hmm... Romantic was the song you liked, but the Romantic EP is stuck together with "Wanna be a star" which is a bit more straightforward in just about every way... beats, lyrics. Definitely a B-side. But the sample remix isn't terrible. Ah well. If you were playing the iTunes game you may wait and purchase by the track, but you're not, so platters it is.
17. Reflect on how awesome it is that you just used a fashion show soundtrack together with a host of internet tools as a music recommendation system to find a promising, yet (deeply?) flawed, relatively unknown band.
18. Write a blog post about it.

One night in Cali, Stephanie and I were out to see a show, when we noticed something strange. I won't go into details but we saw something that didn't seem right, and my first instinct was to call the non-emergency police services number. It took a lot of trying, but I pretty quickly got on the phone with a dispatcher and rattled off the details of what we'd seen. While I was still on the line, still answering questions about specifics, two cop cars zipped around the corner, speeding off in the direction we'd just come from. In a matter of minutes I got a call back from the dispatcher thanking us for calling it in. I'm guessing there was in fact a crime in progress, and thanks to the accessible communication afforded by cell phones, we were able to get the word to the right people in a very short time. It's my hope that we saved someone from frustration and violation felt by someone who suffers a crime without finding the perpetrator.

On an even more serious note, It's this kind of thing which encourages me not to worry about the prospect of governmental missuse of technology. As lines of communication are shortened, the people's power to associate, work together and aggregate information increases at a level comparable to the convenience afforded the government, perhaps in some cases more so, as the people are not so easily tied down by governmental bureacracy. This convenience helps keep the balance of power somewhat level, and guards against minor tyrannies.

By far the best part of my time in Cali was the people I met there.

First there was Robert, who is an Apple intern this summer, and all of his intern friend, including his 3 room-mates.Those 3 guys, Robert's room-mates are some of the best guys I've met, good people all around. We hung around the city and they were very cool about letting me stay with them. I don't know what more to say other than, there's were guys I could hang out with. It's hard to say what would change were the circumstances any different, but I can say I wish them well.

On the other hand, there's Stephanie, who let me stay in her place within ten minutes of meeting her, then kept asking me if I thought that was weird. I honestly didn't, perhaps only because I have a slightly skewed, open-minded (ala hippy) view of the whole thing. She too was great, her boyfriend and best friend and room-mates were also nice.

Gosh I guess nothing much of substance, just missing California already. Maybe I could get back there...

So I've been in San Fran for 3 days now... and I'm having a great time.

WWDC has been excellent, the big news (Apple & Intel) was interesting, but makes sense, in my view. If you're questioning my logic, consider these facts: the iMac G5 is underclocked in the guise of power management, the PowerMac G5 is water cooled and has come up 35% in speed in 24 months, and the PowerBook G5 is non-existant and may never be seen. Clearly there is a power issue, and Intel, while I don't like them a bit (Pentium 4 designed for marketing, anyone?), is a reasonable supplier for reasonably powerful low power chips. I've no doubt that, with the power problem not so serious, Apple's designers will be free to come up with something even better than what we're seeing now (which is Apple's best yet, IMO).

Anyway, back to the matter at hand... I've been in California a few days, and the Public transpo has been hell! Learning curve I guess, but I've missed like 3 trains! Once, I barely missed a train. Rather than wait an hour, I caught a cab to a stop farther down. 20 minutes later, I was at a farther stop. A full hour after then, the train "moseys" into the station. What the hell! Anyway, so many exclamation points can't be good for me.

On the other hand. Something good did come out of the Caltrain. I met a girl named Stefanie. She's a teacher from Arizona who, of course has the summer off and was vacationing in San Francisco. After she was nearly hit by a train, I was complaining to her about how long it took to get from San Jose to San Fran (90 minutes!) when she offered me a place to stay in San Fran. I'm not one to turn down such an offer, and she had an air to her that I liked, so I accepted. Very interesting girl, lives on Haight street. I'm only sorry I only will have a week to know her.

I'm not big on introductions, so I won't bother saying anything about myself. Best to watch and learn anyway, I would think. In that spirit, a bit about what I'll be up to for the next week.

I'm leaving tomorrow for San Francisco, California, where I'll be attending Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference 2005. For six of seven days there, I'll be coding, learning and meeting new engineers, not just any engineers, mind you, but the kind who understand and appreciate the beauty that is Apple. While there, I'll be staying with a good friend of mine, Robert, who happens to be interning for Apple this summer. A job I would have liked to have myself mind you, but I do well enough anyway. There's time for that story later.

I rarely ever do anything big like this with fewer than three reasons for actually doing it, and I can count about five as of now, there's 2 listed above, another is that I've recieved a student scholarship to the conference so that it will be free, another is that I will be able to borrow Robert's PowerBook while there (the very machine which got me interested in the company). I also have heard plenty of great things about San Francisco, which, as far as I know, is Austin (TX), and then some. That is saying plenty. Oh but there's more. With the big Apple conferences such as this one, there is usually a keynote speech delivered by none other than Mr. Steve Jobs himself. At these things, there are wonderful new things showed off and new products released. The iPod itself was released at one of these things, years ago, not to mention the music store. This will be my first opportunity, ever to witness one of these events live and in person. This comes after years of following these event live via internet, and once via live satellite feed on the U.T. campus.

But wait, there's still more. In San Francisco, there happens to be a place called the "Exploratorium," which I've been advised to visit. I was told to do so by a U.T. professor, Dr. John Pearce, who works in medical instrumentation I understand. I was speaking with him about an idea I had, a project I continue to work on, hoping to gets some input, what ever suggestions might come my way. One of his was to visit this place, as he says there's an excellent explanation of the function of the human vocal folds and all of that stuff, which, you'll learn, is important to my project. He even told me to track down an old issue of "Nova" on the Exploratorium, if I could. Well, now I don't need to.

So there you go, but aside from all that, of course, I expect to have a good time, so I'll be hitting up whatever bars and clubs I find that suit me.

All in one week! How am I ever going to sleep? Well that's another story...