April 2004 Archives

Behold, the world's first 400GB hard disk (from Hitachi).
NetNewsWire looks like a nifty feed reader designed for OSX.
Google can now search flash files. Link from Kottke via Waxy.org.
iTunes sells 70 million songs in first year.

I supposed now is as good as any other time to announce that I am on the lookout for new employment opportunities.

Yours truly has to decide whether to go back to web design (seeing how it may not be economically feasible to start a web standards consultancy here in Singapore), embark on full-scale music production, or focus on writing.

Any position requiring a quirky sense of humour and plenty of puns would be good. Other jobs suggested by various friends and colleagues over the past 3 years include script writer / dramatist / actor / radio dj or comedienne.

Whatever my choice is, I want to be happy with what I'm doing, and proud of my contributions. I've had that feeling before and I know I can do it again.

I signed up for Movable Type 3.0 beta testing. Haven't heard from the Trotts since, but I hope to get involved in subsequent stages.

I'll post a list of MT3.0 beta weblogs here. Feel free to contribute more links that you've come across.

Jay Allen's MT3.0 beta blog
Adam Gessaman's MT3.0 beta blog

Here's a list of alpha sites from Kristine's site.

Israeli 'traitor' released from jail. Based on the doctrine of pre-emption, which the Bush administration used to justify the invasion of Iraq, should the US now do likewise to Israel for the suspected possession of weapons of mass destruction?

Or will the doctrine of pre-emption be non-retroactive, since the secrets were leaked in 1986? :)

Today, I learnt that my piano teacher was going to hold a jazz clinic for his students. He was going to team his students up with professional musicians so we could experience playing in a band.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was one of his strongest students and that he had selected me and two other pianists to participate in this clinic (especially considering how I only practice once a week). Time to put in more hours!

We haven't decided what piece I will be playing, but he did suggest playing one of my compositions, provided I could provide scores for the other musicians. That's going to be tricky, seeing how I haven't converted any of my arrangements to MIDI format. I haven't decided on what software to get, can't be bothered to soup up my old G4 Mac and link it to my keyboard, don't have space in the new apartment to set it up anyway, and won't bother to try until we move back into the house. Eep.

Coming to think of it, this is the second time I've been asked to provide scores. The first time it was someone from The Quests (old Singaporean band, very popular a few decades ago). I guess I should do something about it.

It looks like I will have to manually pen the scores. Argh. Haven't done something like that since I took my last Theory exam.

If you have quality and ability it doesn't matter - unless you have desire and commitment and go out and express yourself, you won't get anywhere.

- Arsenal striker Thierry Henry, after scoring 4 goals against Leeds.

I must declare that I finally filed my Income Tax (online, of course). And I definitely hit the last submit button. To be safe, I printed out my pre-submit page as well as the final page. I have filed my documents and kept them in a cool, dry place.

Soon after this momentous occasion, I came across an interesting and pointed Op-ed on the New York Times. If you could choose where your taxpayer's money went to, what would it be?

An article on Kinja, Nick Denton's new weblog aggregating service, has taken up page 38 of The Straits Times today (well, actually it was taken from the New York Times; subscription required).

I signed up for the service after reading Kottke's post. You can find the link under my Menu. Some of my favourite blogs are listed there.

We're experiencing a couple of problems with iPod and iTunes synchronisation here. Advice and provision of any links to tutorials, troubleshooting and FAQ pages would be greatly appreciated.

It seems that my sister's new 15GB iPod is unable to sync with my PC. My PC only recognises VanPod, my own 40GB iPod. We've already registered her new iPod on the Apple website. By default, 15GB iPods don't come with the dock, so I thought she could use mine, and since some of our CDs are shared, why couldn't she load our files onto her iPod from my PC and dock?

So we decided to install iTunes on her own PC. However as she's on Windows 98, she couldn't perform the installation. Bah! [Update: Problem solved. My sister's iPod was suddenly able to connect to my PC, after my last re-insertion (!).]

The other thing that irritates me is the fact that the Apple Singapore iPod section has had a broken CSS link for eons and hasn't fixed it, even though I wrote in to inform them of it last week. I even told them which link it was. Heck, I'd do it myself if they'd let me, because the site isn't very pretty at the moment. [Update: They haven't done anything about it, probably because it looks fine in IE. But it doesn't look OK on my Firebird.]

[Update 14/4/04: Zeldman's walk with the Panther, just in case any Mac users are planning to upgrade. ]

1413.5 songs later, my hard drive ran out of space while iTunes was ripping Groove Armada's Back To Mine compilation. I had zero (0) kb left in my drive. I couldn't even create a new folder!

Obviously, something had to go.

So I archived my old photos and documents, packed them onto CD-ROMs, and bid them goodbye. *wave*

iPodlounge.com has an ongoing display of iPods around the world. Here are a few reflection shots which I like: Mexico, France, Spain and Netherlands.

My sister's in town. I gave her the 15GB iPod. We have a new convert.

Today a year ago, I was baptised. This was my testimony.

Time flies when you're having fun :-)

I couldn't resist it. I bought the Belkin TuneCast™ Mobile FM Transmitter for the VanPod. Still I couldn't believe that the music transmitted by this device would be better than radio quality.

I was wrong. Happily so. I can't say it's as good as listening to a CD, but it's closer to that than the music we get from radio. The trick is positioning the transmitter beside the stereo for the best reception - a few inches made a world of difference.

So for just S$59 (that's US$35) I got myself a 'wireless' media server!

I'm wondering: If the transmission is strong enough, will I be able to play the same tracks from one iPod, from stereos in different rooms?

(Next on the shopping list: some funky noise-cancelling headphones!)

Here's something I just discovered about the default iPod earphones. Try bringing them gently together, metal sides facing each other. They repel! :-D

Four gigs. VanPod has just crossed the 1,000 song barrier with just over 4 gigabytes (3 continuous days) of music, and heaps more CDs to go. [Which goes to say that, cute as it may be, the baby iPod isn't enough for me.]

The album I was ripping was Mavi Muzik, a compilation of chillout music, mostly by Turkish and other middle-Eastern artistes. Mavi is to the Turkish, what Levi's is to Americans.

Multiple fours. Today, I visited two friends at their home. 'Nothing much to it, unless you see it in numbers: 04/04/04 at #04-40!

A new study (pdf) by Harvard and North Carolina universities indicates that file-sharing has a near negligible effect on music CD sales.

The main points were:

1. 'High selling albums actually benefit from file sharing.' File sharing forces CD prices to drop, therefore leading to more CD sales. People on P2P networks who browse other people's files and like the music, may purchase the CDs.
2. A survey indicated that file sampling in fact led users to purchase an additional 8 albums. There were only 159 people surveyed (footnote on p3).
3. 'While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing'. (p3-4. Wha-? So they're saying these users wouldn't buy the albums at all, yet they'd download the files anyway, just because they can?)
4. The study only covered US users, from 8 September 2002 to 31 December 2002. It admits that CD sales typically increase significantly during Christmas season (so would it be misleading to imply that sales were barely affected during this period?)
5. The data collected was based on downloads from OpenNap, a centralised P2P network (p8. Why didn't they use something more popular like Kazaa?)
6. The report concludes with a positive outlook on file sharing, by 'increasing aggregate welfare'.

This doesn't make sense to me, or to other people. I didn't think they had a realistic representation of users. Even during my time as an undergrad living on campus (circa late 90's) people were downloading music from the old, free Napster. Very few purchased CDs - we were, after all, poor students in the midst of the Asian financial crisis. [Note: Being anal about music copyright, I've never used a file sharing program in my life.]

Maybe if an album only had one good song, people would download the MP3 instead of buying the CD. Maybe some other people would buy the CD after sampling a few MP3s from the album, if they liked what they hear. My mind's all fuzzy now after looking at the statistics and equations. What do you think about file sharing?

I just watched The Passion. I felt detached from most of the movie, probably because people had been prepping me to expect much blood and violence. Also, the knowledge that there was a Resurrection at the end, filled me with hope, not desolation. I did not cry or run out of the theatre, nor get a heart attack or stroke. I also did not think it was particularly anti-Semitic as there were many other good and kind Jews who did not want Jesus to die.

I was unshaken enough to take some notes (gasp). Here are my thoughts, in chronological order. [spoilers ahoy]