Listened to John Cage's famous piece, 4' 33", today on Spotify.
When I first heard about this piece, I thought it had a certain mathematical interest, for if you think of compositions as being ordered sets of notes, then this would be an empty set. The visual equivalent might be a TV program that showed a blank screen for its whole duration. That was when I assumed that 4' 33" would be four minutes 33 seconds of total silence. Far from it.
In fact, the subtlety of 4' 33" is that it has to be performed by a real life performer. Frank Zappa once covered it, for instance. Thus if you listen carefully, you can hear the creaks of the performer's chair, and maybe the odd clearing of the performer's throat. Presumably on live recordings there is audience noise to add to the interest.
I said I listened to it, but actually I gave up at 0' 28", faced with the prospect of wasting another 4' 05" of my life. I've just seen the piece referred to as 4' 33" - 3 parts: 30" / 2' 23" / 1' 40", so perhaps I should have soldiered on into part 2. However, I think I got the rough gist.
E F Schumacher's book "A Guide for the Perplexed" introduced me to the idea of "adequatio", meaning that sometimes you're simply not adequate to the task of appreciating something. It's a good concept to take to heart, and I can think of many examples of art that I initially couldn't see the point of, but now really enjoy; Jazz and Opera spring to mind. They didn't change: instead I became adequate to the job of listening to them.
In the case of 4' 33" though, I'm not sure if I will ever find myself adequate. Like the artists who works consist of piles of rubbish or unmade beds, I kind of feel that the only talent Cage needed to produce 4' 33" was the ability to keep a straight face.
Oddly, Spotify claimed the running time was 4' 39".
Thursday, 8 September 2011
Thursday, 28 July 2011
Getting a Nexus S to connect to a PC running Windows XP
In an effort to prevent anyone else going through the misery and frustration I've just experienced, I will now document the steps I had to go through to get my Nexus S to talk to my PC.
Obviously I'm not talking about seeing the phone's file system as an external drive; I mean having the phone show up in the Device Manager so that you can try your hand at developing on it. Sparing you all the false starts and dead ends that I went through, and assuming you've already installed the Android SDK and have a USB cable that fits into the phone, proceed as follows:
Now use the Device Manager to Update Driver for the phone, telling the wizard to search in the C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\extras\google\usb_driver folder.
In the Device Manager, the Nexus S should now move from 'Unknown devices' to 'Android Phone'.
Of course, for you any one of these steps might go wrong. However, even then I hope this blogpost might give you the clues you need to get to your goal.
Obviously I'm not talking about seeing the phone's file system as an external drive; I mean having the phone show up in the Device Manager so that you can try your hand at developing on it. Sparing you all the false starts and dead ends that I went through, and assuming you've already installed the Android SDK and have a USB cable that fits into the phone, proceed as follows:
- Start up the Android SDK Manager.
- See if 'Google USB Driver Package' is listed under Installed Packages.
- If it isn't, it should be under Available Packages. Select it and click the Install Selected button
- Enable debugging on the phone in Settings/Applications/Development.
- Disconnect the phone's USB cable, then reconnect it.
- The PC should report having found a new device, and bring up a wizard to ask you whether you want to install a driver. Cancel out of this wizard.
- Go into Device Manager (right click My Computer and select Manage), and find the phone under 'Unknown devices'. Right click on it and select Properties/Details. Note the two four-digit numbers after VID_ and PID_.
- Open the file C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\extras\google\usb_driver\android_winusb.inf for editing.
- Add in an entry for the Nexus S, using the VID and PID revealed from the device manager. It should look like this:
; Google Nexus S
%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_XXXX&PID_YYYY
%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_XXXX&PID_YYYY&MI_01
The values of XXXX and YYYY you should have noted down above in step 7.Now use the Device Manager to Update Driver for the phone, telling the wizard to search in the C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\extras\google\usb_driver folder.
In the Device Manager, the Nexus S should now move from 'Unknown devices' to 'Android Phone'.
Of course, for you any one of these steps might go wrong. However, even then I hope this blogpost might give you the clues you need to get to your goal.
Saturday, 18 June 2011
A Sign of the Times
No posts for weeks, and then three come along! This one's been on my mind for a while though.
We moved our wireless router recently. No longer sat on my desk, it's now attached to the wall at the bottom of the stairs. I'm moving room soon, which was the principle reason for moving it, but in any case it was becoming inconvenient to keep it there. Without noticing it happen, we now have no less than nine devices that connect to the internet by wi-fi: three computers, two mobile phones, two game consoles, a TV and even a printer.
When the router first arrived in our house, the Wi-Fi was almost an optional extra. The main PC plugged straight into it, and only my wife's laptop needed wireless. Slowly the creep began, driven more by manufacturers pushing wireless into their devices than by us seeking it out. Every time we upgrade a machine now, it seems that it comes with internet access.
All this is probably just the beginning, if the Internet of Things is to be believed. For now I'm just amused that our household routine has acquired a slight alteration after all these years: the last thing to do before bedtime is no longer checking the front door, it's making sure the router's turned off.
We moved our wireless router recently. No longer sat on my desk, it's now attached to the wall at the bottom of the stairs. I'm moving room soon, which was the principle reason for moving it, but in any case it was becoming inconvenient to keep it there. Without noticing it happen, we now have no less than nine devices that connect to the internet by wi-fi: three computers, two mobile phones, two game consoles, a TV and even a printer.
When the router first arrived in our house, the Wi-Fi was almost an optional extra. The main PC plugged straight into it, and only my wife's laptop needed wireless. Slowly the creep began, driven more by manufacturers pushing wireless into their devices than by us seeking it out. Every time we upgrade a machine now, it seems that it comes with internet access.
All this is probably just the beginning, if the Internet of Things is to be believed. For now I'm just amused that our household routine has acquired a slight alteration after all these years: the last thing to do before bedtime is no longer checking the front door, it's making sure the router's turned off.
Searching by Image
Google Images now lets you search by image instead of keywords. You can give it an image and it returns images that look similar, at least to its algorithms. I immediately put it to the test by giving it my mugshot from Stack Overflow. Hmm. Mostly women, with a few babies thrown in. It seems to be having more luck noticing that I'm wearing a black shirt than that I'm male.
Maybe it's because the photo I gave it has the top of my head cropped off? I try the mugshot from this blog. This time it successfully finds web articles containing that same photo, and also comes up with a few faces that do look vaguely like me. Not sure what Angelina Jolie's doing in there though.
Okay, clearly these are early days for this technology, but I applaud what they're trying to do. I look forward to the day when it's so reliable that it can spot family resemblances. That would make a useful complement to the Relative Finder in 23andMe. Another search engine I would like to see is one that let's you hum a few notes of a song and then tells you what it is. Targeted ads could include places to buy the song, or Singing Lessons if it thinks you're off tune.
Maybe it's because the photo I gave it has the top of my head cropped off? I try the mugshot from this blog. This time it successfully finds web articles containing that same photo, and also comes up with a few faces that do look vaguely like me. Not sure what Angelina Jolie's doing in there though.
Okay, clearly these are early days for this technology, but I applaud what they're trying to do. I look forward to the day when it's so reliable that it can spot family resemblances. That would make a useful complement to the Relative Finder in 23andMe. Another search engine I would like to see is one that let's you hum a few notes of a song and then tells you what it is. Targeted ads could include places to buy the song, or Singing Lessons if it thinks you're off tune.
Jazz FM Reaches Yorkshire
Spinning the stations dial on our DAB radio last night, I was delighted to find, lurking among the pop channels and the dubious attractions of the numerous Christian stations (who listens to all these?), a newcomer to the Yorkshire area: Jazz FM. Seems they went national in March, but this was the first I've heard of it.
I bought the radio back in early 2008 in order to listen to "theJazz", which dutifully went t*tsup a couple of months later. Since then I've mostly listened to Planet Rock, where music from my youth is played by DJs even older than me. And though I really enjoy Rock, I honestly wouldn't miss Heavy Metal, so Jazz FM will make a nice alternative refuge for me when I'm not in the mood for pounding, endless guitar solos.
It may also save me a bit of money, as I'd been wondering for a while if I could justify buying an Internet Radio in order to get access to Jazz again. The main thing that had held me back was not the price, but the enormous choice I would have been presented with. A simple decision like Planet Rock or Jazz FM I can cope with, but when the choice is pretty well every radio station on the planet, my listening pleasure might be ruined by the continual worry that there was something better on the next channel.
I bought the radio back in early 2008 in order to listen to "theJazz", which dutifully went t*tsup a couple of months later. Since then I've mostly listened to Planet Rock, where music from my youth is played by DJs even older than me. And though I really enjoy Rock, I honestly wouldn't miss Heavy Metal, so Jazz FM will make a nice alternative refuge for me when I'm not in the mood for pounding, endless guitar solos.
It may also save me a bit of money, as I'd been wondering for a while if I could justify buying an Internet Radio in order to get access to Jazz again. The main thing that had held me back was not the price, but the enormous choice I would have been presented with. A simple decision like Planet Rock or Jazz FM I can cope with, but when the choice is pretty well every radio station on the planet, my listening pleasure might be ruined by the continual worry that there was something better on the next channel.
Saturday, 7 May 2011
Speeding up Firefox and Firebug
Last Thursday Firefox stopped working for me. Not on the web, but in a web-based user interface that I help to develop as part of my job. Every time I tried to login, the program would hang.
At first I assumed it was my fault, but by a process of slow elimination I tracked the problem down to the Firebug add-in. This is Firefox's debugger, and pretty well indispensable, so I had to get it working again. I won't bore readers any more with descriptions of all the dead ends I went down, but here for posterity is the fix.
I had to create a new Firefox profile (by default you have called 'default'). From the command line, type:
At first I assumed it was my fault, but by a process of slow elimination I tracked the problem down to the Firebug add-in. This is Firefox's debugger, and pretty well indispensable, so I had to get it working again. I won't bore readers any more with descriptions of all the dead ends I went down, but here for posterity is the fix.
I had to create a new Firefox profile (by default you have called 'default'). From the command line, type:
firefox -profilemanagerThis brings up a simple dialog that lets you create a new profile. Of course, Firefox now looks like you've just installed it for the first time, so you have to restore any settings you want, and reinstall your add-ins. However, it fixed my problem, and Firefox/Firebug now appear blisteringly fast (I believe the program had been silting up for quite a while). It also got rid of the many incomprehensible warning messages that Firebug had been sticking into the console log since I upgraded to Firefox 4.
Saturday, 30 April 2011
On Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey Again
I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey on DVD last night. The disc was in one of those 3 for £20 deals a few years ago, but I'd never got round to playing it as I'd seen it several times before. Which begs the question of why I bought it, but it was reduced, so it seemed like I was saving money. Anyway, it was quite a few years since I'd last seen the film, so I put it on.
2001 is now ten years in the past, but when it was made it was thirty-three years in the future. Humanity was due to land on the moon the following year, and the film's writers, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, saw no reason why we wouldn't continue pushing on into space. So as far as the space technology goes, the film could easily be retitled 2101: A Space Odyssey, as the space station and spaceships in the film are decades ahead of anything we've got in 2011. They also had Artificial General Intelligence in the form of the HAL9000 series computer. This had a supposedly fault-free record, but went on to murder four people (the QA department having rather dropped the ball there, I feel). AGI is still far off in the real world, though some experts think it will come in the first half of this century.
Other aspects of the futuristic technology in the film have lost their power to surprise. The videophone call from the space station, for instance. Granted, they seemed to have more bandwidth than I've seen Skype use, but in principle we could do that now. And the computer controls were very little advanced from what was around in 1968 when the film was made: lots of flashing lights and large, square illuminated buttons. Not a touch screen in sight.
All that apart, the film still conveyed that sense of wonder that blew my mind when I first saw it age 12. And the beauty, grace and remoteness of space, that was still there too.
2001 is now ten years in the past, but when it was made it was thirty-three years in the future. Humanity was due to land on the moon the following year, and the film's writers, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, saw no reason why we wouldn't continue pushing on into space. So as far as the space technology goes, the film could easily be retitled 2101: A Space Odyssey, as the space station and spaceships in the film are decades ahead of anything we've got in 2011. They also had Artificial General Intelligence in the form of the HAL9000 series computer. This had a supposedly fault-free record, but went on to murder four people (the QA department having rather dropped the ball there, I feel). AGI is still far off in the real world, though some experts think it will come in the first half of this century.
Other aspects of the futuristic technology in the film have lost their power to surprise. The videophone call from the space station, for instance. Granted, they seemed to have more bandwidth than I've seen Skype use, but in principle we could do that now. And the computer controls were very little advanced from what was around in 1968 when the film was made: lots of flashing lights and large, square illuminated buttons. Not a touch screen in sight.
All that apart, the film still conveyed that sense of wonder that blew my mind when I first saw it age 12. And the beauty, grace and remoteness of space, that was still there too.
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