December 2013

wordpress' accelerated update schedule: charlie parker would hurl

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Following Apple (or was it Google), then Firefox, WordPress.org is now on an accelerated update schedule. This locks them into having to think of ways to "improve" the product once a month or so.
Then the hapless user must submit to the ordeal of a full database backup, finger-crossing during the one-click install, then dealing with follow-up releases to fix the updates and broken plugins.
Worst of all, they are now naming releases for famous jazz musicians. Release 3.7 was "Basie"; Release 3.8 (stylistic changes to make Word Press more tablet-friendly) is "Parker."
I posted this comment on the Dreamhost blog, but it's also aimed at Word Press empresario Matt Mullenweg:

So if you don't have a smart phone or tablet and don't care about cosmetic design tweaks, you can skip this release, right?
Was scanning this post and Mullenweg's for any information about security issues, which are the user's main concern, release-wise. Didn't see anything.
Also, calling the release "Charlie Parker" is pretentious. The designers are comparing themselves to genius jazzmen (minus the heroin addiction, money problems, etc.).
You said it all with the phrase "update fatigue."

My artwork in New Dead Families

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Some artwork of mine appears in the current issue of New Dead Families, an online magazine of contemporary fiction, mostly. Editor Zack Wentz describes the publication:

In some alternate universe there is my ideal periodical: a cross between H.L. Gold’s Galaxy, and Gordon Lish’s the Quarterly, and/or Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds and Bradford Morrow’s Conjunctions. In the '70s there were a number of original paperback anthologies that came close: Damon Knight’s Orbit series, Judith Merril’s numerous SF bests, and Harry Harrison’s Nova.

But where are those sorts of literary venues now? Where could that kind of work go now?

Perhaps New Dead Families is that periodical, in that place, and by some quantum trick I have pushed/pulled that alternate universe into my own. This.

Perhaps.

We can certainly try, can’t we?

I'm still reading the stories but am enjoying them so far. Am pleased to be featured in this venue.

Real Native Plants Imported from Asia

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highlinelookingeast2011

Before the High Line became a tourist destination it was a classic post-industrial decay scenario: an elevated botanical garden of weeds and wild grasses that you could only view from the upper floors of certain West Side buildings. (Above is one of the last of such glimpses, from two years ago.) It had charm as a bit of random, windblown nature existing in the city and when it came time for it to be yuppified as a city park, the architects and promoters made a big to-do about using only "native plants and grasses" to landscape after they tore out all the random stuff.*
Now, maybe not so much. Buried in a recent Salon scare story about supposed cold-resistant cockroaches invading New York (always, something is invading) lies the nugget boldfaced below:

New York’s High Line, an abandoned elevated railway transformed into the city’s hottest new park, is responsible for attracting swarms of tourists to Manhattan’s West Side, revitalizing/gentrifying the area and, according to researchers at Rutgers University, introducing a new species of cockroach never before seen in the U.S.

Periplaneta japonica, common in Asia, was first spotted by an exterminator in 2012. The researchers believe it arrived as a stowaway in one of the imported plants adorning the park.

Only in America, as we used to say: Real Native Plants Imported from Asia. Also, free (one dollar surcharge may apply in some states).

*The High Line is still pushing the locavore angle but includes the fudge words "focuses" and "most" in these claims:

The High Line's unique landscape was created in partnership with Netherlands-based planting designer Piet Oudolf. For inspiration, Oudolf looked to the existing landscape that grew on the High Line after the trains stopped running. The plant selection focuses on native, drought-tolerant, and low-maintenance species, cutting down on the resources that go into the landscape.

and

Local Sourcing: Most of the High Line’s plants are native species, and many were produced by local growers. Locally-grown plants are better adapted to grow successfully in our climate, reducing the amount of plant failure and replacement costs.

Except when the occasional import from halfway around the globe introduces invasive insect species.

"Texas Sawtooth Massacre"

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"Texas Sawtooth Massacre" [mp3 removed -- tune is now on Bandcamp]

Sounds from the computer_controlled_rack (the name I gave my modular on the Modular Grid gear fetish website), MIDI-triggered, sampled, and arranged in the Octatrack. The main excitement here is a gritty wavetable sample originating in the WMD Gamma Wave Source module, sampled by the Doepfer A-112 in wavetable mode (with CV-sweeping of the table at my barbaric skill level), played as a MIDI controlled synth (with hi, lo and notch filters), sampled in the Octatrack, "sliced" and rearranged to make 10 or so patterns. There is also a bass line and the reappearance of the most famous beat in the history of electronic music. This is kind of rough going at the outset but gets better as it progresses IMHO.