linux vs apple

Libre Music Production discusses and promotes Linux audio with interviews, plug-in reviews and tutorials.

Musician Scott Peterson, in a LMP interview, makes a case (pro and con) for using Linux:

And of course, my maker leanings are the same that inspired me to learn Linux and begin moving away from proprietary computer hardware and software. Once you buy into, say, the Apple ecosystem you are trapped. Yes it works, yes it’s stable, yes in many ways it’s great. However, once Apple starts removing ports, removing the ability to install after-market upgrades, or control what applications are installed on your computer/iPhone, there’s nothing you can do about it: you have already bought into a (very expensive) hardware/software system (a Technosystem if you will) and extricating oneself from it can be difficult as it requires the learning of new tools, new software, a new OS, etc.

In a society increasingly bound together by "tech" it's becoming easier for banks, businesses and governments to own you because of this learning curve issue. (See, e.g., Munich's attempt to wean itself from Microsoft). Even without maker leanings (the urge to solder parts and/or assemble your own motherboard) you might simply want to avoid owing your soul to the company store, as the song goes, by switching to a software realm based on principles of openness, collaboration, and intellectual freedom. Sounds corny but Apple, Google, and Microsoft are not the place for "hope and change" any more than Obama was.

windows resistance is futile

The city government of Munich, Germany switched from Windows to Linux in 2004 but appears to be on verge of returning to the Borg. Tech Republic gives some background:

At the time Munich began the move to LiMux in 2004 it was one of the largest organizations to reject Windows, and Microsoft took the city's leaving so seriously that then CEO Steve Ballmer flew to Munich to meet the mayor. More recently, Microsoft last year moved its German company headquarters to Munich.

Microsoft's tactics seem to have paid off, as Munich's politicos are "poised" to vote next week for a move to Windows 10. It's ironic that as Linux has improved over the last ten years, Microsoft has gotten worse, and the most compelling argument for a business or government to use it is still "everyone else does." Meanwhile, ordinary consumers overwhelmingly reside in Apple-or-Google-land, because they are all using "devices."

stop sending these dopy emails about putin

Continuing to receive emails from Clintonite friends about the Russian bugbear; today it was a dense, minutiae-filled CNN editorial about some contradictory statements from Team Trump regarding Michael Flynn's contacts with Russians during the transition. It was written in a sort of "aha!", Fox News style.
The sender of the email added, "So maybe *now* you will admit you were wrong." Muah ha ha.
With all the things we could criticize about Trump, the Manchurian candidate allegation is the weakest of beer, but it appears to be the media's (or at least, CNN's) attempt at a Benghazi or Whitewater, aimed at bringing him down.
Calmer relations between the US and Russia would be a plus -- it's ironic it's the nurturing candidate and her disappointed supporters in the government and media, not the hotheaded Trumpians, who are the ones trying to get us into a nuclear war here. They don't care who fries, as long as they can "gotcha" Trump.

Update: Flynn resigned shortly after the above was posted. He was a creep, good riddance, but the reason -- the media thinks the US should be "tough on Russia" -- is pitiful when you consider all his other negatives. Moon of Alabama, the website of ex-blogger Billmon's former commenters, had a good analysis of this putsch by the so-called deep state and its willing journalist helpers (and let's add, unhappy Clinton voters who spam their friends).

The Democratic party, meanwhile, is mostly rolling over for Trump's picks -- his "Homeland" security choice was approved by the Senate in an 88 to 11 vote.

Joe Milutis Eulogizes Dump.fm

modern_complexities

On Hyperallergic, Joe Milutis discusses the recently-deceased website Dump.fm, in an essay titled In Memory of Dump.fm: An Endlessly Collaborative Image Poem.

Neither an art-world-ish “internet surf club” nor a monetized zeitgeist sump pump, dump seemed to harken back to a pre-1997 internet era, when it was possible to imagine that the users you met online were a small enough cohort to seem communitarian, but not large enough to merely replicate the social structures and hierarchies of the world at large.

Milutis' treatment of the site as a poetic language is appreciated:

Weird fragments, heavy dithering, pieces of images or text floating without context. Inaction gifs as opposed to reaction gifs. The quasi-syntactical combinations of these crappy objects were only possible if participants were more interested in treating the combinations like a language — one for which they would both have to amass the vocabulary and then be willing to speak with it. The rapidity of these combinations allowed for the unexpected, as if Breton’s automatic writing had finally found its imagistic counterpart.

Milutis avoids the political in discussing the Rene Abythe GIF below, except in the sense of dump-vs-tumblr politics and dump's intriguing disconnections with the rest of the world ("real" or online). For the record, it depicts Hillary Clinton's "pointing to the right and the red" logo crudely morphing into the Outback Steakhouse logo. (Electors asked Where's the Beef and gave us Trump.) The geek joke is that that the red arrow, when compressed, becomes a jagged outline resembling that familiar outdoors-y mountain range, helpfully rotated so we can see it.

Image5

"Discontinued Beatbox"

"Discontinued Beatbox" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]

Made with the Elektron Octatrack, Elektron Machinedrum, and recorded and mixed in Ardour (Linux version). Only the Machinedrum has actually been discontinued but I like the title. This a bricolage song in that it consists of scraps from earlier (mostly modular) synth tunes, and homemade kits cobbled from various instruments. One loop is recent -- the Helm softsynth, recorded in Ableton and transferred to the Octatrack via flash drive. Also in the mix are some SuperKicks by Inspektor Gadjet, downloaded from the Internet.
One problem with the Octatrack is the eight tracks get used up pretty quickly and its a pain to mix them down or use alternate samples via "parameter locks." Having the discontinued Machinedrum was a way to add extra tracks, with the two boxes running in sync via MIDI.

Update: Re: "eight tracks get used up pretty quickly" on the Octatrack. Wrong. I wasn't understanding how "parts" work. An Octatrack guide by Merlin [pdf] explains it much better than the manual.