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Gary Settles: Schlierin Photography

Jupiter’s Ring system

A mosaic of Jupiter’s ring system, acquired by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft when the Sun was behind the planet, and the spacecraft was in Jupiter’s shadow peering back toward the Sun. (NASA/JPL/Cornell University)

LPs for days man

I have a wall of LPs in my office. It’s not that I am one of those people who insist LPs are better and warmer, I just don’t see the point in replacing them with a CD unless it has a skip or is defective somehow.

I say this, but truth be told, my LP player has been disconnected for the past nine months. Well, with my recent house rearranging, I have the LP player, along with a cassette player/recorder, a VHS player, and a DAT player/recorder all hooked into my computer sound system so that I can digitize an LP, a videotape, or a cassette if I wish to. I’m finding that before I spend the time digitizing an LP, I check to see whether it has been digitized already. If I listen to the LP and decide I may listen to it a lot more I will likely buy the CD or the files.

I have many audio cassettes of my music, improvisations, and radio interviews. I am realizing that I had better get them ripped before they evaporate. I brought a reel to reel master of a concert of my solo instrumental music from the late 1970s in to our recording technician and was told that it was shredding and that it had to get baked. Oh dear.

I know that one of my most faithful commenters, Brad, is likely to be opinionated on the art and science of digitizing audio files. I’d love to post his advice on this issue.

I see that there is now the “Ion LP-Ripping Turntable” (see ad below) that goes directly into computers via USB. Hmm, tempting, but I’ll stick with my old turntable for a bit longer.

Solo performances on bluetooth headsets

Here is a brilliant comeback by Larry David for those moments where you are trapped with someone shouting into a bluetooth headset, oblivious that s/he is annoying everyone.

Our next car

Daniel just put a down payment on our next car, an Aptera. Here is the note he sent to our family:

After close to four years of being a single-car household, Roger and I have decided to reserve an Aptera in hopes it will be our second car in 2009. The plug-in hybrid model costs less than $30k and gets over 300MPG. If you are driving less than 60 miles on a full charge, it doesn’t consume ANY gas. Charging it will take about $2 of energy and only 2-4 hours. It’s only being sold in California, is classified by the DMV as a motorcycle, and begins production later this year. Exciting, no?!

I asked him whether there was a James Bond helicopter feature for LA traffic jams but alas, we’ll have to settle for good mileage.

iPhone post

I am sitting in O’Hare Airport waiting for my flight back to Los Angeles, practicing typing on my new iPhone. Slowly, but surely. Much to report on my return. Tomorrow will be my first day on the job as Chair of the UCLA Music Department and am looking forward to it. Be back soon!

Instant Messaging

Yes, my spell check freaks out when I type “messenging.” [No wonder, it's messaging silly. I created a verb out of Instant Messenger, and what the messenges sent were messenges. Duh...]
I celebrate instant messaging. My parents are always on IM, as are 10 other of my good friends at any one time. It doesn’t mean that I am obligated to chat with them, but there is a nice buzz knowing that they are there and that they WOULD talk to me if I engaged them.

. . .

My thumbs are so damn fat that I’ve given up on text messenging on my Razor phone. I’ll be getting the iPhone and have my fingers, or thumbs, crossed that the qwerty keyboard will “fit” my fingers well. I swear there is a huge market for SIMPLE cell phones that have SIMPLE address books in them (and that’s all) for us aging boomers and other aging generations.

Music textile

“Music textiles” is a large tactile interface for playing electronic music. It was developed by Vincent Roudaud and Maurin Donneaud.

My fantasy runs wild: I imagine a new line of clothes where each piece of clothing is programmed to make a sound when touched. I could imagine my pants being a soft rain that fades in and out. My shirt could be a loop of distant birds. My shoes could have a dial for the foley sounds you are in the mood for. Troups marching? Dial 5. Walking through mud? Dial 8. Add echo to the existing sound you are making? Dial 7777. Dangle earrings could have a whole line of subtle sounds: wind chimes made of glass or wood or metal, the sound of a strike in bowling, or how about the doppler effect of a car going by? Well, maybe someday…
……….

Source: we make money not art.com.
Maurin’s flickr site.
Their MySpace site (watch the videos)

The new corkage fee?

The tradition of a restaurant charging you a fee when you bring your own wine to their establishment (using their glasses and not buying their wine) is commonly known as “corkage.” As you wine drinkers know, many vintners are turning to screw caps, citing the high failure rate of corks as their motivation. What do restaurants call the fee for simply cracking open a screw cap wine bottle? I’m not sure, but I’d call it

SCREWAGE

Brain Age

Despite lusting after all of the items enumerated below, what do we get? Our dear friends Damon and Jane gifted us “Brain Age”– game software for the Nintendo DS. Not just another video game, software to help us aging baby boomers keep our brain muscle. There is no lengthy exegesis about the concept of the difference between brain and mind, but Mr Kawashima, the author and the software’s smiling guardian angel, does give us a summary of what the various parts of the brain do.

It turns out that reading aloud does wonders for our brains. So parents, feel good about nightly reading. Not only is it great for your kids, it’s healthy for your brain. I was happy to see that Sudoku is prominently featured and know that I will be crowned Sudoku Master by this little machine in no time, but I am terrified about its demand that I know how to do math and stuff with numbers. Alright. No mechanical table, just this damned little piece of software. It will be “good” for me. We’ll see.

This image doesn’t show it but written above the pilot is ‘The Flight of Intellect’. The rear label reads: ‘Warranted not to Burst’. The satirical illustration relates to a Charles Golightly, who secured a place in history by taking out a British patent in 1841 for a flying machine that employs a steam rocket. The vehicle was never built. Steam engines were notorious for exploding and being generally unreliable in the first half of the 19th century, explaining the skeptical nature of the cartoon. My guess, from 1/2 sentences seen in search results from pay sites, is that the original Golightly patent has now been lost. Neither the artist’s name nor the date published is known for the above print and so I’m not particularly sure if this picture pre- or post-dates an/other publication(s) in which the Golightly enterprise is lampooned.

[Image and quote courtesy BibliOdyssey]