Other than stopping smoking tobacco the next best thing i could have possibly done for my health was to buy the budget-breaking digital piano. It has a digital drum machine on it. It plays what it plays very precisely for as long as it has electricity supplied to it. I have no idea why that facet of it fascinates me. I expect humans to be humans and computers to be just that. What I do know fascinates me is dancing to these drum beats. Nobody is here watching me dance. That's an important part of this crazy dancing I'm doing. Nobody knows.
I remember learning to dance in high school. There was a chaperoned dance after all the ball games on Friday nights. In reflection, I guess I wasn't, and I'm still not a shy person as far as getting up and trying something new for the first time. I knew the girls liked boys who would ask them to dance. I liked girls. It didn't take a genius...
I'm also a big showoff. I like to attract attention to myself. I know exactly what to do with it. Most rabble rousers do. I've danced all my adult life for-the-other. Not here. Not now. Nobody knows. I dance for-myself. Sometimes after I get up and get to moving my feet I'll go outside my front door to the outside deck and dance out in the open.
I built another deck on the second floor, and there are sixteen 7" high steps that provide me with a fire escape from the upstairs. Sometime when I git jiggy I dance up and down those stairs like beating the band. That's why I say that buying this digital piano has been good for my health.
Some of these drum beats are real lively when it comes to dancing. The drum beat I have playing now is #094 RumbaFlamenco. I've been stuck on it for a couple of days. The rhythm has so many parts to it I can just pick out one that's easy to fall into and go from there. How fast or how slow the parts of the drum beat I attend to depends on how my old body feels about it.
I must have been waiting for somebody to come along to dance with. As if it took two to tango. That was rather stupid of me. I haven't wanted anybody around me for any reason for a while now. Much less somebody just so I'd get up and dance. It seems like since there's nobody around and I'm not dancing for-somebody, the entire movement of my body takes on the careactoristics it feels good about in the moment. If it wants to run up and down stairs... what choice have I?
One of the reasons I like this quantized, perfectly executed drum beat available to me at the touch of a button is to play my djembe drum with. My drumming is not anywhere near perfect because I'm a homo sapien, not a computer. It seems like for me (and you milage should vary if you have a modicum of self-respect) that it's the computer that's revealing my humanity to me in ever more exacting ways.
I naively thought in my early thirties that I must have been one of the world's best spellers of the English language. Can you spell s-p-e-l-l-c-h-e-c-k-e-r? Maybe I'm not as good a speller as I once thought, but the spellchecker only knows the correct way to spell compassion, not exhibit it. The one associated with this relentless text editor does it in real time while I'm typing.
Maybe I only thought I was sorta perfect ere now. How would I know? I didn't have digital perfection available to compare myself to. Such as a spellchecker software program. Cheap. I never thought computers would be this cheap ever before there was such a thing. But, even what I think is cheap now is gonna seem ridiculously expensive in even the very near future.
In some ways I like the way capitalism works. Lots of people would be perfectly willing for computers to stay the way they are now. Particularly the people and companies that have made billions of dollars doing it just the way they have so far. No blame. Like it or not, however, the fickle finger of fate moves on when some upstart fifteen year old sees a better way to do it or to not do it at all, and the old ways are just that. Hickory, dickory, dock...
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Hot Pockets And Cheap Wine
I seem to have just discovered Hot Pockets. I've heard of them before, of course, and I might have eaten one or two before, but now I've eaten at least ten of them, and went back to the store and bought another box of twelve. It's just too easy to pop them in the the microwave for two minutes and have them ready to eat and be done with it. I've tried some of the other quick meals that can be heated up in the microwave, but they're not that good, and the list of ingredients really looks pathetic.
I seem a little overwhelmed by realizing just how many people there are in the world today. I think it started back when I did a People Search on Yahoo, and discovered there was over 400 people in the State of Florida that have my exact same legal name, and at least 800 people in Texas. Word for word my same name. That kind of freaked me out. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I thought that at least my family name was special. Not even a little bit.
I guess I do feel a little special when it comes to how many people there are in Asia. A billion and one third in China. Over a billion in India. Around 300 million in the US. I don't even know what that means. Well, yes I do, I suppose, it means there are too many people for the Earth to continue to support. There's not even enough fish in all the oceans for us to eat anymore. Why life?
How much more can man invent, and to what end? I keep hearing the statement, "Man, if you think this is something, just hang around." Hang around for what? All people have ever done is eat, drink, and fuck. We've made it easier to do that, but to what end? So our offspring can eat, drink, and fuck? Big whoop... eh?
I watched a little bit of a TV show about this rich woman who was showing off her $35 million dollar yacht. She looked like shit from all the things she'd had done to her body to keep looking desirable enough to fuck. I was really confused. Why on Earth did this woman wanna look desirable enough to fuck. She'd been fucking for sixty years and never got no satisfaction out of it.
I did one of them thar faux pas' recently. I doubt if it even matters. Nobody knows. I used to be friendly with this woman who is in fact a real go-getter. The only problem she had was that she was an alcoholic. I personally only thought she was a drunk like me, but nooooo, she had to push the envelope and BE an alcoholic. BEING an alcohol is what she turned her life into. I liked her just fine as a drunk.
I even asked this woman to marry me once in a fit of insanity. She was the woman I truly deserved. Some deluded bitch who used to read me stories written by people a sophisticated person might have recognized right away, but I could tell from the way she read his brilliant writing to me, that she found him subjectively interesting. Besides, this bitch really is as smart as me, or was, but now that she's decided she's an alcoholic she's got too much baggage. The problem for me was that I am not man enough for her. Oh, I don't feel bad about that. I'm not a good enough man for anybody. Who does she think she is? Who am I?
...
I am a light
from very far
that gleams
with all the beauty
of a star,
and is in day
the very night,
the shadow of
a very bright
daydream.
July, 1973
Whatever it is that I am, it's not good enow for the significant others in my life. The problem with that is that I set the parameters by which they judged me, and ruled me unworthy. It's very difficult to get past that facticity.
I seem to be one of those people who figure you're either fer me or agin me. You put an organization you fished for between me and you, I'm gonna give you that organization for company. If you're not cool with being the first person in your life, then you sure as hell ain't gwine allow sech from or for me. I don't buy $20 a pound coffee to use it twice. Brazilian lowland coffee is better the first time than the high mountain arabica the second time around.
My daughter seems to have decided she's an alcoholic instead of drunk too. I really hate that for her. Granted, I failed her as a father, but she failed her own self as a drunk. There are institutions one may commit themselves to, and then there are institutions one can commit oneself to. Alcoholics Anonymous might be a nice place to visit, but the idea of becoming a permanent guest is worse than absurd, it's pathetic.
I'm kind of bingeing on Hot Pockets because of the horrible news. Oh, it's not news to me. I figured this crap out a couple of years ago, but you see, when i figure something out, after all is said and done, it's not written in stone. I learned how not to do that because it's just freaking foolish to paint myself in a corner. The horrible news is that fat cells never go away. They may not be filled with suet, but they're still there just waiting for me to fill them up again.
I saw this article in a reputable scientific online magazine (It's on the internet, asshole, it's gotta be true!) where it stated that even if you get liposuction, once you recover from the operation, the fat cells return on their own, they come back even if you starved yourself. We're doomed! No... I"m doomed. Your milage may vary.
You tell me! My old father was fat as a pig from the time he married that Cancer woman who became my mother. She treated him like God. Why would she not? He saved her from a fate worse than death. My point is that he was a good eighty pounds over-weight from middle age on, and lived to be eighty-eight years old. I'm not a momma's boy because of the way she treated me. I'm a momma's boy because of the way she treated my father until the day he died. In fact, when he had developed pneumonia and was a goner, she put him out of his unperceived misery. I'm absolutely sure she was just following orders. No woman on Earth could owe me that much loyalty. There is not enough I could do for them to bring that sort of debt into play.
People have to give themselves to me. It's not because of some decision I made. I don't know why they have to give themselves to me. It's almost as if I'm not even a part of the decision-making process that ends up with some sort eternal commitment. I'm a double-Taurus. The keyword for Taureans is: I possess.
I own some people. Only the people who of their own volition gave themselves to me. Not only did I not ask this of them, I couldn't prevent it. Worse, I don't even know who some of them are. They never bothered to inform me of their intentions. Leeches. I call them Remoras. People like Mona Worley from when I was a child in the first grade. She adored me for reasons I had no say so about.
Do you have any idea how tasty these stupid Hot Pockets are with cheap burgundy?
I seem a little overwhelmed by realizing just how many people there are in the world today. I think it started back when I did a People Search on Yahoo, and discovered there was over 400 people in the State of Florida that have my exact same legal name, and at least 800 people in Texas. Word for word my same name. That kind of freaked me out. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I thought that at least my family name was special. Not even a little bit.
I guess I do feel a little special when it comes to how many people there are in Asia. A billion and one third in China. Over a billion in India. Around 300 million in the US. I don't even know what that means. Well, yes I do, I suppose, it means there are too many people for the Earth to continue to support. There's not even enough fish in all the oceans for us to eat anymore. Why life?
How much more can man invent, and to what end? I keep hearing the statement, "Man, if you think this is something, just hang around." Hang around for what? All people have ever done is eat, drink, and fuck. We've made it easier to do that, but to what end? So our offspring can eat, drink, and fuck? Big whoop... eh?
I watched a little bit of a TV show about this rich woman who was showing off her $35 million dollar yacht. She looked like shit from all the things she'd had done to her body to keep looking desirable enough to fuck. I was really confused. Why on Earth did this woman wanna look desirable enough to fuck. She'd been fucking for sixty years and never got no satisfaction out of it.
I did one of them thar faux pas' recently. I doubt if it even matters. Nobody knows. I used to be friendly with this woman who is in fact a real go-getter. The only problem she had was that she was an alcoholic. I personally only thought she was a drunk like me, but nooooo, she had to push the envelope and BE an alcoholic. BEING an alcohol is what she turned her life into. I liked her just fine as a drunk.
I even asked this woman to marry me once in a fit of insanity. She was the woman I truly deserved. Some deluded bitch who used to read me stories written by people a sophisticated person might have recognized right away, but I could tell from the way she read his brilliant writing to me, that she found him subjectively interesting. Besides, this bitch really is as smart as me, or was, but now that she's decided she's an alcoholic she's got too much baggage. The problem for me was that I am not man enough for her. Oh, I don't feel bad about that. I'm not a good enough man for anybody. Who does she think she is? Who am I?
...
I am a light
from very far
that gleams
with all the beauty
of a star,
and is in day
the very night,
the shadow of
a very bright
daydream.
July, 1973
Whatever it is that I am, it's not good enow for the significant others in my life. The problem with that is that I set the parameters by which they judged me, and ruled me unworthy. It's very difficult to get past that facticity.
I seem to be one of those people who figure you're either fer me or agin me. You put an organization you fished for between me and you, I'm gonna give you that organization for company. If you're not cool with being the first person in your life, then you sure as hell ain't gwine allow sech from or for me. I don't buy $20 a pound coffee to use it twice. Brazilian lowland coffee is better the first time than the high mountain arabica the second time around.
My daughter seems to have decided she's an alcoholic instead of drunk too. I really hate that for her. Granted, I failed her as a father, but she failed her own self as a drunk. There are institutions one may commit themselves to, and then there are institutions one can commit oneself to. Alcoholics Anonymous might be a nice place to visit, but the idea of becoming a permanent guest is worse than absurd, it's pathetic.
I'm kind of bingeing on Hot Pockets because of the horrible news. Oh, it's not news to me. I figured this crap out a couple of years ago, but you see, when i figure something out, after all is said and done, it's not written in stone. I learned how not to do that because it's just freaking foolish to paint myself in a corner. The horrible news is that fat cells never go away. They may not be filled with suet, but they're still there just waiting for me to fill them up again.
I saw this article in a reputable scientific online magazine (It's on the internet, asshole, it's gotta be true!) where it stated that even if you get liposuction, once you recover from the operation, the fat cells return on their own, they come back even if you starved yourself. We're doomed! No... I"m doomed. Your milage may vary.
You tell me! My old father was fat as a pig from the time he married that Cancer woman who became my mother. She treated him like God. Why would she not? He saved her from a fate worse than death. My point is that he was a good eighty pounds over-weight from middle age on, and lived to be eighty-eight years old. I'm not a momma's boy because of the way she treated me. I'm a momma's boy because of the way she treated my father until the day he died. In fact, when he had developed pneumonia and was a goner, she put him out of his unperceived misery. I'm absolutely sure she was just following orders. No woman on Earth could owe me that much loyalty. There is not enough I could do for them to bring that sort of debt into play.
People have to give themselves to me. It's not because of some decision I made. I don't know why they have to give themselves to me. It's almost as if I'm not even a part of the decision-making process that ends up with some sort eternal commitment. I'm a double-Taurus. The keyword for Taureans is: I possess.
I own some people. Only the people who of their own volition gave themselves to me. Not only did I not ask this of them, I couldn't prevent it. Worse, I don't even know who some of them are. They never bothered to inform me of their intentions. Leeches. I call them Remoras. People like Mona Worley from when I was a child in the first grade. She adored me for reasons I had no say so about.
Do you have any idea how tasty these stupid Hot Pockets are with cheap burgundy?
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Beguine
One of the things I've done and felt good about was to imitate other people. There are some people, however, that it's not been alright to imitate them because it is considered impolite, and that's retards. I don't use that word lightly. Especially when it's been applied to me infrequently all of my life. I'd be willing bet, if the truth could be known, that most people have been accused of being a retard more often than is comfortable.
Today I realized that I could not only dance inside my house and out on the decks and stairs, but i can dance all over my yard too, because nobody can see in here from the paved road. I'm surrounded by my family's properties and the woods and underbrush, and literally... truly... nobody knows. My family already knows I'm crazy. they brag about it sometime. As if to express gratitude that it's me instead of them. No blame.
I stumbled out on to my lawn and swirled and twirled like a maniac. I walked around my house backwards and spun around in circles until i almost fell down. Then, I started walking like a retard and screwing up my face like that grinning idiot piano player with the yellow jackets band, and it felt just great. Some things do happen when I hold my mouth just right. I ain't here just to display the right faces to all the right people. Who decides who that might be?
I did all this crazy stuff to the rhythm of drumbeat #092 Beguine. Well, that's what the LED readout says it's called. I'm familiar with an old Forty's song labeled Begin The Beguine. I never knew what that meant. After seeing this drum beat called Beguine I figured maybe it was the name of some exotic South American dance. I got curious and Googled it up. Nope. Not even close.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beguine
Some weird Catholic religious cult back in the Thirteen Hundreds that had something to do with the Crusades. The legitimate church didn't approve, so they just killed them and let God sort it out. Typical Papist response. It's a fairly interesting read though. The world was a different place back in those days, much less a thousand or two years ere that. Certain human careactoristics were quelled, and if you didn't accept the rules of conscience the ruling majority provided for you, then you either went to live some place else or got dead. I don't think death meant that much until some wackos started making something of it.
Why Yamaha thought this drum beat should be called Beguine is beyond me. All I know is that i like it. I pick out parts of it and play them on my Djembe drum, and listen to the parts I'm not playing, and they seem to take on a different meaning. Then, I stop playing that part and take up another, and listen to what I just played and to what I haven't played yet, and at the end of this round-robin I can hear all the individual parts together.
There are four instruments and the continuous jangle of cymbals being played with brush sticks. It's digital perfect. Over and over. Never missing a stroke. Never adding a stroke. I'll never be that way, but it's cute to have such a model to compare what I do against. It's fun to try to play it perfectly like the computer does, yet, all the while knowing it's not going to happen.
Today I realized that I could not only dance inside my house and out on the decks and stairs, but i can dance all over my yard too, because nobody can see in here from the paved road. I'm surrounded by my family's properties and the woods and underbrush, and literally... truly... nobody knows. My family already knows I'm crazy. they brag about it sometime. As if to express gratitude that it's me instead of them. No blame.
I stumbled out on to my lawn and swirled and twirled like a maniac. I walked around my house backwards and spun around in circles until i almost fell down. Then, I started walking like a retard and screwing up my face like that grinning idiot piano player with the yellow jackets band, and it felt just great. Some things do happen when I hold my mouth just right. I ain't here just to display the right faces to all the right people. Who decides who that might be?
I did all this crazy stuff to the rhythm of drumbeat #092 Beguine. Well, that's what the LED readout says it's called. I'm familiar with an old Forty's song labeled Begin The Beguine. I never knew what that meant. After seeing this drum beat called Beguine I figured maybe it was the name of some exotic South American dance. I got curious and Googled it up. Nope. Not even close.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beguine
Some weird Catholic religious cult back in the Thirteen Hundreds that had something to do with the Crusades. The legitimate church didn't approve, so they just killed them and let God sort it out. Typical Papist response. It's a fairly interesting read though. The world was a different place back in those days, much less a thousand or two years ere that. Certain human careactoristics were quelled, and if you didn't accept the rules of conscience the ruling majority provided for you, then you either went to live some place else or got dead. I don't think death meant that much until some wackos started making something of it.
Why Yamaha thought this drum beat should be called Beguine is beyond me. All I know is that i like it. I pick out parts of it and play them on my Djembe drum, and listen to the parts I'm not playing, and they seem to take on a different meaning. Then, I stop playing that part and take up another, and listen to what I just played and to what I haven't played yet, and at the end of this round-robin I can hear all the individual parts together.
There are four instruments and the continuous jangle of cymbals being played with brush sticks. It's digital perfect. Over and over. Never missing a stroke. Never adding a stroke. I'll never be that way, but it's cute to have such a model to compare what I do against. It's fun to try to play it perfectly like the computer does, yet, all the while knowing it's not going to happen.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Memsistors
Another slack day. I did a minimal effort to sustain all my ghastly habits. I stayed home all day. I didn't even go out to see if I had any snail mail in my rural delivery box out on the paved road. The only exercise I got today was done strictly to relieve my guilt about being so lazy. I just got and danced to the rhythm of the drum machine for maybe two minutes and figured that oughta keep me alive another five minutes. So much for aerobics today. I did go outside and walk up and down the outside stairs a couple of times.
I've been so lazy I haven't even changed the drum beat from it's default setting. I've had it playing 001 8BeatModern for some time now, and ignored it for the most part. I spent a good part of my slovenly day checking out the other sounds on my keyboard. Some of them are very good. Some of the choices have the appellation "sweet" attached to an instrument like 074 Sweet! Clarinet, and 080 Breathy Tenor Sax. I understand why they call them sweet. Just by playing some simple tune using these instrument samples I can make them sound real good. Have I mentioned how much I'm enjoying my fairly new Yamaha Portable Grand digital piano?
Most of the time I use it I've got it set on the Grand Piano setting that it's famous for. It's got this black button, see, that immediately changes all the setting so that it plays the digitally sampled sounds of Yamaha's acoustic grand piano. It sounds a lot like an acoustic piano, a very expensive grand piano, and I never have to get it tuned. That's a big selling point with me. I'm not your musical instrument tuning fanatic some people are.
I'm still thinking about this new electronic discovery announced by the HP Labs today. I seem to have intuited it was a big deal when i read the early morning article. By lunch there were all sorts of highly complimentary accolades going around. If the hype is only half-way right (they literally have working prototypes) it's gonna change the digital revolution more than any event since the invention of the transistor. Maybe even more.
The Hewlett-Packard home page announced the results, and the guy who lead the research team readily acknowledged that the possibility had been worked out mathematically nearly forty years ago by a professor at Berkley. He also stated in no uncertain terms that the "memristor" was a discovery and not an invention. How could it not have already existed if it rang a bell with me.
I'm not sure how it rang a bell with me, and I don't know what that means either. It was the comments about how it not only remember what it's contents were in the present, but it was capable of remembering it's previous contents, and it was further capable of comparing its former occupant with it's present occupant, and that's what makes it capable of simple consciousness.
I don't know if I read this right, but it the articles I've been reading off and on all day about it was that it could do comparative operations such as required in face-reading without any software to direct it's purpose. Granted, I don't know what the hell that means, but if it's the missing link in electronics the way it's being claimed, the possibilities can't even be addressed yet.
If nothing else got done today I did do a lotta reading on memristors. It's sure something to look forward to as this technology comes into it's own. I don't know how this will affect the future of quantum computers. They may be circumvented altogether.
The guy who worked out the mathematics in 1971, Leon Chua, stated that the electronic theorists had ignored the possibilities of memristors existing and scoffed at the notion that a prototype could ever be constructed. The work done at the HP labs proved he was right and they were wrong. It's startling to me to consider what has transpired to date without memristors. Artificial intelligence is about to make a giant leap forward.
I've been so lazy I haven't even changed the drum beat from it's default setting. I've had it playing 001 8BeatModern for some time now, and ignored it for the most part. I spent a good part of my slovenly day checking out the other sounds on my keyboard. Some of them are very good. Some of the choices have the appellation "sweet" attached to an instrument like 074 Sweet! Clarinet, and 080 Breathy Tenor Sax. I understand why they call them sweet. Just by playing some simple tune using these instrument samples I can make them sound real good. Have I mentioned how much I'm enjoying my fairly new Yamaha Portable Grand digital piano?
Most of the time I use it I've got it set on the Grand Piano setting that it's famous for. It's got this black button, see, that immediately changes all the setting so that it plays the digitally sampled sounds of Yamaha's acoustic grand piano. It sounds a lot like an acoustic piano, a very expensive grand piano, and I never have to get it tuned. That's a big selling point with me. I'm not your musical instrument tuning fanatic some people are.
I'm still thinking about this new electronic discovery announced by the HP Labs today. I seem to have intuited it was a big deal when i read the early morning article. By lunch there were all sorts of highly complimentary accolades going around. If the hype is only half-way right (they literally have working prototypes) it's gonna change the digital revolution more than any event since the invention of the transistor. Maybe even more.
The Hewlett-Packard home page announced the results, and the guy who lead the research team readily acknowledged that the possibility had been worked out mathematically nearly forty years ago by a professor at Berkley. He also stated in no uncertain terms that the "memristor" was a discovery and not an invention. How could it not have already existed if it rang a bell with me.
I'm not sure how it rang a bell with me, and I don't know what that means either. It was the comments about how it not only remember what it's contents were in the present, but it was capable of remembering it's previous contents, and it was further capable of comparing its former occupant with it's present occupant, and that's what makes it capable of simple consciousness.
I don't know if I read this right, but it the articles I've been reading off and on all day about it was that it could do comparative operations such as required in face-reading without any software to direct it's purpose. Granted, I don't know what the hell that means, but if it's the missing link in electronics the way it's being claimed, the possibilities can't even be addressed yet.
If nothing else got done today I did do a lotta reading on memristors. It's sure something to look forward to as this technology comes into it's own. I don't know how this will affect the future of quantum computers. They may be circumvented altogether.
The guy who worked out the mathematics in 1971, Leon Chua, stated that the electronic theorists had ignored the possibilities of memristors existing and scoffed at the notion that a prototype could ever be constructed. The work done at the HP labs proved he was right and they were wrong. It's startling to me to consider what has transpired to date without memristors. Artificial intelligence is about to make a giant leap forward.
The iPhone And Me
Apple has really got me thinking about buying an iPhone as my main internet connection device. It may be cheaper than my home phone/DSL connection, and portable after the initial costs. I'm reading about what Apple plans to do with the iPhone on the digital news sites, and it's starting to look like the iPhone will have a WiMax chip in it.
It's difficult to know what's going on with WiMax these days because the Telcos and cable companies are definitely against it. Like a lotta people, I've been following the news about WiMax since the idea of it first began showing up on the tech news sites. I got all worked up about it's possibilities.
WiMax is a threat to a lot of present day businesses and technologies, and they're putting out negative propaganda to negate it's chances of matriculating into the main stream. If Apple puts a WiMax chip in the iPhone, it'll be all over but the shouting. I don't think it will put anybody out of business, but it sure will put a different slant on how people look at the web.
It's difficult to know what's going on with WiMax these days because the Telcos and cable companies are definitely against it. Like a lotta people, I've been following the news about WiMax since the idea of it first began showing up on the tech news sites. I got all worked up about it's possibilities.
WiMax is a threat to a lot of present day businesses and technologies, and they're putting out negative propaganda to negate it's chances of matriculating into the main stream. If Apple puts a WiMax chip in the iPhone, it'll be all over but the shouting. I don't think it will put anybody out of business, but it sure will put a different slant on how people look at the web.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
SmartMusic And Bluetooth Midget Keyboards
I've spent a couple of hours looking at a digital system for learning to play music. I watched all the free videos and thought about whether I would follow along with this system:
https://www.smartmusic.com/default.aspx
I've already downloaded one of their programs called Finale NotePad to writing music down. It is free and does a really good job of what it does. I can't imagine I'll ever need the features the for-money versions provides. I downloaded the SmartMusic system demo, but i haven't double-clicked the DMG file to install it on my computer yet. The documentation and videos continuously state that the system is designed to be used with a live teacher, and I can't afford that. Still, indulging my curiosity by looking at their free stuff has been interesting.
The upgrade Apple provided that allowed my cute little Bluetooth keyboard to operate correctly without a hitch has really pleased me. If it had worked this well right away I wouldn't have purchased the USB wired version, but it didn't work so well when i first bought into the Bluetooth hype, and I did buy the full-sized keyboard. I just switched back to the wired keyboard because of the additional features that make it easier to use for writing. I especially like having that second Delete key that deletes stuff to the right side of the cursor.
I had to buy a new mouse. The old one just reached it's ring-pass-me-not when the scroll wheel just stopped working. I have another USB wired mouse that doesn't move on the surface of my desk but has a big ball to move the cursor around. I got it out and hooked it up long enough to find out if the scroll wheel worked on it. It did just fine, but the other attributes of that type of mouse still irritated me, so I went to Radio Shack and bought a new one and paid way too much. Amazingly, the wired USB version costs more than the wireless ones. I don't like the wireless mice. They don't always work and the wired one always do. What's to figure?
https://www.smartmusic.com/default.aspx
I've already downloaded one of their programs called Finale NotePad to writing music down. It is free and does a really good job of what it does. I can't imagine I'll ever need the features the for-money versions provides. I downloaded the SmartMusic system demo, but i haven't double-clicked the DMG file to install it on my computer yet. The documentation and videos continuously state that the system is designed to be used with a live teacher, and I can't afford that. Still, indulging my curiosity by looking at their free stuff has been interesting.
The upgrade Apple provided that allowed my cute little Bluetooth keyboard to operate correctly without a hitch has really pleased me. If it had worked this well right away I wouldn't have purchased the USB wired version, but it didn't work so well when i first bought into the Bluetooth hype, and I did buy the full-sized keyboard. I just switched back to the wired keyboard because of the additional features that make it easier to use for writing. I especially like having that second Delete key that deletes stuff to the right side of the cursor.
I had to buy a new mouse. The old one just reached it's ring-pass-me-not when the scroll wheel just stopped working. I have another USB wired mouse that doesn't move on the surface of my desk but has a big ball to move the cursor around. I got it out and hooked it up long enough to find out if the scroll wheel worked on it. It did just fine, but the other attributes of that type of mouse still irritated me, so I went to Radio Shack and bought a new one and paid way too much. Amazingly, the wired USB version costs more than the wireless ones. I don't like the wireless mice. They don't always work and the wired one always do. What's to figure?
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Operating System With A Default Button?
There is a keyboard shortcut symbol that I couldn't figure out. Yesterday I stumbled across it (acrostic?) and it indicates the "Control" button. So, to get the Dock off my desktop to allow me to see some sites like Wired.com full screen I push down Control+Command+D and to bring it back I just do it again. I'm still learning lots of little stuff about how Macs have changed since I switched back to using Apple products for the apparent security OSX offers. I don't think it will matter much longer.
I think there will be an internet device that will have a button on it that will check to see if only the default OS is on the storage part of the device and anything else will be removed. Then, you can download whatever the consumer desires to a clean machine, and transfer it over to an off-line computer on a flash drive to use in relative safety.
I've been reading about the ASUS machine that only has a 4 gig SSD flash drive for storage. Now, the HP Mini-Note has come out with a similar one that has a few more features. I'm in the market for an internet only machine for browsing and e-mail. I hardly ever get e-mail any more since nobody discusses anything anymore on the discussion groups. People are discovering that people after all, are altogether too human.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/blogs/fleishman_on_hardware/144293/the_bearable_lightness_of_hps_2133_mininote_pc.html
I've considered the concept of "future proofing" with every new digital equipment purchase I've made. I'm not as good as this as I could be if I had loads of disposable cash in order to stay ahead of the hackers. Just this morning I read this article about how security is not about viruses and trojan horses anymore, but about browsers and how they can be compromised by specially designed web sites that doesn't care what your OS is.
http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9914753-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
I think there will be an internet device that will have a button on it that will check to see if only the default OS is on the storage part of the device and anything else will be removed. Then, you can download whatever the consumer desires to a clean machine, and transfer it over to an off-line computer on a flash drive to use in relative safety.
I've been reading about the ASUS machine that only has a 4 gig SSD flash drive for storage. Now, the HP Mini-Note has come out with a similar one that has a few more features. I'm in the market for an internet only machine for browsing and e-mail. I hardly ever get e-mail any more since nobody discusses anything anymore on the discussion groups. People are discovering that people after all, are altogether too human.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/blogs/fleishman_on_hardware/144293/the_bearable_lightness_of_hps_2133_mininote_pc.html
I've considered the concept of "future proofing" with every new digital equipment purchase I've made. I'm not as good as this as I could be if I had loads of disposable cash in order to stay ahead of the hackers. Just this morning I read this article about how security is not about viruses and trojan horses anymore, but about browsers and how they can be compromised by specially designed web sites that doesn't care what your OS is.
http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9914753-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
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