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Published On: Jan 28, 2004 11:00 AM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jan 28, 2004 11:00 AM
Water in the Gas Tank
An assessment of the sudden stall of Howard's campaign
followed by some tinkering with Apple's new music making application. All sorts
of music links for your listening pleasure.
May we live in interesting
times.
Well, everyone knows about the sudden stall that the Dean campaign has hit over the past week. First Iowa placing Dean third, well behind Edwards, and now in New Hampshire a double-digit second behind Kerry. And the strangest thing is that Dean was ahead of everyone in about every single poll out there. This sudden lurch from a strong first to desperately needing a defibrillator has come as quite a shock. All my fellow Dean supporters are standing around numb wondering where it all went South.
Of course, as they say, "It ain't over until it's over." There are justifications one can give for not declaring the patient dead yet. I just wonder if they are valid, or if we are trying to dampen the blow. (Of course, the moment we feel in our hearts we've lost, it's over.) There's argument that the next races in the South will not give Kerry any further leads as Clark and Edwards enjoy their strong demographics. MN has a huge number of delegates compared with these early states, with the possibility of a comeback. And finally, California and New York have such an overwhelming number of delegates.
It'll come down to whether the voting American Democrats emphasize voting for the candidate they believe in or the importance of showing the illusion of strong, unanimous support for a front-runner. (It's that damned "delectability thing" from a slightly different perspective.) If we go for the latter then Kerry has already lost, unless he does something incredibly stupid.
A few weeks ago someone declared the race "Dean's to lose" meaning Dean would win unless he faltered badly. Now the same goes for Kerry.
For those people who want to hear something funny, I came across two music mixes where someone put Dean's infamous speech/screech to music. Check out Crazy Go Nuts and Keep Dean Alive.
Speaking of music, I went and upgraded to Apple's iLife '04 so I could try out the new GarageBand application. The demonstration by Steve Jobs on the MacWorld Expo Keynote had looked way cool, so I decided to give it a try.
Like Apple's other "iLife" applications like iPhoto, iTunes, iMove and iDVD, it has a really simple-yet-powerful user interface. It is incredibly easy to assembly a bunch of "loops" (2- or 4-measure music lics in a specific instrument that you can repeat ad nausium) to create a song. It requires really no musical ability, and now you too can create monotonous house music!
I went to an online discussion group where people were talking about the app and posting samples of music they put together. They all sounded basically like music, but most were horribly tedious. I know I should be more generous for people who have never created music before, and if anyone stays with it, they might actually make something worth listening to.
Actually, it is pretty incredible how easily a person could use these well-integrated Apple applications to assemble pictures, digital movies, hand-crafted music and assemble it all onto a DVD. The ability to put artistic creation into the hands of the Ordinary Joe is pretty incredible. I sure wish this stuff was accessible when I was a kid. I'll bet Tom Loehrke and I would have assembled some pretty damned cool stuff!
In case you want to hear an example of a GarageBand-created song, I spent about 30 minutes slapping something together. Take a listen to this. Not much to listen to actively, but it could be a great background to a road-trip home movie.
Well, everyone knows about the sudden stall that the Dean campaign has hit over the past week. First Iowa placing Dean third, well behind Edwards, and now in New Hampshire a double-digit second behind Kerry. And the strangest thing is that Dean was ahead of everyone in about every single poll out there. This sudden lurch from a strong first to desperately needing a defibrillator has come as quite a shock. All my fellow Dean supporters are standing around numb wondering where it all went South.
Of course, as they say, "It ain't over until it's over." There are justifications one can give for not declaring the patient dead yet. I just wonder if they are valid, or if we are trying to dampen the blow. (Of course, the moment we feel in our hearts we've lost, it's over.) There's argument that the next races in the South will not give Kerry any further leads as Clark and Edwards enjoy their strong demographics. MN has a huge number of delegates compared with these early states, with the possibility of a comeback. And finally, California and New York have such an overwhelming number of delegates.
It'll come down to whether the voting American Democrats emphasize voting for the candidate they believe in or the importance of showing the illusion of strong, unanimous support for a front-runner. (It's that damned "delectability thing" from a slightly different perspective.) If we go for the latter then Kerry has already lost, unless he does something incredibly stupid.
A few weeks ago someone declared the race "Dean's to lose" meaning Dean would win unless he faltered badly. Now the same goes for Kerry.
For those people who want to hear something funny, I came across two music mixes where someone put Dean's infamous speech/screech to music. Check out Crazy Go Nuts and Keep Dean Alive.
Speaking of music, I went and upgraded to Apple's iLife '04 so I could try out the new GarageBand application. The demonstration by Steve Jobs on the MacWorld Expo Keynote had looked way cool, so I decided to give it a try.
Like Apple's other "iLife" applications like iPhoto, iTunes, iMove and iDVD, it has a really simple-yet-powerful user interface. It is incredibly easy to assembly a bunch of "loops" (2- or 4-measure music lics in a specific instrument that you can repeat ad nausium) to create a song. It requires really no musical ability, and now you too can create monotonous house music!
I went to an online discussion group where people were talking about the app and posting samples of music they put together. They all sounded basically like music, but most were horribly tedious. I know I should be more generous for people who have never created music before, and if anyone stays with it, they might actually make something worth listening to.
Actually, it is pretty incredible how easily a person could use these well-integrated Apple applications to assemble pictures, digital movies, hand-crafted music and assemble it all onto a DVD. The ability to put artistic creation into the hands of the Ordinary Joe is pretty incredible. I sure wish this stuff was accessible when I was a kid. I'll bet Tom Loehrke and I would have assembled some pretty damned cool stuff!
In case you want to hear an example of a GarageBand-created song, I spent about 30 minutes slapping something together. Take a listen to this. Not much to listen to actively, but it could be a great background to a road-trip home movie.
Posted: Wed - January 28, 2004 at 11:00 AM