Via Drawn!, I'm really enjoying the results of a meme that circulated through the online comic world. Artists were asked to draw themselves as teenagers. The meme quickly evolved to include a drawing of one's present-day self as well.

(Gratuitous example included because apparently my mother considers this blog boring due to its lack of images)

Visit the complete collection to relive those less-than-halcyon days. Of course, a fair number of entries represent artists who are less than ten years out of their mid-teens, so, well, what the hell do they know? As we all know, it's only in your mid-thirties that you finally get your shit together and can reflect soberly on your younger self (HA!).

I'm really very tempted to do one of these myself.

I give you One Minute of Music for April, 2008:

Download: [ogg] [mp3]

I suspect that most of the time, I'll want to include some notes and observations about the piece, as below.

• The chord progression (if it can be called that) is a piano doodle that probably goes back to the late 90s. The rest was improvised on top of that yesterday in about two hours, with a bit more polishing this morning. Given the very short production time, I find it surprisingly listenable.
• This isn't remotely the style I had originally envisioned for this piece of music. I always pictured something more like a symphonic theme from a space sci/fi movie (no, really). Instead I ended up with something that sounds a lot like Zero 7 (which can't be a bad thing, I suppose).
• Overall the sound is decent, but nothing special. The mastering needs a lot more control. That's going to be hard to learn -- watching them master a song in the Reason instructional DVD, I was lucky if I could hear any difference at all when they changed compression and stereo imaging settings. The mix could be tweaked too.
• I like the lead synth sound quite a bit, in a cheesy Zero 7 sort of way. It's a bit rough when it first enters, which ought to be fixed.
• I really don't like the piano at the beginning. I was trying to get something with more sparkle and reverb. Alright, I admit it: I was trying to sound like Gowan, circa Strange Animal. Nath was appalled that this should be my ambition. I wasn't trying to write similar music, just recreate the sound.
• I suspect the piano could be a bit punchier if it came in just a tiny bit before the beat instead of on it. That's worth an experiment some day.
• Interestingly, I'm not responsible for any of the percussion. There are two layers: a house-style drum track and a shaker. Both are pre-recorded loops included with Reason that I simply dropped in. Eventually I'll start including my own rhythms too -- Reason includes a pretty sweet drum machine.

Wow, this feels strange and exciting. I've had the vague plan of posting music on this website since I first registered the domain about nine years ago. Suddenly, the time has come. Hope you like it.

I've been a user of Propellerheads' Reason music production software since 2001.

Oh, alright. I've been a Reason owner since 2001. Much as I wish I could say I've been a user, I confess that during the years since 2001 I have mostly opened up Reason, pushed a couple of buttons absentmindedly, and downloaded songs created by others. I've also undertaken the ongoing project of transferring over the various bits and pieces of music I created for years before that on my circa 1990 Ensoniq, before the keyboard dies or all the floppies turn to dust, whichever comes first. None of that amounts to any serious use of the software.

As part of rewarding myself for passing the final tenure hurdle, I spent some of my tax refund on the latest edition of Reason. My copy arrived earlier this week, together with an instructional DVD. It's still a beautiful piece of software, and has managed to acquire significant new functionality (the Thor synthesizer rawks) without becoming bloated or ponderous.

Will things be different this time? Hard to say. As I've already said, this spring seems to have woken me up a bit. I'm feeling a musical urge that hasn't been this strong for a long time. Arguably, my creative energy was being directed into finishing my graduate work, starting life as a professor, and starting a family. I also have actual spare time this summer.

But I want to make a stronger commitment to music. Thus I have decided to launch a new initiative here at Thingo Central. It's a pledge that I call One Minute of Music a Month. I will post at least one piece of original music on this site per month, of at least one minute in length. One minute a month -- that really doesn't sound so hard, now does it? I'm certainly inspired by Leo's semi-regular improv piano videos.

Here are the rules of the game as I see them:

• The music has to be an original composition by me. No covers.
• The music must be produced and recorded from scratch during the month in which it is featured. But pieces that have been composed at any time in the past are permissible (this allows me to draw on a store of old doodles to practice my Reason arranging and production skills).
• The piece should not be a mere song fragment, but it need not be completely finished either. It should be a self-contained sketch, with reasonable attempts at a beginning, a middle and an end.
• One minute is just a lower bound. I'm not aiming to produce exactly one minute per month.
• Although Reason will be my primary tool, the music can use any instruments and engineering techniques.
• One piece per month will be designated as the official Minute. Obviously I can post other pieces at any time. I suspect that I'll post re-mixed and re-engineered versions of older songs as I become more proficient.
• And most of all, the piece can be arbitrarily awful. As with writing text, my internal critic wants to prevent anybody from hearing any music I've created. The only way for me to make good music is to make lots of bad music first and own up to it. Thus feedback is most welcome; but before you suggest it, I am planning to keep my day job.

I think those are the main parameters that were floating around in my head. I guess I'm ready to get going; I should be able to sustain this project for, like, two or three months. Actually, I'm going to get started immediately in a follow-up post, with a Minute of Music for April. It's a couple of days late, but then again it was almost May when I received the software, so I'll make an exception this first time around. Stay tuned.

Another bit of rejuvenation going on in my life right now involves music. This change manifests itself in two ways, the first of which I will describe here (the second will follow soon in another post).

I don't normally hear a lot of new music. I don't listen to commercial radio, which in any case plays either 80s music (i.e., "oldies") or garbage. CBC plays some good new music, but not much, and they tend to glom collectively onto a single artist or group for long stretches (let's see -- it was Autorickshaw, then K-OS, then Sarah Harmer? Is that right?). And while I have a fairly large music collection at home (I assume; what passes for large these days?), it was time to stretch out a bit.

To counteract musical atrophy, I subscribed to two excellent podcasts, both from KEXP. KEXP is a listener-funded radio station in Seattle that I used to listen to as a grad student. They have great DJs, no commercials, and no repetitive corporate playlists. I subscribed to Music that Matters and Song of the Day. The former is about an hour a week of one DJ's picks, the latter a single song every day. Sure, this represents a very wide range of musical styles, and a lot of it is forgettable. But it's always new to me, and utterly justified by the gems that pop up from time to time. I've heard some great new songs that I can't resist sharing:

Large Radio by Cassettes Won't Listen

A moody electronic song that reminds me for some reason of Tainted Love.

Transliterator by DeVotchKa

So lovely. Some of the same elements that make Sufjan Stevens so good. I checked out the album on iTunes and found that most of it is quite different, more of a Roma/Klezmer style. But that's great too! We'll probably pick up the album.

Artsy remix feat. Grouch by edIT

"You ain't artsier than me, 'cuz you shop at Whole Foods in open-toed shoes...". Take that, pretend hippies! Look for it at around 46:50 in the linked MP3.

First of May by Jonathan Coulton

Actually, I found out about this one because of Scalzi's blog rather than KEXP, but it's worth passing on (as is everything by Jonathan Coulton).

...of course, just at the moment I'm listening to Amarok by Mike Oldfield, which 100% of household wives consider to be a musical abomination. I guess some things don't change.

I have been remiss in offering updates on my tenure case here. (Oddly, I'm finding that the "keep people up to date" function of this blog has been partially subsumed by the comparatively terse Facebook status line.) Well, the good news is that there were no suprises. My case proceeded through the various levels of University bureaucracy and received all the necessary stamps of approval. The final memo, signed by the University secretariat, arrived early in April. Now it's just a question of waiting for tenure and promotion to take effect in July.

Of course, with great power comes... well, you know. I've been asked to chair a moderately important departmental committee that keeps itself busy with several activities throughout the year. I have a general feeling of dread about this position, since it carries with it genuine responsibility. I suppose there's an element of Administrative Impostor Syndrome at play here, mixed in with memories of a previous negative experience chairing a committee. On the other hand, I can't avoid responsibility forever, and given that fact, this is as good a committee to chair as any other (and certainly better than some). Also, I'll probably have to coordinate with Dan a lot, which will be fun.

Well, I suppose that's it. With luck, there will be very little to report here about my career for the next thirty years, at which point I'll post that I'm retiring. I'll keep you posted.

Yes, it's true. There was a coup in the Thingo household. A couple of months ago, Nath seized the reins of blog power, and began a new blog on Wordpress that she has since been maintaining with surprising and humbling regularity. Thingo was unceremoniously consigned to the castle dungeon, a forgotten casualty of a great power shift. There it was left to rot while the Stagnometer maxed out.

However, spring marks a return to light and (supposedly) warmth, and a renewed sense of purpose. Representatives from Thingo central are currently attempting to negotiate a power-sharing arrangement with Nath Knits, one that will grant both blogs executive authority...

I won't make any kind of claim that regular service will resume here. I do have a couple of things I want to put on the site right at the moment, which may represent either a spike in activity or a trend. Generally, I feel more inclined to express myself than I have in the past few months. I have marked this change by sprucing things up around here:

• I removed the stripes in the background, which were never that great to begin with. Of course, I had to change the Stagnometer to fade out to the new grey background colour.
• I updated the links page. That page was becoming increasingly out of date with respect to the blogs I actually read. In its place, I've inserted something that's arguably useful: a Javascript-generated blogroll, taken directly from my Google Reader subscriptions. This bit of code is due to the 20% time of a Google Reader developer -- nice work! I'm not including all of my subscriptions, and the list is missing all the blogs I read on Livejournal. Mind you, given how blogging has evolved over the past few years, I see less utility in publishing a blogroll anyway.

All that being said, there's still a part of me that wants to drop my source code in the garbage and either download blog software or sign up for a service. It's one of the things I'm learning as a professor -- I'm less willing to spend time tinkering. If I ever relocate, this page will contain a link to the new site.

Happy Spring!

I'm quite pleased that the Coen brothers managed to pick up a few Academy Awards for No Country For Old Men. It's a solid, brilliantly written movie that deserves the accolades it has received.

Nath, on the other hand, is disappointed that Sarah Polley was passed over for her wonderful work on the adapted screenplay for Away From Her. That deep, moving film certainly deserved the oscar nod, she says.

In the end, though, it's hard for us to stand firm on our convictions, since neither of us has seen either movie. It doesn't stop us from defending them, mind you. Indeed, among all the movies nominated in all the top categories, we've seen a combined total of two: we've both seen Ratatouille, and I've seen Sweeney Todd. I guess we'll both just have to agree to, er, be ignorant.

Excuse me while I whine and wring my hands. So, I've been a bit busy. It's hard enough just trying to have the lectures for my grad course ready before the lectures actually begin. Then there's the conference that had a deadline yesterday. I managed to send in a paper by ripping out one of the unpublished parts of my thesis. We did extend the deadline by a week (I say "we" because I'm one of the organizers and managing the submission system), but there's no way I'm taking another look at that submission. That's minor compared to the important conference deadline this coming Friday. I've got three submissions on the go, one of which will definitely get submitted. The others need focused attention.

Nath's been indulging me by letting me work over the past few weekends. However, weekends haven't lived up to their promise of sustained work recently. Last Sunday fell off the work schedule unexpectedly, as did most of this afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon is bad too, and maybe tomorrow evening. Poof! I guess it's down to late nights during the week.

OK, late nights I can deal with. I just set up my laptop and either listen to music (Squeezebox!) or put on a movie for background noise. Except, and here's the kicker, as of tonight it looks like my laptop's dying. It puts itself to sleep every fifteen seconds or so. It wakes up just fine, but obviously I can't get work done that way (and I have no idea how I'm going to lecture). I'm copying files off the laptop now (it doesn't seem to be narcoleptic when booted up in FireWire mode), just in case. Ooh, the copying just finished. Anyway, let's hope I can make the laptop happy again (I already tried resetting the PMU and NVRAM, but I'll try again; any other suggestions welcome). I can't afford a new one. Now would be a great time for a wealthy patron / surprise grant / lottery jackpot.

Hmmm, and now I can't seem to connect to internet sites (aside from the ones I'm already connected to). This is turning into a real "things fall apart / center cannot hold" sort of evening. Let me know if you see any slouching beasts.

As reported previously, when my department approved my tenure case I rushed out and ordered a new iMac. At the time, I mentioned that my case must proceed through several more levels of administration before it becomes official, meaning that I have further opportunities to reward myself. I should mention that by the end of that same week, my case was also approved by the faculty level, further reducing the odds that I'll encounter any unexpected difficulties. I took that as entitlement to another gift, though perhaps not on the scale of an entire computer.

The iMac is quite a departure from my previous home desktop. I assembled that machine from its component parts and maintained a Linux installation customized just so. With the iMac, you pull the machine out of the box and, well, that's it. I think I had to plug it in, but I don't recall specifically. My tinkering days are mostly behind me, and probably for the better.

That's great until something doesn't work the way I'd like. With Linux, we had the sound output split to speakers in the office and the stereo in the dining room. After lots of configuration, I had the machine set up so that we could listen to music in the dining room and simultaneously do anything else we wanted on the computer.

No such luck with the Mac. The latest version of OSX helpfully suspends all sound applications when you switch to another user. So if we've got iTunes playing music in the dining room and Nath goes in to check her email, the music stops. And there's absolutely no way to reconfigure the computer to change that.

Now, one more thing happened in the last month that contributed to this chain of events: I got paid for some consulting work I had done. Not a lot, but enough that I realized I could make this problem go away by throwing money at it.

So I took my willingness to reward myself, together with my extra cash, mixed in some latent gadget lust, and bought a Squeezebox. This is something I've wanted for a while. It's a networked music player that receives streamed music from a server running on your home computer. It also connects seamlessly to internet radio, even when the server's not running. Unlike something like Airport Express, this thing doesn't depend on a running iTunes to generate music, so it'll work just fine regardless of who's using the computer. I gather that it's a bit more like Apple TV, but without the TV.

Anyway. Can I just say that this thing is exactly right? My lust was well justified. I plugged it in, told it my wireless password, set a couple of parameters on the server, and it happily started playing my music collection. It's got a fairly nice interface controlled from a good remote. The server software is an open-source project should I experience a relapse of tinkering. Even the sound quality is pretty good. Highly recommended, provided you can find someone to sell you one -- there are few distributors in Canada, and nobody in their right mind would order from a US company that uses UPS to ship to Canada.

I feel like this post should end with an LJ-style "Current Music" listing. Except that I'm currently watching Blue's Clues with my kids. "Pin the flag on Mailbox, pin the flag on Mailbox..."

One of the relics of my high school days is a tattered blue binder with a foldover velcro panel to keep it closed. I know it had a cute brand name; I think it was a "Note Tote".

I never really used the binder, but over the years it accumulated a couple of pieces of memorabilia from high school days that I wanted to hang on to. I remember that there was a brown office-sized envelope containing three or four poems written by Mike ("The Old Chair", "The Old Bag", and "Fat and Bumpy's Idyll").

I also remember that it contained a letter from Brad. Brad grew up a couple of houses down from me and we were friends from about the age when I could reasonably be said to have had friends. Our friendship grew stronger toward the end of high school. When I left Montreal to go to University, he wrote what I remember as a kind, optimistic letter with wishes of success for both of us. Unfortunately I can't find the binder, so I can't say with more certainly what he wrote. I've looked everywhere, and as far as I can tell it's gone.

When email became popular, we kept in touch occasionally that way. For the few years we were both on the west coast, we managed to see each other. We ended up in nearby cities (notwithstanding what I learned was his brief stint in Ottawa), but hadn't communicated much recently.

Brad died last week. He was 34.

I wish I could find that binder.