Every now and then I see something built using Flash that makes me wonder whether I should learn to program in it. I mean, ultimately there's nothing you can do in Flash that couldn't be done any number of other ways, Java being the most likely alternative. However, it seems like Flash is running away with the coolness and sophistication, leaving Java to pick up the unappealing scraps (such as my university's appalling graduate student application system). I think I have a prejudice that tells me that Flash is too slow and not very programmable. I suspect that impression is about 17 years out of date (my first CO-OP job in 1992 involved creating Interactive Multimedia content using Macromind Director, which I believe was a very early precursor of Flash).

The most recent case in which I was thoroughly impressed by Flash is Audiotool. Audiotool is a flash-based music production system. It provides simulations of some classic synth gear: the TR-909, the TB-303, a matrix tool reminiscent of the Yamaha Tenori-On, a pile of effects pedals, and a few other gizmos. It's obviously less flexible than Reason, but the fact that it runs as a Flash gizmo inside a browser window is somehow very neat. Plus the interface looks like a physical tabletop covered with gear; the comparison to the Reason Rack is inescapable.

Seeing tools like ths one makes me think I ought to learn Flash for graphics and sound work. Happily, one of the developers of Audiotool has made the source code for a bunch of his previous experiments available for the curious. That might be a good starting point. There's also the growing body of open source Flash development tools to consider.

First of all, thanks to my mother, who pointed out that this site was reporting internal server errors. For the record, I believe the maintainers of this server upgraded the web server installation. As a result I was running on a more recent version of Python, in which the random number generator I was trying to use was deprecated. I changed my calls to random (mainly used to choose a tagline at the top of the home page) and all was well.

I realize that I left the riddle in the previous entry unanswered. Ian was the first to respond with the correct answer (not surprising, since he studies codes for a living, at least to a first approximation). I'm sure most readers recognized the mysterious black writing as Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, the writing system used to write aboriginal languages such as Inuktitut. OK, great, so they included some Inuktitut message in the ad, perhaps the name of the film, right?

Wrong. The text is a simple substitution cypher (a cryptogram) of the English name. It's easy to see that, because the syllabic characters are broken into "words" with the same length as those in the English name. Looking more closely, you can see that the same symbols are used consistently to represent the same letters: ᑎ for T, ᕿ for E, and so on (go ahead, test your browser's Unicode support!).

So what's the deal here? It comes across as a cheap and insensitive stunt, as if the person creating the ad thought they had to make it look more "Inuity". As if it didn't matter what the text was; the syllabics are just clip art, after all, not actual language. Besides, in Canada the movie doesn't even use an Inuktitut name or writing, as is obvious from the movie's official site -- just French and English. (They do use the name Inuujjutiksaq internationally; I wonder what that translates as.)

I've been trying to come up with a good analogy for what kind of insensitive graphic could accompany a movie about a different culture or group, just to reinforce the point. But I haven't been able to pick the appropriate group or offensive graphic: "Can you believe that the ad for that movie about a black/Jewish/gay/furry has a _________ in it?" And no, I don't mean a black-Jewish-gay-furry person (as interesting a movie as that would make). Pick one, or devise your own.

We have the calendar for our local repertory theatre hanging from our bulletin board at home. On the front page of the current issue, they've been advertising the Canadian film The Necessities of Life. Here's their ad:

After walking past this ad for weeks and merely glancing at it, I noticed something very odd about it over the past few days. Does anyone else see what it is? And no, I'm ignoring the two (count 'em, two) typos in the name Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. Just curious.

I finally got around to reading the written comments on my teaching evaluation forms from last term. For the most part they're positive. The overall ratings are probably my lowest ever, which isn't surprising given that this is the first time I've taught non-majors. And some individual students were quite negative. Oh well. The most common criticism was that the lectures are too fast. I do have to work on that -- I tend to speed up when I get excited.

There were a few interesting comments on my personal appearance. One student wrote "I appreciated that Craig always had a casual appearance. It made him very approachable". I've seen different attitudes on the question of appropriate dress for faculty. Clearly I'm on the casual end, though I don't go around in the summer wearing tight Adidas shorts like at least one professor in my department. I know our chair (who is a very snappy dresser) would prefer us all to be a bit more dressed up. But I agree with this student: I'm a casual person, and I want students to feel at-ease with me. My uncle, a distinguished professor, once told me that the only rule I needed to remember for teaching was to wear a jacket and tie, and I know professors my age who follow that rule. I don't think I could.

On the other hand, I suppose it's possible to be too casual. Two students, one from each of my sections, wrote that I should shave my back hair because it's distracting. I assume they're not suggesting that I shave it in class; that would be very distracting indeed. Perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone and wear more turtlenecks.

Happy new year! With the arrival of 2009, I bring you another unsolicited discussion about words.

I've been reading Dickens's Oliver Twist, which Nath was kind enough to give me as a holiday present. I haven't read any Dickens before, though we've enjoyed listening to Patrick Stewart's reading of A Christmas Carol ever since Chris gave it to us year ago. Through that reading, I've come to love the rhythm of Dickens's prose (made all the better through Patrick Stewart's delivery).

In this book we are introduced to a number of scofflaws and ne'er-do-wells, including Fagin (the old Jew), Bill Sikes, Jack Dawkins (The Artful Dodger), and Charley Bates. This last character, being a youth, is frequently referred to by Dickens as "Master Bates". Heh heh heh. Master Bates. Get it? Of course you do.

Now, let's reflect on this. We have to assume that Dickens did not intend this pun (I mean, it's not like Charley Bates spends the book, er, living up to his name). We also have to assume that he was intelligent enough to avoid introducing such an egregious pun unintentionally, since it disrupts the flow of the story for intelligent-but-puerile readers (i.e., me). The conclusion I come to is that the word "masturbate" simply wasn't in common usage at the time.

Is that possible? Well, the introduction to my copy of Oliver Twist claims that the book was serialized beginning in 1837, in a magazine for which Dickens was hired as editor. Looking up "masturbate" in the Oxford English Dictionary, we see that the first recorded use of the word in English was in 1839 (and the next after that was in 1880). The dictionary also tells us to compare with the french masturber, which was used by Marquis de Sade in 1787. (Interestingly, there are also several competing etymologies for the word.) Taking the OED as authoritative on first use, we can make a legitimate claim that indeed, Dickens might not have been aware of the word when he wrote Oliver Twist, despite his considerable vocabulary. We can assume that this wasn't a not-so-subtle bit of lowbrow humour at his character's expense (as funny as that would be).

Of course, this analysis leads inevitably to one other question. If masturbation was only invented in the early 1800s, what did people do before that to pass the time?

This morning, I decided spontaneously that I would finally attack the problem of hooking a commenting system into this site. I figured out a simple way to do this.

Now, many of you already use the Livejournal feed of this blog for comments. I appreciate that, since they did all the hard work and I'm just piggybacking on top of that. I decided that when building the page view for individual thingo entries (which you can find by following the link from LJ, or clicking on [link]), I would scrape the LJ page for my feed and figure out what URL they're using to represent that entry. Then I can embed that link in my blog to direct people to the appropriate page for comments. For bonus points, I'd cache the URL so that I can go back later and see old comments.

Mission accomplished, sort of. If you're looking at the single entry view for this entry, there's a fair chance that you'll see a comments link at the bottom. The caching doesn't seem to be working, but I'm not worried about that problem. You see, the big issue is that LJ doesn't seem to store old syndicated posts and their comments. All the wonderful comments you've left in the past are gone! We can't revisit our discussion on whether Harry Potter can be choked underwater, for example.

I guess I'm left with a couple of options. I can write my own commenting system. Writing blog software was an interesting exercise in 2000, but at this point I can't see the point; frankly, other people have done much better jobs at this than I ever will. I can become a partial sell-out and install popular blogging software like Blosxom or MoveableType, or become a total sell-out and use a hosted blogging site. In both cases, I would want to find an automated way to pump all my old blog entries into the new system. Or I can abandon comments altogether and remain a Web 1.0 curmudgeon (as my uncle would say, I can embrace trailing-edge technology).

Er, comments?

It was a heroic tale of derring-do, and we are admittedly well into October by now. Nevertheless, it is my pleasure to offer you September's Minute (well, 2:16, but who's counting?).

Download: [ogg] [mp3]

Notes:

• Yes, I'm calling this September's OMOM. I'm hoping to have more time in the second half of the month to do an October Minute.

• Yes, this is more bleepy electronic stuff (sorry, no chucka guitars). Unlike some of the previous Minutes, however, I actually kind of like this one. I think it holds together reasonably well.
• The whole thing got started because of the beautiful sound that makes up the sixteenth-note sequences. The sound was hiding inside a complex arpeggiated Combinator in the Reason Factory Sound Bank, but I'm using it without the arp.
• Unlike several other Months, I didn't draw inspiration from Zero 7 this time. The most obvious antecedent for this song is the beautiful Aphex Twin song "Chesh", which is on an ambient compilation that Doug gave me years ago. I think the high theremin-like sound towards the end is reminiscent of a song by Aphex Twin and μ-Ziq on the "Expert Knob Twiddlers" album. So thank you, Mr. James. I also stole one miniscule idea from Tom Third.

Thanks for listening, and remember to ask your local radio DJ to play more Minutes of Music.

Those of you who eagerly watched the calendar inch over into October, hoping for the next installment of OMOM, are no doubt disappointed by now. I still haven't put one up for September, and I'm not sure I'll be able to make one any time soon. My schedule's simply too full at the moment. Rest assured that when I find some spare time, I'll devote (some of) it to music making. Interestingly, T suggested today that we should start an on-campus music production club, which would meet over lunch every two weeks or so and work on making music. That would probably help me find more time for OMOM.

In other news, I'm pleased to report that I supported the arts. Specifically, I purchased a single mega-ticket for a five night performance of all fifteen Shostakovich string quartets. Woo hoo! I even threw in a donation to help support this fairly ambitious project. And so, to our esteemed prime minister, who claims that ordinary Canadians do not support the arts, let me say this: Bite me, Harper.

In still other news, I'm really enjoying the new album Dear Science by TV on the Radio. But I don't think I'm out of line when I say that the video for the song "Golden Age" is, like, totally gay. I'm not I could articulate why exactly, but, well, wow.

With the onset of autumn, Nath brought home a book of slow cooker recipes from the library. Hurray! I love soups and stews that have been simmering all day in the slow cooker. Also, it's just about the only way that my poor nubby teeth can handle beef.

Unfortunately, this cookbook is not without its problems. In several places, a recipe will encourage you to "serve this with" some other side dish mentioned elsewhere in the book. The Chicken Cacciatore recipe suggests Roasted Potatoes as a side dish. Great, except that both recipes take hours to cook in the slow cooker (or am I expected to have two?). To be perfectly fair, I should say that I don't know exactly how long it takes to cook the roasted potatoes -- the page number you are directed to contains the recipe for Pork Chops With Winter Fruit, as does the entry for Roasted Potates in the index. I'm not sure what the deal is there.

Later, the recipe for Caramel Peaches (yum!) observes that it's "the perfect dish to whip together when unexpected guests arrive". Mind you, this is a dish that cooks on low heat for four to six hours. I can understand "whipping together" a batch of cookies or brownies. But if you have six hours to put together this dish for impending guests, they can scarcely be considered unexpected. On the other hand, making your guests wait six hours for dessert might be an appropriate way to punish them for arriving unexpectedly. Take that, guests!

There's a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sitting in my downstairs bathroom. When I'm down there I occasionally pick it up and read a few pages.

Recently, I re-read the chapter entitled "The Silver Doe". (Spoiler alert...) In this chapter, Harry discovers the sword of Gryffindor lying at the bottom of a frozen pond. He determines that he must dive to the bottom of the pond to get it. He's wearing a locket around his neck (a Horcrux) that is the sword's enemy. And then...

Harry put off the moment of total submersion from second to second, gasping and shaking, until he told himself that it must be done, gathered all his courage and dived.

The cold was agony: it attacked him like fire. His brain itself seemd to have frozen as he pushed through the dark water to the bottom and reached out, groping for the sword. His fingers closed around the hilt; he pulled it upwards.

Then something closed tight around his neck. He thought of water weeds, though nothing had brushed him as he dived, and raised his empty hand to free himself. It was not weed: the chain of the Horcrux had tightened and was slowly constricting his wind pipe.

Harry kicked out wildly, trying to push himself back to the surface, but merely propelled himself into the rocky side of the pool. Thrashing, suffocating, he scrabbled at the strangling chain, his frozen fingers unable to loosen it, and now little lights were popping inside his head...

My goal here is not to leave you in suspense about what happens (hint: there are 300 left pages after this scene, so it's a safe bet that Harry doesn't die).

No, I was wondering: does anybody else see the problem with this passage?

[update: 14 September 2008 at 07:46]: Comments here.