meta-roj

dummy daddy

self-destruction

gidget

coming from bradblog, via metafilter, a little confusion about pictures of nuclear facilities.

my observation, of course, is that the ‘suspected iranian nuclear facility’ is probably in north korea with saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. so, of course they look the same. they are the same.

it’s a slam dunk.

brad’s catch is a lot better than my own from the new york times.

civil rights

paint

as a former member of the academy (long story), and being familiar with the making of the sausage, i tend to avoid the grammy awards, but this year there’s a little footnote worth noting in all the hype. reuters seems to have wrapped it up in one sentence very nicely:

Jazz Composer Nabs Grammy After Web-Only Sales [reuters, feb 13, 2005]

Jazz composer Maria Schneider took home a Grammy on Sunday for her album “Concert in the Garden,” without selling a single copy in a record store.

now, you can argue about the artistic merits of a grammy winner, but you can’t argue about the relationship between grammy nominees/winners and sales. this year, we have the first grammy winner that’s not pumping cash through retail chains. that’s a big deal.

so, congratulations to maria schneider… and maybe you’ll drop by that link and push this envelope just a little bit further.

one more little detail – schneider is doing the limited edition thing – 10,000 units, and the auction thing. if you’re interested in music promotion in the new century, that’s worth a visit too.

‘Concert in the Garden’ Limited Edition CD [mariaschneider.com]

I will release only 10,000 CDs of ‘Concert in the Garden’ –that’s it, not one more.
9,000 of these CDs are available for pre-order. 1,000 are being reserved for a special auction to be announced in the near future. … After these CDs are sold, this recording will only be available as a digital download.

update (2005.02.21): joi picked up on this, so i can relax now that the world is aware :). barry got it too. excellent.

today’s story of photo-terrorists comes from the west coast, specifically san francisco, via boingboing.

it seems that the well-intentioned individuals tasked with saving us from the terrorists have lost sight of the rules that operate in this society. or at least, are supposed to operate in this society.

attack of the sf muni fare insectors

When I refused to stop, they tried to cite me but couldn’t find any relevant code, regulation or law to cite me. Enlisting the aid of the SFPD and BART Police officers also yielded now [sic] results. No citation was issued.

of course, i’m not catching all the photo-terrorist stories in my space, but when one creeps up to the level where it gets my attention, it’s worth a moment of yours as well.

death of a playwrite

ever afraid to approach a problem from a different perspective, and with the consumer electronics show behind us, it’s time to announce the latest vaporware from the people that love you at rojisan.com (me).

if you’ve been paying especially close attention to this space, you may recall that i’m a big fan of the pitracer, and that’s the approach that i’m taking with my ipod killer. i also grew up in the 80’s music saturation, with a keen interest in the coolest audio widgets, which often came from b&o. i couldn’t afford the really good stuff, but i still had a pretty swanky walkman with neat-o features (cassette form-factor radio module).

so, without further ado, it’s time to reveal the specifications for the podtracer. or rojpod. or zentracer. erm. i’ll get back to you on that once marketing has done some focus groups. anyway, whatever i’m gonna call it, i know what it’s going to include.

the rojpod is about music. keep that in mind.

first, mp3 is out. ogg is out. wma is out. compressing music is bad for music. so the rojpod only plays uncompressed music. not just uncompressed music, but up-converted uncompressed music. using a completely original d/a path, the rojpod won’t play anything that doesn’t have enough bits. i think 512KHz should do (11.6 times cd quality), and nothing less than 128 bits per sample (8 times cd quality). i’ll go ahead and do that math for you – it’s a 65536Kbps and nearly 100 times better than a cd. of course, that also means that your standard cd will only hold about .74 minutes of music.

second, convergence is out. sure, you can get your mp3 player in a phone, or in a video camera, or bolt on a photo display or video player or all of the above and then some, but that’s not about music, and, as you’ll recall, the rojpod is about music. it only plays music.

third, moving parts are out. solid-state redundant storage is the way of the rojpod. with the new format, the typical 4 minute song is going to take about 3.5 gigabytes of storage. double that to catch any errors (redundant), and the 20 gig rojpod holds 2.9 songs.

fourth, it’s going to come with a bone-conduction sub transducer and real headphones (no earbud for the rojpod, please). it’ll be a big headband arrangement that has great earpieces with a thumper on the back that sits at the base of your skull.

so, there you have it. the rojpod ipod killer. shouldn’t cost much more than $10 grand or so – retail. but for you…. $9500.

and don’t give me any trouble about the limited playing time. pick a couple songs you really like and listen to them until you don’t like them anymore. radio’s been doing that to you for years now.