Disorderly Content

I've been reading a lot on the Interwebs about Songsmith, Microsoft's software for would be vocalists everywhere. Understand that I hate Microsoft with a rare and wonderful passion; they are and always have been an evil that should be stamped out. But with Songsmith they've outdone themselves. It is to karaoke what karaoke is to opera. Or worse; I'm having trouble coming up with an analogy to justify just how awful it is. We're talking "Decline and Fall of Western Civilization" awful.

Just one example should suffice, although YouTube is full of them. Radiohead's Creep as interpreted by Microsoft:

You're welcome.

Update 01/28: Charles Arthur makes with the explanation of just why Songsmith is so evil and why it's so Microsoftian, which he seems to think aren't the same thing. Which may explain why I read his blog and he doesn't read mine.

Dr. Horrible may get all the attention, but it wasn't the only project to come out of the writer's strike. Farscape alum Ricky Manning showed off his own strike project at the last Burbank convention. It's called Fusion, it's really cool, and it's one of the offerings at Strike.TV. Granted, you won't get to see it with the producer and the cast, but you can't win 'em all...

Or at least say Not now. Thanks to Daring Fireball for pointing me at ClickToFlash, a Safari pluging that holds back the plague that is Adobe Flash. Install it on your Mac and it'll keep all those plugins from sucking up your CPU cycles. The cool thing is that they'll still be on your web pages as placeholders. Just click on the gradient on your page and the Flash loads. But if you don't want it, you don't get it. Simple and effective.

Update 01/27: As with any good Open Source project, ClickToFlash refuses to stand still. The bad news is that yesterday's link no longer works. The good is that there's a new location. The even better is that the new owner has enhanced CTF; Option-click on a Flash image and you have the option (get it?) to remember the site and automatically load Flash content without asking. Definitely cool, and a good example of how responsive Open Source can be.

It's a small thing, but maybe a sign of what's to come. Kottke.org points out that with the new administration we have a new robots.txt file for the White House website. The old one had more than two thousand lines of exclusions from search engines; the new one has one. Think they'll be more transparent than the old gang about more than their website?

The White House website gets updated.

I'm just finishing up a Route 66 adventure in Oklahoma, about which more later. But today I was in a tourist shop off the Interstate, named for and showcasing Native American crafts and artwork. I was looking at Indian woven baskets. But these weren't Indian. They were made in Pakistan of all places!

I suppose it's better than if they'd been made in India. Now that would have been ironic!

I'm sitting by Gate C3 at Las Vegas Airport, waiting for my flight to Oklahoma City. Vegas has free WiFi, which is awfully nice of them. And there are quite a few other Mac people taking advantage of it. Like Genevieve Weeks. And John Varney. And Jason Ehrlich. And Michael Steiner. And Junka Suzuki. And Martin of the no last name. And HC of the cryptic initials. And Philippe Balayer, whose Mac speaks français.

How do I know all this? Because they have Sharing turned on, and my Finder is offering me the opportunity to go file browsing on their computers. Okay, there's no real danger, assuming their passwords are reasonably unguessable. But it's funny to open the Finder and see so many Macs. Speaking of which, I do have services turned off, don't I?

Thursday night's Daily Show mentioned that Joe The Plumber is heading to the Middle East as a reporter for some right wing website. That would be funny enough, especially since he's as inept with words as he is with a plunger. But what's even better is his reaction to the dangers of going into a war zone. Wurzelbacher's response? He's sure God will protect him because he's a good Christian. Yeah, that's why all those Moslems and Jews are dying. God's too busy worrying about Christians. I can't wait for the locals' reactions to that particular insight.

To quote Bugs Bunny, "What a maroon!"

Given all the money we/I spend on high quality photographic gear, there's a perverse joy to be found in going low tech. There are Holga fanatics for example, for whom the world looks far better in plastic. Me, I've been lusting after a Lensbaby for a while; it's not remotely something I need, but it sure would be fun! The joy comes in limiting focus in a shot, something tilt-shift lenses make easy.

I've written before about the wonderfulness of tilt-shift for video, and how it makes everything seem like it's in miniature. Now we have a website that lets us simulate the effect on photographs. Just go to TiltShiftMaker.com, upload a photo, move a couple of sliders and see your image transformed! It's amazing!

Now about that Lensbaby. I know I have a credit card around here somewhere...

With all the time and energy I've been throwing into photography lately, I decided it was time to get serious about lighting. To that end I ordered a second studio light. Like my first, the new light is an Alien Bees light from Paul C. Buff. Aside from wanting to Buy American^TM, I like the simplicity, the reliability, the performance and the price of their gear. So I put in my order the day before Christmas and sat down to wait.

I'd hoped against hope that the light would arrive before a shoot earlier this week, but weather and UPS conspired against me. (Didn't matter in the end, as other crises delayed that shoot. But that, as they say, is another story for another time.) First came a call from Buff (not himself, but one of his staff) to say that one of the boxes had been returned by UPS. Apparently they had damaged it in shipment, and returned it to the shipper. Except... what was in the box had nothing to do with my order! Some kind of helmets is what I was told. The upshot is that part of my order wouldn't be coming until we could figure out which part got transmogrified into those helmet-like things.

Anyway, the other box arrived last night, containing my new light. So first thing this morning I called Buff (not the guy...), reached the nice lady with the lovely Southern accent who'd talked to me before, and told her what I'd received. And the missing bits will go out today, to be delivered tomorrow. At UPS's expense, for screwing up in the first place, dammit!

Now if only I could get a refund for that 3 Day Shipping I paid for on a different photo-related order. Sorry, guys, but a 3 Day delivery is supposed to take 3 days, not ten. Even with the holidays, that's excessive...

...but maybe not to a foley artist. Still, these guys find their inspiration in the sounds of silent films. Or something like that. Or not. It's all very zen, or at least really confusing...

"The Noises Rest" from lonelysandwich on Vimeo.

(...and if you get the title of this post, you're old!)

Thanks to a friend on the forum I mangle manage, the year that's behind us presented in song: