I’ll get right to the point. The movie Top Gun was good for one thing. Lots of pictures of gratuitous aviation. I was 17 when it was released and, like most of the rest of the cinema, I spent a fair bit of time looking at the floor during the love scene. I was there to see fast jets (even if some were a little unbelievable).
That said, the song that accompanied that scene is epic. It has remained a firm favourite over the years.
That is all.
It’s not often I hear a new song through mainstream media that makes me stop and take notice.
One such occasion was in November 2004. I had just moved back to Wellington from Auckland. I was staying at my parents’ house while they were overseas on holiday and my family were yet to come back and join me. So evenings were spent mostly watching TV.
I think it was Friday nights that saw Rove Live screen in New Zealand. This particular episode featured an Aussie songstress who I’d heard of but had no real interest in – too ‘pop’ for me from what little I’d heard. But this number performed live on the show really struck a chord with me.
Within a few days I had bought Delta Goodrem‘s album Mistaken Identity, which has a few other gems on it too.
Please forgive the slight quality issue in part of this recording. There is another video on YouTube without this problem but I feel the audio on this one is superior.
Continuing the series of musical posts and jumping forward to the present. Some of my most recently discovered music comes from the biking DVDs my sons have. One is into downhill mountain bkiing and the other freestyle BMX.
These two songs have been heard many, many times in our house and I can honestly say I enjoy them every time.
From the downhill discipline comes Walking on a Dream from Empire of the Sun.
And from the freestyling BMXers comes the wickedly catchy Geraldine from Glasvegas.
I remember hanging around in the 7th form common room. Rather a lot actually. I wasn’t the best at table tennis, but it wasn’t due to lack of practice. I was probably skipping English class again. They were probably discussing bloody Billy the Bard again. Never liked the guy, myself.
Anyway, there was music in the common room, sometimes. Arguing, almost always. Arguing over music was a special passtime. Some of my most delightful musical discoveries have come from friends over the years and this would have to have been one of the first.
The album Who’s Afraid of the Art Of Noise? was removed before it played to completion, but my friend’s choice lasted long enough for my interest to be piqued and it became one of my earliest CD purchases the following year.
Two tracks stand out from this album, and for different reasons.
Close To The Edit is purest Art of Noise brilliance – living up to their name. I had no idea a video existed for this track – a video even madder than the music. Look away if you like old musical instruments.
The second track shows another side of the group, being somewhat reminiscent of 10CC’s epic track Not In Love. Art of Noise’s Moments in Love is long, luxurious and a classic. It took me a little while to find the full 10 minute version. Enjoy.
For what, I’m not entirely sure.
The last few months have been a bit of a blur. Work has held my focus a lot and at home I seem to often just be in a state of perpetual tiredness. Turning the light out well before midnight would probably help. There’s not much to be done about the 6:45am alarm.
But never mind all that. A friend of mine has been entertaining the internet with his All Time Top 25 Tunes and having just caught up on the last of them, it reminded me I had been posting musical stuff here (and earlier on the podcast blog) from my past.
So it’s time for another. Another musical episode of my psyche. This particular song is a little special because it’s one of my mother’s favourites too. Released at the same time as her solo debut album, Alf, Alison Moyet’s cover of That Ole Devil Called Love, I guess, spanned the decades.
I posted this earlier tonight on Google+, but thought it deserved airing here too.
All politicians, and indeed all of us, need to learn one fundamental lesson.
No matter what you think, no matter what you believe, no matter your intentions, there will always be someone who disagrees.
While the only meaningful course of action is to stand up for, stand behind your beliefs, just remember that – to the other person – you’re just as wrong as you think they are.
Because there’s every chance they have the same level of conviction as you, that makes you wrong. Even if you don’t believe it.
The better person, while standing up for their beliefs, keeps an open mind.
Failure to understand this fundamental fact leads to political, cultural, ethnic and religious conflict. Conflict which gives neither party any lasting gain.
Mutual respect and understanding makes winners of everyone and leads to the best outcomes.
To our political “leaders” who just spent half an hour arguing whether a $13 minimum wage creates more jobs or makes workers poorer (than a $15 minimum wage), what might you achieve if you worked together?
$14 anyone?
Herewith a musical interlude for you.
I decided it was about time I got back into doing things with all the music I have at my disposal. While The Sitting Duck Podcast (SDP) is technically no more, this does essentially follow on from that. I’ve thrown away – for now at least – the theme tune and other hallmarks that made the SDP and just concentrated on a pleasant audio experience.
This particular release, production, episode, podcast, call it what you will, is dedicated to a friend of mine. He knows who he is. I hope you all enjoy it.
Tracks played:
I’m currently reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. There is a chapter in there which describes Apple’s visit to Xerox PARC where they discovered the marvellous new concept of the desktop metaphor for a graphical user interface (GUI). The general idea was if the computer screen could mimic a real, physical environment, it would be more intuitive to use.
Now while I’ve not seen a lot of buttons on real desks, they are nevertheless real objects. You find them on phones, on appliances, on remote controls and in lifts (elevators for you Americans). So the concept of pushing a button to the point at which it engages some function – a dial tone for instance – is fairly straight forward.
In recent years, however, I have discovered an annoying trait of some button hardware, principally in lifts. You see, when you push that button, two things happen. Your floor is selected so that the lift control system knows where to send the lift and a light comes on which hopefully signals you that the selection has been made. But not always.
In some lifts I have been repeatedly surprised by a button that lights up, but does not select the floor and indeed does not stay lit! My muscle memory for pushing a lift button is to stab at it with my finger and wait to see a light. I only need a few milliseconds of light before my attention falls away and my mind tells me the floor is selected. Sometimes I glance back at the button to discover it is not lit. Indeed sometimes this is prompted by the inaction of the lift itself.
I figure there are two electrical circuits involved. One to light up the button as simply as a light switch and one to signal the selection to the control software. The latter action then feeding back that the button should remain lit. By hitting the button too lightly or too momentarily, I believe I am only engaging the first function.
As a programmer, this behaviour annoys the hell out of me. It’s not deterministic from the user’s point of view and, well, why are these two functions disparate? It makes no sense at all. What is the point of lighting up a button merely to reflect that I pushed it? It sounds like a scene from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. (It could at least admonish me to not push the button again.)
But at least when we return to the desktop metaphor, this kind of non-deterministic behaviour is not a problem, right? Wrong! Microsoft Windows XP, bless its little cotton socks, does exactly the same thing!
I don’t see it often, but I saw it again today. My mouse pointer movement was not as accurate as it could have been so the tip of the arrow rested on the very edge of the button in question. I clicked anyway and was rewarded with the “pressed” view of the button. But no action! My suspicion is that, much like the disparate circuits in the lift, there are multiple threads of code in the GUI handling the physical appearance of the button and the actioning of its related function. These two threads must be using different models of where the bounds of the buttons are. There is, after all, the bevel and the border to consider as “in” or “out” in each case.
PLEASE STOP IT!
That’s my message to programmers. Steve Jobs was a stickler for detail. He never settled for “good enough”. Sometimes he wouldn’t even settle for “great”, instead striving for “insanely great”. This is why Apple products are pleasant to use. The physical metaphors have been tuned to the point where they are intuitive.
There may be a sound reason to separate the functions in button processing – indeed the Model View Controller (MVC) paradigm may insist it is the best solution. But if you’re going to divide up a task, please ensure the resulting subtasks add up to the original concept.
When I push a button I expect the same result every time. It has two states – pushed or not. Any more – like I saw today – and it’s just sloppy.
Now that a lot of the hubbub has died down, I feel it an appropriate time to give my comments on the passing of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
The news affected me more than, in hindsight, I would have epxected. I didn’t tear up, like some seem to be doing. I did disbelieve for just a moment – until I realised the source was Apple – and then the primary thought hit me.
Bugger.
My thoughts did not turn to Apple at first, but to the man who must have had a hell of a time in the last 6-9 months in the knowledge (it has been reported) that his time on this planet was very limited. And then they turned to his family, for if he lived his personal life with anything like the vision and determination he put into Apple, then his passing will be an incredibly difficult event to deal with.
And thirdly, my thoughts turned to Apple. I don’t for a second believe the company will falter any time soon, but to lose such a leader must inevitably hit them square in the chest and give pause even if only for a moment. I firmly believe that the company’s next move will be to carry on with the plan and continue the success that Steve has enabled.
Steve left this world at the tender age of 56. Far too soon for any human of our time. Too soon for the man, but too soon for the world? We can only wonder what the mind of Steve might have turned out in the next 10, 20, 30 or more years, but we should not forget that in his lifetime he has already contributed far more than most, and we would have been privileged to have been given even a tenth of it. The pipeline inside Apple will doubtless continue to produce his ideas for a while to come, so the journey is not over for the world just yet.
To the people who knew Steve, and they are few, I feel for your loss. For the rest of us, who know him through his company, now his legacy, let’s mark the date and continue our lives, enriched by the ideas of the man. And be thankful.
Hello all.
If you read my blog you’ll have seen my post titled “What’s a podcast?” in which I wonder just what is the distinction between blogging, podcasting and any other type of content creation on the internet. What you’re hearing now is an experiment in the direction I discussed.
At this time I’m not going to say too much of interest as this is more about getting something out there to see how this might work.
But I do have something to say. In fact, I have a request.
Can someone please help me either find or coin a term that can be used to counter the word “fanboy?” I want something which describes a person with a rabid, but unfounded dislike of a brand or product.
Answers on the back of a blog post please (i.e. leave a comment).
Thanks.