"Information Age", My Ass

I got a spam email just now with the subject "bedraggle backpack antagonism". The body text is as follows:

"contralto bindery attica cardiff. descriptive britain boy blurt bellyache dayton. corbett definition disciplinarian clog cochran bull curvature clinging clapeyron. annunciate ascomycetes ak cause deterrent azure bearish."

Seriously, what are they trying to sell me? All-You-Can-Eat-Gibberish for $9.95? Either that, or some study has just shown that one out of every million spam recipients will spontaneously send their MasterCard number to anyone with a reply-to address.

Free Enterprise System, your days are numbered.

- g-spot -

Genius Is Manifest In Many Different Ways

"Never gonna stop, eat it up
Such a tasty snack I always eat too much, then throw up
But I'll soon be back for my, my, my, yi, yi, woo
M-m-m-my bologna
M-m-m-my bologna"

- g-spot -

Creep-Me-Out Factor 10, Mr. Sulu!

I just thought : how would you express the perfect number, 777, as time, in minutes and seconds? 7 minutes and 77 seconds, or really, 8 minutes and 17 seconds.

Guess how long it takes for the sun's light to reach the Earth?

I'm trying very hard to make this not mean something.

- g-spot -

What It's Going To Feel Like At The End

That's it.

No more worrying about the consequences of your next action, because there won't be one. No more consequences having to do with you.

People aren't scared of dying, they're scared of the prospect that the Universe can get along without them okay.

- g-spot -

Predictive Generative Music

I've come up with a new way of writing ambient music, which I'm calling "Predictive Generative". You define a “space”, which could be as small as your apartment, or as big as a city. Each logical area within the location is a “sub-space”. In my apartment, the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, living room, front hall and main hall are the sub-spaces.

Next, you create “paths” which are steps taken to go from one sub-space to the next. Each path is a separate instrument in the peice and the note lengths are actual footsteps travelling from one spot in the "space" to another. A normal step forward is a whole note; a 45 degree turn in any direction is a half note; a 90 degree turn is a quarter note. A path can only contain 3 notes; it’s up to the composer to decide which three. The first tone played is considered the “base” tone; the others are “alternate 1” and “alternate 2”.

When you move into a new sub-space, two things happen. One, you change from the base tone to alternate 1; if playing alternate 1, you go to alternate 2; if playing alternate 2, you go back to the base tone. And two : all movement into a new sub-space is preceded by a pause the length of the step just before entering the new sub-space.

All instrument parts loop immediately when their initial notes are finished playing. Because most paths will be of different lengths, the entire peice will become “generative”, or evolving, as different sequences play over each other in ways they didn’t start out playing.

The composer defines the spaces and sub-spaces, has complete discretion regarding the overall tempo and dynamics (tempo and volume changes are allowed, including total silence for an instrument, provided the sequence is still being followed), decides which instrument a path will be played with and which 3 notes are used in each path. The sequence of notes, their lengths, pauses and tone changes, however, are determined entirely by the physical paths.

I even worked out a notation system...

Step Notation:
| Full step
/ 45 degree step
– 90 degree step

Tone Notation:
0 Change to Base tone
+ Change to Alternate 1 tone
x Change to Alternate 2 tone

(Note : tone changes are written in brackets and are always preceded by a pause whose step value is that on the next step in the sequence)

This is the path from my kitchen to my office:

||| (+) | (x) --||||||- (0) |//||

So, what did YOU invent today?

- g-spot -