Has anyone ever noticed that old recorded audio from the 1920s and 30s has a specific set of qualities that make it sound old, but it's hard to describe exactly WHAT it is?

Obviously, it's lower quality audio, but that's not just it, obviously: I can lower the sample rate ("quality" level) of a modern MP3 and it just sounds like a modern MP3 played through crappy speakers, not like it was recorded in the 1930s.

A couple other things I've noticed from both music and movies of the era (which I've heard a lot of in my Film History class): when people talk or sing, their voice has a very distinctive quality, as if they're talking from their nose at times. There's only so much you can chalk up to it being an accent of the day, though: I've heard people speaking with what sounds like a 20s or 30s accent (mostly when trying to imitate these old recordings), but it still definitely sounds like the recording technology was doing SOMETHING to their voices other than just not getting all the information. Something in the pitch, frequency, whatever...

To see if I could figure it out, I tried taking a recording of a 1930s radio show where they were broadcasting an orchestra playing a particular piece of classical music and a 2000s recording of the same piece of music. I played one after the other in my audio program while watching the audio analyzer (which makes a graph of how loud the high and low sounds in an audio file are at any particular time) and noticed very little difference. All it seemed to indicate was that the 1930s recording was the same as the 2000s recording, just lower quality.

When I lowered the sample rate of the 2000s recording to an incredibly low number, it definitely sounded a little bit more like the 1930s recording, but there was still a certain "muddiness" missing.

I'm sure there are some semi-audio geeks who read my journal...does anyone know what the other piece of the puzzle is?

• 20:21 Robot. #

Only in Kenya...



I'm sorry, the thought occurred to me and I just had to.

This is me ranting about computer and technology related issues, but it's more of a money and ethics thing than a technical, geeky gripe. So I think it might be interesting to everyone.

When I first got my Mac, I was looking around for random, free programs to soup it up. One of the first I found was called AppDelete. I learned that Mac OS doesn't have a way of "uninstalling" software the way Windows does, mostly because the average program has all its data in one ".app" file. However, they do store little bits of data elsewhere, so just deleting the program won't get rid of the clutter. Instead, if you drag the ".app" to AppDelete's window, it searches for all those little files and puts them into the trash for you along with the program. I loved that program, and found it to be very helpful, especially when I was trying to delete a program which left a VERY large amount of junk in a weird place.

All that was nice and dandy and I used it for about a year. About three times over this year it told me "A new version is available, click to download." I did each time, and it either started working faster, cleaning out more crap each time, and one time it was given a graphical upgrade. However, as I was opening it up to delete something one day, it asked me to download the update, so I did, thinking it was just another fix. Much to my surprise, the next time I opened it, it said "Your free trial period is over. To continue using AppDelete, please pay $5." When I refused, the program quit.

What?

I went to the program's website to see what it was talking about. After scrolling down a bit, I found at the bottom of the page:

"AppDelete will now require a small payment after a few uses. This was a difficult decision to make, but with all the time and effort that was put into it and COMPLETE DEDICATION AND SUPPORT going forward I hope you can understand why I did this. You can make a payment through PayPal by clicking on the link below or just visit my Payments page above for more information. The minimum payment is $5.00 and I appreciate your understanding and support. THANK YOU!!!"

Oh, thanks, that would have been nice of you to tell me. Granted, I did press the "Update" button myself, but that didn't tell me exactly WHAT the update was or send me to the website, it just installed the damn kill-switch.

I Googled around for the previous version of the program and installed that. But that didn't work. It still gave me that message AND prompted me to update. I guess all the update did was add one of those hidden files which the program was supposed to find and delete for me. Wonderful.

Now, what really irks me is that this deceptive, sneaky tactic of tricking me into crippling a free program wasn't done by a big corporation. Not even a company. This is one guy. An independent programmer. This is the kind of behavior one would expect from a money-grubbing company like, well, Apple. Not from the little guy.

Well, I wouldn't pay a big corporation even $5 if they tricked me into this bullshit, and I'm not paying an indie hacker either. He doesn't need my money anyway, because from the looks of this, he's well on his way to being hired by an evil corporation for more money than he'd make even if everyone DID pay him.

Of course, there's an ironic, happy ending to this story. In a search for a new, free alternative, I found AppTrap, which does the same thing except you don't need to open a different program. You drag an app file to the trash, and a dialog box asks you if you want to delete all the crap it comes with. The first program I deleted with this new, superior method was AppDelete.

...but then draganta did and so I felt it was necessary to out-meme him.

If you saw ME in a police car, what would you think I got arrested for?

I'm sorry I was unable to see pyrophin for the last time before he goes down to Florida.

Actually, I'm not, because nobody likes him.

Actually, I am, because I love ya, Phin. I'm gonna miss you, but you'll always be in my (cold, callous, unscrupulous) heart.

And you still owe me a movie.

Kyle Gabler has officially replaced Will Wright as my favorite person ever (and I've been looking for a replacement ever since Spore came out).

Mr. Gabler is the creator of the wonderful game World of Goo which is quite possibly going to save the Wii platform from dying ever. However, before that, he did other lovely things:



( Cut for more awesome )



This man is amazing.

As much as I was pissed about the fact that my time with Fallout 3 was abruptly, without any reasonable warning, cut short, and an attempt at replaying it proved rather unsatisfying, I do admit that the time I spent with it was a lot of fun.

And apparently five million people agree enough to buy it.

Holy shit. Those sure were some effective ad campaigns. Halo 3 sold less than that in its first week. Granted, it was only available on the 360, and this figure counts all three platforms that Fallout 3 was released on. But whoa.

Poor Interplay. Going bankrupt before they could make money on this game (granted their version was completely different, but still).

Furthermore, it should be noted that The Dark Knight cost $180 million to make, and made about the same amount of money ($300 million) in its first week. Fallout 3 cost considerably less than $180 million to make. More like $50 million, tops. Interesting to think about that.

So Obama won, but Proposition 8 in California appears to be passing.

Voters in California have passed a measure which explicitly, bluntly, "eliminates the right" for people to do something.

And at some of the Yes on 8 victory rallies, people are saying that gay and lesbian couples do deserve the same rights - we just can't call it marriage.

Yet they chose to just get rid of the closest thing we had instead of just proposing to change the word for something already in place.

This is a case of A) What the fuck is wrong with you dumbasses or B) That's complete bullshit, you're still bigots.

The city went NUTS after Obama won.


Obama Flash Mob Victory Party in Union Square from Zacqary Adam Green on Vimeo.

I think I was standing in the middle of history or something.

I SEE A WHITE HOUSE AND I WANT TO PAINT IT BLACK!!!!!!

It's OBAMAGICAL!

• 23:57 I just saw a cab stop for a black man. How progressive. #

YOUR CHARACTER DIES AT THE END OF FALLOUT 3.

Or maybe not, but whichever of the four semi-different endings you end up with, you do not get to keep playing the rest of the game.

This is especially annoying because I finished the main quest at Level 14, and my previous permanent save was at Level 11. And some of the side quests were a lot more fun than a lot of the story missions.

Now let me explain the logistics of this bullshit:

At the "thrilling climax" of Fallout 3, you and some crazy soldier dudes perform an epic assault on a water purifier built in the ruins of the Jefferson Memorial. Except a giant robot is doing 95% of the fighting, so it's not that difficult. When you finally get inside, all of a sudden you find out that you need to activate the purifier now to prevent a pressure buildup from making it explode. And the control panel is in a room with lethal levels of radiation.

So it was a choice between me or the other soldier who was with me. For some reason, my mutant companion, who, when I first met him, had retrieved a quest item from a room with lethal levels of radiation because it didn't affect him, was not an option here, and didn't even chime in as we discussed this. So I decided that I'd go in, because my armor gave me radiation resistance, and I could pop some pills which gave me even more resistance. She said something to the effect of "hurry or you won't make it out," which made me believe I actually had a chance. So I immediately took pills to de-radiate my body, up my resistance, put on ALL the armor, and went in. With my resistance level, the radiation was at the point where it might kill me after about 15 minutes of standing still. I activated the thing, and then I was treated to a non-interactive sequence from my first person perspective of my character collapsing on the floor. Cue epilogue movie talking about the "heroic lone wanderer," roll credits, return to main menu.

What. The. Fuck.

I loaded my quicksave which I made before I went in there and told the bitch to do it herself. She did, she died, same ending, except this time the narrator criticized me for not sacrificing myself. Roll credits, return to main menu.

The other two possible endings involved putting a virus in the water purifier first that would kill mutants. Either way, someone had to go in there and die along with the entire fucking game.

Now, I understand why, even if you make the "true hero sacrifice herself," the game could be a little bit strange if you kept playing. With freely available fresh water available to everyone, the wasteland wouldn't be such a harsh and hostile place anymore, right? Then why the fuck did Bethesda cook up this "Project Purity" storyline if they were well aware that it would end in the game being unplayable?

Yes, I know that few RPGs are like Oblivion (also a Bethesda game) and most have a clear-cut ending where you can't go back and do all the side quests. In fact, Fallout 1 and 2 were like this. But at least in those other games, you either get a clear sense of when you're about to pass the point of no return, or the ending is mildly satisfying and not abrupt like that. I was not expecting to have all the time I spent building my character (who was, by the way, not at level 20 yet) whisked away in an instant like that.

There were moments when I admired the game's genius because I legitimately felt backstabbed by characters. The ending made me feel backstabbed by the developers.

With that in mind, I give this game a Torrent It out of 5.

So the supporters of re-banning gay marriage in California are now comparing the legalization of it to the actions of Hitler and the Nazis...



This is a clear example of how hate and prejudice is so ridiculously wrong, but am I allowed to make an exception and start hating all Christians now? Please? I'd really like to.

With Microsoft passionately trying to get Windows 7 out by the beginning of 2010, claiming it will fix all the mistakes they made in Vista, it seems that a very interesting analogy is forming here. Assuming that Microsoft DOES get Windows 7 semi-right, and people don't rant and scream about it quite as much as they did with Vista, how will it all go down in the history books?

Is Vista equivalent to Windows ME on a much grander, more destructive scale? Will people be upgrading from XP to 7 the way people upgraded from 98 to XP?

Just a thought.

• 20:37 Middle aged woman working drug store counter singing along to simple plan on the radio.. Wtf #

My other class project was a "Character Study." I did one of snowhusky01.


Portrait of Snow from Zacqary Adam Green on Vimeo.

I worked long hours on both this and my other project to get them to look and sound their best, and after all that we didn't even get to screen everyone's projects in class, so theoretically these are due next week.

This is probably one of the most fun I've ever had doing homework:

EDIT: Here's a higher quality version, which is also in HD if you click the "HD" button. YouTube version is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW_valOT_5E

The Sound of the Undead from Zacqary Adam Green on Vimeo.

Just in time for Halloween kinda.

Beer + politics = wtfs. This one is done rather cleverly, though. I like it.

He was more on TV than I was...sadness.

Full thing here. Good stuff: