Just Gotta Love The Great Computer Randomizations

Just Gotta Love The Great Computer Randomizations

Ah, that wonderful feeling: some update blobbed a configuration file somewhere. One that I haven't touched in (scanning file dates) six years now. One that I set a customization flag in by hand the last time it drove me crazy that I couldn't get a gui widget to give me the environment I prefer, damnit, not the as-shipped.

It's really amazing how fast you get out of the habit of looking under the hood when you don't have a daily. I say how fast; 6 years isn't. Well, it used to not be, but that's one of those things you can understand intellectually, not the gut level. Not until you look up and see the dust on the proverbial bookshelf, anyway.

One of this bit twirler's bad habits is to have ingrained a handful of key-bindings into the subconscious long ago. And then have never revisited the muscle memory because it was faster at any given moment to just go with the habits engrained. It's something like having learned scales with a given rhythmic pattern, and then having never gone back and re-learned them with another. I get locked into something that isn't necessarily the best use of keystrokes, but isn't sufficiently troublesome so as to make me take the time to code a different way.

I like to think I should have done something like that for book formatting, for instance. I could and should sit down and write out the various steps, script them, and automate the process, at least so far as the steps to which automation is the better choice. I just haven't. Yet, I'll get to it... eventually. There's always something else though, you see.

And look at me. I did actually want to talk about Machine Learning today. I blame Noah Smith, he put up a Substack post that set out some things I like, and a couple I don't, in relation to where Machine Learning is just at this moment. And then here I am getting caught first of the year arguing with my computer.

Maybe that's it. Maybe the computer's trying to keep me away from discussing the topic. Hmm, I'll have to meditate on that.

If so, I'd like to think that it's my computer telling me that, if I am going to be spending time at the keyboard, wouldn't I rather be fictioning?

Yes, yes I would. We are our bits then, aren't we? inside and outside the brain case. Kind of cool, ain't it? And here we thought we'd all need to directly use our brain stem for signal transport. Understanding really does only come in small chunks.

How To Say It

How To Say It

I've been listening to some of the Rick Rubin episodes of the Broken Record podcast. Rick has a comfortable approach for me; I can understand a little of how he's created the space for the artists he's worked with to do their work.

I understand as well that there are some folks who wouldn't be able to work with Rick. Nor, probably, listen to an hour+ of his interview of another artist. Not all methods apply. Such is life.

The episodes I've been most fascinated with so far are the, now 4 part series of, John Frusciante interviews. I've only just finished part 2 of that series. I'm having to take my time with them.

I caught myself on Rick's 2nd interview with John over an extended discussion of synesthesia. John experienced this effect fully during an early part of his musical life, though he believes that the feeling is still there to a very subtle, but important, degree.

The part that fascinates me about this isn't the synesthesia itself. It's how Rick first tries to pin John down on it.

And, eventually, how John gets Rick to understand that, even if Rick doesn't have the "visual" synesthesia, Rick does have the same feeling that accompanies it.

The one of realization. Or, recognition. When you see the whole of what you're doing in one go.

That a mechanic sees the inside of an engine before they take it apart shouldn't, doesn't really, surprise most folks. Nor a potter feeling the shape of their vase before their hands touch the clay. What John eventually manages to say in the interview is just this point, really.

That people are fascinated with synesthesia comes, I think, from the realization that some experts don't think of their craft in the way that we would anticipate. It's like discovering that Michelangelo "tasted" his art rather than seeing the painting or feeling the sculpture. It doesn't compute.

Because it doesn't fit the conception we use to understand how others do something. We carry around a general idea from our own experience, but then we stumble across an exception. And it feels like something that should be a bigger deal than it is.

Except with music, the fascination should probably be less than it is. Think about it this way: would you be in any way surprised if Yo-Yo Ma said that he saw an entire score, or significant parts of it, rolling through his mind as he played a piece? Beethoven had to see the notes to write them down, right? Somewhere between the ear and the hand passes a translation from audio to visual. Or tactile if playing.

We have a whole industry devoted to teaching musicians to visualize their music in a very particular way. Little black dots on a page.

In fact, a very important part of later music education is re-teaching students to hear and sing, feel, those notes, rather than just see them. High school level musicians very much know how to see music. Often, seeing instead of hearing is so overdeveloped that it's a stumbling block to their continued development.

They have to learn how to hear it: sight-singing, ear training. In many ways, these disciplines are meant to help the to-this-point much-lauded 1st chair reconnect to their inner 5 year old. Let them pick up the instrument and just hear the music again, without the visual getting in the way.

Then you go on to integrate it. And, hopefully, engage all of your senses as a performer. John just shows that those with synesthesia, those who've learned to integrate that unusual sense into their playing and composing, walk the same path from a different starting point.

I've actually been thinking more lately about AI, machine learning. I set out this morning under the mistaken impression that I'd write something about it. But then Rick and John's conversation intervened in my head. AI just became uninteresting to me for a moment.

... and nope, next day and I still don't have anything to say about AI generators. We've seen this movie before; now there are folks getting theirs gored, that's all. Root hog or die has come for someone else. If I have to, the only thing I'll say is that 15 year olds don't give a shit at all what the old folks say about how they make their art. Nor should they. They'll use the ML algorithms however they want to, and more power to them.

On a completely different note, Kurstin x Grohl continue to have a Hanukkah blast this year. Turning it into a live concert, even. Fantastic.

Stuff I've Been Reading Lately Nov 2022

Stuff I've Been Reading Lately Nov 2022

Aside from the Twitter madness, you mean? Not that I'm on Twitter; I use a web browser to keep up with certain writers who've turned Twitter into a microblog rather than use other sites. As with their many predecessors, Twitter seems to be following a lifecycle that's endemic to internet forums. Rise, coast, dive. Forums are a community exercise, and when they cycle into the Asshole Dominated period they rarely recover. That said, I'm not sure that I know of any examples of forums, public ones anyway, that broke out of this cycle successfully. Facebook, perhaps, but I think that they may be inan unreplicable position due to age group specifics. Who knows at this point?

Brad Delong's Slouching Toward Utopia was a good read, I learned details and emphasis that I wouldn't have otherwise known. I have quibbles, especially I think that Delong does himself a disservice in how he treats 1970-2010 due (likely) to scholar's propriety. I wonder also if, coincidentally, Delong got to 1970 or so and started second guessing the continued utility of his framing device. Still and all well worth it for a good tour of the economic history most immediately foundational to our current era.

Mati Ocha's Terra Incognita and The Transcendent Green. Apocalypse LitRPG books, I liked Mati's voice, character, pacing, and very specific, localized settings. I also like that the inherent power progression problem is also well contained here.

James Haddock's books, Stonecutter's Shadow, Hand Made Mage, and several others. There's a real variety of settings here, some overlap but really this is a writer who's happy to work in similar/same worlds but not beholden to "series" writing if he doesn't want to be. That said, Cast Down World is explicitly labeled as Book One, and that's a setting that I look forward to returning to.

Dave Turner's How To Be Dead series was good... though now I think about it I might have already said that. If I did, it's still a good series!

As I look through the rest of my as-read calendar I don't see any others sticking out. Eh, the To-Be-Read has a T. Kingfisher book I haven't dug into yet, a Joe Hill book with unbent corners... I think that's about enough for now, I've got some stories calling me. Later.

A Mountain Rises Beneath My Feet - M.K. Dreysen 11//20/2022

Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts of a moment

***

A mob of egrets grazing the neighborhood yards is a joy. The decorations they leave on my little car, much less so.

This is one of those occasions that I hear the universe giggle.

***

I've seen so little discussion of the current political noise in reference to that which has gone before. We have few guides, granted, and each generation must learn these things, but we appear to be in a moment where those who know that certain noisemakers and their camp followers have predecessors in both movement and violence are not able to make signal. For every Tucker Carlson there's a G. Gordon Liddy, for every New Right there's a John Birch Society.

I understand why someone Biden's age isn't impressed. But those who should be able to support and teach aren't otherwise around to back him up. At least not vocally or with any kind of reach. Of economists and preachers we have plenty, but thoughtful political scientists can't seem to catch a break.

***

I have reason to think of the album this song opens, Straight on Til Morning by Blues Traveler. 25 years since its release; that year was a big one for me personally. The year I met the lady who's blessed my life since.

What's interesting looking back is that, at the time, if you'd given me a time capsule of later music by Blues Traveler, it's actually this one that my younger self would have told you was more appropriate.

I've been wrong before, I'll be wrong again. Really, the universe giggles at us, and often.

It's Business As Usual Again

when the week starts off reading an article in Science where someone actually dug into how the Hierarchy dominates faculty hiring... forget it. I read it, started to work through how you're better off playing roulette and this big long thing about odds in casino games.

Nah, never mind. Got better things to do with my time, right.

Then I came to the end of my week and watched this wonderfully done video by the Professor of Rock on YouTube:

Look, I know the story of how Paul Simon screwed Los Lobos. What David Bowie did to Stevie Ray Vaughan. And many other similar tales, movies books plays you name it and there's so many many ways that not just the money screws people, but other artists do as well. Like they've decided that because it happened to them it makes it ok to pass it on.

And look, Mick and Keith signing the rights back to Richard was the right thing to do. Stipulated.

After 22 fucking years of cashing those goddamned checks?

Though there is one hilarious moment in the middle of this week, driving back to the hotel room for a day gig trip and the streaming service spit out Nickelback's Rockstar, which I haven't heard in a good long while. And I still can't help smiling at the one lyric in that song that I've always wondered is what really got them put into such a bad odor with the cognoscenti: I'll get washed-up singers writing all my songs, lip sync 'em every night so I don't get 'em wrong.

No it's not a koan, but it was a giggle in the middle of a long week. Just glad I got back on the plane before Ian started making its way up the coast. My heart and help will be going out to a lot of folks who are hurting, and will be. Stay safe and sane where you can, people.

Bravo

Black Lucy and the Bard is a fun way to spend some time in front of the TV. The Nashville Ballet dancers enjoyed themselves immensely, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi played a terrific accompaniment, and writer Caroline Randall Williams adds to the fun by narrating the whole thing (base on her book Lucy Negro, Redux) from the stage.

definitely worth the attention and time spent from this seat. Thank you all, and PBS for the broadcast.