Noodling

The Gibson Digital Guitar

The best part of the Gibson Digital Guitar system is its delivery of signal processing on a string-by-string basis, providing increased quality and flexibility. This provides unprecedented control with the ability to adjust volume, pan and equalization of each string individually. Imagine using six guitar amplifiers - one for every string. Or recording all six strings individually into a computer. Or sending the six-string digital signal to a compatible guitar processor. The guitarist can have a crunch (heavy metal) sound on the low strings, medium distortion on the middle strings and a clean sound on the high strings.

Hey, I think I need a little more attack on the high E, and a little more chorus on the D. Oh and maybe a little more depth on the flange on the B. The whole thing sounds a little thin, too - so let's put some more volume on the low three. What song am i playing again?

Pix and Quality

Pix! Pix! Pix!

When I was young, I'd watch channel WPIX from New York City on cable. At the time, it was an independent (non-network) station that showed a lot of lousy movies, syndicated sit-coms and cartoons: Gilligan's Island, The Ghost and Mrs Miur, I Love Lucy, I Dream Of Jeannie, Bewitched, etc. (now, these are all TV Land staples).

In the early 80's, when Atari 2600s ruled the world, they had a strange call-in video game ... the lucky contestant (I forget how he was chosen), would get to play a game (usually some variation of Space Invaders) where his only input or control was to fire his space ship's gun by shouting "Pix!" into his phone... the dastardly enemy fighters are descending on us all and all he can do to stop the invasion is to shout "Pix! Pix! Pix! Pix!" for 15 seconds. I don't know if the gun was actually voice activated or if there was a person on the other side, pressing Fire in response. But it didn't matter; the game was a mess. Most kids would just shout "Pixpixpixpixpixpixpix" as fast as they could and the gun would "reload" so slowly that it just kinda fired whenever it could, regardless of what was in front of it - scores were basically random.

And speaking of Pix...

Here on Cleek, I've been posting one picture a day, every day, since I started this blog - something like 85 pictures so far. Why?

When I started this, I wanted to do a kind of abstract photo diary: here's a picture of some junk that I saw today, attach your own story to it. The pictures themselves wouldn't necessarily be high-quality, but they might be interesting. I wouldn't tell you anything about them except the technical details (camera type, etc), unless you asked. You'd get to make up your own little backstory for each of the shots and, over time, of the person who took them (the mythical Cleek). Well, that high concept lasted one day. On the second day, I started digging into my collection of old shots. Then I quickly became concerned about the quality of the shots I put up here, and was reluctant to post many of the kind of snapshots that would turn this blog into what I initially wanted it to become - a collection of unaffected shots of random stuff I found here or there. Since I really don't consider myself much of a photographer, this focus on quality is stressful (boo hoo) - I know I can't produce good shots on demand. In all the time I've been taking pictures for the sake of taking pictures, I've only managed to come with a few dozen that I consider really good, and I've posted a good chunk of them already. And, to get to the point: I'm starting to run low on old "quality" stuff to post; I'm either going to have to stop posting every day (which I don't want to do) or start posting the lightweight shots I originally intended to post. So, this post is a warning - the quality of what I post here is about to take a turn for the worse, from it's already mediocre level. Always fighting tradition, I'm going to sacrifice quality for quantity. Just so ya know...

Rubbing and pulling

South Knox Bubba teaches us about pulled pork (and puts me in the mood for some BBQ):

"...there is no 'recipe' for pulled pork. There are only principles and guidelines. Did da Vinci have a 'recipe' for the Mona Lisa? Pulled pork is performance art. And every performance is different. The only goal therefore is a great performance resulting in consistently good, if different, pork.

Once you have your butt and your rub, the next step is to rub your butt. (I recommend you get some of those plastic food prep gloves or your hands will be stained red for a couple of days). Apply prodigious amounts of rub all over the butt and massage it in thoroughly, making sure to get it in all the cracks and crevices and deep into the fat."

He's funny, and instructive!

Social Engineering

Wired News has a story called "Hack Your Way to Hollywood", about a woman who worked in AOL's call center and used the info she got there to start conversations with Hollywood celebrities:

Hired by AOL in 1997, her $6-an-hour job involved answering subscriber questions, resetting lost passwords and solving billing problems. With access to screen names, phone numbers, addresses and credit card numbers through AOL's customer database, she gathered information on politicians and movie industry power brokers to pursue her career dreams.

During about a year and a half of employment at AOL, the woman, known by the AOL screen name "HooterR," contacted or struck up online relationships with Goldie Hawn, Carrie Fisher, Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, producer Lauren Shuler Donner and the late comedian Chris Farley, according to Robinson and Ebner.

Seems she has quite a history of on-line shenanigans:

In late 1994, Robinson teamed up with a high-school friend and concocted a scam to assume the identity of an imaginary Air Force colonel to romance Robinson's single mother, Janet Robinson.

Heather obtained access to an Air Force base near her Tucson home and sent her mother photographs and love letters from a fictional Col. Cunningham, duping the recent divorcée into believing she was carrying on a virtual affair with an officer. Heather perpetrated the fake affair for three months. She went so far as to send her mom a marriage proposal consecrated with the delivery of a ring, which she bought with a stolen credit card and altered ID swiped from an employee at the Air Force base.

The girls were arrested Feb. 10, 1995, and confessed to having used stolen credit cards to make more than $4,000 worth of attempted purchases. Because Robinson had no prior criminal record, charges were later reduced from felony to misdemeanor, resulting in a 120-hour community service sentence.

"We were 16 years old, and I wanted to do something good for my mom," Robinson said. "After the court stuff was done, my mom put her arm around me and said, 'I understand why you did it and maybe some day they'll make a movie about it.'"

A movie? Well, duh, what do you think she was doing chatting with all those celebs?

Perfect Man is slated for release in 2005.

I heard this story in my car this afternoon (when I ran out to get a pack of gum I left there). I thought it would be good blogging material. But I instantly forgot about it... until I saw the story on Boing Boing (of course). It's on Boing Boing because the person who did the radio story is a Boing Boing contributor. Small world.

Before, After

Take a look at the town of Ryongchon, North Korea: where the train exploded a couple of weeks ago.