Arthur C Clarke dies at 90

I am a little worried as an increasing number of my blog entries are about people that have died. I guess that is how age works. The happening in your firends and families lives revolve around weddings, then births, then divorces and eventually mostly funerals. And before you say it, no, I am not 90 years old and am very unlikely to ever be 90 if I am honest. The only way that is going to happen is if somebody forces me to exercise against my will or while I am asleep, but I digress. More than you ever wanted to know here.

Hacked to death......literally

Hacking implanted defibrillators: shockingly easy

No device is truly immune to hacking and so this is no surprise really. But clearly some things are life and death and need to be designed as truly secure devices. It should not have been this easy.......

My DS just got interesting...in Japan only

KORG DS-10 | AQ INTERACTIVE

Very cool and very fun. Looks great on a black DS too :-)

Very Bad Things #1

Wildlife Wall Shelves - The Lakeside Collection

First in a new series of posts of truly strange products that make you ask "who would buy that?". For years I have loved those mail order catalogues of weird and strange things and my wife and I play a game of picking the worst thing in the catalog and seeing if we pick the same item. In the UK Viz magazine used to make up this kind of thing, Franklin Mint style ads, and they were hilarious. However the real thing is starting to be even funnier. Enjoy.

The magic of Teo Macero

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - music: The magic of Teo Macero

"Macero pioneered techniques that elevated the recording studio into more of a creative and artistic tool than it had ever been before. In his later work with Miles Davis he was helping the trumpeter build compelling narratives and integrated, composition-like works from what had in some cases been little more than passing fragments of improvised inspiration. Macero borrowed from early experiments in electronics and pitch-manipulation (from the then New York-based French composer and 'father of electronic music' Edgard Var�se, among others), and defied the improv-is-everything purists among jazz fans to create studio-made works that completely reshuffled the music originally made in the heat of the moment, and sometimes even spliced in clips from other performances entirely."

I was surprised I had never heard of Teo yet new all of his work and myself had been influenced by it. Miles' George Martin. This guy would have been my hero if I had known he even existed.

Lots more background if you Google him.

Such as this New York Times piece.

"Mr. Macero strongly believed that the finished versions of Davis’s LPs, with all their intricate splices and sequencing — done on tape with a razor blade, in the days before digital editing — were the work of art, the entire point of the exercise. He opposed the current practice of releasing boxed sets that include all the material recorded in the studio, including alternate and unreleased takes. Mr. Macero was not involved in Columbia’s extensive reissuing of Davis’s work for the label, in lavish boxed sets from the mid-’90s until last year."

I am liking him more and more. Lots more reading to do......

Linux Home Automation Touchscreen PC

Automated Home - Linux Home Automation Touchscreen PC

I just got finished installing my first touchscreen in the kitchen but it is unfortunately attached to a hidden tower pentium 4. This is very appealing, although right now none of my automation software supports linux.

If only more developers used Java for home automation instead of Visual Basic, C, etc then we would not have to pick our HA software based on our hardware. Mac users pick Indigo, Windows users pick Powerhome, Homeseer, etc. There is an exhaustive list here.

One compromise many applications make is to support a web client. This is a nice solution and allows virtually any client from a phone to a full thin client. However the server still needs to run somewhere and none of the web clients I have seen are as fully featured as the native clients. Not just true for home automation but a general problem with web clients.

Anyway, too much work for me to switch now. I am tied to Powerhome for my main system and eHome for my clients and they work very well.