This post is entirely too long… you might want to make a fresh cup of coffee or tea to get through the whole thing. :-)
Got up early yesterday and made my way to the Santa Fe Canyon Preserve to record some critters on the lake.
Unfortunately, although across the lake, two runners were conversing loudly and I had to stop recording – it’s amazing how well sound carries in the thin air at altitude! A little while later a frontloader was started up in the distance and I gave up. I did find a little protected corner, where I was able to record the river.
I took a few photographs and then I returned home. A little while later I rode the Mariachi Bullitt to Counter Culture for breakfast. Among other things Jon and I talked about recording, how many bits make a byte, 88.2 versus 96kHz and so on.
24bits x 96kHz = 2.304 megabits/second = 0.288 megabytes/second
0.288MB/second x 2 (stereo) = 0.576MB/second
0.576MB/second x 60 = 34.56MB/minute
34.56MB/minute x 60 = 2,073MB/hour
for 24/88.2 that means:
952.6 MB/hr (MB/hour) x 2 = 1,905.2 MB/hour
which is just about three times the information that we record for CDs:
16bits x 44.1kHz = 0.705 megabits/second = 0.0882 MB/second
317.5MB/hour x 2 (stereo) = 635MB/hour
Incidentally, I think LPs used to be about 15 minutes per side… that means a regular CD should be able to hold about 20-25 minutes of music at 24/88.2. And, if one were to use FLAC or Apple Lossless compression, one should be able to fit about 40-50 minutes of high quality music on a regular CD!!! Forget surround sound, the next step is to build quality D/A converters right into computers. Forget about CD players, use the CD only as a delivery system (((and backup))).
Here is some news from the always interesting Trent Raznor – I posted this in the Diary this morning and am including it here in case you want to comment:
Reznor is very forthright about the kind of idiots he has in mind. For him, they have ruined the beauty of eschewing record companies in favor of direct contact with real people out there.
Sounds like this saying: I love humanity, it’s people I can’t stand… Raznor has done better than most in dealing with his fans, but one could argue that artists who can make direct contact – instead of working through a large record company are a minority. Being a creative artist and communicating with people are two entrirely different lines of development.
In the NIN forum Raznor also wrote:
Online communities, etc. I had thought a while ago about attempting to start a mainstream public forum that required real verification of it’s participants for purposes of context. The idea was to have a place where you can actually discuss whatever and have some idea of who you’re conversing with.
Of course The Well has been doing this for a long long time:
The WELL – Join Us You know who you’re talking with: As a WELL member, you use your real name. This leads to real conversations and relationships. It’s the individual people here who determine the experience and create the community. This highly collaborative work in progress has been rolling since 1985.
Have you asked yourself how one should transport a goat on a bicycle? Here is your answer.
Other bike news. Bullitt Karaoke!
Copenhagenize.com – Bullitt Karaoke im Berlin So there’s this guy in Berlin. He has a Bullitt cargo bike from Larry vs Harry. He equipped it with speakers, a karaoke system with microphone and a laptop. He started showing up in Mauerpark in Berlin and got some people to sing. It’s now become a cult classic in the city. On nice days you’ll get 1000 people sitting there in the amphitheatre, staring down at the Bullitt and listening to crap karaoke.
Unfortunately the Karaoke Bullitt and the Drinks Bullitt are not in the same city!!
Copenhagenize.com – Probably the Most Sensible Use of a Cargo Bike in History You, like 95% of the nation, are equipped with a mobile phone. You write an SMS that reads:
2x1L.Frozen Mojito
2x1L.Daiquiri
You send the text to a number.
At an arranged time this Bullitt from Larry vs. Harry shows up at the corner entrance to the King’s Gardens. You collect your two litres of Frozen Mojitos and your 2 litres of Daiquiris, pay the man with your credit card and head back to your friends
The cargo bike category was won by a Dane, Nils Jakob „Kvante“ Mørkbak on a Belingy. (((does he mean Bilenky?))) In the top 5 there were four Bullitts from Larry vs Harry. Andreas, from Stockholm, who finished 5th was riding a Bullitt fixie. He’s mad. Hans came in 7th, by the way.
I love the programme wherein you can read this text in the intro:
“Non-messengers are as always tolerated at this event, although leave the excessive posing to the professionals, thanks”.
Copenhagenize.com – Get Yer Torches! It’s a Bike Helmet Witchhunt! In a perfect world, an individual who chooses to promote everyday cycling, and who has dedicated a great deal of time, energy and personal resources to do so, would be set high atop a pedestral to be respected by the local and global community.
Instead, Matthew Modine, actor and founder of Bicycle for a Day, is subject to a cyber witchhunt these days.
Instead of focusing on the good this guy is doing, all the focus is on his personal choice of whether he wishes to wear a helmet or not. Which he doesn’t.
Ironically, the man is more well-informed about helmets than the pundits who seek to hunt him down.
Great concert at the Birchmere in Alexandria last night. Everything came together and we were able to reach new heights. Everyone in the band played really well. I am hoping that it can become the new plateau from which we can reach for something higher yet… the endless spiral.
We are in Ridgefield today. The sun broke through the clouds this morning and illuminated a rich spectrum of greens in the vegetation. Nearby a tree was unceremoniously destroyed with a backhoe that broke the tree apart like one would break a match. Enlarging a parking lot? It seemed so brutal, compared to using a saw. We should learn to have a little more respect for all life. Rusty told that quite a ceremony, with singing and drumming, precedes the cutting down of a tree destined to become a djembe in West Africa.
Monet’s Love Affair with Japanese Art – TIME Perhaps the greatest gift Japan gave Monet, and Impressionism, was an incandescent obsession with getting the play of light and shadow, the balance of colors and the curve of a line, just right — not the way it is in reality, but the way it looks in the artist’s imagination. “I have slowly learned about the pattern of the grass, the trees, the structure of birds and other animals like insects and fish, so that when I am 80, I hope to be better,” Hokusai wrote 16 years before his death at age 89. “At 90, I hope to have caught the very essence of things, so that at 100 I will have reached heavenly mysteries. At 110, every point and line will be living.” Monet spent the last decades of his life painting his water lilies, and then painting them again, until he lost his sight in quest of an elusive, transcendent perfection that might best be called Japanese.
Copenhagenize.com – The Copenhagen Bike Culture Blog: Copenhagenize Injury Alert! It turns out the that the American Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report [try putting THAT publication under ’employer’ on your dating website profile and see how many emails you DON’T get…] has analyzed a report that shows pet cats and dogs are to blame for a whoppingly shocking 87,000 fall injuries each year in America alone.
87,000 people have shown up at emergency rooms in the course of one year around the country because they tripped over their cat or dog or the dog pulled them on the leash.
87,000. Eighty-seven thousand. And another 87,000 next year. And the year after. And on and on unless we do something.
Where, in the name of Odin, are the safety freaks on this important issue?! Where are the helmet and safety gear manufacturers?! There are people out there to be bullied! There is safety gear to be sold! Millions to be made!
As he went along, Hillebrand counted the number of letters, numbers, punctuation marks and spaces on the page. Each blurb ran on for a line or two and nearly always clocked in under 160 characters.
That became Hillebrand’s magic number — and set the standard for one of today’s most popular forms of digital communication: text messaging. (Via Pop Wuping)
A little bit of SMS and Twitter history.
TV Documentary on Stephen Batchelor This thirty minute documentary on Stephen’s work was broadcast on national television in Holland on 20 April, 2008 as “Boeddhisme Zonder Geloof” (“Buddhism Without Beliefs”). It is in English with Dutch subtitles.
Rome’s 2762nd Birthday Chariot Race at Urban Velo A patriotic group of bikers sporting giallo e rosso (yellow and red) athletic gear cleverly transformed their bicycles into race horses that pulled bigas, or two-wheeled chariots, manned by enthusiastic charioteers. While ancient Roman chariot teams were divided by color into the greens, the blues, the whites, and the yellows, these modern day Ben-Hurs formed two teams distinguished by their headgear–the helmet heads and the brush heads. Eager for a bit of Sunday-morning competition, they lined up at one end of the Circus and at the signal, the race for glory and fame began!
In Copenhagen:
Copenhagenize.com – Danish Cargo Bike Championships
Anyway, the Danish Cargo Bike Championships was a festive affair in bright spring sunshine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many cargo bikes gathered in one place. The course was set up around the square with a fine mix of smooth straights and cobblestoned corners.
There was a race for three-wheelers, with Leif Harup on a Kangaroo taking the gold medal and the three-wheeled glory. Then there was several heats for two-wheelers and Thorsten Rentel beat Hans Fogh by a spoke in the final. In both disciplines the riders rode first without cargo and then had to put three tyres on the bikes to finish.
There were many Bullitts from Larry vs. Harry, a good number of Dutch Bakfiets and quite a few Belinkys. Add to that Christiania Bikes, Longjohns, Short Johns and the aforementioned Kangaroo. Baisikeli was present with one of their ambulance bikes from their African workshops.