Anyway, I guess I’ll just say what I’ve been up to.

I picked up a turntable about a month ago. I went through my parents’ basement and found some good records (including some that were mine), so I figured I’d pick one up. It’s got a USB output, which is handy.

So I’ve been picking up vinyl here and there. I pre-ordered the vinyl remaster & cd of Nirvana’s Bleach (that should be here mid-November). I’ve grabbed a few John Lennon records, a Marvin Gaye and some 45s from Half Price Books in Apple Valley.

Vinyl doesn’t sound particularly better to me than CDs — a lot of them sound worse due to wear, in fact. They are fun, though. Keep in mind that I’ve got a fairly large iTunes library. I’ve ripped/digitized nearly all media under our roof. DVDs, VHS, CDs, cassette tapes, photos, you name it (except books — I’m not completely insane). I’m in the process of re-ripping my CDs in a lossless format (though I’m looking for a seamless way to transcode it when syncing to my iPhone or streaming to my Apple TV). I appreciate the convenience once this media is in my library. Still, it’s fun every now and then to put a record on. And I’m planning on digitizing at least some of them (my George Carlin records in particular).

We also finished mounting our plasma and installing speakers in the ceiling. My receiver can do 7.1, but the room was wired for 5.1. I may run some more wire eventually. But it’s otherwise great for now. Great, except when Kelly is trying to sleep upstairs in our room, conveniently located directly above the living room. So it’s loud as hell up there.

Not much news on the Flapping Crane front. I was furiously working on a DVD set, but it turned out to be too hard on my right wrist. I’ve had to do a wrist brace, painkillers, wrist exercises, all that. I wanted to have something ready for November 22nd, which is five years since we launched flappingcrane.com. That’s probably not going to happen though. We’ll see.

The new website is pretty much ready to launch, though. I’m just delaying it because I know that I’ll have to spend about 3 days fixing previously-missed bugs, and my aforementioned wrist is holding it up in committee.

Finally, I’ve been itching to do something. Not sure what. Some music, some Flapping Crane stuff, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just build some shelves.

I’ve been listening to all unrated songs on my work laptop. It’s a small subset of of full music collection, but it’s got some good stuff in there.

I don’t recall ever getting that weird déjà vu feeling in my early and mid-twenties. That’s probably because that’s when those associations were being developed. Still, I was listening to Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth and Nirvana in my teens, and when I was in my twenties hearing that music never took me back in time. Now it does.

The weirdest one is The Strokes’ “Room on Fire”. It’s odd because the memories are so recent. Any song I hear from that album puts me in my car driving between Eagan and the Twin Cities in late 2004 / early 2005.

Another big one is Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”. That usually puts me back to 1996-1997. Specifically in Las Cruces, NM, driving in my 1984 Buick Skylark to and from Scott’s house, where we’d often hang out, smoke cigarettes and play Magic.

Finally, the last major one I can think of is Beck’s “Sea Change”. Can you guess what one aspect of the memory associated with this is? Yep, driving in the car. This time to and from El Paso, TX from Las Cruces, NM. This was probably 2002 early 2003, after a particularly rough breakup. I would go to El Paso to buy clove cigarettes (this was me wanting to smoke, but purposely making it inconvenient). Someone had broken into my car and stolen my stereo, so I was listening to my music on a crappy little mp3 player. Listening with earbuds was probably not the safest way to drive.

I only mention all this for a couple reasons. First — WTF? Why is this happening now? Why wasn’t this happening 5 years ago? I think I know the answer to that, but it’s still weird. Second, and more troubling, is that these memories triggered because of specific music that I was listening to in the car. I don’t drive much these days — I live very close to work, and when I do drive, it’s brief. I also tend to listen to the radio. So I’m worried that I won’t have musical anchors to take me back when I’m, say, 40. I have a terrible memory, and music seems to be one of the few things that can jog it.

I take one thing back — Pearl Jam’s “Yield” was triggering that sorta déjà vu feeling as early as 5 years ago, I think. To this day, it reminds me of sometime around 1997-1999, rooming with Chris. We had a dumpy little apartment and my computer was in the kitchen. The specific memory is of modifying (I think) DikuMUD (?) to make a sort of “Poison Elves” MUD (if you know what Poison Elves was, congrats, welcome to the Nerd Club. If you know what both Poison Elves was and what a MUD is, then seek professional help). I remember adding an addiction element to the game — if your character smoked, he’d have to continue to smoke or suffer various physical consequences. I never made it public or did anything with it.

Also, I’ve revamped the Flapping Crane RSS feed. This sucker now has MP4 videos that are good for watching on TV (with Apple TV or probably XBox 360) or on an iPhone. Haven’t tested it on other iPods. May not work on them.

Finally, I’m in the process of compressing new versions of all our old videos and uploading them to Amazon’s S3. This should allow for faster downloads.

I haven’t flipped the switch on S3 yet, and probably won’t for a while. I want to get as many vids on there as possible.

I went to a local goodwill and found the keyboard. I added a “crash” button to it and an audio out jack.

Circuit bending involves finding interesting short circuits. It’s kind of random, but a lot of fun. End result is some screwed up sounds.

Anyway, that’s what the crash button does, which is that large round red button.

I recorded some of it. To hear what the crashing sounds like, click here. I edited it and cut stuff out — because it’s so random, you often end up with silence, which is no fun to listen to. The very first part is just the “demo” song on the keyboard.

Something kind of neat — if you short-circuit the right points, you can get the keyboard to play some songs which aren’t otherwise available, like Happy Birthday, something by Chopin, Twinkle Twinkle and a Christmas song. I didn’t solder connections between those points, though. I’m still working on my soldering skills, I don’t think I’m using the best wire and I already had to use the dremel to route out paths in the plastic for the other wires.

I own 2 macs, an Apple TV and an iPhone. I am an iTunes customer — I currently subscribe to 2 shows. I would subscribe to more, but NBC is being dumb. But that’s another issue.

In the course of Flapping Crane’s existence, we’ve made some music. Funny music. Music I’d like to be ringtones on my iPhone.

I can kind of accept that Apple wouldn’t provide a means to make anything into a ringtone. But they appear to be actively trying to stop third-party developers from allowing it.

This is stupid. I can use iTunes to do all manner of illegal things. I can play music that I (gasp!) didn’t pay for. I can import friends’ cds. But I pay for music. The awesome thing about iTunes has always been that it’s convenient and fairly-priced. The DRM is potentially troublesome, but I’ve never run up against it.

I would probably be willing to buy ringtones from iTunes if they weren’t being bastards. Specifically — I want to be able to make my own music into ringtones. They are actively preventing it. They are removing functionality.

Is this of catastrophic importance? No. It’s just goddamn ringtones. But I am becoming increasingly annoyed by this, and my attitude towards Apple is starting to go south.

I’ve got a trial going with eMusic. I haven’t decided whether to subscribe. But Amazon now has an mp3 store with no DRM. If Apple wasn’t behaving this way I might stick with them out of loyalty. But I don’t foresee myself buying anything anymore from ITMS besides the TV shows I’m subscribed to.

Bottom line — Apple apparently thinks it can treat its customers like shit. I’ve influenced friends and family in their purchases, and for years I’ve highly recommended Apple products. I’m starting to question that.

They haven’t lost me yet, but they’re well on their way.

From EMI’s press release: “Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price.”

This makes me happy. DRM is annoying.

I’ve got a Coldplay album or two that I will upgrade, along with a few scattered songs from other EMI artists.

I wonder how this will interact with the new Complete My Album thing — will the tracks you download to complete the album be DRM-free and 256 kbps? If so, if the previously purchased tracks had DRM and were 128 kbps, will they be replaced?

It’s by “the go! team”. You can hear it on their MySpace page.

I can’t even say if I like it or not. It’s a good cover. It’s just very odd to hear a cover of that song. Never thought I’d hear one.

For those of you who don’t remember, Bull in the Heather was one of Sonic Youth’s few hits. You can watch the video on YouTube. It was on “Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star”, which caught a lot of flack (unfairly, I think) from fans. It was kind of seen as a more mainstream album. Which is a silly criticism in my opinion, but hey.

By the way, the woman in pigtails bouncing around in the video is Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill fame.

I don’t really have much to add, except that I would buy more music from iTunes than I currently do if it were DRM-free. And I’m not a purist — I do buy music from iTunes. But when it’s from a band that I really like (Sonic Youth, Beck, etc.), I tend to buy the CD instead, for a variety of reasons, including uneasiness with having the content encrypted.

And hell, there are simple ways to get around DRM. And I don’t currently plan to play the music on anything other than my various computers, ipod, airport express or appleTV (when I get it), so I’m not worried about losing the ability to play my music. I’d rather buy it without DRM, though.

But, let’s face it. The music companies have always had their heads up their asses.

She said even though “Rape Me” by Nirvana was a hit, it just wasn’t the best choice for babies.

Words to live by.

Gah.