Adam's Blog

The Brads – a comic about web design » The Brads – Why DRM Doesn’t Work.

I've applied a new theme to the site, so I'm now billing this as sethadam1.com 10.2. Whereas prior to version "10", each look-and-feel revision was likely a major increment, since converting to Wordpress, a new theme is really much more cosmetic than programmatic. I'd love to hear your feedback, but I imagine the majority of my readers are reading via RSS anyway, so for those of you syndicated, here's a screenshot for you:

Am I the only one who thinks it looks and sounds like #Trey is having more fun with Classic TAB than with #Phish?

Dragon Dictation for the iPhone is spectacular. It works so well it constantly amazes me. Even when I dictated my wife's name - Jenn - it suggested "Jenn" as a possible alternative for "Jen." It frequently gets what I say right the first time, and often catches the wrong words in the tap-to-correct mode when it makes a mistake. So I decided to sing into it and give it a run for its money. I was singing Trey Anastasio's "Host Across the Potomac," whose chorus is "The time has come for desks and chairs to be elevated." I sang the line several times, annunciating a bit more with each line, and here are the results:

• The time has come for desk send JS to be a little David
• The time has come by best chance to be added day babe
• The time has come for dad send chance to be added day again
• The time has come for desk and chairs to be inundated

Gotta love it; four times sung, four totally different results. The moral of the story is: Dragon is great for dictation, but not so much for transcribing singing.

Prompted by Eugenia's post about her iTunes library, I decided to post a glimpse of my own library. My library is still awaiting a massive import of my CDs, which will add several thousand songs. Here are the vitals: 5406 tracks, 29.18 GB on disk, 17 days Only 2699 have something in the "play count" field. I've noticed that for whatever reason, it doesn't register a play count unless you finish the song. Also, many of these were in an iTunes library on a previous PC. This library actually goes back until about 2000, was first in iTunes on Windows in approximately 2003, and was first moved to an iBook in 2005, and was finally rebuilt on my second Mac, a MacBook Pro in 1996. Since then, it's been ported to two different iMacs.) Most played tracks: 1. “Shankhill Butchers” by The Decemberists (104) 2. “Tennessee Jed” by The Grateful Dead (104) 3. “Leslie Anne Levine” by The Decemberists (101) 4. “Terrapin Station” by The Grateful Dead (100) 5. “Circle” by Portal (99) Most tracks by the same artist: 1. Phish (442) 2. The Decemberists (112) 3. DMB (110) 4. The Beatles (71) 5. Pearl Jam (68) 6. The Pat...

Yesterday, after the Apple presentation "Come See Our Latest Creation," geeks and bloggers worldwide took to their medium of choice to complain about the underwhelming iPad and its impending failure. I've seen all sorts of arguments for why this device will fail, but I'm convinced that this device is going to make them all red in the face, and soon. The problem here, as is often the case, is that this device is not built for geeks. In truth, the iPhone isn't either. But it's an undeniable success, largely because it solves most of the problems people have with computing interfaces: single vs double click, right click vs left click, app install, the HFS, etc. And the iPad will be a huge success too. Let's take a deeper look. The biggest complaint heard round the world is the lack of multi-tasking. Let's be straight about this: that's a friggin' software issue! It's widely rumored that some sort of light multi-tasking is part of iPhone OS 4.0, we know the demo'ed iPad was running 3.2 beta. So it's fair to expect that this could come in a future update. But if it doesn't, it's still fixable if Apple determines that lack...

Yesterday, during commercial breaks of the Saints/Vikings NFC championship game, I was flipping over to watch bits of Robocop 2. When I was younger, I remember my friends would gather to watch Robocop and were very excited when the sequel was announced. Watching it now, however, I see how bad that movie was. Or was it? It struck me how old the entire thing felt, and how silly the technology was. It got me thinking about a franchise reboot, and then it got me thinking about what Robocop would be today, if he were re-envisioned. The first thing I noticed is that Robocop is slow and deliberate, and when his "joints" move, they produce a hydraulic buzzing sound. So we'll need him to be smoother in movement, and without announcing his presence. He'll need to be significantly lighter on his feet than the slow and heavy-stepping original. The original sported an eye plate, that stretched only a centimeter or so in height and a few inches in wrap. That will need to change to be supplemented by smaller cameras that can give Robocop a 360 degree view of his surroundings. Since Robocop was severely damaged after being caught in a...

At about one minute fifty-five seconds and without any jam, a fairly faithful replication of an album version of a song shouldn't be a setlist standout. But, by many accounts, the 12/31/09 offering of "Demand" is a notable and curious point in a long setlist. It's notable not because it was flawlessly performed (although it was inarguably done justice), not because it contained inspired playing (but fun, sure), but rather, because it hasn't been performed since November 1996, over 13 years ago. Having been shelved for so long - and very likely to be stashed away again for some time - makes the performance special. But why? Why does it matter, why do we enjoy ourselves so much if Phish plays one of their rarer songs rather a well-jammed version of than one of their more common songs? At heart, I'm a stats geek. Maybe not like Zzyzx, but certainly I'm interested in the stats. I'm incredibly interested in Phish setlist construction, and hope that one day I find myself in a situation where I can interview Trey about it. "Why," I would ask, "does a song like, say, Camel Walk, only appear every 50-some-odd shows? Is that intentional? Why...

Life has gotten in the way of blogging for awhile. I will love you again soon, sethadam1.com.