Month: December 2002

more a celebration than a musical performance

Seattle Symphony

Beethoven Ninth Symphony
Gerard Schwarz, conductor
Seattle Symphony Chorale
Seattle Symphony
Beethoven: Symphony No. 8
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, Choral

I have seen this performed once (Roberto Abbado leading the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus) and listened to it on radio and recordings countless times.

Astounding to think Beethoven was deaf when we wrote it: or perhaps the lack of external sound helped him hear his own music better?

technology in the classroom: help or hindrance?

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Analysis | Mr Chips or Microchips?

Computers have been hailed as the transformers of education, a dazzling technology that changes the whole nature of learning, reduces the burdens on teachers and equips everyone for the modern economy.

Yet disturbing evidence is emerging that computers may harm, rather than help, educational progress. There is still much debate among even the most enthusiastic supporters of high technology about how computers can best be used.

Interesting story here from the BBC. Thanks to Wade who saw it on slashdot.

The most insightful quote comes from the reporter, Frances Craincross:
After all, girls in Britain
increasingly outshine boys in core subjects such as English. So
might more time at the keyboard improve boys� performance? Or
might it be that girls do well because the use of computers brings
few benefits to most pupils?

That’s a really good question: is there a difference between how boys and girls learn that can be attributed to time spend at the keyboard?

My two younger learners got LeapPads this christmas, and I think these are as appropriate a technology as you can find for kids that young (4 and 5).

It’s a folding plastic shell that holds a paper workbook and a rechargeable cartridge that explains and drills the user based on the page being displayed. Some pages are to be written on (the book is laminated) and other are just used as a touchscreen: there is an attached stylus.

What’s missing from this is an operating system, a keyboard, and a display: in other words, it’s not a computer (though the kids call them computers). It’s expandable: simply add a new paper book and cartridge and work with different or more advance subject matter.

What I like most about them is that they’re engaging enough for kids to like them and as as result the hardest part of learning — drilling and repetition — becomes much mess painful.

And for less than $40, it’s hard to beat.

“I’m young, I’m rich and I can do it.”

Glass Panes and Software: Windows Name Is Challenged

The single person most responsible for Microsoft’s selecting the name Windows, according to court documents, was Rowland Hanson, a marketer who came from Neutrogena, the soap and cosmetics maker. Until Mr. Hanson arrived in May 1983, the new software was called Interface Manager, which the programmers liked.

Understandably, Mr. Hanson scrambled for an alternative. He had scant knowledge of computers at the time. “I recall that windowing or something like that had been used by somebody,” Mr. Hanson said in deposition testimony, “and that’s what triggered me to think about it as windows. . . . I looked at our product, and ours was clearly, had windows on the screen.”

So Microsoft Windows it was.

So the name was no more carefully thought-out than the product itself . . . . .

Actually, not to toss rotten tomatoes at the usual target, I’m amused that Michael Robertson is doing this. I don’t know that it’s unfair to call him a “serial opportunist” as MSFT has done: but so what? It’s not as if what Mr Gate’s team hasn’t aped what they couldn’t come up with on their own.

I would never have guessed MP3.com would end up making anyone $372 million dollars. If that gives him the wherewithal to stay in the game longer than Be, I say good for him.

a-ha! Perhaps this answers my question about DISCID

NemWiki: DiscID

This page spells out clearly enough for even me how DISCID’s are derived, and demonstrates how to verify them. Very nice. Of course, this means DISCID is not written to disc but is instead derived from what’s already on the disc, so if the tracks and offsets differ from the canonical, ie RIAA-approved, version, freedb lookups will never work.

Rats.
Continue reading “a-ha! Perhaps this answers my question about DISCID”

object lesson in how *not* to manage DNS

tried to look at the Pacific Science Center’s website this morning . . . . couldn’t resolve their address.

Here’s why:


[/home/paul]:: dig pacsci.org ns


; <<>> DiG 8.3 <<>> pacsci.org ns
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 2 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 2 ;; QUERY SECTION: ;; pacsci.org, type = NS, class = IN

;; ANSWER SECTION:
pacsci.org. 1d3h11s IN NS DNS1.pacsci.org.
pacsci.org. 1d3h11s IN NS DNS2.pacsci.org.


;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
DNS1.pacsci.org. 1d4h25m28s IN A 204.29.25.5
DNS2.pacsci.org. 1d4h25m28s IN A 204.29.25.6


;; Total query time: 34 msec
;; FROM: blue.paulbeard.org to SERVER: default — 204.127.198.4
;; WHEN: Sun Dec 29 11:18:28 2002
;; MSG SIZE sent: 28 rcvd: 98

Both their name servers are on the same network segment and neither can be pinged. Having two next to each other is worse than having just one, since it leads to a false sense of security/redundancy. If something breaks connectivity or power to one, you lose both.

too clever by half

xmcd2make

One day I got tired of typing in song names to the albums I was recording and encoding to ogg.

I knew that a lot of the albums I was recording had song listings available via the CD database at freedb.org.

So I took an .xmcd file, and I wrote a perl script to read xmcd and create ogg files using the output files I got from gramofile (processedxxx.wav’s)

[ . . . . ]

This worked so well that I set out to automate as much of the whole gramofile process as possible. Xmcd2make is the result of this work.

Very nice, indeed. But I wish there was some way to label the disc itself. mp3s are all very well, but I still like shiny discs and handlabelling them takes me back to making cassette tapes.