Virtual Thought

This is possibly one of the greatest web pages ever.

That said, you kinda have to be a programmer to get it.

To be serious a moment: this page eloquently expresses why I don’t like religious wars in my computing.

I’m considering re-working a song that I put to rest a while ago… the mix never made me happy, and after some cool criticism from ASHRUG, the Austin Studio/Home Recording User’s Group last night I want to stick my hands back in the mixing/mastering pie. Badly!

I’m remixing Tidal, an old track I did on Buzz. Here are my thoughts so far:

• Anyone out there know how to make lyrics sung through a vocoder more understandable? One idea I had was that the vocoder seems to have totally lost the sibilants… so I could mix those back into the track from the un-vocodered vocal track after some liberal high-pass filtering… they should also be EQ’ed properly (doesn’t everything?) so they stand out a little more…


• “What this needs is more cowbell!” Seriously, I’m going to mix-down that high, popping, cow-bellish sound… not sure why I tried so hard to bring that to the forefront before.


• The bass needs to be opened up. The hihats, after all this mixing, will probably need to be brought down again. The snare could probably be punchier.


• Needs more texturizing stuff… whooshes, beeps, etc. The things I never quite think about whilst putting down what I think of as “notes”.


• Change the drum track?

Oh, yeah. That song is Copyrighted to me. You wouldn’t want it in it’s current form anyway. ( =

This is one of those times that I’m glad to be alive here and now at the beginning of the 21st century: the first human trials for a diabetes vaccine are ready to test on humans.

It’s the kind of thing that gives me hope.

So I was digging around on the FedGrants website and I came across an interesting thing… seems that the research and development in engineering grants have a little grant that is called the Innovative Information Exploitation Technology and Systems grant.

This grant has several interesting properties: the “Estimated Total Program Funding” has a value of “Not Available” (I love the DoD!). The jackpot, though, comes in the description of the grant, a few sentences in…

“TECHNICAL TOPIC AREAS: Areas of specific interest include but are not limited to: 1) Sensors, 2) Exploitation, 3) Positive, Combat Identification, 4) Battlespace Visualization, 5) Network-Centric Battle Management, 6) Precision Tracking and Targeting, 7) Weapon Effectiveness Assessment, 8 ) Information Management of Logistics, 9) Distributed Control of Networked Autonomous Robotic Platforms, and 10) Urban Warfare Technology.”

Fucking sweet! The DoD is finally researching killer robots! Just for completeness, here’s another website with a prettier version of the grant proposal. So maybe we should contact Dr. Robert Tenney and see if any advances have been made in Autonomous Robotic Platforms in the last year or so, eh? And if I’m never seen again, it’s been great knowing all of you. Hey kids! If you want to start your own interesting excursion into the world of Federal grants, start here!

In the words of the researchers themselves, ”...the impressive non-invasive multidimensional control achieved in the present study suggests that a non-invasive brain control interface could support clinically useful operation of a robotic arm, a motorised wheelchair or a neuroprosthesis…”

This is frickin’ badass. It’s a braincap that you place on your head which uses scalp-recorded electroencephalogram rhythms to control physical objects. Sweet!