Journal: News & Comment

I'm on drums for New Year's at Joe Fortes

I realize that I completely forgot to mention that I'll be playing music with my bandmates Adam Woodall, Sebastien de Castell, and Mark Olexson at the famous Joe Fortes restaurant, near the corner of Thurlow and Robson streets in downtown Vancouver, tonight for New Year's Eve, for the third year in a row. The kids are with the in-laws, so for once my wife is able to join us.

So if you're making last-minute New Year's plans, Joe Fortes isn't cheap, but the food is excellent and you can help us bring the rock. It's your one chance in the year to see me in a tuxedo, which should be worth some money in itself.

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More reviews you can write for me

I forgot to mention that, in addition to being able to review my album at CD Baby, you can also write a review for my podcast at iTunes (you need an account, then just click the link under "Customer Reviews"), which would be swell.

Thanks!

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A new promo, and my album for sale at CD Baby—please write a review

Now that Christmas is over and 2006 is almost upon us, I figured it was time to put together a new audio promo (871 KB, stereo 160 kbps MP3 file, 45 sec) for my Penmachine Podcast of free podsafe instrumental tunes to use and share. You can also hear it at the Podsafe Music Network.

What's a promo?

A promo is essentially a commercial for a podcast, which other podcasters play on their shows so that we all promote each other in a big warm fuzzy network of podcast love. Now you know.

Buy my album at CD Baby, or direct via PayPal

In addition, my CD album Penmachine Sessions is now available from the excellent online music sales site CD Baby:

DEREK K. MILLER: Penmachine Sessions Podsafe instrumental rock from Canada’s podcast.penmachine.com featuring chunky guitars, Hammond organ, and funky beats. Free to rip, mix, and share.

You'll notice that at CD Baby it's only $12.75 USD, rather than the $15 I charge (U.S. or Canadian, depending on where you are, or $19 USD outside those countries) for direct shipments. However, there are two differences:

1. CD Baby charges extra for shipping, so it could cost you less or more than $15, depending on where you have it shipped.
2. If you buy directly from me, you get both the audio CD and a bonus data DVD. At CD Baby, you just get the audio CD.

Please write a review for me

Nevertheless, CD Baby is cool place to buy from, and whether you get my CD there, from me directly, or just download the tracks for free, I'd appreciate if once you've had a chance to listen, you write a review at the CB Baby site. Thanks!

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A great podcast about audio recording, and site about mics

Following up on my earlier post about microphones, connectors, and sound recording, I just stumbled across and listened (in one day) to all five episodes of a great Vancouver-based podcast called Inside Home Recording. The website is spartan, so if you want to subscribe, here are:

• the iTunes link
• the RSS subscription feed (if you use another podcatching program or want to subscribe manually)

Anyway, hosts James Devon and Paul Garay do a great job of providing both basic and relatively advanced tips, tricks, techniques, lessons, interviews, and gear reviews in half-hour blocks. I just wish they had more than five episodes already.

The December 2 episode has a good overview of microphone technologies, and also recommends an online guide from Audio-Technica that talks about microphones, starting from the basics, in great detail.

The website for Inside Home Recording needs some serious work (show notes and some links to the podcast would be a great start!), but the show itself is fabulous, and you should subscribe if you can.

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Moving from Entourage to Mail.app

One of the things I did yesterday while no one else was at the office was migrate all my work email from Microsoft Entourage to Apple's Mail application (affectionately known as "Mail.app" amongst Mac-heads). That's because I wanted to start somewhat fresh in 2006, and to separate my work and personal email. Now that I'm using Gmail for all my personal stuff (with my existing email addresses, not a new Gmail one), I can access it anywhere without copying huge mail archives back and forth from computer to computer.

So far Mail is working just fine. After many, many years of using Entourage and its predecessor Outlook Express (developed by some of the same people who worked on Apple's Claris Emailer, and round and round it goes), I find the transition—especially the different keyboard shortcuts) a little awkward—but there are many things about Mail that I prefer, including its generally cleaner interface, quicker searching, and other clever tweaks.

The worst part of the transition wasn't moving my work mail, which imported seamlessly using the built-in assistant, but sorting out my contact list between Apple's Address Book, Entourage's separate contact database, and my list in Gmail. There's still some slop in there, but it seems to be working okay now. I did use Andrew Escobar's Mail Stamps 2 utility to revert Mail 2.0 back to the old-style buttons it used to have in Mail 1.0, which I prefer, but that's more personal taste than anything.

One question: does anyone know how to get Mail to apply a rule to email in the Sent folder as well as the Inbox and elsewhere? I want all my work mail to get sorted automatically, and so far that's not happening. I should check the Take Control book for tips.

Oh, and I'm now up to nearly 7900 spam messages in the Gmail filter since I last deleted a batch on December 8, which is a mere 16 per hour, down from 20. But I notice that even spam slowed down over Christmas, so the rate may come up again.

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Productivity?

UPDATE: It turns out the office was closed, but I didn't get the memo. Ah well, I had the coffee machine to myself, once I figured out how to turn it on.

Here is it, December 27, and my daughters let me sleep in till 9:30 a.m., when I'd been expecting them to be up at 7 so I could get to work. No big deal, I thought, since it would be a slow week at work anyway.

Sure enough, I arrived at the office at 11:00, and I was the first one here. It's now almost noon and no one else has shown up yet. That should mean I have a very productive day, but as you can see from the photo, that's not true so far.

Time to open up those documents I need to write, I think. But first, some more coffee.

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Changed, yet the same

Following the European tradition, my side of the family eats Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, December 24th, at my aunt and uncle's house. This year the power went out at 2:30 p.m., when the turkey was about half cooked. Improvising quickly, my uncle fired up the barbecue and finished cooking the food there, and it turned out great, despite the turkey catching fire at one point. We ate by candlelight.

By the time the power retured around 6:45, we were opening presents. The house never got cold, because it is freakishly warm in Vancouver right now: something like 11°C, balmy enough to walk around outside in a T-shirt if it weren't raining (of course). As you can see from the small photo, I'm pretty happy with what I received, thanks to the lovely Ms. A. An even better present was how happy our daughters were, now that they're old enough not to be overwhelmed by it all.

P.S. My oldest daughter notes that there were reindeer footprints on the front lawn.

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Merry Christmas

This old image from Apple's iCards site remains my favourite Christmas image:

Eat well, have family or friends close by, and enjoy.

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Not quite ready for Christmas

UPDATE: It's ready now, earlier than expected. Go ahead and shop.

My new page at buy.penmachine.com, where you'll be able to place an order for my brand-new music CD album of instrumental rock goodness, Penmachine Sessions, is almost but not quite ready.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas, everybody! If I don't see you in person, you can listen to me say it in MP3.

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You silly, silly man

What on earth am I doing up at 2:10 a.m.?

Wrapping, my friends. Wrapping. I'm finally all done, but I'm also all wired up from wrapping. Wrapping wired. And tired, although I enjoy the fuzzy time between 1:30 and 2:00, when I often seem to be up for no good reason.

Going to bed now. Tomorrow my youngest daughter and I go ice skating, while her sister and mom go to see a show. All after I sleep.

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Explain all those cables and connectors on a mixing board, please

Yesterday I dropped in to see Roland and we got to discussing mobile podcasting. I gave him a bit of a brain dump of what I know about audio engineering and recording, which isn't a whole ton (more like half a ton), and here's what I sent him afterward.

General resources

I've heard that Audio Made Easy is a fantastic book to start with, and it's on my Amazon wish list.

IT Conversations recorded an excellent talk from the Podcast Academy on portable podcasting. It has a wiki too.

Gear

In addition to those I recommended in my posts to TidBITS, here are some more links about microphones and stuff:

• Lavalier mics: At the Editors' Association of Canada we use this model, and there is another inexpensive option too.
  
  
• Boundary microphones: The Source calls this model a "meeting microphone," so it might be good.
  
  
• Portable package: Here's what the guys from PWOP (home of Mondays, which includes my old friend Richard Campbell) recommend for getting a good sound from an iRiver MP3 recorder. A very useful resource.
  
  
• Here's a fabulous small mixer.

Connectors and cables

Some info about different connector and cable types:

• Connector Types
• An Explanation of Balanced Cabling
• Balanced vs. Unbalanced Cabling
• Wikipedia has a good explanation of the different kinds of microphones.

Here are all the different connector types you're likely to run across (at least that I could think of). For mics, you're generally only concerned with XLR, Neutrik Combo, 1/4" TRS, 1/4" mono, and 1/8" stereo connectors. Phantom power for condenser mics generally only comes from the XLR or Neutrik Combo connectors, or from an onboard battery as in the borrowed AKG C1000S I often use.

• XLR (standard for pro mics):
• Neutrik Combo (accepts balanced mic with XLR converter, or unbalanced plugged straight in the middle)
• 1/4" TRS (Tip-Ring-Sleeve) Phono mono balanced OR stereo unbalanced (also called standard stereo headphone)
• 1/4" Phono mono unbalanced (like a guitar cable)
• 1/8" Stereo (mini-headphone or mini-stereo, like your iPod or Walkman)
• RCA (standard for stereos)
• USB Type A (like on your computer) or Type B (like on a USB hub or device)
• FireWire 6-pin (a.k.a. FireWire 400 6-pin, like on your Mac, IEEE-1394)
• FireWire 4-pin (a.k.a. FireWire 400 4-pin) smaller, unpowered, also called Sony iLink)
• FireWire 800 (different shape, adapter required to connect to slower-but-still-very-fast FireWire 400 ports or cables)
• Speakon (locking, for powered speaker lines)
• Coax (standard cable TV, old-style Ethernet)
• RJ-45 (10BaseT, 100BaseT, 1000BaseT "Gigabit" Ethernet)
• Optical/SPDIF/Toslink (SPDIF can also use RCA connectors)
• MIDI DIN (MIDI can also go through USB)

You can also get an adapter like the MicPlug that goes directly from XLR to USB. I have one, it runs on USB power, and it works pretty well. There is a similar GuitarPlug that uses 1/4" mono to plug into a guitar instead of XLR to plug into a microphone.

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Gingerbread

The Swiss Bakery on East 3rd. Avenue in Vancouver, where I often get a sandwich for lunch, has a spectacular gingerbread house on display.

Here are some photos I took of it today:

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Crying for Kong

King Kong is a fantastic movie, in both senses of the word: it's extremely good, and it is a grand fantasy, showing us places and things that could never exist, or which are long gone, and yet in which we can believe for the moment. I doubt anything else, for instance, could do as good a job of showing us in 2005 what the New York of the mid-1930s looked and felt like, at least in legend.

My seven-year-old daughter came with me, and she is just old enough to handle it, I think. She hid her eyes from the scariest things (no, not the giant swamp maggots or dinosaurs or Kong himself—that would be the people, especially the human residents of Skull Island), but she loved the movie. And, because she is young and among the few moviegoers in the world who didn't know the story beforehand, it is the first film where she cried at the end.

Her first experience with movie tragedy frightened her a little—I don't think she expected her emotional reaction to the film. But we discussed it and I told her that it was okay, that sometimes movies make us sad, as well as excited and scared and amazed. To take a fundamentally silly, if mythic, concept and make it work so well is quite an achievement. I sniffled too.

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Looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer?

Full disclosure: if you buy something through the following links, I get a cut from Apple.

Now go ahead and print out a gift certificate before you run out of time, okay?

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Left brain, right brain, music brain, editor brain

A recent study from New Zealand shows that musicians' brains respond differently to music than those of non-musicians do. In short, when asked to do difficult language-based tasks with music playing, musicians did worse than in silence (indicating that their brains process music much like language), while non-musicians did equally well whether music was playing or not (meaning that they don't treat it linguistically).

That makes sense, of course. I recall when I was a kid that I could just let music wash over me without dissecting how it was made and how it is structured the way I do now, after more than 16 years making money playing it, even if not always often or well.

But it's not an entirely binary thing either, as I discovered yesterday. The two main interface designers at work were away, but we needed to make some application mockups for a presentation taking place today, so my boss called on my not-so-mad Photoshop skillz to get it done.

Normally at work I'm editing words—letters, web content, proposals, emails, and so on. I've found that while I can listen to music while doing that, I can't listen to talk podcasts or other discussion-heavy audio, just as I can't listen to them while browsing text-heavy websites or writing blog posts like this one. I find myself focusing on the work onscreen, and missing out on the talk in my ears.

However, when working on the mockups, which are at least as intellectually difficult but are more visual than linguistic, I found I could happily listen to talk podcasts at the same time, or to music instead, and both get the work done efficiently and enjoy the shows or music. So my brain obviously treats written and spoken language differently than it does music, and differently than visual design as well. I notice that while working and listening to music, I actually do revert a bit to my childhood listening pattern, where I don't analyze the music as much, just hear it—presumably because my left brain is occupied with the tasks at hand.

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UBC podcasts

My alma mater, the University of British Columbia, has been posting podcasts of interesting public lectures at www.ubc.ca/podcasts/ for awhile, but I just found out about them. Subscribed!

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The real thing

UPDATE: I'd better get cracking. I already have at least three people (Roland included) who want to buy the thing, and I don't even have my music page updated with the info. I'll still take their money and send them early copies if they want, though!

Copies of my debut CD have finally arrived, and I'll soon be making them available for sale. In the meantime, you can check out photos and listen to all the podsafe tunes (plus more) for free at my Penmachine Podcast page.

Those of you who receive Christmas presents from me and who read this blog have now lost much of the surprise about what you might be getting.

And whether you are on that list or not, you might enjoy these photos of Christmas lights too.

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Cool diabetic tools

I've had diabetes since the spring of 1991. The latest episode of diabeticfeed (who also use my tunes for their background music—even though they had no idea that I'm diabetic when they started doing it) lists some extremely cool tools. Here are the ones I want:

• The Disintegrator Plus. Cool product, even cooler name!
• Smart Charts "My Other Checkbook" notebooks. Simple, cheap, and useful.
• The Guardian RT continuous glucose monitoring system. This is outstanding, but currently only in limited trials in selected U.S. cities.

UPDATE: Apparently it is available in Canada. For almost $3800. Guess I'll have to think about it for a bit. :)

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Where we are, where we've been, where we're going

Jakob Nielsen: "Some time in 2005, we quietly passed a dramatic milestone in Internet history: the one-billionth user went online. Because we have no central register of Internet users, we don't know who that user was, or when he or she first logged on. Statistically, we're likely talking about a 24-year-old woman in Shanghai."

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Becoming a musician again

When I began classical guitar lessons in 1978 (sort of my idea, but not entirely), my dad said to me that, hey, you never know, you might need the skill to eat someday. I studied the instrument unenthusiastically with a kind but stern instructor at Aeolian Music Studios in our neighbourhood for four years, then quit when I started at a new high school across town—or really, I quit when I had a good excuse to. I'd taken my Grade Four Royal Conservatory of Music exam, done decently well because of a generous examiner, and then it was over.

I forgot everything. I'd never been all that good at reading music, and the skill leaked from my mind. I knew no real theory, so that was gone too. My guitar sat in my closet, and every once in a while there would be a loud TWANG! as a string broke inside the case. While over a third of the students in my school were in band, I didn't pick up a guitar or any other instrument seriously for more than five years. When I did again, it was trying the bass in 1987 when my roommate Sebastien borrowed one. At the end of that year, I tried the drums and found, to my astonishment, that I could play decently well without every having sat behind a kit before.

In 1988, my roommate and I set each other a challenge: on the same day, each of us would buy an instrument (he a guitar, me a drum kit) as cheaply as we could, and we would learn to play them. He found a crappy, silver-grey, plywood, eighties-style heavy-metal electric guitar, brand new in cardboard box at a pawn shop; I discovered what was probably a Sears brand blue sparkle drum kit, used, with god-awful cymbals. One of us spent $80, the other $75, and I don't remember who was who.

We learned, and within a year we'd played our first show, at the Science Undergrad Last Class Bash at UBC in the spring of 1989. By then Sebastien had graduated to a Squier double-humbucking Stratocaster, to which he stuck a Batman logo, and it became the Bat Strat, plugged into a solid-state Peavey amp. I still had the blue sparkle drum kit, but I'd added a better Pearl snare drum and some proper, but still cheap Sabian cymbals. As a band (with our other two roommates Andrew a.k.a. Elvis Flostrand on bass and Alistair on guitar, plus my classmate Ken, who is a now a university professor, also on guitar), we sort of sucked. But people were drunk, and we put on a funny show and had a good time.

We kept playing, from New Year's 1989-90 in a rough bar in Pemberton to a house gig at a scuzzy nightclub on East Broadway in Vancouver. I bought better drums, then bandmates and band names and one-off shows and house gigs came and went, and while I never learned theory or to read music again, I kept getting better and came to learn by ear, which works particularly well for the drums. I noodled on my guitar, which I was by then keeping strung, when I had the chance. By 1994, at the end of my university career, I was playing in The Flu and The Neurotics with Sebastien and Alistair and Dirk and we decided to go full-time. My dad's prediction came true, and though I only rarely played guitar, we spent some of our time busking in downtown Vancouver for money to eat. (Once we received a $100 U.S. bill in our guitar case, and never determined if that had been a mistake from the donor.)

I spent nearly two years as a full-time musician, traveling to Australia and Alberta, Powell River and Vanderhoof, Victoria and Prince George. The playing was fun; most of the rest (driving winter highways at night, fighting with bandmates, being poor, smelling like stale smoke and beer after every show without even smoking or drinking) wasn't.

I quit again, this time shortly after getting married, and spent the next five years hardly playing the drums or guitar or anything else again. I did the occasional fill-in with my former bandmates, creaking like the Tin Man after a rain and hurting my hands, since my callouses had faded. But by the end of 2000 I was back in the game, part-time, for a one-off show in New York City, and then, by the spring of 2001, a full member of The Neurotics again, with Sebastien still my guitar player. I've been at it ever since (part time, with day jobs), for five years now, almost 17 since my first gig.

My technique is not that great, on drums or bass or guitar, and especially on keyboards. I know what I'm doing, but only in the most haphazard and unschooled of ways. But aside from my performing live, I've found that since I started podcasting my compositions, people all over the world enjoy them, and some have asked me to write and record custom material. I'm no prodigy, never was, but it turns out I'm decently good at it.

Tomorrow, though, I'll play guitar for an audience for the first time since 1994, and classical guitar for the first time since 1982. Earlier today my daughters' piano teacher Lorraine asked me to play something for her year-end Christmas Recital, at the Cloud 9 revolving restaurant downtown. Without a second thought, I said sure, and agreed to a version of "We Three Kings," like the one I recorded last week. I may add a few more entertaining touches as well.

I thought I might be nervous, but I'm not. I've played so many shows in front of so many audiences over the years that I know, mistakes or not, that it will be fine, that I'll have a good time—and that I've played with less preparation, to truly hostile crowds, and come out the other side unscathed. It's a good feeling. I won't be playing for my lunch, but I'll be playing for my family—my wife, my daughters, their teacher, my parents, my in-laws, and the other students and their families. The thought makes me smile. After starting and quitting and starting again and quitting again and starting again and keeping at it, I guess I really am a musician now, because the idea of playing for an audience, and making them happy, makes me happy.

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The semi-carefree life of the 1972 college girl

One of my wife's co-workers found an October 1972 issue of Seventeen magazine and donated it to us. Reading the ads is a fascinating look at North American attitudes towards college-age women when I was three years old. Plus they're bloody hilarious:

My favourite for its sheer creepiness has to be this one, part of a two-page spread for a Helena Rubinstein fragrance called "Heaven Sent":

To wit: "A woman whose life is in the future should smell different from a woman with a past." That reflects the overarching message on many pages of the magazine in those heady post–Summer of Love, pre-Watergate years, which was, "You're a young, free-spirited, college girl, unencumbered by the creaky old mores of the past. You can be and do anything you want! But if you sleep around, everyone will spit on you."

Ah, memories.

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Maximum Security Christmas

If you like your Christmas tunes a bit twisted, I recommend the Tower of Song Episode #28 Christmas Show. It's been giving me smiles at work here while I edit. "Maximum Security Christmas" by Jenny Jusell and Country Sunshine (available at Oilville Christmas Dynasty) is particularly entertaining.

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Apple's iTunes podcast directory in trouble

While I haven't personally had any problems, recent chaos in the iTunes podcast directory certainly is causing huge problems for podcasters. When iTunes began supporting podcasts with version 4.9 in July, it instantly became the 800-pound gorilla of the podcatching market.

It looks like, as geeknewser Todd Cochrane says, the directory is being "maintained by a third grader," and Apple needs to put some more people on the project quickly, or find a way to open the directory up for community maintenance.

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Need help converting analog Video8 tapes to VHS or DVD

My wife and I received a camcorder as a present in 1998, around the time our oldest daughter was born. It was fairly high-tech at the time, using the analog Video8 format. But now it's busted, no longer willing to load tapes.

That's a problem, since we have a fair bit of baby and kid footage on tapes we can no longer play. So, does anyone out there have something we can borrow to convert those Video8 tapes to another format? Perhaps the best would be DVD, but I'd be equally happy with a simple way to convert them to another MPEG or digital movie format on our Mac, or (as a last resort) to VHS analog cassette.

If you have a Digital8 camcorder that can play Video8 tapes and output to FireWire (a.k.a. IEEE 1394 or iLink), that would probably be ideal. Or if you know of a better way that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, please let me know, either in the comments or by email. Thanks!

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Songs I love right now

The first two came to me from podcasts:

• "The Enemy" (U.S. iTunes link only, sorry) by Bottle of Justus (thanks, Marcus)
• "What Did You Do?" by Slau (thanks, Tim)
• "Walking With a Ghost" by Tegan and Sara
• "My Doorbell" by The White Stripes (yeah, I know they've done a version of "Walking With a Ghost" too, but I prefer the original with the spooky synths)
• "Brother Down" by Sam Roberts
• "Chest Fever" by The Band
• "Breathe" by Swollen Members with Nelly Furtado

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Excellent advice on how to interview someone

Michael Enright is one of CBC Radio's best-known broadcasters, having been an on-air personality for decades. Tod Maffin interviews Mr. Enright about...how to interview people!

It's only 15 minutes, and is quite informative. They even talk about how to be interviewed well. (Key points: call the interviewer by their first name, and answer the question you would like to have been asked, rather than what you were asked.)

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Free blues vocal satire MP3: "Comcast Connection Blues"

Chris Pirillo wrote some lyrics on December 7, 2005 as a blog post. Then he asked me to write a song around them. The result is perhaps the whitest possible white-boy blues, wherein two guys from the Pacific Northwest complain about an unreliable broadband Internet connection. It's "Comcast Connection Blues" (4.8 MB MP3 file), baby. You may download it and cry your broadband nights away.

It features me actually singing for a change, and also includes what I must say is some surprisingly fine lead blues guitar, which I recorded in only a couple of takes. It was mastered by Les Thorn in New York City. The tape operator was my five-year-old daughter, Ms. L. Miller. The track is also available via Chris's website, as well as on iTunes and the Podsafe Music Network. It's © 2005 by Derek K. Miller and Chris Pirillo.

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Sorry, Santa

We didn't mean to do it, really.

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Apple Aperture: not ready for prime time

Ars Technica goes to town on Apple's Aperture photo workflow software:

Hopefully this will be a lesson to Apple and all developers: releasing buggy launch products is bad. I'm sorry to say that until an update comes, Aperture is a program that will require users to carefullly dance around its problems in order to fit it into a professional workflow.

The Ars team is just clarifying the drubbing they gave Apple before:

They have only themselves to blame: they set themselves up for a big fall by attempting to dig themselves a chunk of the pro market by purporting to have the lossless holy grail of imaging. The trouble with that is they obviously didn't have the engineering or expertise in RAW processing to pull it off...

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Shiptastic

People like me who work in service industries often forget what a hassle it can be to assemble and ship physical products. Sometimes it can be a tough lesson.

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CBC podcasting survey

Head on over to CBC's podcasting page and click on the Survey link in the upper right corner to take their survey about future CBC podcasting initiatives. The questions are intelligent and fascinating, and offer an intriguing look into what the Mother Corp. is thinking about—good stuff, in my opinion.

The survey will take you around 15 minutes, I'd guess, and if you like CBC and podcasts, or are interested in the idea, it will be well worth your time.

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Derek on CBC Radio at 3 p.m. today

Okay, today's the day I introduce the Podsafe for Peace song on CBC Radio's "On the Coast" drive-time show, at 3 p.m. this afternoon. In Vancouver that's 690 AM, or you can try one of these other frequencies depending on where you live. There are also high and low quality online Windows Media audio streams.

I'm trying to get Audio Hijack Pro to record the show automatically, since I pre-recorded my intro this morning, and I'll actually be picking up the kids from school at 3, but if you get a chance to record it from CBC yourself and mine fails, let me know so I can maybe obtain it from you. I'll only be on for a minute or two, then they play the song.

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Keep visitors by sending them away

Last June I briefly met blogging, podcasting, RSS, OPML, and outlining software pioneer Dave Winer at Gnomedex 5 in Seattle. Until then I had been puzzled about why—when he's been around so long, had so many good ideas, and contributed so many things to the Internet community over the years, and even came close to dying from heart disease caused in part by the stress of it all (plus the smoking)—so many people hate his guts.

I had some of it figured out before then. Mr. Winer, for instance, is a pragmatic developer, a "just get it done" kind of guy who's made many things possible for the rest of us. But those who value elegance often dislike what he builds, because it's made to do things, and not always as cleanly as they'd like. Sometimes he eschews or actively ignores what other might like to do in favour of his own solutions. His software can be off the wall, occasionally a bit clunky, and might be hard to understand—even if the ideas underneath are good.

What I found at Gnomedex was that, like many smart people, if he thinks you're wrong, he won't hesitate an instant to tell you. In person, even more than on the Web, if he disagrees with you, he can be very rude. He shoots from the hip. He makes the kind of impression that's hard to dispel.

But once again, Dave Winer is right on target about how things work on the Web:

Now the fundamental law of the Internet seems to be the more you send them away the more they come back. It's why link-filled blogs do better than introverts. It may seem counter-intuitive—it's the new intuition, the new way of thinking. The Internet kicks your ass until you get it. It's called linking and it works.

People come back to places that send them away. Memorize that one.

This came up in a back-and-forth with Jakob Nielsen in 1999. The duality of the Internet. The dark side sees eyeballs and user-generated content. The light side sends them away, trusting that they'll come back. The beauty of it is that the light side works and the dark side doesn't. This is where the optimism of web people comes from. We called it Web Energy in the early days, and it's still with us today.

When I talk to students and others about making websites, that's one of my key messages too. Thanks, Dave.

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Free Christmas solo classical guitar instrumental: "We Three Kings"

Back in October 2005, I said I would record a Christmas carol, and thought that "We Three Kings" (2.8 MB MP3 file), written by John Hopkins Jr. (1820–1891), would be a good one. So here it is.

Unlike any of my other tunes, this has no loops, samples, MIDI instruments, or other fancy stuff. It's just me playing the classical guitar my parents bought for lessons when I was 10 years old, with a microphone and some reverb for that concert hall sound. It's short, just two minutes, so enjoy it. It's also available via iTunes and on the Podsafe Music Network. The composition is public domain, and the recording is © 2005 by Derek K. Miller.

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If you take photos, read this

Here is one of the best articles I've ever read about digital photography, or photography of any sort, for that matter. A quote from the start:

To begin with, let's dispel the notion that a camera records what the eye can see. It does not and it cannot because a camera functions nothing like the eye. [...] Your brain infers information largely by generalizing from what it has encountered before. In doing this the eye and brain have to handle contrasts of light that exceed one million to one.

And author Charles Maurer goes on from there, explaining why, up to the advent of digital photography (or at least digital photo manipulation), painting was actually a better way of capturing the world than cameras were.