I’ve written before about Canada Post. Well, silly me, I trusted them again.

I’ve been stymied on a video project for a while and one of my friends agreed to help me finish it. I needed to send him 100 gigs of footage, so I cleared off one of my terabyte drives and packed it up. My studio is equidistant from a UPS store and a Canada Post outlet. I picked the wrong one.

I paid for insurance. I paid for guaranteed delivery. I was promised it would arrive last Thursday — and I double-checked this because I’m under time pressure. Today, Tuesday, it arrived… AT MY HOUSE IN TORONTO. They gave themselves a five day extension and then did it wrong anyway: CLUSTERFAIL.

This is a truly monstrous waste of taxpayer dollars. I would probably be even more upset if I paid taxes.

Naomi Klein claimed, in The Shock Doctrine, that the Right’s modus operandi is to wait for disasters and then use them as causi belli (forgive my probably-wrong Latin pluralization) to execute their agenda. Well, here’s a freebie: our economy is SHRINKING — there aren’t enough resources to go around — let’s stop delivering post in, say, the GTA. Just for a week.

I predict that people won’t notice, let alone care. If they do, either, just restart it.

But imagine: a whole week of not killing trees for paper-based spam, not having our identities and belongings stolen, and having packages delivered TO THEIR RECIPIENTS (I can’t stress this point enough — it’s really the whole key to “delivery”, as a concept, and I’m willing to pay extra for it)… Oh, what a magical land of joy our fair city might become.

And once that experiment is successful we could roll it out to the whole nation:

Seriously, though: I would rather Harper just keep the entire postal budget for himself. The money would do me just as much good, but he’d retire from politics. Maybe he could split it with Ford.

[UPDATE: THEY BILLED US EXTRA TO TAKE DELIVERY AT THE WRONG LOCATION.]

More new techniques: all the instruments play in their own dominant frequency range, the kick is unprocessed but I changed from the simulated 808 to the simulated 909, added snare rolls and crash cymbals, and played with some new software instruments & effects (Sound Toys).

This is structured as the lead-up to a notional first drop. I don’t like the lead, but it’s mostly there to counterpoint the bass. Snares need work. The lead pans wide, so if you’re not on headphones it’s mud.

A 909, correctly compressed, with just a touch of EQ, is the business. — The Dance Music Manual

Project Opal is underway. Team Z: go!

A new film from Bobcat. I think he’s awesome, and getting better (via Dutchman, without his endorsement):

Republican presidential heaving always gives me a similar sense of epic bleakness.

Here is a test of a bunch of different new techniques, particularly band-filtering instrument tracks. The bass is sharply attenuated above 1khz, while the piano lead has the same done, below 1khz. This carves out a sense of space in the mix and helps it gel — neither sound interferes with the other. The structure is the simplest, most straightforward I could think of at the time that would get me to 64 bars. A maj / F# min, 140 bpm.

Here is the same with heavy sim-vinyl distortion:

Thanks to Dutchman.

Burning Man: the most diverse group of white people you will ever meet. – Blu

The official Burning Man blog (which is written by a volunteer) ran an interesting post about the lack of ethnic diversity among Burners. In the post and comments a number of reasons to explain the lack of ethnic minorities were put forward:

• Going to Burning Man requires a cultural sense of physical and economic security that ethnic minorities have only gained in the last generation. Economic security comes not just from personal income, but from multi-generational wealth, networking and a social safety net.
• Minority culture tends to be more sexually conservative.
• Minorities are more family and community focused, while Burning Man is heavily individualistic. Alternately, only white people need to go to Burning Man to find community.
• Minority culture grew from the civil rights movement while white counter culture grew from an individualistic movement.
• Minorities don’t like camping: “the last time [my Japanese family] went camping, it was an internment camp“
• All the cultural appropriation makes them uncomfortable.
• “Being colorful for a week in the desert might not have the same appeal for those who feel like they are outside of the mainstream all the time.“

Although one comment argued that if you control for income and education, there is no ethnic disparity. Given that none of the census reports after 2008 have been made public, it’s difficult to have an informed discussion about this.

I think it requires a level of immersion within the capitalist system that enables one to afford the luxury of attending as well as a degree of personal consumer excess high enough that one looks forward to an escape from that excess. Maybe it also requires a bit of blindness to the waste involved in a celebration that rejects attachment to worldly possessions by burning them to the ground. That said, I already have my tickets, airline reservations and RV reserved. I suspect that people of color attend in proportion to the percentage of them that have achieved this level of hypocrisy. – Paul Williams

My book club is reading How to Wreck a Nice Beach, on the history of the vocoder. One of my compatriots DJs for CBC Radio 3, and put together this YouTube playlist of vocoder tunes:

New drum kit, new processing techniques. Still much room for improved sythesis. Thinking about just lifting samples, but there’re a million things to try first. This section would be the build-up to the first drop, and would have a 16 bar drum lead-in before it. Might have to get bigger tho, depends on the song.

The bass should be warmer, I guess. It just keeps coming out cold and evil >:)

[Update:] Here is the same arrangement, but I designed a new algorithm for generating snare timings which should be more believably human (ie, funkier):

In no particular order:

Drama

House of Pleasures

How can you go wrong with period French prostitutes? [Opening Gala, Feb 12 14:00]

Rundskop (Bullhead)

I’d like to see more crime movies that aren’t about beautiful people committing glamorous crimes. [Feb 5 14:00, Feb 7 18:45]

Midnight Son

We desperately need reimaginings of the vampire myth that aren’t Mormon sparkle faeries. [Feb 6 19:15, Feb 9 19:00]

Nuit #1

This could be a preachy, dull look at Generation Y, but I’ll listen to a lecture if it starts with a 12-minute-long gritty sex scene. [Feb 5 19:15, Feb 11 11:30]

Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia)

Grizzled detectives sitting in a car at night, talking – it’s like ultra-noir. [Feb 10 21:30]

Documentary

The Redemption of General Butt Naked

I thought this Liberian warlord was fascinating before I heard he’s still alive and has converted to Christianity! [Feb 4 21:30, Feb 12 16:30]

Vigilante Vigilante: The Battle for Expression

You can’t make a straight documentary about graffiti, so like Exit Through the Gift Shop this takes a different angle by looking at people who clean up graffiti in destructive ways. [Feb 9 21:30]

Sushi: The Global Catch

Sushi is the national dish of BC, and sustainable sushi is a really important issue. [Feb 4 16:30]

A People Uncounted

Normally I avoid Holocaust movies, but the Roma are an ethnic group that I’d like to know more about. [Feb 8 18:45]

Girl Model

The modelling industry is so weird, I’m sure this will be fascinating to watch. [Feb 5 21:45]

Here’s a friend of a friend bending some circuit. This contraption won a couple grand in free equipment from Moog: