You may have heard that all 30GB Zunes died last night and will be working properly again 24 hours later. In case you're interested, the C function that caused the problem is displayed and discussed at ZuneBoards.
Basically, somebody did a poor job of leap-year handling.
Here's a great video debunking some of the McCain campaigns recent distortions/lies.
I've always liked McCain for being a "straight talker." Now it looks like he's decided he'd rather lose his integrity than lose an election. And it's working.
As I've noted on this blog before, the Internet gives us the possibility of strengthening the power of a truth through viral dissemination of that truth. If people don't know something, it's not going to have an effect on their thinking.
So, if you agree that people who can't be elected honestly shouldn't be elected, please spread this video around.
Suppose you want to divide a Python list into sublists of approximately equal size. Since the number of desired sublists may not evenly divide the length of the original list, this task is (just) a tad more complicated than one might at first assume.
One Python Cookbook entry is:
def slice_it(li, cols=2):
start = 0
for i in xrange(cols):
stop = start + len(li[i::cols])
yield li[start:stop]
start = stop
which gives the exact number of subsequences, while varying the length of the subsequences a bit if necessary. It uses Python's slicing feature to get the lengths.
That was written in response to an earlier cookbook entry which had the following one-liner:
[seq[i:i+size] for i in range(0, len(seq), size)]
I like that it's a one-liner but don't like a couple of things about it. If your goal isn't a particular sublist length but rather to divide the list up into pieces, you need another line to compute the size. And then it doesn't turn out too well. Suppose you want to divide a string of length 10 into 4 substrings:
>>> size=10/4
>>> size
2
>>> seq = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
>>> [seq[i:i+size] for i in range(0, len(seq), size)]
[[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6], [7, 8], [9, 10]]
Try setting size to 3 to get fewer substrings:
>>> size=3 >>> [seq[i:i+size] for i in range(0, len(seq), size)] [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9], [10]](Dissimilar lengths.)
Here's a briefer one-liner using the slice idea, which doesn't require you to compute the length, and does give the exact number of subsequences you want and with lengths that are more appropriately divided:
[seq[i::num] for i in range(num)]
The drawback there is that the subsequences are not actually subsequences of seq; seq is sliced and diced. But, all the elements are in the output and the subsequences are as close as possible to the same length:
>>> seq = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] >>> [seq[i::num] for i in range(num)] [[1, 5, 9], [2, 6, 10], [3, 7], [4, 8]]
Jazz and smooth jazz are very different things. People who like jazz very often dislike smooth jazz. (Frankly, I can't stand it, though I listen to jazz quite a bit; for example John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" is one of my favorite recordings of all time.)
Or as Wikipedia puts it:
The term "Smooth jazz" seems to inspire controversy. Normal jazz purists contend that smooth jazz is, in actuality, not jazz of any kind, regarding it as a misleading marketing buzzword that represents an attempt to hijack the ostensible prestige of jazz in order to sell what is really a form of "elevator music". They consider the smooth jazz genre uninspired, lacking the depth of expression, harmonic and rhythmic sophistication, and complex improvisation that are hallmarks of traditional jazz; substituting, at times, trite and hackneyed musical phrasing.But there is no ID3 tag for smooth jazz. Id3 tags include one for Rock, and also distinguish many different kinds of rock (Southern Rock, Hard Rock, Progressive Rock, etc.). Many of those rock subgenres share fans much more readily than jazz and smooth jazz do.
This seems to me to be a significant oversight in the ID3 tag definition.
If any readers know who to lobby to change this, please let me know -- I think this could be a helpful change for music software.
I've been keeping politics out of this blog lately, but this just takes the cake.
Howard Wolfson, Clinton's chief spokesman, said during a conference call with reporters that Clinton would not pick a running mate who has not met the “national security threshold” — as Clinton’s military advisers and Wolfson put it on the call — but that it is possible Obama could meet that threshold by this summer's Democratic convention.
In other words, if she gets to be the nominee, and she needs him as VP in order to harness his enthusiastic supperters, he'll magically gain enough experience to be President. Honestly, I find the brazenness of her cynicism amazing, astounding, and revolting.
She undoubtedly thinks that's the only way the Democrats can beat McCain. But the fact is, Obama came out of nowhere and is doing pretty darn well without stooping to such depths. It's possible to do. She just can't do it herself.
Interesting research showing very positive correlations between musical tastes and certain predicted personality traits:
While videos and photos are good for assessing conscientiousness and extraversion, music preferences beat them in allowing observers to predict the participants' own ratings of their agreeableness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. In all, observers' ratings of participants were positively correlated with 14 different personality traits, including those listed above, as well as others such as forgiveness, imagination, and positive affect. [Cognitive Daily]
I haven't posted in quite some time, for several reasons. First, I'm working really hard and it's been hard to find time to post. Possibly a bigger issue is that when I'm posting much less often, I find that I lose the blogging mindset. Yet another thing is: I think all day about my company's technology and plans, but can't post about those because they're secret for the time being!
In any case, I ran across a project called python-safethread today. Its intention is to make a version of Python that does without the GIL and has modern constructs for concurrency. Its home page lists some of its major features:
The author says that he's aiming to make it an alternate CPython version ala Stackless, but hopes to incorporate it into mainstream CPython at some point. Right now it's at a very early state of development.
It sounds like a very interesting project, and I thought it was a good item to post about after all this time.
Theorem: Consider the set of all sets that have never been considered. Hey! They're all gone! Oh, well, never mind... [Dr. David Batchelor, hat tip to Eric Postpischil]
Microsoft is in the business of manufacturing monopolies. Ever since the deal with IBM that launched Microsoft as we know it today -- the deal where Microsoft sold PC-DOS to IBM but could also sell a fully compatible MS-DOS to other manufacturers -- their prime focus has been on that one task. Why do you own Word? If you're like most people, it's not because Word is the greatest word processor in the world for the money, it's so that you can exchange documents with the rest of the world. Everybody has Word primarily because everybody has Word.
Now imagine a world in which everybody had Zunes. You could exchange songs via wi-fi with anybody you want (OK, only for 3 days/3 plays). In that world, if you were the one person without a Zune, there's a good chance you'd want to have one. The lock-in is not as great as it is for Word, but it's the same idea.
Of course, today, the Zune's wi-fi is almost completely worthless because there is no local density of Zunes. But Microsoft is looking ahead to the time that they already have a critical mass of Zune owners. Then wi-fi will be the ether through which user interaction supports their monopoly, just as document exchange plays the same role for Word.
Of course, this all depends on the Zune getting to critical mass. My bet is that it will never happen, because there is little reason to choose Zune over various competitors today. While Microsoft's patented monopoly-machine thinking is clearly visible, in this case it seems more like wishful thinking.
Over in the sidebar you'll see our latest goodie, the Radio Free Goombah player. It contains some totally free, podsafe music that I particularly like from the Goombah free music collection.
You, too, can make a Radio Free Goombah player and add it to your blog, email it to someone, or just listen to it yourself. Pick the free tracks you like best and load 'em in. When a track the listener particularly enjoys comes up, she can click the Keep button and it's saved to her hard disk. No DRM -- play it anywhere.
While I'm at it, I might as well make some comments about these particular tracks!
Allen Shadow is an old friend of mine. I love his music. It's not mainstream -- the lyrics are intense and attention-demanding (probably the single closest comparison is to Lou Reed) and the music is not the usual pablum. It's not background music, and it's a kind of music that's hard to mass-market, despite the well-deserved, uniformly great reviews it's received. Check out, for example, the beautiful half-step drop on the words "forty-second street" in Crossroads Of America.
There is an audience for this music, and one of the things in my mind as the ideas and technology for Goombah came together over a number of years was to enable him, and others like him, to reach their audiences. The Internet has provided the raw technological materials for quite some time, but only now is the problem really being solved.
Anyway, these tracks from Allen are from his album King Kong Serenade which is all about New York City. Don't put them on as background music. Really listen. The lyrics may be found here.
Gunnar Madsen is an artist Goombah recommended to me. He's my favorite new artist discovery in quite some time. Unusual and interesting lyrics; compelling music. If your tastes are like mine you'll love his track "Something Special."
Girlyman is a group I'd heard of but never paid attention to before Goombah recommended it. Viola is a gorgeous track.
Ani Difranco's 2 Little Girls is a longtime favorite of mine. She does a great job in this live version. And a very energetic one too!
Al Di Meola is a truly great jazz guitarist. As far as I know his first recordings were with Chick Corea's Return To Forever band in the 1970's but he quickly went off on his own. Double Concerto is a beautiful track.
Morcheeba -- what can I say. It's not in a genre that I would normally listen to -- "Lighten Up" is very much a pop track. But Goombah recommended it to me so I gave it a try, and I think the music is great and I like the positive lyrics. Even though Morcheeba is a fairly well-known group, due to my personal listening habits there's no way I would have run across them without Goombah. Probably it won't be a track I'll be playing in 10 years, but it's really great to hear it five, or maybe ten, times. And if your tastes are like mine, you'll feel the same way.
This phenomenon -- getting a track just to hear and enjoy it a few times -- is something largely new in my musical experience. In the past I've tended to stick to certain beloved artists only because finding new ones has been so difficult for me -- most recordings out there consist of music I simply don't like, and I don't have the time to wade through them. Goombah eliminates that difficulty, thereby enabling me to have one night stands mixed with my usual long-term artist relationships. This is a good thing and really fun.
You may be wondering how you can make a Radio Free Goombah player with tracks that you choose. You can do it either from the Goombah application or on the web. On the web, go to our tracks page, check the checkboxes next to some of the tracks you like the most, then click the Make Radio button. A Goombah Free Music Radio will appear. Click the Widget button there. HTML will appear that you can paste into a blog. Or, click the Share button and an email will be created with a URL that links to a radio.
I encourage you to drop me a line and let me know what you think.
I once wrote that one reason iTunes doesn't support a subscription model is for the sake of iPod lock-in: once you've bought a bunch of tracks with Apple's DRM, you can't switch to a non-Apple player without losing that money.
I also wrote that I have continued to buy most of my music from Amazon rather than iTunes because of the low bit-rate of iTunes downloads. I can tell the difference between an iTunes 128kbs download and a CD and it's significant to me.
It looks like the Apple/EMI deal does away with both of those objections to buying from iTunes, at least when I buy EMI tracks. They may now be purchased without DRM and at double the bit-rate -- basically good enough that I have not been able to reliably discern a loss in sound quality. In fact it's the bit-rate I use when ripping CD's.
I still think lock-in was part of Apple's strategy. But since it's turning out that only 3% of the music on iPods comes from the iTunes Music Store, the hoped-for lock-in is just not occurring. Apple will do better by giving users a better experience, and that means getting rid of DRM.
I predict that now that EMI has made the first move, other labels will follow suit, akin to the way other airlines tend to follow when one makes a major change in fares. As long as everyone is doing the same thing, things can go on as they are. But then when one makes the inevitable shift, the others must follow to remain competitive.
But it is not as inevitable in this case as it often is with airline pricing, because music buyers can't just switch over to EMI. They want the albums they want, and those are available only from the labels that make them. The general switch to non-DRM'd downloads may take quite some time. Other labels appear to be betting that they can maintain DRM until CD's go the way of vinyl, at which point, they appear to be assuming, DRM will actually help them rather than merely be a nuisance to consumers. (DRM doesn't help them now because most recordings are still purchased on CD without DRM.) But CD's appear to have a fair number of years left in them, so my prediction is that that's a bad bet.
This is a fairly substantial release. The biggest changes are:
There are various other bug fixes and smaller improvements.
"2001 is a non-verbal experience; out of two hours and 19 minutes of film, there are only less than 40 minutes of dialogue. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalised pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconsciousness with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to ‘explain’ a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation.
You’re free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film – and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level – but I don’t want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he’s missed the point.
I think that if 2001 succeeds at all, it is in reaching a wide spectrum of people who would not often give a thought to man’s destiny, his role in the cosmos and his relationship to higher forms of life. But even in the case of someone who is highly intelligent, certain ideas found in 2001 would, if presented as abstractions, fall rather lifelessly and be automatically assigned to pat intellectual categories; experienced in a moving visual and emotional context, however, they can resonate within the deepest fibres of one’s being."
- Director Stanley Kubrick in an interview with Playboy [hat tip: scifimoviepage.]
And...
2001 in one minute with legos.
Update: If you're interested in 2001, you'll want to see this page discussing the critical reaction.
We recently put out a very major new release of Goombah, which incorporates a number of "social networking" features that were absent before. We've added a built-in messaging system, the ability to see other people's most played artists, and much more.
Also, I'd like to mention again that you can hear most recommended tracks in Napster by clicking on the little speaker icon to the left of each track. Not just a 30-second sample -- the whole thing, completely free.
Check it out. Let me know your thoughts.