I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MITCHMATIC-“Ella MPC” and “Joplin MPC” (2010).

I haven’t quite figured out what the MPC stands for, but I really like these two short songs.

In “Ella MPC” Mitchmatic takes some Ella Fitzgerald scatting (I don’t know the source) and makes a new song out of it.  After 30 seconds or so, he throws a simple drumbeat over the whole thing and off it goes. I love that he even makes different “parts” of the song with different scatting sections.  It’s very clever.

In “Joplin MPC” he takes a Scott Joplin rag (I can’t tell which one, but there’s a plunger-trumpet on it) and loops it around on itself.  It creates an entirely new song that sounds nothing like a Joplin rag.  Indeed, if it weren’t  titled that way, it may not even be obvious that that’s where  the music is originally from.  It’s also very clever.  Especially when the drumbeats turn it into a much faster dance song in the middle.

Both of these songs come from the Two Weeks Off album, and frankly I should have just reviewed the whole thing by now, but these two songs really stand out as a cool experiment.

[UPDATE: Mitchmatic just left a comment on my About me page (cool!) and he gives me the answer to the mysterious MPC question–it’s the name of an AKAI sampler.  I’m including this video where you can watch him play “Joplin MPC” live.  It blew my mind]

[READ: December 31, 2011] “We’re not in Redmond Any More, Toto”

This post is all about Barry’s switch from Microsoft Windows to Gentoo Linux.  He explains that it was “a lot like moving to another country, both in the sense that I didn’t know where anything was or understand the local language.”  But Barry is not looking back.

He makes eight statements contrasting Linux and Microsoft.  I’ve never used Linux so I can’t really chime in, but I will say that this blog post had the most comments of any one of his by a huge margin.  (34!–Computer geeks are passionate, man).

1. Linux is a religion.
And practitioners have a born-again look in their eyes.

2. Windows thinks you’re an idiot; Linux thinks you’re a genius.
I agree with the first half, although I do like that you just hit ENTER to install stuff.  While I like to do my own tech repair, letting the machine do the obvious stuff is nice.

3. Windows plays soccer; Linux plays rugby.
Having been an IT guy, I find Windows to be maddening.  “As soon as anything goes wrong with any program, the whole thing collapses in a screaming heap.”  Windows is like a five-year old.

4. Linux marketing sucks.
If you don’t know how good Linux is, that’s your problem.

5.  Windows lets you, Linux unleashes you.
As in you can’t do anything unless Microsoft lets you.

6. Windows gets in your face.
“Everything is checking for updates or activating or deactivating or switching channels and IT HAS TO TELL YOU THIS RIGHT NOW.”  Ha.

7. Windows fails silently.
You click buttons and nothing happens.  You want to shout, “Just tell me what’s wrong.”  Although this next part is false, I rather like the sentiment that “Windows doesn’t even have a system log, as far as I know.”  It does have one, but it’s not easy to find.  Or to understand.

8. Linux people rock.
More to the point, Windows treats a “support customer like something they just stepped in: their aim is to get rid of you with as little touching as possible.”  So true.  So true.

I often think of switching to Linux and my techie friends seem impatient that I haven’t.  But honestly I don’t use my machines at home enough to warrant the steep learning curve.

Read the whole thing, especially if you hate Microsoft, here.