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::Thursday, August 26, 2004::
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Money or a Mouse?
Started a new contract this morning (at the same place I worked before). Having to learn ASP.NET, C#, Visual Studio, Crystal Reports, SQL Server Manager and SourceSafe, all at once...
I was given a mouse with no wheel. The sensation of the absence of a mouse wheel verged on physical pain. It was like losing an arm. Itchy. Luckily, I have now procured an appropriate mouse and I'm back in control.
I recieved notification of an impending Cinestatic hosting 6-month payment due mid-September. I will receive donations with gracious gratitude. Or awkward mumbling.
Party at my house this Saturday. Come!
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2:13:47 PM :: permalink
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::Tuesday, August 24, 2004::
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Bio
I just put up a sort of first-person biography of Smunk on www.smunk.net. Just wanted to get some history across really. Don't read it, it'll just annoy you.
I STILL DON'T HAVE ANOTHER JOB. This is getting serious.
I have spent the last few days developing a rather beautiful Flash application - a graphical project-planner to manage my affairs. It will also be useful for showing employers when I am working, and when I'm not, in case they want me back. I'm leaving that stage of development for now though. Here's a screenshot.
Today I am trying to work on a track, but it's just white noise and I can't get my head round it.
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2:29:30 PM :: permalink
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::Friday, August 13, 2004::
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My philosophy of the internet.
I was asked during a somewhat bemusing job interview last week "What is your philosophy of the internet?" in the context of a discussion around client-side versus server-side implementations of web applications.
That's a rather general question, I said, How do you mean? "Just in general".
So I embarked on a proto-exegesis and found myself disturbingly bounced between nondescript internet cliché and tired old jargon, stuttering as I attempted to find some explanation that could do justice to the amount of thought and experimentation I have put into this subject.
I managed to find my feet eventually, but it was an explanation of raw basics - not connected in any obvious way to the preceeding client/server debate. Having bounced the ideas around ("God, I should have said this" etc., the way that happens after pressured conversations - you know, with potential employers or pretty girls etc.), I have managed to assemble my ideas into a coherent and pertinent whole, which I will attempt to write down here.
Why Server-Side Scripting Is Better Than Client-Side Scripting In Relation To The Evolution Of The Internet
Networks and Protocols
There are many networks on this planet of ours. Many ways for people to interact. Computer networks and other kinds like phone networks and road networks. The internet is arguably the most successful and flexible network we have at our disposal. This is because it is open and insecure. There are no checkpoints and shady customs officers ("you have to pay me to cross the border") - no secret passwords required or exclusive security infrastructures to navigate if a user wants access to the seething mass of information available. The internet's success is a result of the simplicity and universal acceptance of its simple protocol - TCP/IP.* That's all the internet is, in fact - a protocol - a universal language by which computers can communicate. It's not the most efficient and it's pretty stupid, but therein lies its strength.
Standards and Accessibility
Because the success of the internet is contingent on the universal acceptance/ability to adopt certain standards, we should be wary of any course of development that relies on tangential non-standard / marginal features. HTML was originally conceived as a standard for transmitting documents with minimum confusion - this is the standard of the www, and we've seen it distorted and added to, misunderstood (Internet Explorer with its unique box-model width/height misinterpretations)
I'm not saying that nobody should attempt to come up with extra features and protocols for the internet. I'm a big fan of Macromedia Flash, and I think there have been occasional glaring omissions or unnecessary complications in the W3C's standards. I like DHTML, I like the Document Object Model; JavaScript is necessary at times to keep things reasonably fast. I'm being forced to rethink some of my opinions on the subject since seeing Blogger's rich HTML editing system and so on, despite the fact it's been failing certain Bloggers contributing to this website. The obsession with 'accessibility' that I fostered when in Local Government is still with me, though not in the same way that the public sector tends to interpret this word (there's a blanket approach to accessibility - always aiming to somehow cater for blind, foreign, illiterate people - no structure to recognise the difference between different kinds of disadvantages, and a patronising rejection of the fact that people can and do learn how to do things very quickly if the necessity arises). The real utility of making a site accessible is because if you're catering for screen-reading software, you're also catering for mobile devices and future progress in the ubiquity of the internet.
Optimisation
I started experimenting with computer programming when I was about 8 years old, on the ZX81. By the time I had my Amiga, I was obsessively refining and optimising code, always trying to find the most efficient way to do something. Computers continued to get more powerful and this seemed like a lost art - the philosophy behind most software being just to 'make it work, SOMEHOW', optimisation rarely being a factor. Take Microsoft Windows, for example... It's ugly hack layered on ugly hack; there's no elegance or holism to its implementation. I thought all the things I'd learned had become obsolete, but then, whaddyaknow, the web started to provide a platform where optimisation once again became a necessity. Programming in Flash, minimising download
times, knowing that you're coding for a nested system - software within software within software, no longer directly connecting to the hardware. And now there are games that you can download onto mobile phones, so it's still very important. What I'm trying to get at is that there are cycles here. Computers get faster, so optimisation gets less important, but then the internet comes to the forefront. More people get broadband, so optimisation recedes in importance, but then phones come in and we've come back round again. The cycles, in accordance with the extropian vision that I subscribe to, are becoming shorter all the time.
What's your point, Michael?
I set out to connect my frantic ramblings about 'protocols' and the first-principals view of the internet with the issue of Client/Server scripting. I have unwittingly complicated the issue by adding some other first-principles-style thoughts, so my conclusion has become rather clouded again...
By relying on the latest developments with browser software (i.e. coding Client-Side), you fail to insure yourself against the future, because you are introducing a dependence on marginal protocols.
By serving out information in the most basic form possible, having done all the calculations and data manipulation Server-Side (the server being a known quantity, unlike the client), you exponentially increase the life-expectancy of your service. Stripped down browsers can be used, and these will become more and more common. As the internet becomes less dependent on the beige box in the corner of a room and more distributed - integrated into, say, fridges and schoolbooks, you'll see the benefits.
This isn't a black and white issue, of course - there will always be certain things that can only be sensibly performed at the client end, and bandwidth/performance issues will also be a problem if a service is very popular. However, the issue of accessibility, this being a digital domain, IS black and white. If the client's software misses or misinterprets a single idiosyncratic protocol, the whole system can fail, in an idiosyncratic way that is impossible to predict.
The conclusion. As a metaphor.
I think my point, ultimately, expressed in terms of human language (an isomorphic concept- computer communication can easily be described in terms of language).
Why say something with convoluted, obscure language, if it can be plainly expressed in terms that everybody can understand? It might take a little more work to find a simple way to express something, but it is well worth it, if you have something valuable to say.
This is more important for computers, because people are much more capable of dealing with regional accents and can guess the meanings of words from their context, but if a computer comes up against something it's not heard of, it just stops and fails to understand entirely.
Any comments??????
*Many of my thoughts stem from a reading of an article I read last year called "World of Ends - What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else" - by Doc Searls and David Weinberger. I apologise to the authors if I have missed any important points.
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11:28:31 AM :: permalink
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::Tuesday, August 10, 2004::
㉸
I suppose...
...it's because I imagine that all these successful electronic artists would say my music is shit that I am so ready to criticise their works so passionately. If someone says they like what I do, I can suddenly see all the good in their own work. Pretty stupid of me really.
I'm trying to be a bit more serious about music today. Even if it only involves sending out a few emails to people who do events in London.
I am feeling altogether too unemployed at the moment.
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5:32:07 PM :: permalink
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Plexiphonic
Had a nice link put up at from www.plexiphonic.com today. Have a look. There's some real passion for electronica on show, and some videos to download. Thanks Ewo!
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5:29:20 PM :: permalink
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::Thursday, August 05, 2004::
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Emm Essterness
I wonder how many other musicians employ Microsoft Project to timetable the production of their tracks...
Nice to see someone liked my Headset review (Jason Sutter). That's enough self-googling for one day.
The challenge of being 'Smunk' is occasionally very intimidating. The word is intended to inspire images of raucous cheekyness, disobedience, audacity.. When I feel small (as frequently happens) the name seems ill-fitting and arrogant. I wonder how well the moniker fits with my often melancholic output. I suppose the name is better suited to the live-performing Smunk. Who is currently in cold storage. Held under by my incapacity to make phone calls and send out demonstration recordings.
I had a long drunken debate about politics with two friends B and D. It helped to clarify the major source of my discontent with this existence - of society and culture in general.
We are awash in a sea of memes that don't care about us. The easiest way to live is to blindly reproduce those ideas that are the most memorable, the most interesting, the most bold. The ideas that seem most 'different'. I suppose my central point was that the ideas that we are most likely to adopt and spread (say, democracy or commumnism) aren't necessarily those that benefit us, they're the ideas that benefit themselves. This makes me especially distrustful of commonly accepted ideas. The dogmatic repetition of the idea that democracy is the best model for society is one of those ideas, and you can imagine that my arguing its flaws could spark emotions and shouting...
If you are aware of the selfishness of memes - aware that the ones that consume your brain-time aren't often particularly useful, you're in for a lonely existence. I don't watch Big Brother because I know how addictive it can get, and how many hours it can waste. I won't allow myself the illusion that I'm doing something worthwhile or 'fun' by watching such nonsense. I don't hold with politics, because while debate feels worthwhile, wholesome, helpful and important, debate and political theories are a long way from the actions they result in. Political action in our democratic society invariably consists of inventing a new name for something ("new deal for communities", for instance) that seems to address the flaws of some aspect of the current/former way of doing things. It's all done on these short cycles (4 or 5 years between general elections) so long-term planning of the kind that could really help everybody is the last thing on our politicians' minds. It's all media and appearances, using media to maintain an illusion of supernatural infallibility - a lot of stuff and nonsense.
B(ruce) called me a 'disappointed romantic'. That rings quite true. What I feel like having right now is a nice king with a big beard who wants the best for his (or her or his or her) people. With a big beard and one of those sceptres. Someone trustworthy. Have you ever known an old man with a big beard to be untrustworthy? Of course not.
P.S. I'm very disappointed with Beatmasta's decision to withdraw his recent point of interesting debate. To sum up, he was saying that it's important not be thinking about how much fame and fortune you might gain from making music, but how to make people like your music more - to think about the people who will listen to it. My response was one of agreement, and I highlighted my slightly different problem of constantly being aware of the lack of objectivity when it comes to judging people's responses, and the problem of not knowing what audience I'm playing to. More on this later, no doubt.
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1:57:39 PM :: permalink
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㊂
Hobgoblin
Here's a new track. Hope you like it.
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12:31:52 PM :: permalink
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Care to comment?
