Sitting on the dock of the bay

There is a soft light that streams through the window next to me, and I feel as though there is a self-contentedness about the house. I enjoy the subdued colours that come out in the afternoon. It belies the significance of the days to come, but I'd rather not think about that right now. I feel those comforting stubs of a beard across my face, and imagine the strings of an acoustic guitar being plucked. I can't imagine doing anything now, because it would be wasted on a moment like this. Ripeness is plainly all.

When I saw there was no reply, I felt that perhaps it was going to end like it had begun. With two strangers walking away from each other..."I'll probably never see you again".

I don't think I'm mean, but I don't know how I can explain our relationship. I really didn't enjoy denying her time and time again, but really, I felt like there was no other choice. After all, we were too different, weren't we? It's funny that she should be gone now, on a plane somewhere thinking of what a low-life I am. "I don't hate you, I just can't love you. Or like you, it would seem".

Why do some lines come off as bland and trivial when sung, yet others can come off as strange and magical? Perfect example - "...No God in heaven / Or devil beneath the sea". The intonation on the second line is what I'm talking about, you know. I don't know what exactly I'm looking for - is it a mathematical answer? Dylan used to say he made very mathematical music, for what reason I'm not entirely sure. It seems infinitely interesting to try and study the nature of these things, but I suspect that in truth, once you begin to explain it I will doze off. It's as though the interesting thing is posing such questions and then lying back and saying "Ah well, what're you going to do? No answers here!".

It turns out A is a writer, and a prolific one at that! Listening to the talk about his work, it's almost enough to make me want to write again. But I find nowadays that there isn't all that much to write about, in part because I feel like I have read so little that my style is stagnant in the ways of old, never able to progress beyond those ruminations I made in high school. In fact, going to a bookstore these days has become a somewhat sad experience, and in many ways it reminds me of the days when I used to go to a music store and look under G (for the 'Dead), and then...that was it. Rows and rows of music, yet I would focus on six or seven CDs! I knew back then that it couldn't go on like that, and that at some point I was bound to find something new, but I didn't shake that off for a while*. What happens in a bookshop these days? Not all that much, really. Look under C (though I've only read The Stranger...in truth, I wonder myself why I am so fixated on Camus), F (Faulkner), maybe H (to look knowingly at Hesse, think carefully about Hemmingway, and for that odd Huxley book that has missed my eye thus far) and S (for a cheap Sarte find, and to wonder "What if" at Steinback). Egads man, 'tis shameful!

One very obvious thing that I will mention is that there isn't half the online book community as there is the online music community. For starters, there ain't no GS-like encyclopaedia of reviews! I suppose that makes the process of discovery a little more difficult, if only because I've gotten so used to finding music through purel online channels; the word of mouth is, sadly, turning into a relic of the past for me! P sometimes gives his recommendations, which are great almost uniformly, but I don't feel I've done him enough justice with the paltry amount of reading I've done. I remember a selection he made last year especially for me which to this day has gone unread. It's enough to make a man sad.

A RateYourBooks would not be an entirely foolish proposition, methinks. The lists that are generated from such sites are not entirely worthless if they allow one to come across new and interesting things. When one starts to take such lists too seriously, of course, things are bound to get ugly, but I find that intelligent lists can always be enjoyed if viewed from the right perspective.

I suspect that what I need to be reminded of is this - Camus may be no Cave, but Cave sure ain't no Camus. Yes, there are some wonderfully erudite gems I've come across over the years through song, but I would do well not to forget the magic and wonder of the book.

* The metamorphosis was slow, but I think I can pin it down to the end of '02, where old faithful S presented a selection of some albums that he particularly liked. That lead onto several avenues of exploration (like those darling Moodies), and the rest is history.

Sombre replies

I've spent a good hour wrestling with No More Shall We Part, which is surprising, because I expected it would be far easier going. At the moment, it feels even denser and more serious than The Boatman's Call, and that's saying something. Quite a few songs come across as samey-sounding, which is always a bit disappointing, and it's invariably the slower songs. Thing is, there are lots of slower songs; maybe a quarter of them are really energetic, the rest are slow piano-driven songs. I find the best songs to be the ones that really build up an atmosphere, like the brilliant "Oh My Lord", which is by far the best song here (although the first track, "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side", is strong as well).

It's definitely gloomy stuff, and Cave sounds very tired on most of them. I think it's the first instance where you can hear him straining his voice; it sounded great on The Boatman's Call, but he seems to be losing it slowly here.

Of course, just because it's dense and gloomy doesn't mean it has no worth. Enjoyable it may not be, but there probably is more to it than meets the eye.

Update: It took nearly a year for me to re-listen to it. I don't think it's as bad as the above makes it out to be, in fact the songwriting is fairly strong throughout. Dense? Hardly! I'd say it's much easier going than The Boatman's Call. Oh, and "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side" is the best thing on here, make no mistake; no offense to "Oh My Lord", but the opener could be one of Cave's finest compositions of his career. But that's just the euphoria talking...

Berlin also was tough going, and indeed set a bad precedent for the rest of the day. I found myself wading through a lot of soft, almost spoken word intonations by Reed, only to reach the somewhat uplifting "Sad Song" (which, despite the title, is anything but). I remember thinking about this album much earlier in the year, wondering whether it would be an epic tale (for some reason Hamlet came to mind). The initial verdict? Not quite! I suppose that's to be expected with really moody pieces; they really do need a lot of time to stir up some genuine feeling.

iTunes Store Not The Answer

I came across an interesting site that explains why the iTunes music store is far more evil than it lets out to be. I have to admit, I had no idea that it was basically a digitization of the same model of selling music, wherein the artists' cut is paltry. Yet I don't know if I'm as outraged as I should be over the fact that it is building something over the same model of old; after all, I seem to happily buy CDs without any concern in the world. At the moment, there don't seem to be many good alternatives (I certainly don't think downloading a song and then mailing out a cheque to the artist directly is a feasible possibility).

But what does the RIAA have to do to cure the P2P "infection"? Clearly it seems like they have to rethink their whole way of doing business, because it seems pretty clear that when you take down one P2P system, another comes up in its place. I was under the impression that the iTunes music store was a step forward, but the above article has made me reconsider my stance, if only slightly. It's certainly positive that they have seen that you really can use the internet as a large-scale distribution mechanism, and that the iTunes store survives in the face of rampant P2P sharing suggests that when there is a convenient medium of purchasing, there are people who will come around.

As for CDs themselves, I think there will definitely be a larger number of people buying CDs when there is more physical content that is bundled along with it. I'd imagine that many people who care about music would definitely pay a reasonable price to get vinyl-style covers and artwork. I'm happy with buying CDs as they are, but even I have stopped buying the imports that you find in stores, instead waiting for the rejects to appear in one of the $10 stores. They're simply too expensive, and buying even a couple really burns up the wallet. But, if these were to include for starters the vinyl-size album covers, I would start to reconsider. If then you throw in additional artwork and the like, I would definitely start to actively consider the CD worth the money.

* Re the title: what's the question?

Ode to the music catalogue

I was thinking that I would resume work on my music catalogue program at long last, but alas, it seems that it will remain dormant for a while now. After finally breaking down the very counter-productive, "real programmer" idea of not using external libraries for anything and coding everything myself, I thought that instead of writing my own AllMusic parser, I could see if some nice folks had done it all for me. There wasn't anything except an old Perl module, and so after a bit more searching, I came across some interesting information. The new terms of service at AMG don't allow data-scraping/mining from the database without a license, which would make my proposed catalogue features (like lookup and playing song samples) illegal. Granted, the program would only be for my use alone (selfish son of a gun that I am), but it was enough to make me seek out alternatives to AMG.

I went out looking for a freely searchable alternative to the AMG database, but I was a bit disappointed with the results. The ones with the most potential are community-edited ones, such as MusicBrainz and MusicMoz. The latter provides very useful XML versions of the data, while the former has album covers. But there were small things that made me think twice about the whole operation - for instance, the lack of song samples, which is something I was really keen on doing. Also, MusicBrainz doesn't seem to have an "Original Release Date" field for albums, which is what I usually use for my albums. Also, there are (understandably enough) no set reviews for most albums on either; this was something I felt I could do without, but again it is a small inconvenience.

Finally, I decided that I would seek the most sensible alternative - Excel. Yes, like the great Cap'n before me, I thought that the simplest solution would be best. It isn't as pretty without the album covers and the nice GUI, but darn it, it's good, honest stuff. Converting the old database to Excel was trivial (as you might expect, when pasting, Excel interprets a tab as the start of a new column), and so some ten minutes later, I felt the matter was resolved for the time being.

I should say however that MusicBrainz does seem to be rather active in terms of ongoing growth, which means that in the next few years it may well provide all that I ask of it. I'm torn between helping improve it, or helping improve Wikipedia's own repository on music. Perhaps this is the biggest problem with community-driven enterprises - there's too many of them!

(Yes, I realize the post title makes no sense)

History of rock

As one would expect, watching "John Lennon's Jukebox" sparked a fair bit of thought on the history of rock, and how it got to the way it is today. Fascinating stuff, really. S posed the question of who was the first to truly break away from the traditional rock 'n roll influences of the late '50s, which got me thinking a bit. It's funny, by '66/'67, a whole slew of new artists came about, but it's hard to pinpoint the first major deviation. I'd be inclined to go with Highway 61 (big surprise), which was in '65, which is funny because over the past couple of years I got the feeling that it was a lot more cramped in terms of genius around that time. Probably is, I just haven't found it yet.

On the subject, there isn't much that can hope to compete with Peiro Scaruffi's History Of Rock, which is also available as a paperback; it's as comprehensive as you could possibly want, although some of the portions are yet to be translated. He does tend to get a bit carried away with over-romanticising some things, and his view is definitely idiosyncratic. His "Greatest Albums" list is one of the more interesting ones you'll find (how many do you know of that feature Faust I closely followed by The Good Son!?!). His views are another in the line of those that are usually controversial within limits, but sometimes he loses me (case in point, it's unfathomable to not include the Beatles in the "Giants Of Rock" page, but anyway).

The trouble with newbies

Kuro5hin has an article on that most dangerous of creatures, the newbie. As you'd expect, there is no consensus on gracefully dealing with newbies on the internet. Some suggest the good ol' RTFM, others use the "give a man a fish" analogy to encourage going deeper (matched by claims that most people don't care about going deeper, and that all they want is just a solution), and a few suggest simply answering the question or ignoring it. What do we do with newbies? I haven't got the foggiest idea, but walk with me for a bit.

My own newbie phase was fairly classical in structure, in that I displayed all the tells of a newbie with flair and gusto. To me, it is a remarkable reminder of the seemingly exponential growth in terms of technical finesse that I've made, and is always worth reflecting on when I see newbies out there on the net today. More often than not, it still shocks me that I was once very much like them, and I can't help but be amazed that some day someone else would have read my posts like I read other posts now, looking back on days past. On the rare occasions that I read technical forums these days, it's very easy to spot out a complete newbie post. Some faux pas' include dumping a few hundred lines of code and saying "Why doesn't it compile?", failing to give sufficient information (such as just saying "It doesn't work"), and of course not searching the net for other people's solutions to similar problems (which are usually out there). Some five years ago, I made all these mistakes and more, and it's really funny to read some of my posts again, not only because I'm amazed that I made them, but also because it's a miracle I didn't get flamed to the ground sooner (I did get told off eventually though; more on that later)!

It's hard to remember what my mindset was at the time, but I do know that at that point I was very much focussed on getting a game done, and quickly. Tetris was my first focus, and I unashamedly proclaimed how I was total newbie in any form of graphics programming, yet had a strong confidence that I would be able to make a strong clone of Tetris within months. What surprises me was the lack of fore-thought I displayed, but also the lack of rudimentary knowledge about programming itself. One of my posts featured a code dump with a solution that now makes me go red. The problem was an undefined variable! I couldn't figure this out from VC++'s error message. In around a minute, I gave up and posted a question, including all of my code (just to be safe).

If I were to see a newbie doing something like this now, I really don't know what the right course of action would be. It's clear that on setting my sights too high, I was neglecting a lot of deeper learning, instead focussing just on what needed to be done to get something to work, not spending any time on trying to understand why it worked. My initial reaction is to say that it would be important to tell the newbie to perhaps concentrate on more basic issues first, and perhaps try to impart a sense of why the problem has come up and how to prevent it in future. Now, the replies to my particular thread were rather direct, in that they basically pointed out that I hadn't defined a variable, and suggested where I ought to do that. I'd be tempted to try and address how this solution was derived - read the error message, figure out what it means, look at the line where the problem is, and then make the connection.

But will the average newbie care? This is the point made by some at K5. Clearly if (s)he does care, then something more will be gained that just a solution to a specific problem; there is now a simple technique of attempting to fix a larger set of problems (naturally, figuring out what terror messages mean will take some time). I can't offer a statistic of what proportion of newbies would fall into this category. As for me personally, at that stage I think I would most likely let the deeper understanding go past me, and instead focus on what was needed to make the problem go away. Sad, but true! It's clear enough now that a small sacrifice initially can lead to a big payoff down the road, especially when it comes to investing time in learning something, but I don't think I could have been convinced of this back then. (As I sit here now, I think it impossible for a similar fate to befall me now, but perhaps in a couple of years' time I will shake my head at some monstrosity from the past few months!)

Does that mean that the "RTFM" approach is the most appropriate way to deal with this type of newbie? After all, if attempts to teach him/her about the bigger picture are going to go unheeded, isn't the best way to get them to start thinking for themselves and working better? I can't say for sure, but I don't think this is the right way. I simply can't champion this style of dealing with newbies (not the least of which because of my bleeding heart), but, it did work when someone did it to me. When I was eventually put down for my online sins, it really put the fear of the flamer in me. For the first time, another of my questions that I thought to be rather innocuous was not met with any sort of sympathetic response, but rather with a good old fashioned flame that attempted to put me in my place. On reading it, I was shocked, and couldn't believe that I could elicit such a reaction from someone. And, would you believe it, I stopped asking questions. What it led me to do was what I should've done in the first place - search on Google, because most of my problems were amazingly trivial. I was forcibly pushed into this habit, from a fear of other people flaming me to high heaven.

The end was therefore a definite positive, for now I refrain from posting unless it's something I haven't been able to find a solution for even after a lot of trying. I have no doubt that it will work in other cases too, especially for those of a timid leaning, but I cannot advocate it in general. At least, not right now. It takes the tough love approach a bit too far for my liking. I'm a bit more receptive towards the terse "Google it", but even this doesn't feel wholly satisfactory.

I suppose that leaves the "hint" approach, wherein one does not give a full solution, but rather only gives general directions to help one work towards a solution. Now this I think might be the best way to go. Again, no numbers to back up this gut feeling; I do recall threads where "Google for [whatever]" responses have been followed up by a thanks for the original author. I have little doubt that there will be newbies who will be puzzled by such a response, instead expecting a direct answer, but I think that if one persists with this tough-love (not really, but it ain't spoonfeeding) approach, more often than not one will end up helping the dedicated newbie. I'd like to think that if I were given such responses, I would've picked up on how to improve my skills sooner, but maybe I give myself too much credit. I may well have been the newbie that says "I searched but I couldn't understand it, help!!!"!

Now, having said all this, there is a completely different school of thought in this area, one that looks at the situation from a very different angle. These people advocate that the newbie should be able to ask whatever the heck they want, and that documents like "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" can go (you know). It's true that in some cases it's better if a human answers your question personally, rather than a detached document. I however don't think this is a very common concern among newbies; certainly I didn't mind being directed somewhere as along as it told me what I was looking for.

Like I said earlier, I have no idea what the "right" approach is. Wikis have been around for a bit, and as awareness about them increases perhaps newbies will have it easier. The whole thing is amazingly prickly, and at the moment there is no clear course of approved action. I suspect there won't be one for a while to come, either. The newbie shall live on!

If you have a thousand minerals, ten Mutalisks you should build

This is all very funny, highly inconsequential, and as such is probably not worthy of a post. But it's a nice reflection on this day, which was a funky day in its own right.

S was definitely surprised (to say the least) when I admitted that I hadn't yet listened to The Queen Is Dead, so much so that I began to wonder why I've left it lying peacefully on my shelf (pun on the album cover?) for so long in the first place. I'm guessing he didn't believe me when I said I hadn't listened to anything in the past few months. Heck, I pretty much had to leave the room when it came up, because I had no idea what I could say. I think I nervously smiled and mumbled something about liking to preserve things, but it sounded quite funny at the time. It's always amusing when things like this happen, because "people say it's a sin", etc.* Didn't something like this happen before? Hmm, yes, with Rumours some three years ago I think. But that turned out rather strangely, with him actually forcing me to listen to it then and there. Thankfully no similar fate befell me this time, and I got away with a "The hell's wrong with you?". Haha, indeed!

I guess it's cutesy and all that to try and "preserve" things for just the right occasion, but it also places an unfair burden. I suspect that The Good Son suffered a little in this regard, because by the time I first listened to it, it was already deeply cooked inside my head. I pictured what "The Weeping Song" would be countless times over, and so the first time I actually listened to it...well, it was nice and all, but where were those fantastic drums I had imagined? Or that bit about the desert's back? I seemed to focus more on what was not there, which is precisely the kind of thing you'd like to avoid. Granted, subsequent listenings cleared this up, and I began to really appreciate it, but the whole thing bothered me a little. I far prefer the out of the blue miracle from nowhere, the sort that so perfectly manifested itself with Ram.

One of the things I've tried is cutting down on the time spent at GS's site reading reviews for things I haven't listened to. Really, the whole thing is just doomed to failure, because of the completely unrealistic image that a review can place in your head (I think I've talked about how The Fall are unfortunate victims of this, although GS hasn't reviewed them as yet). Clearly it's good to read a review to get the general idea of something, but I seem to take it further than is really necessary. What really gets to me is when I try to convince myself of why something is worth the rating GS gives it - until I heard Morrissey chide me**. Case in point, I really liked The Notorious Byrd Brothers the first couple of times I heard it, but then I started to think of reasons why it only got an 11. At one stage, I started believing that I was way off with my initial reactions, and that it really was rather lightweight. I remember reading JM's review too, where he said something to the effect of "The other songs are sort of just there". I nodded knowingly to myself, but then suddenly snapped out of it and said "Wha? Everything is just there, the heck am I agreeing to!?!". Then of course I read the Capn's review, and peace was restored.

I don't know when this preservation tactic started, though; used to be that around these parts I would feel tired by the end of the day from too much listening. Granted, those were the days when everything I heard was totally new to me, and as such I couldn't get enough of it (let it be known that those Zeppelin boys were at the forefront of this those days, so that no matter how snobbish I may seem today, these are my musical roots). It's probably another over-compensation on my part, but it is one I am rather keen to change soon. It almost seems like the thrill is more in finding and buying things than actually listening to them, which is strange enough for me to resolve to try and stop this in future.

Having a buffer of fresh albums is something else I think I ought to stop completely, because it also causes all sorts of nonsense. Primarily when any new addition immediately goes into this list, the reasoning being "Oh look! Now I have more stuff that I can listen to!". It reminds me (wait for it) of my StarCraft strategy of old, wherein I would hoarde minerals just so they were there to be used. What for? Building units, I guess. So can I build a unit now? What are you, crazy!?! We've got so many now, let's see how far we can go! Needless to say, this time around I've paid scant attention to my available resources, and as a result have managed to come up with far more interesting gameplay (whereas before it would be "Bring me 12 of your best [most powerful flying unit]", which is more or less a sure-win strategy for the single-player campaign).

So, the new plan is as follows - don't buy anything. No, hang on, maybe it's "As ye buy, so shall ye listen"***. Actually, meaningless statements aside, the only sensible thing really is to not hoard, and consume without fear of reducing some imaginary listening buffer. I'd probably do well to consume a little less per year too, since most of the CDs aren't going anywhere.

* I've become the master of including quotes that cannot be completed. In addition to being the master of tying in video games and music. Not to mention footnotes.

** Dereference that

*** I'm just blathering now. But I'm hungry, so I don't think I can make much sense.