I will be writing about applications now and then. I want to take a Genre Theory approach from literary analysis and apply it to applications. I could just call them Categories of applications, like Email, Blogging Platform, etc., but I chose to speak of Genres instead for specific reasons. The main reason is that I want to speak of design patterns for different genres of applications, across numerous categories.
I will be writing mostly about the kinds of applications that I have used the most over the last 20+ years using computers. Check back in every once in a while, I should start writing about this soon. One of the first app genres I want to tackle is the newsreading app. I will be going through the genre in a systematic, methodical way, taking them apart and going through every element, good, bad, and neutral.
Like in any genre, in literature for instance there are bad historical novels and there are good ones. It's the same with applications. Apps are just text, really, they are works of fiction, one could say. Useful fictions. Like in literature, there are great writers and there are a bunch of amateurs who don't even come close. I may not be an application-builder or application-maker, but I am a prolific painter, sound designer, author, and researcher. More than anything, I know exactly what I like and don't like.
I just want to spend some time and get it all out of my system. There really are some bad apps out there. No wonder startups are dropping like flies after burning through their cash handouts. You know, in the long haul, there will be few true entrepreneurs left. By that, I mean true visionaries. They are few and far between. And this little app I happen to be using right now is one of those great works of art in a genre all on its own. But that is another story for another day. Hope you are well. Take care and keep rocking. :)
https://chumly.com/n/215f27f
vendredi 20 décembre 2013
mercredi 18 décembre 2013
The Awakened Ear
I have been composing, performing, and recording music most of my life at this point. I have studied and practised sound design now for a decade and a half, give or take. I was both lucky and unlucky to have been born with extraordinary ears. My ears are billion-dollar ears and I don't feel bad admitting that to the world.
There's just so much that one doesn't hear in life. Either one never took the time to hear it, to listen to it, to observe and study it, or else one was even unluckier than I and was born without hearing, or has suffered ear damage. I have protected my ears and continue to do so on a moment-to-moment basis, and I have pushed my brain to the extremes of perception, to the point of making myself veritably seasick.
One should never experiment with hearing in this way. I am a professional, I studied computer-assisted sound design and the recording arts at a fine institution. I had teachers and guides, administrators, personnel, who had worked in the music industry for 30 years or more. I have been composing, performing, and recording music now for over 20 years.
This is no laughing matter, your ears are not a toy to be played with. Neither is your brain a toy. But I have studied the human ear and hearing, as well as language, harmony, the psychophysics of sound phenomena, music and noise, and I have always taken good care of my ears. The general rule is simple: If your ears receive more than 1 hour per week of sound at 80 dB or more, then you will suffer permanent damage to your hearing. I am proud to say that after 36 years on this earth, my hearing is almost entirely intact. I basically have the same capacities, the same faculties, that I was born with.
Granted, sounds near to 20,000 Hz are very faint, more than faint, I hardly hear them at all, but I perceive them nonetheless. They are still perceptible, it is just a little more difficult than it was, say, 35 years ago. However, I have developed many more abilities. Frequency is not the only feature of mechanical waves and possibly one of the least interesting when it comes down to it, to me at least.
Surely you have held a seashell to one of your ears and observed the sound it made. It has maybe even been explained to you how that works, how you apparently hear the ocean. They have told you that the rushing sound is the ambient noise resonating in the cavity of the shell and so forth. They maybe even told you that this can be done with any resonant cavity such as your cupped hands or whatnot.
I'm sure they told you how it was that the sound resembled the sound of the ocean. The thing is, it really isn't doing much, the seashell. It is more or less acting as a filter, filtering other sounds, modulating them if you will. What I am sure they haven't told you is that you don't need a seashell to hear such things. If you listen carefully, you will hear the sound of blood flowing through your body, and other such sounds, coming from the inside.
One can hear one's own muscles, for instance. We ourselves are essentially one big resonating chamber. If you listen carefully, you can not only hear your heart beating from the inside, but you can hear the blood flow, you can hear the pressure itself, exactly the way a cardiologist or doctor might hear it with the use of some technical medium or medical equipment.
If you listen carefully, when you are walking, you can hear your footsteps from the outside and then feel the vibrations from the inside. Your feet are communicating with your brain in this way through seismic communication. The heart actually mixes with and modulates the mechanical vibrations from your feet hitting the ground.
Try putting your fingers in your ears sometime, or to be safe, use proper equipment, such as earplugs. For this experiment, I have found soft earplugs to be best because they block the canal, that is they close off the opening of the canal. However, it's always better never to put anything in your ears. You can just block them by pressing down softly on the Tragus of each ear. This will close off the opening and allow you to test your hearing with the canal closed off.
What do you hear? If you're lucky, you'll hear the blood flowing, your lungs, your heart, your muscles perhaps. Try speaking. In any case, I cannot recommend that people begin experimenting with their ears and auditory systems in this way, I can only say that I have done it and have learned a great deal about the human ear and hearing in general. It taught me about sound too, in general, and mechanical energy also in general.
In any case, I will be sharing some of these experiences over the next year or so. Please stay tuned, as they say. :)
https://chumly.com/n/21536b8
There's just so much that one doesn't hear in life. Either one never took the time to hear it, to listen to it, to observe and study it, or else one was even unluckier than I and was born without hearing, or has suffered ear damage. I have protected my ears and continue to do so on a moment-to-moment basis, and I have pushed my brain to the extremes of perception, to the point of making myself veritably seasick.
One should never experiment with hearing in this way. I am a professional, I studied computer-assisted sound design and the recording arts at a fine institution. I had teachers and guides, administrators, personnel, who had worked in the music industry for 30 years or more. I have been composing, performing, and recording music now for over 20 years.
This is no laughing matter, your ears are not a toy to be played with. Neither is your brain a toy. But I have studied the human ear and hearing, as well as language, harmony, the psychophysics of sound phenomena, music and noise, and I have always taken good care of my ears. The general rule is simple: If your ears receive more than 1 hour per week of sound at 80 dB or more, then you will suffer permanent damage to your hearing. I am proud to say that after 36 years on this earth, my hearing is almost entirely intact. I basically have the same capacities, the same faculties, that I was born with.
Granted, sounds near to 20,000 Hz are very faint, more than faint, I hardly hear them at all, but I perceive them nonetheless. They are still perceptible, it is just a little more difficult than it was, say, 35 years ago. However, I have developed many more abilities. Frequency is not the only feature of mechanical waves and possibly one of the least interesting when it comes down to it, to me at least.
Surely you have held a seashell to one of your ears and observed the sound it made. It has maybe even been explained to you how that works, how you apparently hear the ocean. They have told you that the rushing sound is the ambient noise resonating in the cavity of the shell and so forth. They maybe even told you that this can be done with any resonant cavity such as your cupped hands or whatnot.
I'm sure they told you how it was that the sound resembled the sound of the ocean. The thing is, it really isn't doing much, the seashell. It is more or less acting as a filter, filtering other sounds, modulating them if you will. What I am sure they haven't told you is that you don't need a seashell to hear such things. If you listen carefully, you will hear the sound of blood flowing through your body, and other such sounds, coming from the inside.
One can hear one's own muscles, for instance. We ourselves are essentially one big resonating chamber. If you listen carefully, you can not only hear your heart beating from the inside, but you can hear the blood flow, you can hear the pressure itself, exactly the way a cardiologist or doctor might hear it with the use of some technical medium or medical equipment.
If you listen carefully, when you are walking, you can hear your footsteps from the outside and then feel the vibrations from the inside. Your feet are communicating with your brain in this way through seismic communication. The heart actually mixes with and modulates the mechanical vibrations from your feet hitting the ground.
Try putting your fingers in your ears sometime, or to be safe, use proper equipment, such as earplugs. For this experiment, I have found soft earplugs to be best because they block the canal, that is they close off the opening of the canal. However, it's always better never to put anything in your ears. You can just block them by pressing down softly on the Tragus of each ear. This will close off the opening and allow you to test your hearing with the canal closed off.
What do you hear? If you're lucky, you'll hear the blood flowing, your lungs, your heart, your muscles perhaps. Try speaking. In any case, I cannot recommend that people begin experimenting with their ears and auditory systems in this way, I can only say that I have done it and have learned a great deal about the human ear and hearing in general. It taught me about sound too, in general, and mechanical energy also in general.
In any case, I will be sharing some of these experiences over the next year or so. Please stay tuned, as they say. :)
https://chumly.com/n/21536b8
mardi 17 décembre 2013
dimanche 15 décembre 2013
Roadmap 2014 - Logs
2014 is going to be a big year for me. I wanted to take the time and make a few simple things crystal clear for everybody. I don't want to have to repeat myself any more than is necessary.
This is where I will be logging everything from now on. Everything that I need to say to the world will be logged right here. I will no longer be engaging much in social discussions on other platforms.
The reasons are simple. I have been blogging every day since 2001 and have received very little feedback or engagement from others. At the moment, more and more people are showing interest in what I have to say and so this is the optimal way for me to keep everyone on the same page.
Again, I will be interacting very little on other platforms. In order to simplify things for myself, I will be posting everything anyone needs to know right here, in these ongoing Logs. These Logs are all Public-Facing. I reserve the right to communicate with others across more private channels. However, I have found that too many people do not know how to respect my privacy properly when I interact with them privately, and so I am forced in this way to do everything out in the open.
To conclude, another reason I am not going to be interacting much with others on social media sites is that people also don't seem to know how to respect me there either. It is in this that way I have set up a kind of buffer zone, if you will, between myself and the world. I face the world, the world faces me, the Interface between these two is my personal website.
This is not meant to offend anyone. If ever you feel that you haven't received the memo it's probably because I never sent one to anybody. Come back here and check the Logs. This is not meant to Provoke but rather to Denounce, though no individual shall be named or otherwise made identifiable in any way. This is not about YOU, it's about ME.
You see, here is the thing, plain and simple. If I continue interacting and engaging with others on social sites and in private channels, I lose this ability to freely speak my mind publicly like this. This is the only way going forward that I can freely speak my mind publicly and have a clean conscience about it. Anyone who is offended by this will have to check their own conscience, or check this website for updates on what I'm thinking and doing. (It's not like I will be doing anything out of the ordinary. These are just Logs, more or less like an expanded Calendar and To-Do List combined).
Life is too short. You've got to learn to relax. I find that too many people have become information gluttons, are suffering from a new kind of gluttony that is pervasive and something that I find is bad for my heart, my spirit, and my soul. Too many people are afraid, but I am not afraid. Be not afraid. 2014 is going to be a big year for me. If you think that I have disappeared, I haven't. I am right here, using this platform as my Interface with the World.
A.G. (c) 2013
https://chumly.com/n/2138c97
This is where I will be logging everything from now on. Everything that I need to say to the world will be logged right here. I will no longer be engaging much in social discussions on other platforms.
The reasons are simple. I have been blogging every day since 2001 and have received very little feedback or engagement from others. At the moment, more and more people are showing interest in what I have to say and so this is the optimal way for me to keep everyone on the same page.
Again, I will be interacting very little on other platforms. In order to simplify things for myself, I will be posting everything anyone needs to know right here, in these ongoing Logs. These Logs are all Public-Facing. I reserve the right to communicate with others across more private channels. However, I have found that too many people do not know how to respect my privacy properly when I interact with them privately, and so I am forced in this way to do everything out in the open.
To conclude, another reason I am not going to be interacting much with others on social media sites is that people also don't seem to know how to respect me there either. It is in this that way I have set up a kind of buffer zone, if you will, between myself and the world. I face the world, the world faces me, the Interface between these two is my personal website.
This is not meant to offend anyone. If ever you feel that you haven't received the memo it's probably because I never sent one to anybody. Come back here and check the Logs. This is not meant to Provoke but rather to Denounce, though no individual shall be named or otherwise made identifiable in any way. This is not about YOU, it's about ME.
You see, here is the thing, plain and simple. If I continue interacting and engaging with others on social sites and in private channels, I lose this ability to freely speak my mind publicly like this. This is the only way going forward that I can freely speak my mind publicly and have a clean conscience about it. Anyone who is offended by this will have to check their own conscience, or check this website for updates on what I'm thinking and doing. (It's not like I will be doing anything out of the ordinary. These are just Logs, more or less like an expanded Calendar and To-Do List combined).
Life is too short. You've got to learn to relax. I find that too many people have become information gluttons, are suffering from a new kind of gluttony that is pervasive and something that I find is bad for my heart, my spirit, and my soul. Too many people are afraid, but I am not afraid. Be not afraid. 2014 is going to be a big year for me. If you think that I have disappeared, I haven't. I am right here, using this platform as my Interface with the World.
A.G. (c) 2013
https://chumly.com/n/2138c97
vendredi 13 décembre 2013
The Living Museum of Modern Antiquity
I have always been an amateur collector of fine things, a collector of rare finds. Amongst my most prized possessions are my many typewriters. They are all analog typewriters, and in fact most of what I collect is either analog or long past its due-date, if you will. I have had old telephones in the collection, everything from staplers to an abacus to old apparel from the Age of the Library Card Catalogue.
In essence, I am surrounded by old forgotten things, objects lost in time. I surround myself with objects from another time, another era. Primarily, old books line the bookshelves one finds against every wall. I collect old filing cabinets, other historically relevant Office Supplies, from old file folders to old agendas, calendars, and notebooks.
I am in The Living Museum of Modern Antiquity where everything is so ephemeral, it is already useless once it comes off the shelf. But what these objects, these things, lose in utility, they gain in sublime beauty, of being physical memories from another era. This is the archaeological context in which I live: The context of Modern Antiquity where the Modern itself is ancient history.
At the same time, the typewriters still function properly. The abacus is still quite useful. Nothing changed, nothing happened that made these things obsolete. The times never changed, they could not change, only people changed, habits changed. The Perennial Typewriter Keyboard is the same keyboard found today on most mobile computing devices. The same old ideas are simply recycled, given a fresh Veneer of Newness, sold at ridiculous prices for something you already had 100+ years ago.
You are foolish not to love History, when History is all around you. The Daguerreotype process still produces the most profoundly beautiful photographs. For a time, the Daguerreotype might have fallen out of use, was temporarily replaced by bolder, newer methods, but now, after all this time, it suddenly begins to shine with such intrinsic worth. The Daguerreotype is Sublime, as ancient ruins are sublime. You latest gadgets are out-numbered, it is them who are out of place in History, for they have not yet found their place in the historical record.
https://chumly.com/n/212ad34
In essence, I am surrounded by old forgotten things, objects lost in time. I surround myself with objects from another time, another era. Primarily, old books line the bookshelves one finds against every wall. I collect old filing cabinets, other historically relevant Office Supplies, from old file folders to old agendas, calendars, and notebooks.
I am in The Living Museum of Modern Antiquity where everything is so ephemeral, it is already useless once it comes off the shelf. But what these objects, these things, lose in utility, they gain in sublime beauty, of being physical memories from another era. This is the archaeological context in which I live: The context of Modern Antiquity where the Modern itself is ancient history.
At the same time, the typewriters still function properly. The abacus is still quite useful. Nothing changed, nothing happened that made these things obsolete. The times never changed, they could not change, only people changed, habits changed. The Perennial Typewriter Keyboard is the same keyboard found today on most mobile computing devices. The same old ideas are simply recycled, given a fresh Veneer of Newness, sold at ridiculous prices for something you already had 100+ years ago.
You are foolish not to love History, when History is all around you. The Daguerreotype process still produces the most profoundly beautiful photographs. For a time, the Daguerreotype might have fallen out of use, was temporarily replaced by bolder, newer methods, but now, after all this time, it suddenly begins to shine with such intrinsic worth. The Daguerreotype is Sublime, as ancient ruins are sublime. You latest gadgets are out-numbered, it is them who are out of place in History, for they have not yet found their place in the historical record.
https://chumly.com/n/212ad34
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