musictubes

Like all analog workflows the attraction is the process itself. The decision path is one way, path dependency is permanent. You can think of it as a roguelike (the game genre) approach to creative expression. Working with constraints is an excellent way to develop your creative chops. Analog workflows, pen and ink, paint, wet plate photography, audio recording on tape, film photography, etc. all hem in the artist in different ways. It is the play inside the constraints and honing the craft that make them enjoyable to do.

There is also something to creating a physical thing that is immensely satisfying. Bits are bits and no matter how useful they may be they end up feeling very much the same as ever other undifferentiated bit in the trillions of photos, sounds, programs, spreadsheets, etc. Capturing light on film and then splashing them with chemicals results in something that you hold in your hand and now is a unique object.

So yes, digital photography is very useful and cost effective. Film photography is about fun or challenging yourself. It causes you to practice deliberate decision making in a creative process. If that sounds meaningless or stupid then it isn’t for you.

Give it up. People have been predicting this for 15 years.

You can’t have a development machine locked down like iOS. As long as the Mac is the development machine at apple it will need to be able to run arbitrary code.

There are over 200 security patches in the newest versions of macOS. AI is helping patch previously unrealized holes.

I can promise you Apple is constantly being blamed by its customers for things out of its control. I worked at an Apple store for years. All sorts of carrier issues, third party accessories, and app problems were chalked up to Apple screwing up.

It will work with the pencil. They were really vague on when that will happen. I wonder how much additional thickness was added to the phone to get pencil support on both screens.

It’s the camera and Face ID. The camera on the iPhone 6 is nowhere near as capable current cameras. Even the much improved camera on the last iPhone SE was considered a huge issue by most people. Cameras are too important to go back to something that thin. The current Air is leaps and bounds better in every way to the iPhone 6 but it doesn’t sell. Why? The battery life and camera. Imagine shrinking the iPhone Air and having even less battery life. Critics would howl and even fewer people would buy it.

Smaller phones can’t fit as much stuff in them as larger phones. Shrink the phone and something has to give. People in the aggregate do not want to make those compromises unless the price is noticeably less. But then it can’t have any of the premium features that are expected from Apple. Small phones are compromises that don’t pay off for Apple.

And which they could not charge anyone for. Unless these were extra resources that would otherwise go unused it cost them the amount they could have charged for them. Normally I would expect most businesses to make reasonable tradeoffs when it comes to how to allocate resources. I’m not convinced that any of the AI providers should be given that benefit of the doubt.

My biggest problem letter is mim. It essentially disappears in a lot of styles. If I was more fluent I’m sure I’d recognize the words more readily and know when to look for it. I don’t find the rest of the letters too difficult even at my basic level.

I was struck by the lack of books in the homes of even educated people in Yemen. I once went to a book fair in Sana’a that was well attended. Think it was on a college campus. I don’t remember seeing many novels in Arabic, they were mostly in English and French. I had been told that if someone sent me any books in the mail they would have to be cleared by the censor before I would get them. That pretty much equated to never getting them. The book fair was a relief. I picked up David Copperfield and Women in Love and that was enough to last me until I made a trip out of the country.

The sad thing is that current Macs are perfect machines for DF. The recommendation was always to get as fast a single threaded machine as possible with the biggest cache. Even the least expensive Macs are monsters in those regards. The game is more multi-threaded than before but still is dominated by single threaded performance.

They are also great for photo chemicals mixed from scratch.

I disagree. Developer machines have to be open, others maybe yes maybe not. Users can choose their security model by the machine they buy.

The closed model has been very good for both developers and consumers. If we use Android as a counterfactual to iOS there are entire swaths of apps that are available on one that are not on the other. Android is more amenable to open source apps and whatever Apple doesn’t on its store. But it is also easier to pirate and download cracked software.

My own interest in making music exposed me to a stark difference between Android and iOS. There is an enormous number of audio apps available on iOS that simply don’t exist in Android. There are a fair number of apps that mirror windows and Mac apps but are far far cheaper on iOS. I am convinced that the console approach to iOS apps is responsible for the existence of a lot of apps that wouldn’t be offered otherwise.

We are better off with a mix of platform types. I can’t imagine any real way a development machine could be completely locked down. They have to be able to run arbitrary code.

I had a funny language issue with Gemini Notebook. The “podcast” it created was pretty good but the “hosts” kept using the word exactly as a response to the other. After the 10th or so time it got annoying.

When I generated another one on the next chapter I prompted it explicitly not to use the word exactly as a response. The male host said something and the female said, “Exactly! I mean… 100%” It’s like it can’t help itself but then tries to correct itself.

Ad blockers work fine for me in Safari. They may not have the flexibility of manifest v2 but they are hardly crippled. Their reputation will continue to be what it is as long as they keep making things that people like.

Shooting film is a different production process than digital. Shot times, color reproduction, dynamic range, the size of the equipment, etc. all impact how movies are shot. Even acting is impacted due to each take having tangible costs. Limitations on how many cameras you can use also changes how you go about shooting.

The beauty of analog production, whether cine, still, or audio, revolves around working with and around the limitations of the process. Yes, when all we had was film/tape we dreamed of being set free of the many limitations of the media. Restrictions do force decisions though and many artists feel more inspired working within limitations. All that’s to say that the choice to do things in the analog realm impact how things are made and therefore has an impact on the final product even if post and display are done digitally. Cinema as an art form is due in no small part to how you work with film.

Phone is unlocked but you have to put in carrier info when you buy the phone. You have to activate a line from one of the big three carriers to use the program at all.