jameswharris

The Beatles 09-09-09

Hardcore Beatles fans are waiting for the the ninth day, of the ninth month, of the ninth year, of this new millennium for the remastered Beatles catalog to be released. It’s been 22 years since the last reissue of the Beatles, when their LPs first came out on CD, when many audiophiles claimed those productions were botched.

Could this be the stimulus package that the music industry needs to get people to buy CDs again? My wife and I have been buying Beatles CDs again for the last year, getting them all except A Hard Day’s Night, so now we have to decide if we want to go and buy them yet again. Of course we both bought all the LPs in our separate teenage lives in the 1960s. And if we want, we can even buy the remastered CDs again immediately because they are also releasing a special second box set in mono.

Will modern kids who live and die by the iPod be anxious to buy sonically superior versions of the Beatles’ songs? Especially considering that their collections are probably stolen now? I can’t Help! but believe that EMI is expecting us Baby Boomers to pay the tab. And will we? Susan and I have opted not to get the box set immediately, but I plan to at least get A Hard Day’s Night. I want to see just how good these remastered songs sound.

The real question is: How many people still listen to CDs on a stereo system? I do, and a few of my old fogey friends, but I think the number is dwindling. I was one of the gullible who bought into the SACD (Super Audio CD) technology when it came out, just about the time the rest of the world was turning to MP3 music. To really appreciate the quality of the new CDs, they need to be heard on a good stereo, or at least a good car CD player.

I know who will buy these new Beatles CDs, the same 3,000 folks Susan and I saw when we went to see Rain, A Tribute to the Beatles last June, a Beatles cover band. The hall was full of Baby Boomers and their kids and grand kids, all seeking the perfect illusion of being at a Beatles concert, and damn if Rain didn’t bring a deep kind of nostalgic catharsis. I recently saw Rain on PBS, and the illusion doesn’t work with TV. I always thought it was a joke that people loved Elvis imitators, but now I know different.

In the 09/03/09 Rolling Stone magazine, they get Paul’s response to one of the recording engineers talking about the new digital production, “McCartney judges the reissues by an even higher standard, ‘It sounds like it did in the room when you recorded it.’” The magazine even says the recording engineers on the project claim, “the digital version is indistinguishable from the masters.” These new discs will be the closest we can get to time traveling back to the 1960s.

However, they also quote Paul as saying, “I can listen to a record on the radio on the beach and it sounds OK to me.” He goes on to explain that he and John were never audiophiles, and they originally recorded most of the songs in mono and let technicians make the stereo mixes. But at the end of the piece they quote Paul again,

Now I hear John and think,’There he is,’ he says, Like, you can almost close your eyes and you can kind of see him, because the quality is so real. So I like that about it.

Fans who don’t buy the remastered CDs won’t get that close if they listen to these new songs as MP3 downloads, but the quality still might be noticeably better. I’m anxious for the Beatles’ catalog to appear on streaming music services like Lala and Rhapsody, so I can add their songs to my playlists.

I’ve been listening to my ripped Beatles albums at work and while I write on my blog this last couple of weeks trying to decide which of the remastered albums I will buy first. Here are their albums in the order of their original British release.

Please Please Me
With the Beatles
A Hard Day’s Night
Beatles for Sale
Help!
Rubber Soul
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles (The White Album)
Abbey Road
Let It Be
Past Masters
Yellow Submarine

Strangely, I’ve learned that my taste in Beatles’ songs have changed over the years. I used to think the later albums were their masterpieces, because of their studio sophistication and the kids had grown into mature artists, but now I’m wondering if The Fab Four were more creative when they were younger, and their songs were silly love songs. My current favorite Beatles song is “I’m a Loser” from Beatles for Sale. However, I can click anywhere in my 253 Beatles’ song collection and find tremendous creativity. My friend Janis interrupted this writing with a phone call, and we chatted for a long time about the Beatles and I played the beginning of dozens of songs for her. She could hear the beginning of the music, remember the words, and start singing the songs, which made me envious of her talent, because I can never remember words to any song but “Happy, Birthday,” and I sometimes stumble on its lines. Susan also has perfect memory of words and melody. I’m so jealous.

The Beatles are considered the musical giants of 1960s music, but there are so many songs from the 1960s that I love much more than any particular song the Beatles created, like “Downtown,” “Stop in the Name of Love,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Eve of Destruction,” and so on. Their collective catalog overwhelms, but they were mostly competing with one-hit wonders. Look at their competition: 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969.

I wish some record company would remaster the hits of 1960s on month-by-month CD collections, with each set capturing the top 100 songs for that month. Wouldn’t it be great to buy February 1964 and hear The Beatles invade the American music charts again, and hear their songs in context to their competition and inspiration.

Recently I finished listening to The Beatles by Bob Spitz, unfortunately an abridged audio book of a great Beatles biography, that has rekindled my Beatles-mania. I plan to read the full version of the book someday and try to list and listen to all the songs mentioned that inspired the Beatles. They loved the popular music of the 1950s, and they even named their band after Buddy Holly’s, The Crickets. Bob Spitz must have interviewed hundreds of people for the biography, and I was most taken with the musical influences that create The Beatles. An idea of what I’m talking about can be found on John Lennon’s Juke Box.

Another way to discover The Beatles is through The Beatles Anthology, an 8 part documentary from 1995. Once you start learning about their history it becomes addictive. I have no idea if young people have much of an idea of who the Beatles were. An old joke twenty years ago was about a young women asking an older man, “Did you know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?”

With the release of The Beatles Rockband game and the remastered catalog of albums, will there be a new wave of Beatle-mania this September. I hope so. Ask yourself and your friends, “What are your favorite Beatles songs?” I was surprised with what my friend Janis answered. She remembered songs that I never think of, but when I listened to them, I thought, wow, I need to concentrate on these tunes for awhile. It’s so easy to forget.

Maybe people don’t listen to CDs anymore, but they still listen to songs, so lets hope these reissues get the world to go nuts over the Beatles again.

JWH – 8/31/9

Living Without Cable TV

Because I’m approaching my retirement years, and contemplating living the last third of my life on a fixed income, I’m spending a lot of time examining how I spend my money. One of my biggest monthly bills I pay is from Comcast. I get cable TV, Internet and local/long distant phone service from them, so naturally the bill is going to be big. Even after I retire, I know I’ll want high speed Internet, so I positively have to budget $50 a month for that. For now, I’m not ready to be one of those people who live a cell phone only lifestyle. So that leaves the $120 a month for cable to consider.

I’ve already cut $23.90 from my bill by returning the bedroom cable box/DVR, so I’m down to $96. My plan is to quit cable entirely as soon as True Blood season 2 wraps up, but I want to explore just what I desire from cable TV and how much is it worth, and what I will miss when it’s shut off.

Pros of Cable TV

Watch shows in DVR time
Excellent selection
Elegant integration of DVR and guide
Channel guide
Convenient

Cons of Cable TV

Cost
Hate paying for channels I don’t use
Overwhelmed by the choice of too many channels
I watch too much TV

Pros of Over the Air TV

Free
Non-compressed high-definition
PBS, ABC, CBS and NBC actually cover most of what I watch
Simple – less to worry about
Will watch less TV

Cons of Over the Air TV

Must watch in real time
No channel guide
No DVR unless I build one
Missing 9 favorite cable channels

The worst downside of free TV is watching in real time. I could build a Home Theater PC, but I’ve explored that idea and there’s a great deal of aggravation involved. [Note to television makers: Invent an elegant but simple to use over-the-air DVR turner that works with an online guide via the Internet – but doesn’t require the show stopping $13 a month subscription like Tivo. A 1gb model for $199 would be a killer product.]

I’ve also explored the idea of just getting basic cable, but at $50 a month I still get far more channels than I want, and most of my favorite HD ones would be lost. [Note to Comcast: Offer over-the-air local HD channels and my favorite HD cable channels listed below, with a simple DVR for $30 a month and I’d stay with cable. And I think a lot of people I know who don’t get cable would consider it too. Or this setup with high-speed Internet and voice for $99.95.]

Most folks I talk to, hate cable because they feel cheated by the huge bill and being forced to buy far more than they want. Cable needs to reinvent itself. Since everyone is moving to digital reception and digital TVs, offer a basic HD package for $25 a month, and provide a la carte selection of cable channels at $1 for those with commercials, $2 for those like TCM, without commercials, and whatever the premium channels think they are worth, and then see what people really want. Also offer bundle packages for those folks who like to buy in quantity.

Which Channels Would We Miss the Most?

My favorites are:

The Science Channel (wished it was HD)
Discovery Channel HD
National Geographic HD
History Channel HD
Turner Classic Movies (wished it was HD)

My wife wants to add:

Home and Garden HD
TLC HD
Food Network HD
DIY Network (wished it was HD)

If we had those 9 channels with PBS, ABC, CBS and NBC – and a DVR with channel guide just for those channels we’d be in TV heaven. Everything else, Susan and I could get on Netflix. And if the documentaries I love from those first four cable channels were easily available on Netflix, I could live without them too. Netflix and streaming Netflix could be everything for me with just PBS, ABC, CBS and NBC for random watching. Those are our lucky 13 channels. Currently we’re overwhelmed with two digital tiers, a bunch of premium channels and scads of music channels we never even flip through.

Comcast and other cable companies need to study what people really want. Ever since I wrote “Saving Money on Cable TV and Internet” a bunch of my friends have come up to me and told me they were thinking about the exact same thing. Everyone I know hates paying a big cable bill for so many channels they don’t want.

Living the Simple Life

Our culture forces everyone into living with information overload. I’m predicting a movement towards simplifying life. Even the young will burn out from Twitter and Facebook overload. Kids feel bad if they don’t have 800 friends in their social networks, but the reality is you can’t have that many friends. And you can’t watch 200 TV channels, and the Internet is just as overwhelming. There’s got to be some consolidation.

Because I won’t get the a la cart cable service I want, I’m going back to four TV channels: PBS, ABC, CBS and NBC. Maybe this makes me a TV Luddite, maybe this is bad for the economy, and maybe it will even reduce what I get to learn about the world, but it might also be innovative for my lifestyle. There’s that old saying about your life flashing in front of your eyes when you die, well, too much of the life I will see flashing in front of my eyes will be sedentary in front of a TV. I regret that.

Part 2 – The Future of Television
Part 3 – Toshiba DR570 DVD Recorder

JWH – 8/29/9

Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a concept that I recently stumbled upon on the web that I wished I had learned during my K-12 imprisonment. I have a wandering mind, with a poor memory, that finds it hard to hold the big picture on any subject, so it was exciting to come across this concept. Because a video is worth a thousand words each 1/25th of a second, I think I’ll let one do the explaining for me:

Tony Buzan is a modern prophet for mind mapping and promotes the concept around the world. In recent years mind mapping software tools have emerged hoping to become a new category of productivity software after the word processor, spreadsheet and presentation package. There’s definitely a lot of information on the web, and plenty of software to try for free, but I’ve yet to meet anyone personally that extols the virtue of mind mapping. And there’s plenty of companies selling products in the $99-$349 range, all touting that their tools are used in thousands of businesses and schools around the world. I wonder how I’ve missed this – maybe because I graduated from high school forty years ago.

I have a life-long desire to write fiction, but I have a devil of a time plotting and shaping a story, so I hope mind mapping might help me. I figure the concept will also be good for my programming projects, and even working out blog ideas ahead of time. Hell, it might lead to essays that don’t meander about so much.

For a software category that’s been invisible to me, there’s an amazing array of products to use, see the mind map of mind mapping software packages from Mind Mapping Software Blog. And here’s a Mind Map Search site listing 200 websites devoted to mind mapping. And if you want to regularly read about mind mapping, try Mind Mapping Blog.

Mind mapping is considered one of many techniques at Mind Tools for business users to expand their career skills, but mind maps are also great for students studying any subject, or for creative people wanting to brainstorm. If I succeed with short story writing I’ll chronicle how mind mapping helped in a future blog. There’s a fair learning curve to mind mapping, and it might be an art in itself. I need to practice a bit before I judge the concept.

After installing a couple free programs, and looking at many commercial sales videos I’ve settled on trying Xmind, available for Windows, Mac or Linux users. (FYI: if you’re using IE8 be sure to turn on compatibility mode while visiting their site.) Most of the free cross-platform packages use Java, and I hate Java applications, but Xmind is much better looking than most Java applications I have used, so I picked it for that reason over Freemind. Xmind was once a commercial product, but now there’s a free version and a Pro version. The Pro version is a $49 a year subscription service with more professional output options.

Most commercial mind mapping programs have 30-day trials, but I’ll wait to see how successful I become at mind mapping before considering them. If you want to give the concept a spin without installing anything on your computer, visit Mind42.com or mindmeister for a web versions of mind mapping.

Another appealing feature of Xmind is their share site, which features uploaded mind maps from around the world to study. Xmind also uses the concept of workbook with pages to create multi-dimensional mind maps. I figure I’ll play with Xmind and research mind mapping for a few weeks or months, and then write a post that chronicles my effort. For now, I’m just curious if anyone I know actually mind maps.

JWH – 8/26/9

Has the Universe Gotten Too Big for Science Fiction?

District 9 is the much talked about new science fiction movie that was released just days ago. But I have to ask: Is District 9 science fiction? Since we get so few new science fiction movies every year why should I even suggest that one isn’t science fiction? We’re always overwhelmed with comic book movies that are obviously too silly to be science fiction, and ignoring the franchise films, like Star Trek, we were gifted with what many fans would consider two uniquely classic-SF movies this summer: Moon and District 9. I enjoyed watching both, but unfortunately I don’t consider either to be science fiction, not by my picky old fart definition of science fiction.

But am I deluded, blowing smoke up my own ass, by worrying too much that science fiction has fallen asleep with alien pods in the room? I know hordes of old SF fans in their 40s, 50s, and 60s that stopped reading SF after the 1980s, or even earlier, who are all wanking nostalgic for SF from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, living in a retro science fictional paradise. This new fangled stuff might look like science fiction, it might walk like science fiction, but it doesn’t quack like science fiction.

District 9 uses outer space aliens as a metaphor for a story about immigration xenophobia and racism. And even though District 9 opens with a magnificent flying saucer orbiting perfectly over Johannesburg, South Africa, with max-gnarly alien aliens, I still don’t consider it science fiction. Why? Real science fiction is about exploring the cutting edge of reality, and District 9 uses its aliens like other movies use angels or dragons to tell a fable. More than that, District 9 models its action after video games rather than modern science fiction magazine stories – but does District 9 model the emerging post-modern SF magazine stories?

Now, I’m not saying that District 9 isn’t a very creative film, I’m just saying it’s not science fiction. It uses science fiction as a metaphor for human xenophobia, rather than being speculative fiction about first contact with a non-human intelligence. Sure it’s a fun, gripping movie, with a fascinating storyline and engaging characters, told with stomach churning hand-held camera anxiety. District 9 is gritty and realistic about human nature, but is totally unscientific, choosing to stay well within the cliché tropes of SF, which are getting moldy-oldie even for me. Even though the aliens look very different from us, they act just like us, especially at our worse, which I believe was the intention of the film’s storytellers. District 9 is an allegory about apartheid, and all other political histories where one group of human beings treat another group of human beings with zero empathy.

Then again, am I wrong? I want to define science fiction by the standards I use in my review of “The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.” I don’t think I’m the only one sniffing out changes in SF. Read Jason Sanford’s “The noticing of SciFi Strange,” and his story “The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain.”

Then read the gorgeous “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang, which just won the 2009 Hugo Award for short story. These are cutting edge stories marketed as science fiction, but are they really science fiction? I’d call them fantasy, but they aren’t even fantasy like Tolkien, L. Frank Baum, J. K. Rowling or Lewis Carroll.

We’re living in a post-modern science fiction world where science fiction has little relationship to science, or reality. In our age of tremendous science and technology, science fiction has decided to become fantasy. Why is this?

An old friend Jim called me this weekend to tell me that he and his wife were watching The Universe, a TV series about astronomy and Stacy decided the universe was too big for her mind to handle, which Jim thought was hilarious. Reality is big, and the old purpose of science fiction used to be producing sense of wonder about the vastness of space and time. Has the universe gotten to big for science fiction?

And, has the universe gotten too big for our cozy little minds? Has science fiction pulled back from the event horizon of reality, fearful of facing the black hole of science fact? As much as I want science fiction to be about science, the story from The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction edited by Allan Kaster, that had the greatest emotional impact on me was “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss,” by Kij Johnson from Asimov’s Science Fiction.

26 Monkeys is a purely fantasy tale that is a post-modern science fiction story where the universe is too big, and the only way to comprehend it is with allegory. The story is scientifically fatalistic, in that the characters give up on trying to understand the sense of wonder in their lives.

This is even more explicitly stated in “The Ray Gun: A Love Story,” by James Alan Gardner, another favorite from the above collection. Read this story, but substitute the concept “science fiction” whenever you hear “ray-gun” while reading this story. This story feels like meta-fiction about giving up science fiction, at least the old modern kind.

And what about Moon, the SF film about where humans refuse to go. When did mankind decide the final frontier was not for them?

Science fiction has always been about the future, it always embraced modernism, showing absolute faith in science with the relentless belief that we will eventually comprehend reality. Ivy League intellectuals have always considered the SF genre to be a literature for dreamy adolescents, so maybe it’s just taken science fiction a bit longer than the rest of the literary world to grow up and face the post-modern world of uncertainty.

JWH – 8/18/9

Saving Money on Cable TV and Internet

We pay $163 for cable TV and high speed internet service. That bothers me, because, for every month we pay $163 now, it means one month we won’t have $163 after we retire. When my wife and I get too old to work and only have a fixed income, we will probably wish for all those frivolous dollars we once spent.

I know quite a number of young people earning little and older people, either retired, or near retirement age, earning little, that have given up cable and/or Internet access. I’ve also read it’s one of the first bills to cut when families are downsizing because of the economy. A lot of young people I know never seemed to develop the cable addition that folks my age have acquired. So they will spend big dollars on cell phones and Internet, but scrimp on TV. I also know a number of people now that have no cable TV at all. Others have given up house phones and Internet too.

If you combine the house phone bill, cell phones bills, Internet access and the cable/satellite TV bill, telecommunication becomes a huge piece of the monthly budget pie. In our household, it’s bigger than the utility bill or car notes we had in the past, second only to the mortgage. Last night I watch ABC World News, three episodes of Weeds from a Netflix disc, and recorded an old black and white movie off of TCM. We pay $4 a day for our cable. Much of what I watch could be had from over-the-air TV or Netflix.

Free TV

I have helped a number of women in their fifties set up digital TV boxes so they could watch free TV. This is the absolute cheapest way to have TV, but you only get a handful of channels. Depending on signal, indoor antennas can be easy to use or annoying. So far I haven’t met anyone wanting to spend the money on an outdoor antenna. If you’re lucky, you can get ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, FOX and several other digital stations in HD. This free option does make life much simpler. And when the antenna works well, I’m very impressed with the quality of the picture.

Free TV + Netflix

Upping the budget to $8.99 a month, you can get a Netflix subscription and see nearly all movies and a good selection of premium cable shows like Big Love, Mad Men and True Blood, but just delayed by several months. Most cable TV shows now come out on DVD, so if can wait for your favorite shows, you can watch them in order and without commercials. This offers the best selection for the least money.

Free TV + Netflix + Internet

If you’re willing to budget another $25-50 for DSL or cable Internet, you can expand your options even more. If you must have the Internet, then this option is a no-brainer. Trying to find low-cost Internet access is hard. There are $10 monthly modem services, but they require a house phone, and many people have ditched landlines to save dough. I have heard it’s possible to get low-cost DSL without local phone service but it’s a difficult option to arrange since AT&T and Baby Bells push bundled services. And if you crave the Internet, then you usually crave fast Internet, and that’s about $50 a month.

Now, if you have fast Internet, and you’re willing to be a Do-It-Yourselfer, you can buy or build a Home Theater PC. This gives you a DVR plus access to streaming TV and downloadable video, including high definition videos. Think of this as free, on-demand, Internet TV. Hundreds of thousands of people are experimenting with this now, and cable companies are getting worried. Internet video quality is constantly improving, with HD becoming common.

With free services like Boxee, Miro and Vuze and a HDMI or DVI cable from your laptop or computer to your HD TV, you can develop your own free on-demand TV library or select from a large lineup of streaming network shows.

Video is quickly becoming the new medium for communicating over the web. People have been watching video on their computer screens for years, but now people are finding ways to make their computers into set-top boxes connected to their TVs and controlled by remotes, so they can watch TV as God intended, from the comforts of their La-Z-Boy.

Cable and satellite TV providers are worried that the Internet will soon provide people with all the TV they want and they will be out of business. You’d think they’d want to offer a better service for less money to compete. Follow this link to a Google search for many articles about living without cable TV. A lot of people are doing it. I like the concept of cable TV, so I won’t be abandoning it just yet, at least not until season 2 of True Blood is finished. I just want to find ways to bring down the cost of cable, but if I can’t, I’ll consider abandoning it completely.

Cable/Satellite TV “a la carte”

People often wonder why they can’t lower their cable bill by just buying the channels they love to watch. Most people watch a handful of favorite channels but have to wade through hundreds of TV and other cable services they just don’t want. I get 200+ channels but probably watch less than 12.

There’s two obstacles to this problem. One, if people bought only what they wanted, many cable networks would go out of business, so cable providers fight this option. Second, as long as cable companies must provide analog channels, those stations you get when you plug your cable wire directly into your cable-ready TV and scan the channels, then they can’t sell channels separately. When cable companies go to 100% digital, a la carte buying will be technically possible.

Right now, a la carte channel buying is not possible, so it’s only a dream option to save money.

My Dream TV and Cable Internet Service

I don’t mind paying for what I want. I think my current $163 cable/internet bill is too high! It should be closer to $75. What I would love is a perfect convergence of TV and Internet. I want to buy a la carte just the exact TV networks I want, and I want to own my own equipment so I can customize it. I’d like a Home Theater PC that played and burned DVDs/Blu-Ray discs, was a DVR recorder for 2 terabytes of shows, played all my own digital media, including MP3 songs, JPG photographs and any collected videos I made or bought, plus streamed music and videos from the Internet. That means my entertainment system would consist of a TV, home theater PC and speakers, all controlled by one remote. That would simplify my setup greatly, and save electricity. Right now I have:

HDTV, with remote
DVR/cable box with remote
Receiver with remote
Media player with remote
Blu-ray player with remote
CD/SACD player with remote

My wife bought me a very nice Logitech programmable universal remote, but I never liked it. Life was so much easier back when I was growing up. We had one TV, three channels and no remotes. Life has gotten too complicated. I dream of living with one remote and no more than 12 fantastic high-definition TV channels with no damn commercials. Infinite variety could come from Internet TV. With fewer TV networks, the quality of TV production should go up. I would get better shows for my time and money.

JWH – 8/14/9