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February 01, 2005
There is still much shuttling to and from various physicians' offices, leaving little time for spewing and viewing. What tidbits I gleaned of today's news came over the car radio via NPR and the BBC, from which I learned 1) The king of Nepal has apparently booted out the rest of the government and declared a state of emergency in what some people are calling a coup... a king staging a takeover of his own country seems a bit odd to me, but there you are; and 2) it is truly astounding how NPR and the BBC can offer up heaping earfuls of phoned-in commentary by various experts about the release of the UN's report on the atrocities in Sudan without a single mention of the Sudanese government's seat on the UN Human Rights Commission.
Of course, it was mentioned that this report will most certainly test the United State's commitment to human rights. Never mind the blue-helmeted rapists running amok in Africa or the fact that the Commission is well-populated with such champions of human rights as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria, and Cuba. Nope. It's all about America's commitment, even though the Sudan report might not even be made available to the UN's own human rights commission for debate because of back-room finagling between the EU and various African delegations.
Yes but Abu Ghraib car battery testicle water torture and so forth. I'd like to say that it's one of the consequences of the media age that people no longer perceive historical trends and only remember the most recent headlines, but I think that's just making an excuse for the willfully persistent negative view of America that certain people feel duty-bound to promulgate and others feel morally obligated to accept. It's a kind of ideological affirmative action plan, in which it becomes the solemn duty of the insignificant journalist to place corrective emphasis on his or reporting, just to make sure that people don't get the wrong idea and toddle about with improper thoughts in their heads. We wouldn't want anyone believing that America expends blood and treasure to topple dictators, then facilitates elections and repeatedly declares its intention to leave immediately upon the request of the new government, would we? Can't have people thinking that enlightened self-interest is still enlightened, no, that just wouldn't do. That's not the real story... just ask the experts. They'll set you straight.
Do you think some artful member of the concerned popperati will turn the ink-stained fingers of Iraqi voters into an iPod ad?
Somehow, I doubt it. That just wouldn't speak the truth to power. Nothing says "Truth" like the juxtaposition of American technological consumerism with a humiliated third-world victim of American imperialism. That's heavy. Reminds me of when I used to do things like snip pics from gay porno mags and stick them onto crosses. Get it? Dicks and God, man, that's deep.
Then I grew up, a bit, and while I can still appreciate the whole dick/God thing, it's a little banal, and certainly not something that I'd want to try and build a career on, entertaining though the effort might be *cough*Sullivan*cough*.
Thus, another winter day draws to a close with a brief burst of unwarranted snark, and I'm still not appreciably smarter than I was yesterday. I have, however, succeeded in resisting the temptation to whack the long icicle that's sprouting from the front corner of the gutter. It's a good five feet long now, and I'm hoping for an ice column of some kind. Did I mention banality recently? I think I might've.
They may be commonplace, but icicles in the sun are attractive and sparkly, and the fact that my house is growing a big 'un means I've got a big sparkly thing on my domicile, and who doesn't want that?
Admit it: you want a big sparkly thing.
But you can't have mine.
I mean it. I've got guns.
February 02, 2005
I recently decided I'd try the whole Oddly-colored Secret Concoction in the morning thing, made from various powders and juices and supplements blended together into an unpleasantly green slurry to which, at the spry age of 97, I would attribute my great longevity, fabulous health, and sexual athleticism. I decided to start with a mixture of orange juice, Reishi tea, some powdered greens, and the powdered vitamins distributed by the good folks at Swanson. I even bought an Oster hand mixer, just for this purpose. Eventually, I would add things like olive oil and maybe some avocado, so that my breakfast glop would be a supercharged mixture of cancer-killing, anti-aging superfoods and wonderfats that would eventually cause my hairline to proceed and my genitalia to resemble those of a race horse. A really good-looking race horse.
I started this regimen four days ago, and was immediately assaulted by the most eye-spattering nasal allergy symptoms: fully-stopped nose, watery glazzies, sneezing, sensitivity to bright light, the whole mucosal works. I guessed that it was the powdered greens--they've got all sorts of grasses and bee pollen in them, so it was a natural assumption to make. This morning, I left the greens out of my mysterious concoction. But once again, I found myself driving to work half-blinded by eye-fountains and sneezes in the face of the cruel highway sun.
"The sort of symptoms I get if I eat... cheese," he said, glancing sidelong at the can of powdered vitamins sitting on the shelf. It whistled tunelessly, and pretended to be interested in the peeling paint on the kitchen ceiling.
Tonight, I identified the culprit. Swanson uses calcium caseinate as a base for their powdered vitamins. Anything with "casein" in it has something to do with dairy, and a quick Google search confirmed my suspicions. It's a processed milk protein:
Calcium caseinate is used as a nutrient supplement. It is used in creamed cottage cheese, powdered diet supplements, nutritional beverages, processed cheese, and frozen desserts because it has a milky appearance and smooth feel in the mouth.
Which is just wonderful for me, because I now have a red-eyed appearance and a bloody feel in my mouth.
I had no idea that I had to beware of concentrated, sinus-exploding, downright evil milk protein in my powdered vitamins.
Naturally, I bought two cans of the stuff. I've got an unopened can and a can less four scoops that I just can't use. I suppose I could use it, but it would be unpleasant and not at all healthy, and I might crash the car. So, really, this is a matter of public safety.
I wrote to the good folks at Swanson--from whom I've bought crates of various pills, potions, and powders over the past couple of years--and told them my sad story. There are alternatives that don't use caseinate as a base, and although they're more expensive, at least I won't feel like I snorted an eight-ball of powdered milk during an all-night disco dairy binge at Studio Udder. I'll see what they do for me. It's what I call a consumer moment. Sure they're great, as long as everything's going swimmingly... but what happens when the caseinate hits the sinuses?
Apparently, there was some kind of Bush speech-thingy this evening, but I was just too clogged up with putrid histamines to watch. I understand that there were purple fingers involved.
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UPDATE:
Not only will Swanson accept both cans for a full refund, they included a postage paid return label with my order, so it won't cost me a dime. The Consumer, he is satisfied. I can thus recommend Swanson Vitamins for all your immortality needs.
February 03, 2005
This week's onomatopoeia is:
That is all.
February 04, 2005
Over at Balloon Juice, John Cole wants to see some more regulation in the credit card industry:
My libertarian instincts eschew any regulation whatsoever, but it this show and my own personal experiences with credit card companies (inexplicably having my APR jump from 9.9% to 24.9%, when I have not been late or over my limit or anything) leads me to believe that some severe regulation needs to take place. The interest rates being charged in many cases are akin to loan-sharking, and it needs to be stopped.
Now, there are doubtless some industry shennanigans that need to be stopped. But Mr. Cole should pay heed to his libertarian instincts.
I have enough credit cards to make a fragile scale replica of the White House. Generally, I pay off my purchase balances each month, and I rarely buy something on a card unless I have the cash on hand as well. It wasn't always that way (see Youth, Foolish), but it is now. When I do splurge--say, by buying a complete music studio based on a Mac Mini, along with a flat-panel display, a 120GB external Firewire hard drive, a digital audio interface, and a shiny new synthesizer--a check goes to the credit card company for the purchase amount as soon as the cash is available, before the statement arrives, if possible. That way, the money's gone, which prevents me from spending it more than once.
If I happen to get a late fee (due to absent-mindedness or the pile of bills being scattered behind the television by a marauding housecat), I call up the credit card company, ask that the late fee be removed "as a courtesy"... and they do it. This is because several credit card companies got sued not too long ago for falsifying late charges and lost, which made the rest of the herd a bit skittish. It's also because I have decent credit, and that's because I take responsibility for my finances. If your credit resembles Nigeria's and you're late five months a year, you don't get the "courtesy." You get a faceful of mud and a boot to the head.
Currently, I do carry about $4500 in card debt, which I incurred to pay my self-employment taxes on time last year and avoid nasty Federal Guvmint interest and penalties. However, I carry that debt at 0%. I can pretty much count on being offered a "0%, no-fee balance transfer" offer until I pay it all off. In fact, I just signed up for one that will carry me through until June of 2006. When I transfer the balance, I activate the new card, then cut it up. Why? Because if you use the card for any purchases, the credit card company will apply your payments to the non-interest bearing balance first, which means you have to pay interest on the purchases until you pay off the non-interest bearing balance. That's how they make money on those offers. I know this because I actually read the terms of the credit card offer.
Anyone who signs off on a credit card offer without reading it, no matter how small the print, is just asking to be smacked with some "mysterious" change in the agreement, which they will bemoan while rubbing their puzzled heads with a balled-up fist and an outthrust lower lip.
I'm not rich, or even particularly well off, but I try to live within my means as much as possible. That means resisting credit purchases as often as possible. It means reading what I sign. And it means taking responsibility for my finances.
And--wonder of wonders! I never get mysterious, massive jumps in my APR interest.
I am certainly not saying that Mr. Cole is one of those hapless late-paying pseudo-Nigerians. What I am saying is that the credit card company told him, at some point, exactly what they could and could not do to their agreement, and I would suggest that, in this case, "inexplicable" might not mean quite what he thinks it means. If this happens to you, call up the credit card company, ask why the rate jumped, and if they can't tell you--or if you decide you just don't like the rate--tell them to close your account. They hate that, and if you tell them why you're closing it, they may agree to drop the rate back down. And if they don't, you can probably pick from among the eight billion credit card offers you get every week and get another card.
No one makes anyone sign up for a credit card, and while they may be more of a neccessity of convenience than they used to be, there's no reason that they can't be managed like cash-in-hand. After I did the stupid-twenties thing and incurred debts and had to be bailed out a couple of times by my mother, I didn't have credit cards for several years. And when I did finally get another one, it had a $500 limit and a 24% interest rate--although I did get to use my purchases to build up points towards rebates off of the price of any one of several fine makes of GM automobiles, huzzah! It took me about seven years of regular payments and careful management to build my credit up to the point where I can float several thousands dollars of debt at 0% interest and am worthy of a credit card company's "courtesy."
I'm about to cull my cretin* of cards, because I've got several that I don't use, and they are tempting. I'm putting it off because I hate the conversations that ensue when I cancel a card: "I want to cancel my card... no, the service was fine... I've just got too many... Yes, I'm sure... Yes... No, there's nothing you can do to change my mind... No... Just can--... No... No, not even with pasties... Just--... Look, just cancel the card, or I'm going to show up at the call center and beat you to death with your headset! Yes... Yes, even though you're in India... No, your English is fine... "
Now, if you want to complain about something that does need some regulation, try health insurance, which is much more of a necessity than a line of collateral-free credit. I buy my own, because I'm self-employed, and they change the terms of the agreement more frequently than Darth Vader. Not only that: the law allows them to charge retroactive rate increases. If they go to the State Legislature on May 5 and get approval to hike the rates by 17%, they can send me a bill for the increase as of January 1 of that year.
Now, they can have their rate increase if they want. It's a consequence of the amazing pit of pig feces that is the Modern American Healthcare System. But charging me more for services that have already been provided? That's like getting a bill for another $50 from a meal you ate a month ago.
Forget loan-sharking. It's health-care-leeching that needs to be stopped.
*Credit cards travel in cretins, like a herd of cows or a murder of crows.
The erudite raisin farmer once again kicks butt and takes names, then kicks some more butt and does a little jig:
What explains this automatic censure of the United States, Israel, and to a lesser extent the Anglo-democracies of the United Kingdom and Australia? Westernization, coupled with globalization, has created an affluent and leisured elite that now gravitates to universities, the media, bureaucracies, and world organizations, all places where wealth is not created, but analyzed, critiqued, and lavishly spent.
Thus we now expect that the New York Times, Harper's, Le Monde, U.N. functionaries who call us "stingy," French diplomats, American writers and actors will all (1) live a pretty privileged life; (2) in recompense "feel" pretty worried and guilty about it; (3) somehow connect their unease over their comfort with a pathology of the world's hyperpower, the United States; and (4) thus be willing to risk their elite status, power, or wealth by very brave acts such as writing anguished essays, giving pained interviews, issuing apologetic communiqués, braving the rails to Davos, and barking off-the-cuff furious remarks about their angst over themes (1) through (3) above. What a sad contrast they make with far better Iraqis dancing in the street to celebrate their voting.
Emphasis his; read the whole thing.
[Via Mr. Cole.]
February 05, 2005
You know, it's not every day that you get to shoot a gibbering 8,000-year-old Mesopotamian demon out of the sky and watch its ragged wings burst into flame as they come into contact with the moonlit snow, leaving only a muddy, charred swatch of steaming earth and the stench of foul black blood to mark its noisome presence in your yard.
I'm just saying.
February 07, 2005
Occasionally, I roll up to the computer in my roll-y desk chair device, only to discover that the twitching fingers, they twitch not because they wish to type, but to play music.
So that's what I'm doing now, instead of writing for you.
Bon!
February 08, 2005
If you came here looking for the Big Funny, or mebbe some weird schizoid rambling, or some tepid political insight, or a decent chicken salad recipe, I am afraid that today I must disappoint. The brain, it is sopped. This happens from time to time, but I must tell you that I suspect this will be a short sop... a mini-sop, if you will, the kind of sop during which the brain, it swells up with the zany ideas that will make the uvula undulate with laughter and the soda spew painfully out of the nose.
But of course I make no promises.
That would be foolish.
February 11, 2005
This week's onomatopoeia is:
This onomatopoeia has been brought to you by the good folks at Omar's House of Figs.
February 14, 2005
 Hospital blogging, using my Samsung i700 cellphone/PDA/artificial lung/hovercraft.
Pea's in for her surgery today, and went into the OR at about 7:45AM. As she said, she's getting a scar for Valentine's Day.
The surgery is nothing terrible--she'll be under for about 90 minutes--but she's never had surgery of any kind before, so it's a bit scary for her. The staff has been good--lots of people asking the same questions over and over again, which is reassuring. We don't want her to wake up missing a limb or some such thing.
So, I'm finishing up breakfast with her mom, and then we'll head up to the Waiting Room to Wait.
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Well, that was fast--just over an hour. Must be those new-fangled lasers they use for myomectomies these days. She's in recovery now, and the doc says she's awake and alert. We'll see her in an hour.
I also found out that my Mac mini will ship on the 16th, and it will be a bit cheaper than when I first ordered it.
So, it's shaping up to be a pretty decent day so far.
February 15, 2005
I have been drawn away from this virtual page by the demands of life, wherein real people with genuine travails demand my attention and compassion, which is all well and fine, because that is after all what distinguishes this pixellated realm from the infinite resolution of reality.
Someday, we'll be able to buy displays with a dot pitch that is smaller than the diameters of the individual rod and cone cells in our retinas. But not yet. Likewise, we'll be able to indulge in pharmaceuticals that give us the Big Big God Sense but can be instantly counteracted when necessary, to facilitate real-world functioning. But not yet.
And, someday, we'll find a cure for the cannibalism that grips our armed forces. But not yet.
Lord almighty, it's late, and my package o' neurons is light and fluffy like meringue, yet almost entirely unencumbered by bossa nova rhythms. If you can find the punny in there, you are almost as tired and brilliant as I! And I would take my hat off to you, were I wearing one.
And so to bed.
February 18, 2005
It is a grumbling day. Ideas for various bits are queued up in my blogreal cortex, but most of them are hideous half-finished masses of stitched-together comedy, moaning and gasping and staggering around like extras from a Romero film. There are some political bits chained up in a small box beneath my occipital lobe, but they're locked away for reason. And flapping around between my unmyelinated axons and the inside of the top of my skull are the Wacky Notions--those nutty crazy random bits that always squeeze themselves onto the page when I'm not looking. It's a madhouse, I tell you! And with only me to manage it, it's only a matter of time before something truly odd happens.
Or not. After all, it's much easier to tell you about all the Amazing Content that you would be reading if only I had the motivation to write it for you. But no! Instead I give you this tremulous warbling, like a shy toddler speared by a spotlight on stage and singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat whilst being pelted with half-chewed gummi bears. Got it? Just like that.
Pea's recovery continues apace, somewhat complicated by the fact that no one's ever cut her open and mucked about with her insides before, and she fears that if she laughs or coughs too hard she will burst open and ruin the couch, despite the good doctor's high quality plastic-surgery-style closure. So she's a little twitchy, but she's better today than yesterday, and certainly better than Monday afternoon after the surgery, when she was all full of hydromorphone. Mmmm... dilaudid.
On the other hand, I am wearing a fabulous outfit today, and it is highly doubtful that I will burst open and ruin it, so I've got that going for me. I made two choices in acquiring this fabulous outfit which I find confirmed, right now: John Erickson says what is true about pleated pants, which is why I hate them and wear plain front. I must say, though, that his notion of the pleated style flattering the big-bellied such as myself is peculiar... the pleats puff out in an unseemly fashion, no matter where the waistband rests. And Manolo, who pointed me to Mr. Erickson, mentions a pair of monk-strap style Mephistos, which are very nearly like the Mezlan monk-strap shoes I bought yesterday, only not quite as nice. The other choices need no confirmation: wool/silk blend jacket in "Butter" by Oscar de la Renta (which I got for an amazing price at Filene's last week... so amazing I bought another in navy), woven Italian tie in gold with blue accents, a deeply royal blue shirt, and pale stone khakis. The chance to engage in this sartorial fiesta was the only reason I actually got up to come into the office today, rather than working at home.
Thus by Intraweb coincidence is my fashion sense (partially) validated. I choose to ignore other such coincidences, of course, as one must in order to maintain a certain amount of sanity. Otherwise, the fact that I had a very peculiar dream involving Martin Sheen as President Bartlett, an ancient temple decorated in satin like a bordello, and a vividly-rendered hermaphroditic Satan on the same day that Astonished Head happened to receive 666 visits might be cause for alarm.
And now: to lunch!
Do not let your fascination overwhelm you. I assure you that my life is only perhaps half as thrilling as it sounds.
This week's onomatopoeia is:
Brought to you by Buggerly, makers of Mayan Beer Enemas and many other fine products.
February 22, 2005
 It's amazing what you come across in old magazines... little slices of how life was or, often, what was considered The Lifestyle worth striving for. Take this ad from a 1979 issue of a hip men's magazine which shall remain nameless so as to confuse certain search engines.
In it, the Human Chin offers a vision what what manliness can be yours, if only you would purchase this product. I think you'd also have to get some serious work done by a competent surgeon, and score one of those snazzy jackets plus three or more Wearing Your Collar Turned Up In Studly Fashion lessons, which sort of increases the whole cost of ownership to the point where it might be better to just stay home and listen to some Barry White on the Hi-Fi with a copy of the magazine in question close at hand.
February 23, 2005
The last time I saw the sun come up, I was either on acid or very drunk... more likely the former than the latter; booze doesn't usually make for a rise n' shine experience, and you tend not to remember it if it does. I do remember, thirteen years ago, wandering bright and early into the Whole Earth Center in Princeton after a particularly inspiring trip through the nighttime lysergic forest, and someone behind the deli counter remarked, "What happened to you? You're glowing!"
This morning, though, I was on pure uncut crumb-topped apple pie when the sun peeked through the windows. I discovered the back-to-back X Files that can be had all through the wee hours of the morning, followed by an episode of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, which was just weird enough to keep me awake in the critical five to six AM slot, and then there was The Pretender, which is actually a decent show that I forgot all about.
I needed to wrench my schedule around, and sometimes the only way to do that is to skip out on a night's sleep and go to bed at a decent hour the following day. The whole three AM to one PM sleeping thing wasn't really working for me. ('Scuse me... Bob would like to be fed, so she can continue being fat.) Anyway, if I survive until ten PM or so, I should be good to rejoin the rest of the daywalkers.
At the moment, that's a decent-sized "if," so I may fall down the steps in a bit and get some espresso, or maybe some crack. The crack's good for staying awake.
At the risk of seeming arrogant, I feel that I must--Jesus freakazoidal Christ on a goddamn pogostick!!!
[... ]
Sorry about that. I've just never seen a blimp that close to the ground before.
February 25, 2005
By the way--if you shoot yourself in the head while you're on the phone with your ex-wife, and while your son, daughter-in-law and six-year-old grandson are in the house with you, you're an asshole.
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Of course, you're also an asshole if you shoot your mouth off based on your own preconceived notions without knowing all the facts.
You know, sometimes I think that strange outbursts about blimp crashes are not necessarily the best blog fodder.
Other days, the medication works, and I don't care so much.
In the midst of observing that the iPod is responsible for the incipient retreat of all Western humans into single-person, climate-controlled, egg-shaped comforfoam-lined lifepods, there to receive informational stimulation via wetware neural hacks and nutrients through intravenous tubes, Andrew Sullivan writes,
Technology has given us a universe entirely for ourselves — where the serendipity of meeting a new stranger, hearing a piece of music we would never choose for ourselves or an opinion that might force us to change our mind about something are all effectively banished.
Over the past two weeks I've been dealing with a misbehaving bit of technology--my troublesome Kurzweil K2500S workstation. It's never been quite worth the money I paid for it, and when a bunch of keys died in 2003 mere weeks after I dropped $900 to fix another problem, I gave up on ever having a fully-functioning piece of hardware. Recently, I've gotten over the shock of spending more money on it, and looked into seeing just how much it would cost to fix, or if I could do it myself.
Kurzweil is currently undergoing some corporate troubles, and although others disagree, I've often found them to be a bit unresponsive on the "official channels" support front. Instead, I visited the Keyboard magazine forum. I introduced myself with a complaint about Kurzweil, and after I got heckled a bit I realized that this is not a particularly good way to introduce yourself to an online community. So I quit bitching and asked for help. Within a few days, I had engaged several people in discussion, and had 1) a fellow in Seattle who was working my problem with some techs he knew there 2) a Kurzweil product manager who put me in touch with another tech, who turned out to be most helpful and can probably fix the problem for about $85.
So, through the Internet, I was challenged to change my attitude, met complete strangers who were willing to help me, and arrived at a solution for my problem.
There's nothing really serendipitous about that, which is Mr. Sullivan's point. It was a very utilitarian, purposeful interaction. I went to a community of folks with similar interests, rather than bumping into someone on the street who was hauling a Hammond B3 into a club, chatting with him, and discovering that he knew a guy who worked on synthesizers and could help me out.
However, as a fellow who's never enjoyed living like a hamster in a box and who's never been able to afford to live in the city any other way, I see Mr. Sullivan's "Atomisation by little white boxes" as a possible response to the increasingly small zone of personal space that cities with several million inhabitants grudgingly allow. The diminishment of "that insane mishmash of yells, chatter, clatter, hustle and chutzpah that makes New York the urban equivalent of methamphetamine" is, perhaps, something that people want. The fact that they're listening to their iPods on the street or the commuter train doesn't necessarily mean that they've eliminated all social happenstance from their lives--just from their commutes and their urban foot travels.
Andrew Sullivan certainly isn't the first person to come up with this idea. NPR's The Next Big Thing has a regular segment called "Walkman Busting," where a roving reporter walks up to random people on the street, asks them what they're listening to, then plugs in and tapes some of it (if you've got a Real Audio player, you can listen to a segment here). The segment's creator, Gideon D'Arcangelo, has said that the whole point of the exercise is to break through the individual's bubble. I remember people talking about these "bubbles" almost as soon as the first Sony Walkman was introduced in 1979.
It may be true that "Human beings have never lived like this before." It may also be true that the only reason they haven't is because they couldn't.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I must retreat to my lifepod. I'm having a yummy glucose drip for lunch, followed by a relaxing nap in a simulated forest glade near a waterfall in stunning Dolby 6.0 surround sound.
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[Ten Fingers 6 Strings comments.]
Excellent: color photos from WWI. I always love stuff like this... it appeals to my sense of the reality of the past (as opposed to the theoretical construct that some folks claim is the true nature of history).
[Via Mr. Green, who got it from Mr. Felton, who got it from Amy.]
February 26, 2005
There are three new Blasts From The Past over to the left, and up a bit.
This week's onomatopoeia is:
Brought to you by Crack brand pharmaceuticals.
February 28, 2005
In the early 80s, I knew a kid named Marcus whose father had a terminal with an acoustically coupled modem that he used to connect to the mainframe at his office. He let us use the terminal to dial up and play a game called Dungeon, which was about a half-step above the text-based computer games of the time because it presented you with a primitive graphical representation of where you were:
In this case, you (X) are in a room with doors to the North and East, and there's a monster (M) in there with you. You'd move around by typing things like GO DOOR NORTH or ATTACK and so on. Marcus updated a hand-drawn map on graph paper as we went through the dungeon, because you could only see one room at a time.
The cool thing about the acoustically coupled modem was that if you knocked it or jumped around on the floor, it would pick up the sounds and spew ASCII garbage like  across the screen. If you pulled the handset out of the coupler and yelled into it, you'd fill up the screen before the mainframe dropped the carrier.
The same principles, apparently, were used to hack the iPod's firmware. Nils Schneider basically made the iPod squawk out its firmware secrets by turning a piezoelectric element within the unit into a speaker, recording the output, and turning the acoustic data back into digital data--just like the modem.
Seth David Schoen at Vitanuova writes,
Somehow this reminds me of the scene in William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic" in which Johnny is made to recite (for three hours) a memorized computer program to which he has no conscious access. "And then it all faded to cool gray static and an endless tone poem in the artificial language. I sat and sang dead Ralfi's stolen program for three hours." In the story, the program in question is a misappropriated secret; here, despite the interesting aesthetic parallel, I think Schneider's purpose in studying the iPod's firmware is perfectly proper.
Mr. Schoen goes on to outline the virtues of this über-creative approach, and I think he's right. The technique appeals to the kid in me... the one that used to jump around just to watch ASCII fly across the screen.
[Via BoingBoing.]
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