I notice a few songs in my collection focused on bodily feelings. Here is another one - Stomach Gurgling.
This one is fun in that it uses the doo-dad (Portamento) that runs up and down the keyboard making whoops and what not.
© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.
2005-11-20
Put employees first: Sir Richard Branson
Put employees first: Sir Richard Branson:
Some people think that servicing the needs of shareholders, employees, and customers is a balancing act, but Sir Richard says that's wrong. It's more of a dependency graph: happy shareholders need a company with happy customers which are created by happy employees.
I know a company that puts customers first, and it has had 50% turnover in the last couple of years. Amazing.
"Outlining the Virgin management mantra, Sir Richard said happy employees keep customers happy. A lot of happy customers would create a lot of happiness to shareholders as well. Without good people, corporations are worth nothing. And to motivate people, corporations should create a fun environment to work. Employees should feel that it is a crusade, not just another job. "
Some people think that servicing the needs of shareholders, employees, and customers is a balancing act, but Sir Richard says that's wrong. It's more of a dependency graph: happy shareholders need a company with happy customers which are created by happy employees.
I know a company that puts customers first, and it has had 50% turnover in the last couple of years. Amazing.
2005-11-18
Experimental Music #1 - Intestinal Disorder
Way back in the depths of time - I'll say around 1984 - 1990 - I had a bunch of analog synthesizer equipment I liked to play with. I made some really bad and/or strange and/or experimental music, depending on your point of view. I prefer to call it experimental, although 'bad' might also be a suitable description.
I offer here my first posting of bad and/or experimental music: 'Intestinal Disorder'.
© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.
I offer here my first posting of bad and/or experimental music: 'Intestinal Disorder'.
© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.
2005-11-14
Storage
It's strange, but as I look back on my career, I see that it has been influenced more by storage factors than processor factors. This is true going all the way back to NES games where with good compression you could double or triple the content that went into a cartrige.
Now I'm trying to imagine a world with these little microdrives (like in the iPod) in everything. And Wi-Fi connecting them all.
The word of the day will be replication. The idea will be to allow your data (and licensed music, movies, books even) to circulate in your own microdrive eco-system but not migrate to your neighbor's, unless he has a license for the content as well.
It's not immediately obvious to most people but the secret to making all of this work well is to simple make many devices write-only. That's what the iPod is supposed to be - you can store your tunes onto an iPod but you can't get them back off to give to a buddy. (On the other hand, your buddy can bring his iPod to your computer and you can give him a copy of your music. But that's a lot more work than simply having iPods talk to each other and exchange music.)
The thing about the current file sharing world is that it is so easy to share files. The system just needs a little friction so that it is easier to buy the stuff online than to transfer it without a license. And the DRM systems need less friction within a 'local ecosystem' so that once you have licensed some music or a movie or a book, you can listen, look at it, or read it, on any device you want.
I bought the Firefly DVDs because everyone told me to watch them before watching Serenity, the movie spin-off from the short-lived TV series. So I did. $30 from Amazon - pretty good! Now i have this 4 CD set... and quite frankly, I'm happy to loan it to anyone that comes along. I'm not going to be watching it over and over again. Is that illegal? (I hope not!) You can imagine a situation where four families get together and make a DVD club, where they get a DVD and share it. They would have some rule where the family that gets the DVD first rotates in a list. That would save them 75% on DVD costs, but also cut the sales of DVDs 75%, which would be painful for the movie companies. Really popular DVDs would transcend this rule, of course, because each family would want to own their own 'Finding Nemo', as some titles do bear watching over and over and over again by the kids.
And I bought, for $1.99, the first episode of Nightstalker from the iTunes store. I finally watched it and meh. But what I am supposed to do with this big file that I never want to watch again? Delete it, I supposed, but the iTunes store only allows ONE download of a video file. If you want to watch on multiple computers you have to copy it around to different machines yourself. I guess this is to save on bandwidth costs for the iTunes store. But that's kind of lame.
*Sigh*. Digital licensing is complicated.
© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.
Now I'm trying to imagine a world with these little microdrives (like in the iPod) in everything. And Wi-Fi connecting them all.
The word of the day will be replication. The idea will be to allow your data (and licensed music, movies, books even) to circulate in your own microdrive eco-system but not migrate to your neighbor's, unless he has a license for the content as well.
It's not immediately obvious to most people but the secret to making all of this work well is to simple make many devices write-only. That's what the iPod is supposed to be - you can store your tunes onto an iPod but you can't get them back off to give to a buddy. (On the other hand, your buddy can bring his iPod to your computer and you can give him a copy of your music. But that's a lot more work than simply having iPods talk to each other and exchange music.)
The thing about the current file sharing world is that it is so easy to share files. The system just needs a little friction so that it is easier to buy the stuff online than to transfer it without a license. And the DRM systems need less friction within a 'local ecosystem' so that once you have licensed some music or a movie or a book, you can listen, look at it, or read it, on any device you want.
I bought the Firefly DVDs because everyone told me to watch them before watching Serenity, the movie spin-off from the short-lived TV series. So I did. $30 from Amazon - pretty good! Now i have this 4 CD set... and quite frankly, I'm happy to loan it to anyone that comes along. I'm not going to be watching it over and over again. Is that illegal? (I hope not!) You can imagine a situation where four families get together and make a DVD club, where they get a DVD and share it. They would have some rule where the family that gets the DVD first rotates in a list. That would save them 75% on DVD costs, but also cut the sales of DVDs 75%, which would be painful for the movie companies. Really popular DVDs would transcend this rule, of course, because each family would want to own their own 'Finding Nemo', as some titles do bear watching over and over and over again by the kids.
And I bought, for $1.99, the first episode of Nightstalker from the iTunes store. I finally watched it and meh. But what I am supposed to do with this big file that I never want to watch again? Delete it, I supposed, but the iTunes store only allows ONE download of a video file. If you want to watch on multiple computers you have to copy it around to different machines yourself. I guess this is to save on bandwidth costs for the iTunes store. But that's kind of lame.
*Sigh*. Digital licensing is complicated.
© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.
2005-11-08
Pristine
The Bellevue Galleria 11 (movie theatre) is under new management. As part of their renovation they purchased a $130,000.00 Christie 2 megapixel digital projector.
We watched Chicken Little on it last weekend. It was beautiful. I couldn't see a single pixel and we were somewhat close to the front of the theatre.
These latest projectors are much better than the old 1.3 megapixel projectors, such as the one that the Cinerama had (and which they stopped using about three years ago).
Now, if everyone else in the entire world would upgrade to these babies ...
© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.
We watched Chicken Little on it last weekend. It was beautiful. I couldn't see a single pixel and we were somewhat close to the front of the theatre.
These latest projectors are much better than the old 1.3 megapixel projectors, such as the one that the Cinerama had (and which they stopped using about three years ago).
Now, if everyone else in the entire world would upgrade to these babies ...
© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.
2005-11-01
iTunes Video
I'm finally watching the iTunes video I bought. It's the Nightstalker pilot. I can't tell if I'm bored because the video is small or the show just isn't that interesting. I think it is the latter, since I've watched little videos before and remained entertained.
You can blow the picture up to full-screen. It looks a little low-res but not so bad. But since the show is boring I put it in a little window on the side and surfed the Internet instead.
I might be willing to spend $1.99 to keep up on Lost if I missed an episode, but otherwise I think iTunes video earns a 'never mind it' recommendation.
(BTW, the Google spelling checker is AWESOME!)
© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.
You can blow the picture up to full-screen. It looks a little low-res but not so bad. But since the show is boring I put it in a little window on the side and surfed the Internet instead.
I might be willing to spend $1.99 to keep up on Lost if I missed an episode, but otherwise I think iTunes video earns a 'never mind it' recommendation.
(BTW, the Google spelling checker is AWESOME!)
© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.
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