Peter Gabriel & Technology

Peter Gabriel, one of my all-time favourite musicians, continues to be at the forefront of technology usage -- particularly when it comes to technology for music and human rights:

On the human rights side:

  • In 1992 he co-founded WITNESS, "an international human rights organization that uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations"
  • In 1999 he started TheElders.org, which is a "new gathering of world leaders who [have] come together to guide and support our 'global village'".

So it's no surprise that he is involved in recent areas of music technology as well:

Both sound really interesting and I'll write more about them once I've played around with them a little more.

[More PG: Wikipedia, Last.fm, Real World Records, WOMAD]

'Last Night' by Moby...9 Days to Go!

We're still nine days away from the release of Moby's latest album, Last Night. Says Moby:

"last night" is basically a love letter to dance music in new york city. what i love about the new york approach to dance music is the eclecticism and the open minded-ness on the part of the musicians, the dj's, and the people in the bars and clubs. in making 'last night' i essentially tried to take a long 8 hour night out in new york city and condense it into a 65 minute long album.

To keep us busy till then, here's some fun Moby related stuff that you can do:

Enjoy :)

Professional Photo of Me!

I recently wrote about my entry in the Melbourne Business School Class Profile Brochure on my professional blog. Since I wrote that post on the day I submitted my profile to Career Services, I didn't have a copy of my professional photograph that will be used in that publication (MBS hired a professional photographer and got all our pictures taken).

This morning, however, I was e-mailed a copy of that photo and here it is:

Ameel Zia Khan

Good photo, eh? I don't look half bad, either :)

Entertainment on a Tablet PC

Every time I've written about tablet PCs on this blog it's been about how that form factor will improve my productivity, efficiency, and will make my life a great deal easier.

What I haven't mentioned is how I expect a tablet PC to improve my computer-based entertainment experience as well. Specifically, how I expect to use it for reading books, playing computer games, watching movies, recording and editing music, listening to music and podcasts, and so on. I'll write about all that some other time but, meanwhile, James Kendrick has posted a video on how he uses his new Fujitsu P1620 for entertainment. It's an excellent video and I suggest you check it out.

Three Years On...

One of the best ways I have of remembering my mother is through music. When we were little she used to sing us to sleep and it's mostly thanks to her that we're a very musical family (we start to sing at the drop of a hat, for example). Since it's been three years since she died I thought it would be nice to post a few videos of the songs that she really liked or that we used to sing a lot.

She was a big fan of Edith Piaf, for example, and her favourite Piaf song was 'Non, je ne regrette rien':

Her other favourite songs included Dean Martin's 'Under the Bridges of Paris', Harry Belafonte's 'Jamaica Farewell', and Frank Sinatra's 'Three Coins in a Fountain'. I'm sure there were others she liked, but these are the ones she knew the lyrics of and sang most often.

Here's Harry Belafonte singing 'Jamaica Farewell':

Bed Time Songs

A lot of the songs she sang us to sleep with were folk songs like 'Lavender Blue', 'Red River Valley', 'Danny Boy', and 'Tom Dooley'.

Here's a video of The Kingston Trio singing 'Tom Dooley':

And, since this is too good an opportunity to pass up, here's the Muppets version of 'Danny Boy':

I remember Ami having a good laugh over this when we first saw it :)

I believe she was more familiar with the Elvis version of this song, though, so here's the tribute video made for his 29th death anniversary that features it:

Travelling Songs

There were also a number of songs that we always sang in the car, particularly on long journeys. One of those was The Three Stooges song 'Swinging the Alphabet':

Other songs included 'The Animal Fair', 'Why Shouldn't My Goose', 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat', and 'Ten Green Bottles'. There were, of course, many more.

It's still hard to believe that she's gone...and I'm glad we have all this music to help keep her memory alive.

2008 LUMS B.Sc.'99 Class Notes

Calling all of my LUMS B.Sc. Class of 1999 classmates!

If you haven't read the news item I posted on our MyFamily.com site or seen the message I sent 50 of you on Facebook, please read this blog post.

It is time, once again, to write our class notes for the LUMS Alumni Annual. Like we did last year, we are going to do compile them using this wiki: http://bsc99.wetpaint.com/

So please: visit the site and update your (or anyone else's) class note entry. Oh, and make sure you do this before Monday, 26 May. On the 27th, I'll copy edit the notes (tweak grammar, flow, etc.) and will mail them off to the Alumni Relations Office.

Finally, please tell all our other classmates that you're in contact with to do this as well.

Thanks!

Jonathan Coulton!

I'd heard a couple of Jonathan Coulton songs before but, thanks to this episode of TWiT, I went and explored more of his music...and I love it!

If you're a geek and you love good music with fun lyrics, be sure to check him out. I mean, who couldn't love these lyrics:

Heya Tom, it’s Bob from the office down the hall
Good to see you buddy, how’ve you been?
Thing have been OK for me except that I’m a zombie now
I really wish you’d let us in
I think I speak for all of us when I say I understand
Why you folks might hesitate to submit to our demand
But here’s an FYI: you’re all gonna die screaming

All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re not unreasonable, I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here, maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains

[From Re: Your Brains]

:)

No "Consensus" on Climate Change?!

A couple of days ago Joseph Romm wrote an excellent article in Salon on The Cold Truth About Climate Change. In it he tackles the various arguments that climate change deniers use, including the argument that it's the sun -- and not us -- that is causing all this global warming (easily debunked, by the way).

The one he address up front, though, is the argument that there is no "consensus" in the scientific community about climate change. Romm's counter-argument? Er, there's no need for consensus when you have the data, stupid:

What matters is scientific findings -- data, not opinions. The [U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)] relies on the peer-reviewed scientific literature for its conclusions, which must meet the rigorous requirements of the scientific method and which are inevitably scrutinized by others seeking to disprove that work. That is why I cite and link to as much research as is possible, hundreds of studies in the case of this article. Opinions are irrelevant.

A little later, he continues:

How many studies? Well, the IPCC's definitive treatment of the subject, "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change," has 11 full pages of references, some 500 peer-reviewed studies. This is not a consensus of opinion. It is what scientific research and actual observations reveal.

Oh, and you know what? The IPCC report actually underestimates the potential future impacts of climate change because the models used in all those studies are actually simpler than what goes on in the real world (because they "omit key amplifying feedback in the carbon cycle"). Observations over the last eight years have helped clarify that since all the observed changes have been on the high side of model projections.

Ah, yes...we're in for a wild ride.

Two Toshiba M700 Reviews

Both Gotta Be Mobile and Tablet PC Review have recently published their reviews of the Toshiba M700 tablet PC:

Both are positive and both have reinforced my decision to buy the M700 as soon I can afford it. Things may, of course, change over the next few months but I doubt any manufacturer will come out with a machine that tops the power, versatility, and customisation options of the M700.

Twelve Days of InkSeine

Ken Hinckley (The Alpine Inker) works at Microsoft Research and, over the last couple of weeks, he's been running an awesome series of blog posts called Twelve Days of InkSeine.

InkSeine (pronounced ink-sane) is a really cool inking application that Hinckley is working on (which is not yet an official Microsoft product). It's one of the only products around that has been designed for inking and not just a keyboard-and-mouse based product that has inking support. For example, a lot of its commands (like cut, copy, paste, search, etc.) are all pen-flick based and not menu-based.

It's still in private beta but will released to the public in 15 February. To find out more about it, check GBM's InkShow on it. Better yet, once it is available, download and try it. Assuming you have a tablet PC, of course.

Want!

It costs as much as a high-end tablet PC (AU$3,890) but the 21.3" Wacom Cintiq is one heck of an LCD screen that also has on-screen pen input capabilities:

21" Cintiq LCD Screen

Of course, that model is designed specifically for creative uses. I'd probably end up getting the 17" PC-720 instead (AU$2,195):

17" PL-720 LCD Screen

Or, at the very least, the 15" DTI-520 (AU$1,760):

15" DTI-520 LCD Screen

Or maybe I'd compromise and get the 20" wide screen Cintiq 20WSX (US$1,999), though that's not available in Australia yet:

20" 20WSX LCD Screen

Ah, choices, choices.

Of course, all this has to wait till I've made my millions.

Soon, soon...

The Toshiba M700 Benchmark Scare

Like me, other power users are finding that the Toshiba M700 has most of they've been looking for in a tablet PC. It is:

  • Powerful -- more so than the Lenovo X61t or the Fujitsu T4220
  • Highly configurable -- like the X61t but unlike the T4220
  • Relatively inexpensive -- costing less than an equivalent X61t or T4220
  • Feature rich -- with more features than the X61t or 4220

And though it suffers a little in the weight department (but only by a couple of hundred grams or so) and its screen resolution isn't as high as some of us would like it to be (though that's offset by the wide screen), its has lots of bonus features -- like that wide screen, a touch screen, a webcam, and a built-in optical drive -- that more than make up for its shortcomings.

Because of all this, we were very surprised when Tiffany Boggs from Tablet PC Review posted its benchmark scores and, strangely, they came out very low. It's PCMark05 score, for example, was 3,399 while an equally spec-ed t4220 scored 4,171 and a lower spec-ed X61t scored 3,473. Most of us had expected the M700 to score somewhere in the mid-4,000s. Curious and concerned, a number of M700 owners ran the same test and came up with similar, low-3,000 PCMark scores.

Quickly the Tablet PC Review forum participants realized that this wasn't a hardware issue but a software one. That, fortunately, was when GBM's Matt Faulkner stepped in. First, he did a clean install of Vista and, lo and behold, the M700's PCMark05 score jumped to a whopping 4,528. Then, he went a step further and installed each system driver in turn, re-running the PCMark test after each reboot. After doing this for about four hours -- and working late into the night since he had to return his review unit the next morning -- he found the main culprit.

It turns out that the Intel Robson Technology Driver for Windows Vista -- a driver used to run the Turbo Memory that wasn't even in that machine to begin with -- was messing the system up. In fact, with the cleanest possible working install, one of the forum participants managed to get a PCMark05 score of 4,737!

What does all this mean? It means that the Toshiba M700 rocks and that, if you want to squeeze the most out of your machine, it is best to do a clean install. Importantly, it reinforces the fact that we have an awesome tablet PC community. If any of you read this post: thanks a million!

Mathematically, Waiting Better than Walking

As reported by IT Wire:

According to three U.S. mathematicians, if you are waiting for something, like a ride on a bus, and its late, keep on waiting rather than walk to the next bus stop.

[...]

They developed a mathematical formula that tells you how long you should wait before trying something different. They found that when both options seem reasonable, you should stay where you are and do nothing but continue waiting.

And with the exception of extreme cases:

[Even] if it is frustrating to continue waiting, you are better off doing so.

You learn something new every day, huh?