The Sonikcycle Syndicate

Over 2 months since me last post… hmmm… seems like only yesterday.

Bhutto is dead.
The war in Iraq & Afghanistan rages on.
I’ve traded Mid-Michigan frigid for Mid-Atlantic mild.
Data collection done, time to finish a paper.
Friends coming and going.
Bachelorhood getting old.
Plans for post-doc life are emerging (never mind the atypical trajectory).

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that I am the first to coin “ressaphobia” — the irrational fear of RSS feeds. Don’t get me wrong, I believe RSS feeds are the greatest thing since sliced bread! It’s just that I can’t bear to open my feed aggregator (Bloglines) in fear of the fire hose of posts I’ve yet to read. Because with each passing day the number of new posts on the blogs and podcasts I’ve elected to follow keeps growing, the dread I feel at facing those growing numbers increases respectively. It’s a vicious circle. I can’t keep up, so I don’t even glance at the good stuff I’m missing.

Shamefully, I’ve resorted to “manually” checking the few blogs maintained by my closest friends! What self-respecting blogger doesn’t actively follow other bloggers with rss? Maybe I’m not a real blogger…

Technorati Tags: rss, feeds, aggregator, bloglines, sonikcycle, blogs, blogging, blogger

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… someday, I, too, shall sport a Seussian sombrero as worm by Michael Hampton of P-Funk. (Click image for full effect.)

Technorati Tags: sonikcycle, p-funk, cosmic slop, sombrero, michael hampton

Soundufama-san & Kotuwan-sa were still on rewind when DJ Yuta made the play.

I just read a tweet from Kate, Twitter compadre and inspiration. She had said, “mmmm… new phone smell…” It never occurred to me that she must’ve just purchased an iPhone or some such nifty gadget. The first thing that popped into my head was, “mmmm… old phone sound…” My next thought was, “I should post that to Twitter, and for full effect link out to a recording of the metal bell ringer in the old brown telephone that is attached to the wall of my groovy grad pad in “married housing” at Central Michigan University. ” So, I did… I got a friend to call the number and let it ring whilst I captured the distinctive sound of its nearly-forgotten ringer, then pushed it up on to the Web here (complete with full sustain and kids yelling in the background).

I’m infatuated with old stuff (no, I don’t “collect”) and I could spend hours perusing old photos on Shorpy, or reminiscing about my old black Western Electric rotary dial telephone with a handset so heavy you knew you were ON THE TELEPHONE, not to mention the bodily harm you could do with it…

Anyway, I have to laugh at myself because after going through all that (only about 10 minutes), and feeling so jolly about my clever sense of humor & warm connectedness with the day-to-day affairs of others, I realized that as in the story of Sonikcycle, I’m the only one who’d get it. Given the fleeting nature of Twittering, the intended recipient, Kate, probably didn’t even notice my so-called response, much less click out and listen to the ringer–even if she did, past experience would suggest that the full picture of this fanciful free association will remain concealed by the dark shadows of Web obscurity and the cryptic clips of tweets & twits.

Technorati Tags: western electric, telephone, twitter, kate, sonikcycle

I started working on my doctoral dissertation the moment I decided to officially Pile it High & Deep under the auspices of UVa, though for the first 2.5 years this work was merely a contemplation of the vague inklings of what was to be. It wasn’t until January ‘07 that I began writing my dissertation in earnest. And it wasn’t until July ‘07 that I fully realized the subtle nuances and powerful effects of procrastination, and the nature of my own dilatoriness.

That procrastination is real, I do not question. But is it always real? Is it possible that what looks like dog shit, smells like dog shit, and tastes like dog shit, ain’t really dog shit? In a word, yes. I won’t ramble on about the psychology of the Big P, but I will share a serendipitous event that gave evidence for cosmic preordination operating under the cloak of imagined procrastination. Here goes…

Weeks and weeks had passed and it seemed as though the only things I had to show for my doctoral self was a respectable Chapter 1, a detailed outline for Chapters 2 & 3, and a boatload of articles and books that I had to digest. More time passed and the emotional roller coaster of disserprocrastitating manifested in manic swings between self-loathing, jubilation, and a devil-may-care-flee-to-the-other-side-of-the-planet attitude. One day, I was chatting with a friend and colleague and he mentioned an author with whom I was not familiar, and, as it turns out, whose work was critical to my dissertation and exactly what I needed to bring closure to my lit review. Here’s the punch: for weeks I felt that I was a pained victim of procrastination, and while some of that P was real, some was only imagined because there was nothing I could’ve known or done to make that conversation happen any sooner. That was the time when I was meant to get it together.

The moral of this story is that procrastination ain’t always what it seems, so don’t let it get to you, and just let the chips fall where they may because things happen when they are meant to happen.

Technorati Tags: dissertation, procrastination, kairos

I have a very high tolerance for disarray, dissonance, and clutter. That said, I also have a deep appreciation for orderliness, harmony, and minimalism. My living quarters are spartan, and my work space is neat and tidy, except on the occasions when garments are strewn about and my papers and books are piled high. Statistically, I’d be described as a middle man, not because my space is kinda–neat–kinda–messy, but rather because it’s one or the other, which when plotted plops me smack dab in the middle…

Like many a Mac user, I run oodles of apps at once and I always have a slew of windows open. That’s just fine with me, but now that I’ve discovered 2 groovy little apps that feed my minimalist proclivities, I’m reveling in a clutter-free computing experience. Said apps would be Spirited Away, which “hides” inactive windows after a specified interval, and MenuShade, which does a nifty menu bar hide and/or opacity setting. Combined with the slickness of Quicksilver, I run minimal, I run deep… I’ve been alternating between completely black screen with 1 window, and my current configuration (the “after” pic)….

In the vernacular of today’s internets, Spirited Away, MenuShade, and Quicksilver are all “full of win!”

Technorati Tags: spirited away, menushade, quicksilver, clutter, minimalism, workspace

I’m diggin’ my first session with Quicksilver… It has that universal “click” of a good app that needs no getting used to, nor discipline to use… it just fills a gap I didn’t even know I had! Like Steve said, “Quicksilver is one of those apps that everybody seems to love, but which nobody can explain.” Steve has a lot more to say about Quicksilver and how to get up and running with it, so I’ll turn it over to him and his Quicksilver tutorial.

Technorati Tags: quicksilver, steve whitaker, technotes, mac os x

Tuesday, June 25th, National Media Education Conference, St. Louis, MO

Listen to (download) the keynote address with the Flash player, below…

wikipedia
Middleberry college
participatory culture
networked culture
kids good at games, but don’t think critically
ethics issues – kids going places parents can’t follow
informed skepticism about web content
transparency in (research) process
“when can I trust wikipedia?”
wikipedia as opportunity
collective intelligence paradigm
be critical of expert paradigm

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (white paper)

Technorati Tags: henry jenkins, media literacy, nmec 2007, keynote

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Chad says to his chum Merrick: Dude, check out Tinydrum4.0, you’ll get a kick eh!
So Merrick twiddles with Tinydrum for a spell and sends these patterns to Chad:
@ 52 bpm : 1-16384-1024-8-8768-4
@ 60 bpm : 16896-256-0-16-32-16448
@ 60 bpm : 4104-129-33024-0-9-1033
@ 60 bpm : 16-40964-1040-4100-1024-4160
@ 40 bpm : 4096-256-16-256-1-1
Chad says: Amazing!!! How do you do it?
Merrick says: Well, let me tell you, son… after years of walkin’ railroad track & junkyards clinkin’ spikes on anything that might make a sound, seeking the sonic patterns in old screen doors banging in the wind, pluckin’–n–tappin’ the inerds of the piano, and riggin’ bendy wooden water skiis with cello strings and pickups—dinkin’ on the dmf tinydrum just comes naturally ;->

Technorati Tags: thepixelplant, tinydrum, dmf, sonikcycle, soundscape, sound art, sequencer, drum machine