How To Fit Coldplay’s Vida La Vida & Prospekt’s March On One CD

September 11, 2013 Leave a Comment

Coldplay Viva la Vida and Prospekt's March

Since Coldplay has a new song and music video out this week (“Atlas” from the Catching Fire soundtrack), I figured this post was finally vaguely relevant. It’s a problem affecting an extremely limited number of people, I realize, but just in case you:

  1. own both Viva la Vida and Prospekt’s March, the 2008 LP and EP from Coldplay;
  2. feel the need to listen to both of them together without repetition;
  3. still use compact discs; and
  4. have not solved this problem for yourself in the five years you’ve had to do so;

I am here to help.

The screenshot below shows a track listing in the program CDBurnerXP. Tracks 5 and 6 were separated using Audacity, as were tracks 7 and 8 as well as 18 and 19. Doing so is optional, but it bugs me when songs do not perfectly correlate to tracks. (I left 16 as it was because there’s no point of silence to split the track, and “Poppyfields” is pretty much only 30 seconds of synthy woo-woo sounds anyhow.)

Viva la Vida/Prospekt's March Track List

You might notice that two tracks from Prospekt’s March are entirely missing; this is ostensibly because the full runtime of all the songs on both collections adds up to 74:04, and standard audio CDs don’t go past 74 minutes flat. However, the missing tracks are just a virtually identical remix of “Lovers in Japan” and a terrible, terrible version of “Lost!” featuring one Jay-Z. Seriously guys, the “feat. [some rapper]” addendum is never a good idea. And although increasing the tempo of “Lovers in Japan” by approximately one beat per minute for the “Osaka Sun Remix” gives it an utterly different sound, I’m not sure I can bear the transcendence of lines like “Soldiers, you’ve got to soldier on” more than once in 66 minutes.

I wish I could share an ISO of the disc with convenient, cutting-edge features like CD-TEXT tagging, but you know, that would be illegal. This Grooveshark playlist should be slightly less so.

Thanks to Everywhere Art for demarcating the areas of Eugene Delacroix paintings used on the album covers in question.

Filed under Music, Random

INFOGRAPHIC: 47 Years of Star Trek

September 6, 2013 5 Comments

This weekend marks possibly the most significant anniversary in the history of historicity itself. I hope you’ll share this infographic to celebrate with me.

INFOGRAPHIC: 47 Years of Star Trek

For the purposes of this infographic, the recent reboot movies are grouped with the original series. Both “The Cage” and “The Menagerie” are included in the episode and minute totals for the original series as well, but Generations is counted as a fully Next Generation movie.

This post is brought to you by Wikipedia (for numbers research and title logos), LCARSCOM (for color and font recommendations), a lifetime of overzealous fandom, and of course the number 47.

Filed under Infographic, Random, Science Fiction, Writing Tagged with , , ,

Google Glass Confuses And Frightens Me

May 6, 2013 1 Comment

The first Google Glass kits have arrived in customer hands. Like the Bluetooth headset did for the sonic part of interacting with our phones, Google Glass does for the visual, placing a tiny screen in front of the eye for always-ready, hands-free use.

I work in the high tech industry – the mobile high tech industry, in fact. Not as a programmer, or an engineer, just as a marketing writer with an interest in technology and gadgets. I write about smartphones and apps every day. New hardware always gets me itching to upgrade.

But I’m not looking forward to Google Glass.

Mobile technology has always lent itself to a kind of consumer arms race. Flip phones were cooler than bulkier brick phones; BlackBerries were cooler still, for a while. Then came the iPhone, which at first couldn’t run apps but was way better at surfing the Web than previous smartphones; and newer iPhones or Android phones were of course cooler than the early models.

Google Glass represents a giant escalation in this arms race. Rather than an incremental improvement to previous phone technology, Glass is a whole new interface that frees the hands completely. One can literally be connected non-stop.

“That’s great!” you might think. “I can do two things at once and have more free time!” Really? I’ve written about this before:

Every advance in technology that promises more productivity and more convenience can only do so for a short time. After that, it blends into the normal, everyday fabric of life and becomes expected rather than novel.

Worker productivity, aided by technology, grew 80 percent between 1973 and 2011. Worker pay, meanwhile, grew just ten percent, adjusted for inflation, in that same period.

Whether or not Glass becomes cool enough to be accepted in social situations, it will undoubtedly find at least niche utilization. Many employers already expect their workers to be available by cell phone outside work hours. Smartphones enable those workers to log into company systems and get work done, even while not on the clock. Google Glass further enables users to divide their attention, giving both real life and in-Glass life short shrift.

At the very least, Glass and its descendants will enable a new type of asshole. The current generation of Glass is rather conspicuous, but future revisions will undoubtedly be miniaturized and more stealthily designed. Researching information on the spot is possible now, but doing it without the knowledge of one’s conversational partners can mislead them. Playing games or otherwise distracting oneself is likewise disrespectful.

TechCrunch, self-appointed arbiter of every Next Big Thing, seems to think Google Glass will be neither a culture-rewriting bang nor a shunned and rejected whimper, and I tend to agree. But don’t expect a bold new world of joyful connectivity without consequences. That’s not how technology works.

Filed under Random, Writing

My Bionic Jelly Bean Kind Of Sucks

April 25, 2013 4 Comments

The other day my mobile phone was finally updated to Android 4.1.2, popularly and deliciously known as Jelly Bean. (Kind of. I mean, yes, but Google’s official Jelly Bean page is for version 4.2. This is probably a clue.) While it brings with it the vaunted Google Now functionality, some lameness comes along for the ride.

The phone in question is a Motorola DROID Bionic on Verizon Wireless. And with this latest update it gets, well, slow. As one of the first dual-core 4G smartphones, it’s getting on in years, but should still have plenty of oomph to run UI elements smoothly. Instead, I find myself waiting precious seconds (seconds!!) just waiting for my screen unlock code to show up.

There are also niggling little interface changes that don’t matter much in the scheme of things, but get to me. One example: when opening a Web link from my preferred Twitter client, HootSuite, I get a dialog asking me what program I want to use to open it. In earlier Android versions, there was a checkbox to indicate that I wanted my choice to become the default in the future. Now, there are “Always” and “Just once” buttons, and I have to make an extra tap. My thumb is BUSY, Google. I don’t have TIME for this.

And then there’s this:

Android 4.1.2 error

Okay then.

This error message appears every few hours. I presume it’s some problem locking onto a Wi-Fi signal. It doesn’t seem to affect my connection, but the error message gets in the way and really seems like the kind of thing that should’ve been caught before release.

Oh, oh, and SPEAKING of Google Now, my weather widget has now been subsumed into that program. So now I have to find another widget to replace that widget if I want weather right on one of my home screens.

Finally, jelly beans are just not as scrumptious as a good ice cream sandwich.

Phooey.

Filed under Random, Writing

REJECTED: Address

November 7, 2012 1 Comment

Every now and then, I slam out something unsolicited with a particular publication in mind. More often than not, they don’t want it, so it goes here. In this case, it was NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction competition, Round 9: “Pick a President.”

Sun

Image courtesy of nixxphotography / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“My fellow Americans: good evening.

“I thank you for tuning in tonight as I address you, as it must be, for the final time. I cherish the three years I have spent as your president. But that time has sadly, though necessarily and without regret, come to an end.

“The sun has always been a symbol of constancy. Day after day, it has risen to provide heat, light, life to our blessed planet. And day after day, it has set, to remind us that there can be no life without its eventual opposite; no heat without cold, no light without darkness.

“Now, the shining beacon at the center of our solar system has succumbed to change. By what mechanism, we cannot explain. For what reason, we shudder to even ask.

“For the past several decades, temperatures on Earth have been inexorably rising. Glaciers and icebergs have melted. The seas have risen. Mild winters have seemed a blessing to those in higher latitudes, just as unbearable and deadly summers have cursed most of us. Tropical storms have grown so intense that one cannot run its course before another barrels hastily ashore.

“The situation first came to our attention in the 1970s, and was quickly labeled, simply, Global Warming. Later, as its effect became more unpredictable, we termed the phenomenon Climate Change. We knew not, at first, its cause, but evidence pointed to a buildup of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere – carbon dioxide that we human beings, and especially we Americans, had ourselves released.

“This evidence was misleading. But it gave us a sense of purpose, because if humanity had begun this terrible process, then surely it could end it. We could choose to survive.

“As political debates raged over lowering our carbon emissions, the real culprit was identified: the sun, growing hotter and without reversal. The fault was not in ourselves, but indeed in our star.

“This information was, I must now confess to you, kept from the general public to maintain order and, crucially, hope. In mere months, the planet will be too damaged for humanity to survive. Our civilization does not possess the technology to understand, much less reverse, the rising temperature of our sun.

“What we do possess are nuclear warheads atop intercontinental ballistic missiles. Despite decades of disarmament, the United States, Russia, and other countries still control enough weaponry to incinerate the surface of our planet many times over.

“And that is what we shall do.

“Prior to my term of office, discussions were already under way with all the nuclear powers of the world regarding the planned destruction of the human race. I continued these discussions, which were brought to a close just a few hours ago. Implementation will not be delayed. We can go on suffering, or we can enable an orderly, dignified, swift end.

“All missile strikes have been coordinated to ensure that no corner of the Earth survives. Together we have endured for thousands of years; and together, now, we bring the human story to a close.

“We can say, now for another seven minutes, that our lives were not ended without our consent – that we merely waited while cruel fate had its way with us. We can declare, proudly, that we were masters of our own destiny.

“Good night, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.”

Filed under Random, Rejected, Writing

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