New Song: Blue (Monkey Butt)

It's weird what sorts of things pop up when I play around with the many sounds and options in GarageBand on the iPod Touch or iPad. Often an instrument sound, automatic pattern, and rhythm will lead to a new song. This new one sounded bluesy (not surprising since the progression is like Em Bm C F#dim), so I started using the word "blue," and before long I had a demo. Although most of the things I mention are not actually blue, monkey butts sometimes are. So there. Like much of life, this song is something of a joke, but not completely.

Music in Space

This video was posted by NASA about a year ago, but I somehow just stumbled on it. Among many other things, astronaut Cady Coleman is a flute player, and when she was on the International Space Station last year, she carried several flutes with her, including one belonging to Ian Anderson (best known as the leader of Jethro Tull). Last April, as a tribute to Yuri Gagarin on the 50th anniversary of his first spaceflight, Cady performed a flute duet with Anderson - she on the ISS, he on the ground. The song was a version of Anderson's "Bouree" which is in turn an adaptation of a Bach piece.

I really like Cady Coleman. She is one of the few astronauts I've had a chance to meet. She visited my space flight simulator demo booth at a Space Expo at the New England Air Museum a few years ago, and we spoke for a few minutes about educational outreach. She struck me as incredibly down-to-Earth (when she's not in space). I didn't realize at the time that she is also a musician.

iPad Rationalization

I swear, it wasn't my fault! I was simply helping to configure an iPad 2 bought for my mother-in-law. I never expected to fall in love (who am I kidding - of course I did). For the few decades that the iPad has been available (allegedly only two years), I've thought about getting one, but I managed to convince myself that it was really just an overgrown iPod Touch, which I have been using for centuries (since fall 2008). Pretty much runs all the same apps, right? Besides, I travel a lot, and the iPod Touch is so handily pocket-sized, while the iPad is nearly laptop size, right? Another thing to lug around and keep charged. Who needs it!

Well after I spent a week or so setting up that iPad 2, I could feel my anti-iPad rationalizations cracking under the strain of a nearly life-size HUD on my simulated space shuttle and the large instrument and control interfaces in GarageBand (yes, I was testing out a few apps my mother-in-law wouldn't need). I tried out a few magazines like WIRED, Newsweek, National Geographic, and Discover Magazine, and they were definitely much more enjoyable than on the pathetically tiny screen of the iPod Touch.  Mainstream apps like web browsing, email, YouTube, and the like are easier to use too. FaceTime and Skype are wonderful on a face-size screen. My willpower was crumbling...

Apple delivered the final blow with the "new iPad" ("3G") announcement - super-high-res screen, faster graphics processors, and a better camera for the same price points as the iPad 2 (though they did drop the price of some iPad 2 models). I was sold. So I gave in and ordered one (wifi only) - telling my wife that this would be a family iPad, not my iPad. I can share (sometimes). I promised I would still use the iPod Touch for travel. And so far I have not taken the iPad on a trip (so far haven't taken a trip...).

The new iPad is really great. Many apps have already issued updates to take advantage of the 2048x1536 retina display, including F-SIM Shuttle (above). Gorgeous rendering of my still less-than-perfect landings. Music creation apps are wonderful on the larger screen. Apple's free movie trailer app was upgraded and the HD previews are amazing. One surprising fave is the NPR Music app (also free). With more room for interface controls and graphics, and plenty of video, it makes it a pleasure to explore new music. I really appreciate that many of the apps I had bought for the iPod Touch are "universal" apps that also work great on the iPad. I've only bought a couple of "HD" apps specialized for the iPad.

Who knew that apple flavored kool-aid could be so tasty?

Too Cool: Driven to Fly!

This is incredibly cool (7 minute video here). A flying car! The Terrafugia Transition® is more like a drivable airplane. It's very light for an airplane or a car, something like a two-seat smart car with wings. It's considered a Light Sport Aircraft.

Terrafugia's FAQ has some useful info including this comment:

The Transition also reduces the cost of ownership of an airplane by burning automotive gasoline, parking in your garage at home instead of renting a hangar, and nearly eliminating ground transportation costs.

Good points! So OK, I have a private pilot's license and a two-car garage that's within a 25 minute drive of at least three airports. I would love to have one. But aside from gasoline, hangar charges, and various insurance issues, a key factor in "cost of ownership" is the price - $279,000. Maybe not this year.

Elon Musk on 60 Minutes

There was a great segment on 60 Minutes last night on Elon Musk and SpaceX. I share his belief in the importance of humankind becoming a space-faring, multi-planet civilization, but Musk has taken this vision and run with it. Big time. The introduction to the interview says:

In the history of space flight - only four entities have launched a space capsule into orbit and successfully brought it back to the Earth: the United States, Russia, China and Elon Musk.

It's impressive and inspiring to me. I wish I were a 30-something engineer again. I would move back to Los Angeles and get a job with SpaceX!

The text version of the interview is here. The video of the whole show (including commercial breaks) is here (there was also a fascinating story on the neurological condition of face blindness). This appears to be just the SpaceX video segment. I don't know how long CBS keeps these 60 Minutes videos on-line.

Music Animation Machine

This is very cool. This small program will play back any MIDI music file and display any of 14 different animations based on the musical content of the file (things like note values, intervals, part movement, and others). To use the free Music Animation Machine MIDI Player, you have to download, unzip, save, and run it on a PC (the .exe file runs directly - it doesn't require an installation program). Windows includes a default wave-table synthesizer, so it should work on any Windows machine with a sound card (if you have hardware or software synthesizers or other MIDI playback devices, it should also work with those).

Many of the animations look best when playing classical music which tends to have more distinct moving musical lines than most popular music, and it comes with several sample classical pieces. You can find tons of classical (and other) MIDI files all over the internet. Bach is especially visual (and sounds good too). The space bar starts and stops the playback.

Matt Bors Wins Cartooning Award

My favorite editorial cartoonist by far is Matt Bors. So I was happy to learn that Matt has been awarded the 2012 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning (check out some of his work on that page, or look through his blogged archives). He is fearless and funny. Nobody gets a pass from Matt Bors - not Obama, not God, not even Steve Jobs! Though like me, he does seem to have special feelings for Rick Santorum. Matt really deserves this award. Congratulations!

Unexpected Facts

London-based HSBC is one of the largest banks in the world, and they advertise a lot in airports. On my recent trip to China, I noticed some of their current advertising posters which feature interesting or surprising facts with the tag line "We find potential in the most unexpected places. Do you?"

One that especially caught my eye was, "Of all the people in the world who have ever lived to be 65, two-thirds are alive today." I guess that makes sense given that during most of human evolution, life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (at least according to Thomas Hobbes). Here are a few others I like, found in this article:

•  0.3% of Saharan solar energy could power Europe.
• Only 4% of US films are made by women, compared to 25% in Iran.
• Right now, there are over half a million people traveling the world by air.
• Over 138 million people work outside their country of birth.
• There are five times more people learning English in China than there are people in England.
• The U.S. has more Spanish language newspaper readers than Latin America.
• Recycling one tin can saves enough energy to power a TV for three hours.

I assume these statements are more or less true, though I don't know the assumptions or calculations involved. I just find them thought provoking.

Love/Hate With Apple

I've got this love/hate thing with Apple (I'll admit it's mostly love).

The hate part: today's new iPad announcement that has finally made me really want one. It's hard to explain why. Better screen, faster processor, better camera? I don't exactly know. But it seems like it's ready and would be really great to have for recording and other things.

The love part? A new GarageBand update (v1.2 for iOS) that addresses my two biggest complaints. There's a "piano roll" note editor for MIDI parts (now if they would only add MIDI export!). And they added "smart strings" that sound really good based on my limited playing with them. There's also a multi-device "jam" feature that works over Wifi that might be cool. Best of all, immediate gratification: I downloaded the free update this evening. It seems to work well on my iPod Touch, but it also contributes to the hate part: now that I've really figured out how to use GarageBand efficiently, I want to use it more for songwriting and making demos, even when I'm home. If only that iPod screen were just a little bit bigger... wait...