Matt's Stuff

I woke up this morning with a single thought rolling and splashing through my head like water in a bowl. I’m not sure where it came from; but it’s here anyway, and I might as well deal with it. I want you to think about that bowl of water. It’s really quite full; whenever some gets sploshed out, a new bit comes in from the bottom, because it’s a magic bowl. This is, after all, only an analogy.

Now, put your finger lightly in it and watch the ripples. Draw your hand in slow circles around the bowl, steadily manipulating the water, and watch it, reluctantly at first, then enthusiastically, follow that lone finger. You have now formed a fascinating little whirlpool -- if you stop stirring, take your finger out suddenly, the water will continue on for a time, carried no longer by you but momentum, till it has slowed to a stop.

Now, thrust your hand, in an open-palmed strike, into the bowl. Disregarding the potential injury you might suffer, the results are, if I may be allowed a bad pun, a real splash. Water goes everywhere. The entire bowl is thrown into a chaotic frenzy. Some bits of water go in this direction, others go in another; eventually, everything settles into some sort of rhythmic sloshing-back-and-forth movement, maybe with circular motion included. If you left your hand in the bowl after the hit, you can either pull it out rapidly or keep it there -- removing it will agitate the situation once again.

That bowl is a lot similar to the thought that I had trudging about my muddied, six o’clock-in-the-morning, gasping-for-sleep cranium -- it walked out of a dream, set its bags down, folded its arms and declared its permanent residence. The realization I had had was this: though we cannot change the paths of time, as they have already been planned from eternity past, we can be a driving catalyst. We cannot change, but we can be the cause of something’s occurrence. We are only as locked-in to anything besides an absolute fact (something like a bad workplace or some psychological barrier) as we decide we are. And, moreover, we are only as far away from a change as we, or anyone involved, is from consenting to it, whether that means changing their minds or throwing in their lots to change the world.

The world we live in is a lot like that bowl of water. We are free to do what we want, and though the water’s patterns aren’t always the way that we like it, we can work to change it -- the only unmovable object is the bowl itself, a set of rules by which the universe is contained. It isn’t usually an instant change, unless you do an open-palmed strike of course, but if you move persistently and unhaltingly, and understand your objectives in light of the flow of the current, you will succeed.

We pass by an infinite variety of options daily. Being fated does not mean we should be passive, for an already written life does not mean we are incapable of being a catalyst -- that mistaken theory, common among believers not yet much affected by postmodernism, is the reason why the people changing the world are mostly unbelievers.

I don’t want to just sit around and wait for something good to happen any more. I want to put a ding in the universe. Forgive a little bit of a self-serving joke, but...

I want to make a splash.

I now leave you with a wonderfully relevant song by the Talking Heads, called “Once in a Lifetime”. Don’t watch the music video; it’s distractingly and unfortunately eighties.

Fireflies (Stretchmix) by TheNewMan

This 27:25 soundscape I've made (with little work at all) is actually just the song "Fireflies" by Owl City, stretched to 7.2 times it's original length. After stretching, I brought the bass end down low; this keeps the kick drum from making this huge long whamming sound which messes up the soundscape feel. I then slightly added some higher and lower octaves to make sure that it didn't sound like a bad radio, and put some damping on the high end to keep any unpleasant harmonics out of the mix. Finally, I put a little compression on it to keep the drumbeats a little more reined in while still there.

Stretched with Paulstretch, a very easy, lightweight, and open-source program. http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

Found out about this from that J. Bieber stretched mix that's been floating around the internet. J. BIEBZ - U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

... And the Lifehacker article about creating your own. http://lifehacker.com/5615442/how-to-create-your-own-slowed+down-ambient-epics?utm_source=Lifehacker+Newsletter&utm_campaign=47eb610c93-UA-142218-1&utm_medium=email

The term "Stretchmix" coined by me, apparently. However, I had nothing to do with Fireflies. That's all Adam Young and is his property.

I think it's funny how it's asking me for the BPM of the song. Really? I have no IDEA.

No matter whether it's unimportant or not, I still get a huge kick out of it.

Why yes that IS a QBASIC interpreter that I rescued from a dying Windows 3.1 laptop, how did you know?

This is an animated 10-minute overview by Professor Phillip Zimbardo
called "The Secret Powers of Time", and what it covers is something he
refers to as "Time Perspectives". A time perspective is how a person
or group of people focuses on certain areas of time and makes
decisions depending on whether they are focusing on the past, present
or future.

This is fascinating, and it makes clear a lot of the thoughts that
I've had running around in my head for the past few years.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/11/philip-zimbardo-on-t.html

--Matt
@elnerdodegeek

EAVB_CAKPOMUCIM

Hey guys, quick post...

So I've just put the finishing touches on a remix of Massive Attack's "Psyche". Not a terribly complicated remix, but a remix none the less... I'm referring to it as the Flange remix (Any electronic musician will know what i mean by "Flange", and will notice where it pops up in the track).

Not sure whether I should keep this version or make a new one, but I do like this one. The original Heligoland album edition was, in my opinion, unusually flat and uninteresting for the, forgive me, "massively" talented electronic duo. (Personally, I much prefer the genius Flash dub from the Splitting the Atom EP -- incredible I say!) However, I was able to utilize the oversimplicity of the original; all I needed to isolate the vox and the guitar was a bandpass, you can only barely hear the top of the kick.

Tell me what you think.

Psyche_remix-2.mp3

(download)

Click here to download:

Psyche_remix-2.mp3 (10.2 MB)

If you  like it, express your approval by tweeting it! ;)

--Matt

@elnerdodegeek

Recenty I created a Facebook account with my name backwards, and have been transferring all my "friendships" to this account (which I will keep clean of all personal data). And, somehow, I've gotten a lot of flak from people who just don't get it. Upon questioning, I discovered that people thought I was quitting because of some of the following reasons:

... I was scared that people were going to find my personal data through Facebook. They don't need Facebook to do that.

... I thought it would somehow improve my security online. "we r responsible for what we put on line. if we dont want something out in cyberspace then dont put it up." (@DallasM9) I am well aware of this fact, but honestly everything I've put on Facebook is on my Twitter, and really I post more to Twitter then I ever have to Facebook. My Facebook isn't some identity thieve's gold mine.

... Simple paranoia. I'm scared of the evil corporations that TAKE MA DATA AWAY FROM MEH. NUUUUUUUU. I'm actually relatively trusting with my data that I want to post on the internet. Know why? If It was potentially harmful to put it on the internet, I wouldn't be putting it up in the first place.

No. What this all boils down to -- why I'm becoming a Facebook ghost -- is simple. It isn't because I fear that I'm somehow going to get hurt by Facebook. This is two things:

1. This is a good, old-fashioned, honest-to-gosh demonstration.

I don't like or will put up with what Facebook is doing. And I'm willing to stand up and say, "Mark, I won't have this."

2. I squirm at the thought of Mark Zuckerburg having my data in his posession.

You know, it's interesting how many people just don't get this. The borrower is slave to the lender. When you sign up to Facebook or Twitter, you put your data in their hands, provided you follow the terms which they set out. And even though your data is being created and uploaded (hopefully, chosen to be) by you with your permission, the content is owned by them, distributed by them, and in all rights is theirs once it is in their domain.

Now, I'm relatively loose with who I make deals with to give me benefit in some way; usually for a web presence of some kind, like Twitter. I'm not going to give any of these guys my credit, social, or any other kind of important number (save for my cell phone to link with that). And there's nothing on Facebook that I wouldn't really mind being public. So why do I care?

I've often been prone to teasing or downright condescension for my cautious nature. Whenever a little voice in the back up my head tells me that I should really not be doing this, whenever I just can't get comfortable doing something that I know is probably a bad choice, I stop and do exactly the opposite. And it's idiotically common that I get laughed at for not doing things that I don't think that I should do (makes sense, right?). But following my conscience and/or common sense is something that has -- surprise -- always paid off.

Well, that's what's happening now. Even though I don't really have anything to fear, the idea that my data is in Zuckerburg's hands gives me the creeping horrors. He's already been proven to be radically untrustworthy; he said so himself. And I can simply not be comfortable with playing in Zuckerburg's sandbox. And as I'm not comfortable with it, I'm withdrawing essentially all of my data out of the service, leaving only a ghost ("Ogirehp Wehttam") behind, which people can use to contact me should they not know another way to do so.

And that's why I'm leaving Facebook.

--Matt

Quick note guys,

@im_dario has finished the Catalan translation of Why You Should Be Scared of Facebook. You can read it here.

You can find the story of how all this came about here.

--Matt ^_^

I really can't thank @im_dario enough.

Just a few days after I wrote my essay on Facebook, I sent a tweet to Steve Gibson, (@SGgrc) a famed security researcher (as in, he wrote the first spyware utility... heck, he coined the term "spyware"!). He had recently joined Twitter, and I figured I would send him a quick message saying he was doing a great job, keep it up, etc.. He responded quickly, and we had a nice, brief conversation.

The next time I turned on my iPod Touch, I had 25+ Twitter notifications. Turns out, he had taken a look at my Twitter stream and had retweeted this tweet. Now, the thing about that is Steve Gibson has 7 thousand followers.

So from that single retweet:

It was retweeted 80+ times.

I got 8 new followers.

And I got one very, very cool email.

A guy from Spain named Dario had seen that tweet via Steve Gibson, and had decided to check my stream out. He had read my essay, and had liked it so much he decided he wanted to translate it to Spanish and Catalan. I made a couple changes to the essay (including licensing it under a CC BY-NC-SA license, and gave him the green light.

A little while ago I got his reply tweet, saying that that his Spanish translation was all ready. And I have to say, this guy worked hard. He even put in annotations to explain America-specific things (like the FTC) to those in Spain. And we still have the Catalan translation coming to us!

You can read it here.

This is fantastic news. Hopefully this will allow this essay to reach more and more normal people, and help them understand the ramifications of using Facebook.

So thank you so much, Dario. And, in a funny, accidental sort of way, I have to thank Steve Gibson (and not just for Security Now!).

I <3 the internet

Matt

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Update: May 20th: The Catalan translation has been finished. You can read it here.