Tag Archives: iPhone

Facing the 2012 RPM Challenge

February is just a couple of weeks away, and as I have every year since 2008, I’ll be participating in the RPM Challenge.

What’s that? It’s simple: produce an entire album (10+ songs or 35+ minutes) entirely during the month of February.

My concept this year is a bit different than in the past. This time around, I will not be using any instruments… just my iPhone. I’ve assembled an interesting collection of music creation apps (which I will detail in a future post, but for now will represent with a pair of screenshots, below), and these will be the only tools I will use to generate sounds. I may sample my voice, found sounds and instruments using my iPhone’s microphone, and I’ll do final mixing and post-production on my MacBook Air, but as much as possible this will be an album produced on the iPhone. Given the nature of some of the apps I’ll be using, I also expect this album to be a lot more experimental/avant garde in style than most of my recent solo work.

I am tentatively calling the album i. And I am also considering producing a companion album, called The Way Out Takes, that will consist of unedited versions of the more experimental tracks that end up on i.

Stay tuned for more details as I think them up.

Reflections on (my own) uninformed speculation as pertains to a possible “iTV” from Apple

I don’t have any inside sources of information on the inner workings at Apple. I get most of my information from a handful of well-regarded tech blogs. (See the link list at the bottom of this post.) In fact, I would probably be doing the world a service by deleting my blog entirely and setting up my URL as a redirect to daringfireball.net.

But my lack of well-sourced information doesn’t preclude the formation of opinions, based on what I’ve heard. On rare occasions, those opinions might even merit sharing with others, and today I think may be one of those times.

The topic is an Apple-branded television, and whether or not such is coming in 2012, or ever. I was inspired to reflect on this after today’s post on the topic on Revert to Saved.

Past performance as an indicator of… something

I have a poor record regarding Apple rumors. I insisted in early 2007 that Apple couldn’t possibly be developing a smartphone. (You won’t find any traces of that insistence here, however, as I did have the good sense not to publish anything about it.)

Most smartphones then on the market sucked. I couldn’t envision what an Apple phone might look like, especially one with a touch screen and only one button. Much like The Homer, my mental abomination would likely resemble a cross between a Nintendo DS and the Cinco-Fone. Besides, it would have to be called the iPhone, and Cisco already owned that name. We know how that turned out.

In late 2009 and early 2010, I couldn’t imagine Apple releasing a tablet. (And that time around I had plenty of stupid stuff to say on the matter.) Every tablet I’d seen before that sucked, and I was certain there would be issues with screen resolution.

We know how that turned out.

Now, an Apple-branded TV, or, as the rumors would have it, iTV. Most TVs today suck, and there are few pieces of technology known to humanity more craptastic than a cable TV set-top box. There are open questions pertaining to the potential device’s screen dimensions. (Today’s flood of rumors says they’ll come in three sizes.) And, of course, ITV is already the name of a British network.

Given the eerie similarity of this scenario to the seemingly insurmountable challenges Apple previously faced with the iPhone and iPad, therefore, I am forced to deduce that Apple must have a TV in development, and… we know what it will be called.

Don’t listen to me

Where Apple excels is not in creating whole new technologies, but rather in combining existing and emerging technologies in novel ways, and optimizing the hell out of their performance. And they integrate their hardware seamlessly with software platforms that deliver content and experiences to create a cohesive and engaging ecosystem that no one else can match.

So, my inability to predict or even imagine what Apple has in the pipeline is partly a failure of imagination, and partly a lack of knowledge of the kinds of hardware and software engineering that Apple is keeping under wraps, guarded with jealous secrecy unmatched by any business or government agency on Earth.

So what?

So what, indeed? What is Apple doing, and more importantly, will it be awesome? Scratch that: How awesome will it be?

But the biggest question I actually have right now is: How much of this (hypothetical) iTV was invented before Steve Jobs died, and how much of Apple’s mojo did he take with him? In the coming months we should have an answer. This will be Apple’s first major product introduction of the post-Jobs era, and it will tell us how well that obsessive attention to detail has truly been woven into the “Apple DNA.”

Further reading

As promised, here’s a list of some of my favorite tech blogs/podcasts at the moment. I subscribe to their RSS feeds and check them daily.

Post script

I cranked out the bulk of this post in the Notes app on my iPhone while standing in a hallway, waiting for SLP. I had the idea in my head and I wanted to get it written before I lost it. I’m not sure what that really says about anything, but I thought it was worth noting.

The Long Run

As I’ve been posting frequently on Twitter and occasionally here, on June 1 I started running. I’ve never been athletic or even particularly physically active, but at 37 I was beginning to feel the effects of my sedentary lifestyle. Thanks to the Couch-to-5K running plan and the fantastic C25K iPhone app, I’ve been able to finally get off my lazy ass and do something about it.

I had to take a break at one point due to shin problems and I ended up repeating a couple of weeks, but in the end I stuck with it and this week I finally finished the program. I hate to use the tired cliché “If I can do it, anyone can,” but it seems apropos. Couch-to-5K is really amazing, especially when an app makes it so easy to do. Now I’m regularly running 30-plus minutes every other day, and I’m looking forward to participating in my first 5K race next month.

The biggest challenge for me with the running lately has been finding interesting music to listen to while running. Combine that with the “itch” to record some new music, and the answer was obvious: I wanted to record an extended piece of music suitable for listening to while running. Over the past week I’ve worked on it in every spare moment, and now it’s finished. So, here I present “The Long Run,” clocking in at 40:37. Later in the week I’ll be posting it on my music site, both as an uninterrupted track and divided into 11 separate (but “gapless”) tracks. I’ll also be releasing it on CD in the 11-track form. But in the meantime you can hear (and download) it all right now on Alonetone:

alonetone.com/room34/playlists/the-long-run

For most of my longer runs I’ve chosen a route around Lake Nokomis, which I’ve commemorated with the album’s cover art, a collage of photos taken at and around the main beach this afternoon. (Yeah, I work fast with this stuff.)

Update: The album is now posted on my music site as well, and the CD is available for purchase. Full MP3 downloads (including the fabled, long-awaited single-track version) coming soon.

What I did on my summer vacation, 2011 edition

My family and I went on vacation last week. Nothing major… a driving tour of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Duluth, Minnesota. A “greatest hits” tour, if you will. There were some things I’d rather forget (a constantly spreading crack in the windshield from a rock that hit it two hours into the first day of the trip; the daily kid freakout in the hotel because we weren’t at the pool yet; watching lots of Disney Channel), and other things I’ll always remember (jogging along the canal waterfront in Houghton at 6 AM; eating a sandwich of salmon, egg and radish on grilled lefse).

But the most enduring overall memory of the trip will probably be the collection of nearly 150 Instagram photos I took on my iPhone during the course of the trip. Instagram’s images may be low-resolution (612×612 pixels), but the endearing and quaint qualities its filters and effects lend, combined with the modern technologies that underly it (and allow for things like instant worldwide sharing, geolocation, and printing a poster of your photos), make it a transformative tool for turning cell phone photos into meaningful artifacts.

And, with that grandiose setup, here’s a sampling of some of the more interesting photos I took on the trip.

I found what was quite obviously not a naturally-formed rock on the shore, and placed it on top of what was also quite obviously not a natural piece of driftwood.

I doubt Roger Ebert was actually at McLain State Park, north of Hancock, Michigan. But someone by that name apparently was.

Whoever wrote this must have been under the effect if they thought they could fit the entire phrase in that amount of space.

Retaining walls can be ugly. Someone in Houghton did their part to change that.

Rosie throws a rock while Fletcher looks on.

I had some fun experimenting with different arrangements of natural elements, and artificial photographic effects.

I think this was a strawberry, growing wild on a rock near Lake Superior.

A stern warning from the monks of Society of St. John, in front of the Jampot.

This disturbing mural greets the inebriated patrons of the Ambassador Restaurant in Houghton, Michigan.

Rosie found a piece of bark on the beach near the mouth of the Presque Isle River in Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

I’m no botanist, but this is a cool looking flower.

Not “You Are Here.” Just… “You.”

I’ve always found artsy photos of derelict businesses appealing, so I had to try my hand at it.

There’s nothing to see out there, but you can see it up close.

I discovered what appears to be half a bowling ball amidst the rocks on the lakeshore north of downtown Duluth.

Amazingly, in all of the times I’ve visited Duluth in my life, I’ve never approached the lift bridge on foot. So I never saw details like this…

…or this.

I like the composition of this photo, with Fletcher in the foreground symmetrically balanced against the lighthouse in the background.

Toy cars on I-35. OK, they’re not really toy cars, of course, but a clever bit of tilt-shift trickery.

Another thing I’ve somehow managed never to experience before was Canal Park in the fog. Until now.

Before writing this post, I tried to research the history of… this thing… sunken in the waters of the Duluth Lakefront just northwest of the canal. But it appears to have been purged from the city’s history. Kind of like… this.

Update (8/5/2011): A former coworker has identified this as the “Ice House”… it even has a Facebook page. Sadly, I still can’t find any more information about its history. How can there possibly not be any more information about this thing online? Is Duluth really so ashamed of it that all but its teenaged, diving residents deny its existence?

There was a cool exhibit called “Masters of Disguise” at the Great Lakes Aquarium. Chameleons are awesome.

So are mantises that look like twigs.

While eating lunch at Takk for Maten in downtown Duluth, I couldn’t help noticing that this giant onion is totally gonna eat that guy!

Couch to 5K week 4 playlist

If you follow me on Twitter (and if not, well…) you know that for the past few weeks I’ve been trying to conquer decades of sedentary lifestyle by way of the Couch to 5K iPhone app. It’s been working out very well so far!

One thing I have yet to do is consciously plan out a playlist to correspond to the cycles of walking and running that are a key to the Couch to 5K program. Well, on Thursday I will be running the final day of week 4, nearing the halfway point (what??!!) in the program, so it’s time to remedy that situation.

Here then is my Couch to 5K week 4 playlist, for your consideration:

Action Song Artist Time
Warm up One More Robot / Sympathy 3000-21 The Flaming Lips 5:00
Run The Distance Cake 3:01
Walk Little Fishes Brian Eno 1:30
Run Smells Like Teen Spirit Nirvana 5:01
Walk And I Love Her The Beatles
Run Highly Suspicious My Morning Jacket 3:05
Walk Pigs on the Wing (Part One) Pink Floyd 1:25
Run Uprising Muse 5:05
Cool down Computerworld Kraftwerk 5:08

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Clearly I focused primarily on the timing and general mood of the songs when programming this playlist, giving… well… absolutely no consideration whatsoever to the transitions between the songs. But I think it will still be successful. It helps me a lot when running to focus on the music and to think, “OK… I run until the end of this song.”

And yes, when I get to running for the entire time, I will have a song for that. I have 14 songs in the library on my iPhone that are over 20 minutes long.