Squish the Squid with the big list of free and/or open-source audio production tools for the Mac.

And I like the name ‘Squish the Squid Productions.’

I’m linking to this because I’ve been trying to get ardour2 to work on my Intel Mac.

ardour2 requires jackd, which, for me, requires qjackctl. And while I can get jackd 0.101.1 through fink, I can’t get qjackctl to build *outside* of fink. Which means way too much learning curve for jackd, so we go back to JackOSX which is v.0.74, which means I can’t use ardour2, only ardour.

Ultimately, I want to use jamin, and all the fun linux sound toys to play with.

Fooey. If anyone has the answer, please let me know.

Can this have been four years ago?

Here’s a guy growing algae for biofuels. He’s using sea water and exhaust from a power plant. The algae acts as a living filter: 80% of CO2 and 85% of NOX are filtered out. The algae is a much more efficient crop for use as a biofuel than other oil-producing plants.

Take away message: If your industry breathes out CO2 exhaust and you’re not using it to grow more fuel, you’re not making money.

http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/UndertheDome/112906.html:

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

I’ve been basically stuck here in the house, waiting for ice to melt.

I mentioned a few posts ago about Robert Wise, who directed ‘The Andromeda Strain,’ in addition to some other little films you might have heard of. Little nothings like ‘West Side Story,’ ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still,’ and ‘The Sound of Music.’ Just some minor, independent films that no one’s heard of.

Anyway, he also directed ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture,’ which I happen to have on a VHS tape I bought at a thrift store for $1. I got it with ‘Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan’ at the same time, for the same price.

So, being on a Robert Wise kick, last night I watched The Motion Picture, yet again. Yaaaaawn. Not a bad film, but, you know.. We already had ’2001: A Space Odyssey,’ so we don’t need extended psychedelic journeys into space and time. Especially when they end with something hugely undefined happening that seems to satisfy the crew of the Enterprise, but not the audience.

Robert Wise really, really loves his diopters, though. Every third scene is framed such that there’s someone in the near field and someone far away, and they’re both in focus except for a fuzzy line between them somewhere. Aside from that, Wise has no idea what he’s trying to do with The Motion Picture, other than to make some money on a big special-effects extravaganza.

I remember going to see The Motion Picture when it came out. I’m still a bit of a fanboy, but not nearly like I was in 1980. The idea of new Star Trek stuff… I went with some friends to see it on opening day. We all left wondering what it was that we’d just seen.

Tonight, however, I watched ‘Wrath of Khan,’ a tight, fast-paced, well-scripted adventure. People have motivations and do things in this movie. There’s a space battle. Early computer graphics. We like it.

‘Khan’ was the movie that motivated a friend of mine to install blinky lights inside the windshield of his Bronco. He had a little switch that would turn on a sequence of LEDs mounted on the dashboard. They didn’t do anything except look kinda cool, like the viewscreen of the Enterprise bridge. He’d put in a tape of the ‘Khan’ soundtrack (the battle sequence music, of course), and turn on the blinky lights and speed off into the night. It always makes me laugh to think about that. And yes, kiddies, there was a time before car CD players.

If the snow keeps up, I’ll have to get to ‘West Side Story’ and ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still.’

I want to write about the snow, but there’s not much to say. There aren’t any good stories for me to tell. It’s all about as you’d expect for a city that isn’t equipped to cope with such things.

The city’s socked in. I love the change, actually, even if it means hardship. The vibe of the whole city has re-arranged, which is the kind of thing I like to observe. Usually winter only brings surly gray-sky depression. But for the past couple of days there’s been something else here, too. A kind of vague, white, powdery question mark above everybody’s head.

Rented ‘War of the Worlds.’

OK, it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Spielberg is a genius. He can make commercial movies that are astonishing spectacles, while still making a statement about the times, and about the human condition.

The real flaw of this movie is that it stars Tom Cruise. It’s not that he’s bad in it or anything; in fact he’s pretty good. The problem is that when you see the face, it’s the face of Tom Cruise. If it had been anybody else, this picture would gel 100%. But it’s Cruise, which is a constant distraction.

Beyond that, however, everything about this movie is just great. I should have seen it in the theater. It’s a great thrill ride, and very dark and creepy. There are some loopy plot problems, but oh well. We see the aliens shooting people with a heat ray, but then we see that they’re harvesting humans. We hear at the beginning that the aliens have been plotting to take over the earth, presumably from *us,* but then we learn that the aliens planted war machines under our feet tens of thousands of years ago. None of these things really jibe with the other, but the confusion often reflects the varying news we were hearing at the time about, for instance al Qaeda. Plot problems or reflections of the world? Spielberg probably won’t answer.

Note that at the same time I rented this movie, I rented ‘The Andromeda Strain,’ another big-budget (for its time) sci-fi thriller. The commonality of these movies is this: Airborne pathogens. But beyond that, neither movie rewards the efforts of humans: In ‘War of the Worlds,’ the aliens just die because they got sick. They came here ten thousand years ago to plant machines, but they didn’t take their booster shots? Ahem. But in ‘Andromeda Strain,’ the crystalline virus just randomly mutates into a harmless form and is neutralized by seawater. Either movie, the efforts of man (and the efforts of aliens) are basically meaningless in the face of the hardships of the universe.

So, uhm… yay.

And speaking of ‘The Andromeda Strain’… Robert Wise? Who knew? Click through and look at that list of films. It’s pretty freakin’ impressive. Dude edited ‘Citizen Kane.’ He was an assitant sound editor on ‘Of Human Bondage,’ 1934!

It always amazes me how wonderful the world becomes when it first snows.

Here’s a link to the White House page in question.

There’s one good thing about this video: It shows that, as an institution, the Bush White House is collectively capable of something a lot like shame.

Today’s bass line gets back to the basics. Terry Jackson lays down the groove for Thomas Dolby’s ‘Airhead.’ Not a great video. Just listen.