Global Noise Offline

I know the frequency of my going off topic is a little bit too high lately, but man, it’s the eve before Macworld Expo 2006, let’s stay away from the boring artsy stuff and dive into geek’s world for a moment. ^_^

What I’d like to share with you is this article on MacSlash, titled “A Linux Geek Gets His First Taste of RDF” (I have no idea about what RDF is, but according to the article, it’s “Reality Distortion Field emanating from Steve Jobs”.), in which the author has some interesting observation on the difference between Unix/Windows/OS X users. Here’s a line from him:

These (OS X people) were people who cared about understanding how this stuff works, but not so much that they would let it interfere with them from getting their first kiss before they graduated from High School.

If you need something to justify the fact that most of the so-called “creative type” of person are using Mac, here is it for you.

UPDATE (1:10 am, Jan. 11, Beijing time): MacRumors and Engadget are doing on-spot live update of the Expo:

MacRumors (don’t need to refresh manually, but text only)
Engadget (text and pics, need to hit command/ctrl + R yourself, they’ve just live reported CES 2006, so probably more experienced.)

With or without the Michael Anti case, you should avoid MSN Spaces.

If you have no idea what “Michael Anti case” is, check out ESWN, RConversation and this NY Times article.

Anti’s blog can still be viewed at anti.blog-city.com if you’re out of the Great FireWall, those who are being “walled” can use this RSS feed or send email to him (antisblog at gmail.com) to subscribe.

From Scobleizer (a Microsoft employee blogger):

Robert Fripp, famous guitarist, was on Microsoft’s campus a few weeks ago recording the sounds for Windows Vista.

Go here to see a video of the recording session.

Some interesting comments:

I think it was Steve Ball’s idea. He is the guy working on the Audio Stack of Vista with Larry Osterman. He also very strong relation to Mr. Fripp:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Niners/SteveBall

— on, on Scobleizer

“I think Brian Eno wrote that wee jingle that plays every time you start windows�

He did indeed record the start-up sound. Ironically enough, Eno is also a lifetime Mac user.

—Tetra, on Scobleizer

Reminds me of some stuff Robert was doing MANY years ago (late 70’s early 80’s) when I was doing radio at WAIF. He did a short tour of record stores, just him and two tape recorders. He threaded a reel from one machine across it’s heads onto the SECOND machine, across its heads and then on its take up reel. The first machine was in record mode and the second in playback. The distance between the machines controlled the delay time. He played while a full reel of tape was recorded on one channel. He then rewound the reel, and played back the recorded track while recording on the second channel (both on machine one) and the second machine was in playback mode as well still providing a delayed output, this time of BOTH tracks. The effect was mesmerizing to say the least. If I remember correctly, as a third pass instead of rewinding the tape, he took the reel off machine two and flipped it over and put it on machine one and repeated the process.

—Gary Shell, on Channel 9 forum