A Flower for My Friend
With bright purple flowers,
Knows not of this thing,
We tend to call hours.
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Tobias Tenney: Eclectic media producer
Words thrown at any topic that gets my fancy.
A Flower for My Friend
With bright purple flowers,
Knows not of this thing,
We tend to call hours.
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J.D., well known for his fight against spam & friends to many, left us recently. (MAAWG has through memorial page for him here. Friends and family have a dedicated page as well.)
At his memorial this past Saturday I took a moment to voice my thoughts. Here is what I had to say:
I wish…
I wish I had known JD better; we were always just acquaintances. I wish I had known he was sick; I would have done anything to help in anyway I could. I wish I could have experienced more of his glowing smiles that emanated from the depths within him and emanated throughout his entire self. I wish…
But alas, wishes are the seeds I throw into the soil with intense dreams of trees growing fruit, but I know full well that they are only dreams painted by a wistful mind. Instead, I think it is important to focus on the seeds that did grow trees & bore fruit.
My sporadic interactions with JD were always wonderfully sweet fruit of experiences plucked and enjoyed from his tree of Life. When I would sit down idly to perhaps say hello or catch up, we would pluck that fruit, I would peel back the skin, split it in half to share, and look at it in amazement; The fruit of experience with JD were always glowing. It radiated the light of happiness from the center all the way to the skin.
I will always remember those fruit from JD’s tree of life in celebration. We may not be able to hold any in our hands, feel it, or see that light with our eyes any longer, but the sweetness shall forever live on in our memories.
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I rarely publish the lyrics to songs I write, but have decided to start looking back at a few. In this post I am going to let you in on the song “Lilacs” which I wrote for “Electric Ballroom“, the Specimen album released in 2007.
Get the song or the entire album on iTunes or…
Original Demo & Full Song Download After the Break.
Before you read the lyrics, make sure you have heard the song first. I vehemently insist that the words used behind a voice on a song is dependent on the combination of words and music. Sometimes the way a word, or set of words, lay upon the notes is poetry itself – regardless of what that word is. It can be the way lips and tongue lick your ears that can make the lyrics profound rather than their literal (or metaphorical, of course) meaning.
I used to pride myself in never writing the emotionally promiscuous and easily tapped Break Up Song™. As it happened, I went through a rather rough break-up just as I was beginning the process of writing songs for the album. There was almost no way of avoiding the topic that was consuming my brain at the time, so I gave in. “Lilacs” is completely, from head to toe, a Break Up Song™ and I am proud of it.
Continue on to the song download and lyrics…
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Today The New York Times published an interview with Jim Sanborn revealing a hint to help unlock the fourth and only onsolved portion of Kryptos on the 20th anniversary of the instalation.
Kryptos, for those not in The Know, is a wonderful art piece commitioned for the CIA headquarters. Jim is an artist, not a crytpographer, so he was advised on how codes are made. Even the person who mentored his cryptography has been unable to decode the full piece.
Although Jim is best known for this piece, his work spans an amazing gaumet. His current project, which my dear friends Jon Singer and Doug Humphrey of Joss, Inc. helped with, is a remake of the first man made nuclear reaction:
“His next exhibit Terrestrial Physics, is scheduled to be displayed in June 2010 as part of Denver, Colorado‘s Biennial of the Americas. It will include a sculpture that is able to generate a 1 million volt potential difference. Utilizing a recreated Van de Graaff generator, Sanborn will have created a fully functional particle accelerator capable of creating nuclear fission.” – Wikipedia
Aside from being a great artist, he is also a great guy with a loving wife of amazing talent. Jae Ko holds her own rite as an amazing paper artist. You can see some pictures of her amazing artwork on the Walker Contemporary website.
I will have my ear on the ground as this pans out. Sadly, this event has meant that I am not hanging out and gutting fish on their little island…
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Subject: “iLok is a Detriment to Your Business”
Dear AudioEase,
I am in the process of re-installing Speakerphone after receiving an email from one of your support staff. I am writing this email as a separate aside about your copy protection method. I am a devout user of Speakerphone and intend to be a faithful customer.
That being said, I absolutely feel that your copy protection system, especially your reliance on iLok, is detrimental to your business.
I make software. My father has been making software since the 60s. Most of my friends obtain their livelihoods from selling software. I consider the ownership of software to be integral to the economy of software companies and all those involved in the market. Just as musicians must retain the copyright to their music, software producers must retain their ownership and ability to make money from their hard work.
We all know that pirates threaten all software developers. This is an issue that haunts all developers at every level. As a software development company, you are required to take the measures necessary to make sure that users purchase your product instead of stealing it. This is not only understandable, but a requirement of your business model.
That being said, I am a paying customer. As a customer, I provide you with money in exchange for your product. I happen to own a laptop and a desktop. I feel I should be able to run your software on either machine (one could argue about needing another license to do this, but it is my belief that I am a single user and won’t be stealing from you in order to run your software on both machines). On top of this, I feel that upgrading my machine, for example, should not require me to jump through flaming hoops to retain your copy protection.
You implemented a “call & response” mechanism to allow me to authorize Speakerphone on my computer. Fair enough. What I don’t find to be fair, on the other hand, is that I can’t install it on any other machines. I feel it would be reasonable to allow each user to install a minimum of two machines, if not 3-5. This seems fair to me, as an end user. I make a point to send you my hard earned money to support the development of your ground breaking and essential plugins. I fully support your development and hard work.
Last time I recovered from a hard drive failure, my authorization did not transfer. Of course, I only found this out when I was in the middle of a late night session – the worst time possible to have a failure, let alone a failure that should never have happened. Since I had recovered from a dead hard drive, I had no copy of Speakerphone to “de-authorize”.
I have now run into at very least three separate and, in my opinion, completely avoidable cases like this. Each time it eats away at my customer loyalty.
In addition, each time the response has always been the same refrain: Get an iLok.
I find this approach to be borderline offensive. I am your customer. I have paid you money for a product, but now you are telling me that I must jump through yet another flaming hoop? To make matters worse, iLok is, essentially, a USB dongle which are inexpensive to produce these days with GIGS of storage, but is somehow limited to 100 licenses. On top of that, empty USB slots on any of my machines are more than spoken for. I have real peripherals that actually need to communicate over the USB bus. The iLok, on the other hand, feels like an unnecessary velvet rope act that says, “It’s ok, he’s with me.” This feel archaic at best.
It is my firm belief that your business would flurish if you abandoned the iLok system entirely. I would highly recomend that you either issue 2 computers per license, or merely do what all of my other non-audio software does: If you purchase the software, enter a valid serial number, perhaps go online and verify that it isn’t one of the hacked serial numbers, then I can instal it on as many computers as I like.
My day job is as a graphic and user interaction designer. My fully legitimate copy of Adobe’s Master Suite Collection requires no dongle (~$2600 software). Final Cut Pro doesn’t need a dongle. Even Digital Performer, who is ostensibly in the same arena as yourselves, does not require a dongle. I have yet to be in an office setting where a plugin or any software has required a proprietary dongle.
I understand that you must fight the pirates and the “would be customers” who instead steal software such as this, but in your battle you have been shooting down legitimate customers in your crusade.
Yes, the iLok is a bit of a “standard” in the audio world, but that should never be something to hide behind. It might strengthen PACE’s monopoly, but it emphatically does not strengthen your marketing position.
Speakerphone especially will suffer from this. My brother is an editor at PIXAR. The would likely be more than happy to purchase him a copy of Speakerphone for him to quickly simulate environments, but the minute they discover he would require a dongle to run the software on his laptop and his workhorse desktop, they would quickly turn around and dismiss the idea.
It saddens me that one of the few plugins that I absolutely respect, promote, adore and use in nearly all of my recordings uses a copy protection method that has driven me to such distress that I felt I needed to write this email.
I have taken some gilded time away from my project at hand to write this email to your company. I am not attempting to insight or fan any flames; I want AudioEase to produce the best software that I feel is worth every penny. Sadly, I feel that your copy protection greatly diminishes the overall experience and usefulness of your hard work.
I implore you to reconsider your copy protection management for the sake of customer satisfaction.
From a loyal, but disheartened customer,
Tobias
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I recently called 911 on my iPhone 3GS and was greeted with multiple busy signals. In the back of my mind I quietly rely on the knowledge that three little numbers can get me help in an emergency. I have sadly had to do this a few times; a busy signal is absolutely unacceptable.
I was driving South on 280 in San Francisco about to merge onto 101. I could see the blinking lights of a car pulled off to the small shoulder on the right. Traffic was moving at least at 50MPH getting ready to merge into a single lane going onto 101. Once I came upon the car, I realized they were dead center in the lane. I only had a moment to act and veered into my right hand lane nearly getting into an accident.
Thankfully, no one that I’m aware of was injured.
I knew right away that I had to report the car stalled in the middle of the lane. It was situated in a very precarious spot right at 2AM on a Friday night. The car was sitting there just waiting to cause an accident.
I got my hands free for my phone on, called 911 and looked for the nearest exit to pull off the road. I couldn’t believe what I heard in my ear:
A busy signal.
I tried again. Busy.
And again. Busy.
Must be a mistake. I tried again. Busy.
An old, but sadly undated, report by KRON Channel 4 about 911 issues.
I have heard of cell phone routing issues with 911 before, but that had been years ago. I had only assumed that this had magically been fixed since last time I had looked into it. Sadly that is not the case. Not only are the systems over run and the routing is out of date, there is no good front end solution to patch the problem for the user other than calling a different number (e.g., local police).
AT&T After Hours Customer Service Number: 1-866-801-3600
I finally got through on my fifth try.
Keep reading for more problems and some potential solutions…
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Above is a ~20 minute (absolutely worth every minute) interview with the leading researcher, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, in the study of Toxoplasma & its effects on humans. This is a must see. [click here to read the full text of the interview]
“…this is a protozoan parasite that knows more about the neurobiology of anxiety and fear than 25,000 neuroscientists standing on each other’s shoulders…” – Dr. Robert Sapolsky
Toxoplasma (Toxoplasma gondii) [Toxo] was first observed in 1908. You may have heard of it as the crazy parasite that makes rats attracted to cats. This, in its own right, is astonishing, interesting, & bizarre. It has also been widely known that pregnant women should stay clear of cat scat & other sources for Toxo as it can adversely affect the development of the fetus.
Dr. Robert Sopalsky at Stanford has taken this link to humans further & has been studying, in detail, how it is affecting humans with some startling observations, but we’ll get to that later.
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Last night I took a trip down to Montara beach which is just off Highway 1 (CA). I drove West on 92, hit 1 and took a right. It was the middle of the night.
Just before I had to break for a stop light, I saw a bird of prey with an immense wing span dodge my car by flying right in front and then off to the right. I did my best to make sure I didn’t hit such a beautiful bird, but I had a question:
What in the world was a bird of prey, like a hawk, doing flying around in the middle of night?
The question itself was the answer. It, upon review of my memory, was actually a tall and wondrous owl out at night.
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I spent my evening taking night time photos. Starting off in Montara and ended up in the park I grew up in taking pictures late at night, like the picture below of the rose.
When I got to Beresford Park, I could hear all the way accross the park the rat ti tat tat of teens in the muck of something they probably shouldn’t be doing once the park was closed, let alone if the park were opened.
It was 1AM and I was curious, so I wandered over, while keeping my distance to see if they were doing anything interesting. Perhaps I would say hi.
It was two guys and two girls clearly with beer in their hands and beer in their stomachs. As I walked near by, then walked away down another path, I could hear something akin to, “I’m not sure…it seems a bit sketch…”
I wandered over next to the community garden and took a few snap shots. I was on the park premessis, but only for a short period of time. I could hear the loud kids head from the shelter down to the swing set. Once they got to the swing set I could hear the girls yelping in what I hope was excitement and the creaking of the swings. I ended up walking down the sidewalk next to the park and wandered in 20 feet because I saw a rose bush I wanted to photograph. In the distance I could hear the kids reveling in their midnight excursion.
I noticed a car coming by slowly behind me just as I heard the kids, who were clearly not trying to be subvert in any manner, say “Yeah, that’s a cop!”.
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One year ago today my little brother, Micah Ethan Tenney, passed away.
This date is one I will never forget, but never want to remember. I miss my little brother.
I intend to celebrate his life on his birthday, not this horrible day.
Instead, here are some resources for those in need. Suicide is something that can be prevented. I can’t go back in time to save my brother, but you can be proactive and save lives merely by being aware.
If you or someone you know is in suicidal crisis, here is a phone number you can call. Don’t be afraid to call or worry about consequences of calling. Anything is better than the alternative.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline
1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Here are some online resources:
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP)
Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE)
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Suicide Prevention Resource Center
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