Hide The Decline

Hide The Decline

Definitions:

1. Your model of gauging temperature by tree growth is wrong and you correct it. You are then chastised for doing so by simpletons.

2. A poorly worded email phrase not meant to be publicized.

3. A meme propagated by idiots in an effort discredit those who would warn them about destructive behaviour.

4. A simple straw man argument.

5. Mass hysteria induced after finding a faux silver bullet supporting a view that doesn’t have much propping it up.

6. A false interpretation made after an illegal data breach from an email system.

Showdown: “Local” TV vs Canadian Cable Companies

The local Canadian TV stations started off broadcasting over the air and made money via advertisements. When the Cable Companies started out, they re-broadcast the local channels on cable for convenience. Everyone was happy until advertising revenue started to fall because of competition with other entertainment sources available (ex. Internet, personal devices, video game consoles).

The “local” stations have had it pretty good up until now: all they had to do was re-broadcast shows already available on the American channels while throwing in local news and the occasional slot for shows like Kinsmen Jackpot Bingo (here in Manitoba). Kinsmen Jackpot Bingo has its roots from a pre-Internet time. There’s no reason it couldn’t be done online, other than the fact that older people may not be Internet savvy, a problem that could be solved with the local cable access channel.

As I see it, there are three ways to solve this problem:

1. Make Local TV a Package, Not Part of Basic Cable.

Take CTV, Global and CITY (I’m basing the channels on Winnipeg, add others for other cities) out of the basic package and put them in a local package. Viewers can pay extra for the package and then the networks can be paid fees based on the subscriptions.

Even better, give networks the option of being in basic without fees, or in the local package with fees.

2. Ditch The “Local” Channels.

Get rid of the local channels. The cable company could then contract out for local news and broadcast it “over-top” when the American channels have their local news. They could contract out to several companies and use a different one on each different American channel. We would end up with basically the same thing we have now, without the “local” channels.

3. The “Local” Channels Could Produce Local and Canadian Content

Here’s an ingenious idea: HOW ABOUT BROADCASTING SOME ORIGINAL CONTENT! (sorry about the caps).

Why can’t we produce some interesting content? We have the technology. It’s not as expensive as it used to be. Even the average Joe can produce something more interesting than what the “local” stations pass for Canadian content. Our current situation is an embarrassment.

Why do Canadians always make themselves second class citizens when it come to Entertainment and the Arts? We have some brilliant Canadian minds here. Let’s start investing in them. Canadians need to be proud: We’re not so prudish and not so middle of the road like our American counter parts.  Yet we suffer from low self-esteem and let jock man keep talking when we have something interesting to say.

What’s Still Good

In spite of some of my negativity towards the networks, I must applaud the following:

- some of the national networks like Discovery and Show Case for good Canadian Content

- the Cable Companies and the CBC for CPAC

- the Cable Companies for public access television

- the CBC for interesting talk radio that is not laced with right-wing rhetoric

That’s my opinion, for what it’s worth. Give me a penny.

Couldn’t help myself

Wouldn’t it be great if the majority of mankind had a similar attitude:

Real Data Counts, Opinion Distorts

Despite an increase in article levels in the last two years over 2007, this video shows that the trend is clearly still downward:

DIY Signal (Audio) Processing – Part 2 (Actually playing guitar).

I decided to have some fun in my next video. Rather than get too much into the details of programming your own effects, I though it might be more interesting to show what you can do with them.

YouTube Doesn’t Like My Sound.

Update: It turns out that some codecs and containers are more reliable than others.  If you want to be sure your video will work, follow their recommendations.

I apparently sound so bad, even a computer rejected it.

I had hoped to post more video this weekend on YouTube, but once posted there was no sound. Oddly, the video/audio encodings where the same as previous videos which worked.

I’ve asked some questions on some forms. Hopefully I will get a useful answer soon.

DIY Signal (Audio) Processing – Part 1.

Technology has progressed so far and is readily available to the average person via consumer goods and the Internet that any musician can experiment with limitless possibilies. It’s a bonus if you can program a computer because signal processing is so easy with JACK audio server. JACK is a low latencey audio server that runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It’s free and it’s open source. JACK allows you to interconnect devices and applications (even your own computer programs).

Since fall is here and winters on it’s way, I’ll need something to do while hunkered down inside. So I’m going to make some videos about it.  Even if you can’t program a computer, the videos will contain useful information about mixed, recording and applying effects (signal processing).

I find it neat that I can play my guitar through processors that I’ve created. I’ll get into that in later videos.

Social Networking Update.

I managed to get my Facebook profile embedded in the sidebar. I replaced my avatar with it. It was a simple as adding a generic text widget and copying in the code for a custom badge from Facebook (I edited it a bit to get rid of the “Create your own badge”  link).  Pushing to Twitter is built in, it just needs to be turned on and configured.

I’ve got Facebook and twitter referencing my blog and my blog including panels for Facebook and Twitter. I can send text messages to update Twitter which updates both Facebook accounts and my blog. The integration between different technologies is amazing, as well as the level of indirection.

Experimenting With Free Online Services.

I had one of those evenings yesterday where one thing leads to another, and you end up doing much more than you intended. It just kind of snowballs on you. I had just activated my Shaw email address. I’ve been on Shaw for years, but never activated it because I was content with my Gmail address (still am). Of course I’m thinking, what can I do with this?

Well, I decided to create a another Facebook account (I know your probably not suppose to have two. There’s probably something in their service agreement about that). I decided it would be nice to create a public profile. A profile for people I don’t know or don’t know very well. It would be wide opened, with most permissions set as accessible to everyone. Anyone with a Facebook account could view my profile which has been specifically crafted for public viewing (It wouldn’t contain a picture of me passed out in the trees at Folk Fest - that never happened).

The original Facebook account would continue functioning as it always has. It’s locked down to the outside world. My family and friends can contact me, invite me to events and see what I’m up to.  If someone happens to tag me in an unflattering picture, it won’t be available on my public profile (before I untag it). No friends are associated with the public profile.

Another benefit is the ability to compartmentalize. There may be things to share publicly that your friends don’t care about. That stuff could go on your public profile. They could always view your public profile whenever they want, anyways. I can associate the public profile with my blog, YouTube or any Open Source project I participate in in the future.

Now the actual experimenting with technologies part.

There are some bits of information I would like to share on both profiles. Twitter was the obvious answer in my head, however, I hit a stumbling block. When I added the twitter application to my private profile after already adding it to my public profile, the public profile stopped getting updates. I reconfigured both of them a couple of times to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake. It was clear the application wasn’t made to work with two profiles. The solution I came up with was to use the twitter application on my public profile and install an RSS feed from my twitter account to the wall on my private Facebook account.

Now I’m looking into blogging. In fact I’m writing a test blog to try out WordPress right now. There’s one thing I don’t like already (about the hosting not the software): You can change the CSS for your blog, but you have to pay in order to actually apply and save those changes. Granted I could install WordPress on my own PC (It’s GPL). I’ve had my own domain name in the past, used zoneedit to keep IP Address up to date for DNS and run Apache locally. Unless you’re looking to learn how to do it, for personal stuff, I find it’s simpler to use hosting. There’s no end to free services that are available. Heck, I’d even pay a small fee for it.

I’ve barely started playing with this blog, but WordPress looks interesting. I can choose from different themes and customize my sidebar. And it’s free. There are two things I’m going to try to figure out tonight (I haven’t even attempted yet):

1. get this blog to update Twitter.
2. see if I can get my public Facebook profile embedded in the sidebar

I’ll post again when I figure those out. If this works out, I have an outlet for my verbal diarrhea that doesn’t involve spamming my Facebook profile.