How Does It Know?

Tonight it is incredibly snowy and stuff, so I spent a couple hours upgrading Wordpress, due to the security concern raised in my last post. I was .3 versions behind, and the previous commenter reminded me of it.

I figured it’d be easier than it really was. Turned out my old theme really hosed things up badly after I did the installation. I couldn’t access the dashboard, couldn’t log in at all, and the blog was all text. So I deleted everything (except the database) and did the one-click install my host provides. Clean slate. Good deal. Change the config to use the old tables instead of the new ones (this is kinda clever, I thought, it lets you specify a prefix for the tables to use… my original ones were “wp_”, and the new tables it made were some random string “wp_asdfa_”… this is so you can have more than one blog in the same DB… me, I never did that, and I’m kinda glad. It seems like I’d get them mixed up a lot).

ANYWAY, so the blog isn’t looking quite the way it used to… it’s using the upgraded version of the same theme I WAS using, but this is its original state, before the modifications I made. I tried just using the old theme after the successful reinstallation, and it screwed things up again. So, this is the theme for now, until I can make some time to do my customizations. I need to compare the stylesheets and see if I can use any of it.

Maybe the blog gods are just trying to tell me it’s time for a facelift on the site.

Good night!

Well, my first post about the Wordpress migration got deleted, because I hadn’t changed a MySQL server name in a config file. I backed up the old database, and restored it to the new database server. Then I made the post about the migration and then I deleted the old database. Turns out the posts were still saving to the old database, and I only realized that after deleting the old database (because of the “Um, there’s no database called that” error I got). Anyway, whatever. I think it’s all set up correctly now.

Another weird thing is that my blog at thelowhello.com got haxxor’d (or however the haxxors would spell it. Any haxxors out there?)… I got an email from Google saying that my site might be harmful to people’s computers. I did a Google search, and here’s what I saw:

So, yeah, stuff in German and French about a Caribbean online casino! Great! I opened up the last post I had made in that blog, sometime last summer, and saw that yup, there was that text and some other Javascript in there. Great again! So Wordpress somehow allowed a SQL injection somewhere… I deleted the offending text and saved the entry, but this actually came at an all right time, because I had been planning to stop hosting that blog anymore and letting the URL lapse. Because we don’t need it anymore and I don’t plan to use it (or that URL) at all.

Anyway, I guess I have some reading to do about Wordpress vulnerabilities. Should be an interesting project. Probably should check plug-ins, too. I haven’t written any myself, so at least I know it’s not *my* code.

So I have this now:
Part Time Songs

Visit for the full post, but basically it’s a way to release music all in one place, without regard for band names or proper projects. Basically a nice sense of freedom to do whatever I want.

In a similar vein, I will probably be migrating this site over to howdoesitknow.com, since that is now the title of the blog, and I’ve always felt just a SLIGHT bit silly having a blog whose URL was my full name. So we’ll see when I get that done. I need to back everything Wordpress related up (including the mySQL DB) before I do anything, I suppose.

So I mentioned previously that I’m obsessed with Scrabulous on Facebook. Here are a few more things I am liking right now.

1. Flight of the Conchords - This is probably totally old news to most of you, since the first season has been on DVD for a while already, but this show follows a couple of New Zealand musicians and their novelty band as they try to make in the NYC. This is perhaps the funniest series I have seen in a long time. I am obsessed with it in a way that I haven’t been obsessed with other things since, like, high school. I am even into the silly parody music (which I am generally not a fan of), because they do such a good job of it and the lyrics are excellent.*

2. I got a Blackberry Pearl 8130 recently, and I am really enjoying it. At first I thought maybe I had made a horrible mistake and that I would never need or use any of the fancy features I was paying for. But after a week, I’m enjoying receiving email on it while away from the computer, reading my Google Reader RSS feeds while, let’s say, on the toilet, and syncing up my task list and notes (which can be exported to various organizer programs, but I am just using Comma-Separated Value files) with my laptop. I also am going to get a microSD card for it, which will turn it into a limited-space MP3 player and photo/video storage. You can also just dump text files, etc onto it for viewing. Very versatile. And I got a $50 rebate on it.

3. Phosphorescent - I know nothing much about this guy, but this track (by way, again, of You Ain’t No Picasso) has been bouncing through my head on and off since I downloaded it last month… It’s such a simple song… The bridge-y/breakdown/slowdown portions with horns remind me a bit of Neutral Milk Hotel, and the actual meat of the song is a simple repetitive (what is that little instrument in there that’s playing the constant subtle high notes in there? Is that just a guitar?) structure with few lyrics. But dammit if I don’t love it. I should check some more of his stuff out.

* One that comes to mind is a song that starts off about all the evil and bad things in the world, but includes this gem:
They’re turning kids into slaves
just to make cheaper sneakers.
But what’s the real cost,
cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper.
Why are we still paying so much for sneakers
when you’ve got little kid slaves making them?
What are your overheads?

It sounds, and is comedically, a lot better when it sounds like anything (and you’re not reading it), and with Jemaine’s emotive soul-style singing.

Sorry dudes and non-dudes… I haven’t been blogging much because I’ve become addicted to Scrabulous on Facebook… Which makes sense, as that was the primary reason I joined Facebook in the first place and I love Scrabble.

Apparently Bill Gates is deleting his Facebook account for partly the same Scrabulous-related reasons.

(link by way of Angela at Unabridged

Good stuff happening on the musical front, folks. I’ve already mentioned that Dan and I and Ian recorded some demos up in Lansing at the end of December. Well, I’ve taken those demos, and layered on some more parts, and chopped up and restructured a couple of the songs to make them more song-like, and added some awesome new guitar lines and bridges and solos and such. It’s all sounding great and I’m still totally excited about the project. After a couple more practices, and maybe some drum practice recording/arrangement in Dan’s basement (I recently purchased a souped-up new laptop for portable music recording, along with a new USB 2.0 audio interface* that is sounding AWESOME so far; I love that my entire recording setup is portable, and doesn’t even require a power outlet if my laptop battery is charged up), we might be ready to head back up to Lansing for round 2 of the actual recording process.

I keep meaning to write an entry about the way I came about the final structures for the 2 songs I felt were too long or repetitive (basically, I had three good parts for each of them, and just strung them together in sequence; doesn’t make for such a great song that way), and I will do so soon. Basically I made myself some nice visual aids that really helped.

Anyway, that’s about it. I’m glad it’s Friday. Another hour of work and then relaxation. And probably some more music fun in the basement studio this weekend.

* People have said I should’ve gone for a FireWire audio interface due to its faster speeds, etc… BUT! If you’re a PC laptop user, you’re stuck with a 4-pin FireWire port (which doesn’t provide power), as opposed to a 6-pin FireWire (which DOES provide power), which means you’re always going to need an available electrical outlet. Mac users win on this one, since Apple’s laptops provide 6-pin connections. Therefore, it’s USB 2.0 for me.

I haven’t been writing much lately, partly due to not having a lot to say, and partly due to not having internet access at home. Comcast high-speed internet for us has been down since last Thursday. So this is day 7. I called them up on Friday. After an hour on hold and a service rep who suggested I change my Internet Explorer settings (I don’t even surf at home with Internet Explorer) to see if that would do anything, I had to settle for a technician coming out to our house.

The earliest they could schedule someone to come out was on Monday, so I asked my boss if I could go home for the second half of the day to wait for that. So I did that, and as soon as the guy came inside, he was getting off the cell phone with someone at the main office (or where ever it was), and announced smilingly, “It’s a Stage 2 Outage! I can’t do anything for you.” When I asked what a “stage 2 outage” was, he said he didn’t know, but “that’s just how they do!”. Ok. Fine. So, I eagerly await them repairing this outage. I chat with Comcast reps online from work daily, just to let them know things aren’t fixed and that I am expecting a good solution. Today, I am told that the Stage 2 Outage has been resolved and that everything should work now.

Too bad that it DOESN’T. So now, since we’re somehow not impacted by this miraculous resolution of the Stage 2 Outage, I have to schedule another technician to come out and look at things. Hopefully things will go better this time? I have no idea. It’s definitely frustrating and I feel very powerless in the situation. I am thinking about switching to WOW, but I’m not sure if they’re able to install in our condo complex. I filled out a form on their site and they’re going to get back to me on it.

Anyway… That’s the story. Wish me luck.

Regardless of whether or not this happened (and it is often questionable), I found this story at Worse Than Failure kinda funny.

It’s a Different Set of Rules

On our way to and from the wedding we attended last weekend, my wife and I made the time pass by listening to episodes of Radio Lab she had burned to CD.

In particular, an episode from Season 2 entitled Musical Language struck my interest. In its three parts they speak about how a repeated speech loop, when repeated enough, will end up sounding somewhat musical, with the various changes in intonation used in the phrase; how language and music are interrelated, and how speakers of tonal languages (such as Mandarin) have a significantly higher rate of perfect pitch than speakers of non-tonal languages (such as English); and how composer David Cope, while going through a creativity dry spell, created a computer program called EMI to help him through it.

From the Radio Lab site:

His program, named EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence), deconstructs the works of great composers, finding patterns within the voice leading of their compositions, and then creates brand new compositions based on the patterns she finds. But it’s not just copy and paste. She brings something new to the pieces. Drift along to the eerily enchanting music of EMI Mahler and ask yourself this: What would Mahler think of an EMI Mahler score? Brillant music? A forgery?

Anyway, it was a fascinating episode, and I started wondering what EMI would come up with if I were to feed it scores of music (if in fact I *had* my music written up on scores, which I do not. It is all mainly scribbled into various notebooks).

A funny little video mockumentary type of thing about the “design team” that made MS Paint. Enjoy! And have a good long weekend (if you’re not working, that is).

MS Paint video

(link found on the Good Experience blog I read sometimes)

P.S. I actually do really like MS Paint. Most of the computer drawn flyers for my old band were made with a combination of Paint and taking screenshots (and then cropping those screen shots and combining with other elements made in Paint, etc… Real janky.)