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WAV to JPG to WAV

2007-08-04T17:11:00.000+02:00

Lisp person Lemon Odor, apropos his interesting experiment to see how MP3 compression would affect images, threw the gauntlet: how would JPEG compression affect audio?

The answer is slightly interesting.

Sound was turned into a grayscale image that was 16 pixels tall to minimize discontinuities at the edges. An excerpt from the 19778x16 image:

You can get the resulting audio files here (850 KB). "q99" contains the lowest quality compression, which unsurprisingly is a bunch of noise with the original sound faintly audible. "q01" is the highest possible quality of JPEG compression; interestingly, it comes off as sounding pretty close to the original. The distortion seems to mess slightly with the harmonics, and that's about most of the difference I can make out.

A side-by-side graphic spectrum analysis of the high-quality JPEG and the original source reveals how poor my ears are at detecting background noise:

I know I'm getting a digital camera that can save to raw RGB.

Kampf um Norwegen

2006-09-23T22:58:00.000+02:00

This 1940 German documentary on the invasion of Norway was only recently unearthed in an online auction. Now that it's on official hands, its ownership status could be disputed; a representative of the Norwegian Film Institute hinted that it could be considered a "spoil of war" as it may contain some footage shot by Norwegians in wartime.

First impressions:
The need for invading Norway is established primarily by an "if we don't do it, the British will" argument. The happy ending is the liberation of Norway from the Allied threat. The mismatch between this and the fact that Germans are shown fighting the Norwegian army in animated flowcharts is simply not addressed.

The German Navy is made to look like the underdog by parading the numerical superiority of the British Navy (always "die Englender"). The film quietly elides the relative numbers of submarines and seaplanes.

The Norwegian government and king are not mentioned at all, nor is there a word about Quisling. Presumably this would have been a passable rhetoric for the film's intended audience.

On the first mention of taking British and French land troops prisoner, ominous hints are dropped of captured plans for a British invasion on the 8th of April — the day before the German one. So you see, it was necessary after all. Watch for this tactic in an attack on Iran near you.

The German troops seem ridiculously ill-equipped and untrained for winter conditions. Soldiers can be seen trying to "walk" while wearing skis when they should be gliding instead; snowshoes are few and far between.

Their other big moment are the much-vaunted paratrooper drops; in the scenes pictured, the soldiers have a choice between landing on mountain-goat-leg-breaking rock, deep snow, or in a frozen lake. The voiceover brags about troops jumping with only a few days practice while the footage shows why this is a very bad idea, soldiers dangling precariously from their parachutes.

I didn't know you could actually land a Stuka on a timber runway.

..."Drontheim"? Where the hell did that come from?

This is pretty high budget, and so it ends in raising one of those goddamn flags over Narvik or wherever accompanied by a grand original score. My stomach is still turning.

Three movies in six hours! Mon pouvre brain-meats!

2006-02-11T06:35:00.000+01:00

Capote: Philip Seymour Hoffman in the main role, for once.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really work, despite the fact that he performs a heroic portrayal of an utterly unheoric character. The film showing his own self-obsession actually works against it — in the first couple of reels, there are numerous cuts from Hoffman being in focus to him being in focus again. For the audience to tire of him is perhaps realistic, but it's still tiring.

Also, the film's music appears to infringe on Arvo Pärt territory without paying the attention to detail that's required to pull it off: often, you'll hear three notes that veer close to something good only to be ruined by a sloppily placed fourth one.

The Libertine: Johnny Depp in a wig, fingering ladies while rhyming, drinking and pillaging. The entire film appears to have been shot on high-speed stock in candlelight alone, and that includes exterior scenes.

The most important difference between Depp here and Withnail in Withnail & I is that The Libertine has no I to act as a straight man for the carousing rascal. Also, Depp's character actually has money, some status and luck with zee ladies, which makes him significantly less funny. Midway into the movie, I'm suddenly subjected to a bunch of half-baked morals about Art and Theater and Love and The Sea, strangling any joy I might have left.

(Though, I still have no idea which part was played by John Malkovich. Now that's acting.)

Finally, Transamerica is the endearing story of transsexual Bree, who, one week before her sex change, finds out she has a teenage son being held on bail in New York. She winds up presenting herself as a missionary of a fictional church, and they somehow get tangled into driving together back to LA.

Those are just the first ten minutes of the film. Even watching it so far, you might be forgiven for thinking this was either vacuous and/or carnivalistic à la Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Interestingly, Transamerica escapes the category by growing more corny, not less. The end has to be the most fucked-up thing I've seen that could still qualify as a happy one.

"Click to go to page pages"

2006-02-10T00:23:00.000+01:00

Spotted in this Zelda tribute comic, this amusingly strained overload on the HTML "page" and the comic page.

Death to 1997

2005-12-16T22:00:00.000+01:00

One good thing seems to have come out of all this "blogging" nonsense. Remember how headers used to be half the time in the late nineties, as a rendered graphic in some fancy font?

Apparently the need to churn out text at a daily rate to keep the pundits happy put that to death soon enough, as the newsprint-like lust for breaking thoughts took over for the magazine-like fetishization of "articles." Which at least makes the web less painted into a corner.

Star Wars 3: The Marxist market analysis

2005-11-22T04:24:00.000+01:00

So it's been half a year since I posted this silly little thing to get Star Wars III out of my head. Let's tally up the Google placings for the search strings that've showed up on the logs, in decreasing order so I can pretend anyone cares:

#500-something: Marxist analysis
#40: osb
(Still a ways to go before I've got the Order of St. Benedict beat. RAAR! Smash monks!)

#31: star wars analysis
#20: flaws of capitalism
#6: star wars 3 analysis
#5: marxist film analysis
#4: star wars revenge of the sith marxism
#3: star wars historical analysis / marxist analysis film
#2: Marxist analysis of Star Wars / marxist critique reading of star wars
#1: star wars marxist analysis / star wars 3 (ideological values) / "Marxist dream"

I also rank #30 for "dream analysis", but only when searching exclusively within the UK — otherwise, it falls off the end of Google's thousand-return limit.

In closing, I hope I've demonstrated that the internet is a glorious pile of arse where even some snotty brat like me can outrank serious dialectic-materialistic analysis of pop culture. Thank you and goodnight.

Spotted: flagrant counting of chickens prior to hatching

2005-11-15T17:30:00.000+01:00

A group of fine young lads on the row in front of me. One of them was wearing a WWJD wristband.

While the poor lecturer was trying to get the point across about disjunct sets and their applications to computer algorithms, this modest Christian was pointing out an ad to his friends: 37" flatscreens on sale. And it wasn't even in the newspaper, it was from a mass mailing.

For once, I'm glad to see the attendees thinning out as the semester progresses.

2*19

2005-10-11T05:17:00.000+02:00

Showing up for my midterms, I was assigned place number 38.

An hour later, going to the doctor, my queue ticket number was 38.

So I sat down in the waiting room and opened the book I brought to where I'd bookmarked it — page... thirty-eight. Hello cosmic paranoia.

The things I did in London

2005-09-27T17:06:00.000+02:00

Two and a half hours after landing, was having vodka at the ICA while listening to Slovenian techno.
Had KFC on the underground on the way, which was a first.
Stayed at a hotel staffed exclusively by Spaniards and Jamaicans.
Grumped about the English habit of using wool blankets instead of proper duvets.
Had Marmite.
Wondered what perverse mind came up with the idea of boiling down soy sauce and putting it on bread.
Saw Hitchhiker's for 1£ at the Prince Charles. Thought they should have strayed even further from the book than they did.
Bought boots about half an hour after I needed them.
Got lost in the theatre district.
Giggled at "Cockfosters."
Had Sunday dinner-lunch at the Hind's Head in Bray-on-Thames, courtesy of stepsister's boyfriend's brother who cooks at the Fat Duck next door. (Kidney pudding filled with oxtail. Only tasty entrails I've eaten in my life.)
Followed the signs towards the Monkey Island Hotel, which is up the road from Bray. Was unfortunately too damn full to walk all the way. Picked chestnuts.
Had two complete strangers walk up from behind me at Earl's Court Station and point to random places on my map.
Managed to order a pint of drip coffee at a Starbucks by mistake. (They were the only thing open in Oxford Street at nine in the morning.) Wussed out of drinking it two-thirds through.
Utterly failed to trade in my old games at the Computer Exchange.
Had noon pint at the end of Rathbone Place.
Somehow managed to feed using chopsticks, for the first time in my life.
(Deep-fried baby squid. Quite evil, but oh-so tasty.)
Failed to get into industrial concert in Islington. Mutter grumble bloody treehouse club rules.
Flirted with random girl in the bar queue at the Porterhouse.
Walked through the whole of Berwick Street without buying a single record.
Popped into The Foundry. It was stylishly decorated with piles of junk hardware, however it was already full of Scandinavians. Went away before I lost the feeling of being on vacation. B+ would get sloshed at again.
Went to the Red Rose club to see three acts advertised as "folknoise." I think they stepped on the fuzz pedal twice the entire evening. The only good part was the girl on electric violin.
Bought eight obscure CD's from some guy's stand inside. [Addendum: One was a Darklife sampler featuring Zeni Geva, woo hoo!]
Had nine drinks in twelve hours.
After said nine drinks, found myself having to navigate London's night buses. To make matters worse, I'd mixed up east and west and wound up at the wrong end of Seven Sisters.
(Got as far as Tottenham Court Road before I gave up and got a cab.)
Picked up dodgy curry from the corner store at 1:30 in the morning.
Saw Frida Kahlo at Tate Modern.
Finally got hold of a 32MB SmartMedia card.
Spent 120£ on games.
(Animal Crossing, Fahrenheit (PS2), Watchmaker, The Italian Job, Hooligans, Getaway Black Monday, Scrapland, Psi-Ops, Black & White, Legacy Dark Shadows, Black Mirror, Mystery of Druids)
Didn't buy a single book.

Jarmusch tries to tell story, falls flat on arse

2005-09-06T18:11:00.000+02:00

Borken Fløøvers is doing the film club rounds this week. I wish it weren't.

We watch a letter being delivered and a bunch of clouds drifting by for far longer than is necessary. This is presumably Jarmusch's idea of film art. Once the movie deigns itself to begin, we see some guy watching a movie about Don Juan growing old; this would be a subtle hint that our antihero is an aging Don Juan character if it weren't for the fact that it's then promptly mentioned three bloody times afterwards.

This attitude of treating the audience as stupid permeates the whole film; witness the demonstrative bird chatter every time Bill Murray wakes up to stuff the fact down our throat that, yes, it's morning. Witness the planes going off for no particular narrative reason other than to pad a 75-minute film to 105. See the main character have dreams that add nothing at all. See Jarmusch try for deadpan tragicomedy and landing far, far short of Kaurismäki, or even the Coen brothers.

In all, my suspicion that Jarmusch is adored primarily by film students and others who want filmmaking to look easy has only been further confirmed.

Audrey Hepburn

2005-06-15T08:42:00.000+02:00

a) Hot.

b) Biggest eyebrows this side of Frida Kahlo.

—and still, a).

Perhaps the plucking of b) is what has reduced the likelihood of a) in this modern world.

Never mind the bras, women should be burning tweezers.

–I mean melting them down, I mean er–

The standard SW3 review fallacy

2005-06-08T21:46:00.000+02:00

Okay, just one opinion. A meta-opinion.

It's the law that every review of Star Wars 3 must start out discussing that enormous problem of everyone knowing the plot outline in advance.

Well, hello. Lord of the Rings, people.

So the reasons for its failure must be more complex than that. Maybe there's an essay in there without so much Marxist dream analysis in it.

(Okay, maybe just a little.)

SW3: The Marxist dream analysis

2005-05-29T13:19:00.000+02:00

In much the same way every homepage must have an underexposed picture of a cat, every blog must have some sort of opinion on Star Wars 3.

Well, I'm sorry. I don't have an opinon, I only have the objective truth.

I appear to be in the wrong focus group

2005-05-29T01:13:00.000+02:00

Seems I've gone into a fully-fledged she-author webcomics stupor.

It started innocently enough, with a mild fanboy-demeanor over Snail Dust — quirky style, dadaist April Fool's, an explosive blend of very wacked-out brains and some quite down-to-earth – well, relatively down-to-earth – storylines...

Then I began hitting Okay Pants for the ultimate in pencil-drawn turbodada — it's the adventures of a girl without any whites in her eyes and her sidekick the tie-wearing mushroom. High drama ensues when she discovers her best friend is in fact the cure for the cruel sickness which induces Pokémon hallucinations in her. Can it get much better?

The answer is, yes. I was finally seduced by the stylish inks and espresso attitude of C'est La Vie, and now I can't make up my mind who to stalk, and in fact, whether I ever feel like reading comics by men again.

There should be a women's webcomic guild, or something.

...oh, right. I forgot.