Limo

Thought so too, but it's apparently Cannes.

For reasons I no longer remember, JR Ackerley's "Hindoo Holiday" popped up on the top of my reading list. Dutifully worked through it, was entertained. It's supposedly the diary of an openly homosexual British man during a five month stay at the court of a minor (and equally homosexual) Indian raja. The quest for pretty young boys is a bit tiresome but other than that it was an interesting and fairly amusing visit to a world now (thankfully) long gone. A quick read, +1 would recommend.

Nah, it's fine. Just don't reheat it beforehand.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/ TLDR: a dead salmon was used while setting up a new brain scanner. Regular protocols were followed and when the numbers for these were crunched, it turned out that they were forced to conclude the measurements indicated the salmon was alive and well and exhibiting brain patterns more befitting a live human. The statistics behind a lot of neuroscience is apparently very, very shakey. In my “machine learning” class I was taught the 1950s work was on creating functions that could output curves of any desired complexity. In theory one input function and one output function was all that was needed, but they figured out the math was a quite a bit easier if you used multiple layers of functions. So it’s basically just math. Really simple math, too, but because actually calculating what the functions should be requires a lot of computing power it wasn’t until 10 - 20 years ago that using it became feasible. There is no link with what happens in the brain whatsoever - unless you want to insist that any process in which outputs from one thing become inputs in another is like a brain, in which case, well, you’re grossly oversimplifying things.

Of course. The branch of science where dead salmon are sentient.

Neither of whom are rock bands, though.

Wow ... you're not kidding.

Thanks to this thread I now know what Banda is. I need to pour bleach into my ears.

Given how much error correction there is in a QR code this is not the least bit impressive. You could just as well doodle over a working QR code and achieve exactly the same result. More info on QR codes: https://blog.qartis.com/decoding-small-qr-codes-by-hand/ EDIT: here's some examples of hand made art that works as a QR code: https://dribbble.com/shots/3658816-Art-QR-Code-Design

ChatGPT is useless. Truly the tulip mania of 2023. There's some rote memorization tasks (basic medical exams, bar exams etc) it can score Bs on and it can write answers to simple *and extremely common* college sophomore essay questions (and again score no higher than a B, which is hardly impressive) but that's about it. Which shouldn't be surprising if you know a little bit about how it works.

Hehe ... reminds me of the story of Bad Religion's first single - they had money to press singles but not to do mastering. So as a result their first single was unplayable.

Yeah, those can be pretty good. They can add some humor, which I like.

Right. That's one of the good ones.

Same here, but also because most lyrics are inane. Even the good ones.

Yeah, this is on me. Depends on what you want to do, I suppose. To me there's a world of difference between a MacBook with Ableton and a modern MPC. The controls and the pad and the workflow just make an MPC more of an instrument ... dunno, for me it just clicks. Love at first sight, in fact. Nice ? If the M8 were more readily available, I might have considered it.

Nifty 30 min. beat tape: Also on Spotify if SoundCloud isn’t your thing.

“Squid Biscuits” is a legit good band name. ?

We finished Foundation this week. It was … horrible. Maybe not if they hadn’t named it ”Foundation” and sprinkled it with just enough references to the books that you were constantly reminded that it did not, actually, have anything to do with Asimov’s work, but they did so it was a teeth grinding fest from beginning to end. But it looks kind of nice, so there’s that. Next up: White Lotus S2. First episode is promising.

I can see why people would say that but I could personally never get over the clunky sequencer ? Especially not in a world where MPCs exist. With any sound source, basically ? I have an MC-101 for this purpose. Though an iPad would work as well. My own setup for the summer holidays is going to be an iPad mini as a sound source (YouTube, synths - and my collection of easy tune and exotica mp3s) and an MPC 500 for sampling and sequencing - it just arrived today and it’s soooo cute!

Useless GAS: just listened to a few of my tracks from a year ago which were recorded through the SP404 mk II I briefly had. Now I want an SP404 again. Not for sampling as its sequencer drives me nuts but only for one single effect, the 303 vinyl sim (IIRC). Makes *everything* sound good.

It would be so cool if you, you know, could actually buy these.

Nice. Seven strings, too ? For me, basically every string above the top three was a waste. You know, punk rock and stuff. During COVID I tried to learn jazz guitar on a very nice entry level Ibanez jazz guitar but it turns out my hands are way, way too small (had sore finger joints for a year until I wisely gave it up).