danbruno.net/blog

Heh: someone on Metafilter asks how long he should put his warm Coke in the freezer, and Adam Savage, of all people, pops up with the answer (in unusual detail, naturally).

Steven Frank has provided a great primer on US cellular technology.

Meficomp, a compilation of 24 original tracks by members of Metafilter, is now shipping. All profits go to music education charity The Mockingbird Foundation.

Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times hates Microsoft’s Zune with a passion.

From McSweeney’s, an imagined DVD commentary on Return of the King by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Classic!

About a year ago I came across DOSBox, a cross-platform DOS emulator. I occasionally fired it up to play some Commander Keen or One Must Fall and relive my childhood, but I was always disappointed that I couldn’t play early Windows games too. (I have a PowerPC chip, so Boot Camp is out, and I’m not about to buy Parallels just for nostalgia’s sake.)

A few days ago it occurred to me that Windows 3.1 ran on top of MS-DOS as a shell, so there wasn’t any reason it shouldn’t run on top of DOSBox too. I did some searching and found an old copy of Windows, and lo and behold, it worked.

That success led me to scour the Internet for the games of my halcyon youth. Some, like SkiFree and Castle of the Winds, have been released freely into the wild by their authors. (I missed Castle of the Winds so much that I asked MetaFilter for replacements.) Many more are available on abandonware sites such as Home of the Underdogs and, as always, through Google on sites of dubious legality.

UPDATE: Joe recommends I go after Space Quest or King’s Quest next. Good choices! King’s Quest VI was another childhood favorite. Other games I’ve downloaded so far: BioMenace, The Adventures of Willy Beamish, Crystal Caves, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Doom, Duke Nukem, Hugo’s House of Horrors, Betrayal at Krondor, Lord of the Rings (the 1991 RPG by Interplay), Mario is Missing, One Must Fall 2097, Raptor, Railroad Tycoon, Skunny, The Incredible Machine, Wacky Wheels, Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure. As you can see, I spent a good number of my formative years in front of a computer screen.

It could be an Onion headline: Area man cockblocked by Obama, threatens Giuliani vote. (via)

Novelist Marisha Pessl on Nick Drake, as quoted by The Onion A.V. Club:

MP: I never knew who Nick Drake was until the Garden State soundtrack, and then I got his greatest hits, and I really like it. It’s really restful and thoughtful, something so pure about his sound. It’s good for when you’re walking around New York listening to your iPod—nice to listen to instead of all the craziness happening around you. I don’t know anything about him, though.

The A.V. Club: He was a reclusive, depressive guy who died very young from a drug overdose.

MP: Really? You’re kidding. He sounds so put-together.

Whoops. (via)

I’m a recent Dylan convert. At some point I had copied a few of my dad’s albums into my iTunes library, but I mostly ignored them. I only became a fan this summer while driving my dad’s car to and from work every day, giving me about an hour a day with his stereo. As it happened, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 was in the CD player, and I played it nonstop both ways for nearly the entire summer. Soon I dusted off the MP3s laying dormant on my hard drive, and last month, I got the complete Dylan (The Collection, as iTunes calls it) for my birthday. I’ve only scratched the surface of the staggering 773 tracks, but I’m enjoying it immensely already.

Last weekend, my parents came up to Boston to see Dylan perform at Agganis Arena. We arrived early to see the opening act — The Raconteurs, a side project of Jack White. The lights went down to reveal a large, ornate R behind the stage; suddenly, bowel-shaking organ music started up, and the silhouetted band members came on. Surprisingly, the arena filled almost to capacity within a couple minutes; I couldn’t imagine that Dylan fans had come early to see the guy from The White Stripes, but evidently they had.

I saw why, too, because The Raconteurs were actually really good. They were loud as hell, head-bobbing and gyrating wildly as rock stars are wont to do. They covered “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” which featured an ear-splitting distortion microphone, and played the only song I knew of theirs, “Steady, As She Goes” as the set closer. They got a standing ovation as they left the stage.

Dylan took the stage to a standing ovation as well — although his entrance was decidedly more subdued — and the people on the floor remained standing for the entire concert. He was wearing a black top hat, a black dress shirt, and what appeared to be black track pants with a white stripe going down the side. I was a bit apprehensive about how he would sound, as there have been, ah, reports that his voice hasn’t aged well.

(I should point out that I actually like Dylan’s voice, as I’ve heard it on record. People complain because he doesn’t sing like a normal human being, and while it’s true that he isn’t awfully concerned with tonality, I like the sound — his appeal is in his uniqueness, as with Louis Armstrong.)

Well, on Sunday Dylan was, in a word, incoherent. I think I understood about thirty words he said all night, and those only because I sometimes knew what he was trying to say (I knew 8 out of the 16 songs). He didn’t play guitar at all, only keyboard, and I’m not entirely sure his keyboard was even on; he just stood off to one side of the stage and sort of shuffled in place while he banged on it randomly. (My dad, however, thought he heard some bad notes come out of it.) He played harmonica for a total of maybe 45 seconds during the whole concert, and it was nothing to write home about, making his voice — such as it was — his principal contribution.

I think the guttural growl that characterizes Dylan’s mature voice lent itself well to a few songs — mostly the new ones from Modern Times; “Nettie Moore” sounded great — but the classics from years past (“Tangled Up In Blue,” for instance) sounded pretty flimsy. He couldn’t hold notes, so he changed his vocal lines to create new staccato melodies (much to the chagrin of the crowd members inclined to sing along). The fact is, Dylan’s voice hasn’t held up into his 60s as, say, Paul Simon’s has.

Once I got past the voice, there was still a good concert to be heard. The band was fantastic, as I expected. They were never overpowering — at their loudest they were still only half as loud as The Raconteurs were — and there were some refreshing reinterpretations and rearrangements, most notably “Highway 61 Revisited.” Other songs, like “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” sounded more or less as they did on the album, but had the extra energy that comes with a live show.

I had the odd sensation that Dylan was covering Jimi Hendrix on “All Along the Watchtower”; the band imitated Hendrix’s introductory rhythmic motive and punctuated the verses with electric guitar solos. To end the song, and the show, “Watchtower” concluded with a gigantic Picardy third, as “Ain’t Talkin’” does at the end of Modern Times. My inner music major found the thematic connection oddly satisfying.

Dylan’s setlist:

Absolutely Sweet Marie
Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
Honest With Me
Positively 4th Street
Masters Of War
‘Til I Fell In Love With You
When The Deal Goes Down
Cold Irons Bound
Every Grain Of Sand
Rollin’ And Tumblin’
Tangled Up In Blue
Nettie Moore
Highway 61 Revisited
——————–
Thunder On The Mountain
Like A Rolling Stone
All Along The Watchtower

The Zune, Microsoft’s first serious competitor to Apple’s iPod, went on sale today. In addition to playing MP3s and videos, it includes an FM tuner, has built-in WiFi, and integrates with the XBox 360. I predict that it will land solidly in second place. (As a side note: when your Zune install messes up, apparently people either go into seizures or have a ménage à trois.)

Anil Dash, who I admire for evaluating Microsoft and Apple products based on their merits instead of on blind partisanship, had this to say:

There’s unquestionably a lot of talent and ambition evidenced in launching a product of this scope and breadth with a small team on a short timeframe. And the Zune team should be commended for pulling it off with such high quality. But the overriding feeling of the Zune is an almost pathological me-too-ism, as if the team weren’t watching consumers or potential customers, but was too busy saying Hello From Seattle to those who were Made In Cupertino. Instead of aiming at the competition, the team should have been aiming for the lead.

He’s right, I think, but the “me-too-ism” is understandable. Have you noticed how many people have iPods now? All but one of the kids in my music history class has one, and I’ve been in subway cars where there were more people listening to iPods than people with other portable media players and people not listening to music put together. They’re like jeans. Who wouldn’t want in on that?

Steve Jobs likes the word boom.

Ryan North has fixed Wikipedia! Thanks, Ryan. Thryan.

According to Rolling Stone, Joni Mitchell is working on her first new album in eight years.

She’s not changed her mind about the leech-like nature of the recording industry (”the record labels are criminally insane . . . ugly, screwed up, crooked, uncreative, selfish” she reportedly reiterated,) but Mitchell apparently feels compelled by current political and social issues to make a statement with her music once more. “When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it’s time for artists to make their mark,” she said.

One song is reportedly inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”, and another will denounce religious wars.

I doubt the album will be as unambiguously political as Neil Young’s Living With War, but if Joni is so upset with the state of the world that she came out of retirement to say so, it could be. Regardless, it should be interesting.