I’m all about the curated playlists on Google Play Music All Access, but they’re definitely missing a certain segment of the music and mood spectrum. It’s all “autumn walks” and “afternoon nap” and “coffee shop.” Where is the “people banging with hammers on the floor above you, need thrashing metal to cover it up and keep you going” channel?
The Google dictionary audio recording for nihilistic is far too cheery.
I hope people realize that “99% signal reliability” means the signal is down about 14 minutes per day on average…
The annotations here are impressive, and a little scary. In that Star Trek kind of way.
I’m gonna cash in my hand
And pick up on a piece of land
And build myself a cabin back in the woods.
Lord it’s there I’m gonna stay
Until there comes a day
When this old world starts to changin’ for the good.
Friends don’t let friends aggressively cache favicon.ico files.
Some of the worst-designed things in our world were probably born out of a round table discussion in which an engineer at some point said, “But if we need … we’d have to …” and mistakenly thought that making the statement would kill the idea.
RVs are a perfect example of this. “But if we need a rolling house on wheels capable of freeway speeds over a relatively long range, we’d have to [make an RV]!”
Typically, these conversations end in everyone groaning, shifting in their chairs, and killing the idea. Every now and then one slips through, which is how you get to having the Deathtrap Capsule Front Doors from Hell in my office building, RVs, the double-necked Keytar, and many other awful things that shouldn’t exist.
I try to avoid making the wrong choice at these points, but it’s hard, especially when doing work on a virtual plane of some kind. The entropy increased within the design process usually derives from the foolishness of the designer.
Google Play Music All Access is so technically frustrating while remaining one of my happiest monthly expenses. Getting two seconds into a song and then skipping to the next one, the failed downloads, the inability to listen reliably while downloading.
I feel a general lack of genuine passion within Google’s products, like they’re seen as technical challenges versus “making something cool happen for people who love that thing.” I could be wrong, but I feel no soul in the design.
I don’t see why we subscribers don’t get some notifications about albums released by bands with heavy representation and playtime in our libraries. I mean, Nickel frigging Creek released an album this year and I just found out about it because I basically clicked the wrong button while pulling up Alison Krauss music.
A Dotted Line is encouraging, 1.5 songs in. Sara’s voice and general effect (in “Destination”) seems to have aged and improved the best of the three, although Sean will always be my favorite vocal talent in the group. Of their later work, I much prefer the pop-leaning modern Sara sound to the “hippie campfire” thing that I often felt at lower points of Why Should the Fire Die? (as in the middling opener to Line, “Rest of My Life”). Fire is kind of a sad album to listen to, a eulogy for the run of creative energy featured in their earlier work.
But now I get to “Elsie”, and I’m like, “hot damn, we’re back somewhere between Nickel Creek and This Side” and I don’t think I will pause even if the phone rings or someone’s at my door.
“Christmas Eve” is Sean in Fiction Family form and Fire format but without the Switchfootiness of Fiction Family. Back at the campfire a bit, but a better, less hippie campfire.
“Hayloft” is terrible. The only thing that redeems it is that it’s a cover. I think that redeems it. Oh, it’s awful. Ow. Uncomfortable. One of those covers where you can hear the original version in the cover, even though you never heard the original, and you can realize that both the original and the cover are awful, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It makes you want to go back to “Spit on a Stranger” (This Side) to get a feel for playfulness in a well-executed wacky Nickel Creek cover.
“21st of May” is pretty good. “Love of Mine” is vintage Fire-era Chris, which is alright, and Sara is on point for background vocals better than she was in Fire. Sean’s guitar feels a little heavier-mixed than in previous albums, and it’s a welcome development. Sara’s ornamental fiddle in the background always has a twinge of irritation for me that’s reliably assuaged by her lovely feature/solo work. Bringing guitar up to the front in these moments soothes the sound for me.
“Elephant in the Corn” is precisely the instrumental you want from the thirty-something version of the “kids” from Nickel Creek. I mean, “Elsie” is most certainly better in spirit, but this provides both a higher level of musical sophistication, some playfulness in a more somber setting, and a final distancing from the dumpster fire of “Hayloft,” from which I still ache despite multiple songs and one phone call interruption.
“You Don’t Know What’s Going On” may well be the song of the album (sorry, “Elsie”), not because it’s more sublime than “Elsie”, or more sophisticated than “Elephant in the Corn”, or because it actually has vocals, but because it represents where this cool and round-hole-square-peg group could go, find additional notoriety, make some more money, get on the radio, whatever. It’s smart, bluegrass-influenced, folk-pop with energy and playfulness. Solid, great.
And we end on “Where is Love Now”, which is apparently the second cover of the album, but you’d never know it. It’s Fire earnest Sara (a la “Anthony”), a bitter taste but with a sweet chaser this time. Sean’s guitar is transcendent, like smash-your-own-guitar-and-just-quit-while-you’re-behind kind of good. It’s Nickel Creek telling you, “Thanks for waiting, we’re back, we’re better, see you soon.”
Thanks for coming back. Stay as long as you stay happy.
Programming has elements similar to writing the rulebook for a sport.
Consider the penalty “Roughing the Passer.” If an Average Joe wrote the rulebook, he would probably have called that penalty “Roughing the Quarterback.” In fact, the Average Joe who asked for the penalty probably justified it by saying, “We need to protect the quarterback after they throw a pass.”
If they had written the penalty and its corresponding rule that way, wide receivers throwing a pass on a trick play would not have been similarly protected, nor would other players receiving a direct snap.
The “bug report” would have come in: “Why does it matter who’s throwing the pass? We want to protect the passer!”
The “programmer” responds, “You said quarterback, not passer!”
I’m generally opposed to Pareto 80⁄20’s, and programming is more 98⁄2, anyway. 98% of the effort to handle the 2% cases that nobody even thinks to specify because they “practically never happen.”