Code

Microsoft Being Microsoft Again

Turns out, Microsoft’s August 2024 security updates are disabling the GRUB bootloader. That’s the program that runs at boot time and allows users to select between multiple operating systems. Erasing that means users can’t boot into any operating system other than Windows.

This reminds me of the shenanigans they pulled in the 90s with Netscape. Microsoft hated the idea that people were browsing the Web with a competitor’s product, especially one that didn’t have a marketing agreement with them.

So they did two sneaky things. First, they went to IT departments and told them to discourage people in their companies from installing Netscape because it might be a vector for viruses and other stuff.

Then they released an “internet jumpstart” service pack for Windows 95 that installed Internet Explorer without asking. The fun part was, once IE was installed, it took control of hyperlinks. So if you clicked on a link in an email message, it would open IE instead of Netscape.

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Recordings

This Is the Road

The new EP is out Wednesday on Bandcamp and streaming services.

My usual approach is to put together a track I’m happy with, then pursue the underlying ideas and elements for a whole set. It keeps a consistent feel and things come together pretty quickly. Araminta Station was an exception. I had a huge amount of distraction in my life, so the tracks came together sometimes months apart. I was happy with the end product, but it’s definitely all over the place in terms of feel and atmosphere.

On this one, {Now + n, Now – n} was the first track. It’s largely based around a complex digital drone, overlaid with washes of reverbed-out pads and a minimal house beat.

(Yes, those are handclaps. No, I’m not apologizing.)

Now I had the agenda. Minimal house at twilight in the woods. I built the box and worked within it.

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Recordings

Raintrace Remixes

The title track from last year’s EP is getting quite a bit of attention on Spotify, which means I might make $0.0004 on it. So I decided to release it as a single, along with a few remixes. It’s free for the next week, so grab it now.

Audio Technology

PRS CE24

New guitar.  It’s a Paul Reed Smith CE24, 2022 model in Blue Matteo.

PRS guitars are known for their Gibson-style set necks.  The CE series uses traditional bolt-on construction, which gives it just a bit more snap.  The other difference is the satin finish, as opposed to their usual gloss finish on the back.

The tone is still there:  a warm but bell-like clarity that splits the difference between Fender (whose quality control has been dreadful lately) and Gibson.  The PRS is a much lighter guitar than the Gibson, and it has the option of splitting the humbuckers into pseudo-single coils.  The CE24 uses their unique “pattern thin” profile for the neck, which is flatter than a Strat but wider.  It’s far more comfortable in my bass-player hands.

Now I just have to get better at playing it.

Dogs

Clio

My oldest passed away this week. She never knew a stranger, and she was the gentlest soul.

Love them fiercely because our time with them is too short.

Civil Rights

The Post-Bruen Landscape

First, some background because I haven’t written on this stuff in a while.  A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in NYSRPA v. Bruen.  At issue was New York City’s restrictive and discriminatory system for issuing permits to carry a firearm.

The law in question was New York’s Sullivan Act, which I’ve written on before. It required a permit to carry a firearm outside the home, then set up an arbitrary, discretionary process under which minorities and union organizers were routinely denied.  In fact, the original text singled out the Irish and used the phrase “swarthy immigrants.”

In the intervening decades, New York made it impossible for anyone but the rich and connected to get permits.  A business owner in a bad neighborhood had no chance of being approved, but celebrities like Robert DeNiro and Bill Cosby certainly did.  In one case, two members of Aerosmith were given permits in exchange for backstage passes even though they didn’t qualify at all.

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Recordings

Cirrostratus

First track for the new year. Done all done in hardware because it’s easier to edit LFO parameters by hand than

f = { |x| (x * 2).sin * 3 + (x * 0.3).sin };
p = Pbind(
\dev, Ptime().collect(f), // current time passed to function
\midinote, Pkey(\dev) + 60 + [0, 4],
\amp, 0.05,
\dur, 0.15
).play;
)
p.stop;