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Apple Genius Is Emasculating Me

Monday, March 30, 2009 7:12 AM (permalink)

Today I hit the gym bright and early after a 2-week layoff due to cold/flu/Strep/murrain, determined to shake off the cruft of what has been my longest period of sick in many years. I synced up my iPod just before I left, and had Apple Genius pick me a workout playlist around "Getting Away With It," by Electronic, which is a song I love to start my workout with.

All was going great for about 30 minutes--in fact, I think I got a bit stronger from the layoff--so I decided to get a little bold with my last chest exercise and try a personal best with the incline dumbbell press. After nearly 30 minutes of The Replacements, "Crystal" by New Order, "Fire Woman" by The Cult and "Tame" by The Pixies, I was ready to punch through a wall, baby.

So I loaded up for a personal best on the DB press (I won't embarrass myself by listing the weight, but it was somewhat lighter than my body weight and heavier than my car keys) and started to psych myself up to push some iron around, and..you know...show it who's boss.

That's when "Perfect Way" by Scritti Politti started playing on my iPod.

I actually dropped the weights after one rep. I went from taking on the world to, well, "placid." I think Genius knew this would happen. I think Genius is made by Skynet.

Anyway, tomorrow I take a more "active" role in setting my workout playlist.

The 10 Songs That Should Never Have Been Made

Wednesday, February 11, 2009 10:09 AM (permalink)

Two music notes in one week? Steve Allan tagged me on this, and after snorting milk out of my nose from reading his list, had to reciprocate. Here's Steve's note:

"Oh, sure, it's easy to come up with songs you love. The emotional attachment you feel for your favorite music is more loyal than a dog's undying devotion. Pshhh, anyone can come up with that list.

But, songs you hate? The kind that, once they are stuck in your head, are the musical version of water boarding.

So, rules. Write the 10 worst songs you know. These are songs that are so bad that you have a tangible (negative ) physical reaction when you hear them.

10. "Playground in my Mind" - clint holmes. Here's what you can do with that nickel, Michael...

9. "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" - Elvin Bishop. Might be a surprise addition, but when a guy named Elvin starts a song off with the line "must have been through 'bout a million girls" it strains credulity.

8. "Escape" - Rupert Holmes. Enough ink has been spilled on the vileness of this song that little needs to be said here, except that if I called my wife "my old lady" like Rupert does in this song, I'd be searching the personal ads, too. Honorable Mention to Rupert's other chart topper, "Him."

7. "We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel. Was this his 4th grade term paper? I bet those backup singers left the studio really thinking they had nailed that one..and learned something along the way.

6. Special Sci-Fi Double Feature: "Mr. Tambourine Man" - William Shatner, "If I Had A Hammer" - Leonard Nimoy. Tell ya what I'd do if I had a hammer... The funniest part of the Shatner cover is that he appears to be "performing" it as a drunk, yet was probably sober--kind of like a Foster Brooks performance, only without the moments of clarity.

5. Disco Theme from The Wizard of Oz/Star Wars/Close Encounters/etc - MECO. That dude was amazing--a one man factory--a veritable industry--of crap. I bought all of his record.

4. "The Final Countdown" - Europe. I wish, Europe...I wish.

3. "Sylvia's Mother" - Dr. Hook. In this song, which Steve also picked, the good doctor appears to insert 40 cents for the next three minutes a total of 4 times, which means that the song appears to reaffirm my belief that it is in fact 12 minutes long. And overpriced by $1.60. Mrs. Avery, just hang up already.

2. "Ebony and Ivory" - McCartney and Wonder. See, it's a metaphor--or is it a simile? So much for that English degree. In any language, it's craptastic.

And my #1:

"Sussudio" - Phil Collins. Sheer nonsensical genius from the man who single-handedly propelled Genesis from the depths of credibility. This makes my number one solely because it makes me feel exactly like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, whose deconstruction of the lyrics is as poetic as his simultaneous deconstruction of two of his "houseguests" with an axe. Just say the word...just say the word.

NextFitness Review

Friday, January 16, 2009 9:01 AM (permalink)

For the past couple of weeks, I've been trying out a new service called NextFitness, which takes music from your iTunes playlist and mixes it with customized instruction from one of a large assortment of personal trainers. Sounded like an intriguing idea, and I'm the sort that needs a little added motivation when I work out, so I gave it a shot.

The service installs a little add-on to your system that syncs up your iTunes music to the system so you can upload the tracks you want in your workout to their mixing server. The system then downloads the newly-mixed and customized workout to your hard drive and automatically adds it to a playlist in iTunes.

I love the idea--it seems to do a pretty good job mixing my tracks with the trainer, and it's kind of nice to be "surprised" by the workout as you go. There are, however, some things that could stand fixing:

There are no diagrams, movies or other explanations of the exercises on their website. While the audio explanations are fairly clear for some things, for others--not so much. This morning I was directed to the "Free Motion Leg Lift" machine, which was a new one to me--I settled for lunges instead, and previously was asked to do a cable ab crunch that I am quite sure (by the pain in my lower back) I wasn't doing correctly.

The feedback mechanism is pretty limited. You can indicate whether or not a previous workout was too hard, too easy or just right, and you can "rate" individual exercises. The trouble with that is that while in general I may find a workout "just right," I may have struggled with a particular exercise (for me, that was oblique crunches this morning). My only option is to rate the exercise as 1 or 2 stars--but I don't want to stop doing the exercise or have it replaced, I just want the system to know that I was not able to complete all the reps in the specified time. Any trainer should be able to correct for that!

There is also no place on the site to track your progress--that is a real deal breaker. While you can see that you are on "Workout #5" with Michael George, you have no place to enter and track your specific progress or workload--even a place to enter how much weight you used on a given machine or what dumbbells you used last time. A "nice to have" would be a system in which you enter the weight you used, and in your next workout the trainer reminded you that you used "x" pound dumbbells the last time. A trivial exercise in voice automation that would eliminate the need for me to take a printout to the gym.

There are technical issues with the downloads. Twice now I have gone through the process of selecting tracks, mixing workouts and downloading them to iTunes--only to find out that my workout audio file was blank (as in 0:00 duration). The first time I found this out was actually at the gym, trying to figure out why it wouldn't play. When you go to the site to try and recreate the workout, there is no way to do so--as soon as the system generates workout X, you can only move on to workout X+1--there is no way to go back and do it again. This means that the system can't really track your progress, if it even ever did to begin with.

With a few tweaks, this could be a real solid service, but right now there are just too many loose ends and cracks in the system--I will continue my membership for this quarter, but am unlikely to renew unless further improvements are made.

Bring Back Patronage!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 2:45 PM (permalink)

Mark Bernstein just announced that Tekka, a journal of new media, literature and the art of software, is back. And welcome, I might add. He also notes that it is coming back gratis for now (it used to be fifty bucks, as I recall, for a subscription) as Mark grapples with the rapidly-changing model of web publishing.

To date, the Interweb's answer to this sort of dilemma has been to hang a 'tip jar' at the door--a link to donate a buck or two via PayPal or someother instrument. This adds considerable variance to the equation, and does not guarantee fair recompense to content creators, though it does operate on a compelling meritocratic principle. Still, I wonder if it is worth exploring two other models--one not so new; the other pretty darn old.

The not-so-new one would be to incorporate the concept of "ransomware" into web publishing--i.e., accept donations up to a stated maximum, and then release the content for free. This also provides an incentive for contributors to a 'zine such as Tekka to do a little self-promotion, for both altrustic and selfish reasons, to 'liberate' their content and make it more widely available. Once the "ransom" is met, IP/Copyright/Piracy issues don't matter much anymore--the material is only released when and if it is freely available to all anyway.

The really old model that this, in turn, brings to mind is the medieval system of patronage. This really is the model that any non-profit uses to survive, publicizing their "Platinum" and "Gold" sponsors, but I suppose an online journal could operate in the same way--how much would it be worth to you to be a "patron" of Tekka? It might be worth a premium if such patronage (as it does with non-profits) carried with it other benefits (a virtual cocktail reception with the authors? :))

A Telemarketing Script That Made Me Slightly Queasy

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 2:31 PM (permalink)

National Geographic called me last night to get me to renew my subscription. I declined, but what really got me was the subtly sliminess of the script:

Telemarketer: "We're calling today to thank you for being a NG subscriber, and also to let you know that we have dropped the price on your subscription"

Me: "That's great."

T: "Your price is going down from 'x' per issue to 'y' per issue. May I continue your service at the lower price?"

Me: "What do you mean, 'continue my service?""

...and downhill from there. I am sure that they have seen some ROI from this approach, but honestly, it just left a bad taste in my mouth. Am I too sensitive to this sort of thing, or does it straddle the border of sleaze to you, as well?

Three Little Words

Tuesday, January 6, 2009 8:46 AM (permalink)

I recently read Chris Brogan's 3 goals for 2009 and was intrigued by the way he framed his 'raison d'etre' for the coming year as just three words: Equip, Armies, Needles. You'll have to read his post to understand what he means by this (hint: it isn't enabling hordes of heroin addicts). It struck me as I read through his areas of focus that the one thing that skyrocketed my career in its early days is also the one thing that could derail it in its middle stages--my endless propensity for dilettantism.

With that in mind, I reviewed my 'goals' from 2008, and was disheartened to see how many were left undone--and how many weren't even started! Now, there was this 2008 election thing that gobbled up my time, and a healthy dose of international travel to boot, but the sad truth was that I wanted to do too many things, and ended up doing very few of them. Coming to grips with my increasing inability to learn and do everything I want will be one of my themes for 2009. Taking Brogan's cue, I reduced my 2009 "goals" to three simple words--three powerful filters for all of my activities in the coming year:

1. Discard - I have a tendency to want to do everything myself--if I don't know how to do something, I teach myself and struggle along. This year, I am not going to learn Photoshop. I am not going to teach myself Wordpress programming. I am not going to do a lot of things. I am going to pay others to do them, which frees me up for word #2...

2. Master - Being a polymath has been enormously helpful to me for the last 20 years, I'll admit. Hitting 40, however, has convinced me that mastery is where it's at. I'm going to spend 2009 acquiring mastery in just one or two areas of interest, and slough off the rest, so that I can...

3. Relax - I handle stress very poorly, it turns out. This year, I resolve to not take things personally, to do fewer things well, and not to sweat the rest.

Happy New Year.

Sheikh Zayed Mosque, Abu Dhabi

Monday, January 5, 2009 2:23 PM (permalink)

A view of the Burj al Arab, Dubai

Monday, January 5, 2009 2:14 PM (permalink)

You're just one meal away...

Monday, January 5, 2009 1:23 PM (permalink)

Has it really been 5 months since my last post? It's amazing how a hiatus like that can present a disincentive to start up again--but I guess, as they say in Weight Watchers, you are just one meal away from being back on your diet. Consider this my one meal.