I was tagged by the venerable John Phillips in the “7 Things” meme where I’m required to disclose seven various things about myself that I think are worth noting about myself. I’m sure a lot of the people who read my blog will already know some of these but here we go anyway.

1. I love Detroit. This is probably a pretty obvious one for most people who have talked to me at any length, but it’s true. I love the area and the state I live in. No, I don’t have rose colored glasses on and think that it’s perfect, but I do think that far too many people sell it short. Ultimately I think a place you live in is what you make of it and I love working a bit to find the hidden gems and small things about this area that make it really feel like home to me. Locals always know how to have the best time, as they say.
2. I am a philosopher at heart. Even before I went to college and studied philosophy fairly extensively it was always an area of great interest to me. The sciences are as well of course, but deep down I feel that they ultimately go hand in hand. Elegance of solution when it comes to unlocking the mysteries of the universe should include the philosophical implications, although we may not have a good enough understanding yet of either side to draw any real conclusions. Yet it is something I do spend a lot of cycles thinking about, even if I don’t discuss it much.
3. Cooking is one of my favorite hobbies. I’m a guy with a lot of hobbies, yet cooking and baking are actually two of my favorites. I see each opportunity I get to spend in the kitchen as another outlet where I can try and flex my creativity. More than that though I’m getting pretty good, so I get a nice meal out of it too! I’ll also note that I don’t typically follow recipes. I might check them out for inspiration or ideas but beyond that I don’t really pay close attention to them.
4. I consider an open mind to be one of the most valuable things a person can have. There isn’t a whole lot more that needs to be said about this. Suffice it to say that anyone who isn’t willing to reconsider their opinions about any given topic is only hurting his or herself in the long run.
5. I don’t consider socialism a dirty word. The fact of the mater is that there have been lots of good and worthwhile social programs by many democratic and free countries, including ours. A moderate approach that blends the best of “socialist ideals” (or perhaps “humanist ideals” fits what I mean more) with the undeniable virtues of a free market society would provide a fair and just system that would benefit a much larger percentage of people than an government at either extreme. At least, in my opinion.
6. I know that music is one of the most important things we have. Music is one of those amazing things that could easily be considered one of the most wonderful things that we as a species have created here. Granted, a lot of it is derivative and awful, but there is plenty that isn’t. As a musician myself I find that music is critical to my happiness… It’s hard if not impossible for me to imagine a life that didn’t involve music so heavily. To that point I think that musical education should be taught to all children at least through sixth grade.
7. I believe in the technological singularity, sort of. I do think that we as a species will set our own evolutionary path through technology, although I suspect it will be a much more gradual (and will also seem fairly natural) process than some predict. (That is, I go with the soft take off or augmented intelligence approach, rather than a hard take off or Strong AI based singularity.) I haven’t entirely made up my mind about this, but I do think it’s more likely than not. Look back just at ten years of progress and try to guess at the next ten, let alone fifty.

Bonus: I think popcorn is one of the greatest things in the world.

Done! It took me a while to get around to writing this, but I wanted to let it percolate in the back of my mind for a while and pick seven things that I thought were important to me.

Here are my victims:

• Jenn Ng
• Sandy D.
• Julius M.
• Luke Hackney
• Herbert C.
• Sarah V.D.V.
• Jeremy Tanner

And the rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Ohmigawd the admin dashboard is so much better. I might start blogging more just because I like the look of this thing now.

Quick little demo I whipped together to show some of the awesome glitchy effects you can get using some Operator drums and a juiced up effects rack that is quickly switching between random effects at a musical interval.

I recently did a halfway decent bootleg remix of Frou Frou - Let Go that I thought I’d share here.

I guess this will be the first thing I actually tagged with my “music name”: KnowLogik. I’ve had this name kicking around for a while (couple years at this point I think) but I’m going to more seriously use it. Over the next few months as I continue to try and be disciplined and work on music I’m planning on taking that placeholder site and turning it into a new blog/repository for whatever stuff I work on.

Anyway, a little bit about the remix. First off I’ll say that the original song is really great by itself and I hope this isn’t taken as an afront by any Imogen Heap fans. But, I always thought a faster, dancey-er version of this song would be good so I gave it a shot. To this end I used Ableton Live 7 (including Operator) and Native Instruments Battery 3 as my weapons of choice.

As always when working with existing audio in Live I began by warping the track. I was surprised at the amount of subtle tempo drift the song had… It certainly wasn’t as bad as some tracks but there were a few tricky parts. The original song has a deceptively fast BPM; around 138. I took it up to 155 which is pretty fast but it still sticks together.

Once I had the timestretching locked down I turned my attention to EQ’ing out (as best I could) some of the drums. This is really an art and I spent a lot of time on this, especially because I need the practice. Eventually what I settled on was two EQ8s; a notch and low shelf. The effect of both was minimal but really helped the drums I’d later add to sit in the mix properly. I didn’t want to completely remove the drums from the original track, especially because there were a few really cool reverse snares that needed to be brought out even more.

Then I recorded the drum parts using Battery 3 as my drum sampler. At first I just used a stock kit which sounded awful, just to get the drums basically to hang. Eventually I went back and fixed up the samples and settings to get it all to blend a bit better, rather than just sound like it was sitting on top. The hihats were the hardest to get. They were way too bright at first, then when I darked them down it just kind of sounded like a mess. I got around this by bringing in some light distortion and bit crunching to make it sound a little more low-fi. It might sound counter intuitive but with the smooth vocals and strings the contrasting graininess of the drums really meshes well because it’s distinctive enough to not sound like noise-soup but also took the brightness down on the hats and snares. That was my thinking at least.

From a song structure standpoint I did chop up the entire original track but ended up sticking with the original layout. It had a nice flow to it, the length was right and I liked the low-key transitions I was able to put in. I toyed around with doing more rearranging and looping but in the end I felt like I was trying to do it just for the sake of doing it and it wasn’t necessary.

I then turned to effects envelopes. The vocals are really the strength of this song and it would have been kind of stupid to try and get too crazy on them so I wanted them to remain largely the same. However I did find a few things to do to make it a bit more interesting. First off, I put in some small tempo changes over time at the begining and end of the track. They’re gradual and happen when there aren’t any drums so it’s almost a little bit hard to notice that it’s there, which I like. I also added a rapid “cutting” in a couple places, right as the initial beat drops and then at the transition right around 1:40. There is also a LFO that modulates the panning for the whole track but it’s very small (except for a few sections where it does ramp up a bit). Also it’s in phase and tempo-sync’d so what it actually does is give a very small “ducking” effect in time with the hats and snare. The LFO also modulates a phaser effect that (especially if you’re wearing headphones) should make it sound like the vocals are kind of swimming around inside your head.

I guess that was more than a little bit of info but one reason I like discussing it is so that other people who might have an interest in this stuff can read it and get some ideas. I know I’ve had plenty of good ones from reading other blog posts or just doing a lot of listening.

Courtesy of my new favorite site, Grooveshark.

Sia, by the way, is the female vocalist who does a lot of work with Zero 7. She is amazing.

Today is November 4 and that means here in the US we vote for the next president. I won’t go on some long thing here about how important voting is here but I will say this. Those that know me also know that I can be pretty cynical when it comes to government and politics, but I do feel strongly that voting is an important responsibility that informed citizens have. Emphasis on “informed.”

I personally am a firm Independent (some might say Constitutionalist) and I’m extremely jaded to the very partisan nature of our political system. All the more then I feel the responsibility falls to the voter then to do the research themselves and decide on their own who the better candidate is. I also feel that the responsibility of the voter is to vote what is best for the nation, even if there are some aspects of that choice which might impact that voter negatively. I make this argument because I feel that if the nation is prospering fully then each individual has better opportunities to proper as well. So what might seem as a potential negative impact to that voter will actually benefit them, given some time.

That said I will come right out and say I have no doubts that Obama is the president that the United States needs at this time.

So, I went to my local polling place first thing this morning to take care of my civic duty. I manged to go at a good time. Just after the initial rush and before the second wave showed up so I only had to wait in line about 10 minutes. I cast my ballot for Obama/Biden and then walked out of the polling place with a smile on my face. I felt good. The weather was and is beautiful here today. It feels like this will be a good day.

A couple notes about Michigan proposals. I voted in favor of medicinal marijuana and for additional stem cell research. For the first proposal I feel that the law was structured in a responsible way and further more I am against the criminalization of most all drugs. That’s not to say I’m personally pro-drug, I just feel that there are more constructive ways of dealing with people who have drug abuse problems than the criminalization of it. For the second I rather strongly feel that stem cell research is an important area of medical and bioscience research that has wide reaching implications for the future. Michigan of all places which needs to move (quickly) to an inovation based economy needs this to pass.

The Ambassador Bridge Gateway Project has been going on for a long time now. For… I’m not sure how long. A couple years at least. Last Spring they started the biggest phase of construction: All of I-75 is closed in both directions near the bridge and will be until at least December 2009. Given that I live south of the city and that’s the way I take to work it’s been a bit inconvenient.

But I thought about it then and like I so often try to do I decided to look at the good aspects of it. This provides a good opportunity to explore some parts of the city that I haven’t been to much. And so despite the extra traffic and time I’ve basically been able to enjoy the fact that I can’t just hop straight on the highway from downtown and get to explore some of the other neighborhoods.

Model D did a feature on topic. But why stop there with just exploring the detour? Victoria (aka @typeis4lovers) clued me in recently via Twitter to this awesome Detroit design guide over at Design*Sponge. I can happily say I’ve been to most places on that list (given that I enjoy the city so much I guess that’s expected) but I haven’t checked them all out and that list is far from complete. Detroit is such a unique and interesting city. It evokes a lot emotions; many good, some bad. It’s good to keep in mind that every day is a chance to explore and learn something new about it.

I’ll be happy when I can shave ten minutes off my drive in to work every morning, though.

A while back I wrote a post that talked very, very briefly about the subjective experience of time. The draft of part two has been in progress for a while, but this is not it. This is just to talk a little bit about where my head is at right now - which is a pretty good place - with some relation to that topic.

My birthday was a few days ago and now I am 26. Of the last eight years that I’ve “been an adult” I feel as though the last three have been some of the most formative ones. I may not know exactly what I want in the long run, but I have refined a usable philosophy for attacking the things I want to accomplish with my life that is going a long way toward that goal. It’s even pretty simple and breaks down into just a few points.

Take nothing for granted.

In my opinion taking things for granted can be a very easy thing to do for someone like myself who has been well-advantaged for my entire life. Not just in material things but family, good friends, intellect and health. Like anything of value these all require attention and care and an un-selfish attitude to stop from thinking that I am inherently entitled to these things. Through this I can appreciate what it is I really have and come just that much closer to true happiness.

Good things require hard work most of the time and smart work all the time.

While I feel there can be a degree (albeit a small one) of luck in many situations, the fact of the matter is that actions are what count most. But I don’t subscribe to the idea that all good things come from hard work. Rather I try to work hard at working smart. Patience is the key virtue here I feel. If more care is taken while planning great things, more productive work is the result, but that requires an individual (or organization) have the presence of mind to go about things in a thoughtful way that guarantees success, rather than initiating a flurry of activity that is likely to not be the best possible plan.

Don’t force focus; focus on what moves you.

This one I will admit is something that I think works best for me because of my personality… Being honest I think that one of my real strengths is in the fact that I have a very large breadth of knowledge and interests. I definitely have quite a bit of depth in certain things (computer science and music for example) but even in those huge fields I tend to study a wide range of topics rather than specializing in a few things. Some people might not consider this wise and I admit it doesn’t work for everyone; we all have different ways of doing things. For me I consider it a huge strength because I rely on it to see topics from many different angles.

That said, I’m like that because I’m honest with myself about if I’m enjoying whatever it is that I’m doing. Simply put I study, work and participate in the areas that are most interesting to me at present time and rarely force myself to focus on a topic if it stops becoming enjoyable just because I may have been working on it for.. however long I may have been working on it. Chances are that it will become interesting to me again and in the future I’ll turn to it once more, but then armed with all of my additional experiences and things I’ve learned since.

…but you need to be able to know what you want to concentrate on.

Everything I said above about letting my interests take me wherever they may doesn’t mean I go around life without a game plan though. I do spent a good deal of time thinking about the big picture and how all the little things I’m interested in fit in the grand scheme of things. This sort of planning is essential for me to stay productive and for me to keep myself in check; making sure that I’m always working toward my goals.

Some concentration needs to be forced occasionally then, if only to ask myself, “Is this really furthering to me toward goal x?” Balancing the whims of the present self against the long-term outcome is a critical aspect of all successful people I think. (Of course, you can go a little crazy with this notion as well and I’m definitely not advocating that.)

Always look at the world with wonder.

I mean this not in the sense of a yokel, but of someone who is not jaded to the truly amazing aspects of our universe. Appreciate that which deserves appreciation. In some ways this goes back to my first point of not taking things for granted. If I can continually look at things with fresh eyes I keep thinking about things from different perspectives. It’s said that the wise listen first and talk second. I think this should be applied to how we see things outside ourselves as well. Listen to everything around you and become enlightened.

All that said I have felt a sense of productivity and clarity about the things I’m working on lately that is just fantastic. I think it’s sort of a long-term form of tunnel vision. I sometimes experience that sort of complete concentration while working where I slip into the zone or the groove or whatever you want to call it and time seems to lose meaning as I accomplish things that might take me days if I wasn’t in that state of mind. This feels like that but at a higher level; almost in the background. Needless to say I’m taking advantage of it while it’s here!

So at 26 it’s nice to see that while I’ve definitely made mistakes along they way I actually do seem to be in control of my destiny for the most part. I know there are times when it can feel like you’re just going through the motions but when that moment of clarity comes where you snap out of it and realize that you have the ability to do the great things that you want… Well, it’s liberating.

Today will be the first day in more than two weeks that I don’t spend the majority of the day working. I need this. But at the same time, I am feeling a little lost as to what I should do with the day.

I just spent a week at my company’s Durham, NC office. It was an intense amount of work and learning but it was fun. Times like that are good examples of the sort of thing I like about my company. You sit down with a bunch of other smart people and you talk about stuff that interests you. At the base level that’s what it’s all about.

Now that I’m back my head is full of thoughts and ideas of things to work on, but I’m mentally drained at this point and I know I need some time to decompress. There are a million things I should or could do… But you know what, being able to let go and not choose is feeling pretty relaxing right now so I’ll just ride this weekend out and see where it takes me.

Beautiful looping performance by Priscilla Ahn.