Legends of the Sun Pig

I didn’t get the Apple TV for a long time; neither in the sense of “buy” nor “understand”. Certainly here in the Netherlands, where Apple didn’t start selling video content through the iTunes Store until last year, it seemed entirely pointless. Even now in 2012 the selection of films on offer in the Dutch iTunes store is still anemic at best, and the Apple TV is a dubious proposition — if you think of it as the equivalent of the DVD player that sits below your TV.

But that’s not what it’s for.

My first glimpse of understanding came in November last year, when the keynote at Minecon was being streamed live across the internets. Minecraft 1.0 was finally going to be released, and Alex and Fiona were super excited about it. We plugged my old laptop into our big-screen living room TV, and let the kids stay up late so we could all watch the big moment together. But while we were waiting, we watched a couple of videos on YouTube. And afterwards, we left the laptop plugged in for a few days, and the kids watched some more videos.

Turns out there is a place in our life for watching YouTube on the living room TV instead of just on our computer screens. But also: it reminded me of a long-dormant desire to rip all of my DVDs to hard disk and have them available through some kind of media centre interface. I had played around with using a Mac Mini as a media centre before, but there’s something a bit naff about having a computer with a big whopping external hard disk plugged into your TV. Sure, it works, and it gives you all of the power! of a general purpose computer (web browser! games!); but it also gives you all of the downsides (software updates! manual configuration!). A home-built HTPC may be a source of massive geek cred, but in the end it’s just a hack.

That’s where the Apple TV came in. It’s a perfectly silent, tiny device that plugs into an HDMI socket, and provides a lovely interface for streaming video. It has a built-in YouTube “app”; no web browser required. I can rent and watch movies directly from the iTunes store. And best of all, I can use it to stream videos from a computer acting as a media centre — which means that the bulky NAS can be conveniently tucked away out of sight in my office. So I bought an Apple TV in December, and it’s great. Mark Boulton gives a good overview of a similar setup (including his backup options) in his post Backups, Networks and a Digital Home. I haven’t installed aTV Flash on ours, but I might in the future.

But although this setup is groovy, it’s still not what the Apple TV is for.

All of these features are about pulling content to your TV. It assumes that the TV is the important thing, and everything else is a peripheral designed to serve it. It assumes that the living room is where you have your TV, and that’s where you settle in for the evening to watch your shows. This is the paradigm that other consumer-level devices operate in: DVD players, cable TV set-top boxes, game consoles. They are all static boxes designed to complement your TV, and to maintain its supremacy as the core of your home entertainment setup.

The Apple TV looks like just another content box, but that’s camouflage. It’s actually is a secret weapon in disguise. Its purpose is to stand that home entertainment model on its head: to place content at the heart instead of the screen. This is where Airplay comes in. Airplay is all about pushing your content (music, video) to a device (speakers, screen) from wherever you are and whatever you are using, rather than assuming that you are tied to a delivery mechanism (your hifi speakers, your living room TV) and want to pull content towards you.

The “aha!” moment for me came when my parents were visiting us a few weeks ago. We were talking about our trip to see the magician Hans Klok in Carré last summer, and about magic in general. My dad pointed out that Hans Klok’s wine bottles trick is a variation of Tommy Cooper’s classic “bottle, glass” routine. Of course, we fired up the Apple TV and went straight to YouTube to find a clip of it. Cool. My iPad was around as well, and while we were watching clips on the TV, we were also browsing YouTube on the iPad and looking up our other favourite acts. And then, rather than pulling up the next clip on the Apple TV, I used Airplay to push the video from my iPad up onto the TV.

This was the lighbulb moment.

The iPad is the device I’m using. It could just as easily be an iPhone, or my laptop. The TV happens to be nearby. The TV becomes a temporary extension of the device.

Another example: I have a friend round to visit. They want to show me their holiday photos, or a funny video of their cat. They could show me on the screen of their iPhone, or they could just push it up onto the big screen.

Or: I go round to a friend’s house. I have a bunch of music on my iPhone. They have an Airport Express plugged into their hifi, and — boom — I can push my favourite song through their speakers rather than having to plug my phone in to the stereo. If they have an Apple TV box attached to their TV, we can watch any movie I have with me, without futzing about with HDMI cables and adapters, or cursing myself for forgetting to bring the DVD.

As more music and video gets stored in the cloud, this becomes an even more low-friction scenario. I won’t even have to worry about putting music or video onto my iPad to take with me wherever I go, because it’ll be accessible from anywhere with a wireless signal. As flexible screen technology develops, more and more ordinary surfaces will be transformed into displays. Maybe I’ll be able to walk into a café with my iPod, and play a movie onto my table. Maybe I’ll be able to play funny pictures onto your T-shirt.

You know, in the future, when Captain Jean-Luc Picard says “On screen!“, and some random ensign pushes the video from their console up onto the main viewing screen? Airplay.

This is also why I think Apple is not about to produce an actual consumer TV. (Although I may be proved wrong on this very soon.) With Airplay, they have relegated the TV to the status of a peripheral. A very expensive peripheral to be sure, but as Fred Wilson has pointed out, cheap things will be smart, while expensive things will be dumb. Apple likes smart things that you will upgrade every couple of years. A small, cheap Apple TV device that makes any big screen TV smart fits in that category; a 42-inch “smart” TV that will be obsolete in two years, but is too expensive to replace in that timeframe, doesn’t. And any kind of Apple-branded TV definitely would be a high-end, premium, and expensive device.

Apple used to make speakers: remember the iPod Hi-Fi? But they got out of that business. TVs and speakers don’t matter any more. They’re just surfaces through which we push our media. Smart, highly personal devices that control the TVs and speakers — that’s where the real value lies.

It’s not under Settings → Sound. Oh no. That would be far too easy.

Go to Settings → Language & Input → Configure input methods → Settings, and uncheck the Sound on keypress checkbox.

Someone was thinking: “You paid for these sounds. Why on earth would you want to turn them off?”

I read John Lanchester’s book Whoops! Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay the other week. It’s another look at the financial crisis: what exactly the mess is all about, how we got there, and what is being done about it. It’s clear, insightful, and (in places) very funny.

Right in the very first chapter, he makes a point that is going to stick with me: with the the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism, we lost a global counterweight to (certain forms of) greed, corruption, and injustice. The current absurd levels of social inequality in the Anglo-American world can be seen as a result of this. The camp of “greed is good” had won by default, and took a sociopathic twenty-year victory lap:

[…] the population of the west benefited from the existence, the policies, and the example of the socialist bloc. For decades there was the equivalent of an ideological beauty contest between the capitalist west and the communist east, both of them vying to look as if they offered their citizens the better, fairer way of life. The result in the east was oppression; the result in the west was free schooling, universal healthcare, weeks of paid holiday and a consistent, across-the-board rise in opportunities and rights. […]

And then the good guys won, the beauty contest came to an end and so did the decades of western progress in relation to equality and individual rights. In the USA, the median income — the number bang in the middle of the earnings curve — has for workers stayed effectively unchanged since the 1970s, while inequality of income between the top and the bottom has risen sharply. […]

Here’s a way of thinking about the change since the fall of the Wall. One of the most vivid consequences was the abolition of the ban on torture which had previously been a central characteristic of the democratic world’s self-definition. Previously, when the west did bad things, it chose to deny having done them or to do them under the cover of darkness, or to have proxies do them on its behalf. Corrupt regimes linked to the west might commit crimes such as torture and imprisonment without due process, but when the crimes came to light, the relevant governments did everything they could to deny and cover up the charges — the crimes were considered to be shameful things. With the end of the ideological beauty contest, that changed. Consider the issue of waterboarding. At the Nuremberg tribunals it was an indictable offence: a Japanese officer, Yukio Osano, was sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labour for waterboarding a US civilian. During the Vietnam war, US forces would occasionally use waterboarding — but when they were found out, there was a scandal. In January 1968 the Washington Post ran a photograph of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese captive: there was uproar and he was court-martialled. With the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the ‘war on terror’, waterboarding became an explicitly endorsed tool of US security. (And of British security too, by extension.) At a time when the democratic world was preoccupied by demonstrating its moral superiority to the communist bloc, that would never have happened.

The same goes for the way in which the financial sector was allowed to run out of control. […] [I]t was the first moment when capitalism was unthreatened as the world’s dominant political-economic system. Under those circumstances, it could have been predicted that the financial sector, which presides over the operation of capitalism, should be in a position to begin rewarding itself with a disproportionate piece of the economic pie. There was no global antagonist to point at and jeer at the rise in the number and size of the fat cats; there was no embarrassment about allowing the rich to get so much richer so very quickly. […]

I hope that movements like Occupy can bring about change from within.

My parents are visiting this weekend, and earlier today we went out for a delightful brunch at Hotel Akersloot. We were talking about societal and technological progress, and I was struck by an interesting date calculation. We moved to the Netherlands (for the first time) in 1978, which is half-way between the end of the Second World War and Right Now. 33 years from the autumn of 1945 to the autumn of 1978, and another 33 (and a bit) years from 1978 to January 2012.

Which is kind of, wow. Huge changes in both of those periods, but it feels to me that the years from 1945 – 1978 were more significant. Perhaps that’s because I wasn’t around to experience the changes first-hand; things I have seen and events I have watched myself seem more ordinary than events I’ve only read about in historical records.

But I suppose that when Alex and Fiona are my age, and compare the period 1978 – 2012 to the decades they will have lived through, they will think that those years were more significant: the fall of the Soviet Union, the unification of Europe, the dawn of the internet and instant, universal access to information.

Interesting times. I wonder what comes next?

Further reading:

• Charlie Stross – World building 301: some projections
• Charlie Stross – World building 302: psychology, beliefs, and other times
• Charlie Stross – World building 404: The unknown unknowns

Many sites are going to go dark tomorrow (18 January 2012) in protest of the SOPA and PIPA bills currently before US congress. I’m helping Making Light do this, and I thought I’d make a quick note of how we’re going about it.

Google recommends using HTTP 503 “Service Unavailable” status codes. The 503 code indicates that the service (or page, or site) is temporarily unavailable, but that it is expected back again soon. This is better than using the 404 (not found), 302 (
moved temporarily), or 301 (moved permanently) codes, because it tells web crawlers that they should just come back and try again later.

If your site is running on Apache, and is allowed to use mod_rewrite, you can set up a site-wide 503 page with the following steps:

1. Create an HTML page called 503.html, and upload it in the root of your site. This is just a normal HTML page – no special code needed. Here’s an example: 503_sopa.html
2. If you don’t already have an .htaccess file for your site, create one (it also goes in the root of your site). If you do already have one, add the following code to the top of the file, but read the notes before you do so:

# =====================
# SOPA Blackout 
# =====================

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
# Set a custom error document for 503 errors
ErrorDocument 503 /503_sopa.html

# Cause all requests (except images) to generate a 503 error,
# which will produce the custom 503 error document
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} !=503
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^111\.111\.111\.111$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(jpe?g?|png|gif) [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !robots\.txt$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [L,R=503]
</IfModule>

Important notes on this snippet:

• The “REMOTE_HOST” line contains an IP address that will be excluded from the blackout rules. Change the IP address listed (111.111.111.111) to your own. This will allow you to keep using your site (and its back-end features, like Movable Type or WordPress), but everyone else will just see the 503 page. If you want to preserve access to your site from multiple IP addresses, you can add multiple REMOTE_HOST lines.
• The first “REQUEST_URI” line contains exceptions for image files. If you want to serve up an image as part of your 503 file, you need this line, otherwise images will return 503 errors as well. If you don’t need an image, or if you are using images hosted elsewhere, you can remove this line.
• The second “REQUEST_URI” line ensures that the file robots.txt on your site will be served up normally, without a 503 error.

When you want to restore access to your site, simply remove the code from your .htaccess file, and you’ll be back to normal again.

Update: Matthew Batchelder has a nifty update that uses mod_rewrite date conditions to automatically switch on the 503 redirect rule on 18th January 2011: Preparing a Site for SOPA Blackout with .htaccess

I have two modes of listening to music: whole-album, and best-of. Sometimes I like to listen to a whole album, all the way through, again and again. And sometimes I like to listen to a random selection of my favourite tunes on shuffle.

My iTunes library is organized accordingly. When I download a new album, I create a new playlist for it, using the year in which I bought it, the band name, and album title (e.g. “2011 Aberfeldy Somewhere To Jump From”). I add metadata to the comments to keep track of where I got it from, and the exact date on which I added it (e.g. “sunpig:acquired=20110206;sunpig:source=emusic.com”). Finally, I use iTunes’ star ratings to rate individual tracks. Slightly obsessive, but I like the way it gives me a view of what I was listening to in a given year. (iTunes doesn’t track listens by date–I wish it did–but I’m guessing that at least 80% of my listens happen in a 6-month period after initial acquisition.)

According to my library, I bought 76 albums in 2011. (For comparison: 2005 = 87, 2006 = 71, 2007 = 81, 2008 = 73, 2009 = 59, 2010 = 57.) Of those 76, there were 20 that I had played all the way through at last 10 times at the end of the year. (Technically: I have listened to each individual track on the album at least 10 times, but that’s a good enough metric for me.) Here’s the list, sorted alphabetically by artist.

• Aberfeldy – Somewhere To Jump From

  Another delightful album from Aberfeldy. Light melodic pop drifting from humorous to melancholy with practiced ease. I’ve never come across an album with closing credits before. They’re quirky and uniquely fitting. Don’t you go changing.

• Battles – Gloss Drop

  More accessible, and more consistent than their first album Mirrored. A fantastic mix of experimental rhythms and furious driving beats. Video: “My Machines” feat. Gary Numan.

• Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee Part Two

  I was disappointed at first that there wasn’t anything on the album quite as catchy as the lead single “Make Some Noise,” but it definitely grew on me. Fun and funky.

• Bibio – Mind Bokeh

  One of my favourite tracks of the whole year is “Anything New”, which is distilled summer in a crystal goblet. A couple of other up-tempo moments punctuate a chilled-out ambient soundscape.

• Big Moves – In the Beginning

  My favourite band discovery of the year. Big Moves are an indie band from Los Angeles. This album has a playful yet very precise sound that reminds me a lot of the Long Blondes – especially singer Jess Imme’s vocals on “Brontosaurus” – but with a generous helping of jazzy meanderings (“Blue Rose”). Video: “Stegosaurus”.

• Big Moves – Lanterns EP

  One bored afternoon in October I was browsing Last.fm for some new music recommendations. Big Moves came up, I followed the link to Youtube, and watched the video for “Groundbreaking Studies“. Then I watched it again. And again. And again. How can a song this good still only have less than 2000 views on it? The song is lush, energetic, and exuberant. The band takes the jazzy indie rock style they displayed on In The Beginning and turns it up to 11. It’s awesome. The rest of the EP is fantastic as well.

• Cee Lo Green – The Lady Killer

  Of all the albums in this list, this is the only one I don’t listen to any more. I loved it at the start of the year, but now it bores me.

• Dananananaykroyd – There Is A Way

  Just amazing, as I have mentioned before. Video: “Muscle Memory”

• Foo Fighters – Wasting Light

  Great solid rock. The Foo Fighters on top form. The video for “Walk” is a neat spoof of Falling Down.

• Friendly Fires – Pala

  I loved Friendly Fires’ first album, and Pala is a great follow-up. Steamy and smooth tropical dance sounds. After seeing their performance at T In The Park on the BBC, I was really looking forward to catching them live at Melkweg in December, but they had to cancel. Sad Panda. Weird video: “Hurting”

• Frightened Rabbit – The Winter Of Mixed Drinks

  I somehow missed out on Frightened Rabbit’s second album The Midnight Organ Fight, so my baseline was their debut, Sings The Greys, which is a fairly subdued, moody affair. They have taken that moody, slightly folky feel, and turned up the power. This album is exultantly alive with anthems like “The Loneliness And The Scream” and “Living In Colour“. These guys are now on my “must-see-live” list.

• Grand State Valley University New Music Ensemble – Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians

  I went through a bit of a Steve Reich phase in the spring, after noticing the World Minimal Music Festival just after it was over. Must not make that mistake again next year. The GSVU version of Music for 18 Musicians is crisp and clear and glorious. Trailer video.

• Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

  Vast, sprawling, lush. Classic Mogwai.

• Sky Larkin – Kaleide

  Last.fm recommended Sky Larkin to me based on similarity to Dananananaykroyd. I didn’t see at at first, because their vocal styles are so radically different, but the rest of their music shares a lot of common themes: heavy rock-infused pop, with unorthodox song structures. Kaleide is a rich and complex album, and my favourite tracks have shifted around a lot since I started listening to it. For now, I’ve settled on liking “ATM” most of all.

• The Decemberists – The King Is Dead

  Unlike the myth-tinged unity of their previous album The Hazards of Love, The King is Dead is “just” a collection of songs. A great collection of beautiful songs, from the peppy REM-ish “Calamity Song” to the sparse, haunting simplicity of “June Hymn.” I caught them live in Paradiso in March, and they were fantastic. Take any opportunity you get to see them.

• The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar

  I wasn’t sure if this album should count for 2011, because it includes most of the same songs as their EP A Balloon Called Moaning, which I listened to a lot in 2010. But it’s too good to leave out. Muscular yet dreamy rock, somewhat reminiscent of Ladytron, but all guitars and no synths. Surprise moment: when I came across their anthem “Cradle” backing a trailer for the new Ratchet & Clank game.

• Tom Waits – Bad As Me

  Brilliant, as always. Video: “Satisfied”.

• Underworld – Barking

  Attaching the word “mature” to techno feels wrong, but that’s what Barking is: practiced, polished, and highly accomplished. Underworld are mainstream now. I still love the album, but it occasionally makes me feel old. Video: “Bird 1”.

• United Fruit – Fault Lines

  I grabbed this because United Fruit were playing support for Dananananaykroyd on their Glasgow gig in October, and it turns out to be an effective hard rock album. They’re good live, too.

• Zoey van Goey – The Cage Was Unlocked All Along

  Interesting that this list starts with Aberfeldy, and ends with Zoey van Goey, because their musical styles are quite similar. Sweet, airy, and melodic pop with excursions into the hauntingly melancholic. Video: “We Don’t Have That Kind Of Bread”.

Notable omission: Aidan Moffat + The Best Ofs – How To Get To Heaven From Scotland. I love this album, and it would have had a higher play count if I’d bought it earlier in the year.