Lou Reed died today at 71. His music — especially the the four Velvet Underground records — have always been very important to me. (If you must know, not actually always, but starting from the time Liza at Camp Half Moon loaned me Loaded and I listened to it over and over on my Discman.)
When a person dies, the privacy exemptions to the FOIA [(b)(6) and (b)(7)(C)] no longer apply. That means a federal agency like the FBI can produce records that might not have previously been available. Using Muckrock, I’ve requested Lou Reed’s FBI file, which must be filled in 4 weeks but may actually come sooner. When Rich Jones requested Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s FBI file, that came in a week (and just days before Christmas, too).
UPDATE: on November 1 I got a response from the FBI saying there were no responsive documents. I find that hard to believe, but have no choice… unless I want to start rumors that they were withheld according to 5 USC §552(c) because he was an informant or involved in ongoing crimes or something. Barring that—case closed.
The rainbow lines of BART always appealed to me, and I got an idea this morning to isolate just the lines and turn the colors up to something brighter. I’ll probably use the concept again, but in light of the ongoing strike (and especially in light of yesterday’s fatal accident), I decided to dedicate the first outing to the workers.
I’ve been building IKEA furniture, which means I’ve got a lot of giant empty cardboard boxes sitting around my apartment. It seemed a waste to just throw it out, so I decided to make something out of it.
Here’s my attempt at a model of Sutro Tower made entirely out of cut corrugated cardboard. I’ve got a Dogme-like aversion to the use of adhesives or measuring devices, fueled in part by the fact that I don’t have any. Still, it sticks together pretty well, and is very sturdy, if a bit perpetually askew.
I haven’t ripped a CD in a long time, so tonight when I had occasion to, I was at a loss for the right method. I used to rip CDs mostly on a computer that runs Ubuntu, but I no longer have an external optical drive, so I was stuck using my Mac. Here are my (loose) requirements:
No iTunes. I’m sure they’ve improved the ripping and encoding process a lot since I last checked, but I just can’t stand using the software.
The rip has to be pretty secure. Truthfully, I don’t really have a way of verifying this paranoia, but I want to at least see a log that shows possible errors.
Output must be lossless, or at least output the lossless step. I want to rip, and then I want to optionally encode, but I don’t want to have the encoder determined by the ripper. FLAC is acceptable, and a mountable disc image is even better.
Finally, I’d prefer a command line interface. And obviously free software.
I looked at a number of options. I used to use rubyripper, which is super paranoid about ripping and checking, but I had a vague recollection that last time I had some compilation issues. Since it’s not in very active development, I decided to keep looking around.
I tried using abcde, which I’ve used before on Ubuntu, and it worked fine but got inconsistent track names. I’m sure this is something I could debug, but I was eager to try other options.
Finally, I settled on XLD. It’s got its own error-checking system, but can also use cdparanoia. It’s built to be easily extensible on the encoder side, so it can output in most any format now and in the future. It’s got a command-line interface and a very subdued GUI. Most importantly, it handled everything I threw at it, including one fairly scratched disc, with no problems.
I moved a month ago, September 1, to a new corner in San Francisco. In two years here, I’ve lived in the Mission, in Noe Valley, in Bernal Heights, in Pacific Heights, and now in Hayes Valley. The picture above is my corner, as photographed by the Google Street View car in April 2011.
Courtesy of OldSF, here’s a photo of the same corner (same angle!) from 1929:
Look at the stairs, across the street on the left side, and how they match with the current construction. And across the street on the right, the building now obscured by a tree but just the same.
Even more exciting to me, from the same site, is the photo from a year earlier, in 1928:
A horse, right there on the street! And look, on this side of the street, on the left, the building is under construction.
San Francisco’s got a lot of interesting history for a relatively new place. It’s nice to feel like I’m part of it.
