free at last

So first a little housekeeping. Sorry I’ve been a little lax on posting things here. Been busy and, besides, microblogging (see Twitter feed) is more up my alley (haiku is my favorite poetry form). On the subject of music, which this post will concern itself with, I should point out a few things:

• My radio show isn’t dead, just been busy. That, and I’m waiting on Mixxx to fix the bug with my microphone so I can use voice over. But that’s really an excuse. I’ve been planning on doing another show, for weeks. So I have lots of fodder for it. Also been thinking about doing a noise show.
• This year, my friend Jon 7 aka President Blair who runs the Timetheory netlabel and subsequently released my first noise album as Brownian Motion, started a project called The ERNIE 4 and played a couple local shows. In the spirit of Future Sound Of London’s “ISDN,” we did a little “tour” via Icecast. As the year is drawing to a close, we should be releasing the archives of this year’s tour soon. Keep an eye out.
• Also keep an eye out for the second Brownian Motion, More Culture Than A Pint Of Probiotics, soon to come from Bleak netlabel.
• The biggest show The ERNIE 4 had the delight in playing was with noisers from across the country at the 2011 Eugene Noise Fest. It was a lot of fun and we had an opportunity to test out some new equipment which worked out really well. We released the rather short set for free which you can find here.

On that latter point, I had finally decided to put Linux on my G4 Mac. It worked, but I wasn’t totally satisfied. After mucking around with it quite a bit, I realized how I could make an old Thinkpad R60 do the trick. Merely days before. I got Lubuntu, JACK, Pure Data, JACK-Rack, Patchage, and a bunch of LADSPA plugins set up. I brought a contact mic along for fun. The flexibility it offered, especially via Jack, was awesome. Best of all, Patchage made virtual cabling super easy. I was able to run multiple inputs any which way I want. Through this process, I got Jon interested in pd and he used it, too.

The more I contemplated this the more excited I got: I had a completely free system. By this I mean not that I got the computer without cost (this is not about money), but that my entire set up, down to the operating system, was entirely open source. Free for anyone to investigate, distribute and modify. Why is this important?

There’s a reason why I’m so adamant about Creative Commons licensing with my work (including my radio show). It’s the same reason why I’m so adamant about using freeware. I don’t believe information should be “owned.” It’s like Monsanto trying to patent DNA. There is only one goal from this– greed. Music should be about your passion to make it. Not greed. If you want to be greedy, go be an investment banker. I do believe that artists deserve recognition for their works and I do believe that artists have the right to profit from their works, even make lots of money from them. When you make it only about profit, however, then you are, in my opinion, not art, you are simply another commercial juggernaut. Go make jingles for McDonald’s.

There is that phrase: if you love something, set it free.

Meanwhile, I became a member of Hal McGee‘s Contact Group of Homemade Experimental Electronic Music and Noise on Facebook. I missed an option to add a track to his recent compilation series of 60 second tracks. In the process of discussing this and lamenting that there were some missed opportunities, it was brought up that the group was about the free change of ideas, not about the compilation. The gauntlet was thrown down.

So I picked it up and offered an idea of my own: a free electronics compilation. Made with free software, distributed in a free format, with a free license, offered through a free host, and released for free. By all of those except the latter, I meant free as in speech, not beer (i.e. not about money). This led to some lively discussion and ultimately some decisions were made:

• Contributions are open. Anyone, Contact Group member or not, can contribute.
• There are no limits on genre or genres. Doesn’t just have to be noise.
• There are no limits on time. Doesn’t have to be 60 seconds. It can be. Doesn’t have to.
• Deadline is January 1. February 1.
• Release will be offered through Bandcamp (technically not free, but their API is freely available). Reason is that we can offer it for “name your own price”which means it’s free as in beer if you want it to be, but if you want to contribute, great. The money will be equally split between all the software projects used.
• More specifically, it will be released on my own Bandcamp page under the “Brownian eMotions” label. Cuz it’s funny.
• Must use free software.
• Must use a free format. MP3 is not free and, besides, we need lossless to make Bandcamp work. I highly recommend FLAC because it is free and lossless and compressed, which makes distribution easier. Other alternatives are WAV and AIFF, but they were originally proprietary formats developed by IBM/Microsoft and Apple, respectively. In general, these should not have licenses or patents, but there are some patents on some extensions, so it may be difficult to be certain that you’re using a free version. FLAC is definitively free.
• Contributions can be made available any which way you want: file sharing services, email, etc. Leave a comment here with how you’d like to do it and I’ll email you back with the necessary information.
• Remember, this is free as in speech. Open source. We’re not talking about price. If you stole Fruityloops off of some Torrent site, that’s not the free we’re talking about.
• It is highly preferable, but not necessary, to use a free operating system. Windows and OS X are not free.
• Also preferable, but not necessary, is the use of open source hardware. If you want to use your guitar, go for it. But if you want to make an electronics project out of this, knock yourself out.
• For many people, this will be a dramatic change. It’s meant to challenge you. Try something new. I WILL be happy to answer technical questions.
• All tracks will be licensed with a by-nc-sa license which allows users to remix and share the track given that re-use or re-distribution is non-commercial, that the original is attributed, and that the new work or distribution is similarly licensed.

That being said, we already have some takers. As I hear from more people I will add them to this list. Here goes:

1. Travis Johnson (track received)
2. Jack Hertz
3. Nuno Maltez
4. Ronny Wærnes (track received)
5. Post-Avantist (track received)
6. Herv
7. Halluciphile (track received)
8. Antiquematter
9. President Blair (track received)
10. The Cheshire Dragon (track received)
11. Centrescape
    
12. Ganglion Cyst (track received)
13. Hobo Liked Gnomix (track received)
14. hiyohiyoipseniyo (track received)
15. Astrometria (track received)
16. Hollywood Video Game Kill-Bot (track received)
17. d0x10 (track received)
18. Lackthrow
19. RJ Myato
    
20. I Died (track received)
    
21. John Dunlap (track received)
22. Nick Bailey (track received)
23. Elizabeth Veldon (track received)
24. Pulsewidth (track received)
25. Carl Kruger (track received)
26. Somnaphon (track received)
27. The Implicit Order (track received)
28. Shaun Sandor (track received)
29. Marax (track received)
30. The Last Thing I Said To You Was (track received)
31. Loopool (track received)
32. noish (track received)
33. Jukka-Pekka Kervinen (track received)
34. Arvo Zylo (track received)
35. Brownian Motion (track received)
36. The ERNIE 4 (track received)
    
37. Precocious Mouse

So get out there, make some noise, and spread the word. Bonus points if your piece is on the subject of freedom 🙂

P.S. This post has been done by email so if it sucks, blame WordPress. 🙂

Update 29 December 2011: make sure to read the comments for some further clarifications.

Update 2 February 2012: A few loose ends left in bold. Revised to include all previous candidate contributors. I struckout the ones who either I lost contact with or who said that for whatever reason they couldn’t contribute. This is mostly for my own desire to document. There may be a volume 2 and 3… Meanwhile, expect this out relatively soon. I’m aiming for mid-February, probably consistent with the release of the new Brownian Motion.

Update 14 Febuary 2012: Come get it!

 

Do Windows without getting your hands dirty

If this picture doesn’t make sense, it’s my 32-bit PPC Mac running near-native speeds on an Intel virtual machine of Windows 7 Professional 64-bit through the Internet. If the reason or the methodology isn’t apparent, read on.

 

starry bike

Speaking of intersections between art and bike, I stumbled across this glorious rendition of Vincent Van Gogh’s iconic “Starry Night” painted by Darren Wheeler of 2Wheeler Customs on a KirkLee carbon fiber frame. The attention to detail is remarkable and does no injustice to the masterpiece. If I read correctly, the thing is made up of 36 layers of clearcoated hand paintings. In my mind, that’s no small undertaking for a piece of fine art on canvas, so it goes without saying it’s pretty impressive for a bicycle coating. It should go without saying that it took the award for best paint at the 2011 North American Handmade Bicycle Show. I bet Pegoretti is fuming.

 

flying while standing still

My lovely wife, Christina Lapchynski, has been an artist since she was a little kid. She recently decided to go to school to study. One of her classes, on 3-D design, has been challenging her to try new media. Her unique vision continues to shine through despite this difficulty, as you can see in this work, “Flying” which is a static sculpture that has a moving element (the front wheel). In this sense, it not only implies motion but has motion. Please check out (and comment on!) her other works on her new blog, “arousing the inner child.”

As an aside, we went to a show of Kenneth O’Connell‘s work at DIVA recently. Christina was really excited about this because they both work with Copic markers. When we were there, we bumped into ex-customer service guy Hugh Larkin & his wife Sandy (who has some great art herself). Turns out they took one of Ken’s classes on a trip to Italy. Small world! Ken’s stuff is INCREDIBLE, by the way. He takes sketching and elevates it to a whole new level.

 

Little Bike Friday for sale

It’s time to make my daughter a new bike, so I offer this Bike Friday Bantam with 20″ wheels for $975. A new bike like this is worth about $1600 and it’s not seen a ton of use, so it’s a darn good deal for the short-statured, young or old.

 

Virtual bike garage sale, part 3

Hard to believe, but I still have more random parts for sale! This should be the last of it and a lot more than the last couple posts.

 

Virtual bike garage sale, part 2

So continues the aforementioned garage sale…

 

Get a Bike Friday for less than $500

No kidding, folks. I am offering a barely used seven speed Bike Friday Pocket Metro in size small for a mere $450.

 

Virtual bike garage sale, part 1

One thing that’s great about working in the bike industry is access to bike parts. This is especially true at Bike Friday, or any custom manufacturer, for that matter. The only thing that is not so great is all the left overs you end up with.

Thus, this begins a series of posts of stuff for sale in order to clean out the garage. Here’s the rules: Everything is as is. Assume used unless otherwise noted. I can ship to wherever, but the cost is not included. Payment by PayPal, check, money order, or cash. Contact me here. Happy shopping!

 

Look ma, no grease

I can’t say we’re ready to sell these yet, but we’re close: the long anticipated belt drive tikit. Using the Gates Carbon Belt Drive leaves us a bit limited on gearing so we are inclined to wait until later in the year when the Shimano Alfine 11 speed hub comes out before release.

So the one you’ll see in and around the Gates booth (thanks, Jeff Linder, for delivering it!) at Interbike (now you’re going, right?) has a normal old 8 speed Alfine. I would still buy it, though. There aren’t going to be any road races on it, but it was a usable flatland gear on the high end. So plenty of low 🙂

Another stumbling block for us on the belt drive is how stiff to make the frame so that flex doesn’t result in belt slippage. So we increased the chainstays from 1/2″ to 5/8″ and brought the chainstay bridge closer to the rear wheel for better triangulation. If anything, it’s overbuilt.

Other interesting frame features include some ideas that Rob English has been kicking around. One is the lack of a clip brace (between the rear end and the back of the main frame). Another is the integration of the stand into the seatmast latch. Both of these are for simplicity’s sake, but the former one makes for better function and easier repair of the rear end latch: a clamp on pin. There is also something going on with the latch pins to simplify things, too, which will provide more clearance.

Then there is the cool split seatstay Rob came up with to deal with split seat stays. Because, as I told Juan Díaz Díaz, a regular on the Bike Friday IRC channel, elevated chainstays are so late 80s 😉

Did I mention these bars? I think I found the first flat bars I like. I am stoked about that! They are Civia Colfax 25° bend multiposition bars. All the clearance and compatibility of a flat bar but so much more wrist friendly.

And am I stoked about the bike! I, for one, plan on pushing hard to release it with the 8 speed. All of us were surprised that the gearing really wasn’t that bad after all. But if you want to be on the list for the official release, get in touch.

Oh and we’re looking for good names. I like Traffic tikit. In typical Bike Friday fashion, it’s a play on words. The Season tikit is a great commuter but this is the übercommuter and in that sense, it really conquers the traffic. What do you think?

UPDATE 15 February 2011: As I’m sure you all know, it’s out now. We opted to give it a relatively lame name, in my opinion, but at least it tells you what it is: Carbon Drive tikit. At the time of writing (yes, I realize this differs from the link above), the 11 speed is $3175 and the 8 speed is $2595. Please note that the use of Phil Wood belt drive cogs allows us to get reasonable gearing with the 8 speed. You also might note the special offer on a Phil Wood hub upgrade..