saturn return to sender

A visual representation of how your tax dollars are spent: Death and Taxes. The full graphic is huge, but worth exploring.

(via del.icio.us/popular, Occam’s Razor)

So I’ve noticed that the audio of DVDs I play on Mac OS X’s DVD Player often comes out compressed, and very poorly. Meaning, in this case, compression of dynamic range, not compression of data. Somewhere in the audio chain is a compressor with an obnoxiously long release, and I know the soundtrack designer didn’t want it there, and I want to turn it off. It kills any dialogue, for example, that occurs right after a sound loud enough in the right frequency range to trigger it. This is not cool.

I have not found a preference for it in the application, and google doesn’t seem to know anything about it, either. I’m sort of surprised, because seriously: it’s really annoying and there are movie/home theater geeks far geekier than I whom I’d expect to be throwing all kinds of internet hissy fits. Apple needs to fix this pronto.

I did find a reference to something called “midnight mode” in this FAQ. Sounds like my little overzealous compressor. Now how the heck do I turn it off?

Anyway, I don’t have an answer, but I wanted to provide a word of commiseration for others who may be searching the night for comraderie — for fellowship — in this cold, unfeeling world of unjustly compressed DVD audio. You are not alone.

sky pond + happy hiker

I did manage to pull myself away from the computer earlier this week and this was the result: the world had gone monochrome!

In a distantly related note, I just downloaded Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children. The song Aquarius is playing and orange figures prominently. With this plus the fact that I toted a mattress on the roof of my car this morning at the precise moment the car talk guys played stump the chumps with a caller who invented a mattress spoiler … I’m just saying, is all.

I consider myself a highly patriotic guy and I understand how people can get worked up over the flag being burned. I love my flag. But symbols are personal things, and everyone is free to interpret them however they see fit. For me, a flag that I’m NOT allowed to burn is a symbol that the government is too intrusive in my life. And it’s an insult to anyone who died to defend freedom. But that’s just me. You might prefer your symbols of freedom to have as many restrictions as possible.

- The Dilbert Blog

(via Aaron, via random)