There was a great article in the San Jose Mercury News yesterday about blogging addiction. I’m happy to say that I am not a member of that set. No, I have found that blogging is primarily a form of procrastination. For example, I really need to be writing a 300 word bio for a book called Vesage that my Legotar will be in. Instead I’m doing this.

So, I have a new strategy. I have stolen a gift that my son gave to my wife for her birthday last year. Shown in the image to the left, it has inscribed on it, “IT’S A 2X4. YOU CAN WHACK DAD WITH IT!” Leaving aside the supposed necessity of this gift, I’m “borrowing” it and putting it on my desk as a gentle reminder that I need to get real work done.

With the exception of KFOG and KUFX, 100% of my audio and visual media is now digital. The promise of the digital age has been delivered in my house and my car.

And it sucks.

Given the choice, I would not trade off the analog artifacts for the digital artifacts, but alas I would have to sacrifice the enormous buffet of content – and what the media lacks in quality it makes up for in volume.

Let’s start with TV. I happen to have DirecTV, but the issue is the same with digital cable. I get a few hundred channels and thank God for Tivo I can navigate my way around them, timeshifting away so I don’t have to tolerate interruptions to my viewing pleasure anymore (like that pesky football game that interrupts all the good Super Bowl commercials – gone!).

Anyway, there are two incredibly BAD artifacts on digital TV. Lossy compression and sloppy encoding lead to constant block artifacts on the screen – I assume this is a combination of DirecTV giving limited bandwidth to the wanky channels I like and a hardware compression solution that is not really optimized for the content. The second artifact is the switching delay. Again because of the compression scheme, it takes a few seconds for the audio and video to assemble when the channel is changed. Remember holding your finger on the channel button on the remote as a kid and seeing the channels flip by? Okay, maybe you don’t, but I do. You could scan all 12 channels in about six seconds. Heaven!

I’ve gotten so used to the channel switching delay that I don’t notice it anymore. Now that I have XM in the car, I get that same switching delay experience when I’m driving.

Until yesterday.

I was listening to KFOG and punched the button to listen to KFOX. BAM! No delay! I was amazed. Like smelling ditto paper, I was transformed back to my youth. Sensory memories kicked in, and the days of analog radio enveloped me. I started hitting the steering wheel button that goes to the next programmed radio station. BAM BAM BAM! New station new station new station no gaps. Ahhhh.

I fear digital radio.

Get off your butt and get to New York. The Cristo and Jeanne-Claude installation ‘The Gates’ is only there from February 12th to the 27th. Sarah and I had the pleasure of joining the Montalvo Arts Center tour this weekend. I took 180 photographs, but I’m only going to share a few of my favorites here. The artists state that "the art does not mean anything," which many New Yorkers agree with wholeheartedly. Nonetheless, the experience is wonderful – you can choose to layer meaning onto it or simply enjoy the spectacle of it.

We were fortunate to have a day with seemingly infinite visibility. The winter trees gave a stark gray contrast to the vivid orange of the gates and the bright blue sky.

We understood from a volunteer that by 2pm on Sunday over two million people had visited the park that day. The paths were quite crowded, but everyone was friendly and having a great time.

About the pictures: the top picture was shot early in the day (thus the great angle with the sun so low). It’s my favorite, and took the pressure off for the rest of the day. The second picture (first on the left) I like because of the different angles and altitudes of the gates, along with the gray trees. The third is a time exposure on Sunday night – I would have liked to have been farther into the park, but it was pouring rain. The final picture was also taken at night in the rain, this time looking straight up – this one has a very organic feel to it, as if it’s in the ocean. The fabric is glistening because of the rain. I love using a flash outdoors at night – they only light locally so the background always disappears into black.

I’ve had knee surgery twice now, once in 2003 to replace my ACL, and then in 2004 because I tore the meniscus again. Rather than a toothbrush and floss like my dentist gives me, my doctor handed me a CD with stills and video from the procedure. If you have a strong stomach and strong curiosity it’s great TV.  The image on the right is my meniscus with the rotary saw. Click here to download the video (3.3Mb). Watch the torn piece get shredded and swallowed by the mean probe! (The vertical ligament you see on the right side is my new ACL, once the Achilles’ Tendon of a cadaver.)

Anheuser-Busch has decided not to run a “controversial” ad during the Super Bowl, but instead to launch it just on their web site. Personally, I think they’re really wimping out, as the commercial, called “Wardrobe Malfunction,” is as tame as they get. But I love their quote in USA Today:

“Our beer drinkers tell us we shouldn’t overreact to the media scrutiny, but we have to live in this world.”

I think every corporate PR missive should be required to start with, “Our beer drinkers tell us…”