Just……..in………credible!
Dell XPS 18 review
Two days ago I received my 500GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD and did the upgrade to my beloved Dell XPS 18: let me tell you, it’s better than I could’ve ever imagined! My machine came with the i5-4210U, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB spinning hard drive which I now replaced. Even in its original configuration it was pretty sweet, but now it’s the snappiest machine I’ve ever owned. It’ll boot from being off in 2 seconds after the BIOS screen, browsers (IE or Firefox) open up instantly, searching is blazing fast! One 4GB DIMM is soldered on the motherboard, but the second one I replaced with an 8GB stick for a total of 12GB, the maximum this machine can handle and plenty for what I do.
My primary purpose for it was to read music on gigs; the typical iPad or other 10″ tablet is just so damn small, really barely big enough to display one page at a time, and although it’s mighty handy to be able to carry so much music in such a small form factor, I had always longed for something more. The Dell delivers in spades: it shows two pages BEAUTIFULLY, with room to spare on both sides. I recommend Sumatra PDF for a reader on a touch screen computer because you can open multiple charts at the same time, and do a two-finger tap on the one you need to go full screen. Try it! The Real Book PDFs fly on this thing, and when you properly index any collection of PDFs, standard Windows search (hit the Windows key and just start typing the name!) works instantly. The battery lasts 6 hours, long enough for just about any gig, and it sits on a music stand just fine. Added bonus: it runs Sibelius or Finale perfectly so if you need to make adjustments to a piece of music at rehearsal you can do it. I use the former, and it’s not exactly optimized for touch, but does work. Better is to just bring a mouse….
Speaking of input devices: the bundled ones are not bad actually. They’re made by Logitech and even though lots of reviewers think they are Bluetooth devices, they are not. Inside there is an extra hidden USB port with a Unifying Receiver plugged in, so any modern Logitech device can pair! Opening the unit is quite easy actually, just requiring a T8 torx bit, and one could put a Microsoft receiver in there instead if desired. There are two more USB 3 ports on the side and of course Bluetooth as well, so connectivity is excellent.
The screen is a 1080P IPS panel with an excellent picture, and full 10-point touch, which works well. At first it’s a little overwhelming, but you get used to using it as a tablet quite quickly actually! The built-in feet allow it to stand in two different ways: upright in landscape mode, and also at a much slighter incline, almost like an audio mixer. I use Cakewalk Sonar X3 for my audio recording and it fully supports touch. I haven’t used it that much yet, but this setup enables a hands-on mixing workflow that is very intriguing……..
That brings me to the second thing I was hoping to do with the Dell: running Ableton Live 9. So far I had always brought a laptop to gigs for this purpose, but I always needed another stand or table to put it on. The XPS 18 sits perfectly on my music stand which I bring anyway, allowing me to easily put it wherever I need it. One USB cable to my Kronos and I have a full-fledged rig, because it uses the Korg as an audio interface! I can’t tell you how amazingly well this combo runs, it’s truly a joy. No cut down iOS nonsense, the real deal! I’ve thrown the biggest Ableton projects at it, and even with the original spinning HD it worked fine, now with the SSD it’s smoking.
In addition to the 2.5″ drive bay, there’s a spot for an M.2 SSD as well, and I’ve ordered a 250GB one to put in there. For now I’ve been running the Ableton projects off a 32GB microSD card believe it or not, but this will complete the system with some of the highest performing storage out there. It’s still hard to believe that you can get this kind of machine in such a form factor. It’s easy to work on, really well built (by Foxconn I believe, who build iPads too), and comes with excellent, “Next Business Day” in-home warranty. Truly spectacular………
Neurosynaptic Chip
“Holistic Computing Intelligence” they call it at IBM, the combination of traditional linear, analytical processing, combined with Neurosynaptic chips adressing senses and pattern recognition. You see, old-fashioned computers use an insane amount of power for tasks that the human brain for instance can do almost effortlessly, like recognizing someone’s face, even when it’s not exactly like you’ve seen it before. Our brains can instantly ‘connect the dots’ if you will, spot the parts that are recognizable, throw away the parts that aren’t and then draw the conclusion. Emulating that process, which takes place in what’s called a “Neural Network” in software has shown great promise, but now we’re moving into an era in which the actual structure, the framework, will be built in hardware.
The SyNAPSE chip which was introduced 08_07_2014 is a major step in that direction; it contains the equivalent of 1 million neurons and 256 million synapses, or as some say, about the complexity of the brain of a bee! That doesn’t sound like much, but as we all know, technology moves fast and increases in complexity exponentially. The craziest part is that at full operational speed it only consumes 70 mW. That’s milli-Watts or 1000th of a Watt! A typical Intel i3 chip can draw as much as 60W, or a thousand times as much, without getting close to being able to simulate that kind of complexity. A human brain contains about 100 billion neurons, so we’re a factor 100,000 away, but when you realize that in 2011 IBM was making chips with only 256 you can imagine where we’re going. A mouse has 71 million and that’s a reasonably complex animal, isn’t it?
There’s so much talk about Artificial Intelligence these days, and a lot of ‘information’ and opinion being spread by people who really have very little if any understanding of the matter. One of the biggest holes in the arguments I often hear is that a machine can never be as complex and unpredictable as a human because everything it does is ‘programmed’; this almost always comes from people who have never even programmed anything, yet they feel very confident in their opinion! The truth seems to be that what we see as such typical biological traits comes from sufficient complexity of just about any system. Think about your PC: does it do always exactly what you tell it to? No way! Sometimes it behaves unexpectedly, due to the synergy of its components, in ways that nobody who designed the individual parts planned, or even could have foreseen. And that’s with traditional linear machines! Imagine what happens if we start building them in electrical versions of the way we’re built. Then comes the question: “will those machines believe in God?” Most asking it will immediately answer it themselves with a resolute “of course not!”, but the answer is actually “quite possibly so!” We’ve already seen complex enough simulations of neural networks exhibiting emotional behavior, and that’s no lie. In addition, we must remember that such systems are not programmed in the traditional sense of the word; a much better description would be that they are taught just like children, which means that sometimes they will not do what they were ‘instructed’ to do.
I don’t think we can overestimate the importance of this development, as I promise it will change our world even more than we can imagine. It’s not simple material, and it requires a really open mind. We MUST hypothesize what will happen if we build a machine that is as complex and capable as a human, and then what happens when it’s 1000 times as smart as the smartest human. We MUST speculate on the effects of a conscious machine.
The Choir: Military Wives (Updated!)
It’s summer so in Holland it’s time for “Zomergasten”, an iconic yearly TV show, which is perhaps my favorite thing on this medium anywhere. Presented by a different host every year, it has only one guest who, for the three hours the program lasts, has total freedom to discuss any topic, tell any story or share any observation, while showing video clips from any movie/TV show/documentary he wants. Mind you, there are no commercial interruptions! This years presenter is Wilfried de Jong, a very smart and truly interested person, and the first guest was none other than Freek de Jonge, a living legend in the Netherlands. A true artist, de Jonge discusses many many interesting topics and makes it clear that he’s as free as a human can be in this day and age: his one-man theater shows are completely and utterly uncompromised, not by commerce, nor the desire to be liked by everyone which plagues so many these days.
In this 180 minute journey, we see a young Charlie Chaplin, discovering his talents in a time when close-up shots had not even been considered yet! We witness the most unbelievable put by Tiger Woods: the movement of the ball includes what looks like about a 90 degree turn, and then a teetering on the edge of the hole for literally seconds before it seems like the growing roar of the crowd provides the last little push it needs to go in. There are many more very interesting parts, but where it really got me was when Freek showed us a few minutes of a British program called The Choir: Military Wives.
It’s the fourth season of a show in which conductor Gareth Malone rounds up groups of people to form a singing group. This is no populist BS though, he works them, but more importantly, literally makes them better people. I’ve said many times the we westerners don’t sing together enough! I haven’t seen the whole show, but in the 5 minutes we got to witness on Zomergasten, at first we see a few dozen women whose husbands are away at war; these are ladies who know each other, but in England there’s not much socializing between folks of different ranks so they don’t know each other well. Also, most are not singers and visibly uncomfortable with the whole situation. In addition, military wives are probably in a similarly rigid system as their husbands, not used to the ‘cutting loose and letting go’ that music begs for.
By the time that they perform in front of prince Charles at Royal Albert Hall (!!!!) their faces have completely changed; I get tears in my eyes writing this, I can see the unity, the peace, the togetherness, the confidence. It’s like they were girls and now they are women. Freek makes some very fascinating observations: “when their husbands come back from the war, they’re going to have a problem!” The women have now far surpassed their partners in this journey of discovery we call life, as the latter have probably regressed in their understanding of balance and happiness. Wives who acted like they had never been listened to have now learned to wield the power of their voices, in the best, most selfless way possible.
One final interesting thing: even though most Dutch public TV shows are watchable online these days, for free by the way, most of the time Zomergasten is not, but this episode was. You know why? Because the restrictions always come due to ‘geographic’ license issues in this over-commercialized world; but true art is not run by money managers! There were no Disney clips, no major network Amercian TV…….. and the result was another perfect example of the potential of this Medium.
UPDATE: found out that the entire three part series can be watched on Youtube in perfectly fine quality! I watched it last night and was so moved……. Choir Director Gareth Malone is quite an interesting character, and at points all his judgements of these women (“they literally have no voice!”) seem quite pretentious and almost vulgar, but then the faces don’t lie and the incredible joy and thankfulness they experience moved me to tears. Wow!
Streaming
The river of nonsense based on misinformation thickens every day! From idiotic videos ‘proving’ that no airplane hit the second tower on 9/11 (2.5 million views ladies and gentlemen!) to diet advice stemming from horribly wrong conclusions drawn from questionable scientific research, we are in danger! You see, humans put a value on information based in large part on how many others they hear state it. We are herd animals after all, and so we follow. Before the information age, in order for you to hear thousands of people say something, a very large percentage of folks directly around you would have to do so. These days, even if only 1% of a population believes something, but they are loud and active, it can seem like everybody believes it.
Here’s something I do know a something about: performance royalties for music. If one were to believe the internet, Spotify is taking advantage of composers and publishers, paying them horribly low amounts. Nothing is further from the truth actually. Two months ago I did an experiment: I signed up for a paid membership for one month, at $10, and then proceeded to put XR7 on loop. In the last few days I’ve been getting my regular payments for that period and they’re actually good: 1.24 cents per play! That means every time ONE person listens to ONE song ONE time, I get paid more than a penny. Contrary to popular belief that is WAY better than any terrestrial radio ever paid! Not all the songs have come through for this period, including The Robot Song, which I played on repeat separately, but already my little experiment has brought in $25, or actually MORE than I paid for my membership. How that is unfair is beyond me……
Now, I don’t know what the pay scale is at Pandora and it probably is worse, but still, whenever these musicians around here bitch about the new model, I want to slap them. They post stuff on FB, about how someone had a million plays but only made $400. Well guess what, if your song plays on a broadcast radio station and is heard by a million people, how much do you think you get paid? This is part of the problem caused by the idiotic price of 99 cents that iTunes has instilled on us. It’s outrageous……..
Jellytime
Now that I’ve made the move to become contract-free, I will also be buying phones at full retail price. I’ve had my HTC Inspire 4G (aka the Desire HD) for more than 2 years, and even though its manufacturer has dropped support for it a LONG time ago it’s turned out to be a great purchase. You see, while it officially never got any newer version than 2.3.6 (=Gingerbread), the geeks out there have pretty much perfected builds of 4.2.2 Jelly Bean on this device! I flashed a ROM called “Jellytime” and now my phone is literally better than ever! It’s got all the newest Google bells and whistles and runs buttery smooth, even after installing all my apps. Can’t believe it, but I really have no need for buying something new until it breaks. The 4.3″ screen is still excellent, mapping flies, it browses nicely, it’s got the newest camera interface. The improvements Google has made in its OS are quite impressive: it’s not often that old hardware will run a newer version better than it ever ran the older one……
At the same time, I’m really glad to see that there are some great low cost new smartphones hitting the market. From Samsung’s Galaxy Ace series (4″ Android for $200 or so) to Nokia’s Lumia 521 (4″ Windows Phone 8 for $150), you can now get a device that does just about everything without breaking the bank. I’m talking full-fledged phones with the newest versions of their respective OSs, just with slightly lower specs. It just seems sillier and sillier to spend the typical $700 for the newest toy, doesn’t it?
Kronos
And there it was: a synthesizer that’s really just a computer, but unlike the insanely large Neko systems, it’s portable and sleek and runs its own OS, based on Linux. I’m talking about the Korg Kronos! Let me tell you, this machine is so far superior compared to even the most expensive Yamahas or Rolands, it’s not even funny! It really is in a class of its own, with 2GB of Ram and a 30GB SSD, with room for an additional drive, right inside! It’s got an 8 inch color touch screen, sliders, knobs, buttons……the 1GB sampled pianos are unrivaled by anything but a regular computer, but there are physical models in there too! Rhodes MkI, MKII and MKV, Wurli 200 and 200A, Hammond B3, Polysix, MS20…..this software is fantastic. No more need to bring a laptop to host Vstis, it’s THAT good.
