Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Ok, so you’ve been to the concert where somebody is just sitting typing on a laptop. And for all you know, they’re playing a recording and checking their email. I mean, Carl Stone rocks back and forth and so you can tell he’s getting his groove on, but some folks, like me, just sorta sit there and twiddle their thumbs. There’s been all sorts of discussion about how to make the performance aspect more evident so the audience gets some visual stimulation. This guy has the answer. (You must watch the video [10.3 Mb]. I swear it’s accessible to everyone, not just computer music geeks.) I am going to copy him.
Tags: Music, Computer Music

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Goodness gracious, I got a right wing comment on my blog.

I’ve heard it said by leftists that men have no right to have an opinion about abortion. Well, then, what about women unwilling to engage in the procreative act with a man?

Abortion is a constitutional right, but I’ll still address this issue by Issue

Anti-choice people do not care about fetuses

If anti-choice people thought a fetus was a person, then they would never make an exception in case of rape or incest or anything. That wouldn’t matter. A person is a person. When someone miscarried, they would mourn it like a dead child. They don’t. They would have a ritual to name a fetus or otherwise celebrate its conception. This would be a religious celebration. I know of no such Christian celebration.
More than half of conceptions are never born. Is the afterlife overrun with the souls of those who never made it past a few cells?
A fetus, therefore, is only a person when a woman is pregnant by having consensual sex. Pregnancy is thus imposed upon women, if unwanted, as punishment. Women need to keep their bodies under control. If they do something they shouldn’t have, a person may be thrust upon them. If they were attacked or did not consent, then it’s not morally a person. Obviously, this has more to do with controlling women’s sexuality than with fetal people.

Controlling Women’s Sexuality Directly Effects me

If the only allowable sex is in marriage between a man and a woman, well, my life sucks then. Men are just not cute. I appreciate that people have different religious views than I do, but hopefully this is not a theocracy and what I do that doesn’t negatively effect any other person is my own business.

Just cuz I’m a dyke doesn’t mean I’ll never be pregnant

I read a few years ago that there was a gaybe-boom going on. Artificial insemination is all the rage. You can do it at home with a willing donor and a turkey baster. (It’s not the procreative act, but it’s certainly one of them.) I’ve been thinking about having kids. It’s terrible to contemplate, but something could go horribly wrong. I can’t say for certain that I’ll never have an abortion.
I can’t say for certain that I will never date (or whatever) a boy. I mean, people change their minds.
Women sometimes get raped. A small percentage of raped women get pregnant from it. Less than half of reported rapes get prosecuted. If women don’t want to report that they’ve been raped and, when they do, half the time prosecutors don’t think there’s enough evidence to take it to court, how is an exception for rape supposed to work? Weeks later, when she realizes that she’s pregnant, the victim comes forward and says what happened and there’s no evidence? That’s supposed to be in a court hearing? Or would we take her at her word?
Or if she does report it, but the DA decides it’s a case of he-said-she-said. If there’s not enough evidence to convict a rapist, then how could there be enough evidence to terminate a person. Except that a fetus isn’t a person, or the circumstances wouldn’t matter.

People can have opinions on any damn thing they want

I have opinions on lots of things. I have an opinion on how Russia ought to handle its oil companies. I formed it by reading the BBC’s news feed. I could blog about it here and probably only Marek would care. But I have an opinion.
I have zero voice in the matter though. I’m not a Russian. I don’t get to vote in Russia. I will never be in a capacity where I make a decision about a Russian oil company.
Pro-choice means I think women should be empowered to chose how they live their lives and make their own decisions about sex and procreation. If somebody wants to have a baby, great! If somebody wants to terminate, she can do that too. Birth control, fabulous. Dating girls, awesome. Women should control their own bodies. I’m a person, so I get an opinion. I’m a person so I get to control my own body. We live in a free society, so I don’t get to control anybody else’s body. How is that not clear?

Roe Vs Wade Established the idea of a constitutional right to privacy

Pregnancies end all the time. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes on purpose. How it happened is between a woman and her doctor. That’s the descision. I like having a right to privacy and in this era of spyware, homeland security and gigantic data-mining operations, I really don’t want to lose that right. Everyone, possibly preggers or not, has an interest in whether that right stays or gets chucked out. (I would make a joke about babies and bathwater, but it’s in terrible taste.) since it’s clear that anti-choice peopel don’t really care about fetuses, I wonder how much of their politics has to do with maintaining heteronormativity and male domination and how much has to do with the idea of destroying constitutionally-protected privacy rights.

I am a lousy speller

It’s always good to point out a misspelling in a flame, because it shows that you have much better spell checking software than I do. Also, I got an A in spelling when I was in 8th grade, but I failed typing. I hope this is somehow consoling.

Please go counter-protest tomorrow

10 AM Powell and Market. I would be there if I could.
Tags: Pro-choice, Politics

I’ve put up infomration on my iphoto publishing scripts. They modify the outputted webpages from iPhoto and generate my XML feed for my photo library.

I’m thinking of doing an additional XML feed which has all the new pictures on it instead of a link to the new pictures. I’m also thining of including flickr-like tags. But all of that is a lot of work.
anyway, if you use iPhoto or other, similar, web ill-equipped software, these scripts might be handy. I understand you can also find plug-ins for iPhoto. That might work, but it wouldn’t be nearly as helpful at getting me to procrastinate on my thesis.
Tags: iPhoto, XML

Anti Choice rally Saturday in San Francisco

Abortion rights advocates have scheduled a 10 a.m. counterprotest Saturday, beginning at Powell and Market streets, and plan to shadow the Walk for Life demonstrators to the Marina.

You’re from the Bay Area. You’ve protested before. But have you ever counter-protested? It’s a rare opportunity for you to be the counter protesters without having to leave the area!
And, if the anti-choice people (the organizers have also organized anti-queer rallies, those bastards) are successful doing an anti-choice rally in San Francisco, we’re doomed. These folks are all emboldened by the cornonation of Dubya. They think they own the whole country. Well, we’ve got blue neck enclaves, dern it! And we won’t give up without a fight or at least a counter-protest, right?
12 years ago (my how time flies) I was a counter-protester against Operation Rescue. Let me say that marching on the other side of the street as them is a lot less stressful than clinic defense. Marching is kind of fun. Clinic defense is stressful, there’s a constant risk of arrest and of the other side winning, etc. Doing a counter march gives you an excuse Monty Python classics like Every Sperm is Sacred. And if their march is successful, then clinic defense will be the next thing on the agenda, so nipping this in the bud would be a good thing.
Tags: San Francisco, Activism, Pro-choice

The naughty children are very disruptive. You’re really on our side and not theirs because they’re so very mean to you other, good children.

Let’s see. I went to my one class today. I’ve signed up for Braxton’s ensemble, Braxton’s seminar and Colloquium. I successfully enrolled. Whoever designed the enrollment thingee in the student portfolio is an asshole, because it took me like 20 minutes to find it. “Hi, press this button from an on-campus computer or be dropped form the rolls of your university” seems to call out for a prominent link, no?
My out-of-department teacher form last spring is going to send in the paperwork that I should have asked for last spring. *cough* My fault for the insane delay. This is very good, as she no longer works here and I was worried I would have to take another out of department class and I don’t want to write another 20 page paper on anyhting aside form my dern thesis. Speaking of which, I have a draft of chapter 6, which is on the fascinating topics of additive synthesis and modulation techniques including ring modulation, am, fm, phase modulation and the tiniest of blurbs on pulse width modulation. (guess what the m’s in “am” and “fm” stand for.) You too could learn to do all of these things and more in SuperCollider if you want to beta test my book.
When I was in grad school I had to walk to school, through the snow, with a tuba on my back. How do you walk on ice without slipping? I’ve managed to avoid falling (mostly), but I have great fear of falling and hurting my tuba. A friend of mine smashed the screen of his powerbook by slipping on ice. It’s dangerous stuff.
I’ve got Xena back. She’s spen the entire time home hiding in my room. I haven’t seen her at all. She’s not very dog-like for being a dog.
I’ve started adding tags to the bottom of my posts. Part of this is because I’m a proponent of automatic catagorzation through machine-readable xml stuff. (human readable explaination coming) Part of it is because I wabt to see if I can hack the tag system by just inventing my own tags. I think I can, as there exists official tags of both “weblog” and “weblogs.” The stupid non-difference of the plural seems to indicate people just putting up tags willy-nilly and there not yet existing a good algorythm to lump stupid plurals together.
Ok, tags are like “file under” thingees to attach to a post. Tehcnorati scans the blogosphere (gah, what a stupid word, it means “lots o blogs”) looking for tags and then files blog posts under the appropriate tags. So users catagorize their own content. the problem with this, of course, is the meandering pointless post like this one. But I’ll tag it anyway. Doing stupid things with tehcnology is fun. (Yes, I created one with my own handle. Because I’m an egotist, that’s why.)
stupid jet lag
Tags: Celesteh, My Life, Wesleyan, SuperCollider

I’m not a Deaniac or even a democrat. Dean told reporters that he wasn’t a liberal. And he’s not. His healthcare plan was to allow everyone to purchase health insurance. Sadly, this would be an improvement over the current sad state of affairs. And he yelled in a way that recording technology rendered embarassing. His campaign had already fallen apart by then. He wasn’t even a real candidate, he just wanted to make health care an issue. The fact that he got so far without really running a campaign indicates the sorry state of the Democratic primaries.

The Democratic party is still in a sorry state. Democrats and sympathizers end up pushing candidates who aren’t very good just because they’re nobody else. Well, in that spirit, Dean for DNC chair. He’s got a few things going for him. He’s a govenor. They’re better at grand statements and symbolic leadership than fillibuster-prone political-compromising senators. Don’t get me wrong. Senators have their place. That’s in the senate. And Dean understands the internet’s potential in a way unmatched by anyone else aside from Al Gore. (I’m being serious here.) And the kids like Dean. The Democrats need the kids. They need their energy and they need their votes in future elections. If the Democrats don’t reach out to the kids, the kids will all go Green or stop voting. Probably the latter, sadly.
So, for the political power of govenorship, for the internet and for the kids, I say Dean should be DNC chair, unless we can find a southern govenor. We need one of those bad soon. The republicans have one, conviently named Bush.
Tag: Politics

My plane left Oakland at the ungoldy hour of 6:15 AM. I had the fun experience of getting to run to the front of the security line, as my plane was already boarding by the time somebody at United decided maybe they could be bothered to check my bag. You need more than one person to check bags of 8 check-in computer thingees. One person gets confused by touch-screen tehcnology and things fall apart, otherwise.

I went through Chicago. There’s a cool tunnel between terminal B and C with neon flashy lights. Last time I went through it, I was grooving on the messages from the conveyor belts. They announce that you’re at the end of a belt. As you ride from one end to another, you hear the messages phase with each other, the reverb levels change, etc. It’s interesting how sound works in space. Somebody else apparently had the same thought about it because this last time there was rythmic sound installation running. Very well done. I don’t know if it’s new or if it was just turned off last time I was in O’Hare.
When I got to CT, the temperature was 5 degrees. Fahrenheit. That’s -15 C. gah.
Classes start tomorrow. I think I will take Braxton’s ensmble and Braxton’s seminar and that’s it. My advisor has said I can beta test my book on his students. Muahaha.
The hole in the bathroom ceiling is patched by not painted. I finally got all the windows to close last fall, but they’re still single pane. It’s dern cold. I have athlete’s foot (a momento from my trip to Yosemite). My sweetie is nice and cuddly but so so so far away. It might get up to freezing temperature on thursday.
If I missed you over break, I’m very sorry. I wanted to see everybody and I fell way short. I did get a lot of writing done. I’ll be back a few times during the semester, but will probably be writing like crazy, alas. I’ll be back for the summer and then hopefully off to Germany in the fall and then come back a year and a few months from now and enjoy the warm, reasonable weather and avoid places where the high temperature is -15 C and never leave California again, where it’s warm and sunny and I can get hugs from Cola.
Tags: Celesteh, My Life, Sound Installation, Wesleyan

It’s my last day in California. tomorrow, very early, I lave to return to Connecticut to finish my last semester and graduate and never live in connecticut again. I procrastinated on several things this break. For example, I didn’t verify that all the thesis writing I was doing was ok with my advisor until sending email a couple of days ago. I didn’t get documentation that I’ve done my out-of-department course requirement. And I didn’t go to the DMV. My liscence expires February 13th and apparently they don’t want to issue me another liscence with that now 13 year old photo (where has all the time gone?) By the time it expired, the new liscnce, if it had the old photo, would have been from half my life ago. You shouldn’t use pictures of yourself at half your age for an ID unless you are very, very young.

I thought to myself that I’ll just head on in today and get the new photo. Augh, but today is a holiday. Not for Cola who is duitifully working for her civil-rights-leader-ignoring, marget-thatcher-loving company. But for the DMV. And for, coincidentally, The Mississippi Tax Board who are also honoring the birthday of Robert E Lee, or so says their phone message at 601-923-7000. I called it. it’s for real.
Matt LaGoy, always an amusing fellow, has coined a new term: blue neck. This would be the liberal foil to a red neck. I am a blue neck bobo, I admit it. and as such, I would never for a milisecond consider celebrating the birthday of Robert E Lee. Good lord. I want my drivers liscence.

Mitch just reminded me that he got me the domain biodieseldyke.com for my birthday a couple of years ago. and there’s bling for sale at the other end. wow.

i wish i had any sort of memory

I reccomended that people listen to this thing, so I feel compelled to offer an errata.

1. The Buchla did not improve on the Moog. The Buchla predated the Moog. It was built for the San Francisco Tape Music Center and was the world’s first voltage control synthesizer.
2. The SF Tape Music Center did not “close.” It moved to Mills College where it became the Center for Contemporary Music
3. Subotnic did not take the Tape Center’s Buchla to New York. It is still at Mills College.

All these errors were in the first 5 minutes. I am dismayed.
On a further note, pre-programmed patches on digital synthesizer are not an “improvement” over analog modular. grrr.

Update   Ok, the rest of the show is good. And actually, they’re talking about something called the “Buchla Box,” which is not the first Buchla, perhaps. However, the beginning is still a bit misleading.