Month: September 2011

Artisan

I hate the word artisan as it applies to food. Everyone these days is selling artisan cheese or artisan bread or artisan chocolate. This adjective could be replaced with a blank space and the expectation of what the food is would not change at all. It is common knowledge that the FDA allows companies to abuse food descriptors like ‘natural’, ‘fresh’, ‘organic’, and ‘free range’. Even the word ‘blueberry’ doesn’t mean you are actually eating blueberries. It is past ridiculous.

But that’s not why foods being described as artisan rub me the wrong way. It’s because this is just a way to make your food sound more pretentious. It isn’t akin to the labels of ‘angus’ beef, or ‘applewood’ smoked bacon. These things, while overrated and essentially meaningless, at least actually exist. Angus is a breed of cow (yes, McDonald’s buys them) and applewood is just bacon smoked with wood from apple trees (as opposed to non apple trees). Artisan, however, is just a buzz word that doesn’t even bother pretending to offer a tangible benefit.

Dominos Pizza just introduced a new line of artisan pizza and apparently some people are upset with their use of the word. OMG what are all the honest to goodness food crafters going to do? I’m delighted this is happening because it will clue the public in to the fact that the word is absolutely meaningless. Besides, if people are confusing your gourmet pizza with Dominos because of the qualifying adjective, then you’ve got bigger problems.

reCAPTCHA

Everyone knows what a captcha is by now but in case you are blissfully unaware let me explain it. You are perusing a website article about how it’s perfectly acceptable for grown men to read all the Harry Potter novels when you feel the need to set the record straight. You click on ‘Post Comment’ ready to troll the author and otherwise tell him what a big nerd he is when something like this appears on your screen.

So now you need to stop what you are doing and decode some text before you can proceed to explain why everybody who is commenting besides you is a moron.

The reason we all need to go through with this ritual is because the internet is a horrible place where everybody is trying to sell you budget viagra. Spam bots will scour the web looking for places to comment and leave messages like “BUY VIAGGRA FOR DICK LONG!! LADIES SAY YES!!”. Since these spam bots aren’t actual people they have the advantage of being able to post millions of comments around the web in the time it would take us to string a proper sales pitch together. But the lack of a human brain is also the spam bot’s downfall.

You see, computers have trouble in certain areas that are second nature to humans. Spatial recognition, context, speaking- these are all challenging tasks that we take for granted. Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, allows computers to scan an image of text and convert it to actual text, in effect translating the image. Computers can actually do this fairly well but problems arise when the font type is not recognized or the letters are smudged or the image quality is low. And that’s why captchas work, because spam bots aren’t able to correctly decipher the fuzzy images of words to access the commenting sections of websites.

Enter reCAPTCHA, a clever new kind of captcha that wants to put the human brain to noble use. It is a Google project that aims to translate years of printed books and New York Times newspapers and preserve them on the web. After scanning and analyzing text images, reCAPTCHA takes the words OCR has trouble with and publishes them for human eyes to decipher. You enter the text and essentially translate a word that the computer couldn’t so now it knows the correct answer.

This is all well and good but what does this mean for security? If the computer doesn’t know the correct answer then how does it know that you are a legitimate human? reCAPTCHA uses two words, one that it knows the answer to and the other that it wants the answer to. If you submit the correct answer for the known word then it assumes your answer for the other is correct and validates you. I initially worried about there being an easy word and a difficult word. What is stopping a spam bot with OCR from successfully bypassing the captcha? The OCR will correctly identify the easy word, then mess up on the difficult word, and the reCAPTCHA will accept the mistake as a correct translation as long as the easy word is a match! Let me reiterate. If captcha text is not generated by a human on a word proven to fail OCR, then it is not an effective antispam measure. Google claims that both words used are unreadable by OCR and that is probably true, but playing around with the web service shows a whole lot of easy words that I have a hard time believing can’t be solved by bots.

Now, I’m not claiming to be smarter than Google and the entire reCAPTCHA project so I will defer to their claims of security. It seems like a legit enough process, yet still a process that inherently allows us to game the system. Any time you see a reCAPTCHA branded captcha, it’s time to start having fun.

This is an actual captcha from their website that was approved.

Oops. I just made the New York Times racist. You can play around with it yourself here.

Christina Holsberry

Ok, so you might be thinking, “Christina Holsberry… Who the fuck is Christina Holsberry?”

But that’s exactly the point. No one knows who she is. Yet…

What is this? Why would I want to subscribe to her? Who is this? What is going on here?

FUCK YOU Facebook. And fuck you, Christina Holsberry.

3 Awful Albums from Good Bands

When it comes to my musical preference, one thing I like to hang my hat on is that I only bother to become a fan of bands when I am confident that I can appreciate their entire catalog. That means I like all the songs on the album more or less, and it means I will continue to get the new releases even if sometimes they aren’t as good as previous material. But hey, since I’m such a great judge of music, that means I never need to buy shit albums, right? Well, as a counterpoint to me knowing everything, here are 3 awful albums from good bands.

Muse – The Resistance
This starts so well- poppy, but clean and tight and catchy. The first few songs on the album shocked me a bit because they felt like a different Muse, almost like a band that no longer wanted to make alternative music. Then the rest of the album happened. Muse has always had a problem with rambling. They were never the type of group that keeps every song on their albums focused. They like to experiment with different sounds and sometimes get downright silly. But that’s ok. They have awesome songs, epic sounds, pretty good songs, and some that I would consider filler. But still, these low points never defined the albums before. For a party playlist you might want to make sure a couple of these are unchecked in iTunes, but that’s the extent of it. The Resistance, however, must have used up all its panache in the first 3 songs and MK Ultra. Every single other song on the album is slow, melodramatic, whinier than usual, hilarious, and if I could somehow not stress the point enough, just plain bad.

Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs
As above, this album had a good single packaged with it. There are the couple of surprise favorites that good albums require- the folksy Bixby Canyon Bridge and the snappy Grapevine Fires. It was a bit troubling to first realize that the vocal style got a very slight makeover, almost like a hard to place dialect. Throw in a couple other decent songs and you have an album that is teetering in the balance- which way will the rest of the album lean? Unfortunately, the answer is uninspired and surprisingly unmoving for a Death Cab album. Of the albums on this list I think Narrow Stairs should get a pass because it never descends into completely horrible territory. But after the last couple of amazingly emotional albums, the aloofness of this one is a big disappointment.

Coldplay – Viva La Vida
Apparently not happy with the reception of their previous effort, X&Y, Coldplay tried to go a different direction with this album and give it a different mix. I heard a soundbyte about how the band’s new producer thought they were in a rut and really wanted to break them out of mediocrity. I have never in my life heard someone say they were against something so much and then do the exact thing they wanted to prevent. See, X&Y is a great album that was already a departure from their prior sound and I thought they pulled it off amazingly well. They were ambitious and most of the songs were strong and there was very little to complain about. Yet Viva La Vida turns into a messy mix of sounds that, while not horrible, can not stand alone as anything noteworthy. This is the Coldplay that people who hate Coldplay can make fun of, and people who like Coldplay have a hard time defending. There is nothing original, appealing, or powerful about this album, and if it was up to me I would say it’s time for a new producer.

whyihateeverything.co.uk

Really guys? Why I Hate Everything dot co dot U.K.? Who do you think you’re fooling?

Let’s just get something out of the way.

Domain Name: WHYIHATEEVERYTHING.COM
Created on: 15-May-08

Domain name: whyihateeverything.co.uk
Registered on: 06-Feb-2009

So apparently this Kevin Sanders guy really wants to unoriginally hate on stuff. The hate part I get – it’s not like I’m breaking new ground in cynicism. But there’s one thing I’m pretty sure he didn’t hate, and that’s my juicy web domain. EAT THAT KEVIN SANDERS! Everyone knows a .net domain is 2nd place but he’s not even trying with this one.

So now I officially have an arch nemesis. (Well, either that or a sidekick, but that’s more gay than I’d prefer this relationship to be). So let’s get to know our new friend Kevin Sanders a bit better.

“I’m the one that came up with the concept of this website, if you can call the idea of moaning, whining and bitching a new and original concept. It’s not. In essence, I guess I’m just the guy who coughs up money to air his grievances on a website that very few people will ever read.”

So far we are on the same page Kevin Sanders. No one reads this shit. But I’d be damned if it isn’t hella fun to vent. The problem with ranting, though, is that it’s easy to sound like a 12 year old when you’re doing it. Case in point:

“Now, let me clarify something for the whiny bitches that will inevitably cry themselves to sleep.…”

Or how about his sign off?

I have been Kevin. You have been annoying.

Yup, 12 is about right.

But let’s not trash Kevin Sanders too much. I am sure there are a great many things we can agree on such as the value of Facebook, the pointlessness of etiquette, that I have a better web domain. I certainly wouldn’t want to get in the way of his THREE POSTS in almost as many years.

Live and let live, they say.

Life Turns Electric – Finger Eleven

I’ve previously mentioned Finger Eleven’s disappointing slide from greatness. After two lights out records they would never return to form. Their 3rd album was a large departure – it can definitely be considered good but it remains disappointing because the formula was changed. The band had a lot of success with One Thing, similar to how Pearl Jam’s (later) most played radio songs were among their worst soft crap. This led to the complete lack of creativity in the band’s 4th album. While there were some good tunes and talent on display a lot of tracks, like Window Song, were just trying to cash in on poppy success and as a result the entire album suffered.

Famous Last Words
Famous Last Words

Now their latest album (not quite so new anymore), Life Turns Electric, while still full of pop hooks and their signature new style, doesn’t try too hard for fame. It is a much more solid outing but still a shadow of the band’s initial efforts. Whatever Doesn’t Kill Me and Stone Soul are similar attempts at topping the pop charts but there is more depth put into these songs that makes them more bearable. There is a bit of a rut mid album where a few of the songs get a bit campy but besides these tracks Finger Eleven put together a solid album. For the first time since 2003 the group is attempting to not devote all of their resources into packaging a single. Sure, a couple tracks like Living in a Dream do try to capitalize off the catchiness of their previous single, Paralyzer. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it falls short of true 5 star material.

Living In A Dream
Living In A Dream

But past all this there is markedly more substance to the album. Life Turns Electric is alive with interesting hooks even in the mid-tier songs. This is a collection of fun music that remains engaging and likable. The band has sworn to take more time to produce their tracks and the improvement does show. Still, in the interest of their legacy, I’d recommend taking an extra year for their next outing.