Greetings friend. I've created a mod music file (play with Winamp or XMMS) and an ogg file of my latest music piece for your enjoyment. I created it with Soundtracker for Linux yesterday. It took me 3 days to learn Soundtracker well enough to create that. The samples I created myself with Csound.

I learned two really interesting things yesterday that allowed me to create that song. If you follow the link above, it'll give you the full info as well as a bunch of stuff to teach you how to use a tracker. What I learned from that page is: 1) stereo is actually useful and 2) echoing is not worth it. The reason for 1 is that mono squishes sounds together while stereo can give up to 13 virtual sound sources. I never noticed it, but stereo seperates sound sources so that the listener can virtually understand that more than one instrument created the sound. It's pleasing to even my ear. I often think that hifi is a waste of time. I say: gimme 11025 kHz mono 4-bit ADPCM or 24 kbps 44.1kHz mono over an audio CD any day. In fact, I don't listen to CDs anymore. I r0x0red (aka. ripped) my collection into Ogg format and listen to them instead of CDs. There's a really good reason for that: I can listen to all my music anytime I want in any mix I want. I rarely listened to my collection before I ripped them. Now I listen to them more, but less since I got more into electronica.

Expect good things coming from here soon. I'm going to get squared away with Creative Commons so you can swap my music, pictures, and text freely.

I'd like to explain something a bit complex, interesting, and odd if you'd allow me. It's a good lesson, so I hope you'll take something with you from it.

Robert Zubrin gave an important reason for going to Mars last Monday (2004-01-12). He said, good technology will carry with it the values of the engineers and scientists who created it. While this may not sound revolutionary, it really is. It's quite similar to R. Buckminster Fuller's philosophy of engineering.

Imagine a person who was concerned about privacy. But not just his/her privacy, but everyone's privacy. This person may study computer science and create an encryption algorithm that was not just secure, but safe. There's a difference there I'd like to explain: GPG may be secure, but it takes a lot of work to ensure that it does indeed ensure privacy. If the machine that uses GPG is insecure, the encryption means nothing. So this person creates this new system and their value for privacy is carried in this technology.

So for Mars, what values would be present in the technology that Human Martians would create? Value for efficiency, maybe for environment, for technology, and for life. These pioneers would create technology to get to Mars with their value intact. They would create things for the benefit of themselves and the people they live with. These people would value things that people on Earth take for granted. But not just these people, but those who wish to migrate to Mars would also value these things in their life. The values would transfer as technology advanced and as the technology was exported to Earth. People on Earth would use these technologies and understand the value of these things.

In my life, I find very much value in information, communication, and science. These values come from my experience with the technology that I use. The internet has revolutionized the way that people get information. I believe that it is the most important part of the 90s. By this, I mean that it has changed more people's lives positively than any other technology. It will continue to be the most important part of the 00 decade. How long will it take for something to surpass the internet in importance? What technology, change, or structure will improve our lives more than the internet? We had better start working before the internet takes another decade by storm.