The fact that two people happen to speak the same language may not automatically result in these two persons understanding each other. I observed that in some cases a misunderstanding is almost inevitable, if someone tries to talk shop about a subject he/she is actually not familiar with. Depending on the situation this can be amusing, annoying (for the victim) or embarrassing (for the poseur).

Some time ago, I went into a shop for ordering a DSL connection (they were resellers for a large German ISP). The shop assistant handed over some forms to be filled out, including a desired password for a customer login. Being familiar with programming my first thought was to make sure what characters can be used at all and thus asked her, whether only alphanumeric or any printable characters are allowed. Energetically she shook her head and replied: “Nah, you can only use letters and numbers.” That response irritated me, of course. “Uhm, excuse me, but that’s exactly what I’ve been talking about: Alphanumeric means letters and numbers.” Having realised the nonsense she had emitted, the shop assistant opted for a sorry excuse which I cannot remember anymore, but her face expression looked interesting once her authority was undermined by her faux pas. Somehow I was left with an impression that I could not trust this shop and would be better off not to visit it a second time.

I also remember the communication with this woman was weird: Whenever she looked at me it seemed it was not really me but like someone behind or next to me she was talking to. Sometimes her reactions did not seem appropriate to my questions or remarks and suggested a familiarity that did not exist. Apparently I reminded her of someone else and somehow she must have had the funny notion of actually talking to that person instead to a stranger. How the shop assistant was able to look at me without fixating me with her pupils is something I would like to learn. Warped lenses? Or was she just afraid of looking people into the eyes, because that might reveal other aspects of posing?

In one of my reviews I mentioned Instellar Overdrive and Syd’s zippo in action. Of course this was a reference to a film sequence I had in mind, but which is probably not really widely known. However thanks to YouTube, there is the complete 16 raving minutes recording of Pink Floyd’s Instellar Overdrive available, which was part of the film Tonite let’s all make love in London. If you watch closely around 11′ 30”, you can see Syd Barrett finding an alternative usage for his zippo lighter :-).

Entia Non aka James Mcdougall has already published quite a few releases on various labels before. His latest work called sub routine was released yesterday on Resting Bell, a label whose previously reviewed release earned rather devastating criticism by me. With that in mind, two questions were interesting: Will Entia Non surprise the world with his release? Will Resting Bell be able to restore its reputation as one of the better netlabels? The answer, so it seems, is a happy-end like “yes” in both cases. Now that we took away the tension and incentive to continue reading for our readers, let us get into more details about what can be expected:

There were some subtile changes in Entia Non’s vocabulary, as the latter has become somewhat rougher, grainier. Clicks and crackles enrich the rather static sceneries and non-sequiturs break up longer passages into smaller pieces. On the other hand there are still trademarks of ambient in it, like dense patches of mellow synthesizer tones and the endeavour of avoiding “off notes” that could cause too much unrest. Even in macro rhetoric, the most daring of the four tracks with its gloomy beginning (almost like the kind of music we usually find on Darkwinter), James seems to shy away from being too adventurous and gradually adds some minor chords to restore tonality again. Sometimes the length of the tracks does not quite keep up with the number of components a track contains, which limits the music’s degree of variation and makes its course quite predictable.

But as a whole, this is quite a decent work and despite its rather tame and handsome characteristics still interesting enough to make it a successful blend of both mainstream and more unconventional sounds and an attractive listening experience. Thus, apart from my usual quibbling about minor details, I can recommend this release for downloading and its use as background music for creative work.

I came across this weird bug whilst tweaking my site and could not find any website mentioning it. Or maybe I am too silly to use the right wording for my search queries as I cannot imagine that I am the first person to have noticed it.

First off, my layout here complies to HTML Strict 1.0. It would even validate as HTML Strict 1.1 after a minor configuration change on my web server (so that it uses a different mime type for html documents). My CSS file I use also validates without the slightest warning. Now to the description:
Whenever I use a block element that has an embedded <i> or <em> tag (to mark a quote for example) or alternatively, I define italic as style for a block element and it contains text that stretches over multiple lines, IE 6.0 on Windows will freak out and add horizontal scrollbars without a visible cause. These bars disappear as soon as I remove italic from the offending style or the embedded <i> or <em> tag from the affected block element.

Perhaps someone incidentally reading this post knows how to work around this problem or a link pointing to a working hack? Any hint would be greatly appreciated, as I really would like to learn what exactly is causing this issue.

The above headline might be irritating, because at first glance Radian6 obeys robots.txt. However, once it is blocked by a server, it switches its user agent to some generic java client and continues indexing. Anyway, before I go on, let me first introduce you to Radian6, its origins and purposes:

Radian6 is a crawler from Canada and its purpose becomes clear just by looking at the first lines on its home page:

Millions of blog posts. Viral videos. Reviews in forums. Sharing of photos. Status updates via microblogging. All conversations, all happening online right now and affecting brands, reputations, sales, you name it.

This is classic marketing speak at its best, and right, the company behind radian6 provides marketing and promotion professionals with the latest “trends” in the blogosphere, so their customers can pick them up and modify their advertising campaigns accordingly, as you can read on this page. To me this boils down to bullying sites with a PR machinery, pushing them aside into irrelevance and snatching trends and slogans for corporate advertising or promo campaigns. All fine and dandy, but who am I to support the advertising industry by providing keywords they can eventually use against me? The bot is to no benefit for me as I do not get to see its index unless I pay for it. Add the fact that Radian6 shows a broken crawling behaviour with pulling the same content multiple times a day and omits trailing slashes in urls (resulting in even more waste of traffic as each request has to be redirected to the actual location), and the only conclusion for me is to deny this bot. And that means on my server 403 Forbidden:

142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:03:20:01 +0100]
"GET /feed/ HTTP/1.1" 403 215 "-" "R6_FeedFetcher_(www.radian6.com/crawler)"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:06:39:35 +0100]
"GET /feed/ HTTP/1.1" 403 215 "-" "R6_FeedFetcher_(www.radian6.com/crawler)"
142.166.3.123 - - [09/Jan/2008:09:46:53 +0100]
"GET /feed/ HTTP/1.1" 403 215 "-" "R6_FeedFetcher_(www.radian6.com/crawler)"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:12:50:18 +0100]
"GET /feed/ HTTP/1.1" 403 215 "-" "R6_FeedFetcher_(www.radian6.com/crawler)"

Now one would think at some time a legitimate bot will eventually give up and move on to more commerce friendly hosts. But that turned out to be wishful thinking, as the bot seems to have inherited a mental deficiency that prevents it from accepting that someone does not want to see it:

142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:03:19:26 +0100]
"GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 200 77 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:03:19:27 +0100]
"GET /a-new-release-i-finally-got-started HTTP/1.1" 301 5 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:03:19:28 +0100]
"GET /a-new-release-i-finally-got-started/ HTTP/1.1" 200 9582 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:03:20:01 +0100]
"GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 200 77 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:06:39:33 +0100]
"GET /a-new-release-i-finally-got-started HTTP/1.1" 301 5 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:06:39:34 +0100]
"GET /a-new-release-i-finally-got-started/ HTTP/1.1" 200 9582 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:09:46:50 +0100]
"GET /a-new-release-i-finally-got-started HTTP/1.1" 301 5 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:09:46:51 +0100]
"GET /a-new-release-i-finally-got-started/ HTTP/1.1" 200 9582 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:09:46:53 +0100]
"GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 200 77 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:12:50:16 +0100]
"GET /a-new-release-i-finally-got-started HTTP/1.1" 301 5 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"
142.166.3.122 - - [09/Jan/2008:12:50:17 +0100]
"GET /a-new-release-i-finally-got-started/ HTTP/1.1" 200 9582 "-" "Java/1.5.0_11"

Why is it, that some outfits in the promotion and marketing industry (and their most radical variant called “spammers”) have such a disregard for individuals and believe everyone gladly accepts their “message blast” if it is only repeated often enough? Why do they cherish the delusion of being special, excempt from common ethical standards and more gifted and intelligent than their targetted “consumer base”? I assume they do not put such questions into consideration or accept opinions contrary to theirs, therefore I decided to add the netblock 142.66.0.0/16 to my growing list of firewalled ip ranges to prevent any more “stealth visits”.

In case you wish to opt out from their visits too, simply add the following line to your .htaccess or httpd.conf file:

Deny from 142.66.0.0/16

Or, in case you are fortunate enough to run a dedicated server and do not expect any welcome visitors from that ip allocation, you may prefer to firewall their range right away:

iptables -A INPUT -s 142.166.0.0/16 -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport ! 25 -j DROP

This rule leaves port 25 (SMTP) open as communication channel. Since this is a rather large chunk of addresses, it may well contain responsible companies and individuals and for those I still want to be reachable via email. Of course, if you do not have any such concerns you can also apply the BOFH method and silence this range entirely:

iptables -A INPUT -s 142.166.0.0/16 -i eth0 -p tcp -j DROP

Yeah, California demise has got me: As reaction to my Attributor article, there was a lot of activity on my server. Not only by employees of that company, but also by some twit in the San Francisco area, who thought probing my POP3 server for accounts would be a terribly good idea. I am not clear about the motive though: Was it just some spammer in need for fresh addresses? Or was it rather somone with an axe to grind, who hoped I would use easy to guess email accounts with rather silly passwords?

first a part of the pop3 log as evidence:

Jan  6 12:47:30 my.pop3.server in.qpopper[26407]: Possible probe of
account access from host 207.213.142.74 (207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29]
Jan  6 12:47:36 my.pop3.server in.qpopper[26412]: Possible probe of
account accounts from host 207.213.142.74 (207.213.142.74)
[pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:47:39 my.pop3.server in.qpopper[26417]:
Possible probe of account adm from host 207.213.142.74 (207.213.142.74)
[pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:47:44 my.pop3.server in.qpopper[26415]:
Possible probe of account account from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:47:49 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26430]: Possible probe of account admin from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:47:51 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26432]: Possible probe of account temp from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:47:58 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26441]: Possible probe of account admin2 from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:48:02 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26439]: Possible probe of account test from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:48:04 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26453]: Possible probe of account test2 from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:48:07 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26459]: Possible probe of account test3 from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:48:09 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26461]: Possible probe of account web from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:48:16 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26471]: Possible probe of account web2 from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:48:16 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26473]: Possible probe of account test1 from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:48:24 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26486]: Possible probe of account webmaster from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:48:25 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26476]: Possible probe of account web1 from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:48:30 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26484]: Possible probe of account webadmin from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:49:57 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[26590]: Possible probe of account webmaster from host 207.213.142.74
(207.213.142.74) [pop_quit.c:29] Jan  6 12:54:19 my.pop3.server in.qpopper
[...]

In case you have been wondering what kind of email addresses are not really a brilliant idea to use, you have more or less an answer now :-). Contrary to an SMTP server, the POP3 server will, independent from the existence of an account, keep complaining about an invalid password. Therefore any probe here is not really suitable for collecting spammable email addresses. But maybe the focus was on getting one’s hands on emails that were meant for someone else? I leave that interpretation to those who received my complaint about 207.213.142.74, the company responsible for the network:

CustName:   IS West
Address:    268 Bush St.
Address:    Suite 5000
City:       San Francisco
StateProv:  CA
PostalCode: 94104
Country:    US
RegDate:    2002-03-26
Updated:    2004-11-05

NetRange:   207.213.142.0 - 207.213.143.255
CIDR:       207.213.142.0/23
NetName:    SBC207213142000020325
NetHandle:  NET-207-213-142-0-1
Parent:     NET-207-212-0-0-1
NetType:    Reassigned
Comment:
RegDate:    2002-03-26
Updated:    2004-11-05

When I checked for 207.213.142.74 for any occurances in anti-spam blocklists, it turned out to be unknown to them. There were no new connection attempts since that probe, but to be on the safe side this range rests in my iptables ruleset for now.

Despite the usual administration work for the server (watching log files and react to bad behaving visitors accordingly) and hunt for obscure music to write about, I even began working on my third Nodepet release. Which means for the first weeks nothing but tormenting audio sources with overprocessing, make them squeak, scream and stutter and store them for later usage. This may not really sound like someone working on music, but I do have my own recipe:

In short, if complementary noise happens to meet each other and interact nicely, it usually starts to spin off melodic lines by itself. Though I use larger chunks of audio data, I only use parts of them (those that catch my interest and seem to be suitable for transposition or reversal). In this case I take it with Gilles Deleuze:

Commencer par la premier principe, c’est un peu une méthode qui emprunterait le modèle de l’arbre: on cherche d’abort la racine. Mais il y a une autre méthode ou un autre modèle, c’est celui de l’herbe. L’herbe, elle pousse par le millieu

I do not start sequentially (the tree model), but somewhere in the midst of my work and reach out to either side (the herb model). This is also one of the ways of creating similar variations without being identical, slightly modifying the start conditions but maintain just enough to recognise the phrase as a whole. Each of these components have their own characteristics and carry the core of the phrase with them. What I call “phrase” is a sequence of tones or sonic events that can exist for itself. In “traditional” composing the phrase is subject to the metrics being used. But, much as in life, a sonic event does not only consist of symmetric, regular shapes and this is the core of my methology: I free the “phrase” from its cage of regular metrics and let it end where it seems appropriate by its inner necessity.

My current phrases are rather harsh this time and it will become a challenge to remain both abstract and listenable. Tonality, just like the motive in photography, is not relevant for the overall outcome. That is still the construction as such, how its parts are connected with each other and how well contrasts are set. I do not expect any fast results though, as traditionally I continue where I last left off and first have to re-adjust my work to new principles. That is, I do not rest on my achievements but constantly destroy and rebuild them, mainly focussing on things that were not satisfying in the previous incarnation.

But then, what is satisfying? That, I do not know. Perhaps it is the struggle itself, or to say it with Albert Camus:

La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un coeur d’homme; il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.

Thus I should consider myself lucky for my unrest.

The latest release of the Abdicate Cell netlabel features a rather obscure project of the name Kill the TV. Its title “El país de las máquinas”, which is spanish for “the land of the machines”, gives a good idea about the music’s main characteristics:

A machine hall, crackling, decaying echoes, analogue synth lines drop down the dusty floor. Slowly formates a dubmatic abstraction without fixed rhythms. Above all lies the threatening athmosphere of hovering tritones and overflanged echo loops. Transition to the second movement, swirling particles of bit crushed samples, machine noise adds chromatic vibrations. A digital variation of Instellar Overdrive, Syd’s zippo gliding down the strings, before some TR-808 drum emulations redefine off beat as something melting down and irregularily dripping down the floor. Grainy voice samples and chopped off forths tripping off some alarm signals. Carried away by hallucinatory snatches of sonorous voices a bleeping radar is trapped in a mushy echo loop.

Kill the TV fire off a multitude of events in their two track ep and demonstrate how abstraction can be used to create intriguing tension, and even paint a lively scenery. This is ambient sound in a very literal sense: Creating a scenery that you can reach out for with your hands (perhaps not too close in this case). I consider this a very good release that I would like to recommend as download to my readers.

This romance started back in December:
One fine day, shortly before Christmas, I noticed some weird requests by Yahoo’s crawler:

74.6.28.164 - - [23/Dec/2007:08:25:16 +0100] "GET /kurzfilm/ HTTP/1.0" 301 307 "-"
"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)"
74.6.28.164 - - [23/Dec/2007:08:25:17 +0100] "GET /kurzfilm/ HTTP/1.0" 404 275 "-"
"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)"

Of course there was no directory called “kurzfilm” on my server, but it seemed some stale link was pointing to it and Yahoo checked to see whether there is something new to discover. If you look closely you spot a 301 redirect before the actual 404 response. That is because I use mod rewrite to redirect any request that does not use “www.mydomain.com” as host to that location first, in order to ensure, that only this version of my domains will appear in search results. After some research I was even able to locate the origin: Some Dutch website used to link to it using the server’s ip address. Unfortunately this was a fatal mistake as Yahoo is now querying this non existent “kurzfilm” directory over and over again.

Google behaves different in that regard: Once it cannot find anything there it soon discards the url and moves on. Also it obeys 301 (moved permanently) redirects and discards the previous destination after a while. But Yahoo?

Yahoo loves “kurzfilm” in the morning:

74.6.28.164 - - [06/Jan/2008:09:08:59 +0100] "GET /kurzfilm/ HTTP/1.0" 301 236 "-"
"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)"
74.6.28.164 - - [06/Jan/2008:09:09:01 +0100] "GET /kurzfilm/ HTTP/1.0" 404 5883 "-"
"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)"

And “kurzfilm” in the evening:

74.6.28.164 - - [06/Jan/2008:20:02:50 +0100] "GET /kurzfilm/ HTTP/1.0" 301 236 "-"
"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)"
74.6.28.164 - - [06/Jan/2008:20:02:52 +0100] "GET /kurzfilm/ HTTP/1.0" 404 5883 "-"
"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)"

Did you notice the 301 redirect? That means Yahoo is still using the server’s ip address for its request, despite the 301 redirect, which should normally signalise that a request be permanently turned to the new destination instead. But then again it would not be Yahoo and so I shall expect to find “kurzfilm” in my logfiles around this time next year, too. Maybe I should create this “kurzfilm” directory already, just for Yahoo: The “kurzfilm” search engine # 1 :-).

Antanas Jasenka from Lithuania describes himself as being someone who explores various areas of music and claims to have reached an own musical identity. Something his latest release Giib on Clinical Archives is to demonstrate. After a rather mediocre intro which - apart from rather persistent shrill feedback - consists of some “preparation noise”, to point out that something is about to happen during the next few minutes, subway 2 finally delivers the promise of a mature music style. Not unlike later Autechre works, Antanas Jasenka creates a juxtaposition of chord variations that seem harmonic at first glance. Looking closer, however, these tones are too erratic and glassy for a warm feeling of tenderness, but this fragile crystalline balance is exactly what makes this tune quite interesting.

Much too soon we are dragged away and shrouded into a bleak echo loop, which seems to simulate the monotonous driving noise of an imaginary subway. There, a shrill, piercing alarm bell, the pulse of time with distant synth lines that provide a rather sketchy tonality. Unfortunately, like in the beginning, Antanas Jasenka is a bit overdoing his lengthy usage of unpleasant frequencies, which considerably limits the joy of listening via headphones. Fortunately this practice is discontinued in the follow up track, which features some references to the Tresor label’s abstract and rather dissonant techno of the later nineties, albeit without using a centred bass drum as pivot element that keeps everything together. Sadly, the sample sequences are too short to work effectively by themselves and the forced usage of conflict rhythms turns out to be rather disturbing and counterproductive to the music’s consistence.

Autechre like chord sequences are picked up again towards the end of the release and embedded into distortion and feedback. Like in subway 2, the illusion of harmony is interfered by erratic tones and displaced elements but that does not prevent the track from reaching a peaceful final. Clearly the best moments of Giib are those dominated by a strange fragile melodic and the weakest are those where Antanas Jasenka tries to be harsh and abstract, something that does not really seem to fit to his musical vocabulary and therefore ends up as half hearted attempt at creating contemporary noise abstractions. As a whole interesting, but not really overwhelming.