Finally – after YEARS of avoidance – I have started taking the time to properly arrange and master the music available on this site.  This is a rather involved process; it involves hours of soundfont hunting, instrument tweaking, checking and re-checking levels, normalizing and compressing, and any number of smaller steps in-between depending on the particular song.  Because this process is so involved, I’ve failed to set aside the proper time for it, instead choosing to make my music available in various states of “almost finished.”

But no longer.

Here – for your listening pleasure – are two tracks familiar to anyone who has frequented the site in recent years… only they’ve been given proper treatment (meaning they sound a bajillion times better than previous versions):

Aerith’s Theme (Piano Solo) – MIDI (8kb)

Aerith’s Theme (Piano Solo) – mp3 (5.8mb)

Aerith’s Theme (Piano Solo) – ogg (4.2mb)

Retribution – MIDI (51kb)

Retribution – mp3 (6.1mb)

Retribution – ogg (5.0mb)

mp3s are available as high-quality VBR encodings (220-260kbps), with the ogg versions roughly equivalent.  Unlike previous versions of these tracks, proper compression and normalizing means each song will fit nicely into any playlist, with each track playing at a proper, standard volume.

I’m particularly happy with the way Aerith’s Theme turned out.   The new version uses a carefully tuned Steinway-based soundfont, and I’ve finally put my excellent Audigy2 ZS to use in getting the envelope hold, decay, and release working as it should.  The track sounds quite good considering it was recorded over MIDI from a 20-year-old keyboard.

Retribution sounds fairly similar to its original version in terms of actual instrumentation.  Some of the more grating tracks have been toned down, and I’ve swapped the piano for a celesta (it meshes better with the other instruments IMO).  Repetition on the percussion track has been cut down, and I’ve finally solved the problem of static on the loud sections.

Many additional, minor changes have gone into the remastering of these tracks, and I’m very pleased with how they’ve turned out.

Every song on the site will be getting similar treatment in the coming weeks, and every track will eventually be released in both mp3 and ogg versions (as well as the original MIDI when applicable).  I debated supplying FLAC versions as well, but the filesize simply isn’t practical.  Additionally, since these are not “live” productions, the extra “quality” FLAC affords really isn’t worth the extra time it requires.

If you have any feedback, do let me know.  Otherwise, enjoy music that is finally getting the treatment it deserves!

(And as always, all original music on this site has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License – so send copies to all your friends!  :)

At any rate, several months of inactivity doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about the site. A number of improvements to the site’s layout are in the works (note the new icons top-right, for example), and I’ve got some cool projects just about ready for uploading:

• Two cool new VB projects (one game, one graphics) are in the final stages of “clean-up”
• Newly equalized mp3s for all my music – which will make them WAY more mp3-player-friendly
• If all goes according to plan, a re-licensing of my first novel under a CC license, which would allow me to release it online for your reading pleasure. (This is something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile.)

Along with these updates are some back-end site improvements you (hopefully) won’t notice, which should make it easier for me to update the site. I’m hoping that will motivate me to post more regularly, and if nothing else it will simplify the process of getting content off my hard drive and into your hands. :)

So pardon the dust as the site undergoes some much-needed updates, and look forward to a 2010 chock full of new and improved content.

The Short Description:

Here you have it: the largest, most complex programming project now available on tannerhelland.com. Originally a final project for a university bioinformatics course, my artificial life simulator has now been completely retooled as a full-blown lesson in evolution and population genetics.

As with most artificial life simulators, a set of simple artificial creatures compete for limited resources.  Each creature has a strand of pseudo-DNA that determines three basic attributes: size, speed, and range (how far it can see).  When the little critters reproduce (asexually… unfortunately), mutations may occur.  Over time, this can lead to remarkable changes in gene frequency throughout the population.  Typically the creatures with a balance of speed and range tend to win out over bigger, slower creatures and smaller, faster ones.

The code is well-optimized, so it should run decently on any hardware.   As a bonus, the simulator can be surprisingly addicting – my longest simulation to date ran for over 500,000 cycles before all the creatures died.  For further analysis of a particular simulation run, all data can be saved to a tab-delimited text file compatible with any major spreadsheet software.

The Long Description:

As you can imagine, a project of this magnitude warrants a fair amount of documentation.  I am currently working on a “how to use this software to teach evolution and population genetics” tutorial that educators – or anyone interested in biology – can read to see how things like genetic drift, population equilibrium, the “bottleneck” effect, and other aspects of a small, closed population work.

Unfortunately, a document like that takes some time to create… so rather than holding off until I’ve finished it, I’ve decided to upload the project for people to start playing with.  If you have any comments or questions, let me know and I’ll see if I can’t work answers into the final version of the tutorial.

(If you’d like to be notified when the documentation is finished, please let me know via the contact form.  I plan on sending out an email once all updates have been posted.)

Download Artificial Life Simulator Code and Executable (38 kb)

I’m intervening because I care.  We’ve had some good times together, but if you continue down the road you’re on, you are going to die.

What am I talking about?  I think you know.  I’m talking about your asinine leadership, including such figures as Chase “Diarreah of the Mouth” Carey and Rupert “I Lost $4.3 Billion This Year” Murdoch.

These people are not helping you, Hulu.  These people are hurting you.

Maybe even killing you.

See, people like Carey and Murdoch come from the “old school” approach to media.  They think that consumers should be forced to double- and triple-pay for all media they consume.  It’s not enough that consumers sit through commercials.  They should also pay for a subscription service like cable or satellite (unless they settle for OTA, of course).  On top of that, dedicated fans should pay AGAIN for a copy of these shows on DVD or Blu-Ray.  Murdoch and Carey think that’s still not enough, because they now want to charge you for watching shows online as well.  Last I count, if you really enjoy a show you should pay for it at least four times – and that’s not including if you want the show on a portable device like an iPod or smartphone.

You know what’s so great about you, Hulu?  You haven’t been this way.  You’ve given people the opportunity to enjoy shows over and over and over again by only paying for them ONCE (via advertising).  What a novel concept – allowing people to enjoy shows from almost any internet-connected device, and recouping your cost via advertising.

This concept reminds me of another company you may have heard of.  Its name is Google.  Google’s market cap is currently over $170 billion dollars.  Has Google achieved phenomenal success by shifting its burden of cost to consumers via subscriptions?

Absolutely not.  Google provides consumers with free services (search, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Docs, Chrome) then subsidizes those free services with ad revenue.  $170 billion dollars later, consumers possess a plethora of free and useful tools, advertisers have the most targeted ad venue ever created, and Google becomes the most powerful online entity in the world.

Compare this to all the multibillion-dollar online companies that recoup costs through subscription models.

…Oh.  Wait.  How many multibillion-dollar online companies do that successfully?

That’s right.  Zero.

Now this is not to say that premium subscription services cannot work, because they can.  (Although many other companies have tried that and failed.)  If you wanted to offer, say, 1080p streaming for a premium price, that would be okay with me and most of your other users.

But the key with premium services is to actually provide premium offerings.  If you attempt to take something that has been free (e.g. everything up to this point) and suddenly start charging for it, you will lose viewers.  Tons of viewers.  Maybe all of ‘em.  Imagine if Google started charging you a monthly fee to use your Gmail account.  Imagine if Facebook started charging every time you checked your “wall.”

It’ll never happen, because these companies aren’t moronic.  But Hulu, your board of directors…

…Let’s just say I’m not as sure about them.

I want this to be more than just an angry rant, so let me share some concrete ideas on how you can increase profitability without alienating your entire userbase.

1. Improve international offerings. Do you have any idea how popular you could be if you became less U.S.-centric?  Even if your shows remained available only in English, you could easily increase viewership by an entire order of magnitude through an improved international presence.
2. More stand-alone software clients. Your recent desktop Linux client was a great move.  A PS3 client would be even better.  Clients for mobile OSes?  Pure gold.
3. Start cross-selling DVD versions of shows, and consider partnering with Amazon or iTunes for downloadable sales. If someone is watching back episodes of “The Office” and loving every minute of it, why not sell them a DVD box set right there?
4. Convince CBS and other leery networks to sign up. I’d love some online Big Bang Theory, so help CBS realize that they make more money off me watching BBT on your site than they do when I DVR the show and watch it commercial-free over and over and over again.

If you try all four of these ideas and none work, then consider some kind of paid premium offering.  Just don’t jump straight to a subscription model, because it makes no sense.

Sorry for being so bold, but I like you, Hulu.  I want you to succeed.

But facts are facts, and let’s face it – your competitors are only getting stronger.  YouTube is already offering ad-supported movie services.  Crackle is getting better, even if it remains U.S.-only.  Netflix’s Instant Watch offers most of what you do PLUS the ability to get my HD fix via Blu-ray.

So to try and switch to a subscription model amidst all this competition is nothing short of suicide.

I want better for you.

I recently joined many others in canceling my cable service because I have better places to send $75 a month.  First thing I did was buy a $20 antenna that gets me all the major TV stations (in hi-def).  This, combined with Linux’s MythTV and a digital tuner card, gives me a great HD-DVR.  Netflix and you fill in the rest of the gaps, and with all the leftover money I can buy every show I’ve ever enjoyed on DVD or Blu-ray.

Lots of people have left cable and dish behind because of services like yours, Hulu.  With the economy in the state it’s in, you can bet that many more people will take this leap in the near future.

So the question becomes – when these millions of viewers look to online viewing offerings, are they going to pick the free YouTube, the less-shows-but-free Crackle, or the as-good-as-you-plus-physical-media Netflix?

You fill a niche that no other site currently fills, and you are throwing away years of progress if you move to a subscription-only model.  Let NetFlix fill that niche.  It already does it much better than you could because of its pairing with rental services.

I’m here to help, Hulu.  Don’t make me leave you.

Because if you become “subscription only,” I will.

(Anyone who listens to John McCain’s input on technology gets what they deserves.)  The real irony of the whole matter is contrasting McCain’s view on net neutrality with the following quote (from his 1999 candidacy speech): “The blessings of technology give us the means to breach the walls of ignorance and isolation. We [can reach] our founding ideal that all men are created equal by giving all Americans access to information and knowledge, and an equal opportunity not only to pursue, but to attain happiness. Education is the great equalizer and used wisely, the information revolution will hasten the end of a two-tiered society of haves and have nots, and advance human freedom into the even the darkest corners of tyranny.”

I believe it is.  The first statement in the Ubuntu Philosophy reads:

Every computer user should have the freedom to download, run, copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any purpose, without paying licensing fees.

The “Contribute to Ubuntu” article on the Ubuntu wiki takes this a step further:

Ubuntu is most of all a community. All of the software, artwork and documentation in Ubuntu has been created, tested, used and discussed openly by people around the world participating in the Open Source community made possible by the Internet. Anyone who uses Ubuntu is part of this global community, and we invite you to help shape Ubuntu to better meet your needs. To make it yours!

Anyone can help shape and improve Ubuntu…

While I am a programmer, I have yet to try my hand at contributing code/coding to the Ubuntu project.  It seems to me that while open source can always benefit from more developers, the free software ecosystem is already chock-full of quality software written by some of the best coders in the world.

Free and open source software is not held back by a lack of coding prowess.  If anything, many pieces of proprietary software have a long way to go before they can compete with the technical accomplishments of their open source counterparts.

What I think most FOSS projects lack are things far more difficult to fix than rooms full of talented coders.  Many FOSS projects lack strong leadership.  They lack vision.  They lack designers.  They lack pragmatists.  They lack true communities.

These aspects – while more nebulous than raw coding talent – are what truly prevent free and open source software from directly competing with proprietary software.  If I examine the most successful FOSS projects (Apache, Firefox, WordPress, Wikipedia, MySQL), I see a collection of projects that may not be the most technically advanced, but that represent an excellent mix of design, leadership, vision, pragmatism, and community.

Which – not coincidentally – are the same reasons I use, advocate, promote, and attempt to improve Ubuntu.

Leadership

Mark Shuttleworth is a complex man with many fans and at least several less-than-fans (frenemies?).  But love or hate the man, it is difficult to argue with his leadership techniques.  In five short years he has turned Ubuntu from a pipe dream into the most popular desktop Linux distro on the planet (a distro even Penguin Pete is willing to try).  As a server, Ubuntu has attracted clients as large as Wikipedia – the 6th most-visited site on the internet.

A project as ambitious as building an entire OS cannot succeed without strong leadership (think Steve Jobs), and no other desktop Linux has a man like Shuttleworth at the helm.

Vision and Design

Vision is a difficult thing to quantify.  For one, I believe vision is about more than just “wanting to make the awesomest thing ever.”  Almost every FOSS project has that goal.  (Otherwise, why would they exist at all?)  But vision isn’t just about having a goal – it’s about having a firm framework in place to make such a goal possible/probable.

In 2008, Shuttleworth stated a two-year goal for desktop Linux surpassing Apple in usability.  To quote from the linked article:

“The great task in front of us over the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop from something that is stable and robust and not so pretty, into something that is art,” Shuttleworth said to applause from the audience. “Can we not only emulate, but can we blow right past Apple?”

However, he made no mention of whether Apple intends to simply sit idly by while desktop Linux catches up to and surpasses the user experience that Apple has become so well-known for.

“I see this [need] for free software—beautiful, elegant software. We have to invest in making this desktop beautiful and useful,” Shuttleworth said of Linux.

If you’ve read any of my other articles, you’ll know I have many concerns about Ubuntu’s current user experience.  But things like the 100 papercuts project and this commentary from Ivanka Majic, the leader of Canonical’s design team, give me hope:

Serdar Yegulalp (of InformationWeek): UIs in open source apps, Linux especially, are a common source of complaints from the uninitiated. What can be done about that?

Ivanka: “I don’t think there’s a silver bullet. Being able to spend the last 7 months working with our own in-house developers, getting the language right (if I change an icon, is that a “bugfix”?), feeding into the process at the right time, figuring out the release schedules, all those things. Right now, there’s not much to see — there’s a kind of shallow level of change from a visual perspective, but that’s because we’re just getting started. Nobody can do everything in six months but we can make it a little better. I think a brand-new design team can’t possibly have gone ‘ta-da!’ and handed you a brand new super shiny Ubuntu. But I think Ubuntu does get better with every release. Karmic has a kind of smoothness to it that Jaunty didn’t have. You can already tell the difference. And I’ve got massive hopes for Lucid…”

Other (read: almost all) Linux distros have prettier default themes than Ubuntu, but user experience is about more than just looks.  If 2010 passes and Ubuntu remains ugly and partially usable perhaps I’ll reevaluate my loyalty – but until then, I’m excited to see what Shuttleworth’s hand-picked team provides.

(And for those unhappy with Ubuntu’s usability: are you aware of any other distro that employs a corporate-funded design team of fourteen people from different disciplines (visual/graphics designers, interaction designers, and more)…?)

Pragmatism

The free software world is chock full of idealism.  What most large-scale FOSS projects lack is not idealism, but a solid dose of pragmatism.

Pragmatism: character or conduct that emphasizes practicality.

Take Fedora, for example.  I think Fedora is a fine distro, especially for users who want a cutting-edge desktop Linux experience.  But have you ever seen Fedora’s forbidden item list?  This is a list full of ideology, not practicality.  Fedora will never become THE desktop Linux distro because proprietary drivers, like them or not, are an unavoidable necessity for at least 5+ more years (maybe longer for certain hardware vendors).  OGV is a great format, but recommending it instead of DVDs is not practical for anyone.

Please do not mistake my commentary as a slam against ideological individuals or distros.  I think the free and open source world benefits greatly from its strong ideological background, and I hope it never loses support from ideological purists.  But in order to compete with Windows and OSX, any potential mainstream Linux desktop must sacrifice certain ideologies for the sake of practicality.  If it doesn’t, it will be forever doomed to obscure usage among tech-savvy individuals only (which may be what many ideologists want, but that’s another matter entirely).

Ubuntu does an admirable job of walking the fine line between ideology and pragmatism.  It ships only a handful of questionable packages by default, and for heavily-used but patent-encumbered software (mp3, DVDs, etc.) it provides easy installation with full disclosure of the risks involved.  I have mixed feelings about Mono and Moonlight, but if they can someday get me Netflix Instant Watch on Linux I’m all for supporting them.

Ubuntu has also extended its hand to commercial developers via the forthcoming Software Center.  This could be the best thing desktop Linux has done to attract developers. I have no idea how well the Software Center will perform in this regard, but its creation is absolutely an excellent usability move with a great deal of potential.

What other desktop Linux distros actively strive to engage commercial developers?

Community

I’ve discussed the Ubuntu community at length elsewhere, but it’s worth mentioning again.  I am not aware of another desktop Linux community that offers a breadth of information comparable to Ubuntu’s.  Extensive documentation, a huge wiki, paid support options, lively forums, IRC, mailing lists, LoCo teams, books, fan sites galore…

Need I go on?

Ubuntu has rallied an impressive combination of professionals, developers, and casual users to its cause.  With so much at stake, I worry that if the Ubuntu project can’t provide a viable competitor to Windows and OSX, will any other desktop Linux ever have a chance?

Conclusions

I am deeply concerned with the stagnation that has consumed proprietary desktop OSes over the last ten years.  Hardware power has grown in leaps and bounds, but how well have mainstream operating systems evolved to utilize such power?  Viruses and overall security remain a rampant problem, general OS usability is no better than it was 10 years ago, and even the visual presentation of OSes has made only minimal progress toward something truly artistic and not just “functional.”

I believe that a competitive desktop Linux distro could change this.  If all software developers wrote and designed software for OSes they could actively contribute to, we could see massive improvements across all forms of software in a remarkably short period of time.  If all hardware drivers and software formats were standardized and open sourced, how much more time could be spent improving hardware and software instead of just getting it to work at all?  If consumers weren’t forced to pay hundreds of dollars for an OS that was mediocre at best, they could instead spend those hundreds of dollars on software – potentially leading to more jobs for software developers, not less.

Look at the improvements that have come about because of a simple standardization like USB.  Love or hate the spec itself, does anyone really want to go back to the days of competing serial/parallel/PS2/SCSI/etc. interfaces?  Would the internet be what it is without open standards and open source software?

A functional, reliable, usability-focused desktop Linux distro has the potential to redefine desktop computing (which – despite the hype behind cloud computing – will still be around for many years, particularly in developing nations).  Proprietary OSes have had 20 years to give us a better desktop experience, and have they succeeded?

Ha.

I use Ubuntu because it provides me a better desktop experience than Windows.  I promote Ubuntu because I know it can provide others with a better desktop experience.  I advocate Ubuntu not just because free and open source software can save people money, but because FOSS represents an excellent long-term investment in improving the human condition via technology.  I attempt to improve Ubuntu because without honest criticism, it cannot meet any of its stated goals.

I apologize if this post comes across as melodramatic or hammy.  I don’t mean for it to be anything but sincere.

Ubuntu is an excellent distro and I will continue to praise it when it excels.  Conversely, I (and many others) will criticize it when it falls short.  (For the record, I much prefer the former.)

And to any developers that I have implicitly insulted via my critiques: I apologize.  I mean no disrespect.  Your work is absolutely appreciated.

But please – take my criticism for what it’s worth, and use it to improve your project.  If I unfairly characterize something, please correct me.

Because at the end of the day we’re all working toward the same goal: a better desktop computing experience.  I’ll do it my way.  You’ll do it your way.  And hopefully, the end product will represent the combined best of all our efforts.

“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius…”

-Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear)

(Hey Netflix: I hope you’re paying attention…)