The Null Device Blog

New tshirt design has gone to press…

.com maven-turned-internet-culture-wonk Derek Sivers has recently posted a blog entry about how everyone really needs to relax and remember that when you’re angry at something on a computer there’s a real person on the other end.

Okay, that’s all well-and-good, but he goes on to use some frankly asinine examples.

The first is about a woman who runs a mail-order company, who got a vitriolic email to customer service that made her cry.   This is one of those things that makes me wonder if said person is really suited for the kind of job that requires dealing with customers.  Sivers uses this as an example of how people overreact on the internet, sending angry emails whose bloviating far outclasses the infraction.  I think Sivers needs to get out more.  He’s been an internet gazillionaire for a decade now, so I suppose he doesn’t have to mingle with us peons anymore, but anyone who’s spent time in an airport has probably seen some sweaty, balding businessman from Schaumburg ranting and raving and berating some poor 19-year-old ticketing clerk at the gate because his plane is snowed in in Rochester.  Or perhaps, since it’s been so long since Sivers has worked in traditional customer service, he’s forgotten about the frankly bizarre  angry letters addressed to the “president of the company” or the abusive phone calls demanding to talk to a manager over some perceived slight, like not allowing a customer to pay their bill 5 months late.  The internet may make it easier to send an angry screed to customer service, but it is hardly the only method, and by no means is the angry tirade a new web-2.0 phenomenon.

I also ask…geez, how long have you been on the net now, Derek?  I mean, even when I got started, back in the pre-boom early 90’s, the flame war, the angry message, the name-calling, the invocation of Godwin’s law…these were well-known things.  The third email I ever read was aimed at someone on a Star Trek mailing list I had just subscribed to – “Brent Spiner is not [expletive] German, you [expletive] [expletive] [obscene gerund].”  It became clear very quickly that incivility was sort of the stock-in-trade of internet communication, and it was to be taken with a grain of salt.  This is not to say that this is a good thing, per se, but…geez, it’s 2010, we should all be aware that this is just the way things are and this touchy-feely “remember there are real people out there!” thing that Sivers is advocating seems sort of naïve.  If you can’t handle a flame war, perhaps the internet is not the best place for you to be hanging out.  All the Derek Siverseses in the world are going to have a hard time changing the behavior of a few million people,  so until they do, it’s either grow a thick skin or unplug the laptop.

His other example (he only had two, really.  Statistical analysis, this is not) was of a friend who was trying internet dating, but only lukewarmly, and was deleting a lot of messages from “losers” without reading them.  Sivers saw this as callous and unfeeling, since these guys had clearly spent a lot of time crafting messages to her, hoping to win her attention and her heart.  Um, dude?  Internet dating?  That’s your example?  Yeah, it’s a step up from Craigslist’s “no strings” section, but still, you can’t be so naïve to think that every one of those guys read her profile and decided she was Their One True Soulmate and their fragile self-esteem is riding on her response.  He also can’t believe that she was the only one they sent messages to.  The whole point of an internet dating site is to provide a larger pool of potentials, and get the ball rolling by offering a method of safe, reasonably anonymous contact.  I’m guessing most of these guys have gotten ignored before, and have done their share of the ignoring as well.  And…hell, even in the real dating world, “uh, yeah, I’ll call you!” is the way of the world.  Nobody walks into a bar and politely informs every guy nearby on the dancefloor “gosh, you seem like a nice guy, but I’m really not interested in you” or agrees to go on a test date because a guy clearly put in enough effort to come by and say hello.

I’m not even trying to sound cynical.  I’m not saying civility and politeness are dead.  I’m quite fond of them, myself.  But the cold hard fact of the matter is that in a lot of situations, people act uncivilly, or it’s just not appropriate to do so, and those of us on the receiving end – especially those of us who create subjectively-perceived things open to criticism like art and music – simply cannot expect to be glad-handled by every internet user, customer, consumer, listener or patron in every situation.  It’d be great if everyone in the world were unflinchingly polite and measured in their responses, but never in human history has it ever actually happened, so why Derek Sivers thinks imploring people to “remember that there’s a real person on the other end” of the computer is going to change a few thousand years of social conventions.

Scene 1:

 I was in the studio, fussing endlessly over some vocals, while Nori sat purring loudly in my lap.

I was struggling with how to get a vocal take to sit correctly in a mix. I could get it to sit right but it would become very nasal-sounding and harsh, and if I removed some frequencies then the vocal sounded odd over the song. I was very, very precisely adjusting the knobs of the PSP classicQ equalizer to try and find a happy medium.

Nori sprang into action and mightily headbutted my mouse hand, sending the onscreen knob wildly careening to some random extreme setting…

…and damn if it didn’t sound pretty good. How does she keep doing that?

Scene 2:

“Mrow?”

“Mrph.”

 ”Meeow? Prrrrrrrrrrr.”

“Buh.” It’s 4:48am. Nori is standing on my chest desperately trying to get my attention.

 ”MEE-YOW.”

“Bleaarrgh alright alright I’m up I’m up!”

I assume the food dish is empty and I’m being alerted to this fact. I get up, and Nori dashes to the bedroom door. Sure, food dish.  Must be. I follow her.

Surprisingly, instead of heading upstairs to the food dish, she tears down the stairs into the studio. I think this is cute. But I’m tired, and go back to bed. A few hours later, I get up to get ready for work, and go downstairs to grab some laundry from the dryer. I note that my screens are not in powersave mode, and there’s a status bar up on the screen. I walk over to investigate, and see that Logic is cheerily recording audio, and has been since about 4:50am.

Nori has figured out how to press “record.” She’s bucking for an engineering credit, I just know it.

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: No Chinese Buffet Is Safe

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Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: 100% Grass-Fed, Free-Range Organic Band Members

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Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: Hey, Douchebag, All Our Female Band Members Are Spoken For, So Stop It
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Could Talk About Microphones For An Hour Instead

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Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: Increasingly Inappropriate for Goth Clubs

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Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: We Brought Our Own Beef Jerky, Thanks

It has been an annoying past few days in the studio.

Some things have gone quite well, of course.  I’ve re-engineered backing tracks to make them cleaner and punchier in the live environment.   I’ve been able to do this quickly and efficiently with the new machine, since I don’t have to freeze tracks to be able to play back my mixes.   I’ve also got a new rack of DI’s en route, thanks to a lovely tip from Mr. Wade Alin.  They’re not Radials or anything, but they look to have better build quality than the ones I’ve currently got.    Also there’s a new ATA rack to put them in coming.  I decided that the 6-unit full-depth rack I’ve got is entirely unnecessary for my 3 units of shallow-depth gear, so I’ve got a 4U Gator on the way.  Also, being ATA, I feel a little safer about it than I do about my current rack.  Plus that extra space leaves a little room for expansion.

The things that haven’t gone right?  Well, yesterday I opened a newish track that I had recently transitioned over from the old system.  I hit play and…it sounded really weird.  That wasn’t right.  I popped open a few of the plugins I was using and noted that every.  Single.  Instance of PODFarm Plat had switched back to its default setting, which happens to be an emulation of a Fender Jazz amp with reverb.  Basically, the entire song sounded like each part was being played from inside individual cardboard boxes.  And I used PODfarm a LOT on this track to get grungy synth distortion, so the track was pretty much hosed until I could fix it.  I spent much of the afternoon switching as much as possible over to Logic’s native Amp Designer.  It doesn’t always sound quite as nice as PF for some of the emulations, but I can at least be assured it’ll work next time I open it.  I get to look forward to the next few days of recreating settings and rebuilding tracks.  Grumble.

A nasty headcold coupled with my usual overactive sinus-based ick has kept me from recording any vocals for the past week and a half.  This is particularly annoying, since I have stuff stacking up I want to record/rerecord/fix.

Aaand finally, I plugged in my MOTU 828 (mk1) yesterday, to test out my backing tracks and…kernel panic.  I rebooted, and…kernel panic.  I unplugged it and…kernel panic.    Some online searching demonstrated that hey, whaddya know, the new MOTU drivers under snow leopard don’t like the old 828 all that much.  I dug out one of my archived installers and put an older driver on, and it seems stable.  For now.  Nonetheless, this makes me kind of twitchy about relying on a nearly-10-year-old audio interface.  I do have plans to get a new one but…not for a while yet.    I just bought a new car, I’m a little low on petty cash.

Sigh.