Happy New Year - 2019

Happy New Year - 2019

It is now 2019.  That's the year Blade Runner was set in! Back in 1982, 2019 seemed a long way off, now, we are here. So far no replicants, so far.  We do have smartphones, a lot of them.  A whole lot of them!  We talk more to our technology then our family and friends.   Not so computed.

As the new year comes, one can reflect on the previous year.  Each year I work hard to improve myself.  I want to become a better person, a better human being as I get older.  At this point, I feel each year I have gotten better, improved in the things I care about.  Some things are not as important, so I stop improving on them.  Other years I take up something that I haven't worked on for years.  Sometimes I find a new way of doing something that I've been doing forever.  Life is funny like that.

New Year's resolutions almost never come to fruition.  Working out, getting more healthy, losing weight, in many ways are things that can not be solved with a resolution.  One needs to make a plan of action, and focus on one aspect that will help them improve what is not working. I'm not saying to never have resolutions, in my lifetime, rarely have I seen them make a difference in someone's life.

Make goals, set new goals as you get older and mature.  Make new goals once you accomplish your previous goals.  Having a mission in your life will give your life focus.  Structure is the one common element of those that I have known that are successful.  So forget your resolutions and get some structure in your life!  Compute that!

Happy New Year!  So computed!

Magnets Omit Memories

http://a.co/d/cZTHa82

I recorded the Magnets Omit Memories CD last summer using a Moog Mother-32 Semi-Modular Eurorack Analog Synthesizer and Step Sequencer without any digital editing. It took a few months to get artwork and selection list down.  It takes a while to make not only the music, also all of the other things needed to make a CD.

Twenty years ago, I would have been amazed at the quality of this CD.  The CD artwork is amazing!  Also, I can have anyone from all over the world buy it for five dollars.  Back then, I would have paid five dollars for one of these CDs and sold it for ten to twelve bucks.  Times have changed.

Today no one wants a physical copy of a CD or to pay for music.  Most people today don't have a CD player in their car, and the CD player they have in the house is rarely used.  People have moved the clutter of CDs and DVDs out of their houses and moved to digital formats.  If you ask most people the last time they bought music in any format, it has been years for the average person.

Video on Demand and Audio on Demand is what today's technologic savvy costumers want.  They have cell phones that cost over a thousand dollars, they don't want technology from the mid-1980s to listen to music.   Now they 'talk' to their phone and tell it what song they want to hear.  Same with video.

When bands play live, only the diehard fans or people that want to support musicians buy their CDs.  I doubt anyone even bothers to open them up.  They find the music online and listen to it in their cars via Bluetooth.  The CDs go in a pile of junk storage before it is donated to charity or the trash can. 

However, we miss the amazing artwork of albums.   When we moved from vinyl to cassettes, the artwork shrunk down in size.  It got a bit larger when Compact Discs replaced cassettes.  I love getting vintage vinyl just to look at the album art.  It is a small piece of art that you could hang on the wall.  To listen to the music, I search the web to hear it.  Most of the time, it is online to listen to without dusting off the record player. 

I've worked with the computers since the 1980s and I know that hard drives fail at some point.  The cloud is just a bunch of bigger, faster hard drives connected to the internet that will fail at some time in the future.  They will continue to move the digital information to the next 'hard drive', one day, they won't.  That music will be lost to the cloud.  Streaming services will disappear also.  The movies and music you listen to online will move to the next cool and hip technology the future will bring.  Or not.

You no longer own the music or video, you are really licensing it.  At any point, the company that owns that license can pull it from you.  Buying digital content on the cloud can digitally disappear.  Having a physical copy of a DVD or CD will work for over a hundred years, not sure if the DVD and CD players will be around too much longer.  Good luck finding one that works forty years from now.  Maybe even twenty years from now.  The physical copy of your DVD and CD is yours, you own it to listen to until it fails.  Which, it will.  All media falls apart with time.  Time is the predator which constantly stalks us and our technology.  Time will win in the end.

Enjoy your music while you still can!

Compute that!

Here are the links to this amazing experimental electronic music CD.  It may change your life if you get it and listen to it while you still have that option!

Magnets Omit Memories CDMagnets Omit Memories Digital Download

I really hope you will enjoy this experimental electronic music, I only used the sounds that I created from the
Moog Mother-32 Semi-Modular Eurorack Analog Synthesizer and Step Sequencer without any digital editing.
If I made a mistake, I went back and re-record the entire track.

The concept of this album is about living your life to the fullest way possible. 

For me, many things can not be said in words, however, I can express them in experimental electronic music.
Thank you for listening to Magnets Omit Memories.

- Herbert Midgley  July 31, 2018

Technology Is Great!

Technology Is Great!

The technology that we have today is amazing!  The computers, the internet, the smartphones, cameras, software and apps, we all use and love.  There are even guitars tuners that can tune the guitar without me touching the guitar. Wow!

I love gadgets.  I have always loved gadgets.  I always will.  When a new device comes out, it is faster, cheaper and easier to use.  When I used a Commodore 64 or Atari 800xl in the early 1980's, I never thought that I would need another computer.  Those 8-bit computers could do everything that I ever needed in the 80's.  Today most couldn't even get a program to load.  LOAD "*",8,1 to most computer users today is not understandable, it looks like a bunch gibberish.

The one thing that was good about those early computers is that they were slow.  Not to us back then, but today they sure are.  They could compute, but it took a while for them to load, save, and run software.  It was faster to do things in your head.  We all had a bunch of phone numbers that were memorized.  It was faster for most of use to write in cursive in longhand than type on these computers.  Which meant we did a lot of things without technology.  Some of our Casio watches had a calculator, but that's all.  No cameras, no mobile phones, no GPS, no Apps, it only told time and had a stopwatch.

We talked to each other.  We had to call and talk to a person.  We had to write letters to each other.  We had to show up when we made plans because phone booths were not everywhere.

It was a time where we used technology to improve our lives.  Today in many ways, technology as is our lives.  A big difference. 

So go out there and talk to someone that needs it.  Leave your smartphone at home for a few hours a day.  Go for a walk with some friends.  When you eat, talk and pay attention to those you break bread with.  Laugh, cry, hug and shake hands with those that you love and care about.  Listen to music in a group and not on earbuds.  Watch a movie in a group instead of watching it on a cell phone.

Enjoy your life.  Use technology to improve your life, not be your life.

Compute that.

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The Future

The Future

I love the thought about the future.  In my mind, it will be amazing!  I can't wait for a few hundred years to go by and see what will happen for humanity.  Of course, I will see a few more decades go by.   I predict amazing things will happen in the future.

Think back at how different the world is as compare to the 80's, 70's or 60's.  Computers, mobile phones, the Internet, and so much more.  Can you imagine how different the world would be if computers weren't invented in the last 30's?  Imagine the world without computers, it is hard for us to do that after we use them.

In the future, there will be technology that we can't even imagine that will be part of humanity's daily lives.  Could you describe what the internet is and will become to the first computers users in the 30's?  Or go back to 1066 and tell them about searching for information, watching moving images, or listening to music, knowing your location, communicating to anyone on the planet,  or buying a pizza or book, using a computer.  You would sound like you are out of your mind to them.

Computers and the internet is such a major part of our lives, we don't even think about that we are using them.  The technology of the future will be the same for them.   Our lives are so rich with information, entertainment, and ease because of our current technology.  The internet from ten years ago seems like prehistoric times as compare to today's internet.  

It is impossible to know what technology will be use by humanity in the future.  All I can say that in the future, our lives will be better.  We will live longer, we will have more time to do things we love, and we will continue to improve technology for the next generations.  

The future will be amazing, I hope we all live long enough to see even more amazing technology.  The future will be a better place, one zero and one one at a time. 

Computed!

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