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Some express dismay that I'm living in a tent under a highway overpass. Actually I feel like I've got it pretty good.

I have my music, see.

When I left Caltech in January 1985 I was determined to work as a street artist on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. I'm not real sure what happened - my memories of the time are confused - but I wound up at UC Santa Cruz where I ultimately completed my physics degree.

I've been working as a coder since 1987. Since 2004 I've thought I should be a musician. Not just as a hobby but as a way of life.

I was really beating myself up for not singing on the street as often as I could have. But I've been a busker for just three months. Actually I'm making good progress.

Today is below freezing, it's too cold to sing. Not that I'm unwilling to brave the chill but that the cold air in my throat diminishes the capacity of my voice.

By the time Spring comes I will have more songs to sing, and will sing better. I'll earn plenty of tips then.

I'm good at coding, but coding does not make me happy.

Music makes me happy.

I just read that the rough cut for Star Trek Continues episode 6 has been completed. The episode should be out some time in 2016. Looking forward to it! I wonder if it will feature the new engine room.

Meanwhile another Star Trek fanfilm production was sued today by Paramount. From what I read from the STC people, Paramount had stated they would permit fan productions as long as noone was making any money. I wonder if that's not true, or they changed their mind, or what.

So ... what happened to Ian Murdock?

Update: At the time of my writing this earlier, there was no news. Now I see from his employer that Ian committed suicide.. He was already dead by the time most of us heard of the threat, I believe.

I read a portion of Ian's article on how he found Linux earlier today and enjoyed it a lot. He started on an Apple 2 like I did, but obviously he went a lot further in life. So sorry to lose you, Ian. The world is much poorer for your passing.

Suicide threats should always be taken seriously. Worst case scenario you embarrass somebody and they never do it again.

Meet sexcurity theater:

Belgium police investigate Brussels lockdown orgy claims

Police chiefs in Belgium have reportedly launched an internal investigation into claims soldiers and police officers held an orgy while colleagues hunted for terror suspects. Two policewomen and eight soldiers are said to have engaged in a sex party at a police station in the Brussels neighbourhood of Ganshoren.

The city was in lockdown over fears of a Paris-style attack at the time. Soldiers slept at the police station for two weeks during the operation.

"When they left, they organised a small party to thank the police in the area," police spokesman, Johan Berckmans, told Belgian newspaper La Derniere Heure (in French). "We have launched an investigation to find out what exactly happened."

Speaking to De Standaard (in Dutch), the spokesman said 15 to 20 soldiers had been sleeping at the Ganshoren police station during two weeks in November so they did not have to travel so far at the end of their shift.

I've been experiencing depression, not a "Goodbye Cruel World" sort, more like feeling no ambition at all. I haven't been singing on the street as much as I could. There's a problem with being totally self-employed: if I don't show up to work I have no one to scold me.

I know very well that this is not like my normal self so I asked my psychiatrist for imipramine. It has worked well in the past. He prescribed 50 mg at bedtime for my first week, then 50 mg in the morning and at bedtime after that.

Tonight I will complete my first week of it. It's not having any effect yet.

If I sleep too much it makes me depressed if I'm depressed I sleep too much. Clearly I should sleep less but I just don't feel like getting out of bed.

"Get more exercise," commanded my psychiatrist back in the day.

"I don't feel like it."

"Do it anyway."

I had in mind to study up on kernel programming but instead it's all I can do to reload Facebook.

I'm getting more food stamps on the third. I'll buy some ice cream. Ice cream fixes everything.

Learning from the past: What yesterday's media can tell us about the times

If you want to get a real feel for what was happening during a certain period in history, how people really felt about the issues of the day, take a look at the media coverage.

For example, a recent study of how historically black newspapers covered the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia, found their coverage not that much different from their mainstream counterparts.

The team of researchers, including a journalism professor from Michigan State University, was surprised by the findings, as they hypothesized that black newspapers would be more sympathetic to the racially mixed couple who challenged the Virginia law.

Historically, said MSU’s Geri Alumit Zeldes, the African-American press is an advocate for civil rights.

“Just knowing how the ethnic press operates, we thought they were going to be very one-sided in favor of the Lovings,” she said. “But they followed the same pattern as the mainstream media such as the New York Times and others.”

Zeldes said one of the lessons learned from this, something that hasn’t changed since the first newspaper was printed, is that news is a cultural mirror of what is going on in society at that point in time.

“If you take a look at the newspapers at the time they were published, they will give you hints as to what the times were like,” she said. “So if we look at the black press at that time period, you can get a sense of what the black community was thinking because those reporters were part of that community.”

Zeldes said that by reviewing the newspapers’ stances on the issue, it gives us a clue to the political and cultural mood of the time.

“It indicates,” she said, “that some segments of society in the late 1960s were ready to lessen social and cultural marriage restrictions, but that other groups in the United States were still undecided.”

News as a Cultural Mirror: Historically Black Newspapers Reflecting Public Views of Loving v. Virginia (1967) (DOI: 10.1111/josi.12144)

From Futurity.

We do not provide access to anyone for non-political purposes

As if that makes it any better!

At the time I wrote it I was very determined to go to music school to learn to compose symphonies. Some kuron advised me "So you want to compose, then compose". That is he felt I should not need a degree to write music.

This essay is very popular with composers, there have been three who offered to teach me but life was just a little too crazy to focus on it.

• I Have So Many Questions About Music

In other news, with the money my Aunt gave me for Christmas, I purchased a hardbound drawing book, two technical pencils, a technical pen, an eraser and a pencil case. I'm quite good at drawing when I'm in practice, but it has been a long time so I have some work to do.

3D XPoint: Not The Point

A fun article about Intel/Micron's 3D XPoint that I was too lazy to submit.

Computing capabilities aside, the $34 billion 2020 estimate from Intel for 3XP DIMMs partially reveals the Earth-shaking nature of this technology. What most people aren't yet realizing is that 3XP is "fast enough" to replace standalone DRAM in the vast majority of use cases. Research from 2011 outlines a hybrid PCM/eDRAM chip that increases performance and dramatically reduces power versus traditional homogeneous DRAM. This was done using assumptions from the old filamentary PCM technology: nano-PCM will improve the numbers even more dramatically.

From the patent applications, we know that the announced 128Gbit 3XP part is heavily sandbagged (i.e. - they don't want it to appear too disruptive). With the expected four planes (instead of two) and four bits per cell, that works out to exactly one terabit. This blows 3D NAND out of the water. This is the part that they were really going to announce - after the ECD bankruptcy had reached closure last summer.

But my article came along in the form of a giant monkey wrench, the ECD bankruptcy closing was further delayed and the Ovonyx CEO was deposed. Microsoft scrambled to put together a stop-gap Windows phone after it became apparent that they weren't going to be able to ship their PCM/3XP phone in the near future (this phone wasn't cancelled - just delayed until PCM is fully-secured).

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There's no incremental technology planned to succeed DDR4 DRAM. The industry is going to fragment at this next step (Micron's HMC, Samsung's WIO and AMD/nVidia/Hynix HBM). This transition is going to produce few winners and many losers. Who's going to win? The US Government has already weighed in on the matter (where "HMC" is Micron's "Hybrid Memory Cube")

Today I found a reasonably quiet place to make a very lo-fi recording of America the Beautiful with the built-in mic of my Acer Aspire E 15, with Audacity. I saved it as an Ogg. I don't know what quality number it is but really that doesn't matter.

Soylent Singing

It's easy to tell that my mic does not have flat frequency response, as certain notes resonate with the Acer's plastic case.

I'll make some far, far better recordings when I can rustle up the cash for a real mic. You can get good-quality mics with built-in USB for about $200, or I could get a better mic with an XLR connector then use a USB audio interface. Sadly my Acer has no way to attach firewire.

I once owned a Zoom H4 handheld audio recorder. It advertises itself as four-track however it is really two tracks, it just has the ability to record a second time, laying down the second pair of tracks along with the first pair. There is a somewhat improved model available now but I don't recall the price.

More important than finding a better mic is finding a quiet place to record.

I'm expecting to cash out a $7000 401k soon. I'd forgotten all about it until I was reminded of it by the Social Security Administration. I'm going to buy a van to live in, when I do I expect it would work to go way out in the woods to do the recordings.

I'm afraid I've been slacking at the guitar, however I've been picking up the piano again as there is an upright that I can play at a day center for the mentally ill in vancouver. All the shops are closing early tonight, so I'm expecting to spend some time on my guitar before I turn in.

For Christmas day, the Potluck in the Park people are holding a dinner from noon to 3:00 at the Portland Art Museum. I expect I'll go to that.