Programming Soundtrack MMIX.III.XIII

Came home from another hard on-site day of infinitely pushing heavy Windows XP SP3 Japanese boulders[1] up the mythical mountain... should I go out and get wasted with my wetbrain friends? Go to bed at 8:30PM? Jump off my Tokyo highrise balcony and plunge to a comforting Windows-free death?

Oh, what's that, iTunes has a rec for me? Really, Eat Static has a new one already? Yes! (New to me, at least; it was actually released last year.)

Hmm! Maybe I should fucking sit down and write some fucking code![2]

2.4 hours of energizing basslines and evolving psycho-delllllic-woah-man trancey melodies later, I am inclined to listen to it a third time[3] and keep going, but I don't have any Ritalin with me. Plus, I'm just kinda too old.

Still. This is fucking programming music. No words, no intrusive hey-hey-look-at-me ego-hooks. Just a smooth and additive flow of audio that the brain loads up and runs on a couple of idle cores.

It's like, they took the longstanding strength of Eat Static, topped it with African Head Charge, and then drizzled on some butter-sautéed Shpongle, with a dash of Claude Chalhoub.

Fucking great.

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[1]: Yes, yes, I would love to convert Japanese companies to Mac OS X. Or OpenSolaris. Even Ubuttnu or OpenSuse. But those things aren't fucking happening. The Mac is dead here, in the same way as it was dead everywhere around '97 or so. Linux is dead here, in the same way it has always been dead everywhere. Some people say that the whale-eaters are running a decade behind. Maybe so, in some ways. But my experience on the ground suggests that Apple (and Bubu, OpenFruFru, etc.) should focus on allowing users to type in their native fucking language without a learning curve.[*]

[2]: alternated at roughly 30-minute intervals with standing up and writing some fucking code, of course

[3]: Yes, the album is not only the fucking bomb, but it completely fills up a standard 74-minute audio CD[**] (73.65 minutes). Right on.

[*]: Yep, the Windows way of typing in Japanese does actually suck, but it's what people know. And although it is invalid in many contexts, in the case of entering fucking text into the stupid machine, I think "it's what people know" is a compelling argument. As least as a training-wheels default option.

[**]: You see, back in my day, we had these flat little plastic discs that could be used to play music...