nerd alert

at the risk of sounding awfully nerdy, i was excited to find that cbs has posted a whole bunch of full length macgyver episodes on youtube. even more exciting: full length episodes of the charlie rose show. i watched his interview with bjork from seven years ago. who needs digital tv when you have internet?

speaking of digital tv, my colleague showed me the credit card looking $40 coupon the US government has mailed out to people to assist them in purchasing the digital decoder box so you can continue to use your analog tv.

let's have some friday night math:

105,480,101 households (2000 census) * $40 = $4.2 billion

assuming every household gets one coupon regardless of how many tv's they own and regardless of whether they have cable, satellite, or otherwise have no need for a digital decoder box.

of course these things don't come in the mail automatically. you have to fill out a form and apply for one, or two even. since there's no way to verify that you need one or not, it's possible you could apply for two coupons, wait for some time because the coupon fund has already run out of money, buy two converter boxes, return them, and earn $80 in store credit. hmmm, not a bad idea.... i wonder if walmart still has their famous return policy.

i'm not encouraging fraud. that idea really came to me just then. i'm sure somebody has already thought of a way to prevent this. in any case, don't try this at home.

i took a break from composition today and just had some fun with my synthesizer. the synthesizer i'm playing with didn't come with any preset instrument sounds. at first, i found little use for it because i didn't want to be bothered with trying to program it when i could just use something else with twenty different sounds to start with. it turns out that not having any presets is pretty liberating. i have no frame of reference for what is possible or what the thing is best at so with a little playing around, i end up with something interesting just because i wasn't headed in any particular direction with a preconceived idea.

the other really cool thing about it is that i can use the key pressure from my midi controller to change the way the synth sounds. i can play a key and wobble it around like on a violin for some interesting effects.

and for my next nerdy trick, let me write about my magic the gathering card collection... just kidding, i sold my cards years ago.

it's kind of amazing how far that game spread. when i saw my cousin in the philippines, one of his friends had a magic card out on his desk. small world.