Rhythm and Gravy

A couple of new songs:

The first is “Death or Radio” by Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer. I’ve been getting into Indie Pop music since a couple of years ago when I happened on a Fountains of Wayne album at a used CD shop in Pittsburgh. Subsequently, my cousin Brady introduced me to The New Pornographers. I realize I’m way behind the curve on this, but I’d been previously self-confined to jazz, soul, and hip-hop, so suck it.

I found this track on JWZ’s latest mixtape 074 (JWZ is the proprietor of the DNA Lounge in San Francisco and he’s got some wacky musical taste, but his mixtapes are always interesting and often really fun). I’m a sucker for a good hook, and “Let’s hold hands and listen to sh*tty bands” is right up there with the best. Really, that line is pretty much how I feel about pop music in general – I don’t like it because it’s necessarily good (although a lot of it is), but because it tricks me into liking it.

The same goes for “nerdcore” hip-hop. I guess I’ve known about it for a while, starting back in the day with MC Stephen Hawking and more recently, MC Frontalot. I heard MC Chris’s “Fette’s Vette” while watching “Zack And Miri Make a Porno” last week (decent movie, by the way).

Overheard at the Home Depot on N. Aurora Saturday morning:

Woman: “They told me I needed to pick up ten gallons of odorless kerosene, is this the right thing?”

Saleslady: “Possibly. Can you tell me what it’s going to be used for?”

Woman: “I’m not allowed to say. But it’s for the WWE.”

This is the way I find out that the WWE is in town. Gee, I wonder what the kerosene was for?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I love Pittsburgh lately. After moving to Seattle two years ago, I’ve reconnected with a bunch of friends via Facebook, and the Steelers have rescued football for me. But this… this really sums up my feelings for the place. Really. I shed a single tear.

Dear Lazyweb,

When running in the foreground, my iPhone app occasionally uses an alert to get the user’s attention. If the Ring/Silent switch is set to silent mode, the phone will vibrate (kSystemSoundID_Vibrate); otherwise a sound is played.

It appears as though the iPhone SDK limits me to playing audio supplied by my application only:

I was unable to find any explanation for this limitation of the AudioToolbox Framework on the google. Does anyone out there know what the justification might be? Note that Apple’s applications seem to be able to use system sounds (presumably using the same AudioServicesPlaySystemSound or AudioServicesPlayAlertSound API calls exposed to us), as shown in this screenshot of the Alarm Clock application.

Update:

It looks like I’m able to use an NSDirectoryEnumerator to get the contents of /Library/Ringtones/ on the phone, but if I try to load one of these files using AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID() it fails with OSErr -1500 (Operation could not be completed). Sandboxing… Thanks to Steve Makofsky for his help.

You shouldn’t have to register to leave comments now. I think I’ve got it figured out so that the comment spam isn’t a problem for me.