The Doctor (of Rock)

October 30, 2013

Moving My Blog

There was never really much of a blog here, but FWIW I've moved my hopefully-growing-into-something-real blog to:

http://blog.doctorofrock.com

Existing content was replicated to the new site.

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July 24, 2013

Maybe I'm Amazingly Angsty

...and why I can't just sit back and enjoy an amazing McCartney show.

Disclaimer: I'm about to crank the blowhard factor up pretty high. That is, when I talk about anything remotely emotional, I feel like a total blowhard trying to be deep, because I'm actually "Die Hard" deep on a good day, not even "Gladiator" deep. Is it more or less blowhard-y if I announce it first? In any case...

Seeing McCartney live is an emotionally confusing experience for me. Last Friday was show #6 for me. I can't say whether one show was better or worse than another, because, as per Paul's reputation, every show is flawless. He'll stop touring when he starts missing notes. The only mistake I've ever heard him make was forgetting the lyrics to You Never Give Me Your Money... on purpose, at every show on the tour, which encapsulates everything good and bad about his reputation as a perfectionist. The Seattle show was far and away the "biggest" show I've seen him do, so it goes down as my #1: it was the first show ever at Safeco, so there were actual fireworks (not just stage pyrotechnics), the living members of Nirvana reunited on stage (Seattle's favorite musical child helping to open the doors to our new largest concert venue), and it was definitely the hardest-rocking of the shows I've seen. And the weather was spectacular: a little sun for the earlier, lighter part of the show, then lights-and-explosions-in-the-dark for the *pounding* encores. Almost like he drew it up that way... Paul can afford to rent weather, right? There was plenty of Yesterday, but overall this was a rock show. "Special treats" that I hadn't heard before included Another Day, Ob-La-Di, and - most surprisingly - Mr. Kite. But highlights have not changed for me in six shows: down the line, it's Maybe I'm Amazed and Live and Let Die. I'm so fired up at the end of Live and Let Die that I literally have to fight the urge to run circles around the stadium (which would risk significant personal injury, and more importantly would have caused me to miss Hey Jude).

Here comes the blowhard-y part. For some reason, seeing (or sometimes even reading about) McCartney makes me marvel, usually not in an entirely happy way, at how much this person who is nominally from the same species as me has seen and accomplished in his life. He probably wrote 50 of the 1000 greatest songs of the recorded music era, played on another 50, and has met/toured-with/jammed-with everyone who recorded the other 900. For my money, he's *easily* the most "complete" musician of the 20th century; I have him down as the greatest songwriter, but any way you spin it he's in the top 50 as a songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist, live performer, and studio genius, and I can't put anyone else in the top 50 in all those categories. Beyond that, he's met presidents and prime ministers, played in front of possibly *billions* of eyes, and he's raised seven gazillion dollars for charity (not an exact figure, but if a gazillion were a real number, no matter what number it was, this would be a low estimate).

So all of that comes down somewhere between awe and self-pity for me. Some combination of (a) being or approaching "middle-aged" and (b) starting with moderate-at-best self-esteem, it's somewhat hard to just sit there and appreciate all that is McCartney without thinking "he does twelve things better than I do any one thing".

But that's maybe 30% of why I feel oddly conflicted at what should be a purely upbeat experience, or usually the day after. The other 70% has more to do with the fact that every show starts with grainy black and white clips of the Beatles in the studio, John and Paul hovering over a piano somewhere, the Beatles meeting x and y and z, the Beatles slowly growing up. If these are supposed to strike an emotional note with the audience, it works. Paul is 71 now, and has watched nearly all the other geniuses with whom he created modern music pass away, and no matter how much scrutiny has gone into documenting the Beatles' every step, he's the only one now who knows what was really happening when all those clips were captured, and the only one who knows what it felt like to be at the pinnacle of creativity that was Lennon/McCartney. The good and the bad of it: the moments of inspiration, and the telling each other to fuck-off-I'll-record-it-myself, all of which were part of the magic that we might never see again. In fact, the odds have it way against us seeing that magic again in my lifetime (I'm a computer scientist, so I have the authority to make up probabilities). And there's definitely a little hint of "holy crap, mortality and what not" and "even Paul can't take it with him" that factors in.

I know there are lots of "people who have done a lot of stuff and been around a while", but for some reason I don't get this strange wispy feeling when I think about what Henry Kissinger has seen and accomplished, or Bill Gates, or Dan Rather, or any living or non-living dignitaries or geniuses. This *only* happens with McCartney. It's not that I'm the biggest Beatles fan in the universe. I'm not. I probably know the words to 60% of the Beatles discography. I don't remember Beatles birthdays or who Ringo's wife is or how many kids Paul has or what guitar George played on Your Mother Should Know (also a surprise treat at this concert, BTW). Maybe it was being introduced to the Beatles at a formative place when I was just starting to play music (the first song my high school band played was Day Tripper... also a surprise treat at this concert, BTW). Or maybe I'm less angsty than I think, and there's no secret trigger in my past, and all 45,000 people at Safeco felt the same thing.

But to conclude my blowhardiness, I'll thank Paul for another spectacular show, for a reason to start picking up my guitar more often (the awe outweighs the self-pity, when push comes to shove, and I dug in yesterday for a good long round with this), and - though he didn't cook it himself - for the awesome veggie dog I ate before the show (that was just to make sure I concluded with something not-very-serious and more in keeping with my use of social media).

Here's the best review I found of the show. Good review, but why isn't he more angst-ridden?

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May 16, 2013

My Vegan Week in Paris

...and why in 10 years, Paris will be the destination for vegan cuisine.

I recently traveled to Paris for a week. The trip was 50% work, 50% vacation, and 100% vegan. I turns out, after extensive research, that French people really like butter and cheese. So I won’t say that Paris is exactly the optimal place for vegan dining. With that said, I enjoyed a fantastic week of food, and will argue in this post that if right now Paris is like a C- as a vegan cuisine hotspot (compared, say, to New York, or any city on the West Coast of the U.S., which are all A+’s), all signs point to Paris becoming the destination for vegan food in the next decade or so. I’ll start with a bit on why Paris is currently a bit vegan-challenged, then talk about my hypothesis that this is going to change, then will talk about my week there and all the restaurants I visited.

Why Paris is Not — Right Now — A Vegan Paradise

To be clear: Paris has perfectly good produce, and you could get a salad anywhere full of fresh green lettuce (if you ask for no cheese, and then remind them that no cheese includes crumbled cheese, and also ask for no dressing). But anywhere in this post, when I say “food”, assume I mean “food with actual calories and preferably some protein”. Contrary to popular perception, vegans are not ruminants, cannot survive on kale, and in fact don’t eat more lettuce or spinach than anyone else does. I eat ~3000 calories a day and I don’t like lettuce. So the fact that every brasserie in Paris can provide salad is not bad, but is essentially a no-op.

So when I compare to the U.S. cities I was born in (New York) and/or live in (Seattle), here are a few reasons Paris is barely functional for vegan dining in 2013:

Even “bread for breakfast” is complicated. Bakeries in Paris play the breakfast role that DnD and Starbucks play in the U.S., and in the U.S. there are always bagels, most of which at this point are vegan (though not all; bagel vegan-ness is complicated and outside the scope of this discussion). In the U.S., If there aren’t bagels, there’s a wheat bread something something that still feels like food. Not so much in Parisian bakeries. Croissants are of course the standard breakfast fare, and other than at the hippie vegan places, there are not vegan croissants available. Crepes play a similar role (fast, non-gross carbs), but are also not vegan-friendly, and even the nominally-vegan gallettes (which contain neither milk nor egg) are often difficult to order vegan because they’re cooked on a buttered pan, without an available substitute.
One cannot bank on Asian food. In the U.S., basically every Chinese or Thai restaurant has tofu... in fact they want you to eat their tofu because it’s cheaper for them than meat. Asian food is much less common in Paris than in major U.S. cities, and tofu is actually not a given. Maybe a third of Asian restaurants I peeked into had tofu on the menu, I figure maybe half had tofu on the premises. Sushi places on the U.S. West Coast also have a near-universal menu of vegetarian and vegan options, e.g. inari and avocado rolls. I didn’t see inari anywhere in maybe 10 Japanese/sushi places in Paris. And if maybe 50% of soup/noodle/Pho places or dishes in the U.S. use a meat broth, it appeared to be about 90% in Paris. What all this means in practice is that in a group scenario, the blanket approval of Asian restaurants breaks down.
Other ethnic food is not uncommon, but is less distributed. If you walk any block in Manhattan, you’ll see a steakhouse next to a Thai place next to a Middle Eastern place next to a pizza place next to a Starbucks. It’s not that there are no non-French restaurants in Paris, but that most neighborhoods are all French restaurants (which actually mystifies me a little... every block seems like 10 brasseries in a row with the same menu). So if you’re wandering with friends and you’re not in the Middle Eastern neighborhood, count on a low probability of falafel. And, as per the general theme here, count on a low probability of non-animal protein. On the flip side, there are several neighborhoods chock-full-o-falafel.
One cannot bank on chain food. In the U.S., I know that if I’m in a rush and it’s time for breakfast... Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Panera have bagels. If it’s lunch... Subway has a veggie patty, McDonald’s and Burger King have veggie burgers (which are no more or less disgusting than their meat products), and Chipotle and Baja Fresh have awesome black bean burritos. Bottom line: chains have functional, non-animal-based food. Not so in France. Chains are generally less common (certainly part of the appeal of Paris for “food tourism”), and none of the chains have the vegan-friendly products they carry in the U.S. (Starbucks, for example, doesn’t have bagels).
Substitution is not part of the culture. “Can I get x with y instead of z, with the q on the side?” is a standard request in the U.S., vegan-ness aside. In the U.S., other than at the fanciest restaurants, places and servers generally want the customer to have what they want and — within reason — are not offended by substitutions. Maybe this is one of the few upsides of our out-of-control tipping system, which doesn’t exist in Europe. You probably won’t get glared at if you request substitutions in Paris, but you’ll get a confused look, and your request will likely involve a lengthy exchange with the kitchen that ultimately results in less clarity on what you’re actually eating. It’s just not a thing.

Bottom line: don’t plan to walk outside with a group and say “we’ll find something on this block” unless you aren’t particularly hungry. I was mostly in Paris for a conference, so there were plenty of people around and I never had to leave my wife to fend for herself. In fact once I settled in and said “this is going to be an adventure and I look forward to traveling to a new (pre-selected) place for every meal”, I had a blast, and saw several neighborhoods I wouldn’t have seen if I could have counted on eating near my hotel.

Why Vegans Will Be Flocking to Paris in 10 Years

Although Paris doesn’t compare favorably to most U.S. cities for vegan dining right now... you heard it here first... I predict Paris will be the place for vegan dining a decade from now. I personally have no tofu in this fight (i.e., I have no trips planned to Paris and may or may not ever be in Paris again), so I wouldn’t call this “optimism”. Rather, a few clear trends point to a real rise in vegan dining in Paris:

French people love animals. Europe in general, and Paris in particular, has a wildly dog-friendly culture. Can you imagine bringing your dog into a restaurant in Manhattan? Unless you're an A-lister eating a restaurant you partially own, not so much. In Paris, every park is a dog park. Dogs are off-leash all the time (and consequently dogs are well-behaved all the time). Overall, French people display a clear empathy for animals that is above and beyond the mean empathy for animals in the U.S. This does not tip the scales toward vegetarianism overnight, but it helps. Empathy for cows isn’t the same as empathy for dogs, but it’s a little further down the same emotional axis.
French people love the environment. We definitely hear a lot of trash-talk about American environmental habits coming from Europe (and France in particular), and I admit to having assumed this was just a case of “it’s easy to hate cars when everything is close together so you don’t need cars”. But I have to say that the sense of environmental activism in Paris was palpable, everywhere in the city. The public transit system is incredible compared to even the best subways in the U.S., and is constantly growing. The main city parks and gardens (e.g. the Tuileries) are maintained with organic supplies and no pesticides. Just like in all of our stereotypes, cars are tiny, motorcyles are tinier (and ubiquitous), and consequently gas mileage is off the charts. Overall: I was wrong, France, your environmentalism is quite sincere. And again, though this doesn’t turn anyone into a vegetarian, it puts a cap on how large the meat industry can grow, and is likely to make the population much more responsive to the argument that reducing meat intake (without giving up meat) can contribute to environmental protection just like reducing oil consumption (without giving up cars). So I could absolutely imagine a “meatless Monday” (or perhaps “sans viande samedi”) becoming a cultural tradition, which would open the door for meatless menu options and increase enthusiasm for meatless restaurants.
Paris is full of hippies. Paris has to have more artists and college students per capita than any European city, particularly in the summer. And where there are artists and college students, there are hippies. And where there are hippies, there are vegetarians. And where there are vegetarians, there are vegetarians who need to eat. You see where I’m going with this.
Natural and organic food is exploding in Paris. Grocery stores in Paris tend to be smaller than American supermarkets. Consequently grocery stores can turn over a little faster than in most of the U.S., and it was very clear that in the ~2 years before I visited, an astonishing number of crunchy natural grocery stores had opened up, including large and expanding chains like Naturalia and Bio C’Bon, as well as a number of smaller local markets. Natural and organic is not equivalent to vegetarian-friendly, but in practice, every one of these places carried tofu, soy milk, and all sorts of meat substitutes, comparable to what a Whole Foods would carry in the U.S. (despite being so much smaller). This points to both a growing market and a growing distribution channel for non-animal protein and a general open-ness to a change in food culture.
Everyone speaks English in Paris. Being comfortable as a traveling vegan or vegetarian largely hinges on being able to communicate with proprieters and servers. And often a phrasebook falls short here (aside from being an annoyance), because asking questions like “is the pan greased with butter?” or “can you make the pad thai without fish sauce?” is a challenge if you’re operating one-noun-at-a-time. So certainly for Americans, the fact that basically everyone in Paris who works at a restaurant, hotel, or grocery store speaks excellent English provides a ton of comfort and clarity on what one is eating. This has nothing to do with French people wanting to eat vegetarian food, but this list is about why Paris is may be on the rise for vegan tourists.
Paris is good at food tourism. Last but not least, people travel to Paris in part for the food, a fact in which the city takes great pride. If there is a city where vegan/vegetarian travelers are going to be willing to travel a few extra blocks to say “I ate at this fantastic restaurant in this neighborhood that sounds super-European”, it’s Paris. If there is an opportunity to expand food tourism — and the claim that Paris is the culinary capital of the world — to a growing population of vegetarian and vegan travelers, entrepreneurial Parisians are going to figure out how to capitalize.

So overall, I’m not claiming that Paris is going to turn vegetarian, or that 90% of restaurants are going to have vegan options. But I do think that a mild cultural shift will occur that allows, say, 50% of restaurants to have vegan options (maybe around what you’d find in New York, for example), and that this will be enough to make Paris a destination — if not the destination — for vegan dining.

Last But Not Least, My Week in Paris

So that’s all great for the vegan visiting Paris in 10 years... what about right now? In fact I had a jolly time sampling vegan food in Paris, and — as I mentioned above — the fact that I had to plan each meal and travel to eat turned out to be a positive: I saw parts of the city I might not otherwise have seen, and probably had more variety than I would have had I dined at the majority of restaurants, which are pretty consistently “French food”. Here are a few highlights:

Gentle Gourmet Café (Metro: Bastille)

Seasonal, small menu of French-ish vegan cuisine. Atmosphere fancier than the price would suggest (which is generally a positive, though actually it felt a little too quiet and "nice" for my taste). Friendly, quick service. Nice location right across from the quay. Most importantly, this was the only place I ate at twice, which is putting my... mouth where my mouth is. My first visit was for lunch, where I spent about €16 for an excellent portobella burger, fries, bread, salad, and coffee. I went back because while in Paris, I wanted to get my croissant on, and this was the only place I came across advertising vegan croissants, so I went back for breakfast. I was not a vegan for 30+ years, so I’ve had my share of croissants. This was on par with the best croissant I’ve ever had. And it was vegan! On the flaky/dry side, which is exactly how I like pastry. Mmmmm. I had two.

Grand Appetit (Metro: Bastille)

I had lunch here, and spent €6.6 (which BTW is less than a coffee in Paris) for an excellent plate of vegan sushi w/tofu. Vegan sushi is easier said than done in Paris: the standard vegan options that are always available in the U.S. (e.g. inari) aren’t standard fare here. But this is not a sushi place, it’s a cool, menu-on-a-chalkboard café that serves interesting food, a variety of cereals, and takes pride in tea. And I always love when a super-hippie place is run by someone who doesn’t look the part; the dude looked straight out of Fiddler on the Roof. Very friendly, spoke English, took credit card.

M.O.B. (Metro: Filles du Calvaire)

This is an American import; they also have a location in Brooklyn. It’s a hip vegan burger place, somewhere between health food and fast food. I spent about €7 for a large plate with a veggie burger and fries. The place had character, the service was friendly, and I liked the vibe of the one giant communal table. But that’s the good news... this was probably the worst meal I had in Paris. As I mentioned above, I’m sort of down on vegan places that don’t serve a lot of protein, because I can get perfectly good bread and vegetables anywhere. From the very small menu, I picked the veggie burger, which was super-soggy, and definitely a relative of the Garden Burger family of veggie burgers (i.e., no protein). The fries were really heavy. And I don’t think I just ordered the wrong thing; the was quite limited, though some of the vegan desserts looked appealing. Overall, not a must-visit.

My Kitch’n (Metro: Brochant)

Ate dinner here. The menu of the day had just two plates and two smoothies on it (and vegan carrot cake). Very cool “hippie home cooking” vibe. I had a couscous curry/bean bowl; it was great. Very casual dining in a lively market. I almost missed the place; the address I had was the address of the market, which itself is quite hidden from the side of the street I was on. But I’m glad I wandered a little to be sure before giving up. This is definitely the closest to the “restaurant”/“just a counter” border on my list, but there are tables, and the service was friendly, so I’m calling it a restaurant.

East Side Burgers (Metro: Saint Ambroise)

Ate lunch here. Fast food vegetarian/vegan burger/dog/fries place. A certain “fast food is cool” charm, and the fries were good. Service was friendly. Looks like a burger stand (in a good way) upstairs, but downstairs seating area nice. Burger was not good. Like super not good. Greasy, runny yellow cheese substitute. Generic, pasty white bun. Lots of unnecessary paper and wrapping for a dine-in. Cool menu of vegan desserts that I didn’t try.

Sol Semilla (Metro: Jacques Bonsergent)

This was easily the hippiest place I ate at in Paris. More like modern Orange County hippie, less like ‘60s grunge hippie. All into supplements and wheat germ and what not. That was neither good nor bad. What matters is that the food was excellent; I had a hippie noodle-y thing, a hippie smoothie thing with some kind of grass in it, some raw chocolate beans, and an awesome hippie vegan chocolate dessert. Servers were very helpful in helping us sort out what everything was; even if the menu had been in English, I had no idea what all their wild superfood hippie supplements were. Seriously, be ready for a dose of that... it was sort of like “Janis Joplin meets GNC”. Strikes against the place: more expensive than other places I ate. Not expensive by the standards of “going out to dinner and eating meat”, but more expensive than any other place on this list. I spent about €25 (just for me) and left a little hungry. Also, though I’m totally cool with the half-grocery-store-half-restaurant vibe, there were people literally standing around our table who neither worked at the restaurant nor were customers. Just people coming and going and passing packages to the proprietors, or waiting for people to come in and out of the kitchen, or smoking outside the door (while holding the door open). I’m not sure what the deal was, but it was a strange vibe. I got the sense it was very typical. But my food *tasted* fantastic, and I can’t say the vibe wasn’t unique. And given how much other folks recommend this place, I would put it on a “visit if you’re sampling vegan food in Paris” list.

Quick Thanks

First thanks to all the people I stole all the pictures from on the Web; I’m too lazy to carry a camera. Second, thanks to the three sites I used when I was planning where I would eat in Paris: happycow.net, a blog entry on the Hungry Hungry Hippie blog, and veganparis.com.

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March 25, 2013

Exercising-While-Gaming is the Future of Exergaming

...and how you can get seriously fit while shooting zombies in the head.

In this post, I’m going to tell you how we’ve gotten the combination of video games and exercise so wrong for so long, and how we can fix it. If all goes well, I’m going to convince you that you can get fit at home even if you hate exercising, and I’m not going to use the phrase “Wii Fit” except to disparage it. Seriously. I’m going to change your life today.

Also see the two-minute video version: The Call of Duty Workout

Why “Exergaming” Is Broken

Wikipedia defines “exergaming” as “video games that are also a form of exercise”. I define it slightly differently: “crappy video games that are also a crappy form of exercise”. For 10+ years, we’ve heard study after study saying that “playing some game where you jump on a button is almost as good for kids as walking”. But here’s the thing: the whole premise is that video games are fun. Shooting your friends is fun. FIFA 2011 is fun. Jumping on a button is not fun. The other side of the premise is that exercise makes you fit. This is true. Running makes you fit. Lifting makes you fit. Soccer makes you fit. Swaying from side to side on a box does not make you fit. And walking doesn’t make you fit. I mean, it’s better than watching TV, so if those are the choices, stop reading this right now and start walking. But talk about settling for the lowest possible bar...

Really, you may have fond memories of the first 10 minutes you played Wii Fit, but do you know anyone who went from unhealthy to healthy this way, or — even less plausible — anyone who went from healthy to *fit*? You don’t. And don’t be confused by the five people on the Web who say that Wii Fit or Dance Dance Revolution changed their lives and made them super-fit. Three of them are lying to impress girls, one of them is lying to impress guys, and the other one is statistically equivalent to “no one has ever gotten fit playing exergames”.

Let’s do a couple case studies here... this is a Wii Fit:

Now close your eyes, think of the most crazy fit person you can imagine (I’m going with Larry Fitzgerald), and picture him or her standing on this little white box. Eh?

Is this any more plausible than any of the 2am infomercial novelty fitness gadgets? I have both an “Ab Roller” and an “Iron Arms”. They’re both a little silly, but both are way more useful, at $7, than the Wii Fit. Seriously. Why are we BS’ing ourselves about this?

Let’s turn our attention instead to the “high end” of the exergames market: the $3000 bikes you find at the gym that have “games” built in. Like this one:

So many times I’ve thought to myself “I don’t want to go to the gym, but if only I could see a crappy avatar of myself riding slowly through the streets of a forest that’s supposed to be in Italy, I would totally go to the gym”. Seriously... why would I play this game? It’s not even a game! What do I shoot? Where are the fucking dragons?

More recently we’ve seen a wave of accelerometer-based games that do actually encourage slightly more significant body movement, but the ads for these games make it blatantly clear that no one believes in this model. See this woman in the ad for EA Sports Active 2?

Let’s be honest, she’s too busy running and going to gym to play EA Sports Active 2. On the other hand, David Beckham clearly was struggling to stay fit until he discovered that he could wear accelerometers on his arm:

Really? Did he become a worldwide athletic icon by playing a game where you punch the air four times and then take a water break? Or did he get super-ripped because he works out and plays soccer for 10 hours a day?

Why Exer-and-Gaming is the New Exergaming

The problem here is that there’s a huge number of fit people who don’t need video games for exercise motivation. They just like exercise. Every person you’ve ever seen in an ad for running shoes or an ad for fitness video games (e.g., David Beckham) is one of those people.

I’m not one of those people. Statistically speaking, you’re not either. We evolved to sit around as much as possible until we had to run after a boar. If I pumped Megadeth into my headphones and had 15 bottles of Five-Hour-Energy, I would still be bored after 5 minutes of running on a treadmill.

Now... here’s the real secret that every would-be-fitter-than-we-are person should know... exercise isn’t boring if you’re so distracted that you don’t know you’re exercising. You think this isn’t news, because everyone listens to music while they exercise, but let me tell you, this is news. Music is fine, but one in a thousand people are actually so deeply attentive to their music that they’re really distracted. I don’t know why we BS ourselves about this either. I think it’s part of the “it’s hip to be waaay into my music” movement.

On the other hand, video games are fun. I’m not even a gamer. I’ve never played Halo or World of Warcraft and only barely know what they are. But I totally get that pixels moving around and stuff blowing up is fun. Good video games are enough fun that you can totally forget you’re exercising, even if you don’t love video games, and if by any chance that isn’t enough for you, you can watch video games and watch TV, and you should be good to go.

So on to my recommend setup for everyone who (a) gets that video games are at least “pretty fun”, (b) thinks that exercise is boring, and (c) wants to exercise.

Building Your Exer-Cave

This is a snapshot of my garage exer-cave, where everything is carefully crafted to deliver an instant-access, absurdly-distracting exercise experience at Craig’s List prices. I’ll start out by saying that this is the most complicated (albeit low-cost) version, which suits my toddler-like attention span by providing ~14 different entertainment options, complicated further by the need to keep everything silent outside of my headphones due to baby-sleeping-ness. If you only want to watch TV and play XBOX, and you have zero babies sleeping within earshot, there’s no need for the complicated version.

Here are some of the highlights:

A recumbent exercise bike.

IMO the recumbent bike is key, since you can work out at full steam, on the order of 1000 calories an hour (we’re not f’ing around here and taking a leisurely stroll, we’re working out), and still keep your upper body sufficiently still to play games. I am personally unable to do this on an upright bike or an elliptical, etc., at least not at maximum exertion. Ergo I’m partial to the recumbent bike. If you’re new to the gaming workout, get a bike on Craig’s List and spend as little as possible. I.e., don’t convince yourself that you need to drop $1000 on fitness equipment, since you won’t, and we’re done before we get started if the exer-cave costs more than a gym membership. A good rule is “buy shitty, and when you break the pedals off, it’s time to upgrade”. I’m not kidding, you’ll physically break the frame of a $50 Craig’s List bike pretty quickly if you get serious, but IMO that’s the way to start, and then you’ll be in a better position to invest carefully in a more serious bike.

A crappy monitor

...on which to play video games. Keeping cost down here is also key, since if you require a 55” plasma TV and a construction crew when you’re building your exer-cave, you won’t really get around to it. CRT monitors are all but free now. In fact if you live anywhere with a lively Craig’s List, they’re literally free.

A crappy TV (this one is 15” and was also free)

...on which to watch TV, either when something awesome is on that is itself a sufficient distraction (read: football) or when you want the double-distraction-power of TV and video games at the same time.

An additional crappy monitor

...just in case. Sometimes I use this for streaming video while I’m also playing games. At the very least, it makes me feel more like I’m sitting at mission control. I mean, crappy monitors or not, that’s a whole lot of monitor-age in that picture. Folks who are Netflix-inclined will find the additional crappy monitor extra-useful.

A DVR

...for the non-Netflix-inclined and/or the heavily ESPN-inclined. Mine is filled with enough football to get me from Saturday through about Wednesday, when I may have to fill one exercise session with an episode of House before football starts up again on Thursday.

“Central command station”

This is where I keep audio stuff and game controllers, within easy reach of the bike. More on this later. If you (a) don’t have kids (and thus can put the TV at whatever volume you want even at night) and (b) aren’t using a PC at all (so you don’t need a keyboard), just put your remote control and your XBOX controller near your bike and you’re fine.

Games, and devices on which to play them

A computer that is sufficiently badass to play all but the most modern games now costs about $150 on Craig’s List. An XBOX 360 costs about $100 on eBay. Either by itself lifetime of gaming. I used to use the PC but haven’t touched it since I discovered XBOX (about 7 years after the rest of the world discovered XBOX). IMO the PC is not necessary unless it’s your DVR. XBOX basically has you covered for your while-you-exercise game console. It turns out that if you’re not playing games for six hours a day, a game lasts a long time. If you never buy a game, and just play free trial games on XBOX Live, you can never spend another dollar on games and be good to go for life. Or you can spend $10 once a month on a used game. Either way, game selection is an important part of getting the exer-cave right. More on games later.

Five-hour energy

Caffeine planning is a critical part of exercise IMO. I typically only hit the 5HE before daytime workouts, usually on the weekend, which lets me push a little harder, and maybe do 1500 calories in a day instead of 1000. During the week it’s just a cup of tea because I’m working out at night. Do what works for you, but no matter what you think about caffeine, if it’s the difference between pushing through a little early-workout lethargy and not exercising at all, it’s good for you (provided you protect your sleep). This whole post, remember, starts from the supposition that we don’t intrinsically like exercising and can admit to needing some digital and/or chemical support.

Thoughts on Exercise-Friendly Games

Choosing the right games to keep you engaged is critical, and this is often not the same as just picking games that you think are awesome.

If you’re playing games on a PC, for example, there’s a difference between “you can play this game with a gamepad” and “you can really play this game with a gamepad without having a crappy experience and/or having to reach for the keyboard every 30 seconds”. There are a zillion ways to map your gamepad to the mouse or to keyboard buttons to play games that don’t have gamepad support, but IMO if you have to do this, you will have a terrible gaming experience. Not worth it.

Even if you’re playing games on a console, some games work better than others. In particular, if you are a gamer, you may find it frustrating to play games that you’re used to being awesome at, since no matter how you look at it, you will not be as awesome when you’re pedaling hard. And more generally, games that are super-fast (e.g. Call-of-Duty-esque first-person-shooters) are going to be a bit more frustrating than slower games. I’d say you should count on having about 85% of the controller dexterity you’d have if you weren’t pedaling.

So with those things in mind, here are some games I’ve found to be optimal for playing while exercising:

1. Portal, Portal Prelude, and Portal 2 ...are basically perfect for this scenario, on PC or on XBOX. Mentally engaging, with all the visual stimulation of high-powered modern games, and relatively fast-paced, but not so fast that you can’t look away for a second while you’re out of breath, and not so fast that it really matters that your dexterity is limited. PC gamepad support is excellent. Don’t overlook the fan-made Portal Prelude either; it’s pretty fantastic, and every game that gives you 10 hours of gameplay could easily be a couple weeks of serious exercise.
2. ”Stealth action” games ...also work perfectly, for the same reasons: sufficiently entertaining and exciting to do the job of distracting you, but not so fast-paced that you care that you’re not the world champion. I also find that the adrenaline of exercise actually heightens the tension that’s delivered by good games in this category. Games that worked really well for me here are Resident Evil (all five of them) and Bioshock (1 and 2). I played the Resident Evil games on PC, and gamepad support was excellent.
3. Old-school Nintendo and Super Nintendo games ...are fantastic for this scenario, if you’re old enough to think they’re fun (the kids these days… with all their 14-button controllers and their HD graphics…). Played on an old console, played via Flash, played via emulator, played however you want to play them, they totally work, because games were simpler then, and if you knock 15% off of the cognitive and physical dexterity you need to play a modern game, you’re still waaaay ahead of what you need to play a game from 1988. My go-to games are Baseball Stars for the NES and Tetris Attack for SNES, but almost anything that was popular circa 1990 is a great way to spend a few minutes here and there while biking.

Thoughts on Routines and Schedules

One of the most significant dangers of the get-fit-while-you-play approach is forgetting to actually get fit while you’re playing. I.e., moving the pedals around for 30 minutes is not necessarily equivalent to 30 minutes of exercise. So you’ll see I’ve primarily referred to workouts in terms of calories so far... this does not mean that I think the calorie reporting on most fitness equipment is particularly accurate. It’s not. But it is consistent, so if you peg your workout to calories, it becomes a little harder to “cheat”, i.e. to let yourself slack off because you’re paying attention to Halo. Once you get used to this, you can easily start checking on yourself every 15 minutes or so to make sure you’re in the ballpark. “Ballpark” should leave you feeling like you’re covered in sweat and unable to go much further when you’re done. That’s what working out feels like. So if you’re not there, ask whether the hour you just spent on the bike playing Halo felt more like working out or like playing Halo.

Another approach I use during football season and during the NHL playoffs is to tie my workout to the game clock, typically one half of football with fast-forwarding allowed only for timeouts and commercials, which is typically around 45-55 minutes (then I’ll usually round up to an hour with some of the “short and lightweight” games I mention above). During the NHL playoffs, I usually do the first 2 periods, which ends up being around the same amount of time. If you’re a sports fan, tying your workout to watching sports lets you double-up on the adrenaline, and you can very quickly develop a feeling of “as long as they’re running full-speed, I’m running full-speed”.

More generally, for TV fans (sports or otherwise), using TV to make your workout an event to which you really look forward is a huge motivator. So I schedule my workouts around games I really want to see: Saturday night I’ll hit the best college games of the day, Sunday and Monday I’ll work out to NFL games, and Tuesday is always my rest day during football season. If American Idol is more your style, pin your workout to American Idol. Whatever gets you psyched up. Although I loves me some SportsCenter, for example, I never work out to SportsCenter, because anything that’s on 25 times a day is not an “event”. I similarly avoid low-energy TV, even if I’m into it: this includes dramatic (but slow) movies, for example. Also it is slightly harder to hear quiet dialogue while exercising, unless you have $3000 equipment, so super-subtle, dialogue-driven content is often not the best choice.

The last note I’ll add on routines: do consider the ergonomics of whatever you’re doing. Put the TV/monitor somewhere that’s comfortable for your neck, and if you sit at a desk all day, I recommend keeping workouts on the recumbent bike to no more than 30 minutes. This is why I split my workouts about 50/50 across an elliptical (while I watch TV) and a bike (while I play games): aside from adding that much variety, it breaks it up a bit ergonomically. I seriously f’d up my neck a while back and probably made it worse by sitting on the exercise bike for an hour a day with the TV always off to the same side. Lesson learned.

Thoughts on Fitness Outside the Exer-Cave

All of this effort around making the garage workout more fun was less necessary before I had kids; I had more time to play competitive sports, which always provided the distraction I needed from the underlying physical activity. But lots of folks aren’t into competitive sports, and others (like me in 2011) can’t really make it work in their schedules. In other words, when I was a grad student with basically no minute-to-minute responsibility, I didn’t need to play video games because I could play frisbee at 4pm every day. Not so much in the so-called “real world”.

I also have really come to like running, even though a year and a half ago I was pretty sure that running was the precise antithesis of “fun”. This transition happened largely on the same principle as the one that made the exercise bike fun: I discovered the Adam Carolla podcast (I was a fan of the radio show before it got canned), and that was just the spark I needed to make running an event I looked forward to. The routine of mapping a run and picking an episode started me quickly down the path from “I’ll run if and only if I’m running toward the TV to watch hockey” to “I spent the entire week looking forward to my Sunday long run”. I.e., if there’s one big message here, it’s that entertainment and exercise can be coupled pretty deeply, and the real game is finding your combo.

But what I haven’t found a way to do yet is to make lifting fun. I can sort of watch football while lifting, but it’s sufficiently not immersive that I never think “I can’t wait to watch football while I lift”. I.e., I end up having to pay too much attention to lifting. I did P90x for a while, which not surprisingly was awesome for precisely as long as the DVDs themselves were entertaining, which not surprisingly was almost exactly the 12-week duration of the program. Anyone? I believe in balanced conditioning, and I’m all ears if someone can suggest ways to make lifting more palatable. Not kidding: I’m toying with the idea of a heads-up display so I can walk around the garage with my football while I’m lifting. Eh?

Optional: If you have a sleeping baby, need 4 sources of entertainment at once, or are just into complicated audio routing...

Again, if all you need is an XBOX controller sitting by the bike, you can ignore this section, and you can have your exer-cave without all the wires. I have this setup crafted around the fact that I have little and I work out at night, so total noise production needs to be zero. If this is also you, read on…

Back to our central command station... here’s a close-up:

A small audio mixer(this is a Behringer XENYX 502)

...probably $35 new or $20 on Craig’s List. Audio feeds come in from the cable box, the PC, and the XBOX (and I leave a little 1/8” connector hanging out for my iPod). The mixer lets me send them all into my headphones. Being able to pan left and right is also useful for certain workout scenarios… most notably when using workout DVDs (I went through a P90x kick), you can put the DVD on the “cues only” track, pan it to one side, and pan other content (podcast, TV, etc.) to the opposite side, and they really don’t get in the way in your head. Because it turns out that Tony Horton is really funny the first time, but by the second week I totally needed something else going on while I was working out.

DI Box:

If you find that running audio from your XBOX/PC and your cable box into the mixer produces a meaningless, horrible buzz, it’s probably because your cable box (like mine) is not properly grounded. No problem; I stuck a DI box with a ground lift switch in between the cable box and the mixer, and all is fixed. Probably $10 in extra cost, since the crappiest DI box on Earth works fine for this purpose.

Gamepad connected to the PC

If you like wireless controllers, make sure the charger(s) is right next to the bike also. IMO it’s key to have everything in one place; having to get up to find/charge/put away the game controller breaks the flow and damages the “I’m not exercising or doing anything that’s a pain in the ass, I’m just playing video games” mentality.

A tiny keyboard with a built-in touchpad

This is one of the old Motion Computing keyboards that I found on Craig’s List for $5. You can’t really type while riding a bike (believe me, I’ve tried), so the goal is just to have something very compact for occasional button-clicking (to start a game or a Netflix movie or whatever). A big keyboard and/or a mouse quickly makes this too unwieldy even for small operations.

Bluetooth headphones

...paired to a Bluetooth transmitter that’s connected to the output of the mixer (the transmitter is just a little dongle that take a regular headphone input and sends the audio out over Bluetooth). $25 for the transmitter and headphones together as of the time I’m making this post (at Overstock). This was a key innovation in my distraction maximization: I don’t have uncomfortable headphones dangling from my head, and I can ride the bike, get water, stretch, lift, whatever, without ever leaving the awesome world of my football or other audio entertainment. I strongly recommend buying cheap here too. You can spend $100 on Bluetooth headphones, but there’s pretty much consensus that they all wear out due to sweat eventually, and in my experience the $25 last at least as long as the fancy ones. And that’s $25 with transmitter. The only downside of the cheap setup is that it won’t work at 200 feet away, but that’s not the point here.

XBOX controller

See (3) re: keeping the charger right next to you as well. Every extra step you insert between you and video games makes exercise that much closer to being a chore again.

Read more...

March 20, 2013

Some Bass Tones You Hear Sometimes

...a guided tour.

The great Duff McKagan once said something like “a bass player is doing his job when two different pieces of music sound different, and the audience knows it but really can’t explain it.” That largely sums up the fantastic anonymity of the bass, to all but bass players and prog fans. In fact the vast majority of music lovers have probably only noticed a song’s bass line just a few times, and have likely never thought about bass tone, which bassists of course spend many hours and many dollars crafting so they can — quietly and anonymously — influence the whole vibe of a song.

The main goal of this post is to give folks a a sense for the variety of bass sounds that permeate popular music, by presenting and discussing snippets of songs you probably already know. I’ve tried to choose clips where the bass is clearly audible, but in some cases you’ll have to work a little to really catch on to what the bass sounds like. Tip of the day: you don’t need fancy speakers to listen carefully to electric bass, but if you’re listening on a phone or tablet without headphones, save yourself a few minutes and stop reading now... electric bass is typically entirely inaudible on tablets and phones.

And I’m organizing the sounds I’ll discuss by putting them into a few categories (seven, to be exact). Of course, I understand it’s ridiculous to try to put all bass sounds in the universe into categorical buckets. Within the huge space of “electric bass for popular music”, I’ve tried to pick examples that highlight some of the canonical tones. In reality 99% of recorded bass is going to be somewhere in between the categories I lay out here. In engineering terms, I’m trying to lay out a basis for bass sound hear every day. A basis is a set of examples that describe some larger space, where everything in the larger space can be represented as a combination of the examples. So I’m not claiming that every bass sound I hear on the radio falls into one of these categories, but hopefully most can be described as somewhere in betwen these categories. Let’s call it a bassis (hahaha that was f’ing clever, no?). Also I’m only commenting on music I encounter in my rock/pop life; I have nothing at all to say about jazz or show tune bass. And even within my world, I’m focusing mostly on electric bass, and largely excluding synthesized bass, though I’ll include a few sampled/synthesized examples because sampled bass makes up such an important chunk of popular music (nearly everything in modern hip-hop and R&B).

And as best I can stick to this promise, this is not going to be “Dan’s top ten most awesome favoritest bass sounds”, though I’ll make no effort to hide my opinions. In fact, it turned out that there was a logical ordering of common bass tones moving roughly from my least favorites to my favorites, so that’s about what you’ll get. So with that said, crank it up, and let’s get started with a list of the basic tones that I’m going to discuss.

The Sounds of Boom:

A Rough Breakdown of Bass Tones in My Slice of the Rock/Pop Universe

What I Call It	Some Examples I’ll Use
The Rumble	Kanye West, T.I., Notorious B.I.G.
Overdriven Rock	The Ramones, Green Day, The Sex Pistols, Skid Row, Guns n’ Roses, The Cure
Bright Jazzy Rock	Yes, Rush
Tight Metal	Megadeth, more Megadeth
Classic Thumping P	Parliament Funkadelic, Dr. Dre (via sampling)
Vintage Smooth	The Supremes, Queen, Led Zeppelin
Modern Drive	Jason Mraz, Gretchen wilson, Miranda Lambert

Tone #1: The Rumble

I promised I’d start with bass sounds that I’m not really into... rumble is the bass you “feel but don’t hear”. Or often, if you can hear it, you can’t quite tell where notes start and stop. Lots of bass, no attack. In frequency terms, this means basically everything in the bass is below 100Hz, without the attack of a finger or pick that usually clocks in at a few hundred Hz.

Some rumbly songs, like the Kanye West track I excerpt below, just sound rumbly all the time (this is a particularly awesome example, since - although I swear I didn’t notice at the time I picked it - the lyrics start with “make the ground move, that’s an ass-quake”). But other rumbly songs sound like the bass fades in and out. Often it’s not really coming and going, it’s just dipping so low that you can’t hear it (but it can still shake the earth and make your ears hurt). The T.I. song I use as an example below has this property, at least to my ears. At around 6 seconds into the clip, it seems to get quieter in the bass, then around 10 seconds pop back in for one note, then out again. This is one of the only times in writing this post that I fired up a spectrum analyzer to confirm what I was hearing: in fact when it gets “quiet”, it’s just dropping down to a low rumbly E, the same volume as the low rumbly B (a little higher) that you hear at the beginning of the clip and at 10 seconds. Same with the Rihanna clip, always loud in the bass if you look at the spectrum, but it sounds like it’s coming and going.

Lest anyone think this is just and old guy complaining about how today’s hip-hop wants to rock your neighborhood, I also included a Notorious B.I.G. clip from 1994 that’s also pretty rumbly; this has been the sound of much of hip-hop for a couple decades. I’ll list an exception below, in the “Thumping P” category, a hip-hop track from around the same time with a much clearer bass sound. And in fact, even in this B.I.G. clip that I’d definitely call “rumbly”, the bass is much quieter compared to the rest of the track than most modern hip-hop, and makes my ears much less sore.

Overall, the rumble is not my thing, and I’m excited to move on to the next set of examples. My ears are tired.

Kanye West – Mercy

Mercy.1 (2012) (slightly NSFW)

Bass: Synthesized

What I Call It: Rumble

T.I. – Trap Back Jumpin

Trap Back Jumpin (2012)

Bass: Synthesized

What I Call It: Rumble

Rihanna – Pour it Up

Pour it Up (2013)

Bass: Synthesized

What I Call It: Rumble

Notorious B.I.G. – Gimme the Loot

Gimme the Loot (1994)

Bass: Synthesized

What I Call It: Rumble

Tone #2: Overdriven Rock

Part of punk was about being loud, and sounding even louder than you were. That meant the beginning of a trend where bass would get a little brighter (i.e., more high-frequency content) than it had been in the ’50s and ’60s. Brighter tones came via a pick (the ’70s saw a huge increase in picked bass), via the replacement of flatwound string with roundwound strings (which are brighter), and with allowing the bass to distort a little, even if not quite at distorted-guitar levels. There’s definitely brighter bass out there than punk and hard rock bass, and we’ll get there a little later, but compared to earlier recordings, bass was definitely cutting through the mix more when punk arrived.

In general, I agree with the notion that “tone is in the fingers”, and a great bassist will sound like him/herself on any reasonable collection of gear. With that said, the sound of punk bass - and much of the hard rock that was inspired by punk - almost always lands on a particular combination of gear: a Fender Precision Bass (i.e., “Fender P”), played with a pick, into an Ampeg SVT, with some overdrive. This is such a canonical combination that numerous articles have been written about its ubiquity, including this fantastic overview at Premier Guitar, from which I grabbed a few of these examples.

I’m going to list these examples chronologically; the earliest are the true punk inspiration for this tone (The Ramones and The Sex Pistols). These two bass lines will be some of the toughest on this post to pick out for folks who have never listened to a bass before, because punk bass was usually played right along with the guitar, and because the recordings in general were gritty by today’s stanadrds. I think it’s fair to say that much of ’80s and ’90s hard rock bass was heavily inspired by punk bass, even if the gear changed a little. So to my ears these all fall pretty sensibly into one cluster of tones. Heavy and gritty, bright enough to cut through, but still with bass filling out the bottom. “Fascination Street” and “Sober” are probably the most controversial examples, but to me they’re punk-caliber gritty.

This is still on the list of “tones I don’t really like”. In fact the only artist here I’m a big fan of is GnR, and I was never into Duff’s bass tone.