Somebody really, really does not want to go back to stamp collecting.

Across the road, they laid white tarps over the greens. Last summer they watered in the blackout.

I am greatly flattered by the above letter which arrived today from Keith of Electron with two CDs and three mini-CDs enclosed, two of his work under the name The Stereo Effect Project and three from his pal in Germany going by Heptane Sun Quad.

I am enjoying this electronica as it reminds me of incidental music from space shows of my childhood, both cartoons and Apollo news coverage, as well as, more generally the Fripp and Eno stuff I got into from King Crimson, Fripp's Exposure and loop albums to Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports which I first heard at Dave Swick's apartment in the winter of '79-'80 in Halifax when I was in grade 11 visiting with his brother, Rob. Soon there after, new wave like Gary Numan's cars incorporated the synths into a pop music reaction to punk which itself was reacted to mid-80's by the Smiths and others.

A while ago I was wondering about adding sound to this site. Not necessarily music but some audio. I received some interesting support and advice.

It is hard to find a cheap digital sound recorder but I think I have landed on an inexpensive alternative, the Sony TCM-150 portable cassette recorder. I am not so much loyal to Sony as comfortable with it. I have a Sony stereo amp, a ICF-2010 shortwave radio and recently we got a DSC-P32 digital camera. Am I really that loyal? Had this week's service issue about my 64 Mb Memory Stick not been resolved as quickly as it was in the end, I may have done a Ruk over the rotten telephone client service they were offering. I now hold my tongue as they were rescued by a helpful and responsive email.

So, I will have to figure out where to get one, what it can do without a microphone and whether a further investmet in one is required. I walked over to get something to eat this lunch and heard the scrunching sound of shoes on cold snow for the first time this winter. That's what I want to record and post for you, especially that guy in Belize - the sound of snow.

Yesterday was very biometric:

• The date for my seminar with the Surveillance Project at Queens was reset for later this month. I am going to talk about my thesis on the constitutionality of automated biometric surveillance and the recent cases on the liberty right in section 7 of The Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
• The US confirmed that we need to get the new biometric passorts before October. I, too have no problem with this as it is not my country.
• On West Wing the nutty DARPA (not ARPA) character in the Hawaiian shirt admitted to spokesperson lady that they were doing biometric studies within government on the biometrics of citizens. [It was very well described in the script.]   And she was shocked at the imposition on the US Bill of Rights.

A few weeks ago, I bought a CD by I am Robot and Proud (aka Shaw-Han Liem of Toronto) called "You Make Me this Happy" from Electron, discussed here, run by helpful Keith. I appears I am Robot and Proud has other newish CDs out called The Catch and Grace Days. I just listened to "Saturday Afternoon Plans" [recordco mp3 link here] from The Catch and I liked it very much. All good to listen to with Oswald.