The Suite 16 » technology — The Suite 16

Postcard From Nicaragua

Nancie S. Martin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:09:00 +0000

The classic 20-gig iPod I’ve had since 2004 finally passed away after many hours of service, just before I left for the airport for my flight to Nicaragua 10 days ago. I typically travel with it and a JBL OnTour setup that provides me with a soundtrack wherever I am. Nonetheless, I was neither musically nor aesthetically deprived.

For evidence of the latter, see the photo below of the grand staircase in the 19th-century home of generous and gifted friends in Granada, one of the oldest cities in the Americas, where I slept in an antique, mosquito-netted four-poster bed, soothed by the sound of tropical rains and wakened by the bells of the cathedral next door.

On a side trip to the surf destination San Juan del Sur, a friend was kind enough to lend me a horse. There is a reason that riding through a jungle and cantering along an otherwise inaccessible beach is the stuff of fantasy. My steed was white, and named Pablo Picasso, so I couldn’t get the Jonathan Richman song of the same name out of my head. I also sang “Caballito Blanco” to Pablo, which I learned as a child in Chile.

Thus, when it came time to go clubbing, I was prepared for Latino men whose stares I could not resist. My Spanish held up well enough for me to crack jokes, decline invitations, and read mash notes from the smitten. I also had the new-to-me experience of being piloted around a dance floor by a smiling fellow whose eyes were at an awkward level that made staring both impossible and unnecessary. But we were dancing to a 9-piece band playing the Nicaraguan classic “Pobre de Maria,” a tragic story of a poor campesina in the big city, so I didn’t mind.

I managed to refrain from the Internet most of the time, but of course it found me:

And now, the Apple Store awaits.

Pi A La Mode

Nancie S. Martin — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:54:00 +0000

Excuse me while I geek out: you can now hear the first 10,000 digits of pi in a musical sequence. Play ten notes from the tune of your choice, and you’ll literally hear the music of the spheres. I tried “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Stairway to Heaven” and they both sounded equally trippy. (Via Idolator.)

Nancie & The Rockers

Nancie S. Martin — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:04:00 +0000

I’m very proud of the years I spent at Mattel in the ’90s, producing the first computer games for girls and launching Barbie.com. So I was pleased and very gratified last week to be invited back to their corporate headquarters in El Segundo, CA to speak to an employee conference about “The Future of Music.”

My conclusions were fueled by my own personal Magic 8 Ball, but basically the gist of it was:

Kids have always loved music;
There are lots of new and traditional ways to discover music;
We have to be creative about finding new ways to make money from it;
Music is a personal soundtrack, not a CD; and
“The Macarena” and “Crank That” have more in common than you think.

There were many musical interludes, and much appreciation for our client Baby Loves Hip Hop’s efforts to provide parents with music they can enjoy with their children.

But for some reason, the international audience particularly enjoyed this video of a long-forgotten ’80s band (the hair alone is worth a view):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dby9yb_NgQU]