Latest "feature" Articles
Music & Sound » Misc. Pieces, Singles, & EPs
Yiki·dū·sō (A Dream) digital single by Mike Kupietz cover
Posted inMusic & Sounds Posted in genresElectronic MusicExperimental Music

Digital Single: Yiki·dū·sō (A Dream)

This digital 0", originally hosted on my Bandcamp page, contains a track that sat unfinished on my hard drive for far too long, now finally having had the burrs filed off and rough edges sanded down for safe general listening. It's an experimental techno sample manipulation exercise exploring the text of a meme video that went viral about 10 years ago.

I got some nice kudos for this piece when Intelligent Arts, an organization publishing ebooks on music and technology run by the late composer Joel Chadabe, an old mentor of mine, included it in a series of online articles on "Word Music / Text-Sound", the use of spoken words as a component in musical compositions, alongside pieces from luminaries such as Steve Reich and Kurt Schwitters.

Also included…

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=3838  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Writing » Topical Writing » Reviews & Criticism
Fragrance Reviews
Posted inWriting Posted in genresReviewsOpinions

Review Compendium: Fragrance Reviews

Unbeknownst to anybody except Dan Sonenberg—in fact, practically unbeknownst to even myself—I occasionally write fragrance reviews. These are those. Some people enjoy them.

Those of you with the nose can find me on Fragrantica.

function toggleAll() {document.body.querySelectorAll('details').forEach((e) => {(e.hasAttribute('open'))?e.removeAttribute('open'):e.setAttribute('open',true);});}

Toggle all reviews open/closed
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=3528  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Visual Art » Generative Illustrations
00036aotc
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresAI Generative IllustrationUrban Surrealism

If You Don’t Live It, It Won’t Come Out Your Cone: Adoration Of The City

This is a series of generative art images I am paticularly fond of. Originally these were going to be part of my RobGAN Hitchcock project, but they kind of stand on their own. Created with Stable Diffusion.

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=3075  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Creative Nonfiction Portfolio
347c5ae0 ccae 434d 8b08 beb2f01014c9 proc
Posted inWriting Posted in genresMemoirs & Reflections

Essay-Length Memoir: “The Light Shone On Me”

Foreword:

For some reason, I've always been particularly moved by a sense of loss. It's the sole valuable observation I ever got from a kindly but not particularly effective therapist I saw for a while in my 30s, one of the few deep and profoundly true things about myself I hadn't already excavated on my own in my decades of frequent navel-gazing before that.

I've always written a lot—although I never considered myself a writer, so much as just someone who writes things down a lot—and in my 20s I had started occasionally writing longer essays, when I felt moved to. At a certain point, a few years after writing this one, I believe, I realized the longer pieces that I always felt were the most successful, the ones I had labored in love over and really eventually did manage to express what I had set out to…

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=3055  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Visual Art » Generative Illustrations
New Userpic. No Specific Lyrical Reference; Just Very Appropriate General Generative Hitchcockiana, Produced Serendipitously By While Trying To Generate A Psychedelic Portrait Of Eugene Mirman Listening To Shufflmania.
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresAI Generative IllustrationIlluminated Lyrics

Giving It To A Soft Boy: RobGAN Hitchcock — AI-assisted lyrical illustrations

New Userpic. No Specific Lyrical Reference; Just Very Appropriate General Generative Hitchcockiana, Produced Serendipitously By While Trying To Generate A Psychedelic Portrait Of Eugene Mirman Listening To Shufflmania.For a while, I had a Twitter account, @robGANhitchock, where I was posting AI illustrations of Robyn Hitchcock lyrics I created using a Generative Adversarial Network ("GAN"). This was an interesting project, because when it started I knew next to nothing about generative art; as I worked on it I learned more about crafting prompts, and more and better tools emerged, so over the course of the full set, you can see the progression of experience and improved generative algorithms: from the first few in VQGAN, then FreewayML,…

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=2935  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Code & Algorithms » Demo & Live Tool Playground
The Internet Bad Statements (“BS”) Detector
Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresFact-CheckingLive ToolsWeb TechnologyPHP

Online Fact-Checking Tool: The Internet Bad Statements (“BS”) Detector

Here's a fairly old repost from my consulting site, where it got no traction whatsoever.

The Bad Statements Detector is a specialized search tool designed to aid in online research and to help prevent people from passing along nonsense on the internet, by making it easier to look stuff up on fact-checking websites like Snopes.com, Politifact, FactCheck.org, and other myth-busting websites all at once.

It works very simply: drag a “Detect BS” button to your bookmarks bar to create a "bookmarklet", a javascript bookmark that opens a tool when clicked. Then, while you surf the web, you can drag your mouse to select text on any web page and click your “Detect BS” bookmark link. This will return no-nonsense links from a multitude of reputable fact-checking and science websites that tell you if the statement you selected is well-known BS (plus offer you some sharing options right from the popup.)

…
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=2856  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Writing » Topical Writing » Reviews & Criticism
Literally <strike>Hundreds of</strike> Like A Thousand Capsule Movie Reviews
Posted inWriting Posted in genresMovie Reviews

Review Compendium: Literally Hundreds of Like A Thousand Capsule Movie Reviews

If you don't want to read the introduction you can skip straight down to the reviews.

Introduction

A number of years ago I started jotting down summaries of movies I've watched, just to keep track of what I'd seen. As the years went by, the list grew, and occasionally (but not often) I was moved to write more, until finally I wound up with hundreds of them, mostly very short summaries but occasionally a little more in-depth for movies I particularly liked or loathed. There's a brief section of favorites and honorable mentions, then below that they're indexed by movie title, click a letter to see the titles starting with that letter.

By the way: this list is extremely heavy, although not exclusive, with horror and science fiction films, because that's what I watch most.

A word about my terminology

As I wrote these reviews just for myself, I…

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=1956  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Movie Reviews

Rent-A-Pal

Ok, not a great movie by any stretch, but deserves an honorable mention for being fairly original, clever, and darkly entertaining.

Wil Wheaton fiiiinally earns my complete forgiveness for Wesley Crusher, by playing his very creepiest self in what, for at least 2/3 of it, plays like one of the better (although definitely not one of the best) Black Mirror episodes. Set in the 80s (and well done at that, not overplaying it) a lonely bachelor stuck at home caring for his mother brings home a "Rent-A-Pal" VHS virtual friend. Seriously, I didn't have high hopes for this one, and the ending engages in some much-too-predictable strokes, but overall it's mostly well done enough, and creative enough, to be worth a watch. Bonus points for keeping you guessing about whether the video tape is or is not actually responding to what's happening in front of the tv in some amusingly…

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=1621  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Workshop » Works In Progress » Musical Works In Progress
Michael Kupietz Live (And Almost In Tune) on Pirate Cat Radio, 5/28/2009
Posted inMusic & Sounds Posted in genresWork-In-ProgressFull AlbumFolk & BluesAcousticky GuitarLive Performance

Album Preview: Michael Kupietz Live (And Almost In Tune) on Pirate Cat Radio, 5/28/2009

Back in 2009 my old ex-friend Rick Abruzzo, whom I'd met some years earlier during a mutual effort to resuscitate the soggy corpse of the San Francisco Cacophony Society, invited me to come down with my guitar and fill some airtime on Baghdad By The Bay, his show on San Francisco's Pirate Cat Radio. A few unruly friends tagged along to egg me on, and in addition to going out live over the wires, the ensuing off-the-cuff, improvised hour of chaos was recorded for posterity on Pirate Cat's state-of-the-art low-quality direct-to-mp3 recorder. This is that chaos. It may or may not have passed for showmanship—you be the judge.

This is basically a nearly-finished live album, warts and all, and creeping up on 15 years after the fact it just awaits on a little bit of final production gloss and mastering for me to…

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=1482  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Writing » Life In A Mikeycosm (Thoughts & Reflections)
Kwitter, the one-user social network
Posted inWriting Posted in genresSocial Media Addiction

Social Mediocrity: Kwitter, the one-user social network

I quit Twitter a while back, and sometimes even just glancing at FB consumes a full day, so I have no outlet for my amusing social-media-worthy passing thoughts, except to just think them privately to myself. And that's so 20th century.

So this page is my new one-person social network, "Kwitter", a place to post thoughts, which I call "Kwits". Anyone who is me is invited to register and post.

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=1385  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Workshop » Works In Progress » Musical Works In Progress
गोल्डन यात्रा • The Golden Yatra
Posted inMusic & Sounds Posted in genresWork-In-ProgressFull AlbumDrone

Album Preview: गोल्डन यात्रा • The Golden Yatra

This one is finished except for the final production and mastering... it needs some studio gloss on it.

This a a drone album I did in early 2023. I created the basic audio for this with the wonderful Bento analog synthesis emulator, then arranged and produced it in my hated enemy Logic Pro.

Unlike a lot of my music, I would actually present this as worth a listen, for anyone open to things this far from conventional musical ideas. Dim the lights, put your headphones on, and drift downstream through my inner space for 80 minutes. You may like it or you may not, I never would have expected to. I certainly wouldn't ever have thought that a 80 minute piece of music with only one note could be engaging all the way through, and especially not hold up to repeated listening. But I'm pleased to…

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=1236  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Writing » Life In A Mikeycosm (Thoughts & Reflections)
Shower thoughts
Posted inWriting Posted in genresRandom Brain DroppingsFun

Even In The Quietest Moments: Shower thoughts

Idea for a movie: A time traveling refugee from the 1990s is stuck in another era and must try to blend in, but is found out when it is discovered he knows how to correctly pronounce the names Shania, Tyra, and Demi.

Geezer Butler, bassist for the band Black Sabbath, came up with the idea for heavy metal music when the band drove past a movie theater showing a horror film, and there was a ticket line up the block. He thought to himself that if people like so much to be scared, what if he wrote music that was like a horror movie?

So, I wonder... what would the world be like today if the band had taken a different route, and driven past an X-rated theater instead?

What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but must use Wordpress to do it?

Ice…

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=771  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Writing » Topical Writing
“Are you free?”, and Other Ideological Musings
Posted inWriting Posted in genresPoliticsAxe-Grinding

Ideology In Brief: “Are you free?”, and Other Ideological Musings

Let's talk about sex! No, wait, let's talk about something even more taboo!

These are some samples of political, ideological, or economic thoughts I've jotted down. I don't consider myself an authority on these things, for sure, I just like to think things through, and as I like to say, for me these kinds of writings are intended to open a conversation, not to be the final word.

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=769  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Workshop » Works In Progress » Musical Works In Progress
Five Themes In Uncertain Times v.0.89.05
Posted inMusic & Sounds Posted in genresWork-In-ProgressFull AlbumZetetic MusicProgressive / Art Rock

Album Preview: Five Themes In Uncertain Times v.0.89.05

Posted with great reluctance, my perpetually unfinished magnum opus, likely to someday stand as my failed masterpiece, a ponderous 65-minute arabesque of serialist post-rock instrumentals which, after 7 ongoing years of work and no end in sight, is at this point holding up the completion of 8 subsequent albums.

I wouldn't make a recommendation as to whether anybody should listen to this or not. This isn't actually intended for anyone to listen to, this one in particular I'm really just making to suit myself, writing it for its own sake. You're welcome to check it out, but that's as far in as I'll welcome you.

Some degree of patience may be of help to those who do care to venture into it, because it does something longer, quieter, and more deliberate than it may at first…

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=511  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Workshop » Works In Progress » Musical Works In Progress
Early Experiment: Monster Zed / Night Of The Living Zed 0.5a
Posted inMusic & Sounds Posted in genresWork-In-ProgressZetetic Music

Night Of The Living Dread: Early Experiment: Monster Zed / Night Of The Living Zed 0.5a

An early experiment in the serialist style I've been developing, which I was once told by a figure in a dream should be called "Zetetic Music". 2017. This is not a listenable or enjoyable album nor a particularly interesting piece of music, and is posted here primarily for the historical record. There are many other things on this site much more worth listening to.

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=509  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Workshop » Works In Progress » Musical Works In Progress
Ethay Eaday Illstay Eamscray (“The Dead Still Scream”) — Music From The Imaginary Motion Picture
Posted inMusic & Sounds Posted in genresWork-In-ProgressFull AlbumSoundtrackProgressive / Art Rock

Album Preview: Ethay Eaday Illstay Eamscray (“The Dead Still Scream”) — Music From The Imaginary Motion Picture

Imagine if an esteemed Pig Latin cinema auteur filmed a classic 1970s horror movie entirely in his native tongue. Then, imagine if I had been picked out of my second-grade class by that auteur to create a vintage electronic progressive soundtrack to that film. Now, imagine that soundtrack was unearthed and finally saw release as an album in the 2020s. These are the work-in-progress demos for what someday will be what would have been that legendary classic film score.
| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=507  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Workshop » Works In Progress » Musical Works In Progress
The Strutbutter / The Great Game Show In The Sky, v13.15
Posted inMusic & Sounds Posted in genresWork-In-ProgressElectronic MusicCover Songs

Demo: The Strutbutter / The Great Game Show In The Sky, v13.15

I've been putting together an album of goofy electronic arrangements of classic tunes. Here's one I'm still working on at the moment, a medley of classic favorites, called "The Strutbutter / The Great Game Show In The Sky".

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=1  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Visual Art » Generative Illustrations
A Helluva Band — Generative Art gallery
Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresAI Generative Illustration

Is There Rock After Life?: A Helluva Band — Generative Art gallery

Angel trumpets and devil trombones, and you are invited! Here's some phantasmagorical music-themed generative AI illustrations I, well, generated.

These were, by the way, generated with Dall-E 2.5, which is sadly no longer available. All public instances have been replaced with Dall-E 3 which is much more literal, produces crisp, more concrete and digital-looking or often cartoonish images, and is not good for abstraction or "sloppier" images. I remain hopeful Dall-E 2.5 will become available again, or a future version will allow the use of prompts again that can facilitate generating more obscure, impressionistic, and stylistically varied output.

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=98  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
Code & Algorithms » WordPress Plugins & Mods
Generating On-The-Fly Email Addresses as an Anti-Spam Measure in WordPress
Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresWordpress CodingPHP

Generating On-The-Fly Email Addresses as an Anti-Spam Measure in WordPress

On my IT consulting business site, I'm using a php script I've written to generate on-the-fly random email addresses specific to the browsing session looking at the site. So, I can include email addresses in plain text on the site, but if a spammer harvests one, I can block it, and other people legitimately browsing the site will still get individualized working addresses they can contact me with.

It generates a log as email are generated, so you know who got what email. You'll want to watch the log size yourself so you don't fill your disk space.

Obviously it's more complicated than just this, there's whitelisting involved as well as some other behind-the-scenes trickery, such as double-checking emails against the log as they arrive, that I can't reveal publicly for opsec reasons.

But, I can reveal the basic php script that coughs up a random email address specific…

| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=94  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off