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0x01 (01) Cicero in the Twenty First Century More than 2000 years ago, the Roman orator Cicero wrote ``Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.'' It's amazing how little has changed. 0x02 (02) The Programmer's Alphabet My first computer song, based on various sailors' alphabets. 0x03 (03) The Mushroom Song Wrote this one while my job at Zilog was going down the tubes. They'd just hired a CEO named Sack, and that's just what he started doing... 0x04 (04) Daddy's World I wrote this one for my older daughter based mostly on some of her favorite computer games. 0x05 (05) High Barratry The company now known as The SCO Group was once called ``Caldera.'' I'd always wondered why it was named after a kind of gigantic crater caused by the collapse of a magma chamber. 0x06 (06) Bugs A big favorite with kids, for some reason, based on a poem I once read in Datamation magazine. It sometimes acquires topical verses. 0x07 (07) Demon Lover I wrote a story that included a description of a duet between a singer/songwriter and an AI built into his guitar. So of course I had to write the song to fit the description. 0x08 (08) Guilty Pleasures This was actually written in realtime---I finished it at about 2am after everyone else had gone to bed. 0x09 (09) The Little Computing Machine Written while listening to Golden Bough singing ``The Black Velvet Band'' and wishing I could afford an Apple ][ 0x0a (10) Silk and Steel Another song about the AI guitar. I still don't know the full backstory behind this one. 0x0b (11) Vampire Mega-Byte An old Silicon Valley folktale from the days when men were men and transistors were germanium. 0x0c (12) Paper Pings Sometime you just have to parody your own song before somebody else does. 0x0d (13) I Wanna Be a Webmaster Some of the numbers are a bit dated, but it's amazing how little has changed in the last 10 years. 0x0e (14) Stuck Here... Ever wonder what it would be like to have your mind uploaded into a computer? You could live practically forever... 0x0f (15) TEOTWAWKI v2.0 As it turned out, the biggest problem the doomsayers of 1999 had was how to dispose of the leftover canned-goods. But they may still come in handy. 0x10 (16) Uncle Ernie's Inspired by a now-defunct surplus joint in Oakland called Mike Quinn's. 0x11 (17) The World Inside the Crystal My first serious computer song. You can always tell the programmers in the audience. They've been there, and they know. 0x12 (18) Someplace in the Net The Usenet, and alt.callahans in particular, is what made me realize that cyberspace is a place.
(Note that this is likely not to be the final order; it will do for now. Suggestions are welcome. Yes, of course the tracks are numbered in hex. What did you expect? 13 hex is a hacker's dozen.)
It's been a long, strange trip. I first started thinking about a computer album sometime in the very early 1990's. The idea was trolled past several different publishers, most of which are defunct now, before home-recording technology finally advanced to the point where I could do the whole thing myself -- so that's what I'm doing.
At this point, there's at least one take recorded for each track; in most cases what I have will be useable after at most minor edits and cleanup.
There is a LiveJournal community (multi-user blog) devoted to discussion of my albums; some of that discussion will be moved back here eventually.
The working directory can be found in ../Albums/coffee/; the to.do list is the place to go for the definitive, up-to-date status.