An argument against the Occupy protests in NYC which a co-worker frequently makes is that they annoy the residents with the constant drumming.  Speaking as someone who considers camping where there are all night drum circles *vacation*, I can understand that argument – incessant drumming can get to be annoying (I much prefer melodic acoustic instruments), but the kids and I have had no trouble falling asleep to a tribal beat performed by hundeds of swarthy would-be belly-dancing accompainists.  I did a quick survey of news articles to gauge how the residents near Zuccotti Park may have felt about Occupy drum circles, and lighted upon this recent article (Nov 14th) in the Times.

Since Sept 17 when the Occupy Wall Street protests began, there have been 175 complaints about noise from residents near Zuccotti park about construction on the nearby World Trade Center which frequently continued on till 2am.  During that same time there were 115 complaints about drumming or music or talking.  The Times article interviews some residents who claim that the Occupy folks were far better neighbors than the Port Authority during this time – meeting with them and working to address concerns, unlike the Port Authority.

If you have spent any time in the city over the last 10 years I assure you that the loud booming you usually can hear for blocks around you is NOT coming from an acoustic drum, either.  For years folks everywhere have been subjected to the amplified electronic beat box of a thousand Honda Civics scraping the ground under the weight of their 2000 watt stereo systems – the only difference is that like the passing train, they don’t stay in the same place for very long so its hard to actually catch these guys – so nobody tries.

There are plenty of other arguments to be made against allowing the Occupy folks to continue camping in Zuccotti Park, but I don’t think drum circles is a very good one.

I don’t pay for TV. Right now I pay for a cable connection to the internet which I really have no reason to complain about. It goes down sometimes, but for the most part Cablevision provides me with a fairly decent (speedy) connection, and they offer pretty good service to boot when things go belly up. That said, I don’t pay for their television service, because like the TV service from any provider, they only offer bundles of channels and not ala carte. So be it, you can still get DTV if you live close to the city, or receive those same over the air signals right over the cable if you have a TV with a QAM antenna. In fact, if I couldn’t get local PBS over my cable connection free then sending them cash every once in a while woudn’t make much sense after the transition to DTV since we can no longer receive them over the air (too far away).

For folks like me, an application like minitube is a special gift. I’ve had many a “Youtube night” where a bunch of us sat huddled around the big LCD screen and played one…video…at…a…time as each took turns searching for their favorite videos. minitube is just what I was looking for, a way to kick off a series of related youtube videos without additional user input. While it isn’t what I was looking for exactly when I told the high pressure salesman in the “disconnect” office that I wanted to just pay for the channels I wanted to watch, its a way to watch a sort of customized TV channel (without having to get up *every* couple minutes) with minimal effort. The only thing that’s missing should be obvious – commercials. Which is sort of the reason why I was a little hesitant to even mention this program since YouTube will certainly decide they need to monetize this somehow if and when they determine a lot of people are using YouTube in this, the clearly coolest way.