I just googled a mis-spelling of my name. No, this isn’t something I do every day. Google seems to have done away with many of their spelling corrections. It used to be, if you Googled the word “colour,” it asked if you meant color–something I pointed out in the draft of my search engines book. Unfortunately, Google has fixed this (bastards!). I haven’t decided whether to leave the reference and note that it was historically true (probably), or if I’ll yank the whole discussion.
Anyway, in this process, I was trying to trigger the spellchecker to come in, so I used “Halavis” which, in the past, has led to a suggestion of the correct spelling: a pretty nifty thing for someone who gets his name messed up often. Unfortunately, it does not make that suggestion any more. Despite “Halavis” being the name of an Argentinian textile manufacturer, and a rare surname, most of the links in the first few pages of Google results are references to me. So, I tried another common mis-spelling–Havalais–with the same result.
Now, on the one hand, I am not one of those people who gets overly upset when people can’t say my name, or spell it. Frankly, I am just happy that most of the time they have something nice to say about me. Heck, I’m even happy when they have something not-so-nice to say, since I’m glad to have people disagree with me. When my former chair, after five years in the same department, still introduced me as “Havalais,” I may have inwardly winced slightly, but it really wasn’t a big deal, I thought.
But as I look over the list of “Halavis,” I wonder whether he is better known than I am. And more importantly, I wonder whether so many references to my mis-spelled name encourages its continued growth. If you think to yourself “I read this article by Lackaff and whats-his-name” and a Google search yields “Halavis,” not once, but multiple times. When the journal Serials Librarian spells it that way, as does a recent co-author on her vita, and any number of my students, does it mean I should be more vigilant in defending (the spelling of) my name? Should I be “that guy” who gets huffy when people mangle his name? Or better yet, should I just go the “Sting” route and start going by just “Alex” or maybe “Alex H” or “Alex the Amorphous”?
Your Sample Just Exploded
This is so cool. Yes, Melodyne has been around for a while, saving vocalists from their own flatness. But what really makes this interesting is what it means for samples. It’s hard enough now to detect the use of a sample, as it is folded, spun, and mutilated. But at what point does it stop being a sample. Obviously, the phrasing of the original instrument remains important, but at some point, you’ve chopped the original up so much that it isn’t really a “sample” any more at all?
I mean, if you “sample” a paragraph from a book, and don’t cite it, you’ve clearly plagiarized, but when you take single words from someone, you clearly haven’t. Musical notes are not as discrete as words–the phrasing of a note by a violinist, or even by a pianist is fairly unique–but once you get down to the note-by-note level, it starts to feel a lot less like sampling.
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