Posts tagged #culture

Christopher Drum's Improv retrospective has people asking me about Lotus Improv again. It turns out I've been writing about it on this blog, on and off, since 2004. So here they all are in one place.

Where the idea came from. The newest post tells the oldest part of the story. In Lotus Improv Pre-History I describe reading a pile of "how to run your inventory in 1-2-3" books and noticing the same formula, copied by hand across groups of columns, over and over. Write it once and let the program apply it. I called that the semantic spreadsheet. Showing the same data with its dimensions flippe...

From cozy to towering, at-home libraries come in all forms. Get inspired with homes across the country.

Download Handy - the free and open source speech to text application for Windows, macOS, and Linux

Music programming in the browser

Amazing ai generated videos

A new way to publish a book to the web

A Place to Call Home: A Novel [Smith, Deborah] on Amazon.com. FREE shipping on qualifying offers. A Place to Call Home: A Novel

The official documentation for Raspberry Pi computers and microcontrollers

Amazing summary of all the crazy dev tools in the python world.

Excalidraw is a virtual collaborative whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.

What We Propose –The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine.

The Oppenheimer Case –None

An educational puzzle game. Solve a series of tasks where you build increasingly powerful components. Starts with the simplest logical components and ends up with a programmable computer.

Become a computer operating system and try not to anger the user!

agoodmovietowatch is the world’s first portal of highly-rated but little-known movies and shows. Curated by humans and not algorithms.

We curate collections of images, books, audio and film, shining a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives. Leaning toward the surprising, the strange, and the beautiful, we hope to provide an ever-growing cabinet of curiosities for the digital age

Collections –We curate collections of images, books, audio and film, shining a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives. Leaning toward the surprising, the strange, and the beautiful, we hope to provide an ever-growing cabinet of curiosities for the digital age

The better way to group and organize your Youtube subscriptions

Non technical, but i love sketching and drawing to pass the time. Author says: “Practice drawing little houses and towers. Then level them up with dimensional views and clusters that create different styles of towns and cities…”

Aggregates used book sites. Recommendo

BookFinder.com: New & Used Books, Rare Books, Textbooks –Aggregates used book sites. Recommendo

Author says: “Every week now, it seems, events on the ground make a fresh mockery of those who confidently assert what AI will never be able to do, or won’t do for centuries if ever, or is incoherent even …”

Create custom poster prints with your very own designs & artwork at Mpix, or personalize one of our designs with your photos. Premium quality printing, easy ordering, & 24 hour shipping.

Makesigns is a scientific poster printing company with a focus on a simple ordering process and unbeatable customer service. We also offer free templates and tutorials to help you make your research poster.

Poster printing services and pricing guide.

Top 20 Books a Software Developer Must Read (Updated) –A continuous learning mindset is a key quality of a software developer who wants to stay relevant and grow their market value. Vectorly has…

4 Books For Intermediate Ruby And Rails Developers. –I’m a fan of good books. Through my Ruby and Rails journey, I’ve discovered a few excellent books that I’d like to share with fellow Rubyists. The authors of these books are experts in their fields. These books are my recommendation and I think they deserve some space on your desk.

One of the several painters in Santa Fe that we really liked!

Artwork by Ivan Blagorenko

Artist BioPascal Pierme is a Frenchman who settled in Santa Fe in 1997. Prior to that time, he had gained a European reputation as a promising young sculptor. He fielded a series of solo exhibitions in France and Switzerland, and worked on collaborative projects with Pierre Cardin and others. Pascal's career has blossomed in America. He has been awarded several commissions for large-scale installations. Galleries and collectors alike have responded to the simplicity of his approach, which balances geometric abstraction with organic form. There is an undertone of symbolism as well, a hieroglyphic shorthand that hints at other visual languages. Pascal was influenced from a very young age by his grandfather, a wood sculptor. It was from him that Pascal developed his love for wood and his passion for working with it. He creates an extraordinary range of abstract meditations that seem to arise directly from the material itself, rather than from a conscious plan. He has an extraordinary rapport with his materials, concocting his own varnishes and resins as well as creating bronze-like patinas on non-metallic surfaces. He works with a variety of precious woods and creates sculptures that express the texture, aroma, and strength of each. He considers wood to be a feminine material - warm, colorful, full of surprises, and not always easy to control. Therefore, many of his sculptures have a feminine cast, with elegantly swelling contours and subtle curves. Conversely, he sometimes works with more angular, masculine themes, such as his Fleche (Arrow) series, and the wood responds with a robust presence. Pascal's technique is interactive. Each work of art is characterized by a graceful balance, a meticulous attention to detail. Even as he carves and burnishes, he allows the piece to guide him. Artist’s Statement“Wood has its own intelligence,” he says. “It knows many things, and it teaches them to me. In this way, I understand what I want to do with it, so that the final image reflects its innate qualities as well as my own thoughts and feelings.” - PascalCurriculum Vitae BORN St. Raphael, France 1962 EDUCATION 1975–1980 Art History and Technique, St Raphael, France 1980–1982 Aerograph Technique, San Diego, California SELECTED ART-RELATED Ruinart Champagne Project, Miami, Florida Curatorial “1002 Project” Calvin Charles Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona ART in Schools, 42 child participants, E.J. Martinez Elementary, Santa Fe, New Mexico Art in Embassies, International Art in Architecture, National Assistant Sculptor to Dan You for feature film creation, France Assistant Muralist, Palais Bulles, “Patrice Breteau,” Pierre Cardin's residence, Cannes, France Collaboration with Architect Anti Lovag, “Urban Project,” France Working Residency, bronze foundry, Belfiort, Pietra Santa, Italy SELECTED EXHIBITIONS * Solo, Museum, University and International Exhibitions 2019 Pulse Art Fair - Miami, Florida - Represented by: Michele Mariaud Gallery, New York, New York 2018 Gallery Fritz, Pascal Pierme, inaugural solo exhibition - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2018 SITE Santa Fe, Exquisite Corpse: Live Drawing Spectacular, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2018 Art Market San Francisco, Fort Mason Center - San Francisco, California 2018 Michele Mariaud Gallery, Dual Exhibition: Pascal Pierme and Joan Salo - New York, New York 2017 Art Market San Francisco, Fort Mason Center - San Francisco, California 2016 GF Contemporary, Pascal Pierme: 20ème Anniversaire à Santa Fe, New Mexico 2016 Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Abstraction Today, Atlanta, Georgia 2015 Montclair State University, George Segal Gallery, Art Connections 11, Montclair, New Jersey 2015 Saatchi Art International, "Gifts for the One Who Has Everything" Collection, London, United Kingdom 2015 Art Olympia 2015 - Toshima City, Tokyo 2015 Taos Art Museum, Annual Gala Exhibition - Taos, New Mexico 2015 Albuquerque Museum: Miniatures and More - Albuquerque, New Mexico 2015 Aberson Exhibits, Pascal Pierme - Tulsa, Oklahoma 2015 Calvin Charles Gallery, Pascal Pierme: Pivot - Scottsdale, Arizona 2015 X Florence Biennale, Art And The Polis - Florence, Italy 2015 SACI's International Art Exhibition Award 2015 - International 2014 Royal Academy of Art, Summer Exhibition 2014 - London, England 2014 Royal Scottish Academy, International Open 2014 - Edinburgh, Scotland 2014 Art Gemini Prize - London, England, second prize for painting and sculpture 2014 GF Contemporary, Pascal Pierme: Après Musée - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2014 Taos Art Museum, Annual Gala Exhibition - Taos, New Mexico 2014 Albuquerque Museum, Pascal Pierme, More Artist: Miniatures and More - Albuquerque, New Mexico 2014 Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Fall National Exhibition - Novato, California 2014 Awarded first prize by Juror: Betti-Sue Hertz 2014 The Club Collection, Airline Clubs Worldwide 2013 Taos Museum of Art, Annual Gala Exhibition - Taos, New Mexico 2013 Highlands Museum - First Place, Mixed Media - Ashland, Kentucky 2013 Cornell Museum, National Exhibition - Del Ray Beach, Florida 2013 Paia Contemporary Gallery - Paia, Hawaii 2013 David Richard Gallery, sponsored by Creative Santa Fe - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2013 Michele Mariaud Gallery, AAF International Art Fair- New York, New York 2013 Yares Art Projects - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2013 Cancer Foundation of New Mexico, Sweetheart Gala - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2013 Calvin Charles Gallery - Scottsdale, Arizona 2013 Blanche Ames National Art Exhibition - North Easton, Massachusetts 2013 Center for Contemporary Art - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2013 Aberson Projects - Tulsa, Oklahoma 2012 Living with Art, AAF International Art Fair - Singapore Island, Singapore 2012 Living with Art, AAF International Art Fair - New York, New York 2012 GF Contemporary, AAF International Art Fair - Seattle, Washington 2012 Calvin Charles Gallery - Scottsdale, Arizona 2012 Alan Avery Art Company - Atlanta, Georgia 2012 Paia Contemporary Gallery - Paia, Hawaii 2012 Calvin Charles Gallery - Scottsdale, Arizona 2012 I M A Gallery - Seattle, Washington 2012 JAG Contemporary - La Jolla, California 2012 GF Contemporary - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2011 Paia Contemporary Gallery - Paia, Hawaii 2011 Aberson Exhibits - Tulsa, Oklahoma 2011 JAG Contemporary - La Jolla, California 2010 French Consulate - New York, New York 2010 Dallas Art Fair - Dallas, Texas 2010 Zane Bennett Contemporary Art - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2010 Preston Art Center - Las Cruces, New Mexico 2010 Chicago Art Fair, Zane Bennett Gallery - Chicago, Illinois 2010 Miami Art Fair, Ruinart Champagne - Miami, Florida 2010 Calvin Charles Gallery - Scottsdale, Arizona 2010 Zane Bennett Contemporary Art - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2009 Chinese European Art Center - Xiamen, China 2009 Miami Art Fair, Zane Bennett Gallery - Miami, Florida 2009 Preston Art Center - Las Cruces, New Mexico 2009 Logan Fine Art - Houston, Texas 2009 Zane Bennett Contemporary Art - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2008 Ube Center of Art - Ube, Japan 2008 Poltrau Frau Show - New York, New York 2008 Living with Art - New York, New York 2008 Contemporary Gallery - Paia, Hawaii 2008 Happy Art Gallery - Cannes, France 2008 707 Contemporary - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2008 Contemporary Fine Art Gallery - La Jolla, California 2007 Museum of Fine Arts - Las Cruces, New Mexico 2007 Palm Springs Museum of Art - Palm Springs, California 2007 United Creators International - New York, New York 2007 Phoenix Art Museum - Phoenix, Arizona 2007 artDC, Modern and Contemporary Art Fair - Washington, District of Columbia 2007 707 Contemporary - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2007 Logan Fine Art - Houston, Texas 2007 Contemporary Fine Art Gallery - La Jolla, California 2007 Function+Art - Chicago, Illinois 2006 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Annex - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2006 Riva Yares Gallery - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2006 ART Miami - International Art Fair - Miami, Florida 2005 707 Contemporary - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2005 Living with Art - New York, New York 2004 Calvin Charles Gallery - Scottsdale, Arizona 2004 Aspen International Art - Aspen, Colorado 2004 707 Contemporary - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2004 International Atlanta Art Fair - Atlanta, Georgia 2004 1002 Project - Calvin Charles Gallery - Scottsdale, Arizona 2004 Contemporary Fine Art Gallery - La Jolla, California 2003 707 Contemporary - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2004 Contemporary Fine Art Gallery - La Jolla, California 2004 Aspen International Art Gallery - Aspen, Colorado 2004 Michelle Delamour Show - New York, New York 2004 Anderson Gallery - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2004 Calvin Charles Gallery - Scottsdale, Arizona 2004 Trinity Gallery - Atlanta, Georgia 2002 Expressions in Fine Art - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2001 Soho Gallery - Palm Desert, California 2001 The Horse Power Project - proceeds to select charities - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2001 International Art Fair - Palm Springs, California 2001 Expressions in Fine Art - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2000 International Art Fair - Palm Springs, California 2000 Expressions in Fine Art - Santa Fe, New Mexico 2000 Trinity Gallery - Atlanta, Georgia 2000 Street of Dream, Showcase - Las Vegas, Nevada 2000 Aid and Comfort - Santa Fe, New Mexico 1999 Soho Gallery - Palm Desert, California 1999 Governor's Gallery - Santa Fe, New Mexico 1999 Aid and Comfort - Santa Fe, New Mexico 1998 Museum of Fine Arts - Montgomery, Alabama 1998 Albuquerque Museum - Albuquerque, New Mexico 1998 Waxlander/Khadoure Gallery - Santa Fe, New Mexico 1998 Aid and Comfort - Santa Fe, New Mexico 1998 Fuller Lodge Art Center - Los Alamos, New Mexico 1998 Sculptures Exhibit NMG - Los Alamos, New Mexico 1998 Sixth Summer Sculpture Exhibit, New Mexico Sculptors Guild - Santa Fe, New Mexico 1997 Miranda Galleries - Aspen, Colorado 1997 Waxlander/Khadoure Gallery - Santa Fe, New Mexico 1996 Suvretta Hotel - Saint Moritz, Switzerland 1996 Gallery Platini - Annecy, France 1996 Le Manoir de Cologny - Geneve/Cologny, Switzerland 1995 *Galeri

Portfolio is a web page that can be viewed at jonathankeeton.

Success Through Presentations – 5 Minutes with Cyrill Success through presenting well

Series: 5 Minutes with Cyrill

Cyrill Stachniss, 2022 Credits:

Video by Cyrill Stachniss

Thanks for image courtesy to Andres Milioto, Olga Vysotska, Michelle Watt, William Moreland, Luis Quintero

Intro music by The Brothers Records

April 4, 2022 at 02:54PM

Browse and download high-resolution, public domain Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations and Posters.

Artvee Browse and download high-resolution, public domain Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations and Posters. March 20, 2022 at 02:22PM

Adding depth sensors onto the machine allows it to “see” its environment

This robot can hike as fast as a human Adding depth sensors onto the machine allows it to “see” its environment January 22, 2022 at 02:43PM

cantino/mcfly: Fly through your shell history. Great Scott! Fly through your shell history. Great Scott! Contribute to cantino/mcfly development by creating an account on GitHub. January 4, 2022 at 02:50PM

RoboGrok University-Level Robotics 1 Course

January 3, 2022 at 04:42PM

Can I Let One Kid Play Violent Video Games and Not the Other? — The Information

December 21, 2021 at 04:39PM

OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer

As an artist, you probably have drawn the human body several times and realized how difficult it is to do it all from memory. This is where an adjustable online drawing model comes in handy. These adjustable models are also often called drawing mannequins

Free Interactive 3D Model for Drawing Figures, Dynamic Poses, and More – Online Drawing Mannequin As an artist, you probably have drawn the human body several times and realized how difficult it is to do it all from memory. This is where an adjustable online drawing model comes in handy. These adjustable models are also often called drawing mannequins October 31, 2021 at 02:21PM

Versions of Excel Explained [Updated 2021] » The Spreadsheet Page Did you know that Microsoft Excel’s first version was released almost 35 years ago, as of the date of writing this article? Initially, our beloved spreadsheet program was available exclusively for Macintosh, back in 1985, with a version developed for Microsoft following in 1987. During its life, Excel has undergone a number of different transformations to become the powerful spreadsheet software that we know and love today. Driven by our love for Microsoft Excel, October 18, 2021 at 04:54PM

The history of spreadsheets In this article, we briefly cover the history of spreadsheets starting with their origin, evolution, and the current scenario. October 18, 2021 at 04:55PM

An Introduction to Pivot Tables Using Excel 2000 An Introduction to Pivot Tables Using Excel 2000. What are Pivot Tables?. The Pivot Tables facility is a feature of Excel which is used for summarising data in a spreadsheet or database – e.g. by adding, averaging or counting without having to create formulae. October 18, 2021 at 04:54PM

In 1977, Jenny Holzer began to paste posters on the streets of New York City: anonymous, alphabetical lists of concise statements on subjects including capitalism, class, sex, and love. In the years since, Holzer’s pithy, often enigmatic messages have infi ltrated everyday life through materials from benches and LEDs to condom wrappers and tea sets. […]

Your #1 source for chords, guitar tabs, bass tabs, ukulele chords, guitar pro and power tabs. Comprehensive tabs archive with over 1,100,000 tabs! Tabs search engine, guitar lessons, gear reviews, rock news and forums!

💡 The perfect tool for inspiration!

The world's best free documentary collection - Simply the best Documentaries

(1) ULTIMATE GUITAR TABS – 1,100,000 songs catalog with free Chords, Guitar Tabs, Bass Tabs, Ukulele Chords and Guitar Pro Tabs! Your #1 source for chords, guitar tabs, bass tabs, ukulele chords, guitar pro and power tabs. Comprehensive tabs archive with over 1,100,000 tabs! Tabs search engine, guitar lessons, gear reviews, rock news and forums! August 22, 2021 at 08:56PM

Documentary Mania – Free Documentaries Online The world’s best free documentary collection – Simply the best Documentaries August 22, 2021 at 08:50PM

Flim 💡 The perfect tool for inspiration! August 22, 2021 at 08:55PM

Webster’s 1913 Old version of websters August 22, 2021 at 08:43PM

Alda tutorial Alda is a text-based programming language for music composition. It allows you to write and play back music using only a text editor and the command line. August 17, 2021 at 02:31PM

Record, transcribe, edit, mix, collaborate, and master your audio and video with Descript. Download for free →.

Descript | All-in-one audio/video editing, as easy as a doc. Record, transcribe, edit, mix, collaborate, and master your audio and video with Descript. Download for free →. August 12, 2021 at 01:55PM

lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to 🤗 Thank you for listening, I hope you will have a good time here✔️ | This music is free to use in your livestreams & videos→ https://bit.ly/lofigirl-usethe… July 16, 2021 at 12:01AM

Massive collection of images of old movie posters

Movie Posters Collection – Harry Ransom Center Digital Collections Massive collection of images of old movie posters July 11, 2021 at 01:23PM

Install Ubuntu 20.04 on a Raspberry Pi Got an unused Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 laying around? Let’s put it to good use by installing Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa on it! This will make a great platform to cr… May 22, 2021 at 01:48AM

Guitar Scientist: Create Free Guitar Diagrams Online Guitar Scientist is a Free Online Editor || Create Scales and Chords diagrams, for Guitar, Bass and more. Download your Diagrams, Visualize Shapes. Perform Better!

Acoustic Guitar Tuner Online | Tuning Acoustic | Fender Tune your acoustic guitar with Fender’s free, guitar tuner. Select standard or alternate tunings or customize your own tune for your acoustic guitar.

I use this website as a memory dump for gamedev things i might need in the future. I will update it with new things when i feel like it or when i need to forget things to make room for more. If you have any questions ask on twitter.
Note: This is for my own personal memory dump so it's written to

University-level, short video lessons and full online courses to help you understand and prepare for this technology of the future.

Custom stencils of phrases, quotes, scriptures, and lettering for stenciling in your home

Audiobook-download site Simply Audiobooks offers a selection of free public-domain titles.

Audiobook-download site Simply Audiobooks offers a selection of free public-domain titles.

Free audio books

Cool art

amazing custom painting

GameDev.net is your resource for game development with forums, tutorials, blogs, projects, portfolios, news, and more.

Free research on art history

Works pretty well

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Learn programming with a multiplayer live coding strategy game for beginners. Learn Python or JavaScript as you defeat ogres, solve mazes, and level up. Open source HTML5 game!

Great resource

A beautiful book about numpy.

Another very useful text processing tool for text based data files.

A classic - the books and the guy

I spent way too long figuring out the how to make video calls feel natural. Here’s the best advice I came up with.

IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music

Great resource

tags: music classical library

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I spent over an frustrating hour on the phone yesterday with Bank Of America and Paypal trying to sort out what a charge that was showing up on my credit card. All of $4,200.00. So nothing small. It turned out that it was correct, but the description was so incorrect that it was impossible for me to figure out just from reading the statement. I know we’ve all been there.

During this fiasco I spoke to five different people, earned myself a $25 Amazon gift certificate to ‘apologize’ for the bad service (Is that all my time is worth?), was on infinite hold (15 minutes+) waiting for a ‘supervisor’ – twice. Anyway I won’t go into the blow by blow because it’s boring and stressful to recount.

My...

I came across a wonderful quote about intellectual property. I am not sure I agree with it myself but wanted to share it. It is from Carsie Blanton’s blog post “New Rules for the Music Business” and it goes like this:

““Intellectual property” is an absurd concept that only a society of clueless, museless marketers could possibly conceive of. It’s an idea that serves markets, cripples muses, and is willfully ignorant of all of human history.

We are stealing from one another constantly and shamelessly, and that’s a blessed and beautiful thing. Every folk song is a mashup of all previous folk songs. Every film stands on the shoulders of all other films. Every ...

This is worth looking at: It was an utterly unexpected rebirth. from the moment Freddie Mercury and the other members of Queen – guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon – took the stage at London’s Wembley Stadium, on July 13th, 1985, at the historic Live Aid concert, the group captured the day. Here’s the full article.

It’s obvious if you think about it, but this article drives some points home. If you use some kind of web service to read, listen, watch, charge, use, borrow or share stuff, that company not only knows what you’ve (read, listened to, etc.) They also know much more specifically how you did so: Did you stick with it to the end, did you do it from a particular place, at a particular time? Did you do it in one sitting or over a day or a week or a month?

If you then combine such observation across a farily large group of peope you can learn amazing things. Like how many people finish your book, or how far through it they get before abandoning it. Do they listen to the whole song? At what episode...

I just saw Blue Jasmine, the latest Woody Allen movie. It is excellent and I recommend it. I also happened to read Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New York Times where he reprinted many of the allegations against Woody Allen repeating various allegations that make him sound really evil in his personal life. I also saw the Golden Globes telecast where they showed a montage about his career and hear Diane Keaton give a speech on Allen’s behalf.

Suffice it to say that I was confused about what to believe but ...

This is just a great read.

A Speck in the Sea – NYTimes.com:

Looking back, John Aldridge knew it was a stupid move. When you’re alone on the deck of a lobster boat in the middle of the night, 40 miles off the tip of Long Island, you don’t take chances.

Flying back home yesterday I read this article about Wikipedia in the New York Times: Wikipedia, What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page? – NYTimes.com:

The three tenets of Wikipedia articles are “No Original Research,” “Neutral Point of View” and “Verifiability” — terms that, in and of themselves, are open to debate. At any rate, Mr. Wales wanted to make real the words of Charles Van Doren, one of the editors of the Encylopedia Brittanica, who wrote in an essay in 1962: “Because the world is radically new, the ideal encyclopedia should be radical, too. It should stop being safe — in politics, in philosophy, ...

Point Solving Problems for Real World, Using Design – NYTimes.com:

While the projects had wildly different end products, they both had a similar starting point: focusing on how to ease people’s lives. And that is a central lesson at the school, which is pushing students to rethink the boundaries for many industries.

A fascinating article about the “Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford” also known as the D.School.

Everyone knows that Design Thinking is great and the new hotness. I love great design, and am in awe ...

Who knew that a story about behind-the-scenes of a big restaurant could be gripping, but this one is. I guess it’s a combination of a fascinating operation with outstanding writing. Check it out.

22 Hours in Balthazar – NYTimes.com:

Produce comes in, too — 50-pound cases of russets from Idaho stacked head high and six deep; spinach, asparagus, celery, mushrooms, tomatoes — as do dry goods, dairy and some 500 pounds of insanely expensive peanut oil for the French fries. The restaurant employs six stewards to deal with deliveries and storage alone; they weigh goods and check them against invoices, putting everything in its proper place, keeping the Health Department happy. At a typical restaurant, as much as one-third of the overhead goes to food costs, and so efficiency is an imperative. “Monday, you’ll see,” Kelvin Arias, the head steward, tells me, “all the walk-ins will be empty.”

Fox News debuts bizarre, giant tablets in its outrageous new newsroom | The Verge:

Fox News has just unveiled a breathtakingly ridiculous newsroom, complete with novelty-sized Windows-based touchscreens, a Twitter wall, and a wannabe Minority Report-style display, which it hopes will connect it with generations of viewers who use smartphones and apps.

I just saw that the final “Season” of Mad Men will be delivered in two mini-seasons, 7 episdodes in 2014 and 7 more in 2015. I had this idea for a TV show that has not been done yet.

Just like the contrivance of 24 hours is that it occurred over a 24 hour period, in real time, my show, called 30 Years, occurs over a 30 year time span, in real time, with the same actors. Here’s how it works.

We commit to 30 years (calendar years) of seasons, with 4 epiisodes each. The actors start out in year 1, and the same ones, appear year after year, so you actually see them aging and the world changing around them. It’s one cogent story line which is determined up front, but it runs for 30 actual years, 4 episodes at a time.

(c) Pito Salas, 2014. Patent Pending.

The Many Mysteries of Air Travel – NYTimes.com:

If you’d like the answers, I highly recommend Patrick Smith’s new book, “Cockpit Confidential.” Mr. Smith is a pilot and blogger; much of the book’s format and contents are on display at his Web site, AskThePilot.com, or in the archives of the “Ask the Pilot” column he wrote for Salon.com for years.

You should read this book: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. It’s shocking and insightful.

Basically the book explains and teaches that when you hear, for example, that Egypt is getting a billion US$ in military aid, that’s not what it sounds like. We are not sending them a check for a million bucks. We are actually sending the million bucks to US millitary corporations.

Why? Because the funds that Egypt gets can only be spent with specific US companies on sp...

I haven’t read it, but, it’s free 🙂

I am reading a really cool book right now: GARBO: The Spy Who Saved D-Daya about a double agent and an elaborate look behind the curtain of espionage during WW2. Makes me wonder about the amazing amoung of leaked detail about a missle strike on Syria.

Could it be a total spoof, and even as we speak, special forces are infiltrating Damascus and doing their thing? And “whoops” – did I just give it all away?

...

Cory Doctorow: Lies I’ve Told My 3 Year Old Recently Trees talk…:

“Lies I’ve Told My 3 Year Old Recently Trees talk to each other at night. All fish are named either Lorna or Jack. Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose. Tiny bears live in drain pipes. If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky. The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago. Everyone knows at least one secret language. When nobody is looking, I can fly. We are all held together by invisible threads. Books get lonely too. Sadness can be eaten. I will always be there.” — Raul Gutierrez, “Lives I’ve Told My 3 Year Old Recently” (via words-in-lines)

(via thatbooksmell)

If you are, or ever were, a Billy Joel Fan you will really like this interview. Fascinating to read what seem to be the reasonably honest thoughts and feelings of a Rock Star!

Billy Joel on Not Working and Not Giving Up Drinking – NYTimes.com:

So he doesn’t write anymore, not pop songs anyway. Instead he goes about his relatively ordinary life in plain sight in a cedar shake house in the middle of Sag Harbor village. He has a few of his vintage motorcycles in the garage, and his boat slip is within walking distance. He is seemingly never alone, spending his time in the company of hi...

Do you watch Mad Men? I know it’s very good. I always watch it. But sometimes, it doesn’t make sense, and I wonder, have I been sucked into a reality distortion field myself? Is it really good?

REVIEW: Mad Men – Episode 8: The Crash – Celebrity Gossip, News & Photos, Movie Reviews, Competitions – Entertainmentwise:

However, the experiment was hit and miss. With the majority of the creative team at SCDPCGC (as the agency seems to be called at the moment) under the influence of, um, well who knows really, there were moments when it was hard to tell what was real from what was imagined. Again, that isn’t neces...

How to Be a ‘Woman Programmer’ – NYTimes.com:

But none of it qualified me as extraordinary in the great programmer scheme of things. What seems to have distinguished me is the fact that I was a “woman programmer.” The questions I am often asked about my career tend to concentrate not on how one learns to code but how a woman does.

Here’s what I think: If economic analysis says that technology does not contribute to the overall productivity of the country, check the analysis. It’s incorrect.

It’s self evident and obvious that technology – computers, smart phones, tablets, cloud computing, robotics, and on and on make us more productive. I say, send the economists back to the drawing board to look again.

Economic Statistics Miss the Benefits of Technology – NYTimes.com:

The meme is back. The burst of productivity during the dot-com revolution of the 1990s gave skeptics pause. But as productivity has slowed substantially in recent years, doubts have re-emerged about whether information technology can power economic growth like the steam engine and the internal combustion engine did in the past.

I picked up David Byrne’s new book: How Music Works while waiting around in a bookstore. I flipped it to this page with this quote which I thought was quite cool. If I remember he was quoting something else. Anyway, I wonder how this general idea can be adapted to other forms of improvisation, like designing software products or teaching. I am thinking. Do you have an idea?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjqf5F7PPGw]

This trend is now unstoppable – massive open online courses – or MOOCs – are constantly in the news. The angle often seems to be about whether or how or how much they will impact higher education and education in general. It’s a topic I am very interested in.

Here’s another piece of the puzzle, this time from the New York Times. In this article a reporter signs up for ten different online courses in a quest to assess from his personal experience along these dimensions:

Professors: B+ Convenience: A Teacher to student interaction: D Student to student interaction:...

This is from the New York Time’s article about Curt Shilling’s ill fated game company “38 Studios”:

“It just felt really good, when this all started, to have the sexy sports celebrity from Boston who seemed to like Rhode Island and showed up in Rhode Island, and who built this exotic new business, even though no one knew what it was,” says the historian Ted Widmer, who grew up in Providence and works at Brown. “It seemed like the digital economy, or biotech, or whatever. But then it turned out that it wasn’t the new digital economy. It was some 13-year-old’s medieval fanta...

As you know the topic of the future of the university, the role of MOOCs, and online learning, is highly topical these days. I happen to be interested in it too so I refer you to this David Brooks Article, called, The Practical University. It’s an interesting angle.

However I want to pull a single quote out of that:

“Think about Sheryl Sandberg’s recent book, “Lean In.” Put aside the debate about the challenges facing women in society. Focus on the tasks she describes as being important for anybody who wan...

This is a tired topic but this article from the New York Times does have some good tips on managing your avalanche of email …

“…There’s no quick fix. But set aside a few hours one afternoon, brew a pot of coffee, get a tasty snack, put on your favorite playlist and roll up your sleeves. It’s time to tame your in-box…” (from “How to Lighten the Crush of Email“)

Read the article here.

We saw “Ryan Landry’s “M”” at the Calderwood Pavilion in the South End last weekend. I started out a bit suspiciously when the playwright (who’s not famous) name is part of the name of the play being promoted. The play is based on a famous film “M”. Here’s a bit from an interview:

When asked, “A German film from 1931 about a child killer … what made you want to turn this into a play?” Landry says: “Because it is a beautiful masterwork. A goal to which other artists should aspire. I chose this film because I wanted to write a play based on the most unfunny thing in the world and still make it [the play] funny. It is a sad play too. It is a human play” (from...

Tom Friedman, quoting Tony Wagner, describes what he thinks should be taught today (that isn’t really being taught:)

““Today,” he said via e-mail, “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge. As one executive told me, ‘We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think — to ask the right questions — and to ta...

I am (after 10 years) a beginner pianist who wants to improve. I practice, but not diligently enough. On average I think I practice 5 days a week, for about 1/2 hour, so that’s less than 3 hours a week. Clearly I could do better. But I am proud of the effort I put in and I definitely have made a lot of progress. But I am at best still an advanced beginner.

From an article,“If you’re busy, you’re doing something wrong”,

“We can start by disproving the assumption that the elite players dedicate ...

An interesting view on patents from Judge Posner:

“In Posner’s view, many patents are unnecessary. Patents, he believes, are important for drug companies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars bringing a new drug to market — a drug that can easily be copied by a competitor. Without the protection that a patent affords, pharmaceutical companies would have far less incentive to come up with new drugs.” (from New York Times)

In another article that discussed Posner’s view on patents: “Why there are too many patents in America” (from The Atlantic)

I saw this movie last night and really thought it was great. I had read somenegative commentary about Zero Dark Thirty:

“At the same time, a number of journalists and public officials—including three United States senators—have excoriated Zero Dark Thirty. Their main complaint is that the film greatly overstates the role played by torture—or “enhanced interrogation techniques,” in the CIA’s terrifying euphemism—in extracting from al-Qaeda-affiliated detainees information that ultimately led to the discovery of Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was kille...

[](Y.Squarespace.Utils.lightboxAsset()I designed the calendar to the right to help me keep track of my piano practice. As you know, maybe, to learn piano you need to practice every day. Well I don’t do that regularly enough, and as a result (and general clumsyness) my piano study is going at a snails pace. So of course, technology to the rescue.

Jerry Seinfeld described how he would force himself to do something every day. In his case, work on his comedy. He would put an X on each day in his calendar when he worked. He would then psych himself up to never break the string of X’s, and the longer the string was, the more it h...

I am a big fan of this book, so I was really surprised to find a freely downloadable copy of the file in pdf form. I snooped around and the site seems legit but it’s odd that a very popular book is made available for zero dollars.

Here’s the link to Lean Startup on PdfBook.co.ke

If you are wondering, .co.ke is Kenya. I posted a question to them to explain whether this was above board. I wonder…

I was listening to an interview with David Brooks the other day. The interview was conducted by, of all people, Alec Baldwin on “Here’s the Thing”, a show I discovered on public radio.

Alec Baldwin is a good actor for a certain kind of role, and can be quite funny, but we have learned things about him which are not very likable at all, right? But who knew that he was very intelligent and quite a good interviewer?

The David Brooks interview is very interesting and enlightening and I recommend it. But this post is mostly to point you to a highfalutin term for something that makes a lot of sense to me:

“The correct position is the o...

From the New York Times, an article by Nick Kristof, describing a real-life story of a friend of his and health care.

Whenever I hear, “We have the best health care in the world”, I think of stories like this. It is a travesty that in a wealthy country like the USA, there are 48 million Americans uninsured. Some 27,000 Americans between the ages of 25 and 65 die prematurely every year because they don’t have health insurance. From the article:

“Let’s just stipulate up front that Scott blew it. Other people are so...

I recently subscribed to the New York Review of Books. Not sure this was a good decision as the last thing I need is more stuff to read. I came to it because I kept seeing interesting articles from the NYRB come up on various blogs and searches.

Here’s quite an interesting book review of “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism “. Thi...

I first came across Sandy Metz in this video:

[vimeo 12350535 w=500 h=281]

2009 – Sandi Metz – SOLID Object-Oriented Design from Gotham Ruby Conference on Vimeo.

If you are interested in Object Oriented design you will enjoy this. She is a wonderful speaker, and fun to listen to. Even if you don’t agree with (or understand) some of the concepts, I promise that you will enjoy listening to it. Since then Sandy has come out with a wonderful new book which I highly recommend: ...

I created this quick and dirty list of useful resources for some friends who wanted to dig into the latest thinking on web and mobile user interface design. I am sure this list is incomplete and quirky but I thought it would be good to share:

I’ve had great luck with Lynda.com courses. It’s only $25 per month, and you can watch as many as you like. Here’s one about CSSS for Developers Here’s another to teach you Photoshop. I’ve actually taken a lot of this one. The author is great. A famous book with basic concepts on ...

I like this quote:

“Everyone here introduces themselves as an “entrepreneur.” It’s as if they hand out the title at the airport when you arrive. “Welcome to San Francisco, you are now an entrepreneur! Which start-up T-shirt would you like?”

This belief that everyone is an entrepreneur has a stultifying effect. It can drive founders to seek an easy acquisition instead of a quest for true innovation and a sustainable, profitable business — a truly entrepreneurial challenge.” (from Bits Blog, NYT)

Just from today’s New York Times:

“Voters in New York State use a vote-scanning system that can tally votes swiftly and, in most cases, correctly. Not New York City. The city’s Board of Elections uses a creaky system of counting by hand that is prone to embarrassing errors on election night.” (from Why Can’t NYC Count Votes?)

As you may know, I’ve been working on launching Bootup Academy, which will offer applied computer science or engineering programs to college students who want to supplement their studies with an intensive 10 week summer program. That’s why you may have seen more posts here labeled [EDUCATION].

We’re now adding an additional focus, Booting Up experienced technical folks who have never put together a web or mobile application, have not worked in an agile environment, and so may not have the right check boxes on their resume.

We think they may be interested in rapidly bring themselves up to speed, develop skills, knowledge, contacts, and importantly, a por...

A good article in the Atlantic about game designer Jonathan Blow. Interesting quote:

“I continued. “You’ve been chasing some deep form of understanding all your life, and what I think you’ve found is that questing after that knowledge brings alienation with it.

The further you’ve gone down that road, the further it’s taken you from other people. So the knowledge is ultimately destructive to your life, just like the atom bomb was—it’s a kind of truth that has a cataclysmic impact.

You thought chasing that knowledge would make you happy, but like Tim, part of you eventually wished you could turn back time ...

This book looks good: “Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the pitfalls that can sink a startup”. I came across it in the “Startup Lessons Learned” Blog, which may be the best blog about leann startups.

This excerpt talks about a common scenario with startups, where the founders assume that they way they chose to split equity on day 0 will continue to work for them as time goes on:

“How should founders deal with such developments? In short, by assuming when they do the initial split that things will change, even if the specific changes cannot be foreseen, and therefore structuring a dynamic equity split rather than the static splits used at Zipcar, govWorks, and many other startu...

If you are a theatre fan I strongly recommend a play I just saw last night. It’s called “Luck of the Irish”. From a review on Boston.com:

“… It’€™s one of numerous instances in Greenidge’s superb, beautifully realized new play — now receiving its premiere in a Huntington Theatre Company production directed by Melia Bensussen — that illustrate the playwright’s sure grasp of the nuances of race and class and her insights into the complexities of human nature.” (from Boston.Com)

Run, don’t walk to see this play at the Huntington Theatre in Boston!

Listen, I love the New York Times. I read it cover to cover (or pixel to pixel) every day and have it delivered in dead-tree format to my doorstep each morning.

But so often I come across an awkward sentence which I have to read and re-read several times to understand.

I’ve been noticing this for a long time now and it makes me wonder whether it’s a stylistic thing or a that they have had to lay off their best editors.

At any rate, I don’t have the same impression when I read he Wall Street Journal (which I admire but don’t love.)

Here’s a recent example:

“LAGOS, Nigeria — In a quarter-century, at the rate Nigeria is growing, 300 million people — a population about as big as that of the present-day United States — will live in a country roughly the size of Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.” (from NYT)

What do you say, am I crazy?

I love this article. It’s by an actual authortalking about whether it matters if a reader reads a book through to the very end.

He starts with the basics, claiming that serious (‘mature‘) readers don’t feel self-imposed pressure to read a book to its very last syllable:

“It seems obvious that any serious reader will have learned long ago how much time to give a book before choosing to shut it. It’s only the young, still attached to that sense of achievement inculcated by anxious parents, who hang on doggedly when there is no enjoyment. “ (from Why Finish Books)

Agreed.

He then ...

This is from a play we saw last year at the Huntington Theatre. The play is Prelude to a Kiss by Craig Lucas. It production was quite good but this particular speech struck me as the best part of the play. Don’t read it as depressing just as really good writing and really true.

An annual event, the streets of Willemstad (Curaçao)are covered with art by well known artists:

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615

(See: Willemstad Word Gekleurd)

I love this metaphor – or is it a simile – or a malapropism – who knows:

“It’s the cloud within the sterling silver lining” – Frank Bruni in the New York Times

See what he did there? It’s inside out and upside down. Cool. Forgive me, the article is ok too, but that quote jumped out at me I had to spin up the ole blog machine.

I saw this article in the Sunday New York Timestoday which starts promising but then becomes a bit ridiculous and makes a mockery of serious research, in my humble opinion.

It starts with a claim that sounds plausible:

“Recent advances in understanding what psychologists call “embodied cognition” indicate a surprisingly direct link between mind and body. It turns out that people draw on their bodily experiences in constructing their social reality....

“Dear Kelley

I’ve had a very bad two days with Comcast, and if you check my account you will see that I’ve used Comcast for over 20 years!! But I am now talking to Verizon.

Because I don’t want to waste more time with you guys I will say this: I am glad to talk to someone serious who wants to know how you are going wrong. I don’t want to talk to a trained support person who is trying to calm me down. I am very calm.

Here is a short list of issues:

the web site says that the link is for an email to Rick Germano. This is clearly not the case as I am talking to you. You treat your customers like they are dummies. your voice mail menu is horrible and time wasting. it seems tike it tries all ...

As you know, I am a big big fan of Spotify. Lately I’ve been playing with the Last.FM integration. It’s a handy way for me to see what new music or artists I might like to listen to. I’ve discovered plenty of new music that way, it’s great.

What I would like is to be able to ask Spotify (or Last.FM) for a ‘radio’ station which plays music that I might like to hear. This feature exists but it doesn’t suit me because it would jump from a raucous rock piece to a quiet jazz piece to a strange folk piece. Generally I play music based on a general mood I am in or want. Quiet Jazz in the morning and upbeat stuff (load) when I am washing dishes. You get the idea.

If you work for Spotify, what do you think?

Funny insider lingo. I am sure you’d be able to do a similar video for Washington DC (politics) and L.A. (movies) and Kendal Square (Biotech). My word is computers. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR8zFANeBGQ]

I have a warm spot in my heart for independent bookstores, as such a store paid for my college education. My family business was a bookstore. It is no longer around however, having gone out of business years ago. Blame Amazon?

Secondly, I read lots of books, and own even more. (Yes that implies that I buy books that I don’t read. I don’t feel bad about that. I enjoy books.)

Thirdly, I love, I mean, I LOVE Amazon.com. What convenience, what great prices, what free shipping. I even own some AMZN stock. In truth I bet in the last year I spent more money on books at Amazon than from local bookstores.

See the conundrum coming?

Whenever I am in a strange town, o...

I Just came back from seeing “Gods Of Carnage” at the Huntington Theatre (in Boston) tonight. Couldn’t wait to post my recommendation.

It’s short (about 80 minutes – no intermission), fast paced, well acted and funny. It’s a story about two couples who are thrown together to discuss a playground altercation between their two sons. That’s the set up.

The story takes up an evening when they get together to discuss it. Huntington has been embracing the web and social media in excellent fashion of late. I just noticed the ingenious new bit, which is doing a “trailer” for a ...

I just finished reading the book Seabiscuit. I previously had no interest (and no respect) for Horse Racing. The book changed that. It was quite interesting in human and racing terms.

Now that I think about it I am also a big fan of the Dick Francis mystery series. Unfortunately he’s no longer with us, and I think I’ve read all of them. They are more about British steeplechase, but still, about horses. So I guess there was a latent interest there 🙂

Anyway, one take away was how many every day English words and expressions in daily use come from the Racing World. See how many surprise you!

track record neck-a-neck by a nose also ran dead heat photo finish tongue tied down to the wire

It felt like a war zone without the danger! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofUdhro7G2o&w=420&h=315]

I saw this movie, Altered States, again last night. It’s even better than I remembered and it’s my third or fourth time seeing it! It’s weird and scary (still) but really compelling. An antropo-horror movie!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbYT3UclhNY]

I saw this quote from Dickens’ Great Expectations. I had to read it several times to get the meaning. It’s appropriate for this season.

“Pause you,”€ Pip says, “€œand think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.” (from Dickens, as quoted by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times)

I just finished reading a great book, “Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer ” by Duncan Watts. First of all it confirms the eternal sceptic that I am.

My summary of that book is that it warns us to be careful when we think we understand why something happened (why did that startup succeed? why did that product fail? why does that medicine work? why does that treatment not appear to work? why did he get sick? why did he get well?)

The danger is ...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzh-TKzXN2k&w=560&h=315]

I’ve been playing around with each of the major tablets while considering ‘my next move’ 🙂

Oddly I have not been able to find a side by side comparison of their weights. After googling for 3 minutes. So as a public service let me transcribe my notes on this vital topic.

Apple iPad 2: 21.1 oz Barnes and Nobel Nook Color: 15.8 oz Amazon Kindle Fire: 14.6 oz Barnes and Nobel Nook Tablet: 14.1 oz Amazon Kindle Touch: 7.8 oz Amazon Kindle 4: 5.9 oz

I continue to spend spare time on developing my Android tablet game. As you may remember from my last post, it involves a top view of a city. I’ve taken the time to learn a lot of Adobe Illustrator so I am used slightly more advanced techniques than last time.

I have to admit that when I walk around town I am constantly noticing the width of sidewalks, the color of streets, whether there is grass right up to the side of the building and other silly details.

Anyway, here is what I have so far. How do you like it?

From the New York Times, How Exercise Benefits the Brain:

“For some time, scientists have believed that BDNF helps explain why mental functioning appears to improve with exercise. However, they haven’t fully understood which parts of the brain are affected or how those effects influence thinking. The Irish study suggests that the increases in BDNF prompted by exercise may play a particular role in improving memory and recall.” (from NYT)

A useful article in the New York Times today, just in time for the holidays. Anew site that tries to forecast the best time to buy that item you really want.It seems to draw a graph showing how the price of, for example, a Nikon 50-300mm Zoom Lens has varied over the last 3 months and whether I should buy it today or wait till next month. It’s a very nicely done site and if it works, it could be very useful. The site is decide.com.

“Oren Etzioni writes articles about artificial intelligence for scholarly journals, is a renowned expert on data mining and gained fame when Micro...

This article gives a fascinating perspective on the disconnect between what they teach in law school and what knowledge is required to actually be an effective lawyer. Some great facts from the article:

“Last year, a survey by American Lawyer found that 47 percent of law firms had a client say, in effect, “We don’t want to see the names of first- or second-year associates on our bills.” Other clients are demanding that law firms charge flat fees.”

…and …

““Law school has a kind of intellectual inferiority complex, and it’s built into the idea of law school itself,” says W. Bradley Wendel of ...

Not my usual topic, but I came across a rather interesting article about the history of the famous (infamous) AK-47 machine gun.

“The AK-47 has succeeded so wildly because it is almost an ideal realization of the personal firearm: where most weapons have had to contend with tradeoffs between accuracy, lethality, speed of fire, reliability, cost of production, and ease of carrying and use, the AK-47 managed to find a sweet spot maximizing these traits. In fact, the weapon is so reliable, effective, and easy to use by untrained operators that its advent made it widely possible for just about any group, even with little ...

What I don’t get is the price. First I had to have bought the music (from Apple or someone else) and now I have to pay again ($24.95 per year) in order to make it all available over iCloud. I think I will stick with my new favorite, Spotify.

I am sure I don’t fully understand the details, but it seems to me that the essential benefit that the new iTunes provide is that I can access my whole music collection (as far as it is ‘legal’) from any device attached to iCloud. Anything else?

Well, I think the very idea of ‘owning’ a music collection is antiquated. I mean it’s evidently inefficient that millions of people have a copy of the same bits that form “Let It Be” on each of their computers....

I was excited to hear about the Kindle Fire. But I was waiting to read some impartial reviews of one before running off and buying one. After all I am a big fan of the Kindle (gen 2) and enjoy reading books on Kindles. And, believe it or not, I don’t yet own an iPad.

So the Fire seems like a match made in heaven, right?

Well, today David Pogue, tech reporter of the New York Timeskind of reviewed the Fire (along with the other new, low end Kindles.) Well, the punchline is, he loves the new inexpensive Kind...

Chris Shipley of Guidewire Group has a great post bemoaning how entrepreneurs are driven to invest their time and energy and (other peoples’ money) on more and more vacuous projects:

“Indeed, the collective attention of young entrepreneurs seems be have been hijacked by all things trivial. How many knock-off AirBnB sites does the world need? Or new vertical social networks for niche groups that can’t figure out how to create a Facebook page? Or Foursqure meets Match.com meets World of Warcraft?

Presumably, these proportedly hot startups are endorsed by the taste makers of the angel investor scene. And if you’re an investor, these busines...

I’ve spent the last few weeks in dribs and drabs building a new game for Android. Lately I got deeper on what it means to have a ’tiled’ game space display where you construct the appearance of the game space by arranging a series of graphic images based on what’s needed for a certain level of the game. The idea is that you get essentially data driven graphics.

In my case the game space is a maze, ostensibly a map of a neighborhood. Creating these, still rather ugly tiles, is fairly painstaking both to understand what the tiles are in your vocabulary to be able to create a variety of game levels, and then to do the graphic design and actual image files for these baybies.

Here you can see a...

Interesting article with a provocative title: “The Designer’s Notebook: Passion Versus Professionalism“. This is a topic that interests me. He says:

“Passion” is an excuse used by employers to mistreat their employees. Your passion is supposed to make up for the insane hours and low pay for which the industry is notorious. Many job ads emphasize the importance of passion in applicants; few emphasize the quality of life that the employer offers. (from Passion vs. Professionalism”)

Reading the whole article, in the end I don’t agree with his argument. I think in general passion is a very important t...

This link lets you see all the passages in Steve Jobs’ new biography that were underlinedby Kindle readers. All of them. Pretty interesting don’t you think?

Can you compose crappy music? I had a field day today ‘designing’ a bit of music for my “Game Of Life” Android game. In the old old days, when computers for the first time allowed you to choose a font for your text. we all became bad amateur typographers and book designers. Do you remember the “ransom note” font in the original Macintosh (yeah, that was 1984?) It looked like this:

We loved it and everyone played with it. And there were lots of other ugly fonts but how did we love them.

Well now (for me) the same thing is happening with music. Yeah I am an amateur piano and guitar player but designing a sound track is not some...

Apparently (not sure why yet) on Android, sound effects files using the OGG format work better than those using wav or mp3. It might be an AndEngine thing, I am not sure. Anyway, here’s my result of half hour googling and experimenting for a reliable way to convert the files. I tried a bunch of things, and I finally settled on MediaHuman AudioConverter. Use it. It really works and is nice and simple.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Odd book. In the end I really liked it but at first it takes a surprising set of turns and is not at all what you would think. The writing style is almost poetic which is what I think I enjoyed the most,

View all my reviews

I have become a total Spotify addict. I have almost totally stopped downloading MP3s and am gradually locating all my favorite music on Spotify. I posed a couple of semi-sceptical notes when I first started using Spotify and so I am due for an update, right?

Cancelled Rhapsory, trying Spotify

Spotify, Genres???

Update about Spotify I

So what has happened since? I find that I am using Spotify on my iPhone and on my computer, all the time. Occasionally I will dip back into my large iTunes collection to remind me of artists that I want to list...

I got some of this list from Lee Sheldon’s course syllabus. I have not read all these books but I want to:

Designing Virtual Worlds. Richard Bartle.

Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Lee Sheldon.

Developing Online Games. Mulligan and Petrovsky.

Massively Multiplayer Game Development. Thor Alexander et al.

Synthetic Worlds. Edward Castronova.

Community Building on the Web. Amy Jo Kim

My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. Julian Dibbell

A Theory of Fun. Raph Koster

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. Jesse Schell

If you watched (or didn’t) the preceding video by Jesse Schellyou might have caught one throw away idea mentioned that really intrigued me: Eliminate grades and instead adopt a system modeled more like experience points in a game. The idea he mentions I believe came from a Professor Lee Sheldon. Here’s the link to his course, Gaming the Classroom.

In my teaching at Brandeis, deciding how to handle grading is one of the trickier problems* to solve. While my experience teaching so far is quite limited I ...

If you are interested in Game Design you have probably seen this video… I finally watched it and thought it was really worth sharing. I definitely recommend it. Jesse Schell is funny and engaging to listen to and has great insights to offer. The last 7 or so minutes is a fantastic riff on how gaming might / will invade our everyday life in the future. Very plausible.

http://www.g4tv.com/lv3/44277

Xbox 360 Games – E3 2012 – Guitar Hero 5

So I have now been using Spotify for about a week after sumarily deserting Rhapsody (no stickyness at all!) Here’s my summary:

Pro Spotify

Has a nice downloadable client on Mac which I can launch from the Dock

I seem to be discovering some new music from non-American Jazz artists. Not sure this is a credit to Spotify or just luck

Neutral

Exactly the same price

Apparently equally large catalogs

Against Spotify

Relies purely on an obscure search syntax (e.g. “genre:”Piano Jazz”) to search genres

Does not have ratings based on genres – i.e. top downloads or new this week in Classical.

Has a confusing relationship with iTunes. Why does it offer me to ‘download’ my iTunes and make it available ‘offline’? iTunes already does this on iPhone

No way to know what ‘genres’ it actually knows about beyond the obvious: “Classical” and so on. Is there “Singer Songwriter”? Is there “New Orleans Jazz”? No idea.

Jury is still out for me…

Ok a few hours into it, I’ve located what looks like a major weakness in Spotify. One of the fun things about Rhapsody is discovering new music. What are the top albums in “Piano Jazz”. Had to look and look for a similar feature in Spotify. The closest I can find is to type this into the search box:

genre:”piano jazz”

Oy! And by the way, how am I supposed to know that “piano jazz” is a legitimate genre? Oh just look on this list.

Whoops. Piano Jazz is not a real genre, so it doesn’t work.

Any one know any tips?

As I said in the previous post, I am a bit of a promiscuous signer upper. From a cursory look, Rhapsody and Spotify are fairly similar. They both charge $10 per month for unlimited listening to all kinds of music. I saw a few blog posts that took one side or the other.

With all the geek news about spotify, one would like to know more. So, I capriciously cancelled my Rhapsody and am now trying the new thing.

That’s a problem they both have. No stickiness whatsoever. I know that for example the Sonos product supports Rhapsody. If I had spent $1000’s of dollars on a Sonos set up (like friends of mine have) AND Sonos didn’t support Spotify, then I might think twice. But here, it’s just another bit of software to set up and play with.

I will report back!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what kind of preparation college students need as they graduate to pursue their futures. Thomas Friedman writes an excellent column in the New York Times where he says:

“Look at the news these days from the most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy — Silicon Valley. Facebook is now valued near $100 billion, Twitter at $8 billion, Groupon at $30 billion, Zynga at $20 billion and LinkedIn at $8 billion. These are the fastest-growing Internet/social networking companies in the world, and here’s what’s scary: You could easily fit all their employees together into the 20,000 seats in Madison Square Garden, and still have room for grandma. ...

We just got back from the monthly meeting of “Boston Postmortem“.

Huh, what is that? Well as a result of my teaching at Brandeis this summer – Mobile and Game Software Development – I have developed a greater appreciation for the gaming world. When we had Ed Baraf of Blue Fang games speak to our class, among the many things he taught us was that there’s this great meetup in Waltham called the Boston Postmortem.

It was very well attended and the crowd sounded and felt like a community that knew each other and was pretty tight which ma...

Another on the mark article by David Brooks: the mother of all no brainers.

I can’t help it but I am riveted by this debt ceiling debacle. Like many I want them to stop bickering and reach and agreement. I know there will be parts of it that I hate, but I know that overall I will be thrilled that this particular soap opera/drama/crisis is over, and that our leaders have stopped acting like children:

The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evi...

If you’re interested in computer games for Android, see what you think of this one’s potential… Coming soon to an Android near you according to some friends of mine.

I’ve seen a prototype and, it looks promising in an Angry Birds kind of way. Mindless and unique. Let them know what you think!

Giraffe Adventure, Coming to an Android near you!

It’s hard to comprehend people who feel that it is reasonable (let alone ethical, let alone bankers) to get paid on the order of $50 MILLION a year.

You should watch the documentary Inside Job. It’s nauseating.

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

No need to paraphrase or editorialize. Just read the whole thing, will ya? Lots of good advice that I wish I had gotten years ago.

How to steal like an artist (and 9 other things nobody told me)

Actually there is one nice tidbit that I got from the Lifehacker article that led me to the above link:

“It’s not a new idea—you’ve very likely heard the phrase “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” It’s commonly attributed to Pablo Picasso, or T.S. Eliot, though it likely originated with neither. Kle...

This New York Times Op-Ed piece by Bob Herbert really hits home:

“The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.” (from Losing Our Way)

It’s called “Losing Our Way”. You should read it.

A really excellent interview/review of Christopher Hitchens and his memoir, “Hitch-22”:

“He could never have guessed how prescient those words would be. In June last year, while on a tour of America to promote the hardback publication of his book, Hitchens was taken ill in New York and was subsequently diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. Thus did he acquire his visa to a place where nothing can be taken for granted. Hitchens has christened it ‘Tumourville’.” (from “Godless in Tumourville: Christopher Hitchens interview“)

An interesting article about how to think about designing Artificial Intelligence for playing poker. It’s high level but gives you a good feel about how this writer went about the design. You also learn the basics of Poker at the same time:

“It is very important in this type of project, for any AI project really, to fully understand the rules of the game and the tactics typically used to win. So when I worked on poker I spent a fair amount of time reading the best books and playing the game, both against existing AI and real humans of various levels of experience.” (from Poker AI: A Starting Point)

And here’s a follow up article on the same topic: “Aces High: Numerical Techniques in Poker AI“

This is actually a keynote to a conference, but it had some very interesting ideas in it. The article is called “The New Science of Morality” and it’s by Jonathan Haidt. I don’t know if it makes full sense out of context, but read this section. It makes an important point and it might draw you into reading the whole thing.

“[…snip]Morality is like The Matrix, from the movie “The Matrix.” Morality is a consensual hallucination, and when you read the WEIRD people article, it’s like taking the red pill. You see, oh my God, I am in one particular matrix. But there ...

“That journey will provide reasons for resisting the claim that a deterministic view of the material universe is incompatible with free will. Much of the apparent power of deterministic arguments comes from their focusing on isolated actions, or even components of actions, that have been excised from their context in the world of the self, so that they are more easily caught in the net of material causation.” (from How Can I Possibly Be Free?)

This is from a really difficult article called“How Can I Possibly Be Free?” in the New Atlantis. At ...

From Science Daily: Couch Potatoes Beware: Too Much Time Spent Watching TV Is Harmful to Heart Health.

“Data show that compared to people who spend less than two hours each day on screen-based entertainment like watching TV, using the computer or playing video games, those who devote more than four hours to these activities are more than twice as likely to have a major cardiac event that involves hospitalization, death or both.” (from Couch Potatoes Beware: Too Much Time Spent Watching TV Is Harmful to Heart Health

Scott Kirsner tweets:

“Invented at MIT, Sifteo cubes (tiny displays that talk to each other) are almost ready: http://bit.ly/eXsCQU / http://bit.ly/ehhZ1Q”

Sifteo cubes are similar (except much more expensive and presumably programmable) to Scrabble Flash, that have been around since last year. Interesting.

Finally someone writes about somethingthat happens to me (and yes, to you) all the time.

What was that movie about that we saw LAST WEEK?

How come did it take till page 102 before you realized you had already read this book?

No friends, no need to feel shame anymore. It seems like it happens to everyone (should I add, for you smart alecs out there – it happens to everyone — eventually.)

“Did this mean that it hadn’t been a waste of time to read all those books, even if I seemingly couldn’t remember what was in them?” (from New York Times)

The other day I wrote a post where I mentioned Google’s App Inventor, and I mentioned it with some skepticism. Today, a column in the New York Times that covers Google’s App Inventor in more detail, and comes to more or less the same conclusion:

“I’m happy for App Inventor. I wish it a long and exciting life. Surely it will have one in schools and computer classes, among other niches.

But for nonprogrammers on their own? Forget it. Android Hype Inventor is more like it.” (from the New York Times)

Check this link out, there are lots of really fun drawings. The artists take a little kid’s drawing and turns it into something amazing. Here’s a taste:

Originally posted on May 04, 2007. Reprinted courtesy of ReRuns plug-in.

I think I might be entering a new phase in my music listening. I listen to a ton of music, on my iPhone, on my computer, in my car, all the time. And up to now it’s always been downloaded (purchased) music that I organize manually within iTunes. From time to time I’ve had subscriptions to eMusic and similar services. As a result I have a huge number of tracks on my computer and on my iPhone. And as my music taste develops, and I discover new artists and composers, lots of those tracks are listened to rarely.

The alternative services like Rhapsody, which has been around for a while. But I ...

Who would think that an august publication like the Wall Street Journal would pull something like this: I was paying for access to their online edition. I decided to cancel it. Their very rich and sophisticated web site lets me change just about anything, but there’s no mention, anywhere, including FAQ and help, on canceling. Oh, and wait, there’s more: there is an 1-800 number to call. But guess what, they too can’t cancel. They have to forward you to someone else, and wait again, who then tries to talk you out of canceling. Geez.

I was supposed to fly from San Fransisco to Boston today. Monday (2 days ago) I got an email from JetBlue saying, more or less: “Sorry to tell you, but your flight has been canceled. Please call 1-800-xxx to make a new reservation or get a refund.” No explanation of why. I was taken aback, but I guess it happens all the time. After spending 30 minutes on hold, I was able to make new plans which had me leaving a day early (yesterday.) Back safe and sound now. To JetBlue’s credit for the moment, they are waving all change fees and more importantly, any fare differences. From their web site it seems like the flight was canceled due to ‘weather.’ While indeed tonight at 10pm we’re supposed to be in the middle of a blizzard here in Boston, on Monday, when they canceled, the weather today was predicted to ok. I guess they have better weather forecasters than the weather channel!

Finally I found someone expressing what I have been thinking about the fracas about NBC, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien etc. etc. And while I didn’t know then what I know now, I did eagerly tune in for the first Jay Leno @ 10:00pm show, hoping to see the payoff to all the hype that preceded that first episode. Do you remember all the promos and the hints and speculation? Then, on that first night: ...

Thomas Geoghegan has a fantastic column in the New York Times explaining the mess we are in because of the perversion of the fillibuster rule. I don’t know how we are going to get out of it, but… come on! You should definitely read the whole thing. Here’s a key quote. Doesn’t it make your blood boil? ...

In my graphic design work I’ve gotten to know scratchboard (aka clayboard.) It’s a very cool material that I’ve had a lot of success with. Here’s an early example. Here’s a pretty good rundown of many of the tools, materials and techniques for working with clayboard. I found it very informative.

Here’s a nice detailed review of the Kindle competitor, “Nook“. If you are thinking of giving or getting one for Christmas or Channukah you might find the review useful.

This post talks about the difference between owning, possessing and accessing a book or anything tangible: “If I buy (”own”) a book, I expect to be able to do things such as re-sell, loan, rent, gift it. If I rent or borrow (”posses”) a book, I don’t, but expect to be able to do things like take it with me on a trip. If I am in your house and flip through (”access”) a book, you being a mensch aside, I probably can’t just walk out the door with it.” (from What does it mean to ‘buy’ an e-book’)

There’s another very practical aspect of physical goods which...

Sergey Brin of Google has an op-ed in today’s New York Times, making the case for Google Books: ...

We saw the “Jersey Boys” musical in Chicago last night. It’s a lot of fun, even though the sound system at the “Bank of America Theatre” wasn’t up to par. Actually it was pretty awful. The music is great and the story is interesting. Who knew that Joe Pesci had some connection with the Four Seasons?

It makes we want to find a good memoir from one of the Four Seasons describing what it was like. Can you recommend one?

There aren’t many good options for Music notation software. Sibelius is in my opinion the best, which as this software goes is not saying all that much. For it’s functionality it’s quite good, as a piece of elegant and usable software, it gets a “B” at best. Over a month ago Sibelius announced their Version 6. Like any software company they made a much bigger deal of it than the changes would justify. Still there were a few things in it that I wanted.

They started taking orders over a month ago. They have a not very generous deal for upgraders (I already have version 5) but still I...

Pandora is one of my favorite music sites. It’s a quick way to get an infinite play list built around a song that you give it to start with. I’ve become a fan of several artists that I heard on Pandora for the first time. I hear that their catalog of music isn’t nearly as large as some other well known music sites, but I could never tell any lack of grat music. So Pandora is pretty excellent… except they were in danger of going under due royalty rates that they were being charged. Well here’s the good news: “Pandora (And other internet radio) Has Officially Been Saved!”

Ethan Zuckerman writes a great piece about how Paul Simon’s Graceland album came to be, with some of the historical context, backstory and being a xenophile. A great read: “At its best, Graceland sounds like Simon is encountering forces to large for him to understand or control. He’s riding on top of them, offering free-form reflections on a world that’s vastly more complicated and colorful than the narrow places he and Art Garfunkel explored in their close harmonies. In “Boy in the Bubble” (video above), the chorus, “These are the days of miracle and wonder, this is the long distance call” could serve as a tagline for anyone confronting our strange, connected world.” (From ...

Take a book that I was interested in, “The Lords of Finance”, by Liaquat Ahamed. This is a brand new book, very timely that I heard mentioned on TV. Prices:

Sample Chapter on “Kindle” (including Kindle on iPhone): $0. I read it and thought it was really good and was tempted to buy it. But I almost never buy hardcovers so normally I would wait for it to come out in paperback.

Hardcover, List Price: $32.95

...

The other day, Amazon released a free application on the iPhone (and iPod Touch.) On the surface, just another ebook application. The application is free. When you run it the first thing you do is to register it to Amazon’s web site (using your normal Amazon username and password – you already have one, right?) As far as the Amazon site goes, your iPhone is a Kindle. It shows up on your list of Kindles. And you can buy books for it. So now you can visit the ...

Tortoise by Tim Mason I set my pace deliberately keeping precious what matters under the hard shell I show the world.

Truth is survival counts each step I take assures that.

I’m not much on ambition, but how long you folks been around?

I put that question to Aesop when he was a betting lad – gave my bookie good odds against his rabbit I left him with a moral and a question “can you hang?”

Takes time to comprehend but patience comes with my pace so let me rephrase that how do you follow your dreams?

Me, I keep what’s precious under the hard shell I show the world.

Dave writes an enthousiastic review of this book: The Secret in Building 26: “I just finished reading The Secret in Building 26: The Untold Story of How America Broke the Final U-boat Enigma Code. What a fascinating read! I’ve written before about the UK’s contribution to code breaking during WWII (‘Neglect’ of Bletchley condemned and Bletchley Park Update), but this is the first time I learned about some of the details of the US contribution. I always thought the majority, if not all, of the work was handled by the British, but this book details how it was much more of a partnership between the British and Americans. Most of this stuff is only recently declassified, and most is still classified. However, the information available is a great introduction to the dawn of the electronic computer.” (from: from Big Dave’s Blog)

…

Hey, how about doing me a favor? It will only take you a minute or less. It won’t cost a penny. Help the famous and wonderful Club Passim win a grant from, who else, Virgin America.

Spread the karma, it will come back to you!

JUST CLICK HERE CLICK HERE JUST CLICK HERE

I’ve known about Pandora for ages, and the last month or so have been using it again, a lot. It’s quite amazing: constant, free, music. Based on your interests. How does it work? Well just go to Pandora, set up a free account, and indicate, for example, an artist or style you like. It begins playing songs, one after another which people who’ve liked what you like have also liked. You hear a song or artist you don’t know, indicate with a thumb up or down how you like it. That’s it.

I have discovered artists I didn’t know, rediscovered some that I knew, or music that I loved and had not heard before. All for free.

One might ask, in a fa...

Now here‘s a recommendation: “I recently got a hold of what I consider to be the nicest mathematical book in my collection. As a matter of fact, it’s the nicest book I own, period – even though I posses bookshelves teaming with terrific titles on mathematics, science, programming, computer science, photography and so on.” (from Math-Blog)

That goes right onto my wish list!

Hey! If you live in Boston or Cambridge, and you like music, especially Folk music, then you’ve probably been to Club Passim in Cambridge – Harvard Square actually. It’s a lot more than a ‘Coffee House’ – it’s an institution where many of your favorite 70s acts got their start. Passim is a tiny little folk music club in Harvard Square that’s existed years and years and where musicians like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan played at the very beginning of their careers. I am friends with various people at Passim, over the year we have attended lots of shows there.

We have been members for ...

Since I wrote a somewhat negative post mentioning Outliers and Malcolm Gladwell the other day, I thought this was a worthwhile follow-up,“Lost in the Crowd” from the New York Times, which starts sounding positive: “As usual, Gladwell intelligently captures a larger tendency of thought — the growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes. His book is being received by reviewers as a call to action for the Obama age. It could lead policy makers to finally reject policies built on the assumption ...

There have been a number of articles taking shots at some of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, “Outliers”. No doubt Mr. Gladwell is really good at getting visibility for his books and has hit upon a formula with The Tipping Point and Blink which are fascinating reads, with profound insights, that happen to sell well. Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times was the first one I saw being not 100% flattering about the book, saying:

““Outliers,” Mr. Gladwell’s latest book, employs this same recipe, but does so in such a clumsy manner that it italicizes the weaknesses of his methodology.: (from ...

As a favor I am posting this notice about an event that looks like it might be fun: Battle of the Bands

The requirement is that at least one member of the band must work for a New England-area technology or life sciences company or a venture-capital or private-equity firm that invests in technology. All levels of bands are welcome—from club veterans to garage hackers. All musical styles are welcome – entry deadline is Dec 12, 2008.

The event will take place on January 22, 2009 at the Middle East in Cambridge. Last year Jeet “Miki” Singh, co-fou...

A really good article in the New York Times Magazine today about Lewis Hyde. I had not heard of Lewis Hyde before. First of all, the article makes me want to pick up his book, The Gift: ““The Gift,” the core argument of which depends on establishing an analogy between the making of art and how objects accrue value in traditional “gift economies,” has been praised as the most subtle, influential study of ...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3ijYVyhnn0&hl=en&fs=1]

I am just finished reading Devil In The White City by Erik Larson. Loved it! This news item about the first archaeological dig at the site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition caught my eye because that is what the book is about (also about a serial murderer, but that’s something else again.) I am only part way through the book but it’s quite good so far.

You like Barnes and Noble? How about Border’s? Or do you prefer Amazon? Well, check out these amazing bookstores around the world!

I just came across this announcement for the ‘Battle of the Tech Bands’ on January 22 in Central Square (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.) “Musicians from Boston’s tech and tech-investment companies play their geeky hearts out—you pick the winners!”

Sounds like fun! Check out the Battle of the Tech Bands here!

iLike is this really cool, really popular service which compares the music you like with others’ tastes as they play music in iTunes. It’s a handy way to discover new music. As you can see in the screenshot to the left, it displays all this in a very nice little window to the right of the iTunes window. All very cool.

Not only do you see other related music that I may be interested in, it also offers me downloads of free, up and coming artists who might interest me.

And then, it shows me nice litte pictures of other iLike users who listen to Beethoven or whoever.

Regular readers of this blog know about AllOfMp3.com, a Russian music site that sells music of all kinds for a ridiculously low price. It’s kind of like the iTunes or EMusic store, but at a fraction of the price. Every so often there is news that they are about to be shut down because they are fraudulently selling copyrighted music. They say that what they are doing is strictly legal by Russian law.

I don’t know who is right. But as they say, “If it seems too good to be true, then it probably isn’t true…”

Anyway, from time to time their ability to be paid via credit card (like Visa etc.) is disabled....

Today we hear that EMI is going to sell DRM-free music over the iTunes Store. I haven’t studied the fine print yet, but it’s clearly a big deal no matter how it reads. Here’s an interesting look back at Napster who in a way started it all. Check out this post from Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: ** Shawn Fanning created Napster in his dorm room at Northeastern. It was the fastest-growing application in the history of the Internet. We changed the world but failed to achieve business success. Here is a glimpse into the inside story of Napster, and at the end, some lessons learned for entrepreneurs.

(from**: How Napster changed the world – A look back 7 years later)

Check out this post from Influx Insights Weblog: rethinking gladwell’s model of influence. My first reaction was that indeed the paper referenced in fact refuted one of The Tipping Point’s key assertions, the importance of connectors. But I am not so sure it does now that I’ve had a little more time. Anyway, it’s worth taking a look.

I heard about this book, “Dreaming in Code”… it looks really interesting but kind of depressing to read which is why I didn’t run out to buy it. Building software is just really really hard and for some reason no matter how smart and experienced we are, projects still can easily run themselves into the ground.

I’ve often heard (and said) why can’t we build software the way we build bridges? People building bridges don’t have the kind of disasters that we have in software. (Note: Joel on Software’s blog’s logo is a bridge…)

Anyway, you should check heck out this post from ...

Check out this post from dzone.com: latest front page:

I just finished a fantastic book called "Algorithms", by Sanjoy Dasgupta, Christos Papadimitriou and Umesh Vazirani. Even better: this book is free and can be downloaded in PDF form from the authors’ web site.

(from: Free book on "Algorithms" highly recommended)

I’ve written about AllOfMp3.com before. I can’t say other than it’s a pirated music site. You can buy mp3’s of music of all kinds, from a nice catalog, at ridiculously low prices (like $3 or less for a complete album.)

Some wags have suggested that AllofMp3 proves that people are totally willing to pay for downloaded music as long as the price is right. Yeah, like people are totally willing to pay for a BMW as long as the price is right. Other rumors have been that AllOfMp3 is always one step away from being shut down because the WTO has made closing down of ...

Came across Jonathan Coulton, the songwriter who embarked on a ridiculous challenge to write a song each week, for a whole year. Quite a crazy thing, but he pulled it off.

“Thing a Week is a project I’ve been working on since September 2005 in which I record and post a song a week as a podcast. It’s a way for me to keep the creative juices flowing as freely as possible, and a way for me to push myself to take risks, work quickly and trust in the creative process. It’s also a form of protest – I will keep doing this until someone pays me to do it.” (from Thing a Week)

One of my all time favorites, that you gotta check out, ...

If you were intrigued by my previous post about the Clock of the Long Now, I came across a nice, philosophical and instructive article about it:

“But even if the Clock of the Long Now fails to last ten thousand years, even if it breaks down after half or a quarter or a tenth that span, this mad contraption will already have long since fulfilled its purpose.

Indeed the Clock may have accomplished its greatest task before it is ever finished, perhaps without ever being built at all.” (from The Omega Glory by Michael Chabon)

Read it.

Technorati Tags: clockofthelongnow

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=blogbridge-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0465007805&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr I just finished reading Steward Brand’s book “The Clock of The Long Now”. It’s a quick, illuminating read, talking about the creation of a Clock and Library meant to last for 10,000 years, and how that thought and vision will affect the way we are. ...

I don’t know if you followed the spat a few months ago. This book, “A million little pieces” by James Frey was chosen by Ms. “O” (Oprah) for her book club. A lot of fanfare, a lot of press. It’s a memoir about one man’s experiences as a totally out of control addict, then joining a rehab program and getting on the road to recovery.

The problem is / was that after Oprah made all this fuss about James Frey, it turned out that certain details of the book were fictionalized. It was not exactly clear whether 10%, 20% or what were not from his real life experience...

If you read my blog chances are you’ll really enjoy John Batelle’s book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. Actually it’s mostly about Google, but in a bit of clever marketing I think the broader title makes it more attractive. Many people have reviewed it so I won’t bother other than to say that it’s a really good read and worthwhile. Recommended.

I saw these two books in Barnes and Noble. They look quite interesting. I might get them.

The God Theory. I am always interested in the various evolution vs. intelligent design debates, and this book claims to come up with a way to accommodate both into one framework or paradigm.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=blogbridge-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0300110561&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=ffffff&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr

**The Wealth of Networks. ** This is a fairly dense, scholarly book about networks, social and otherwise. Looks very interesting, but honestly, it may be too thick 🙂

Technorati Tags: book

I was probably the last one to hear about AllofMp3.com. It’s this massive, well organized and apparently solid Mp3 download site. Music is not free, but extremely cheap. It’s apparently hosted in Russia or somewhere else.

The question is of course, “is it legal” and “is it ethical”? Friends of mine who’ve known about it for years (claim to) never use it. I have to say it gives me pause to download the whole “Tapestry” Album (Carole King, from the Jurasic Period) for something like $1.50. Ridonculous.

There apparently have been lawsuits trying to shut down the site. Just today I there’s talk about another one: “...

I just finished reading an excellent book called Confessions of an Econmonic Hit Man. Quite amazing really. Tells about the machinations of american foreign aid, and how all foreign aid is not as benevolent as you might think. Also kind of hints at why there are so many Texas oil men and huge construction contractors represented in the government. A fascinating read. Recommended.

Technorati Tags: book

One of my favorite singer songwriters, Susan Werner, somehow has gotten herself into a “patriotic song contest” on the Huffington Post Blog. It’s a funny song, and Susan Werner is absolutely awesome! Check out the song!

Technorati Tags: singersongwriter, susanwerner

I’ve experimented with all kinds of novel music related services and products.

My favorite is Pandora. This is a a site that helps me discover new music that I like. It’s introduced me to several artists that I had never heard of before which are now favorites. In this case I am plugging Beth Nielsen Chapman. A wonderful singer songwriter, I think from Europe, that has the sound I really like. It’s quite wonderful to create a Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell or Bill Evans channel discover new artists.

It’s great!

By the way, also of interest are:

Last.FM – An application that is supposed to do something simi...

This is kind of cool.

I am playing around with the Last.FM music service.

Among the many things it does, is that It ‘watches’ everything you play with iTunes to figure out your music tastes. And then with that, Last.FMrecommends music that you might like.

What caught my eye is the first use of the famous ‘long tail’ graph as a User Interface element. You can drag the vertical bar right and left to affect whether the recommended music is more in the popular or obscure range of possibilities. Cute!

Technorati Tags: cool, longtail

Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight

Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene

I’ll see you in my dreams

Last Saturday night I got married

Me and my wife settled down

Now me and my wife are parted

Gonna take another stroll downtown

Sometimes I live in the country

Sometimes I live in the town

Sometimes I get a great notion

To jump in the river and drown

Well I asked your mother for you

She told me you was too young

I wish to the Lord I’d never seen your face

Or heard your lying tongue

Stop your rambling, stop your gambling

Stop staying out late at night

Go home to your wife and your family

Stay home by the fireside bright

I love Irene God knows I do

Love her to the day I die

If Irene turns her back on me

I’ll take morphine and die

(If you know why I posted this then you know why I posted this 🙂

Technorati Tags: blues

This little gem really works! A StarTrek cool little device that sits on top of your stereo or TV set. It’s called a Roku Soundbridge M1000. Has a remote control, built-in Wi-fi (which DOESN”T MEAN wireless fidelity, darn it) and various audio-outs to connect to your amplifier. Simple as pie.

...

Robin Good points to: “The Myth of The Rock Star and of the Need To Sing-up For a Major Recording Label”:

“Music” does not equal “compact disc”. Music is data. It doesn’t matter whether you burn it to a CD or rip it to an iPod or a Memory Stick or store it on your hard drive. It’s still music.

**Take a minute to internalize this concept. **

Once you get past the notion that music has to come in the form of a shiny little Frisbee that retails for $16.99 at your local MegaSuperMusicPavilion, certain other truths tha...

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=blogbridge-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0805079076&fc1=000000&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&lt1=_top&nou=1&IS2=1&f=ifr&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr I came across this review in “World Wide Words”, an email newsletter (remember those?) about … well, words. Here’s an excerpt from the review:

“He takes readers through introductory topics such as syntax, case endings, grammatical gender, and the curiosities of Semitic nouns, in which a set of three consonants creates a template within which detaile...

I just saw references to these two books. I am putting them on my reading list.

Rebuilt: How becoming part computer made me more human – Michael Chorost.

Is Bill Cosny Right? – Michael Eric Dyson

Technorati Tags: book

I Just came back from seeing ‘Falsettos‘, an unusual (and unusually good) musical, at the Huntington Theatre, in Boston. The themes cover the gamut from family, children, love, judaism, homosexuality, life and death. The music is unusual and complex and very nice. I recommend it highly. So much that I also just got the music from iTunes!

Technorati Tags: music, recommended

Susan Senator has published a book: “Making Peace with Autism”:

“It’s her memoir about our family, and how we have dealt with the autism that afflicts our oldest son”

(Susan is Ned Batchelder’s wife.)

Check it out, and also check out the web site (probably written with Python 🙂 that Ned built for Susan.

A book that I read recently about what ...

By sheer coincidence, the day before leaving for Spain, two people independently mentioned to me that Angels and Demons by Dan Brownwas good, even better than Da Vinci Code by the same author. So, I picked up a copy at Barnes and Noble as my light reading for the trip. This is a great, quick read. A page turner. I recommend it. And indeed I agree that it was better and more interesting than Da Vinci Code. Interesting as Angels and Demons is an earlier book, and still Da Vinci Code is the one that is selling thro...