Monday, January 24, 2005

A little overdue, methinks...

Sorry about the silence, things have been "hella-busy" (as they say in the backwoods of northern CA). (Not that that's where I am right now.) (Not that there would be anything wrong with that.) (I think I need one more parenthetical phrase here, but I'm all out at the moment.)

Anyway, here's some good news: the case of that idealistic biker guy was just dismissed! A little bit o' justice in a cruel cruel world.

The new IJG album is proceeding nicely... more news on this soon.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

The devil's music

This is a funny read, though I completely disagree with the tired, tired implication:

MUSIC CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO MOUSE HEALTH

My mom gave us a "Baby Mozart" video for our daughter this Christmas, and there too, I resist the assumption that "classical" music (and Mozart somehow more than any other composer) promotes intelligence or makes a kid a genius or whatever. (What video did Mozart watch as a baby, I wonder?) For one thing, it's not "really" Mozart's music that is featured in the video, but a very watered-down version of same.

But how much more adventurous and interesting is the Boobah series. In one episode ("Record Player"), three sets of characters find three different records that play three different songs. Each song is played separately. Then, the characters find yet another record that plays all three pieces simultaneously, creating a glorious cacophony! Sort of "Baby Charles Ives."

It's art if you say it is, part 2

Marta de Menezes does interesting things at the intersection of biology and art. Check out the surgically altered live butterfly wings, fr'instance.

Friday, January 07, 2005

The story of my life

If you've ever wondered what it takes to be a musician, Erik Satie lays it all out for you here.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Orwell, Kafka, and Bush

My neighbor's wife, who is in the military (as a reservist, I think), was recently sent to Guantanamo Bay. That's relative "good news" for her--at least "Gitmo" is not the horror of Iraq. Or maybe, as Richard Cohen suggested in the Washington Post yesterday, it's just Iraq without the carbombs.

Two great tastes...

CSPAN Karaoke! Why didn't anyone think of this combination before?

(Nota bene: when you get to the above page, you've got to click on "Idiomorphic software" to get to the feature.)

Monday, January 03, 2005

A little bit of code

From Ed Felten:

"TinyP2P is a functional peer-to-peer file sharing application, written in fifteen lines of code, in the Python programming language. I wrote TinyP2P to illustrate the difficulty of regulating peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless."

Find it here.

Return of the Son of Space Invaders

Be on the lookout.

(If you find that site a little cryptic, here's a nice explanation.)

It's art if you say it is.

Or, how to make a living with roadkill.