Art

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vonnegutSTYLE

7/14/2008 in General by face | No comments

vonnegutSTYLE
Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete

6/25/2008 in General by face | No comments

The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete

“All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmological equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now. Today companies like Google, which have grown up in an era of massively abundant data, don’t have to settle for wrong models. Indeed, they don’t have to settle for models at all.

277 – The Biggest Drawing In the World

5/26/2008 in General by face | No comments

277 – The Biggest Drawing In the World:

“With the help of a GPS device and DHL, I have drawn a self portrait on our planet,” writes Swedish artist Erik Nordenankar on his website for the project, appropriately named http://biggestdrawingintheworld.com. “My pen was a briefcase containing the GPS device, being sent around the world. The paths the briefcase took around the globe became the strokes of the drawing.” The resulting drawing’s dimensions are 40,076,592 by 40,009,153 meters – which are about the dimensions of the Earth’s surface, if it could be rolled out as a canvas.

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Jazz Excursion Radio

4/12/2008 in General by face | No comments

Jazz Excursion Radio
Listen Now: Windows Media: 96 / 64    MP3: 128 / 64

Found this while I was reading about Bill Evans. Sometimes the radio works best ;-)

The MP3 128K stream is tastier than the 64K.

There are a number of “stations” – Smooth, Dinner, Vocal.
If you sign up to be a member of All About Jazz you get to download the tune of the day as well.

Bagatellen: Signifying Junkie:

4/12/2008 in General by face | No comments

Bagatellen: Signifying Junkie:

So, to the listening library I was dispatched. It felt like a punishment even before I clamped on those thumbscrews-for-the-ears they called “headphones” and popped in a tape of Sunday at The Village Vanguard. (Isn’t there a part in all of us that rebels at unsolicited recommendations? Don’t you hate it when somebody gushes, “This is the awesomest, ever. You’ll love it.”) Village Vanguard, I thought, what’s that, some medieval theatre-in-the-round? The way my teacher described it, the experience I was about to receive would be pianistic heaven on earth, Mount Olympus on the 88’s, and god himself would vibe me from those solid grooves. Bill Evans was at that time the summation of everything that was ever worthwhile doing with a piano or a piano trio. Forget Monk – not really a piano player; didn’t he write some quirky tunes? – forget Hines and Tatum – hopelessly old-fashioned, heavy-handed stuff – who? Cecil Taylor? Get out of my sight, infidel.

Bill Evans – The Vanguard Sessions – 1961 – quoted on the last page of this month’s Jazziz Magazine.

I have a “fair bit” of Bill Evans in the collection. Turns out that I have 2 copies (not identical) of the Vanguard sessions – “Bill Evans Trio: Sunday At The Village Vanguard” and “Complete Riverside Recordings (Disc 7)”. They are not identical, but appear to be the same sessions. The former is engineered a bit differently.

I wonder what’s different in the latest “Bill Evans: The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings 1961″ collection? The reviews and description at Amazon illumimnate.

Goo-ology : Fantasies

3/23/2008 in General by face | No comments

Goo-ology : Fantasies
I like Newton’s Egg and a few others. The mousetraps are too Jones.

Quote of the Day

3/7/2008 in Readers Digest Centerfolds by face | No comments

“We are from, not there!”

X

1,000 True Fans

3/5/2008 in Readers Digest Centerfolds by face | No comments

Kevin Kelly — The Technium

The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people; a few lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers. Of those two, I think consumers earn the greater reward from the wealth hidden in infinite niches.

Ask E.T.: Interface design and the iPhone

2/11/2008 in General by face | No comments

Ask E.T.: Interface design and the iPhone

The iPhone platform elegantly solves the design problem of small screens by greatly intensifying the information resolution of each displayed page. Small screens, as on traditional cell phones, show very little information per screen, which in turn leads to deep hierarchies of stacked-up thin information–too often leaving users with “Where am I?” puzzles. Better to have users looking over material adjacent in space rather than stacked in time.

The review is a video. 56MB download, so be patient. Go ahead and read the excerpts from the book while the video is loading.

“Spatial Imperialism”!

Being Funny

1/30/2008 in General by face | No comments

Smithsonian Magazine | Arts & Culture | Being Funny

Steve Martin – watch the video

In general, however, a comedian in shackles for indecent language, or a singer’s arrest for obscene gestures, thrilled the growing underground audience. Silliness was just not appropriate for hip culture. It was this circumstance that set the stage for my success eight years later.

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