September 24, 2017

September 23, 2017

The second redeeming feature (alongside Samantha Mathis' amazing purple-fading-into-white dress) of the widely reviled movie "Super Mario Bros." was that it had a good soundtrack, with Roxette, Divinyls, George Clinton - even US3's "Cantaloop". (Actually think there was a law in those times that every movie had to have that song - "Renaissance Man", "Sisters", "It Takes Two", etc.)

The oddest song, though, is Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch's "I Want You"... its mostly a goofy, bubblegum romance rap, but the funny part is how it starts with 45 seconds of slow piano and a woman sensually whispering and sighing "I want you..." -- interrupted by a full rap swagger "yeah baby, I want you too" and the drums kicking in - a kind of hilarious shifting of emotional gears.

The really weird thing is it wasn't on any of the lyrics sites. But... I have fixed that. No need to thank me, world.

September 22, 2017

Shot from JP Honk @ Mill City Grows:

With my new commute I was so very little reading in, but lots of podcasts. Guess it's time to switch gears and use Audiobooks. I guess Audible is an ok deal - it's like a "book of the month" club except you choose the book, so long as I listen to at least one I guess it's a good deal.

September 21, 2017 tuba

Scenes from the Revels RiverSing:

"The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."
--William Blake, from Proverbs of Hell. (A work I hadn't seen before, but I dig it.)

It was quoted by Dan Dennett in "Intuition Pumps". Just this morning I decided to try switching gears away from podcasts to audiobooks. It's a challenge for me to listen as attentively as a book demands, relative to a chatty podcast or an NPR show structured to be listened to. (More and more I feel aware of how my preferred reading mode is "skim, get the gist and go back for the tough bits.) Maybe it's a good discipline for me. I am wondering if I'll be as able to extract tasty quotes as readily as I do from ebooks.

Making the rounds - If Bostonians Loved Other Local Institutions the Way They Love Their Local Sports Franchises

September 20, 2017 lookup

Heh, every once in a while I want to find this early iPhone vs Nokia E70 comparison... (warning, very swear-y)

From my devblog, farewell 32-bit iOS apps.... There's only 6 or so I'll really miss, but still. Apps are really what make smartphones special, and it's annoying when they go away.

September 19, 2017

About the Juggalos March on Washington. I didn't realize how serious that "they're a gang" label the FBI socked them with was, and how it screws with a lot of lives.

Might as well called The Salvation Army a gang. Or Jehovah's Witnesses - and they're recruiting.

The juxtaposition of some deep and profoundly sad emotion against the semi-technical details of the composition and goals, of making the photographs deliberate... it's a little jarring. It can almost seem a little tawdry, but sometimes making good worthy art – art that measures up to the magnitude of the occasion – can't be left to happenstance.

So many of us have cameras in our pocket now, and many of us our becoming more fluent in a new visual language (usually pretty casual - but with the right filter capable of moments of quick beauty). Maybe we should all take a bit more time to set up some shots of people we love, photos that will tell the story about this time and this place and this person.

September 18, 2017

After a long beautiful 4 gig weekend - Mill City Grows in Lowell, Prospect Hill block party, Boston Makers at the Children's Museum, and the Revels RiverSing parade.

RIP Stanislav Petrov whose profound application of common sense over following official procedure stopped WW3 from being started when some clouds looked like ICBMs to a computer system.

The revenge of bullet time: makes me wish I spoke Russian!

5NIZZA-SAMOLIOT (DIRECTOR'S COLOR CORRECTION) from max ksjonda on Vimeo.

"Amish life is about recognizing the value of agreed-upon limits, and the spirit of the internet cuts against the idea of limits."
--Erik Wesner, blogger of "Amish America", in this NY Times piece on the Amish and technology. I've had a deep respect for the deliberation that the Amish apply in terms of technology, ever since I read Wired's fair-handed treatment of them in 1999.