October 2008
42 posts
Trick or Treat →
I haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but free music is nearly always worth linking to. The music is the ‘treat’, but the ‘trick’ is quite amusing.
(via)
“Hello,
In 1944, Russ Morgan, Larry Stock, and James Cavanaugh wrote the song,...”
– The email sent to the recipients of Spotify invites, made me smile.
Way Out West →
Until quite recently Dominic West was a stranger to the general public. Since leaving drama school in 1996 he has appeared in several notable plays, worked on a couple of Shakespeare films and made himself something of a go-to-guy when it came to casting the obnoxious British boyfriend in American romantic comedies. But in spite of some excellent reviews, he was essentially the kind of actor who...
Made Me Smile →
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-10-26) →
Ladyhawke
Battles
Girl Talk
Burial
The Kills
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Spying on the IRA
The other day Kottke had a link to this article in the Washington Post telling the story of how British intelligence set up laudrettes in Northern Ireland in an attempt to catch people handling explosives.
It was linked to on Metafilter last night, and the comments contain a couple more interesting articles. The Sinn Fein Weekly (An Phoblacht) ran a story on the matter, and The Atlantic had a...
Banksy's Pet Shop →
Fish-fingers swimming in a glass bowl, chicken-nuggets pecking at a little dip-carton and salami basking on rocks are some of the animals available in the artist’s latest piece in New York.
Once and Never Again →
The Long Blondes broke up after guitarist and song writer Dorian Cox decide that he was unable to keep up duties as a musician (in his myspace post, he said that he may never be able to play the guitar again…) after suffering a stroke in June of this year.
One great album, one good album (in that order) and the new Singles EP are all we have left, though there’s the possibility that...
King →
There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you’ve got 100 kilos of heroin in the trunk of your car. Just to be near it, to smell it. Driving along at 120 mph in France somewhere and thinking: “I know what I’ve got in the car.” Police stopping beside you. A gun under my seat. Wouldn’t think twice about shooting them. Taking the risk. At the end of the day that’s why I became a drug dealer. Not...
Middle-earth ecology →
he world of The Lord of the Rings is a Middle England NIMBY agrarian fantasy: Tolkien’s heroes have all mod cons with the necessary agricultural and manufacturing infrastructure airbrushed out; while Mordor’s inhabitants and Saruman, who openly manufacture stuff, are the villains. It probably just comes down to Tolkien’s well-known gripes about Birmingham encroaching on...
African Swim →
More free music from Adult Swim this time with an African flavour. This follows from their electronic compilation, Ghostly Swim, and a whole host of other freely downloadable albums, with artwork as well, which is always nice.
Update: It seems my eye must be drawn magically to free things. The two albums I downloaded first, Warm and Scratchy and Definitive Swim, are both free but the rest, sadly,...
Let this be a lesson? →
In Minneapolis, I littered my carry-on with many of my prohibited items, and also an Osama bin Laden, Hero of Islam T-shirt, which often gets a rise out of people who see it. This day, however, would feature a different sort of experiment, designed to prove not only that the TSA often cannot find anything on you or in your carry-on, but that it has no actual idea who you are, despite the...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-10-19) →
Ladyhawke
Jaguar Love
Los Campesinos!
Stars
Placebo
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Home From Home →
The Guardian’s Weekend magazine yesterday had photos of children living in Britain from just about every country in the world* and interview pieces with many of them. The children range from those forced to flee their country to the daughter of Bahrain’s ambassador, part of the royal family and as you’d expect their experiences of life in the UK, and how they view their home...
Good-bye and good luck →
Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.
A letter from a hedgefund manager announcing his exit from the money business. With a slightly odd...
Today's Lunchtime Reading
The Morning News’ sidebar-links is on fire today with interesting things to read:
The Rich Support McCain, the Super-Rich Support Obama
Lower Richistanis tended to vote almost exclusively based on taxes. But Upper Richistanis placed a higher priority on longer-term societal issues like health care, the environment and education, which are traditional Democrat issues. Some say Upper...
It wants to be a single word →
The short story — how modest in bearing! How unassuming in manner! It sits there quietly, eyes lowered, almost as if trying not to be noticed. And if it should somehow attract your attention, it says quickly, in a brave little self-deprecating voice alive to all the possibilities of disappointment: “I’m not a novel, you know. Not even a short one. If that’s what you’re looking for, you don’t...
The Experiment Worked →
Now, the final numbers are in. In short, In Rainbows sold better than their last album, selling 1.75 million copies of the physical CD, 100.000 box sets, and 30,000 units on iTunes in the US in the first week of availability. The album was number 1 in both the UK and US for the first three months; it was played 17 million times on Last.FM, and even to this day it’s in the top 200 UK & US as...
Will it Scale? →
Charles Arthur writing not about technology but about celebrity, and comparing how Andy Murray’s use of the internet (and in particular Twitter, described as ‘gnomic’) compares to Stephen Fry’s:
travelling through Kenya with his iPhone, watching rhinos being tranquillised and posting pictures. He only joined Twitter on October 9, yet over the course of a weekend acquired...
Maps
The best technical talk at FOWA was Beyond Google Maps (not, apparently, the speaker’s choice of title- I wonder why, for so many of the talks there, that was the case?). It was given by Andrew Turner of Mapufacture and took us, very very quickly, on a tour of what’s happening in the world of online mapping. Video here, highlights linked from there.
He was going through things so...
Before, not After →
This Sequoia deck gives me the same feeling as the stock analyst who screams “SELL” after the gloomy numbers go public. Good advice comes before the bad times roll, not after. Anyone can look back at an event and dole out sound advice after it happens. The people worth listening to are the ones who were giving the good advice before it was fashionable
Jason Fried making some good points on the...
Spherified Vegetables →
In an effort to expand his palate, I’ve followed the standard parenting guidelines without much luck: I keep putting veggies on his plate, even if he won’t eat them; I eat lots of them myself; and I regularly cook with him. I’ve even tried the morally questionable practice of sneaking veggies into his favorite dishes (a la Jessica Seinfeld). The Critic—as I like to call him—was...
The Choice →
It’s not really any surprise that the New Yorker is endorsing Obama, but they gave up the entire Talk of the Town section last week to a piece outlining why.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-10-12) →
Ladyhawke
Ratatat
TV on the Radio
Jaguar Love
Bloc Party
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Fear Factor
Tim Bray spoke to a packed room (highlights) about what best to do in times of financial worry in order to stay happy and prosper. It basically comes down to agility, and being able to quickly adapt. For companies, that means no large up-front expenditure, no long-term projects (with nothing to show until the end). For individuals, and in particular developers, it means not tying yourselves...
Tech. and Psych.
The first of the talks that had anything worth writing about was by Suw Charman-Anderson and gave a look into how psychology can be applied to technology and in particular things people do on the web. The highlights are online to watch, and Jemima Kiss at the Guardian has a short write-up that also links to an article previously by Suw in the paper on email compulsion.
The rewards offered by...
Back from FOWA
So, back from London. I made quite a few notes on the various talks, and have taken away plenty of little snippets of things to take a more detailed look at. The slides and videos for all the talks are going to be put online at some point, so I don’t see much sense in me just writing about what people said. There were, however, plenty of moments while listening where a point was made, and...
FOWA
I’m off to Future of Web Apps in London on Thursday and Friday of this week, quite looking forward to seeing what the different presenters have to say for themselves. Not looking forward so much to the travel there and back, so I hope it’s worth it.
Money Meltdown →
Everything you need to know about the global money crisis of 2007-?.
Looks to be a pretty comprehensive list. The first link is to the This American Life’s Big Pot of Money episode, which is really interesting and you should listen to it.
Related, over the weekend, I found myself going back to read the Interview with a Hedgefund Manager that I found a while ago (and part 2), I...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-10-5) →
Ladyhawke
Jaguar Love
TV on the Radio
Princess Superstar
Bloc Party
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
A Cross the Universe →
Teaser of a forthcoming documentary of Justice, probably NSFW (swearing, brief nudity…) but, depending on how long it is, might be interesting. Band documentaries tend to be to long, in my opinion, wasting time with pointless background questions and ‘setup’, but the glimpses they offer into the world of touring can be interesting. We’ll see, the soundtrack will be good...
Journalism / Coding
Twitterific last night presented me with an advert for scholaships available to coders wanting to study Journalism at Medill (somewhere in the US), it intrigued me and while what I read on their site sounded really good, the admissions process for International Students seemed like far too much work (and mentioned scholarships not being available…) so I didn’t think any more about it.
...
Dexter gets his own Newsstand →
A variety of magazine covers spoofed to advertise Dexter on sale as a Newsstand in San Francisco containing such features as “5 Signs You’re Dating a Serial Killer” and Dexter’s own sandwich recipe.
(via)
Reckoner →
Radiohead have released the ‘stems’ to Reckoner for people to have a play around with, some are pretty good. The Diplo one is brilliant, others are, to put it nicely, lazy - doing little more than speeding up and adding drums.
Capital →
This occurs to me while I’m watching Star Wars for the 800th time. When the Millenium Falcon escapes from Mos Eisley, there are no TIE fighters. Three star destroyers, yes, but no TIE fighters. Why is that?
Read on for some speculation.