By Sheila
Lennon
Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
April 15, 2005, 6:40 p.m. --
Last week's weblog
Music
for dogwoods: NPR has a text story about dogwoods -- in bloom
someplaces, but not here yet. (Our very first forsythia blooms opened
this morning.) But the notion of music for dogwoods -- fanciful metaphor
to me -- is clear and concrete to some:
Here's the music our experts imagined as the voice of the dogwood:
* Faure: "Romance Sans Paroles, Op.17, #3" Kathryn Stott, pianist
* Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in G Major, Op.32, #5" Megan Hughes,
pianist
* Mozart: "Concerto in A Major for Clarinet & Orchestra," Benny
Goodman/Boston Symphony/Charles Munch
* Copland's "Appalachian Spring"
Hear the tunes at the link on the headline above.
Link
to this item | Comment
IceHotel: Talk
about ephemeral architecture...
Imagine
a hotel built from thousands of tons of snow and ice, and re-built every
winter- that is ICEHOTEL in the little village of Jukkasjârvi in
northern Lapland, Sweden.
In ICEHOTELl there are double rooms and suites for overnight guests,
a lobby, a pillar hall, film auditorium and of course the famous ABSOLUT
ICEBAR - where folk from all over the world socialize till late.
In November, building starts on the unique ICEHOTEL and the official opening
is in mid December.
By the time the spring sunshine has done its work and the ICEHOTEL has
slowly but surely made way for summer and has run back into the River Torne,
May has arrived. At the end of April or the beginning of May, we close
ICEHOTEL for the season - all depending on the weather gods however.
The hotel has been built to a different design each year since 1990. My
favorite part of the brochure:
Warm outer clothing is included in the price when you stay with us: Snow-mobile
overall, hat and gloves.
That's because the bar (where even the glasses are made of ice) and bedrooms
are maintained at -5°C. (23 degrees Fahrenheit)
ICEHOTEL Double room
You sleep in a thermal sleeping bag on a special bed built of snow and ice,
on reindeer skins. You are awakened in the morning with a cup of hot lingonberry
juice at Your bedside. Breakfast buffet and morning sauna included. The
price is valid for 1-2 persons in a double room.
Price: SEK 2800/double room ($394.27)
Bonus photo: While researching the IceHotel I found the photo above on a student's
page about Kiruna, Sweden. There's also a photo of a group sitting
on carved-ice chairs in front of an ice fireplace with snowy logs in it.
Link
to this item | Comment
AutoStitch: Painless
panoramas? The illustration is fascinating, and having a robot make the edges
match sounds easy:
AutoStitch is the world's first fully automatic 2D image stitcher. Capable
of stitching full view panoramas without any user input whatsoever, AutoStitch
is a breakthrough technology for panoramic photography, VR and visualisation
applications.
AutoStitch is built using cutting edge research from the AI lab at UBC,
but it's incredibly simple to use! Just select a set of photos, and AutoStitch
does the rest: digital photos in, panoramas out. Try the free demo (for
Windows):
Download the FREE demo version now!
Okay, so what's the catch? Apparently, there isn't one yet. I like this:
Q: My AutoStitch demo expired. What do I do?
A:We are periodically updating the demo version of AutoStitch. Please
download the latest version from this webpage. The latest release version
is AutoStitch v2.183.
Q: How do I get the commercial version of AutoStitch?
A:There is no commercial version of AutoStitch at present. We are currently
looking for developers interested in building products using AutoStitch
technology.
I haven't tried this and, after a punishing week that included a tango with
TurboTax, I'm not likely to tonight. But I'm a sucker for superior free software.
If you try it, document what you do, and please let me know how it works.
Link
to this item | Comment
Mock
duck: a delicious assortment of thrift store cookbooks. Browsing
recipes from a simpler time. Via Grow-A-Brain.
Link
to this item | Comment
Concrete
lightbulb is just one of the ideas at Finkbuilt, "a
tinkerer's journal and look at life's debris." Here's how to make
it:
...Take a very fine file, razor saw, or emery board and carefully saw
aroud the lightbulb, right where the glass meets the threaded base. You
want to score the glass all the way around. Then you will be able to snap
the bulb right off at the base and extract the base complete with the long
glass filament holder. Do several at a time, since some will turn out better
than others.
Next mix up some some concrete, either pre-mix or just a 50/50 blend of
sand and portland cement. Make it about the consistency of hummus. (everyone
always says peanut butter, so I thought that I would say hummus.)
Use a funnel or paper cone to fill the bulbs with the concrete, then replace
the glass stem and screw base. Let the concrete dry for a few weeks, then
peel the glass away much like you are peeling a hard-boiled egg....
Did you ask why you[d want to make it. Think of it as heavy trompe l'oeil.
Thanks to J-Walk for the pointer.
Link
to this item | Comment
Start-up
wants to improve on Firefox: At News.com
A new version of the Firefox Web browser is coming your way, but not
from the Mozilla Foundation.
Round Two planned a corporate launch Monday night with the promise of
bringing "a new crop of products and services that will enhance your
Firefox experience."...
Round Two also said it was supporting StockTicker, TinyURL Creator, Copy
Plain Text, Extension Uninstaller, Lorem Ipsum Content Generator, OpenDownload,
Open Long URLs, Search Plugins and Secure Password Generator.
As for Round Two's own extensions, Decrem said the company was considering
antivirus software to integrate with Firefox.
For what it's worth, these aren't the extensions I must appreciate, such
as flst, copy
url+, bookmark
here, gcache --
and I already use the free AVG antivirus software on Firefox and the Thunderbird
email client.
Link
to this item | Comment
April 14, 2005, 7:40 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
BlogHer: A
conference for women bloggers is set for July 30 in Santa Clara, Calif. (drats
-- too far away).
Here's the game plan to get you here, written in the royal "we" to reflect
the great input of BlogHer's advisors and many friends. I recommend you
get your plans made so you can get to the good stuff, such as "How
to be naked," "BlogHer
Debate" and "Do-ocracy"...
Start here: ...
Mission
Conference schedule
Registration
Logistics (Hotels,
airports, etc.)
Volunteers (Scholarships!)
Sponsors
The
registration page makes clear that BlogHer is open to all bloggers, "including
men and beginners..." Registration costs $99.06, $21.73 for students.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
power of many eyes: More nice
satellite images, this time at Wired.
DigitalGlobe,
described as "a major player in the satellite imagery business, " has
so many images that no one had ever looked at them till everybody's eyes
were unleashed on them by GoogleMaps:
Baghdad on April 9, 2003, just as an American bomb was exploding, the Burning
Man festival in the early stages of setup, and more.
The 747 landing in Tokyo is remarkably clear, considering the satellite
moves at 17,000 mph, notes an accompanying story (Surprises
Lurk in Satellite Snaps).
Link
to this item | Comment
Online
archive moves step closer: The BBC announced yesterday its latest
steps toward nurturing a publicly created culture:
Free internet access to thousands of clips from public service radio and
TV programmes is a step closer after the launch of the Creative Archive
Licence.
The BBC, Channel 4, the British Film Institute (BFI) and The Open University
(OU) launched the scheme on Wednesday.
It is the first stage of the Creative Archive initiative announced by
former BBC director general Greg Dyke in 2003.
Under the plans, the public will be able to "own" a copy of
the clips and use them for their own creations....
It is hoped the Creative Archive Licence will give media users legal access
to material which they can use to express their creativity and share their
knowledge.
It will allow people to download and use footage and audio for non-commercial
purposes, with each user agreeing to abide by the licence conditions before
gaining access to any of the available material.
The archive was set up after the BBC pledged to "help establish a
common resource which will extend the public's access while protecting
the commercial rights of intellectual property owners".
The Creative Archive Licence is inspired by the Creative
Commons system - a flexible copyright arrangement pioneered in the
US to stimulate creativity....
Link
to this item | Comment
In
yuan we trust: The New Yorker's Talk of the Town explains the
global economy with an admirable economy of words. Basically, Asia won't
let the dollar crash, because "Their best customers would effectively
be unable to afford their wares."
Link
to this item | Comment
The blogosphere seems remarkably quiet, perhaps doing last-minute taxes.
I'm about to join them.
April 13, 2005, 8:04 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
Minneapolis
is going wi-fi: From Minnesota Public Radio,
The city of Minneapolis is receiving proposals to develop
city-wide, wireless Internet access. The drive to provide cheap broadband
service known as WiFi began almost two years ago. Cities around the country
are scrambling to provide wireless services to residents. City officials
say the Minneapolis system could be among the largest in the country....
Call it Mi-fi there.
Providence would be perfect for this. Shoot, all of Rhode
Island would. Is anyone working on this here? It could be Ri-fi.
Link
to this item | Comment
MeetIn.org: Hot
on the heels of Meetup.com's new
fee structure, a free alternative takes the spotlight:
OUR MISSION: To make new friends through a local social
network without the pretense of establishing business connections. Why
do we do it? For the fun of meeting new friends!
Would Joe Trippi have organized all those Meetups for Howard
Dean if each local group had charged dues?
In rhetoric wars here, one thing rankles. This is from Meetup's
announcement of the new dues:
Why a fee? Because we want to be most focused on
the people. Nobody else. As Bob Dylan said, you "gotta serve somebody." Well,
if we gotta serve somebody, we prefer it to be you. We're here to help
you succeed at growing great Meetups
How do you serve somebody by charging them money? Have they
even listened to Dylan's Gotta
Serve Somebody? Here's how it goes:
You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody....
I didn't think it would ever do as part of a commercial for
anything but a church.
Link
to this item | Comment
Prison portraits: I saw the proofs
of tomorrow's Live Weekend section, and was stunned by Deborah Luster's
portraits from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, accompanied by some of Brown
faculty member C.D.
Wright's poems.
Instead of making a big blog, I made a slideshow of them
so people who don't see the paper see this work: Here
they are. (It's not Flash; let it pop up.)
Link
to this item | Comment
April 12, 2005
New garden blogs: Three more garden bloggers emailed
to tell me of their creations. I've added them to the permanent Garden
Blogs list, which really is living up to what was once a tongue-in-cheek
subhead: "More garden blogs than you have time to read."
North Country
Maturing Gardener is a Connecticut transplant now living in
northern New Hampshire, and a certified Master Gardener in both states.
Her blog
item listing monthly chores for most of New England is the sort
of news to use I crave. Yes, plant your peas in April.
Dirty
Thoughts is getting under way along with a new garden in Puerto
Rico, where gardener Nina is planting bananas in "hard, red, clay
soil." The most recent blog
item lists what she's planting now, and promises photos.
TreeDazzled: "I
love trees, especially big trees--and I like to start from seed. This site
is an attempt to share my interest in trees with others," writes "Shoot," about
TreeDazzled, from San Francisco. The latest blog entry
begins, "I transplanted four giant sequoia seedlings from cell-packs
into 8" pots today. Last year I did the same thing and they all died..."
Related: Botanical.com is
the home of the electronic version of "A Modern Herbal" by Mrs.
M. Grieve
Link
to this item | Comment
There goes the neighborhood: Meetup is
going to start
charging for organizing interest groups that meet in the real world:
$19 a month, $9 for existing groups.
Link
to this item | Comment
Late show: Human Television: I've been meaning
to blog this for almost two weeks. It's rock critic (Spin, Rolling Stone)
Wayne Robins' review of Human
Television on his very occasional personal
blog.
...I imagine this is the sound of every (original) bar band in Williamsburg
and other esoteric pockets of Brooklyn, or Manhattan's lower east side.
And that's not a band thing. Lots of guitars, sometimes artsy, sometimes
squalling, the sound sometimes concise, sometimes sprawling. Nice, and
unpretentious. I don't know quite how seriously to take them, and I can't
tell how seriously they take themselves....
Link
to this item | Comment
April 11, 2005, 6:04 p.m.
The
46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities at Ian "Gizmo" Richards' Tech Support Alert:
Once you get to know your computer, one of the first urges may be to change
it, to add new functions or make things easier to do. Some of these utilities
-- little add-on programs -- are replacements for clunky tools that came with
your system, such as Notepad. Others are defenses against intrusions -- anti-virus,
spyware, etc. (Bill Gates never foresaw the PC networked and cruising an open
Web; it was intended as a desktop tool.).
There's the better browser (Firefox)
and Email program (Thunderbird),
and add-ons for Outlook. You'll find Picasa
(Best Digital Photo Organizer and Editor), Gadwin
(Best Free Screen Capture Utility) and even the Best Free Anonymous Surfing
Service -- he names two. In a few categories, Richards considerately names
one app for power users, another for beginners.
I downloaded a few of the 46. There were some I'd never heard of, so this
strikes me as a real service Richards has done us all here.
He also authors a free monthly newsletter along similar lines.
More free goodies: If you do switch to Firefox, Thunderbird or Mozilla, a
crew of skilled users and volunteer developers are busy adding yet more function
to it, little programs called "extensions." As you might expect,
these are not all superb, and sometimes they don't play nicely together. That
said, see the current, constantly growing collection at Mozilla
Update. If you find one you like, click on the link. There'll be more
explanation, and an opportunity to click an Install link. (A warning may appear
at the top of your browser window, and you may have to enable installation
for that site.)
Extensions don't take effect until you close and reopen your browser. You'll
find them under Tools-->Extensions. Right click on the name of the extension
to find out how it works, set its options, etc.
Related: The
(Illustrated ) of Mozilla Firefox: From Phoenix, to Firebird, to Firefox
Link
to this item | Comment
HistoryBuff.com:
How newspapers covered events in American history. The site boasts three sections
of primary sources: Online newspaper archives, transcripts of original newspaper
articles about major events and articles written by "everyday people"
about events or eras in American history
Magnify the papers to read them. (This yields maddening small sections.)
Decorative
Nameplate Hall of Fame has some nice engravings, such as the Carpet Bag of
Boston, in 1852. Here's a detail of, presumably, representative readers. what
the reader logo above. A section of audio files includes what is believed
to be the first recorded commercial: (P.T.) Barnum
plugs his circus in the message.
I like this: Anne
Royall: America's First Professional Female Journalist?
One of the more embarrassing interviews of history was obtained from a
President of the United States by a newspaper woman who sat on his clothes
as he bathed in the Potomac and refused to budge until he answered her questions....
I could spend a lot of time here, just browsing.
Link
to this item | Comment
Are
You Living In a Computer Simulation? The original essay question by
Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom that has spawned a multitude of replies. He
links to many of them.
Here's the abstract of the original paper:
ABSTRACT. This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions
is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching
a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely
unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary
history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a
computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant
chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations
is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other
consequences of this result are also discussed.
Link
to this item | Comment
Drive-By
Truckers at The Fillmore: Newsie Tom
Mangan, still rocking.
Patterson Hood’s singing a song that wonders who’d drive his
car, listen to his tapes, play his music, after he’s thrown himself
off Lookout Mountain.
His band is pounding out an ominous rhythm but his players look oddly upbeat.
It’s dark, dangerous material typical of the Drive-By
Truckers, who spent a good three hours Saturday night trying to deafen
everybody within 20 yards of the stage at The
Fillmore in San Francisco.
Hood adores his material, plainly lives to get up on a stage and share
it at extreme volume. It feels so good he never stops smiling.
Even when he’s singing about suicide. Or that song about a musician
who’s dying of AIDS and can’t stop now because he’s got
another show to do.
The crowd eats this stuff up. I’m no different. By the end I’m
shouting along to a rousing chorus of “shut your mouth and get your
ass on the plane.” The plane will crash, killing the leaders of a
popular rock band. We know this, we scream along anyway. After all, the
song’s operative line is “living in fear's just another way
of dying before your time.”
The strange magic of the Drive-By Truckers is their ability to write murder
ballads with jet-blast rhythms and piercing, rapid-fire guitar solos that
make their fans feel good about the experience of hearing them. They pull
it off because their songs about death are really songs about life, that
is, why it’s worth living flat-out till your last breath. Sure, it’s
a rock ‘n’ roll fantasy to us in the mortgage-paying masses,
but the Truckers give us a few hours of escape...
The band's site conveniently offers three tunes and a video on their homepage.
Tom, a desk jockey at the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, also maintains
a blogroll of blogs by editors, on the left side of the blog.
Link
to this item | Comment
First
communique from the Unitarian Jihad: Jon Carroll at sfgate
pulls this off beautifully.
Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian
Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of
our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions.
Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being
no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary....
Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with
brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and
personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like
actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators
and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day.
We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try
for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through
the issues....
We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough."
We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just
because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives
are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone
in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball.
Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the
world is out to get everyone.
In the parts I didn't quote are more members of the jihad with names such
as Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace, Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity,
Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness and Sister Hand Grenade of Love.
This being a Web full of wags in an era that prizes interactivity, the column
spawned a way to participate: Your
Unitarian Jihad Name generator.
The page assigns a name when you arrive. Mine, unfortunately in one respect,
was Brother Spikey Mace of Quiet Reflection.
Quiet Reflection is nice. But I'm no brother.I appealed for a gender reassignment,
and became Sister Spikey Mace of Quiet Reflection. But I wanted to see what
else was out there. Eventually, I became: Sister Pepper Spray of The Short
Path.
Okay, it's silly, but after reading the next item, you may feel like joining
me. Sister Jackhammer of Courteous Debate is available, if you need a name.
Link
to this item | Comment
And
the Verdict on Justice Kennedy Is: Guilty: Dana Milbank in the Washington
Post Saturday,
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is a fairly accomplished jurist,
but he might want to get himself a good lawyer -- and perhaps a few more
bodyguards.
Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of
"Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald
Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.
Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion
forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment."
To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a
conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly
said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement
for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."...
A judge in Atlanta and the husband and mother of a judge in Chicago were
murdered in recent weeks. After federal courts spurned a request from Congress
to revisit the Terri Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.)
said that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer
for their behavior." Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) mused about how a perception
that judges are making political decisions could lead people to "engage
in violence."
"The people who have been speaking out on this, like Tom DeLay and
Senator Cornyn, need to be backed up," Schlafly said to applause yesterday.
One worker at the event wore a sticker declaring "Hooray for DeLay."...
Related: After
DeLay Remarks, Bush Says He Supports 'Independent Judiciary'. NYT Saturday.
Link
to this item | Comment
How
to setup a new TiVo without a phone. At PVRblog.
Meet Vernon:
The first death-row blogger. "Read
the introduction now. Then send him a question at MeetVernon@Gmail.com"
Not me.
