Vacation, Friday night. There must be some live music around here. Oh, Paul Simon in Burlington. That sounds good. Bought a single ticket the night before the show and got dead center last row before the soundboard. A perfect seat for this event. Although most of the audience was sitting down the whole night, I […]
July 4, 2006
Great Bass, Lesh Philling
Right up until Sunday, the day of the show, I wasn’t sure if I’d go to see Phil Lesh & Friends at SPAC. I’d been sick for two weeks, the first week full-blown, with all symptoms known to (wo)man, and a second full week with the phlegmish hacking cough. Symptoms had died down by Saturday, […]
July 3, 2006
Stadium Arcadium
The new double-album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stadium Arcadium, really rocks. People were raving about it, and I liked the single I heard on the radio (Dani California) , so I splurged and bought an actual physical CD – made of atoms no less. None of them ephemeral DRM encrypted bits for the […]
July 3, 2006
Concert Etiquette
Overheard at SPAC: Why do you carry a lighter to rock concerts? You don’t smoke. —Sometimes people ask for a light. But smokey rooms suck. Why would you help smokers by offering them a light? —Because if, at a rock concert, someone asks for a lighter, the chances are good that you’ll have the option […]
June 29, 2006
Narrative Selection Bias™
Doug and I had an interesting exchange in the comments that’s worth bringing to the front page. I pulled a quote from a blog post and out of context the quote had a different meaning. A reader could get the wrong idea. So this is a formal disclosure statement that Notio is extremely biased. I […]
June 23, 2006
Notable Quotes
From this week’s New Yorker: Fine Tuning: Reassessing Radiohead Radiohead has much in common with the Grateful Dead, including passionate fans who follow the band from city to city, trade bootleg recordings of shows, puzzle out the meanings of the band’s cryptic lyrics, and (in Boston, at least) dance badly while smoking expensive-smelling weed. But […]
June 16, 2006
From the Mouths of Babes
What do 1st and 2nd grade students wish for? Mostly the same things you and I do. Excerpt: * I wish thar was mor peas in the world * I wish pepol wloud be treted farly * I wish evey body could go to scool * I wish to have more fun * I wish […]
June 12, 2006
Making Money on the Internet (cont.)
Video blogging is hot. Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft for PodTech.net (whose servers are so overloaded they can’t even load a homepage). And then, he mentions this: Yesterday I was talking with Amanda Congdon, one of the co-founders of Rocketboom. Her videoblog is now seeing about 300,000 viewers a day. That’s, what, a year or […]
June 11, 2006
Love, Taste, and Sublime Dignity
Grateful Dead keyboard player Vince Welnick died June 2. John Perry Barlow: When Jerry Garcia died, Vince was alone among us in his wretched sense of utter loss. He attempted suicide about six months later, thereby 86ing himself from any further creative interaction with what was left of the Grateful Dead. As a culture, we […]
June 11, 2006
Fire Dance With Me
The CCMA party was held at The Compound in Atlanta. Weird place. Had fun. The tent had fans, but acted like a greenhouse, so it was pretty hot in there. The indoor area had A/C, but they left the doors open so it wasn’t that cool. Really loud; hard to talk. Kind of a weird […]
June 9, 2006
The Difference Between Heaven and Hell
I’m at the Consumer Cooperative Management Association conference in Atlanta. This morning Peter Couchman from the Midcounties Co-operative in England (near Oxford) presented a (probably well-known) parable during his keynote address. I paraphrase: There once was a highly developed Buddhist guru who had the ability to transport himself to any place in the universe. He […]
June 8, 2006
Never a Still Moment
To give you a flavor of the multi-media nature of modern baseball, here is a short video clip of the national anthem from the game last night. Notice the thin horizontal video screens over the third-base line (and presumably over the first-base line where we were sitting). The effect of these was to have motion […]
June 8, 2006
Home of the Braves
Thanks to my friends at CDS, I was able to enjoy The National Pastime tonight: The Atlanta Braves vs. the Washington Nationals at Turner Stadium in Atlanta. I uploaded 15 photos to Flickr. There’s so much to say, and it’s so late to say it. Even though we were outdoors, watching a live event, it […]
June 6, 2006
Tufte’s “Beautiful Evidence” About to Ship
Very interesting thread on complex bookmaking. Start around March 9 to pick up the recent info. He’s self-published 1.2 million books since 1983, and the detail with which he prints these books is unbelievable. Highlights from the link above: * We await a test printing of some of our color tints (e.g., hows does 2% […]
May 31, 2006
Dashes Are Not Just for Running and Salt
My punctuation questions provoked good comments, including a grammar correction from Meg (which created the opportunity for a [third {level of} parenthetical] comment) and two professional citations from Hannah: Per Strunk and White, third edition, Elementary Rules of Usage #8: Use a dash to set off an abrupt break or interruption, and to announce a […]
May 30, 2006
Resonant Rice
For all the psychoacoustic shamen out there: What happens if you pour rice on a steel plate and subject it to high sound pressure? It makes interesting patterns as the frequency rises.
May 29, 2006
What Up That?—Yo.
My brother-in-law said this yesterday at the Circle-Y barbecue. It made me laugh. The phrase has just enough words to convey something, yet not enough of them to resolve the ambiguity. Add the street slang (he’s a law officer) coming from a white boy (though, from New Jersey) and somehow it just stuck with me. […]
May 25, 2006
Which is Weirder, the Beard or the Tie?
VT Senator Patrick Leahy with Bob Weir, May 23, 2006. It looks like a good time was had by all. More.
May 23, 2006
Nike+iPod
Amazing advance in product sophistication. Apple partners with Nike on a blockbuster idea. Buy special (Nike) running shoes with a sensor in the footbed. The wireless sensor talks with a small receiver pluged into the dock connector of the (Apple) iPod. A special version of software takes over the display, and adds voice feedback cues […]