New Harry Potter movie getting pretty good reviews
New Harry Potter movie getting pretty good reviews.
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Entries for June 2004
An extensive listing of songs that sample Blade Runner
An extensive listing of songs that sample Blade Runner. The site has listings for many other movies as well.
Chatted with the creator of Bikes Against
Chatted with the creator of Bikes Against Bush at the Parsons MFA Show last night. The thesis (PDF file) is interesting reading.
Dark Age Ahead
Some running notes:
What I find most useful about reading Jacobs is how well her arguments scale. They’re scale-free arguments. Through her discussion of large cities in The Death and Life of Great American Cities and of entire civilizations in this book, you can see instantly how the problems and solutions she examines could be used to describe smaller entities like towns, families, large corporations, project teams, blogospheres, online communities, etc.
Dark Age Ahead is ultimately another in the this-world-is-going-to-hell genre of media, but Jacobs makes it seem OK somehow. Maybe it’s because she’s really concerned about it and not selling fear like everyone else?
Several mentions of Canada and Toronto (Jacobs’ current place of residence) in the book so far. I wonder about generalizations being made about specific situations in Toronto; something to keep in mind.
Jane Jacobs hates cars. Absolutely can’t stand them. I thought this book was about a possible coming dark age, not her dislike of automobiles.
As I’m reading, I’m flipping back to the endnotes. Many of her sources are either the Toronto Star or private conversations she’s had with people. One gets the mental picture of an elderly woman sitting at her breakfast table, reading the newspaper to guests, and getting so worked up about it all that she writes a book about the coming dark age.
Best chapter is Dumbed Down Taxes, about how the collection and distribution of funds by the government has become disconnected with the needs of people. Jacobs makes the excellent point that maybe the rules and structure we came up with for governing the county 200 years ago isn’t necessarily the best way to go about it now and should be reexamined. Why is New York City part of a state? Does it benefit the state or the city in any way? And what about states? Do they still make sense? (And don’t even get me started on the electoral college.)
Before I bought this book, I looked it up on Amazon and read a review by Dr. J. E. Robinson called The Title and Book Jacket Do Not Match the Text Inside (you’ll have to scroll for the review…Amazon annoyingly doesn’t permalink individual reviews). When I first read the review (2/5 stars), I thought it unfair. Now having finished the book, I still think the review was largely unfair, but Dr. Robinson does have a point. In trying to make her points (which, when she stated them in chapter 1, I thought were excellent), Jacobs is all over the place and seldom manages to clearly support her arguments. Not that the examples she cites aren’t eventually relevant (after all, a dark age pretty much affects everything in a culture), but they don’t go directly to her main points. I would have loved more focus.
Doing a lot of complaining, but really, there lots of excellent stuff here. The individual stories and passages contained in the book would have made a great series of magazine articles or a fantastic weblog.
One of the spelling bee contestants from
One of the spelling bee contestants from Spellbound has started a weblog. Just glad it’s not the annoying Emily.
NY Times on the resurgence of classic video games
NY Times on the resurgence of classic video games.
Ray Kurzweil has a new book coming
Ray Kurzweil has a new book coming out in October called Fantastic Voyage. “The science behind radical life extension. Live long enough to live forever.”
Update your firmware on the Canon Digital
Update your firmware on the Canon Digital Rebel to make it run like the more expensive 10D.
Amazon is blogging
If you’re logged into Amazon and visit the front page, you’re presented with your Plog, or personalized blog. Basically, The Great and Powerful Amazon looks at what you’ve purchased, looked at, and rated and posts links to other items you might find interesting. It’s the same recommendations they’ve always given people, only more timely (this DVD is out today, we thought you might like to know because you liked this other movie) and in easily digestable chunks. Blog as interface; the content exists and this is just another way of presenting it.
Update: Matt says that he’s not seeing his Plog. Maybe they’re only testing it for some people, so you may not see it when you hit Amazon’s page.
ForwardTrack and Tom’s Petition
Eyebeam has launched their latest project, ForwardTrack. It’s a system for diseminating petitions that not only keeps track of who supports the petition, but how that support has developed. The description from the site:
ForwardTrack is a new system created by Eyebeam R&D designed to promote on-line activism. The system tracks and maps the diffusion of email forwards, political calls-to-action, and petitions. Our goal is to help people understand decentralized networks and see the power of “6 degrees of separation.” ForwardTrack technology helps prove that one person can make a difference.
It’ll be interesting to see if petitions are more viral when people can see exactly how they’ve made a difference in spreading the message. The first project they’ve set up is Tom’s Petition, an effort to renew the national Assault Weapons Ban which automatically expires at the end of the summer. If you’d be interested in signing this petition (or in seeing a neat map detailing how I got signed up and how many people I’ve signed up), you can go to my Personal Petition Page and enter your name, zip, and email address to get the petition sent to you. When you forward that email back to Tom, I’ll get credit for introducing you to the petition. You can forward the petition to friends, family, etc. and, if you’ve got a Web site, also point people toward your Personal Petition Page.
Addicts of fossil fuels
Kurt Vonnegut is all over the place in this recent essay for In These Times, but his last two lines find the mark:
Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.
In the long term, the potential of the West (and the Middle East for that matter) will be limited until we stop relying so heavily on oil. Since few in politics seem to be thinking past the next election (or even the next news cycle), this presents a problem.
Manhattan Timeformations, mapping Manhattan’s skyscraper districts through time
Manhattan Timeformations, mapping Manhattan’s skyscraper districts through time. Transparent New York is the best one; overlay the 1811 grid on top of the map of farms.
Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 will be out in
Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 will be out in theatres on June 25th. This will break all sorts of records for a documentary and make Moore a rich(er) white man. Is it time yet for someone to make Michael and Me?
Design Observer on the latest issue of
Design Observer on the latest issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and Complex Simplicity.
The Taxicab Metric “is equal to the
The Taxicab Metric “is equal to the length of all paths connecting [two points] along horizontal and vertical segments, without ever going back, like those described by a car moving in a lattice-like street pattern.”. Also known as the “Manhattan distance”.
City planning and constructing supercomputers have more
City planning and constructing supercomputers have more in common than you might think.
Me talk pretty this morning
On the way to work this morning, a man holding a folded subway map motioned to me and then his map. Happy to give directions when I can, I walked over to where he was standing. As I approached, he motioned to the map again and began, “excuse moi…”
Before I could even think about it, I replied, “oui, monsieur?”
That elicited a surprised look and a stream of French dialogue. I think I heard “parlez” and “francais” in there somewhere. “Non, non, non, monsieur. Un peu, un peu.” My crude way of saying that I don’t speak French very well.
Slightly disappointed in my unwitting deception, he cut to the chase. Rockefeller Center. Good, something easy. I pointed in the general direction, but he seemed skeptical, motioning to it on his map. Reaching back into my memories of high school French, I conjured up the approximate French version of “49th and 5th” and pointed once again in the right direction. Relived that I seemed to know where he wanted to go and that I was able to tell him so in (mangled) French, he gave me a nod, said “merci monsieur,” and headed off.
“C’est rien. Au revoir monsieur,” I replied after him.
He looked back at me, suspicious, as if to say, “are you sure you don’t speak French?”
Tons of great photography in the PDN 2004 Photo Annual
Tons of great photography in the PDN 2004 Photo Annual.
Glassdog returns as a blog, flush with color and attitude
Glassdog returns as a blog, flush with color and attitude.
Timeline of the history of information
Timeline of the history of information. From cave paintings to the dissemination of the Starr report on the Internet.
GeekDIY points to all sorts of geeky
GeekDIY points to all sorts of geeky projects, like building your own Mac or catapult. Or putting Linux on Big Mouth Billy Bass (the talking fish).
Long thread on how Jesus is better
Long thread on how Jesus is better than Mohammed because he’s more popular or something. I forget the exact details…just tell me which format I should worship!
Chapter on sparklines
Tufte has revised his chapter on sparklines. Sparklines are “intense, simple, word-sized graphics”.
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