The muxtape.com source opens with this little gem:
I enjoy the minimalistic design. Hope enough music gets bought to cover all the s3 costs and inevitable law suits.
I would enjoy a more multi-upload and reconfigure type interface, but the one-song-at-a-time instills an ideal of effort and discrimination.
In conclusion, my taste is questionable, while Bobby Cupp’s is inimitable.
Tags: music · ui · webdesignNo Comments.
Ginsberg’s Howl can be turned into a strangled love song with some noun -> pronoun substitutions.
Original:
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun-
ned governments!
Fake:
Her! Her! Nightmare of her! She the
loveless! Mental she! She the heavy
judger of men!
She the incomprehensible prison! She the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! She whose buildings are judgment!
She the vast stone of war! She the stun-
ned governments!
And, no it doesn’t make too much sense.
Tags: allen ginsberg · Literature · poetry · substitutionNo Comments.
From a slavish recitation of Eddie Lampert’s invest prowess comes the quote:
Recently, Lampert has bought shares in Citigroup (C), Motorola (MOT), and Clear Channel Communications (CCU). His positions in these investments are worth $780 million, $16 million, and $30 million respectively.
This was all published just about one year ago, allowing us the benefit of hindsight. Let’s list each stocks May 2007 - May 2008 performance:
Against the S&P 500: -5.8%
Down from the shoulder’s of giants is a long fall indeed.
(via Felix Salmon)
Tags: economy · financial advice · stocksNo Comments.
The Nationals will almost certainly finish near last in the standings and attendence. One reason:
Then Jack Abramoff tried to buy off all of Washington. New lobbying laws soon followed, and now the maximum gift given to a lawmaker cannot exceed $50. Which means all the Presidential tickets – $325 for single-game ones, $335 on Saturday and $400 for the front row, all more than the best seat at Yankee Stadium, which goes for $250 – that should have gone from lobbyist to Congressman to hard-working staffer no longer exist, and the market won’t get any hotter unless the Nationals do, too.
Tags: No Comments.
Interesting paper at PLoS ONE. Some folks at Berkeley propose a centralized telemedicine network using cell phones:
Most medical devices have three main components: a) the data acquisition hardware which is in contact with the patient, b) the image display unit and c) the imaging processing hardware. We propose that physically separating these three units could yield a medical imaging technology that is robust, less expensive and can be used by less rigorously trained personnel.
The central insight, and most likely benefit of their proposal, is the actual imaging computations are better done in somewhere with the infrastructure to maintain availability, i.e. “the cloud“.
As far as the mechanics of the thing, the author’s admit some problems. By making some of the individual components simpler, they’ve introduced extra extra complexity into the overall system:
Indeed, an important issue to consider is the requirements for cell phone compatibility. If it is required that the DAD connects to every type of cell phone available the design will have to consider numerous constraints. On the other hand, if the DAD will only be compatible with cell phones that also function as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and run an operating system such as Windows, the design could be very flexible and there are still enough available options on the market for this.
Yet, PDA-type devices are the least likely of cell phones for a telemedicine site to have.
And one has to wonder how broad the reach of cell data networks are in these sorts of locales. Data coverage is spotty even in industrial countries like the US. A better proof of concept overall would have included an attempt at using SMS/MMS. The authors do makes some gestures toward alternative communication methods:
A second option is to upload the data to the cell phone and to send it using the cell phone’s links such as Email, texting / MMS options or Telnet. This depends on the types of service that the cellular provider supports, but at least text messages are a widely available option today, even in the simplest cellular networks.
Hopefully they can follow up along those lines.
Definitely a cool enough idea that someone with some ability to actually implement it should take note.
Tags: cell phones · cloud computing · development · medicineNo Comments.
It strikes me that the chorus from Sheryl Crow’s, annoyingly earwormy song, All I Wanna Do could be coerced into something slightly more accusatory and unsettling.
In the original:
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard
With some grammar bending and verb agreement:
All he wants to do is have some fun
He’s got a feeling he’s not the only one
All he wants to do is have some fun
He’s got a feeling he’s not the only one
All He wants do is have some fun
Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard
Tags: grammar · lyrics · meaning · musicNo Comments.
A British newspaper prints an article bemoaning the strangicisms of Indian English:
But such phrases are entrenched. A driver, when asked what he does, may refer to his occupation as “drivery”. He keeps his “stepney” spare tyre in the “dicky” boot.
How disgraceful that the British would mangle our language so.
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Yves Smith claims an interesting factoid:
Robert Shiller tells us that housing prices since 1890 (no typo) have appreciated 0.4% a year. Historically, a CD has been a better store of value than a house.
That certainly doesn’t feel true, but then the Bay Area can be a distortionary place about these sorts of things.
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David Brooks displays an uncommon amount of professional jealousy when he claims:
[Drew Westen] takes an interesting dollop of neuroscience and uses it to coat the conventional clichés of the Why Democrats Lose genre.
Also, the argument Brooks attempts to offer regarding Dean vs Kerry is backward:
Third, how did John Kerry beat Howard Dean in the Democratic primaries? Was it because of his Oprah-esque displays of emotional intensity?
Kerry won because he was nebulously more “electable” than Dean, not by any reasonous argument. As Brooks asserts later in his assessment, reason and emotion are not nemeses.
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A power line blew in downtown SF today. The Chronicle got reactions from the worst affected:
Naturally, when you hear an explosion, you think the worst,” Von Jones said. Nevertheless, he hurried back to work. “We’re Fruit of the Loom — we’ve got to make this commercial.
Tags: No Comments.