April 2009
44 posts
Noooooooooooo. I was loving the new and improved “master of time & space” Faraday. Damn you Lost writers for being great enough to kill interesting characters. Excellent episode, they’re killing it this season (pun intended).
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Battling “spring insomnia”, which for once means an overabundance of energy and NOT allergies. Time to go to the gamechanger, Miles’ A Tribute to Jack Johnson.
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Lowell kids tested for swine flu after Mexico trip... →
Oh crap, I guess that this swine flu scare just got real…particularly since I’m currently working in the Lowell schools.
Yeesh, I’ve also read reports that H1N1 kills via a “cytokine storm” wherein healthy young adults are actually killed by a hyperactive immune system. Perhaps it’s time to go on a 3 day binge and reduce my (otherwise Herculean, of course)...
“I am a sick man. I am a wicked man.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground. The greatest literary opening of all time. Also, words to live by.
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davidkaneda:
Amidst myriad changes in my life, today marks one of the most important — this afternoon’s coffee will be iced.
YES. It’s my favorite part of the year, the shift from hot to iced coffee - and I refuse to switch back until the fall, NO EXCUSES. It may be the firmest rule I have.
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The Specials - Nite Klub
Hello weekend!
All the...
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“AIR apps are like modern day Java applets… sure, they run on every platform. But...”
– Loren Brichter, the great developer of Tweetie (via marco) (via davidkaneda)
EXACTLY….and it just feels wrong to run TweetDeck or Twhirl on OSX. Tweetie’s interesting, but I’m pretty hooked on Nambu at the moment.
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“I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about...”
– Stephen Hawking (via bigfun (via syntheticpubes)
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James Chance & the Contortions - Contort...
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The cost of AA environmentalism
marco:
We’ve been burning through AA batteries like crazy recently: our new camera flashes use 4 each, and we started using electric toothbrushes that use 2 each. Then there’s remote controls, Wiimotes, and just about everything else in the universe that runs on AAs.
I’ve been using those generic yellow IKEA batteries that usually run $1 for a 10-pack. They’re not great, but you definitely get...
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The Small Faces - Rollin’ Over
New (to me)...
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“Why am I not participating in Record Store Day? I am totally independent, and...”
– Ron Lessard of Radical Ron’s Records in Lowell in reference to his non-participation in the indie record store “Record Store Day” promotion. He’s taking an anti-anti-corporate stance here I guess? Is this like an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation where...
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“http://flic.kr/p/54Vid6 testing out the new flic.kr shortening service…so...”
– (via my twitter at pfmartin)
I was surfing through some TwitPic photos yesterday when it occured to me to check the domain http://flic.kr. Sure enough, Flickr/Yahoo owns it (.kr top-level domain for South Korea). My immediate thought was that it would be an excellent way to integrate Twitter...
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WatchAdam Berg’s Dark Knight-Inspired Short Film Carousel | /Film
Excellent, and worth watching on endless loop.
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The Sound - Missiles
I guess I’ve been back...
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The Clash - Lost in the Supermarket
Little...
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Shellac - My Black Ass
I’m sort of ashamed...
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Sites I Spend Time On
Every once in a while I like to take stock of my web habits and see where I’m really spending my time. I test out new sites and services at a pretty brisk pace, dropping the majority in a vicious selection process. The survivors aren’t necessarily the best, but they’re where I spend my time, and it’s worth reflecting on why:
Tumblr. Three complimentary reasons why the...
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Gorillaz - M1 A1
Oddly, this song appeared in a...
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Supporting Photographers on Tumblr and Beyond
aodine:
spaceminer:
Let’s encourage proper photo credits as an internet norm, starting here and now.
I love Tumblr. Since joining in January, I’ve only enjoyed it more and more, as I’ve discovered funny, beautiful, intelligent, and heart-warming tumblelogs.
But there’s this one thing.
While the great quotes I come across here are almost always attributed to their source, photographs are...
Watchpatrickcassels:
I’m hoping to hire this guy as my personal life coach. He’s still working to pay off his 48-dollar-a-dozen business cards.
“It doesn’t fit in a Rolodex because it doesn’t belong in a Rolodex!”
If you’ve spent 25 years designing your ridiculous business card and fluffing your hair…I’m going to guess your “guaranteed results” aren’t all that...
Slint - Nosferatu Man
She peeked around the corner...
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“The market mystique didn’t always rule financial policy. America emerged from...”
– Paul Krugman (via The New York Times)
Krugman continues his run as our most impassioned and rational voice during this crisis, increasingly criticizing the Geithner/Obama plan as the details continue to unfold. He reiterates another important piece here in a recap of post-Depression financial...
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Music Discovery Thoughts
I have a lot of thoughts on the music industry, some scattershot and incomplete, some fully formed and mostly coherent. Mostly I default to my standard media observation that the only important entities are the content producer and the consumer, with every middleman and distribution network on the chopping block at all times.
Music discovery is incredibly important in the successful propagation...
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Morphine - Cure for Pain
From the stylistically...
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“The primary constitutional principle at the heart of this case is the doctrine...”
– Iowa Supreme Court, Varnum v. Brien (via julyshewillfly) (via lafuguedantoine)
Glad to see this news today, and I hope that people are finally realizing that this “debate” will eventually be looked back on as negatively as the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine of Plessy v....
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Bank of America Gestapo Tactics
I just had an incredibly distasteful experience at Bank of America (go figure). I attempted to cash a $200 check from the city, a BoA account, and was told I had to pay a $6 fee “unless I wanted to open an account”. That bit of extortion was galling enough, but I was in a rush so I reluctantly agreed.
The real trouble started when the teller pulled out an ink pad and demanded a...
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“When the balance sheet of a company does not capture the true costs and risks of...”
– Nandan Nilekani, the co-chairman of the Indian technology company Infosys (via Thomas Friedman’s NYT article, The Price Is Not Right)
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“Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple...”
– The Quiet Coup - The Atlantic (May 2009)