12.22.05
Posted in Career, Design, Life, Media
at 7 pm
Over at Design Observer: writings about design & culture: Dmitri Siegel: Bartelby™
In his essay “Free Time,†philosopher Theodor Adorno explains how our time away from work has gradually been filled with economically productive activities masquerading as leisure. He further explains how we become habituated to this functionalization, so that when we have free time we don’t feel relaxed, but instead feel an anxiety to function, commonly known as boredom.
The article prompted me to see if I should add Bartelby to my Amazon wishlist… which I could but then realized that Melville’s work is almost all available through Project Gutenburn’s Archive.
Both the essay by Dmitri Siegel and the short story by Melville made for some great reading. However I’d like to learn more about Adorno’s work as that “Free Time” essay sounds like a major problem in my life at times.
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12.19.05
Posted in Media, People
at 10 pm
So I’m noticing how much I’m listening to KNRK again. Gustav has always been one of my most fav DJs of all time and happens to be a Depeche Mode fan in the extreme.
I remember when things went downhill with KNRK and the final blow when Marconi was summarily taken off of the air. At the time of the change from the Daria/Gustav morning show to the Marconi show there were a number of newspaper articles that detailed what was going on and more when Marconi was yanked.
I wondered if there had been any more recent articles looking at KNRK’s turn around. I googled for KNRK and Gustav and such and actually came across my own journal entry about Gustav, but there has not been much about the station lately which is a shame. The closest I’ve found is a podcast from Northwest Noise from 15 May 2005 and has turned out to have Gustav’s look back at the station. It’s GREAT. If you’re into KNRK’s music, you should listen to this podcast.
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12.04.05
Posted in Media, People
at 11 am
A little Roy-Orbison-mellow, with a Nick-Cave-twist for the U of Portland women’s soccer team as they play in for the National Title against UCLA:
Just running scared, each place we go
So afraid, that Christine might show
Yeah, running scared, what would we do
If she came back and ran toward you?
Just running scared, feeling cold
Running scared, can’t stop that goal
Just running scared, afraid to lose
If she came back, which foot would she choose?
And then all at once, she was sprinting there
So sure of herself, her head in the air
While my heart was breaking, which one would it be?
Then she turned round and scored the goal on me
Go Pilots!
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10.19.05
Posted in Media, People
at 10 pm
Over the past year I had the opportunity to see and amazing process up close: the writing of a novel.
Jock Murphy wrote an amazing book called Redemption Song. I was lucky enough to even get the chance to comment on the work before it was finished. Jock’s book is now available on Amazon and I’m just so incredibly proud to have been there for the birth of a great work of great dedication.
Congratulation Jock!
And even further, he’s made the book available on a chapter by chapter basis on his site. Take a look at some of the work and if you get hooked, buy the book! Jock took his time and his inspiration and has something that other people only hope to have, think of having, dream of having. A book of one’s own.
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09.10.05
Posted in Apple, Career, General, Life, Media, Tech, Transport, Web
at 9 am
For the first post of September, we’ll be covering August and the last few weeks with QuickNotes™…
1) I’ve got a new laptop: 15″ PowerBook. Woo Hoo! It’s teh hot! Seriously, switching from the plastic-cased iBook to the aluminium wraped 15″ PB has given me a new appreciation for thermodynamics. (But still the PB is FAST! So much faster than the iBook.)
2) Tiger is okay, but little to write home about. The UI inconsistencies in OS X from the system and iApps perspective is becoming more obvious. But I could be just railing against the fact that part of iChat crashes on a regular basis, just after I switched back to using it instead of Adium because iChat can now do multiple accounts including Jabber accounts.
3) General instability is the call of the day. Some things are craping out way too easily. I’m letting Steve use my iBook while he’s out in Astoria for school, and I’ll be putting Panther on it.
4) Went and saw part of the Woodburn NEDRA electric drag races. Took some video and put together some movies for John Wwayland over at plasmaboy racing.
5) The new iTunes interface is an unecessary change unless it’s carried out to the rest of the iApps. The name for it seems to be “Polished Metal” as opposed to the older (and reviled) “Brushed Metal”. The iPod Nano looks cool but it took me days to find out it was solid-state flash and not hard drive-based. The ROKR iPhone is for SUKRs. Totally crippled and nothing new hardware-wise. Apple can’t build the whole widget, so the widget is a total compromise.
6) Our living rooom television died. Would like to replace it with a flat LCD, but they’re still more money than I want to invest in Home Entertainment. If anyone’s got a recommendation for a $200 to $300 television with *LOTS* of input and output jacks, let me know.
7) I’ve got a freelance project launching in the next could of days. I’ll point to it once it’s got a bit of burn-in time.
8) I’ve been seeing a new testing probe-bot that’s crawling around Contact forms. It’s already hit LazerQuick where we’ve patched it and just last nite it hit my feedback form on OrderSomewhereChaos. Nasty little bugger made me dive back into Perl code that I’ve not touched in 6 or 7 years. The mail is being sent to the (probably compromised) AOL account of “jrubin3456@aol.com”. They’re looking to find tons of spamming reflectors. I’m sure they’ll find *LOTS* of them.
9) Amy and I are off to see the final regular-season game for the Timbers! Mighty Mighty Timbers!
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02.28.04
Posted in Career, Media
at 8 pm
“These results are supportive of research by Jensen (2001), which states that participants listening to classical music are more likely to disclose personal information than those listening to no music.” – Usability News, 6.1 2004
It would be interesting to have music playing in the background of a job interview, or some other highly structured interaction and contrast classical with other music forms.
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02.25.04
Posted in Media, Tech
at 12 pm
Great interview on Wired with one Dr. Michael Bull. He talks about how the iPod and other portable music devices are used to control one’s environment. Below is an excerpt, read the full interview with Dr. Bull at Wired.
For example, a lot of people use it to go to work, for commuting. I found that they use the same music on a regular basis. They will often play the same half-dozen tunes for three months, and each part of the journey has its own tune…
It gives them control of the journey, the timing of the journey and the space they are moving through. It’s a generalization, but the main use (of the iPod) is control. People like to be in control. They are controlling their space, their time and their interaction … and they’re having a good time. That can’t be understated — it gives them a lot of pleasure.
So, for example, music allows people to use their eyes when they’re listening in public. I call it nonreciprocal looking. Listening to music lets you look at someone but don’t look at them when they look back. The earplugs tell them you’re otherwise engaged. It’s a great urban strategy for controlling interaction.
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12.28.03
Posted in Media, People
at 10 pm
I found this bit of Card history interesting. True or untrue, I’m not sure.
Originally, the face cards were portrayals of actual personages, and slight traces of them remain to this day. Charlemagne was the model for the king of hearts; the Hebrew King David was portrayed by the king of spades; Julius Caesar was represented by the king of diamonds; and Alexander the Great was the prototype for the king of clubs. On the feminine side were Helen of Troy as the queen of hearts, Palas Athena as the queen of spades, and the biblical Rachel as the queen of diamonds. Also honored from time to time were Joan of Arc and Elizabeth I, as well as a number of others. The knights, or jacks as they came to be called, were all patterned after famous soldiers, such as Sir Lancelot for clubs; Charlemagne’s nephew Roland for diamonds; Hogier Le Danois, another Charlemagne lieutenant, for spades; and Etienne de Vignoles, who fought for Charles VII of France, for hearts.
You might ask, “Ross, why were you visiting a Baccarat site?” Why because I was watching the DVD Amy got me… Casino Royale! Not quite what I expected. I rate the film VO: Very Odd.
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07.04.02
Posted in General, Media, Tech
at 12 pm
I just came across a great pair of reads in the form of two articles written by a BattleBots builder. His team’s bot is quite innovative and it’s great reading his workup of the control system.
The second article isn’t finished because he’s not allowed to announce if he won or not until the show airs later this year. I wish him post-competition luck!
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