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Evidence of Prior Art

Purple Giraffe     Zebra Car

After three days of repeated requests, Miles got his wish, and was granted permission to paint his favorite giraffe purple. Why we originally thought this was not a good idea is anyone’s guess. It’s been a month since he painted his hippo green; at this rate he’ll have his entire animal collection re-classified in the spectrum by age seven. Evolution of a drawing: It’s a car. No, it’s a zebra car. No, it’s a zebra car with legs (a “walkie zebra car”). No, it’s a walkie zebra car driving into some ointment.

Music: Bob Log III :: Wigglin’ Room
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Postfix Enabler

Nifty: Postfix Enabler turns any Mac into its own SMTP server, useful for laptop users finding themselves god-knows-where without an SMTP connection. Also includes a full POP/IMAP server, if you swing that way. Postfix is already built into OS X, but unless you’re running Server, you’ll have to jump through a few hoops to get it working. For $10, Postfix Enabler makes it happen in less than a minute, cleanly, con GUI.

Of course if your ISP requires mail to be routed through them, it’s not going to help a great deal – you’ll just have to configure Postfix to authenticate to the ISP anyway. But by telling your mail client to send outbound on localhost, sending at least feels buttery fast.

Music: Plastilina Mosh :: Nordic Laser

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Quantum Determinism

New Scientist: “Underneath the uncertainty of quantum mechanics could lie a deeper reality in which, shockingly, all our actions are predetermined.”

Early last month, a Nobel laureate physicist finished polishing up his theory that a deeper, deterministic reality underlies the apparent uncertainty of quantum mechanics.

So all of those mind-blowing paradoxes only look like paradoxes because our minds are too puny to find the order beneath the chaos, and the free will debate is up for grabs again. But remember, not all deterministic systems are predictable (weather, anyone?), and if we can’t predict, then we may as well be free. And even if we aren’t, I’m with Isaac Bashevis Singer: “We must believe in free will — we have no choice.”

How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

Music: Junior Kimbrough :: I Cried Last Night

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WFMU

I’ve listened to plenty of Ketjak, but had never seen the Ramayana Monkey Chant performed (this is a must-watch). Heard plenty of slide guitar, but never seen a dude using a spoon clenched between his teeth as a slide. Watched plenty of Bob Denver, but had never seen him buried in sand with an inverted face painted on his chin, being worshipped by surfers.

All of this and mountains more at the amazing WFMU, a truly incredible archive of strange music and music-related info/media.

Thanks baald

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Tricks of the Trade

Tricks of the Trade collects hundreds of little tips specific to various professions, but often useful to everyday Joes.

Painter: Before resealing a can of paint, blow one deep breath into the can and close it quickly. You’ll fill it with carbon dioxide, which will keep the paint from oxidizing prevent it from developing the “skin” that paint gets when it sits a while.

Some of the “professions” are faux, but still clever:

Sandwich Enthusiast: When ordering a “custom” sandwich from a deli, Subway, or college cafeteria, say the name of each ingredient with an air of finality, as though it will be the last ingredient on your sandwich. The sandwich-maker will pile plenty of the stuff on, trying to fill your sandwich to a respectable size, not realizing you intend to ask for more ingredients.

Music: Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers :: Hey There Little Insect
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BitTorrent, Integrated

Apple could save a bundle on bandwidth by tapping into the unused cable/DSL bandwidth of its users. Macosrumors claims to have information pointing to the planned inclusion of a P2P system to be built into OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Users who elected to turn on the “Reward-Sharing system” would receive Apple credits, redeembable for iTMS downloads or other goodies.

Based on some rough math estimated for the proposal, the team pushing this concept believes they could cut Apple’s bandwidth costs by hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars per year and by always finding the closest peer-sharing hosts, the system would also save terabytes of Internet backbone bandwidth that is now used for Software Updates, QuickTime Movie Trailers, and iTunes Store downloads among other things.

Integrating P2P into the operating system at this level would be a sort of acknowledgment that P2P isn’t an activity users do on top of a network stack, but an emergent feature of the network itself, increasingly integral to everyday computing.

In the midst of the net neutrality debate, this has additional implications, since it means users with lots of dark fiber would suddenly be using lots more of their Comcast (etc.) bandwidth. Apple essentially making the internet healthier by distributing the load … but ultimately at the expense of the carriers.

thanks dsandler.org

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Living With War

Lwwcover “History was a cruel judge of overconfidence / back in the days of shock and awe…” says Neil Young on his new protest album Living With War. The album – which took just three weeks to produce – was released digitally first (as a stream), then released to legal download sites for purchase, and hits record stores soon. New York Times:

“In a song whose title alone has already brought him the fury of right-wing blogs, he urges, “Let’s Impeach the President.” It ends with Mr. Young shouting, “Flip, flop,” amid contradictory sound bites of President Bush. But Mr. Young insists the album is nonpartisan.”

More on partisanship in a CNN interview. Musically and lyrically, this is not Young at his most creative – Living With War is no Greendale. But the honesty is compelling, and it’s a great example of how an artist can use technology to mobilize and distribute a message quickly.

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Relunctable

Me: “Miles, why are we having so much trouble with dinner tonight?”

Miles: “Because I’m relunctable.”

Me: “Do you mean reluctant?”

Miles: “Yes Daddy, I’m relunctable because I don’t want to eat any.”

Music: Robert Wyatt :: Born Again Cretin