David Byrne on your Radio Dial:
The former Talking Heads frontman has started a streaming radio station. Looks good (via Susan Mernit).
Sunday Morning Shards #24:
On my mind and in the reading queue this week: The "Saturn Return" Edition:
*12 days until South by Southwest Interactive. I can’t wait. This year my old college buddy Josh is coming alone. Are you?
*My friend Tara explained the concept of "Saturn Return" to me with I had heard about when I first moved to San Francisco from my cousin Amber. Very applicable to now even though I’m technically one year out of it.
*When I saw The Polyphonic Spree in concert last week as part of the Noise Pop festival, they announced that, after 3 continuous years on the road, they were "taking a break." with plans for some new music in the summer time. Beyond that, they were vague.
*I’m on page 237 of Lolita, 72 pages to go. This is the home stretch of more than 4 months of wrestling this brilliant difficult book to the ground. Almost there…
*My friend Jason Kottke has thus far raised about $4800 in his plan to blog full-time for a year. I’ve become a Kottke.org micropatron.
*I’m trying out Quicksilver again after losing patience the first time. I’m letting this tutorial guide me (via 43 Folders).
*Oscars are tonight. Allthough nobody really cares, I’m eager to see Chris Rock as host. My friend Dave (the Where There’s Smoke film critic of record) has a complete set of predictions.
Call Me Lame-o:
Ok this is really lame, especially since I haven’t posted in a few days and I didn’t do "Shards" on Sunday. But facing yet another deadline on my book, it’s all I have time for. So…
Following SloLane and Lucia’s lead, please introduce yourself. Who are you? What brings you here? And how long have you been reading?
That orange Feedburner thing to the right has proven to be yet another web doodad to obsess over. How many readers does my feed have? Who loves me? Will Billy Callaway ask me to the Harvest Ball?
So I’m getting a reality check. Comment away…
Sunday Morning Shards #23
On my mind and in the reading queue this week. The “Canadian Skye” edition.
*Christo’s Gates have been unfurled, in all their saffron glory, in Central Park. The New York Times has an appraisal.
*R.I.P Arthur Miller. What a genius.
*Why the future of music needs more bands like Wilco.
*The Future of Music Coalition is non-profit organization of musicians, technologists, policy makers and lawyers seeking to discuss these issues in an intelligent and rational manner. I signed up for their newsletter (via Scott Andrew.
*A profile of Philip Seymour Hoffman that doesn’t use the word “pudgy.” How refreshing. (via Heath Row).
*Instatone is a HotorNot-style database of unsigned musicians and songs. Last.FM strikes me as a better way of discovering new music as it filters based on what you already like. But I’m open to other points of view (via Large Hearted Boy).
*The New York Public Library’s Home Library Kit. Comes with databasing software.
*AlterNet give an in-depth look at the acendancy of the right wing.
*Howard Dean will lead the Democratic Party. Anyone found any news analysis of this?
Our next Virtual Book Tour happens Tuesday. Mark your calendars!
Sunday Morning Shards #22
On my mind and in the reading queue this week. The “Listening to You” edition.
*The Online Journalism Review asks “Should newspapers made their online archives free and advertiser supported or should they charge per article?” Quite a debate. I haven’t made up my mind yet (via New Media Musings).
*43 Folders is on fire. They just partnered with MolskeineUS for notebook fufillment and are writing a column for Make, the new DIY Tech magazine from O’Reilly.
*Candlight and angry words at the closing of the Salinas, California libraries (via librarian.net).
*AlterNet profiles the 10 Worst Corporations of 2004.
*My buddy Jeff Veen has a fantastic primer on organizing your RSS feeds so they don’t drive you to drink.
*In praise of not joining book clubs (via Arts Journal).
*In a rare ahead-of-the-curve-gesture, Sony Music now has RSS feeds for their artists.
*Punxsutawney Phil says “Six more weeks of winter!” He didn’t spend this week in San Francisco.
Ducks Amuck:
The 150-year old Peabody Hotel in Memphis calls itself the city’s only “5 Duck Hotel.” Everyday at 11 AM, the hotel’s Duckmaster (a fulltime employee) rolls out a red carpet and the hotel’s ducks march down the carpet to the hotel fountain in the center of the lobby. They swim in the fountain until 5 PM and then retire to their home on the hotel roof.
According to legend, it’s been going on since the 1930s when the hotel general manager thought it would be funny to toss live ducks into the hotel fountain. When the original Duckmaster retired after nearly 50 years of service in 2003, the hotel conducted a worldwide search for his replacement. The winner was Daniel Fox, who now is responsible for training and care of the ducks. The ducks are rotated every 90 days as when they grow up, they develop an independent streak and start wandering around the lobby.
I found out about all this when my father was in Memphis recently on business and stayed at the Peabody specifically to see the Duck March. I love that guy.
Sunday Morning Shards #21
On my mind and in the reading queue this week. The “In The Evening” edition.
*I’ve been reading Soul City, a neat little fable by Toure’ about a fictional municipality where the streets (Cornbread Boulevard, Satchmo Stret), buildings (Negritude Univeristy, Cool Street Library) and districts (Honeypot Hill) are all named after famous African-American icons. In Soul City, the mayor is a DJ whose mix pipes through speakers embedded under the sidewalks and the citizens dance and strut as they walk. I’m lovin’ it.
*In honor of the 21st birthday of the Apple Macintosh, a video of the original mac’s announcement and debut (January 24, 1984) at Apple’s Cupertino HQ, has been circulating around. Steve Jobs is dressed like a member of the Billionaire Boys Club and the computer today looks laughably squat and boxy. Nonetheless, when the theme from Chariots of Fire begins and the crowd erupts into a standing ovation, I had tears in my eyes. Over a friggin’ computer announcement. Damn that Jobs guy knows how to put on a show.
*Salon has a related article called “Hallelujah, the Mac is Back.”
*The 2005 Bloggies have been written up in the Washington Post (via Large Hearted Boy).
*I get asked all the time by my clients how to appropriate pitch their books to bloggers. Now I’ve got somewhere to point them.
*The New PR is a resource for public relations professionals to discuss the changes blogs and nanomarkets are briging to their business. There’s also talk of creating a wiki of editors, columnists and media contacts, which would remove such information from the proprietary clutches of companys like Bacon’s and make it freely available on the web ala Wikipedia. Exciting stuff.
*Sogudi is a tiny add-on to the Safari Browser which allows you to abreviate searches on your favorite web sites. Sounds minor but has saved me a bundle of time. Or at least it feels that way (via 43 Folders).
*I spent the afternoon today purging my office and processing outstanding things to do according to the principles of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Though I only got part way done and there’s a huge pile of files and action items on my floor, I feel oddly clensed. Must. Press. On.
*Coachella’s lineup is announced tomorrow. I’m going to try to go this year. Wahoo!
No ‘Shards’. Again
I’ve committed myself to purging old junk from my office today so no Sunday Morning Shards unless I get to it this evening. Just wanted to let you know.
Sunday Morning Shards #20
On my mind and in the reading queue this week. The “Back to Work” Edition:
MacWorld is this week in San Francisco. I have never been able to filch a pass. I will however be attending the 43 Folders Meetup on Wed. in hopes of filching a Moleskine notebook or an OS X productivity tip.
The simply awesome play The Bright River begins the last two weeks of its run at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts in Berkeley. Point blank: You cannot afford to miss this play. So don’t. It’s that good.
Does anyone know how to transfer contact information from a Palm Desktop to the Mac OS X Address Book? I tried to use the Missing Sync program by Markspace and got nowhere.
Great Business Week cover story “The Future of the New York Times.”
A Lazyweb request: Some needs to design Del.ici.ous for RSS feeds. In other words, lets say I want to know what feeds my favorite weblogger subscribes to. Would it be cool if a widget would allow them to place their feed list, blogroll style, on their blog and then allow a passerby to drag and drop the feed links into their own rss reader?
Lots of neat people have died in the past week or so. Shirley Chisholm, Will Eisner and Danny Sugarman.
Digital Web profiles the Top 10 Web Companies to Work For.
The AMPEX cassette tape company has filed for bankrupcy and closed down its last factory. There are no other cassette tape factories in the U.S (via Scott Andrew).
The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive is a giant database of tracks and their rhymes.
Musicplasma lets you type in your favorite artist and presents a dots-and-nodes diagram of other artists that sound similar to them (via Del.icio.us/popular).
Who knew rooting out bad grammar could be so much fun?
I finished reading two books this morning. Which felt great.