SotD: Ooh La La · This by The Dit­ty Bops, from their self-titled de­but al­bum in 2004. I’d nev­er heard of them be­fore, nor have I since; but this is a re­mark­able song and more than one friend, hear­ing it in the back­ground, has stopped talk­ing and asked “What’s that?” ...
[3 comments]  
SotD: Identikit · This is from Radiohead’s re­cent A Moon Shaped Pool, which I’ve been lis­ten­ing to a whole lot, and oh my good­ness what a beau­ti­ful song ...
 
SotD: Western Stars · No­body, and I mean no­body, brings more to a per­for­mance than k.d. lang. But she’s not on the road that much, so you might have to set­tle for record­ings. A good record­ing to set­tle for would be Shad­ow­land, fea­tur­ing pro­duc­tion by country-music leg­end Owen Bradley and guest ap­pear­ances by oth­er divas-with-twang. This is prob­a­bly the best song on Shad­ow­land ...
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Happy New Year! · Best of 2018 to you. But this isn’t a re­al blog post, it’s a place­hold­er to de­bug a sub­tle Uni­code bug in my com­ment sys­tem that doesn’t ap­pear on my stag­ing en­vi­ron­men­t. *sigh* ...
[5 comments]  
Songs of the Day · Here’s my New Year’s Res­o­lu­tion: I’ll try to try to pub­lish a short piece ev­ery day rec­om­mend­ing a song that I think is ex­cel­len­t, and apt to please at least some read­er­s. Let’s see how far in­to 2018 I get; a quick run through the col­lec­tion turned up around 240 can­di­dates, so a whole year’s worth of songs would be a stretch goal. Read on for mo­ti­va­tion, lo­gis­tic­s, and me­chan­ic­s. Or just read the song notes, start­ing to­mor­row. Or don’t ...
[3 comments]  
SotD: New Year’s Day · Back in the late Eight­ies, for a few months I went to aer­o­bics class, and once ev­ery ses­sion the in­struc­tor put this U2 chest­nut on and ev­ery time my beats-per-minute cranked right up. Not in the slight­est ob­scure, but worth re­vis­it­ing at least once a year, ide­al­ly on this day ...
 
Moving Mobile Windows · A large pro­por­tion of the in­for­ma­tion I con­sume on my mo­bile comes from two app­s: The Economist (iOS, An­droid), and a whole lot of feeds via Feed­ly (iOS, An­droid). They both present text in nar­row columns and share a love­ly, sim­ple nav­i­ga­tion metaphor which un­for­tu­nate­ly has re­cent­ly bro­ken (on An­droid at least­) ...
[7 comments]  
How To Sell Bitcoins · In 2013, I bought a few Bit­coins from a dude in a cof­fee shop, pay­ing with hundred-dollar bill­s. Later that year I sold enough to get my mon­ey back. Then I for­got about them, Bitcoin’s price gy­ra­tions oc­ca­sion­al­ly reg­is­ter­ing in a cor­ner of my mind. But ear­li­er this month I de­cid­ed to find out if the re­main­der could be turned in­to re­al ac­tu­al mon­ey, and it turned out they could. Here’s how ...
[10 comments]  
The Last JSON Spec · The IETF just pub­lished RFC 8259 (al­so known as “STD 90”). Edi­tor, yr hum­ble ser­van­t. The legacy-ASCII full text is here and there’s a nice-looking HTML ve­ri­on here. I think this is the last spec­i­fi­ca­tion of JSON that any­one will ev­er pub­lish ...
[7 comments]  
Dark Vegas · I spent four nights in Las Ve­gas while at re:In­ven­t. The city’s day­time as­pect is kind of flat and low-contrast be­cause who cares what it looks like then? Pho­tog­ra­phers there come out like vam­pires af­ter dark. I took along the lu­di­crous “Achromat” lens for the spark­lies, so got ’em if ya want ’em. Al­so hotel, mu­sic, and venue rec­om­men­da­tions you won’t want to mis­s ...
 
Unapocalyptic Software · The At­lantic pub­lished The Com­ing Soft­ware Apoca­lypse by James Somers, which is full of dire warn­ings and strong claim­s. Here’s one: Since the 1980s, the way pro­gram­mers work and the tools they use have changed re­mark­ably lit­tle. My first pro­gram­ming job was in 1979, I still con­struct soft­ware, and I can tes­ti­fy that that as­ser­tion is deeply wrong, as is much else in the piece ...
[12 comments]  
Do You Love Any Dead People? · I think most of us do, so if you’re in Van­cou­ver around Hallowe’en, you should go vis­it A Night For All Souls. Even if ev­ery­one you love is still alive, you should go any­how be­cause it’s full of ex­treme ethe­re­al dark-hued beau­ty ...
 
Dueling Camera Apps · I got a Pix­el 2, large­ly be­cause it’s said to have a re­al­ly great cam­er­a, with software-driven mag­ic  —  machine learn­ing at work. Here are two shot com­par­isons be­tween the Google and Light­room An­droid cam­era apps to see what that means in prac­tice ...
[5 comments]  
Vintage Nauticals · We keep our boat at Horse­shoe Bay, a pret­ty lit­tle place when ap­proached by land. Boaters in­bound by ocean come face-to-face with a huge an­tique float/pier/break­wa­ter kind of thing, whose ug­li­ness I’ve long found mag­nif­i­cent and which to­day I took the time to tour and pho­tograph ...
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Working at Amazon · Some­times when we’re try­ing to hire a se­nior em­ploy­ee, I get asked to do a “sell call”, tell them what it’s like to work here. Since I’m com­ing up on three years and haven’t quit, I guess the sup­po­si­tion is that I’ll be pos­i­tive. Since these can­di­dates are out­siders and some of them don’t come to work for us, noth­ing I can say can be a se­cret. So why don’t I tell ev­ery­one? ...
[10 comments]  
Live Metal is Better · Re­cent­ly I went out for a live met­al triple-bill, with En­don and SUMAC open­ing for Boris, whom I’ve cov­ered here be­fore (with groovy pix). More pix to­day, with words on the his­to­ry and mean­ing of met­al, and how to pho­to­graph it ...
[5 comments]  
Macro Trends · In The bub­ble with­out any fizz, The Economist ad­dress­es the fact that financial-asset prices (s­tock­s, bond­s, and the like) keep drift­ing up and up in a world where in­fla­tion doesn’t; are we in a mega-bubble? What’s re­al­ly go­ing on? Looks ob­vi­ous to me, but then I’m a left-winger. I think it’s all a straight­for­ward con­se­quence of eco­nom­ic ef­fi­cien­cy and class war­fare ...
[3 comments]  
Refresh Is Sacred · There are two kinds of client ap­pli­ca­tion­s: The first kind has a “refresh” or “reload” but­ton to make sure your app’s in sync with its server’s view of the world. The sec­ond kind is bro­ken ...
[8 comments]  
You Might Be Evil · Or at least, your em­ploy­er might be. Over the years we in the tech sec­tor have got­ten used to be­ing well-regarded. After al­l, we make people’s lives bet­ter, on bal­ance. That’s chang­ing. At the mo­ment it’s rum­blings from thought lead­er­s, not per­va­sive pop­u­lar anger. The oth­er thing that’s new is that they’re thought lead­ers who are pro­gres­sives and lib­er­al­s; just like most of us in the tech pro­fes­sion­s. It no­tably in­volves the M-word and those of us on the in­side need to be think­ing about it ...
[9 comments]  
Photos of the Sky · I mean No Man’s Sky the game, which I’ve been play­ing again late­ly. It’s been ac­cused of be­ing most­ly a plat­form for gen­er­at­ing cheesy sci-fi book cov­er­s, but that’s not true, and al­so I love cheesy sci-fi book cov­er­s, so this is most­ly to show you some. With a few words on the game ...
[1 comment]  
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