U2 singer Bono was knighted yesterday. He told reporters that his youngest son “was disappointed that his dad was not presented with a Star Wars light saber.”
“He thought I was becoming a Jedi,” Bono said.
[To the tune of Hermeto Pascoal, “Intocável,” from the album “Só Não Toca Quem Não Quer”.]
Technorati Tags: music
Medieval IT support.
[To the tune of Ludwig van Beethoven, “Sonata in F minor, Op. 57 “Appassionata”,” from the album “Piano Sonatas”.]
I can imagine the kids’ new baby cousin (the one with two start up-employed, very techie parents) reacting this way, actually.
[To the tune of The Corrs, “Little Wing,” from the album “Talk On Corners (Special Edition)”.]
Technorati Tags: children, games, video
Except for the box of unsold Alien Loves Predator t-shirts, perhaps. Otherwise, it’s brilliant!
(click to see the big version)
[To the tune of Derek & The Dominos, “Little Wing,” from the album “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs”.]
Technorati Tags: bicycles, games
A data point from my favorite new comic, Alien Loves Predator.
Technorati Tags: digital-physical, end of cyberspace, humor
Or so I argue (albeit very, very briefly) in today’s New York Times.
A very cool graphic illustrates the piece, too
Now when anyone Googles “caffeine” and “gateway drug,” I’m going to rise to the top of the search results. I don’t know if this is a good thing or bad.
Mmmm… brains…
[To the tune of The Band, “Long Distance Operator (Outtake),” from the album “Music from Big Pink“.]
Technorati Tags: brain, coffee
One of the consequences of pervasive computing that we're going to have to grapple with is the proliferation of devices that accidentally preserve confidential information about us. One example: photocopiers.
[M]ost digital copiers manufactured in the past five years have disk drives — the same kind of data-storage mechanism found in computers — to reproduce documents. As a result, the seemingly innocuous machines that are commonly used to spit out copies of tax returns for millions of Americans can retain the data being scanned.
If the data on the copier's disk aren't protected with encryption or an overwrite mechanism, and if someone with malicious motives gets access to the machine, industry experts say sensitive information from original documents could get into the wrong hands.
Some copier makers are now adding security features, but many of the digital machines already found in public venues or business offices are likely still open targets, said Ed McLaughlin, president of Sharp Document Solutions Company of America.
"You actually have a better chance at winning 10 straight rolls of roulette than getting those hard drives on copiers rewritten," he said….
Sharp was among the first to begin offering, a few years ago, a security kit for its machines to encrypt and overwrite the images being scanned, so that data aren't stored on the hard disks indefinitely. Xerox Corp. said in October it would start making a similar security feature standard across all of its digital copiers.
Technorati Tags: pervasive computing, privacy
Today I took my daughter to a birthday party at the Tech Museum of Innovation. (It’s an extremely cool place for a birthday. At the end, I asked her, “Was the birthday party educational?” She replied, “Sort of.” Which is more than can be said about many venues.) Since she’s old enough to just hang out with her friends, I dropped her off and headed to the new city-SJSU library to do some work.
Along the way, I walked around the downtown and San Jose State U. area a bit. The city has spent, or encouraged private developers to spend, gigantic sums of money on redevelopment in the area. So there are now lots of new tony apartment buildings, and numerous upscale or upscale-ish chain restaurants (are Gordon Biersch and PF Changs upscale?). All of this is pretty well-executed, and here and there you also seem some genuinely interesting architecture: the new City Hall is really cool, the Tech Museum is fun, and the San Jose Rep is a pretty neat space.
And yet, somehow, it doesn’t hold together. For all the money spent on development, and the various New Urbanism touches, downtown San Jose still feels weirdly uninhabited. The new buildings don’t signify vibrancy and community: instead, they just signify “redevelopment happening here!” Now, I was there on a Sunday afternoon, and arguably this is the worst time to visit a downtown. Yet, even around the edges of the campus, which are now surrounded by some very big luxe apartment/townhouse buildings, I didn’t get that feeling that you get around, say, Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square, or a million and one little parks in London, of a space that’s inhabited, and has a private life that you’ll only glimpse through parted curtains and gaps in the hedge. Instead, the downtown has all the intimacy of a financial district after the markets close.
I’m not sure what’s keeping that spark from catching, either. At one level, they seem to be doing everything right: more commercial stuff, more downtown housing, some cool public spaces. But some of it feels too programmed: there seems to be a preference for food court-style chains over the mom-and-pop places that make a neighborhood distinctive. It also didn’t feel dense enough: more people on the streets would attract more business, and generate more activity of all kinds.
There’s also something about the new buildings that can be strangely office park-ish. In the area around Fairmount Hotel, for example, there are pedestrian walkways and plazas, but they’re big and concrete, too large to be personal and too small to be grand. Some corporate headquarters occupy entire city blocks, or big chunks of a block, and are surrounded by manicured grass or concrete pads. It’s almost as if the big buildings in downtown San Jose want to be like suburban corporate headquarters rather than buildings in San Francisco or New York. It may make for better executive parking, and spaces that are easier to program and manage, but it works to the overall detriment of the city.
Still, I hope it comes together, and the downtown becomes more than a tourist and Friday night entertainment destination. Successful cities are cool, and it’s strange that the Bay Area only has one world-class city. Plus, San Jose sits in one of the most fabulously wealthy and important regions in the world; it ought to be more impressive.
[To the tune of The Band, “Tears Of Rage (Alternate Take),” from the album “Music from Big Pink“.]
Technorati Tags: architecture, city, san jose
The last couple days I’ve added some really outstanding music to my collection, but it’s a strange combination of stuff.
First, two albums by The Band, Music from Big Pink and The Band. I can’t believe I didn’t grow up with these, and have them memorized by the time I was in high school. I’ve long had The Band’s greatest hits, but somehow their most popular songs manage to not quite be as amazing as songs like “Whispering Pines” and “Tears of Rage.” The apparent looseness of the music is very misleading: while it sounds like they treated the beat as an optional thing to be followed now and then, they were very thoughtful in their choices of instruments and arrangements. It’s the very definition of genius: music that doesn’t call attention to its own complexity, but instead offers you a space to fall into.
Second, just by chance I stumbled upon Sound Tribe Sector 9, an electronic/ambient group that completely blows me away. I discovered Mono and Mogwai not that long ago, and STS9 reminds me partly of those two, but jazzier: some of their work also has overtones of the great Southern jazz group Sea Level (whose Cats on the Coast is tremendous). Their 2004 New Year’s Eve show is very, very good. Go check it out.
[To the tune of Sound Tribe Sector 9, “Open E,” from the album “2004-12-31 - Tabernacle“.]
The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul
© 2017 Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Ph.D.
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
