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- July 29, 2005
Penn’s Latest
July 29, 2005Read more
I was listening to Day-to-Day on NPR yesterday, and heard about The Aristocrats, a documentary from Penn Gillette and Paul Prevenza about “the filthiest joke ever told.” It’s a joke that’s only told between professional comedians. as it’s way too harsh for mainstream audiences. There’s 100 comedians all telling their variation of this joke, and you get a sense of the enormous variety of delivery techniques in this heavily-bleeped audio segment. The movie website is a lot more explicit–uncomfortably so–but this is a celebration of free speech and the art of storytelling that I don’t think I should miss. The NPR segment is OK for tender ears…it’s very insightful too. The New York review is highly entertaining too.
- July 28, 2005
Marcel Marceau
July 28, 2005Read more
I caught an interview with Marcel Marceau on The Connection. He’s still kickin’ at 81 years old, and it’s a treat to hear him talk on the radio. I started listening at first for the sheer novelty of it, but I quickly became drawn in. I didn’t know he was part of the French Resistance fighting Nazis in World War II. And to listen to him speak about his art, his experiences, and what it is to be alive…just incredible. I came to understand that this man has really touched millions over a career than spans 60 years.
The audio interview is, unfortunately, in RealAudio format, but you can download Real Alternative and Tara’s Real Audio Plugin for Winamp and avoid all that spyware crap.
- July 28, 2005
Hoopty Rides
July 28, 2005Read more
Stumbled upon Mr Jalopy’s Hoopty Rides, the blog of a person who truly loves mechanical things, particularly (it would seem) automobiles. He seems to delight in acquiring old junkers and restoring them to their full glory. He’s built quite a fleet of such vehicles, of which I am irrationally jealous. If I had any mechanical aptitude and a few acres of land in the Southwestern desert, I might dream of doing the same thing. I also like Mr Jalopy’s talent for understatement: as he describes the Model A. cab in the picture:
Not the first automobile that I have purchased at a garage sale though probably the most ambitious.
Heh. Mr. Jalopy rules!
- July 27, 2005
PickleJar Entry 001
July 27, 2005Read more
I’ve been working on getting to a regular sleep schedule so I wake up early and go for a healthy walk. I’ve done it for five days now, and am finding it actually is a good way to get the blood flowing in the morning, just like S. said it would. Except in my case, it’s more like 10 or 11AM…I’m still not hitting that sweet spot of 6:30AM.
Anyway, the morning walk can be a bit boring. The first day, I focused on the act of walking, feeling where all the muscles were, what they were doing, posture, etc. A lot to concentrate on. I found myself wondering if I should get one of those portable headset radios so I could at least listen to NPR. As I was thinking about this I lost my concentration a bit and stumbled, so I refocused on stepping. Step step step step. Just to mix it up I did a double-step, kind of a funky down-beat, and I imagined some horns playing in time. Which gave me this idea:
MARCHING PODCASTS Walk to the beat of your own theme music! Fun!
I enjoy the combination of music, thought and activity:
- That episode of Family Guy where Peter wishes for his own “theme music”. It plays constantly when he’s doing things, in perfect time. It’s awesome (and hillarious)
- Ally McBeal‘s therapist tells her to pick a theme song, and play it in her head at opportune moments. John Cage had his Barry White moments and tells Fish to “listen for the bells”.
- In live music, I love it when the singer is introducing the other band members. The bass player and the drummer maintain a nasty beat, the singer is calling out everyone’s name and they’re groovin’ and jammin’ along before launching into the final number.
- On a similar note, there are great intros…when the MC announces that James Brown is coming out on stage, he’s got a great rhythmic way of saying it. Not quite rap. Not quite spoken word. It’s just great. The beginning of Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy has a similar vibe.
- Marching drills, like they show in movies like Full Metal Jacket, maintain the cadence, and just sound cool. I dig the call-and-response format too, like in Gospel music.
- Games like Dance Dance Revolution tells you to do cool things, via the arrows, during the course of a round of play. When you master it, it’s awesome and fun.
Combining all these together into a 30-minute workout, with great original music suitable to the mood and a great voice person to call things out…I think that could be cool. You’d want a different one every week though, hence podcasting.
Of course, I’m pretty sure that existing workout tapes already take this approach, and have since the 1980s! But mine would be so much cooler :-)
- July 27, 2005
Personal WikiWikis
July 27, 2005Read moreI’ve been looking for an expanded way of managing my ToDo List for years. Currently, I just use a text editor, and set up my list something like this:
TODO LIST JULY 27 2005 o Go grocery shopping . Fix formatting bug in blog x rewrite header function o refactor code using header function x Process party photosWhat I like about this format is that it’s pretty fast to edit, delete, and reorganize the list. It’s no good for scheduling or keeping track of a large pool of ToDo items though, but it’s way faster and more flexible. The only downside is that the text editor is dumb: the items in the todo list are not otherwise manipulable programmatically as you could in a real system. However, on the front lines of productivity, the quick-and-dirty list works just fine. I also miss the lack of formatting in a plain text editor, like with bold text (you know I’m fond of it if you read this blog regularly).
While I was browsing Digital Media Minute, I came across a link to WikidPad. A Wiki is a document system that allows you to create hyperlinked pages of information on the fly just by running words together. The beauty of the system is that you don’t have to manually create pages in HTML, create new files, or worry about organization. The wiki software manages that for you by keeping track of the links you’ve created and providing search. So if you’re the type of person that tends to branch off into tangeants, a Wiki might be a good way for you to capture the information as you’re doing your brain dump.
The main problem I have with Wikis is that they’re ugly. I have three criteria for applications I use on a daily basis, if I have a choice about it:
- Fast interactive entry via keyboard; workflow is self-evident without wizards; no bloat; fast startup,
- Flexible at accepting and depicting different kinds of information
- Formatted output is aesthetically pleasing, as is the organization of the GUI itself
Wikis tend to lose on the Formatted critera, because they just aren’t nicely set up typographically. The in-line markup language also tends to make things look a little unfinished.
Anyway, I’ve just started using the WikidPad, which runs only on Windows. There are a couple of other options I have not yet tried: Project Forum is a self-contained version that can run on a desktop; Personal Wiki and VoodooPad, which are Mac OS X only. VoodooPad looks particularly cool…I’m going to try it on my PowerBook because it looks like it manages picture links.
