Category: noted in passing

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Originally uploaded by your mistakes are your style.

by the time you’ve seen this, it’s likely too late.

It will be a fitting irony if George W Bush’s greatest legacy to the country is that he has so damaged the Republican party that it has permitted the (non-crazy) citizens of the US to elect their first non-white president. Not that he will ever see it that way.

[From TBogg » If you live in this world You’re feelin’ the change of the guard ]

I was thinking the same thing earlier today, that instead of a more entrenched hard-right Republican majority, he leaves an energized Democratic party, has created a political environment that has gotten millions of people to register and vote for the first time in their lives, and will see his agenda — tax cuts for the wealthy, wars in the mideast, politicization of everything — dismantled piece by piece over the next couple of years.

Is two minutes forty-seconds the perfect length for a pop single?

I looked at my collection and while I have a few that come in at that length, a range of 2:40-2:45 yields 162 items or 7.3 hours of music. At exactly 2:42*, this is what I get:

Route 67 | 2:42 | Let’s Active | Big Plans for Everybody
Wildwood In The Pines | 2:42 | Johnny Cash | Personal File (Disc 2)
Get Up | 2:42 | R.E.M. | Green
Thinking About You | 2:42 | Radiohead | Pablo Honey
Providence | 2:42 | Sonic Youth | Daydream Nation
Oceans | 2:42 | Pearl Jam | Ten
Coda: Marine 475 | 2:42 | King Crimson | Thrak
Sheila Take A Bow | 2:42 | The Smiths | Louder Than Bombs
Blitzen Trapper | – Wild Mountain Nation | 2:42 | 550 Blitzen Trapper | KEXP Song of the Day
Get Outa Ma Pagoda | 2:42 | Chris Spedding | The Very Best Of
Rusty Chevrolet | 2:42 | Da Yoopers | Culture Shock
The Operative | 2:42 | Magazine | Scree Rarities 1978 – 1981
I Wanted So | 2:42 | Johnny Cash | Personal File [Disc 1]
Baby Plays Around (Demo) | 2:42 | Elvis Costello | Spike Bonus Disc
Holy Love | 2:42 | The Blue Nile | Peace At Last
Sheila Take A Bow | 2:42 | The Smiths | The Best Of The Smiths, Vol. 1
Lovely Rita | 2:42 | The Beatles | Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
I Will Always | 2:42 | The Cranberries | Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?
Larks’ Tongues In Aspic,Part Three (Live) | 2:42 | King Crimson | Frame By Frame [4 – 1969 (Live)]
Take Me For A Little While | 2:42 | Dave Edmunds | Repeat When Necessary
This Charming Man | 2:42 | The Smiths | The Best Of The Smiths, Vol. 1
Bones | 2:42 | Foot Village | SXSW 2008 Showcasing Artists
I See You | 2:42 | Adrian Belew | Here
Michelle | 2:42 | The Beatles | Rubber Soul
How Great Our Lord | 2:42 | Randy Newman & others | Randy Newman’s Faust
Walk Like an Egyptian | 2:42 | The Puppini Sisters | The Rise and Fall of Ruby Woo

• by exactly, I mean make a playlist with a range of 2:41 – 2:43 and pull the 2:42 tracks from that: seems to give a better result.

Anyone else remember the scene from The Kids Are Alright described here?

The Who had 10 minutes left to fill on the LP. Kit Lambert, The Who’s manager, suggested to Pete Townshend that he write “something linear… perhaps a 10 minute song.” Townshend responded by saying that rock songs are “2:50 by tradition!” Lambert then told Townshend that he should write a 10 minute story comprised of 2:50 songs.

[From A Quick One While He’s Away by The Who Songfacts]

Here’s something I just learned about. I know lots of people do the +modifier stuff with email, but this is effort-free.

I recently discovered some little-known ways to use your Gmail address that can give you greater control over your inbox and save you some time and headache.

When you choose a Gmail address, you actually get more than just “yourusername@gmail.com.” Here are two different ways you can modify your Gmail address and still get your mail:

• Append a plus (“+”) sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address. For example, if your name was hikingfan@gmail.com, you could send mail to hikingfan+friends@gmail.com or hikingfan+mailinglists@gmail.com.
• Insert one or several dots (“.”) anywhere in your email address. Gmail doesn’t recognize periods as characters in addresses — we just ignore them. For example, you could tell people your address was hikingfan@gmail.com, hiking.fan@gmail.com or hi.kin.g.fan@gmail.com. (We understand that there has been some confusion about this in the past, but to settle it once and for all, you can indeed receive mail at all the variations with dots.)

For me, the real value in being able to manipulate your email address is that it makes it really easy to filter on those variants. For example you could use hikingfan+bank@gmail.com when you sign up for online banking and then set up a filter to automatically star, archive or label emails addressed to hikingfan+bank. You can also use this when you register for a service and think they might share your information. For example, I added “+donation” when I gave money to a political organization once, and now when I see emails from other groups to that address, I know how they got it. Solution: filtered to auto-delete.

[From Official Gmail Blog: 2 hidden ways to get more from your Gmail address]

When Roy is on his game, look out. On the idea of state-backed religious discipline:

It took us nearly two millenia and oceans of blood to reduce these savages to a noisome rump. We can spare a little attention to remember why we did it. [From BIG-TIME NEGOTIATORS, FALSE HEALERS AND WOMAN-HATERS. A bride wants…]

To celebrating, we’re giving away one FREE Nokia N95 to our best Fonero around the world. This is how it works: Starting today, you have until December 15, 2007, to connect to as many different FON Spots worldwide. Obviously, connecting to your own FON Spot doesn’t count! You’re all welcome to compete for the prize, those who share and connect for free and those who buy FON Passes. [From FON]

• Got my enormous enlarger installed and working, near enough. It throws a 16×20 image from a 4×5 negative which is a bit startling to see. Scored an enlarger bulb and an unopened pack of 8×10 paper from Jim’s Cameras. He has a lot of papers in there, few of which I have heard of. I’ll have to do some research. Now to sweep out the sawdust, clean up the room itself, finishing the light-proofing, and see if I can pull a print. I suspect some alightment issues may loom, but I’m thinking positively about it all. The enlarger is older than I am and arguably better-built.
• Made good “pantry soup” last night. Pantry soups are named because they use staples you probably already have, but I use the term to encompass ways of cleaning out the pantry of odds and ends. And you can make it without soaking beans overnight, something I can never remember to do. Pour a quart of boiling water over 1 cup of cannellini beans. Leave them for an hour. Crush 8 cloves of garlic, cook slowly in some oil, add some chopped fresh or dried rosemary until fragrant and golden. Add the drained beans and 7 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour. Add a couple of ripe tomatoes crushed or a 15oz can of your favorite canned tomatoes, with some dried basil/oregano/whatever you like and a 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil. Heat through. Fish out that partial bag of pasta (fusilli, orzo, your choice) you have left over from something you made and add it. When the pasta is done to your liking, season and serve. Even better the next day, if it lasts that long.
• Installed FreeBSD 7 on the laptop I have been working on. Took maybe half an hour. Sometimes the ugly ASCII art interface is the way to go. I didn’t get to use ZFS as it isn’t obvious on the installer screens. I’ll look at it more closely later.
• And tomorrow to Pacific Northwest Ballet to see the Nutcracker: we know three of the performers, all 10 year olds, and one of them is in tomorrow’s performance.

I had my doubts about this, but I’m over it now. I wasn’t sure how good the shows would be and I wasn’t familiar with the artists in any depth. But hey, it’s not like I’m paying to go and I don’t have to listen to the whole thing.

I went to my fortnightly appointment to donate 7.5×10^11 platelets and decided to give a listen to a recent show by Art Brut. Wow, a lot of fun and just the right length (about 45 minutes). I rarely have that long a block of time (at least not that I can count on) so it worked out well. The sound was a little uneven — some jumpy levels — but it was a great show, lots of energy and the band was plainly having fun, as was the crowd.

Check it out.

Boring prattle about blood product donation after the jump. You’ve been warned.

Continue reading “some great listening to be had here”