:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 ::

Lost in the Shelves

Great post over on the flickr blog of book and library related photos. Some of places I've posted before, some great new finds. Worth a look.

Labels: Literature, Photography

:: Dan 20.1.10 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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It's that time again:

Stuart Maconie - Pies and Prejudice (hangover from last year)
Kurt Vonnegut Jr - Slaughterhouse Five (again)
Lewis Carol - Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Oliver Sacks - Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Kurt Vonnegut Jr - Breakfast of Champions
Stuart Maconie - Cider with Roadies
Naomi Klein - Shock Doctrine
James R. Blandford - P.J. Harvey: Siren Rising
Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons - Watchmen
Hunter S. Thompson - Fear & Loathing in Las Vagas
Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson - The Gods That Failed
Philip K. Dick - Radio Free Albemuth
Stephen Morris - In Search of Bristol
Richard Matheson - I Am Legend
Frank Skinner - Frank Skinner on the Road: Love, Stand-up Comedy and the Queen of the Night
Geoff Manaugh - Bldgblog Book: Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, Landscape Futures
Sun-Tzu - The Art of War
Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night
William S. Burroughs - Junky
David Edmonds & John Eidinow - Bobby Fischer Goes To War
Ralph Steadman - Doodaaa: The Balletic Art of Gavin Twinge - A Triography
Gore Vidal - Myra Breckinridge
J.G. Ballard - Crash
Peter Cook - Tragically I Was an Only Twin (ed. William Cook)
Richard Beard - Becoming Drusilla: One Life, Two Friends, Three Genders

2008, 2007, 2006

Labels: Literature, Reading

:: Dan 27.12.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Some readers may remember I did a stand-up routine a few years ago about Brian Eno being "The One" (like Neo in The Matrix).

Seems someone else thinks he may actually be VALIS (from the Philip K Dick book of the same name, although Radio Free Ablemuth is a much better book on the same subject).

Before scanning that from the Sunday Time Style magazine I searched for an online version. I didn't find one but did find this from last April:

What pop music tells us about JG Ballard
"Author JG Ballard, who has died aged 78, cast a huge influence over the literary world. But for those who have never picked up one of his novels there's another forum for learning about his work - pop music."

Labels: Art, Humour, Literature, Music, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 4.10.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I remember chess being big news during my childhood in the '80s, around the time I started playing. So it's interesting to see the biggest match, and biggest rivalry, of the era being relived.

"Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov have renewed their old rivalry in a twelve game exhibition match at Valencia. The contest will last three days with two rapid games on days one and two to be followed by eight blitz games on day three."

Channel 4 news gives a nice introduction [video link] including some explanation of the political backdrop.

The rematch so far is reported here.
"Garry Kasparov beat Anatoly Karpov in two games Tuesday at the start of an exhibition chess match marking the 25th anniversary of their first title bout, a grueling event that was eventually ended after five months."

Pierre Garon: How the game of chess lost its soul
"Yet we only know these names today because of one man: Bobby Fischer.
Before Fischer, chess in America was an intensive care unit patient on IV. The title of world chess champion belonged to the Soviets. Then Fischer rose to prominence in the Sixties, and with incredible ease dispatched all candidates to become, in 1972, official challenger to titleholder Boris Spassky."

Coincidentally, I'm currently reading one of the more accessible books about the match. David Edmonds' and John Eidinow's Bobby Fischer Goes to War.

The psychology is interesting. The authors perhaps overplay the suspicions of cheating, the chapter applying game theory to Fischer's unreasonable behaviour is perhaps a step too far, but it's a riveting read nontheless. The profiles of both players early lives make me wonder about the mindset of the grandmaster. The savant like powers of recall make me wonder about how their brains may be differently wired to some other peoples. In much the same way as Oliver Sacks considered musicians in Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. I'd like to see chess get a similar treatment.

The "Living Chess" chapter of the Bobby Fischer book mentioned touches on this, mentioning the similarities in thinking between mathematicians, chess players and musicians. It also quotes Nabokov, who said, "There is nothing abnormal about a chess player being abnormal. This is normal." It goes on to cite some of the more extreme examples, such as Paul Morphy, the unofficial world champion in the 1850s. (The official world championship is generally regarded to have begun in 1886.) Quoting the same book at length:

"[Morphy] also despised the chess 'scene'. While only in his twenties, he descended into a state of paranoia and depression, and became a recluse. Occasionally he was seen wandering the streets of New Orleans, muttering to himself in French. A shoe fetishist, at the age of forty-seven he was found dead in his bathtub - rumour says surrounded by women's shoes."

For further accessible chess related entertainment there's always the film Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine, reviewed here.

Labels: Chess, Literature, News

:: Dan 23.9.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Heya! It's been some time. I know I may have thrown you the odd scrap of music now and again but that old spark, it just hasn't been there lately has it. I know you have other places to hang out. I hope you understand what a death in the family has done here. But it's great to meet up again, have a drink, chew that fat, catch up on what we would have been chatting shit about if other events hadn't conspired against us.

Did I tell you I attended the BLDGBLOG book launch last week?

[v.o.g.: You mentioned you were going]

Ah, well, I did. And not only did I get a great book out of it, not only did I meet with and chat with Geoff Manaugh, whose a really inspiring guy, not only is there a photo floating around flickr of me sat at the same table as Warren Ellis (I didn't realise that at the time, I was distracted by the woman with him), but I've also come away with some blog based inspiration.

In the introduction to the book Geoff explains that when he started BLDGBLOG he decided that he wasn't going to pour concerns and negativity into it, it would just be for stuff that interested him. Things that made him think, gave him ideas, starting points for flights of fancy. I like that philosophy. I may try to take it on to some degree.


[source here via here]

So what else has caught my fancy?


Shots taken on Czechoslovakia - East border of the eastern German state security (Stasi)
[via www.ustrcr.cz]
Found in the Vice Magazine photography special, which is out now.

Its good to know that The American President is an Ass Man, Apparently

"But seriously, is this not one of the best presidential photographs of all-time? Even Sarkozy looks like he's sneaking a peek, though he's French, so we expect him to do it. However, in Obama's defense, that is a great ass!"

"Solicitors for the National Portrait Gallery are apparently threatening legal action against a US Wikipedia user for downloading 3,300 digital photographs of paintings in the UK museum's collection, and then uploading them to Wikipedia."
[via clayton cubitt]

Cauty - Julie Andrews tip in the Nude magazine sale


Codex Sinaiticus - Home The ‘Draft for Comment’ version of the Bible

Rumours of a Dr Who film

There, I Fixed It

6 Intriguingly Shaped Communities As Seen On Google Maps

My Pinhole camera experiments


"Patti Smith is one of the most anticipated gigs of the week, and the audience the most vocal. … joined by SMZ leader Efrim Menuck on drums and Portishead’s Adrian Utley, who attacks a guitar with a paintbrush to spooky effect."
Festival review: Ornette Coleman’s Meltdown, Southbank Centre, London SE1 | Music | The Observer
I mentioned this to Leafcutter John, wondering if he was aware Ade was at the Polar Bear gig where John had used the same paintbrush trick a few months back. His response was a spirited "Ah, but did he do it better?"

Stylophone Beatbox

Pre-order here

Open Source TIC - ePetition response | Number10.gov.uk
"The Government supports the principle that, where new software is being developed by the Timely Information to Citizens pilots, this should wherever possible be released under open source licence and available for use by other local authorities. ... Where the pilots will result in new software tools, ownership and intellectual property rights will usually remain with the individual local authorities"
Is this not a contradiction?

‘Ghost village’ to be demolished

"A village built in Argyll to meet the demands of the UK oil boom of the 1970s but abandoned without ever being occupied is set for a new role." [video link]

Stuff you've missed on the tumblr
* a whole bunch of new photographers discoveries
* shoes by architects
* a bunch of LEGO stuff inc jewellery, USB sticks and giant Star Wars models
* London Underground Map print dress
* Geek guide to shoe lacing
* The Battleships drinking game

I've also just discovered that Blogger is limited to 20 tags per post.

So what have you been up to? How are things?

Labels: Art, blogs, Copyright, Electronic Music, Flickr, FOSS, History, Instruments, IP, Law, Literature, Maps, Music, Petitions, Photography, Politics, Privacy, Religion, Sci-Fi, Wiki

:: Dan 14.7.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Bldgblog Book: Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, Landscape Futures (Paperback) by Geoff Manaugh

The BLDGBLOG Book Global Launch Party
Sponsored by Wired UK @ The Architectural Association
Tuesday, 7 July 2009 | 6-8pm
36 Bedford Square, London
Free and open to the public | Cash bar

Labels: architecture, Literature

:: Dan 6.7.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"We experience spaces not only by seeing but also by listening. We can navigate a room in the dark, and "hear" the emptiness of a house without furniture. Our experience of music in a concert hall depends on whether we sit in the front row or under the balcony. The unique acoustics of religious spaces acquire symbolic meaning. Social relationships are strongly influenced by the way that space changes sound. In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture, Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter examine auditory spatial awareness: experiencing space by attentive listening. Every environment has an aural architecture."



"Eusebio Sempere, a respected minimalist 20th century Spanish artist, created a sculpture composed of a three-dimensional array of polished stainless-steel tubes that rotates at its base, as shown in figure [above]. In addition to its provocative visual effect as the moving surfaces reflect in the sunlight, it was also a sonic filter that blocked transmission of particular frequencies. A listener on one side heard a tonal modification of those sound sources located on the other side, the visual equivalent of colored glass prisms. This sculpture is an aural embellishment because it changes sounds that propagate through it."



As referenced in Trevor Cox's Sound Architecture: Spaces That Speak programme on Radio 4 last week, unfortunately no longer availble on the iPlayer. (Although I do have an MP3 rip. Get in touch if you really want to hear it.)

Labels: Acoustics, Literature, Radio4

:: Dan 24.3.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I was drinking with my work colleagues in John Torode's Smiths of Smithfield on Friday evening. (Rubbish selection of beers incidentally, unless you like a choice of six shitty cold largers when you go out.)

Torode's panda eyed face stares down at you from the cover of his new book from all angles. The book is called John Torode's Beef. This isn't a food based pun allowing the chef to vent his frustrations with the service industry. It really is a book specifically about cooking beef. Part of the trend I am noticing in ever more specific tomes in culinary instruction.

We start with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's brilliant Meat book (and now a Fish one too, Veg to follow?), then progress to one specifically about the meat from one animal, like Beef, eventually moving on to books about individual cuts from specific animals, like the Steak Lovers Cookbook.

Then there's a plethora of Sausage books and complete freaks can even buy cookery books dedicated to Marmite. Guides to combining food and drinks now even cover what water to drink, following the introduction of the mineral water concierge to certain restaurants. I know I already have books dedicated to soups, to sauces, and to home made pasta.

But how far can this trend go? Will we see Making Sausages with Rabbit Shin Meat or What to Eat with Volvic? Or are short snappy titles the order of the day. Coming soon: Offal? Brassica? Parsnip? Eyes?

Labels: Cooking, Literature

:: Dan 11.3.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I posted about the free-for-all at the Bookbarn a couple of weeks ago. The opening of the doors at the Bristol book warehouse made national news.

The capitalist past of me was offended that all of those books, some of which were mine that I had taken there for them to sell on my behalf, were just being given away. I felt better about this once I'd visited and made up for my losses.

The anarchist past of me loved the idea of the free distribution of knowledge.

The liberal part of me loved the fact that all sections of society were represented, from charities, to students, to squatters with dogs, to opportunistic wheeler dealers, to pensioners with walking sticks, all picking through the mess.

The English part of me loved how polite everyone was. There was no barging, no shouting, no fighting over anything. Just a melancholic air of acceptance of the literary post-apocalyptic feeling that pervaded.

If ever anyone wanted to stage an intellectual coup d’état in the UK all they would need to do would be to spray all the books in a warehouse like this with legionnaires, open the doors to the public and leak the story to the press. You would wipe out every free thinker in the area. I'm sure there's a book in that.*

* Idea published under a non-profit creative commons licence, thank you very much.

Labels: Books, Bristol, Flickr, Literature, News, Photography

:: Dan 10.3.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Free books at the Book Barn
Hands off! Some of those are mine. I took boxes full of books in there for them to sell over the years, some not long before it closed. I'm quite annoyed about this. =[

Books' free-for-all in warehouse

People have been invited to help themselves to the books

People in Bristol have been invited to help themselves to free books at a warehouse which were left behind when the owners left the site.

Bookbarn's lease on the premises in Arnos Vale recently expired and when the firm moved out it left behind thousands of books.

Managers of the Paintworks site have invited people to help themselves.

This Bookbarn is in no way connected to the company BookBarn International at Hallatrow in North Somerset.

In no way connected? Except that they were sister stores running on the same account so money you earned in one store could be spent in the other. So I feel like they've given away some of my books. So I went down there on Friday and took goods of equivalent value. Felt better after that.

I also bumped into some squatters I know in there, busty loading book cases into a van. Apparently their fifth day on the job! And I got a gig out of it. I'll be playing another Occasional Cinema film night in Stokes Croft on April Fools Day.

Guardian
Daily Mail *spit*

Labels: Bristol, Gigs, Literature

:: Dan 26.2.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Time for my annual reading round up. This year I have been mostly reading...

Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion
Joe Inglis - The Greatest Cat Tips in the World
Isaac Asimov – Foundation & Empire
Collected works - Dream on: Bristol Writers on Cinema
Mike Alsford - What If? Religious Themes in Science-Fiction
Eugene Byrne & Simon Gurr - The Bristol Story [1.3MB PDF flyer]
Peter Barber - The Map Book
Philip K Dick - The Simulacra
Dominic Bliss - Being the Best Man For Dummies [see this post]
David Gerrold [Ed] - Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in "The Matrix" *
Oh No It Isn't – A History of Pantomime *
Peter Lathan - It's Behind You!: The Story of Panto *
Mark Thomas - As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela
Stanshaw Lem - A Perfect Vacuum
Belio [Ed] – Pencil Break
Brian Aldiss – Brothers of the Head
David Brunner - The Cat Owners Manual
Ken Garner - The Peel Sessions: A Story of Teenage Dreams and One Man's Love of New Music
John Wyndam - Jizzle
Stuart Maconie – Pies and Prejudice
John Robb - Punk Rock: An Oral History **
Troy Paiva - Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploring

* As mentioned on the September Skip to the End radio show
** As mentioned on the November Goatlab radio show

Labels: Literature

:: Dan 31.12.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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A selection of the worlds most beautiful libraries.


HANDELINGENKAMER TWEEDE KAMER DER STATEN-GENERAAL DEN HAAG

Labels: architecture, Art, Literature, Photography

:: Dan 24.12.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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We're doomed! Alien-like Squid With "Elbows" Filmed at Drilling Site.



It seems the Kraken has finally awoken.


[About the lego Kraken]

Speaking of which, the Triffids are back too! I'm slightly concerned that 'it is billed as a "fast-paced, futuristic and electrifying take" on Wyndham's work' but I still can't wait to see it. Slow, impending dread is always better. As Simon Pegg explains.

Labels: Ecology, Environment, Lego, Literature, Sci-Fi, Zombie

:: Dan 28.11.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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PencilBreak Book, 200 pages of breakcore inspired graphics from all arround the world, edited by Belio.
Release date: July 20th



"A big mashup of the best art and graphics inspired by and for the digital hardcore subcultures we live and enjoy. This book compiles fresh work from more than twenty international artists. All of them share a similar feeling and passion for distorted sounds and graphics. This book is meant to be an homage to Breakcore and other styles of hardcore music and corresponding attitudes.

"This book doesn't pretend to be the bible of breakcore music [so, don't espect to find everybodies faces here!], it's just a visual approximation to what we think it has been one of most fresh musical scenes during the last years. We like so many different kind of music [not only breakcore, of course], but since an aesthetic and conceptual point of view, we want to focus in this scene, because it means to us [and many others] one of the most inspirative influences in graphic creation, and a perfect mixture and remixture of the best ingredients from the culture we lived during the past decades, from the skate style, passing by the postdigital easthetic, breakcore makes fun and re-invented black metal, trash culture, rave, terror movies, 80's, rock attitudes, videogames, tattoos, errors & mistakes, tv, superheroes... and whatever could be saved in your mind during the time you grew up, all twisted... in a graphic tsunami that defines very well a music genre that is based in the creation of something new using all kind of music styles, where you can't always follow a concret rhythm, to be exact, breakcore's definition is where concret sounds or rhythm are the last thing you gonna find."

UK distro via Toy Life
Strike that. I've checked with Toy Life and although Dave does sell Belio titles in the UK he will not be getting this in. Best to order from Belio direct.

Labels: Art, Breakcore, Comics, graphics, Literature

:: Dan 15.7.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Bluff 4-08 Do Pokerbots Dream of Electric Sheep.pdf [190KB PDF] [HTML]

Not a fantastic article but an interesting find. I wasn't expecting to find a PKD article in a poker magazine (Bluff Europe) I picked up when waiting in a Chinese take-away.

Searching around I also found this story from 2005:
Science non-fiction
"Grace was one of 19 robots participating in the conference's 14th annual Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition. Her job was to entertain the crowd and allow her Carnegie Mellon University team of creators to test how she uses social interactions, rather than sight and sound, to achieve a task -- in this case, finding a team member in a pink hat. ... Across from Grace, an android version of the late science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick sat in a chair candidly chatting about his novels and personal habits. A true conversationalist, he made eye contact and punctuated his remarks with smiles and scowls on his realistic, three-dimensional face -- sculpted by David Hanson, founder of Texas-based Hanson Robotics Inc. ... Nearby, several robots rolled through a section of a hallway, seeking bright balls and stuffed animals as part of a scavenger hunt. The robots had to make their own decisions about how to locate and retrieve the objects using artificial intelligence: No remote controls could be involved, said Paul Rybski, a CMU post-doctoral fellow and co-chairman of the competition."

Labels: AI, Gaming, Literature, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 23.6.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"best vw vyk Female taste garlic stand began colour noon string contain blackboard perhaps not keg act. rv m [spam url] rather low solution city thumb beat example miserly dream depend thousand also excite oak pig."

Labels: Literature

:: Dan 13.6.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Lovely example of spam poetry just received:
good uih f Girls die knowledge move quotient confess beautiful learning brush blackboard snail memory job stay summer.
[url removed] whistle such flame answer began

Labels: Literature

:: Dan 15.5.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"A little piece of trivia I didn't know, apparently Stanley Kubrick asked Roger Waters if he could use music from Pink Floyd's 'Atom Heart Mother' for Clockwork Orange. Someone's re-imagined what the opening sequence would have looked like if he'd said yes and this is the result." [via grom]

Labels: Art, Film, Literature, Music

:: Dan 12.5.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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A CAPTCHA (IPA: /?kæpt??/) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine that the response is not generated by a computer. The process involves one computer (a server) asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human. A common type of CAPTCHA requires that the user type the letters of a distorted image, sometimes with the addition of an obscured sequence of letters or digits that appears on the screen.

Those things piss me off. I fail them far too often. If I were a character in a Philip K. Dick story it would be the first sign I'm not actually human, as I believe I am, but either an automaton, simulacrum, or a figment of my own or someone else's imagination. I'm pretty sure I'm not a character in a book but can't rule out the other four.

Labels: IT, Literature, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 12.5.08 [Arc] [1 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Arthur Clarke's 2001 Diary
"Excerpted from Lost Worlds of 2001 by Arthur C. Clarke,
New American Library (New York), 1972."
[via lmg]

Labels: Literature, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 2.5.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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The Penguin Blog on book blurbs and the new issues of Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm with cover art by Shepard Fairey
[via natali]

Labels: Art, graffiti, Literature

:: Dan 24.4.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Jesus Could Have Walked on Ice

Rare conditions could have conspired to create hard-to-see ice on the Sea of Galilee that a person could have walked on back when Jesus is said to have walked on water, a scientist said today.

The study, which examines a combination of favorable water and environmental conditions, proposes that Jesus could have walked on an isolated patch of floating ice on what is now known as Lake Kinneret in northern Israel.

Looking at temperature records of the Mediterranean Sea surface and using analytical ice and statistical models, scientists considered a small section of the cold freshwater surface of the lake.

The results suggest temperatures dropped to [-4 degrees C] during one of the two cold periods 2,500 –1,500 years ago for up to two days, the same decades during which Jesus lived.

Labels: Environment, Literature, Religion, science

:: Dan 22.4.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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The Guardian, the newspaper that loves The Fall more than any other, prints extracts from Mark E. Smith's autobiography Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E Smith, to be published by Viking on April 24
Part 1 and part 2

Labels: Literature, Music

:: Dan 16.4.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I guess this is a meme in the original sense of the word. It shows how an idea has started in one place and been built on, developed and evolved by others. Traditionalists would call it a conversation.

From Octopus99

Dominic Zero says:
"I actually lost interest in Alias after Season 1 largely because for a hard-nosed uber-agent working undercover she seemed to spend an awful lot of the time crying and getting upset. Either that or she was in jeans and a tee shirt the whole time once her contract had been renewed and I no was longer fished in. Everyone knows female undercover agents have to dress up as either prostitutes or pole dancers or goths at least half the time. Just ask Heather Locklear."

El Duderino says:
"Actually if I ran an undercover espionage agency I would only hire hot chicks and dress them in rubber and lingerie. I mean it makes fucking sense, innit? Then I'd pray to god all the targets hung out at fetish parties. They'd really stand out in Safeway."

I say:
"Everyone knows they do. It comes with the territory. To end up in that line of work you have to take pleasure in role-play, dressing up in uniforms (sometimes cross-dressing), and knowing there is a serious threat of torture around every corner. How could you end up in that career if you weren't a fetishist? It just make sense."

Labels: blogs, Fetish, Literature, meme, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 14.4.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Couple of interesting posts over on Null Device.

Can India's most powerful black magician follow through with his assertion that he can kill a person within three-minutes using powerful black magic? An atheist volunteer proved otherwise.

Sounds like something that the US Military psy-corp should be considering.

Meanwhile the 'US Department of Homeland Security convenes a group of science fiction writers, dubbed "SIGMA", to brainstorm ideas for defending the nation; writers, instead, go off on bizarre tangents.'

Labels: Goats, Literature, Magic, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 27.3.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Conversations with a science visionary
Clarke's three laws:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
   
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
   
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Labels: Literature, RIP, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 20.3.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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As spotted by Bristle in the comments of the last post:

[amazon]

I'm also intrigued by this:


[amazon]

"Thanks for your reviews of our book,"A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits." This introduction to some of the world's most enchanting, weird and powerful spirits is intended to observe them in action in their natural habitats. Rather than separate the species by religious tradition, ethnicity, national boundaries or time, we opted to place them side-by-side and see how similar their fangs, talons, lore, and bad habits might be when in Forest, Mountain or Domicile anywhere in the history of humankind. We are a mother and daughter team, both writers, who share a love of mythology and who hold graduate degrees in Religious Studies and in Cultural Anthropology respectively. We hope that the readers of this work find these creatures as fabulous and informative as we did. For each entry, there is a "Dispelling and Disarming" section just in case! The universal cure is this: Hold them up to the light and see them for what they are, then show them Love and Compassion and the'll be blown away."

I don't believe in any of these fairy stories of demons or angles or gods or leprechauns or unicorns - yes, your God is in that list too - and a field guide to studying them seems ridiculous. I'm tempted to buy it for the Ecologists in the office so they can look out for them on site. File it along with all of their bat identification books as so on. Yet this sentence suddenly made it more interesting: "Rather than separate the species by religious tradition, ethnicity, national boundaries or time, we opted to place them side-by-side and see how similar their fangs, talons, lore, and bad habits might be." That's a very telling exercise that may help people see to the root of the psychology that created these theories in the first place.

Labels: Art, Literature, psychology

:: Dan 11.3.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Free Books On the Internet, Courtesy Freakonomics
[via researchbuzz]

...and...

dipiti - A Search Engine For Message Boards
[also via researchbuzz]

Labels: Literature, Search

:: Dan 2.3.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Morning. I am offline at the moment. My PC died last Friday (power surge wrote off the power supply and mother-board and due to age rendered processor and RAM useless) so only have internet access in work, which I obviously try to minimise. Webmail is blocked. Should anyone really want to contact me for some reason, I can still pick up Flickr and Murdockspace messages, but not Facebook. I bought a new PC from yoyotech last night. Thanks to Spoksey for specing that up for me. Normal service will resume soon.

News

From Sunday's Independent:
"At present, Britain does not routinely fingerprint airline passengers (see page 3 for the US attitude). But starting two months from tomorrow, several million travellers each year will have their fingerprints, and photograph, taken twice before being allowed aboard a domestic flight."
The referenced article about the US attitude is here.
I mailed this to a security consultant friend to find out how it came about. Apparently it's down to commercial reasons, so every one gets to access one set of shops. Wooo.

Rambert Dance Company's ‘Britney Breakdown’
(I did some acoustic work for Rambert a couple of years ago. Lovely people.)
"Rambert Dance Company's ever-popular Season of New Choreography is an exciting opportunity to see brand new work created by some of Rambert's versatile dancers. The company has a track record of nurturing young choreographers. One of these is Hubert Essakow, who has commissioned a new work from Richard Thomas for Adey to sing live with the dancers. You won't be surprised to know that she gets to sing the word "arse" quite a bit."
(You may remember Richard Thomas from sitting behind the piano on TMWRNJ and as the person who provided the music for and co-wrote Jerry Springer the Opera with Stewart Lee.)

Spotted

Filthy, muck-strewn white van on the M5 on whose back door a mischievous passing finger had scrolled, "Cleaned by the NHS."

Busses

Chatting to "That'll be the Day: The Musical: The Fleece woman" on the bus stop yesterday morning. Tells me about her job then asks what I do. I say I work for an engineering practice in the centre. "Is that an admin role?" she asks. What!? Look at me. Glasses. Beard. Carrying laptop bag. I'm an engineer you cheeky cow.

I sat on the bus today, reading The God Delusion, next to someone reading the Bible. Book II of Psalms to be precise. What a wonderfully secular society we live in.

Labels: Art, Literature, News, Personal, Secuirty, Spotted, Travel

:: Dan 31.1.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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A recent technical discussion in the office was sidetracked by discussions about the age of parts of the UK motorway network. Google to the rescue, we found ukmotorwayarchive.org, "the online encyclopaedia of UK motorway heritage."

Not only did it answer all of our questions, it even presented an animated time history of network (very slow loading).

Meanwhile, over at Chris's British Road Directory we find the intriguing C-road hunt and the brilliantly annotated work in progress that is the Motorway drive simulator. I recommend the simulation of the M5 Northbound from Exminster in particular, where the petrol is only 85p/ltr and where the first "Tiredness kills Take a break" sign is annotated "Ten miles between junctions here - it's a long way to Bristol and most people are going all the way. Please don't drift off!"

Stupidly geeky as it is, it is still strangely fascinating. I've often wondered if such a map existed as I've been driving, but until now never bothered to look it up. Much as we like to take the piss out of the boring old gits in Civils in the office the engineers' fascination with such systems cannot be denied. In Microserfs Douglas Copland has the computer programmers pouring over 1970s freeway design manuals, quoting aloud from them to each other. There he touched an important part of the engineers psyche that transcends discipline.

Labels: Computing, Engineering, Literature, Maps, Travel

:: Dan 23.1.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Sorry to geek out way beyond my normal bounds by posting about stamps. The quote below shows why I found this interesting.

Bond stamps: From Ruislip with love

"Each stamp offers a potted history of spy-novel iconography. The Pan jackets, with their understated secret codes and visual metaphors (Dr No's spider web, From Russia With Love's Fabergé egg, the Spirit of Ecstasy from Goldfinger's Rolls-Royce) were replaced by crass pictures of the spy hero centre-stage, in action, in the sea, and on a bar stool – themselves to be replaced by the Penguin Viking covers, beautiful retro images of the books' real selling propositions: chicks and baddies."



More images: Ian Fleming photos - Daylife

Labels: Art, Literature

:: Dan 30.12.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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As usual, here's my end-of-year reading list, of all the books I read this year, in order:

The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins
Secret Underground Bristol - Sally Watkins
The Crack in Space - Philip K Dick
Something Like Fire - Lyn Cook et al
Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson
Chocky - John Wyndham
Prelude to Space - Arthur C Clark
An Individual Note of Music Sound and Electronics - Daphne Oram
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
Them: Adventures With Extremists - Jon Ronson
Clans of the Alphane Moon - Philip K Dick
Freakonomics - Levitt & Dubner
Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine - Norbert Wiener
Now Wait For Last Year - Philip K Dick
A Computer Called Leo: Lyons Teashops and the World's First Office Computer – Georgina Ferry
The Sleeper Awakes – H.G. Wells
Microserfs – Douglas Coupland
Archispeak: An Illustrated Guide to Architectural Terms – Tom Porter
Confessions of a Crap Artist – Philip K. Dick
No Logo – Naomi Klein
Extreme Ironing – Phil Shaw
Slaughter House Five – Kurt Vonnegut
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K Dick
Solar Lottery - Philip K Dick
Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut
Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
The Road to Wigan Pier – George Orwell
Martian Time Slip – Philip K Dick (in progress)
The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins (in progress)

Labels: Literature, Reading, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 29.12.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I've just finished reading The Road to Wigan Pier. It contains a selection of derogatory references to stereotypical Socialists and Liberals - who drive others away from their cause with their eccentricity - as 'creeping Jesus, sandal wearing, vegetarians.' These comments culminate in Chapter XI with this brilliant quote:

"Any Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus form another summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say ‘whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian’. They take it for granted, you see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years onto the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity."

Things have changed a bit since the '30s haven't they.

Labels: Food, Humour, Literature

:: Dan 14.12.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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bldgblog on The future warehouse of unwanted books

Coincidentally I've been thinking about libraries recently. I was back up in Manchester over the weekend. As well as taking some time to do some Christmas shopping I made a point to take the time to wander around and take in the sights again, too see what has changed in the six years since I lived there. In places quite a lot had, in others it was reassuringly familiar. I loved wandering around Vinyl Exchange and Piccadilly Records and Afflecks Palace* again.

* Why is it full of 13 year olds? With their parents. Buying them pink studied off the hip belts. And that's just the boys.

After enjoying the refurbished Art Gallery and some bratwurst from the obligatory German market I found myself wandering into the central library for a look around (and to abuse the toilet facilities). I spent hours here as a student - the library, not the toilets - and love the building. An online student guide tells me it is "the largest local library in Britain, created in 1934 as a circular building based on Rome's Pantheon." So there you go. I'd love to spend a few hours in there with my camera. I'm fascinated by the odd little stairways all over the place, roped around the top as they descend into the floor, ending in a dark oak door marked "staff only" at the bottom.

John Rylands library is even more impressive in its Gothic splendour.

[more on architecture in Manchester]

With this fresh in mind I read the first link above and the related Guardian article - Inside the tomb of tomes

"This warehouse is being built to house the books and journals that no one wants. With the British Library's UK collection growing at a rate of 12.5km of shelf space a year, is the notion of the copyright library really sustainable?" [guardian]

"In other words, a relatively random piece of 100-year old legislation [the 1911 Copyright Act] has begun to exhibit architectural effects. These architectural effects include the production of huge warehouses in the damp commuter belts of outer London. These aren't libraries, of course; they're stockpiles. Text bunkers." [bldg blog]

It's a shame that this is what we have come to. At the exponential rate the data we produce is growing, how are we going to continue to store it? Digital storage seems the obvious answer but brings further problems with it.

"It's been estimated that €3bn are lost across Europe [over an unspecified time period] entirely due to bad management of digital files in libraries ... Would we have enough confidence to throw everything away? Would you?"
Rory McLeod, digital preservation manager at the British Library quoted in The Guardian

The Internet Archive sets about trying to solve the same problem for digital data.
"The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains almost 2 petabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. This eclipses the amount of text contained in the world's largest libraries, including the Library of Congress."

Google Books is trying to get searchable versions of books from many great libraries online.

We are warned that Data growth outruns ability to manage it [Computer Technology Review, Feb, 2002]

Wikipedia: Modelling Wikipedia's growth

And then how do we decide what data to store? Said copyright act states that everything printed should be stored. Do we need to do the same online? Right down to the live journals and the cat photos and the porn? Maybe so.

"The Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris is, for the first time, opening its extensive collection of pornographic materials to the public. Part of the contents of the forbidden section, officially known as "l'Enfer" (Hell) and consisting of pornography and erotica from the 17th to 19th centuries."
[via null device]

"Only bona fide academic researchers have been allowed access to the "L'Enfer" collection until now. The omnipresence of erotic or pornographic images in the modern world has persuaded the French national library that it is permissible, finally, to open the doors of Hell.

"The exhibition reveals some interesting, historical differences in erotic tastes. The earliest, 17th and 18th century, material dwells on the straightforward pleasures of the flesh. The celebration of the pleasures of pain – imposed or submitted – begins with the Marquis of Sade in the late 18th century. Pornography from the French Revolutionary period is mostly political, especially scurrilous allegations about the sexual appetite and imagination of Marie Antoinette. The 19th century concentrates on the blazing sexuality lying below the stern conservative or domestic exterior of life."
[via the independent]

If this too needs to be saved, then this all has knock on effects on the amount of server space required, which I thought about writing about until bldgblog saved me the effort with this follow-up post - Server Rooms and the Future of Humanism - which likens the environmental impact of server farm to the carbon footprint of an SUV.

"Is this the long-term historical irony of humanism – with its museums and libraries, its institutionalized nostalgia – that all these air conditioned warehouses and rural server farms don't represent the indefinite continuation of the humanist project but, rather, that project's future ecological demise?"

This brings me to further musing on the subject of data organisation. I've noticed that the job title Information Architect seems to be growing in popularity. Architects love to describe their discipline as "the most public of all art forms" (I believe this quote is attributable but I can’t remember to whom). It seems obvious that someone involved in designing computer networks would hope some of that glamour would rub off through use of the word.

One day this may not seem as jarring a comparison to the layman as it seems now. I'm sure if I stopped someone on the street outside now and asked them what an architect does the response would be something like, "they designs buildings and stuff, dun 'em?" [can you tell I'm in Bristol as I write?] Yet if I asked what an Information Architect does the responses will probably range from "someone who designs computers?" to "something to do with the internet?" to stunned silence.

As we move towards a future where our virtual existence is increasingly blurred with meat space will we increasingly see the people behind these systems as creating a form of public art? "That GUI is very modernist in style don't you think." "I like the gothic phone system they have in that building." "I though I'd add some Art Deco influences to this database." And so on. I've just re-appropriated existing stylistic names, when logically on new names created from no on will be appropriated in that way, but I hope you see where I'm coming from. This could be a two way flow, ideas from IT could be integrated in architecture too, creating skinable buildings, hyperlinking lifts, rss feeds of the people passing through reception, but I'm sure things like that are being tried already.

Labels: architecture, Literature

:: Dan 4.12.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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You find some enlightening reading material lying around in the office kitchen. Among the usual quick turnaround dross like a couple of days worth of Metros and my gig flyers there is usually some material with more staying power. The Amnesty magazines I've dropped there have always stayed and I know have lead to at least one sign-up (do I get a commission?). The FT appears from time to time. Strategic Risk magazine is currently liberally littered around the place, displaying headlines like "Kidnap – a booming industry"

My favourite find to date has been Chief Executive Officer magazine. Now, my understating of business organisation is not as clear as it might be - the view is obscured somewhat from my lowly position - but am I not right in thinking most businesses have just the one CEO?

Who left this here and for who to read? Surely it is only of interest to the person who bought (subscribed to?) it and a couple of people who are after their job. You'd think they wouldn't want to give them any pointers. The thing itself is bizarre. It's in the same high gloss finish as in-flight magazines, rather than the matt finish I like and am used to as is the current trend in fashion and graphics magazines. It's full of profiles of up and coming CEOs and statistical breakdowns of average CEO ages by industry (no mention of sex though). My favourite part of all of this though, is the wind down section in the back dedicated to improving your golf swing. No stereotypes reinforced there then. I'm not sure what I can add to that.

Labels: Humour, Literature

:: Dan 3.12.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I've collected up a lot of links that I have little to add to recently, so here's a link dump of things you might find interesting, useful or humorous:

The definitive Lorem Ipsum resource

Microsoft error messages in haiku form

The blog of "unnecessary" quotation marks

Vector Magic: image to vector converter

The 88 Fast Food Items Most Likely To Kill You
U.S. centric. I've never heard of most of these chains. And wtf is this at #54: "Jack in the Box Sausage Biscuit"? The mind boggles.
[via slashfood]

The Honeypot, West St, Bedminster

[via hijack]

For the musicians:
Octavcat remix competition
Expired Two Loan Swordsmen remix competition, but you can still grab samples if you want them. (Of course, you then shouldn’t use them.)
Virtual cct bent speak & spell

Labels: Electronic Music, Food, graphics, Humour, Literature, Typography

:: Dan 8.11.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Gearing up for the special edition directors cut Wired have this Q&A:
Ridley Scott Has Finally Created the Blade Runner He Always Imagined
via null device, who also pulls some pullquotes out of it:

J. Craig Venter
Geneticist
"The movie has an underlying assumption that I just don't relate to: that people want a slave class. As I imagine the potential of engineering the human genome, I think, wouldn't it be nice if we could have 10 times the cognitive capabilities we do have? But people ask me whether I could engineer a stupid person to work as a servant. I've gotten letters from guys in prison asking me to engineer women they could keep in their cell. I don't see us, as a society, doing that."

Doesn't this miss the entire point of the story. I don't think Dick ever intended any of his novels to be accurate representation of the future. He only wrote science-fiction because it was the only medium through which he could get his ideas published. The story is actually about the philosophical arguments about what is human.

From wikipedia:
Dick's inspiration for the central plot point involving androids which are indistinguishable from humans came from specific factors in his own life experience. First and foremost, he could not accept that the people who committed atrocities such as the Holocaust during World War II were truly human. He felt that they must be inhuman monsters who merely appeared to be human. While this was initially a figurative philosophical concept, Dick was a user of amphetamine, which he used to fuel his writing. As a result, he developed a high level of paranoia, and his notion about people appearing to be human when they were not became more literal.[citation needed]

Admittedly this is exactly the type of uncited reference that makes wikipedia unreliable, but having read it matches my understanding of it of the point he was trying to make.

Sci-Fi that tries to accurately predict the future is often boring. [cf. most Arthur C. Clark] Sci-Fi that asks 'what if?' is what is really interesting. The what if doesn’t have to be plausible, it's just a platform. It allows analysis of current thinking, be it scientific, philosophical, political, religious etc, from an outsiders point of view. That’s what makes it interesting as a medium.

Labels: Film, Literature, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 28.9.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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L.A.Times: Philip K. Dick's children work to ensure the influential author's cinematic legacy
[via lmg]

Labels: Literature, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 19.9.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I'm a sucker for anything related to War Of The Worlds, from H.G. Wells ground breaking novel to Jeff Waye's stunning musical interpretation. However, I've never been a 'graphic novel' person and this Dark Horse Comics ecomic version is a little unscrupulous with Well's text. Still worth a look though.
[via grom]

Labels: graphics, Literature

:: Dan 12.9.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Steampunk
Originally uploaded by pashasha.


dev.null quotes the Boston Globe's article on steampunk. Well worth a read if you're into moddified hardware or any of the science-fiction that inspires it (Verne, Wells, Gibson, Sterling, Stevenson etc.). Make sure you check the pictures, otherwise you'll just get the impression that all these people do it make up ridiculous names for things (eg "The Nagy Magical-Movable-Type Pixello-Dynamotronic Computational Engine") [login required on the BG site, some photos on Flickr here].

Terry Gilliam's film Brazil is also noted as an inspiration and it happens to be on BBC 2 tonight. The film is co-written by Tom Stoppard, which reminds me I meant to link to this story about Stoppard's time working on The Bristol Evening World, published from the very building I'm sat in as I type this.

P.S. Pashasha also has a great set of "Music Things" pictures.

Labels: Cyberpunk, Flickr, IT, Literature, Mods, Sci-Fi

:: Dan 29.8.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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There is thunder and lighting outside and the rain is so heavy it's setting off car alarms. And I'm off to Glastonbury in the morning. (Via Sheffield.) I won't be back until Monday. I would normally ask Dash / Skip the Budgie to fill in while I'm away but he'll be there too. I know Spokesy and Popcorn are both busy people but maybe if you're lucky maybe they'll pull something out of their asses. In the meantime I recommend you watch the festival coverage on the BBC and remember that they have an editorial policy of only showing the most boring middle-of-the-road tat so as to prevent too many people exploding in a fit of jealously. Or you could just laugh at all of the footage of miserable people trudging though mud. It look like that's the least of my worries.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test

Labels: Glastonbury, Literature

:: Dan 19.6.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Andy Farnell recently asked me, "Do you know about the work of the Barrons (Forbidden Planet) I'm trying to get hold of any research material on these kooky pioneers of "snuff audio". If you know of anyone who has schematics of their self-destructing synthesisers please gimme a shout."

If you can jump in here please do so.

Now, my knowledge of the Forbidden Planet soundtrack extended to knowing that it was a pioneering piece of work in electronic music and that it still sounds amazing today. Unfortunately I don't even own a copy, although I do have Jack Dangers brilliant reworking. After an initial google the first place to go looking is of course Wikipedia. Here I find a page about the couple, Louis and Bebe, and their work.

It's a fascinating story and by the time I'd read that I was just as interested to know about how they worked as Andy. I noticed the reference in there to a book Lewis took his circuit building inspiration from; Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948). A quick search on this and I found that it is still in print, see Amazon link below. Wanting to keep it authentic (and cheep) I bought a second hand copy of the second edition (1961) and awaited its arrival. (In the mean time the Forbidden Planet DVD and OST CD were added to my wishlist.)




When it arrived I found a book absolutely packed with the level of mathematics I thought I'd left behind at university and nothing in the way of circuit diagrams. I still read it in the hope of finding some insight, and struggled through the maths, which although I could just about follow and found it difficult to derive meaning from. There is still interesting material in there but something aimed at a more novice audience would have been better.

Below I've typed up my notes from reading it. They will probably only be of interest to someone reading a copy of the book themselves, someone who wants to know how much it would tell them about electronics and audio, and myself as there are a few things I wanted to research further. Page numbers refer to the 1961 edition.

Blurb: "...as readable by the layman as the trained scientist..." John B. Thurston, The Saturday Review of Literature.
p72. "We now wish to define [the intergral from minus infinity to infinity of K(tor) d epsilon (t, gamma)] The obvious thing to do would be to define this as a Stieltjes' integral, but [epsilon] is a very irregular fuction of t and does not make such a definition possible." Ha. Of course! Why didn't I see that?
Do you see what I'm up against here?
p86. On electronic circuits: "The details of its construction are more for the specialist in electrical engineering than for the reader of this book. They may be found elsewhere.¹
"1. We refer especially to recent papers by Dr Y.W.Lee."
'Recent' in this case is thought to refer to 1948.
p98 "In this book, we have avoided mathematical symbolism and mathematical technique as far as possible" Lies!
p102. Fig 2 shows a block diagram of a simple feedback circuit, much as you would find in any analogue electronics textbook.
p112. Figs 3 & 4, as above.
p114. Fig 6, as above with addition of interesting filter system. [Will add scan, please check back]
p145. Explanation and definition of a minority report as a fault finding system within parallel computing systems.
p142 a. Reference to correspondence with Bristol University (also on p199)
p142 b. Contains a lobotomy joke! You don't hear those everyday.
p146. Quotes Lewis Carol.
p154. Section about people with red hair and stutters (would this by PC today!?) plus musing on extinction.
pp158-161. Thoughts on free markets and game theory (although it is not referred to as such), and the problem with capitalism.
p162. Refers to Western exploitation of the "flesh-pot of Egypt." Funny how things don't change.
p164 & 171. Notes on chess computers. Predictions seem to have been accurate.

Incidentally, I didn't only start taking notes half way through. There really wasn't anything worth noting in the first half apart from a disparaging remark about scientific fields becoming too specialised and acoustics given as an example.

Frequently used terms I decided I ought to look up:
Gestalt
A priori
A fortiori

And finally, a reference to the Rorschach Ink Blot test inspired me to have a look for the images, as even when studying psychology I can't recall actually seeing them. The disclaimer on the above site explains why (scroll down the images if you're still curious).

Labels: Cybernetics, Electronic Music, Electronics, Literature, psychology, science

:: Dan 12.6.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Flatland [full text] by Edwin Abbott
+ more about it
"Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a 1884 novella by Edwin Abbott Abbott, still popular among mathematics and computer science students, and considered useful reading for people studying topics such as the concept of other dimensions. As a piece of literature, Flatland is respected for its satire on the social hierarchy of Victorian society."

Labels: Literature, Maths

:: Dan 15.5.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Popmatters interviews Steven Johnson about his new book The Ghost Map: A Street, an Epidemic and the Two Men Who Battled to Save Victorian London [paperback due in Oct]. The interview alone brings up some fascinating ideas and questions. If the book is anywhere near as inspiring as it sounds it'll be a good read. Remember, this is from the author of Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software so it should be good. Taking the "long zoom" look at society and networks. More intriguing in the connections it draws and more robust an approach than lateral thinking will ever get you. The Ghost Map concerns itself with the story of the cholera outbreak in Victorian London, allowing it to analyze that time of amazing flux in the same way Gibson and Sterling attempted (in fiction form) in The Difference Engine, although their attempt failed to pull it all together in the end. Evolving maps have always fascinated me too. The recent exhibition of London maps at the British Museum was mesmerising. I'm going to end this post now before I meander too much.
[via lmg]

Labels: Books, Literature, Maps, science

:: Dan 9.5.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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New York Times article
Wikipedia entry

In These Times - Cold Turkey
'Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: "Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.'
Done.
[via Heartache with Hard Work]

Labels: Literature, RIP

:: Dan 12.4.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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