it's my (old) blog: August 2010

Friday, August 27, 2010

more bon iver

skinny love on letterman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRWbdZltELg

how to be alone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs
A video by filmmaker, Andrea Dorfman, and poet/singer/songwriter, Tanya Davis.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

the song that got me into 'for emma, forever ago'

Bon Iver - Re: Stacks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePatJIwB-sI

very beautiful. try it if you haven't already

Update:
Apparently it's about poker? Hmm.

Update:
It's not just about poker.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

the government wants to force cigarette companies to use plain packaging for cigarettes, ie, no colour, no logo. the cigarette companies are running commercials in protest. they claim it won't work. follow my train of logic here: cigarette companies care about making money. so if they care about this, then they think they will make less money, which means selling less cigarettes, which means it will work. so by caring about it they are proving they think it will be effective. no doubt the tobacco companies (or their advertising teams) are aware of this paradox so their campaign is based on the premise that shop keepers will have difficulty picking out the correct pack. they have formed some kind of bogus 'shop keepers alliance' and made commercials supposedly on behalf of them. will anyone buy this? who knows. maybe it would help if they said coloured packs would help stop the boats.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Yak shaving. Literally.

No, really.

Perhaps you can use this in your next PowerPoint. :)

(This was on "Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe". Cool show btw).

(for non geeks: "yak shaving")

f--k yeah democracy

three seats in doubt:

they were calling brisbane for the libs early on. not so apparently. my vote is in there. it's being counted and recounted. fuck yeah democracy.

scrapbook entry

Sunday, August 22, 2010

horses on mary st

mind. blown.

Friday, August 20, 2010

iWatch?

this isn't real.

or is it?

sweet fixie

Notice purple chain.
This fixie belongs to Marcus the coffee maestro at Bunker Coffee in Milton.

Thoughts on Whyday

See: http://whyday.org/

I read a sarky tweet something like 'oh, let's delete our blogs and remove all our code in honour of _why'. It make me pause for a second. Let's face it, what _why did was pretty uncool. In fact you could say it was massively douchey. (There i said it). So the tweeter has a point.

In some ways the date of _why's online self destruction seems more suited for mourning, perhaps a minute of sombre and respectful silence.

But, putting that aside, Whyday is (or should be), a celebration of the other things _why is known for, not the one last unpleasant (and unfortunately most headline grabbing) thing.

I read other tweets like 'gotta do some ruby for whyday'. This is cool, sure, but I think people should know that _why wasn't really all about ruby. He was about being creative. He was about beautiful code. (Which explains why he liked ruby a lot ;). He was about the joy of programming. And the sharing of that joy.

Also, did anyone cringe slightly reading this: "(just as Camping and Hpricot led to Sinatra and Nokogiri)". It comes close to implying that our creative and beautiful code is mostly good for being thrown away and replaced by practical and mundane code. (No offence to Sinatra and Nokogiri people). (As well as that, _why's final tweets seemed to imply that he was a bit down about the Hpricot/Nokogiri thing).

Anyway, here is my clock demo (as tweeted earlier):

clock demo now more awesome and less buggy http://bit.ly/ayLkC0 #whyday

And some why the lucky stiff linkage:

Thursday, August 19, 2010

fixies

i've recently become aware of the 'fixie'. have fixies been slow to
catch on in brisbane, or am i just out of touch with local hipster
cyclists? (likely). i'm taking about fixed wheel bicycles. these are a
trend now i think. only they have to be old and restored or converted.
new is not cool for a fixie. here are some sydney fixies outside uber
cool surry hills coffee shop, remy and lee's, possibly belonging to
remy and lee themselves. (i sense a correlation between hipster coffee
shop owners and fixies).

Saturday, August 14, 2010

new song of the week (last week to be honest)

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HNY0rx2fw4

here they are on letterman (warning: hippies)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb9jY8yAxgs

perhaps the best mandelbrot zoom ever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sSm53Q9Jws

Friday, August 13, 2010

here's some nice joanna newsom (on kimmel)

http://stereogum.com/468422/joanna-newsom-on-kimmel/news/

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

does this service exist?

it's a mail digitising service.

you set your postal address to, say

Box 182745

C/- Digipost

123 Whatever St

Somewhere 4000

then, for a few dollars a month Digipost will scan every piece of mail you get and send it to you by email.

their web site lets you access all your old mail digitally, suitably tagged and indexed, (maybe ocr'ed)

the web site also gives you a 'shred it' button which destroys the hard copy and a 'really send it to me', for when you get a new credit card, or your car rego sticker

the shred it button has some nice sound effect when you click it and maybe an animation.

there is some kind of eco friendly paper recycling done (at least the marketing claims this ;)

there is also an iphone app (of course).

this would be great if you wanted to travel and still be able to pay your rates bills.

of course you don't use your Digipost address for package deliveries or birthday cards from your grandma, only for bills and statements.

i think this would be pretty useful.

less this...

update:

yes it does and it looks exactly like i imagined it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BtAnp9EXuU

looks like they are targeting businesses mainly

and there are others, reportedly less good. see here... (thanks @unixbigot)