palm creek highlights

• Rosie Burgess
• Ange Takats
  
• Courtney Young from Mackay (can't find link)

Palm Creek Folk Festival was nice. Went there from about 2pm until about 9pm on Saturday. Serious people arrive Friday afternoon and head home Tuesday. I can see why. Bumped into lots of people. Fire dancing was pretty good. Missed the flumes and hannah hartman. :( Saw dave (the hardest working man in show biz) on his way from one gig to another. Hung out with gai and charles. Got an autographed cd from rosie burgess. There's a different vibe with the youth festival component. It's nice. More soccer moms and dads than hippies, but in a good way. Kids having a brilliant time. And some killer high school bands, though they needed a decent bass amp. I will lend them mine next time perhaps.

no panflute

this flow chart can be applied to many things other than the pan flute. for instance:

• shower radios
• "crocs" or croc knock-off sandals
• hacky sacks
• tinted headlight covers
• saxophonists
  

post your list in the comments...

poem

night highway
visor up
no sound but wind roar and engine hum
no scenery
only road and oncoming headlights
senses alert
mind empty
alone

i remember to use high beam and the extra visibility gives me a little burst of exhilaration
my lips are sensitive to air turbulence variations
my cheeks are sensitive to fluctuations in air temperature
my left thumb is learning new controls

trusting the machine
trusting the road
not completely

Fwd: Audiosurf scoreboard alert - Dethroned: bye bye bad man

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Audiosurf Scorekeeper
Date: Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 5:52 AM
Subject: Audiosurf scoreboard alert - Dethroned: bye bye bad man
To: simon.baird@gmail.com

Audiosurf scoreboard alert - Dethroned!

You used to have the worldwide best score for: bye bye bad man by the stone roses

Now the Audiosurf player '-=[SSB]=- KirbyMan' has beaten you. Get back in the game and reclaim the top spot!

View High Scores for bye bye bad man by the stone roses

pics

the mayor made a speech

there were some cute choi kwang do kids

there was some maori poi dancing

and a band played

retweet

new sigur rós! gobbledigook! it's... different! and there's naked people! it's... I don't know..! it's... wow! http://youtube.com/watch?v=...
Update: That vid is gone now. Try your luck on youtube. Or please enjoy watching it here on the official site in some lame inaccessible video format (quicktime).

oops

I guess I left my iPod running. That would be too much Michael Stipe for anyone don't you think?

you might have seen this before but...

I think it warrants a re-run. it's a commercial for Tiddlyspot created by jacquelyn janis aka rambly

http://vimeo.com/864443

the dog is brilliant

Red Baron Seaplane in jeopardy

I heard that so-called "residents" are complaining about it and it might be shut down. What the hell is their problem? Actually I don't know. Perhaps they have a valid complaint. Maybe it killed four dugongs last week. Or maybe a red 1950s Grumman G-164 seaplane spoils the ambience on their multi-million dollar island-view balconies. But nevertheless the seaplane is a treasure. This blog post is a petition. Post a comment supporting the Red Baron and once there's a bunch of comments I will forward it to the newspaper or maybe the mayor. More photos here.

um...

Can someone chip NASA a few dollars so they can afford a colour camera for their next mars probe?
 

"This is an approximate-color image taken shortly after landing by the spacecraft's Surface Stereo Imager, inferred from two color filters, a violet, 450-nanometer filter and an infrared, 750-nanometer filter."

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/images/

looks like geohashing is going to be big

http://thymothyhuge.blogspot.com/2008/05/geohashing.html

http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/Main_Page

A pig's gotta fly

today I went for a ride in a pedal kayak like this

with little flippers underneath that swim it along when you pump the your legs.

this seaplane used to live on magnetic island but the locals didn't like it so it moved over to the strand.

we paddled up to it in the marina

and later got out of it's way. it was just like porco rosso.

when it takes off it kicks up a lot of water then banks left to avoid the cargo ships and the freight cranes. when it's coming in to land it flies along the beach lower than a kite.

earlier some parachuters landed on the beach but I didn't see them.

time to chuck the ankle breakers I think

mary's shoes

design

See/read:

1. obama poster by scott hansen
2. radiohead album wallpapers by bobby solomon

local people

It's this morning. I've ordered a coffee at a cafe at Parkside, one of my local mini-shopping centre. I've just bought a ham and cheese bread thing from Brumbies which I plan to eat for breakfast. Coffee arrives.

Sow face: Oh. Oh you can't eat that here. You'll have to take that outside.

Me: Really? I'm your customer. I've just paid $3.20 for a coffee. Could I just put the bag away? [it has Brumbies logo on the paper bag]

Sow face: Look you can't eat that here. People will think you can sit here and eat that here.

I'm a little cranky. It's early. I'm hungry. I haven't had any coffee. The cafe isn't empty but there are many free tables. My coffee is in a proper cup so take-away isn't an option. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to deal with this woman who I'm starting to think doesn't like me. Perhaps my hair is too long and I look like trouble in my motorcycle jacket...

Me: Are you SURE? Because I will probably NEVER come here AGAIN.

It's starts getting weird here. I can't remember what was said next. "Trouble? We'll have no trouble here.." kind of thing. So eventually I glance my coffee, take a deep breath and agree that I will put my food away in my bag and eat it later. The coffee was really good, damn it.

Ps, I can't believe I've been putting sugar in coffee for so many years. It took a couple of months to wean off. But it was so worth it. Sugar in coffee is like sugar in tea. It's wrong. You fools! Once I was like you! Say no to sugar! Enjoy the flavour!! Thank me later!!!

more python vs ruby

A:

import re
line = re.compile(r'\s*#.*$').sub('',line)

B:

line.gsub!(/\s*#.$/,'')


Guess which is which. Guess which one I prefer.

(Dear readers, I realise this is boring on numerous levels. Hopefully I will get it out of my system before too much longer... ;)

Update:
A₂:

line = re.sub(r'\s*#.*$','',line)

Much better. I can read that. Thanks Xavier!

life/game

Y: I've realised even in my game I don't want to get married. Half the girls in the village want to marry me now. It's the whole point of the game. But I'm staying single.

Me: [lolz] Your animals need you...

Friendfeed

Here's the thing. If I care about something I've already subscribed in my rss reader. If I don't care about it then I don't care about it. So what is friendfeed doing for me? I suppose it's a way to discover other feeds related to people I know. But how important is that to me? Not very. Scoble claims it's about the conversation, by which I take it to mean comments on friendfeed items. Who has time for that? Trackbacks and blog comments are the conversation aren't they? If you have something important to say are you going to put it into a comment on a friendfeed? Doubt it. So in other words it's "inconsequential chatter" which I can get plenty of elsewhere on the internet. I'm not saying friendfeed is a bad idea, I guess I just don't think it's going to be as big as some people are predicting.

Fwd: Processing.js for TiddlyWiki

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Simon Baird <simon.baird@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, May 14, 2008 at 10:15 PM
Subject: Processing.js for TiddlyWiki
To: TiddlyWiki <TiddlyWiki@googlegroups.com>


If you're not subscribed to Paul Downey (aka psd)'s blog you might have missed this:
http://blog.whatfettle.com/2008/05/11/tiddlyprocessing/

It's about Paul's brand new ProcessingjsPlugin which lets you use Processing.js in your TiddlyWiki. TiddlyWiki is now a pretty nice tool for playing with Processing.js. I think this is very cool.

I've made a demo/showcase/play site with a slightly tweaked (Paul, a patch is on the way) version of Paul's lovely plugin with some examples of a few different ways you can use ProcessingjsPlugin:
http://processing.tiddlyspot.com/

Background reading if you don't know what this is all about:
http://ejohn.org/blog/processingjs/
http://processing.org/

Simon.

--
simon.baird@gmail.com

More from Pythagoras Switch

Pi ta go ra su wi chi (Pythagoras Switch) seems like it might be a pretty cool show. Here is a compilation of another of their regular segments: And here's some more if you're as addicted as I am now: