I feel quite honored to have been ask to suggest a post to LP Cover Lover, and it has come to pass: LP Cover Lover · Hey, Joe
All I did was mention it here, and I got noticed.
I’ve mentioned the Captain Kangaroo record before, here.
I feel quite honored to have been ask to suggest a post to LP Cover Lover, and it has come to pass: LP Cover Lover · Hey, Joe
All I did was mention it here, and I got noticed.
I’ve mentioned the Captain Kangaroo record before, here.
I carped about BookTour.com the other day in William Gibson Book Tour (Updated) and I will note that they have now updated the William Gibson page, and the RSS Feed thereto with updated information. There’s also a page and a feed just for Vroman’s. That’s a nice feature. I’ll back off being too harsh on BookTour, but they are cutting it awfully close on these things. For an author you might really like why else would you check an RSS feed if not for timely information. I think they were about a week late in getting Gibson’s information in there. They definitely need better mechanisms to get data in.
But enough about them, and more about William Gibson — you may, perhaps, be interested to read:
Terry Gross interviews William Gibson, 1989 (transcribed by me a long while ago)
If you want to hear the story of how I heard of Gibson in 1983 check out Cyberpunk Guy, 1988.
This morning I saw this post on LAist about Google Maps Street View in L.A. That works well, but despite the fact that I live approximately in Los Angeles I was more interested in San Diego views. And downtown, my old stomping grounds is pretty well covered. When I was 18 years old (uh, that’s like 19 years ago hoss) I worked at the Central Library, pictured here inside the Street View interface at fullscreen:
I like what they’ve done here. The interface has a lot going on, and despite some unsure clicking on my part, I managed to get around okay. I like the convention of having the marker you place change when you pick it up. The animation here reminds me of editing a Mii on a Wii, where you sort of pick the avatar up and he sort of struggles, as though you’ve picked up a rabbit who’s not too pleased to be picked up by the scruff of her neck.
I did some searching around San Diego with this and noticed the old AVENCOM offices at 10th and G were missing, it looks like they were demolished and replaced with housing. More condominiums it looks like. I was hoping to see Leah’s and my former place on 21st Street but there are not photos that far east of downtown.
I poked around Los Angeles too, it was fun to see some sites. There’s a lot of photos in there. The thing I keep coming back to is that this kind of “screen scraping the world” as in the Amazon Maps views that came out some years ago (doing basically what Google’s done here, but a bit clunkier), geotagging of photos on photo sharing sites, etc. … will only get more real-time, not less. I suppose there will be a view on these maps sometime for “live view” at some point. You might be working in your office and browse around to see what the line looks like at the local bakery, or directly see the traffic cameras on your commute.
None of these science fictional seeming technologies sounds crazy to me. And the fact that they don’t sound crazy indicates to me that they’re coming fast.
Leah’s response when I sent her a link to lpcoverlover.com — a blog that shows the covers of old LPs was “talk about a blog with a singular purpose.”
Today there’s one I really like:
And Leah’s reaction was “oh my god. that is awesome.”
And of course she’s right. Soundtracks I understand, but soundtracks for reading? This is a new and incredible concept. Well, maybe it’s not actually a new concept, since this is decades old. But still.
I have spent more time than you may be able to imagine looking at old records — LPs, singles, 12″ singles, cassettes, CDs — and there are way more than you can imagine out there. I have the patience to look at every single record in a record store if I have the time. I just let the torrent of visual input — imagery, artist names, titles, the age of the record, how it has worn — wash over me. I would not be a fan of Dead Can Dance or Roxy Music were it not for running into their records in record stores and wondering “what is this?”
lpcoverlover.com features all kinds of records. ALL kinds. It’s a wonderful blog to let wash over you.
For some weeks I’ve been enjoying the vicious and rather dirty blog uncov — which attempts to deflate Web 2.0 hype by exposing the crap that passes for clever technology, they are particularly cruel to TechCrunch, who does seem to hype each and every dumb startup and site to the moon.
I was delighted to find that the uncov guys Ted and Kyle actually have dayjobs. It’s called Persai and it’s new. They haven’t launched anything, but they are collecting all RSS and Atom feeds. Like many startups, they have a blog. I noticed that ArtLung blog feed url is contained in their feed corpus. Quite an “honor” to be one of the 118524 feeds included. Though I suspect they got the feed url not by lovingly visiting my site along with more than a hundred thousand others; I suppose they spidered technorati or one of the other blog metadata aggregators for feeds.
Just after I looked at the corpus yesterday I checked out this post on Sam Ruby’s site where he spidered the whole thing to see the availability of the feeds in question.I believe that I’m one of the Status Code 307: Temporary Redirects, since I’m using FeedBurner for my feeds these days. My feed is still available at the old URL, but not a simple 200. This is in my opinion an appropriate code because I want the latitude to move to a different service. Smart feed parsers should be able to cope with this.
Most of this is not of interest to my own readers, but I will point out that other great snarky websites dedicated to talking about the rampant mediocrity in web dev are Coding Horror and WorseThanFailure.
My brother-in-law Rick has a new show at the Ruth Bachofner Gallery, entitled Zzyzx Road, as part of that show several new paintings have been placed (by me) on the Paintings page on his site. I find Rick to be an interesting character. At once he reminds me of my father to some extent, but he’s so not. He’s just a man, and a father, and a brother-in-law. I enjoy the fact that his paintings have mathematical precision, but inlaid with primal and base native arts. It’s interesting to see the id and the superego play so easily together.
The Ruth Bachofner Gallery is located in Santa Monica. I’m hoping to get down there before the show closes September 1st. If you’re in the L.A. area, I surmise it’s worth a look. As a bonus, I can tell you that Bergamot Station is worth visiting anytime.
Lyrics for the week:
Focusing on nowhere
Investigating miles
I’m a seeker
I’m a really desperate manI won’t get to get what I’m after
Till the day I dieI learned how to raise my voice in anger
Yeah, but look at my face, ain’t this a smile?
I’m happy when life’s good
And when it’s bad I cry
I’ve got values but I don’t know how or whyI’m looking for me
You’re looking for you
We’re looking in at other
And we don’t know what to doThey call me The Seeker
I’ve been searching low and high
I won’t get to get what I’m after
Till the day I die
Meta: Is it just me, or does it seem like I am blogging again? Enough of this vox and twitter and flickr an especially delicious bull. I will continue to use the services that have utility, but they take my eye off the ball as far as what I’m trying to do online. Look on my works, ye mighty, are unfocused… despair!
At lunch today I won $20 on a bet. I’ll take possession of the dough at lunch tomorrow.
The obscure knowledge in question was “Who wrote the book that Total Recall was based on?”
The answer is of course Philip K. Dick — the novelette was “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” which I actually purchased as a chapbook at Comic-Con in 1990 and promptly lent to my buddy Chris Greazel. I think maybe I should ask for that back. Hah. Somehow I think that might be lost.
The counterclaim was that it was Robert Heinlein. Laughable.
Anyone want to take me on in trivia? I could use need the money.
Touring with his new novel Spook Country. I think I can make it. Leah, want to go with me? We can make a night of it!
Friday, August 10, 7:00 PM
Vroman’s Bookstore
695 E Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, CA 91101
UPDATE: By the way, booktour.com, you were USELESS in bringing me this information. You have one event listed for Gibson, and are not updating it. What good is a customized RSS by author if the data is not current? You’ve got work to do before I rely on you for anything. One might think that Gibson in particular (having coined the word “Cyberspace” twenty-some years ago) would merit current data, but one would be disappointed in that. Fans love this crap, why is there no easy way for me to suggest the book tour dates? Your teeny “Add events to BookTour” link wants me to be an author or publicist. Boo! That’s crap. Why not accept suggestions then have a vetting process? Or accept them and list them as “NOT CONFIRMED” as you build your database of bookstores and other venues where writers speak? Then it’s simple enough to edit that stuff. I was excited to read about your site on The Long Tail blog of Chris Anderson, but I’m disappointed by this.