Passing clouds of inconsequential observations
Himself As Martine was sprouting some [wikipop]alfalfa[/wikipop] seeds I borrowed some to make a [wikipop]time-lapse[/wikipop] movie of their sprouting. You can watch the live updates on the Alfalfa Cam page as we capture individual images to build the time-lapse movie or just come back here:
Martine says “A watched alfalfa seed never sprouts”.
Alas I will probably not be able to get to the Science Museum for the Daphne Oram exhibition and marvel at the Oramics Machine…
Having set up the [wikipop]BBC Radiophonic Workshop[/wikipop] Daphne left because they were not being adventurous enough fast enough for her liking. It is a wonderful quirk that she should have been followed into the workshop by the equally delightful [wikipop]Delia Derbyshire[/wikipop]…
Daphne struggled on to build the Oramics Machine which could “read” squiggles painted onto [wikipop]film stock[/wikipop] and converted them to sound. [wikipop]Norman McLaren[/wikipop] had experimented with such ideas for some of his animations…
Meanwhile over the Atlantic [wikipop]Raymond Scott[/wikipop] was experimenting with electronic circuits to generate sound (and employing the young [wikipop]Robert Moog[/wikipop] to build some for him)…
You can download a Software Oramics Machine from the Daphne Oram website. It always seemed to me to be something that would make a great iOS app…
Others seem to have had the same thought 🙂
With the arrival of Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) the App Store has seen a flurry of one star reviews…some of the more lucid ones consider all changes a personal affront and complain that they break the industry standards…
Alas the opportunity for such one star rants has not existed for very long so we need to fill in the blanks from the past…
I have just purchased [wikipop search=”Macintosh 128K”]the new Macintosh computer[/wikipop]. Where are the arrow keys and control key? How am I supposed mark out and edit a block of text? These Control key combinations are an industry standard…
I have just purchased the new [wikipop search=”iMac G3″]iMac[/wikipop]. Where is the [wikipop]floppy disk[/wikipop] drive? What use are these new fangled [wikipop]USB[/wikipop] ports? Will anyone ever develop any
peripherals for them? Why can’t we have industry standard [wikipop]SCSI[/wikipop] and [wikipop]Serial ports[/wikipop]?
Etc. Etc. You get the idea.
Just over a week ago we installed Lion on our modest iMac (2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 128MB) and the MacBook (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256MB). Apart from the lack of AirDrop on the iMac all seems as expected. No slow downs or crashes as some one star reviewers have seen. Even the 2TB Western Digital external drive continues to chug away. Natural scrolling seems natural although the addition of a trackpad is probably a good idea… Which seems to be the point some people are failing to get. [wikipop]Steve Jobs[/wikipop] likes to quote the ice hockey player [wikipop]Wayne Gretzky[/wikipop] “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has beenâ€. Watch a young child using an iPad
and it is pretty clear (never mind the sales figures: iPads=9.2 Macs=3.95 Millions in the last 3 months) just where the puck is heading. Of course some people may prefer marking out and editing blocks of text with some obscure control key combinations.. so perhaps this process started with the first Mac which failed to provide such keys to force programmers to think in the new graphical way rather than continue with what they already knew. Today’s children will grow up finding the idea of dragging a mouse around on a desk to manipulate something on the screen as equally silly and archaic even if it was once an industry standard…
A splendid selection of 1966 – 1968 [wikipop search=”The Fillmore”]Fillmore[/wikipop] recordings from Wolfgang’s Vault today.
On the 24th June 1966 [wikipop search=”The Mothers of Invention”]The Mothers[/wikipop] were supporting [wikipop]Lenny Bruce[/wikipop]. Bruce was not on his best form and would be dead by August. In 1969 [wikipop search=”Frank Zappa”]Zappa[/wikipop] would release an unedited recording of Bruce at the December 1965 Berkeley Concert (This has subsequently been reissued several times and can be found on [wikipop]Spotify[/wikipop]). Zappa was a fan of [wikipop]Sea Shanties[/wikipop] and had owned [wikipop]A.L. Lloyd[/wikipop] and [wikipop]Ewan MacColl[/wikipop]’s Blow Boys Blow (another Spotify link). He had given the record to [wikipop]Captain Beefheart[/wikipop] which led to a long running dispute between the two as to whether it was a gift or a loan. The record included the song The Handsome Cabin Boy
which Zappa often used in concerts as the theme for an improvisation:
Listen to more Mothers of Invention at Wolfgang’s Vault.
As the previous piece about tram testing has been so popular I pass this on as a public service announcement. According to the man working on the testing today the line will be open tomorrow (Thursday 7th July). There is nothing to indicate this is the case…
…either at the station or on the Metrolink website other than the addition of Chorlton in the station listings…
Update: Now confirmed on the Metrolink site.
Metrolink’s new Chorlton line opens for business
Passengers will be able to travel on Metrolink’s new Chorlton line from Thursday 7 July.Services will initially run every 12 minutes from service start to service end, Monday to Saturday. The Sunday 12-minute service runs between 9am and 5.30pm, with a 15-minute service from 6.58-9am and 5.30-10.52pm.
The journey time from St Werburgh’s Road to St Peter’s Square is approximately 15 minutes.