Interweb

Play time

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A few days off from work presents one with the exciting prospects of doing absolutely nothing. Of course actually doing nothing would be a far too difficult, bordering on the impossible, task. It may appear to others that what you are doing is nothing although you are fully engaged in some activity that, seemingly, has neither purpose nor produces anything worthwhile. The description by [W:R Crumb] of his working patterns strikes me as being pretty good template…

“It’s necessary to “waste” a certain amount of energy in order to allow new ideas to emerge from the random spinning off of doodles, scribbles, worthless foolishness, playful notions, silliness, aimless meandering, wandering down dead-end streets, a few of which may turn out not to be dead-ends. As I say, this is necessary activity… It’s not healthy to always be devoted to a specific direction, a certain idea… The mind becomes rigid, stifled… Sooner or later it’s necessary to break out, to goof off… This isn’t to say that during these relaxed periods you should allow yourself to be passively robbed of your energy [by others] such as TV, books, etc… Part of the time, at least, must be devoted to randomly wandering about in a creative way which may possibly lead to new discoveries within yourself!
It’s difficult to explain… forget it…”

There is a splendid talk by Stuart Brown from a recent TED conference about the importance of play…

So that will be me for the next few days… just pottering about doing a whole lot of “nothing”.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted. – [W:John Lennon] (attributed)

The Revolution Run Around – Guess the number

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I have been messing around with the Revolution software which is generally pretty neat but occasionally deeply frustrating – which is not necessarily a bad thing. It is based on Apple’s old [W:Hypercard] so I had some inkling of how it would/should work but the documentation (as is often the way with such things) can leave you wandering around in a circle, so close and yet so far, but the support forums are very, erm, supportive so I did manage to put together (and finish!) a (very) simple guess the number game to see how it all fits together.

The Guess The Number game
The Guess The Number game

The Revolution software does generate versions of your creations for some other non-Mac computers but I do not know if they actually work (the alternate versions not the other computers 😉 )

Download the Linux version or the Mac OS X Version or the Windows version.

Perhaps I need a separate page to document my explorations…

Waits to Buckley via Groucho

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Barry recently posted about the publication of the book about [W:Tom Waits] that he and Sharleena – these are not their real names 😉 had illustrated. This inspired me to see what Spotify had to offer in the Tom Waits section. Quite a lot apparently. There was a suitably eclectic selection featured in the Tom Waits’ Jukebox including a track from the [W:Lord Buckley] album A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat which Frank Zappa released on his [W:Straight Records] label. Thanks to the wonder of the Interweb we can enjoy Lord Buckley and [W:Groucho Marx] sparring together. Splendid.

Safari 4

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The new Safari 4 beta refused to launch for me. Plug-ins are the usual suspects with browser failures. I was using the wonderfully useful Glims and a quick search of the Interweb revealed a couple of lines to paste into the Terminal….

sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Glims/

sudo rm -rf /Library/InputManagers/Glims/

A quick Restart and Safari 4 is working – this very post is coming from it 🙂

Safari
Safari

If you need to get back to version 3 there is an Uninstaller on the Safari 4 [W:.dmg] which will put you back to where you were.

Glims Updated: 25th Feb
A new version of Glims is now available.

Not that we didn’t know something was cooking at Apple but we didn’t expect it to be released so fast. We apologize for any problems we may have caused and hope you keep enjoying our plugin.

Indeed we shall.

Spinning around in the Spotify catalogue

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Whilst enjoying the wonderfulness that is Spotify one can come across the occasional cataloguing anomaly. Clicking on an artist’s name offers a brief biography and a list of Similar Artists. Normally this is a great way to explore but….
Clicking the minimalist composer [W:Steve Reich] gives you the New Orleans jazz band leader [W:George Lewis (clarinetist)] as a Similar Artist. Perhaps I am missing something but I do not really see the connection. That George Lewis should not be confused with this [W:George Lewis (trombonist)] who can be found on the Nine To Get Ready album but clicking his name linked with the album takes you back to the other George Lewis :-\

The Leaves were a 1960’s band who recorded “Hey Joe”

The Leaves – Hey Joe

which [W:Frank Zappa] parodied in Flower Punk and [W:Jimi Hendrix] later reworked.

Hendrix – Hey Joe

Spotify has the right biography….

The Leaves - Hey Joe
The Leaves - Hey Joe

But the wrong [W:Leaves (Icelandic band)] music. Or vice versa.
:-\

The Spotify blog keeps you well informed and a recent listing of new additions (yes I am the kind of person who scrolls through them all 😉 ) included the [W:Sun Ra] Second Star To The Right album (a favourite of mine). Searching Sun Ra fails to find it. But searching for the album’s title does find it. Apparently it is by Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Arkestra which is obviously why searching for Sun Ra fails to find it :-\

Homeschooling and baking controversy spoof

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An anonymous editor added a splendid story to the [W:Wikipedia] [W:Homeschooling] article. It was quickly removed but I post it here for prosperity:

In 2001 the Wonderbread company introduced a class action lawsuit against the US government–specifically targeting homeschool families. The company charged homeschool families with saturating the market with their homemade, wholegrain products and hand churned butter. Spokesman for the Homeschool Commission for Fair and Equal Baking Practices, Leonard Norton, defended American Homeschooled families by saying: “Homeschooling and wholewheat baking are almost synonymous. It would be a tragedy to see honest, hardworking, homeschooling Americans see their right to wholewheat baking taken away.”

Note the Spotify link below – this stuff isn’t just thrown together 😉

Spotify – 21st Century Radio

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Wowie Zowie! OK – we are talking kid in a sweet shop here 🙂 but Wow! Spotify is a free music streaming service that changes everything. Imagine your own personal radio station. You select the playlist without the inane disc jockey and (so far) minimal advertising. The music is presented in an [W:iTunes] like interface with a wonderfully eclectic selection. There are a few glaring holes… of course [W:Gail Zappa] has missed yet another boat so there is no Frank Zappa although there is a little Dweezil (pass along nothing of interest here 😉 ). There is no Beatles (but there is an interview with their hairdresser!) nor Pink Floyd. In general you can find what you are looking for. Sometimes you are spoilt for choice. With over one hundred versions of [W:It Don’t Mean a Thing] which do you select? Let’s listen to them all – It’s free!

Spotify
Spotify

How they are going to make this pay remains a mystery. There is an option to upgrade to an enhanced (advertising free) Premium service for £9.99 a month. Hmmm… 120 quid a year to listen to the radio (even a personalised one – did I mention [W:Escalator over the Hill]) seems a bit steep. Right clicking on a title does reveal a Buy From… option but this is always greyed out; perhaps I am clicking on the wrong tracks (no commercial potential 😉 ) or this is a feature to be added later. But with such an extensive library available would you bother to buy anything anyway? I guess only if you needed to stick it in your [W:iPod] and take it away with you.

Right clicking also allows you to add a track to your Playing Queue or you can copy the address of the track and send the link to someone else with a Spotify account to enjoy.

Fun things to do…. Type random words into the search box and listen to everything that comes up. Cabbage = 86 tracks. Browser = 1 track.

Explore. Enjoy.