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Passing clouds of inconsequential observations

Tag: A to Z Challenge 2016

  • Z is for Frank Zappa

    Who does not love tying divergent strands together to finish a project as a unified whole? I know I do…

    A recent Kickstarter project raised over a million dollars to help finance a documentary about Frank Zappa and preserve his archive of works (known as The Vault).

    Zappa died in 1993 but remains ever present (he has been featured in several A to Z posts here) as he has throughout my life since I was thirteen when he made quite an impression…

    “Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.”

    One may imagine that had he lived to see the growth of the web he would be all over it. Long before iTunes and MP3s were imaginable he proposed a system where music would be played down a phone line and the recipient would record the music on to tape. Such was his growing resentment towards record companies and their control over the production and distribution of music. And it always returned to the music…

    “Information is not knowledge.
    Knowledge is not wisdom.
    Wisdom is not truth.
    Truth is not beauty.
    Beauty is not love.
    Love is not music.
    Music is THE BEST.”

    From Cage and Varèse to Tuvan throat singers to Reggae to Doo Wop he was fascinated by it all.

    He was one of the first to own a Synclavier but was frustrated by its limitations – things that today one can achieve on even a modest laptop computer.

    But why would you believe anything I say…

  • Y is for You

    Who does not love random strangers reading their random posts? I know I do and would like to thank those that have taken the time to visit here – probably hoping to find something interesting but usually finding not very much at all (that was one of the most popular posts!).

    visitors

  • X is for OS X

    Who does not love a good computer operating system? I know I do – every day.

    As the classic Mac OS grew in to an ever growing tangle of code it was decided to find a replacement and start again. Several options were available and a likely contender was the Be system but ultimately Apple decided to buy NeXTSTEP which had been created by NeXT the company that Steve Jobs had started after leaving Apple – effectively bring Jobs back to Apple. NeXTSTEP was reworked in to a new version of Mac OS. As it would be the tenth version, was based on a UNIX system and was a departure from the last version Mac OS 9 it was called Mac OS X rather but still pronounced 10. The name was later shortened to just OS X. It is now expected to revert back to Mac OS so as to fit in with iOS, tvOS and watchOS.

  • W is for World Wide Web

    Who does not love browsing the web? I know I do and frequently do so. In a little over twenty years the world wide web has grown to become as integral a part of our lives as the water and electricity supplies. In that time it has also lost its clunky name and is often now referred to as the web or the Internet as it is the most familiar face of the Internet.

    This week we have checked bank accounts, done shopping (groceries, fabrics and yarns, baking equipment, books), checked when the courier will be delivering goods, applied for jobs, watched TV, listened to radio programming, played games, applied to audition to appear on TV, listened to music, watched film trailers, checked news, weather and travel details, written and read blogs, video chatted with friends and answered questions from strangers, checked library book status, and all the incidental daily diversions one may encounter. All thanks to the ubiquitous web. How did we ever manage before?

    The future is not what it used to be….

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