Sun - August 12, 2007

Andy Ihnatko is one funny dude—and not Fake Steve



I actually find it a little tiring to read a whole article of his because of the energy burned up being amused.

Posted at 06:47 PM    

Fri - April 23, 2004

The Book Exercise


Fun with random book excerpts!

Via Due Diligence:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

“In general, the names of bindings do not affect the semantics of a program, but are simply used to improve readability.”

From Andrew Shalit’s “The Dylan Reference Manual: The Definitive Guide to the New Object-Oriented Dynamic Language.” Those of you who know I’m fond of the Dylan programming language may think I went out of my way to locate it, but in fact, the DRM was at the top of the pile of books closest to me at the time I read the rules.

Note that page 23 of the DRM has some example code, etc., so it may depend on your interpretation of the rules, but the above is what I consider the fifth sentence from the text on that page.

Posted at 11:17 PM    

Mon - April 12, 2004

GarageBand Now Playing


A brief note about Garage Band and some links to excellent examples of what people are doing with it.

Apple’s GarageBand has been an immediate success. There are already several websites with a large collection of loops and music created with it, including iCompositions and MacJams.

Punjabi in the House rocks and has a unique sound.

No Regrets is especially impressive technically, because it was done entirely with a Mac providing instrument sounds, and the vocals were recorded using the built-in (ie. “cheap”) microphone on an iMac.

3am Jam really shows off the production quality possible with GarageBand.

Also, here’s an excellent Chicago Sun Times article by Andy Ihnatko, who describes GarageBand as “Tetris for songmaking”.

Posted at 12:27 AM    

Michael Moore Speaks to Easiest Audience Ever


My impressions of seeing Michael Moore speak in Santa Cruz.

We saw Michael Moore speak in Santa Cruz. Talk about a biased audience, eh?

He was great. He made us laugh, he made us cry, he made a room full of liberals fall in love with him, boo him, then rally behind him again. Better value than any movie I’ve seen in the last few years, and he’s given me some inspiration and hope for the future of America.

Posted at 12:26 AM    

Yo ho! Yo ho! A pirate’s life for me!


My impressions of Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Saw Pirates of The Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl tonight. Okay, actually it was last night, as it was the 10:05pm show and it is after midnight as I write this.

Good movie. Some very fun moments. A little long and slow, though. I think it needed a different editor. A lot of the action scenes suffer from too many cuts, closeups, and shaky handheld camera work that I’m sure the filmmakers thought would make them more exciting, but in the end just make a lot of it fairly generic and hard to follow.

In his movies, Fred Astaire insisted that dance numbers be filmed with full body shots and few cuts, so you can see the dancers doing what they do best. Action movies should follow suit and show the action so you can see it. Good action speaks for itself.

Posted at 12:26 AM    

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