linkdump for 2006.11.30
-
Cool blog discussing unusual and historical maps.
-
Oh, so straightforward, but so non-obvious…
linkdump for 2006.11.29
-
This reminds me of the Edmund Scientific catalog I used to drool over as a kid.
-
It’s great this is available online as mp3s. I love Bill Laswell stuff from the late seventies and early eighties, but the stuff from the nineties – my introduction to Laswell – is a little too new-agey or something.
-
The BitTorrent Store will offer content via BitTorrent from studios like 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate, MTV Networks, and Palm pictures when it launches next year.
No Comments
linkdump for 2006.11.28
-
“Newfound files detail how UT-Austin police tracked the lives of Sixties dissidents.” Lloyd Doggett, Janis Joplin, and Kinky Friedman were all under surveillance.
-
Subject area experts seem to find articles about their field more reliable than non-experts.
-
The US Army has introduced a strategy game that pits a futuristic American army against insurgents… the only problem is that the Americans can’t lose.
-
The Bush administration waged a semantic battle after NBC News decided to term the conflict in Iraq a “civil war” yesterday.
No Comments
order prints
I didn’t realize that Flickr users can send photo printing jobs to their local Target photo center. I just spent about ten minutes uploading images to Yahoo! Photos, since I clicked through the Target.com website. (It didn’t occur to me that Yahoo! owns Flickr.) Perhaps if I read the Flickr blog, I would know about the integration with Target’s photo services. This would have saved me some time, since I had all of the photos I wanted to print uploaded to my Flickr account.
Well, maybe. When I upload images to Flickr, I almost always downsample them to 1024×768 for a few reasons. I don’t have a Flickr Pro account, so I’m limited to 20MB of transfer each month. I never hit that threshold, but images are about 2MB fresh of my camera, so I would hit it pretty fast if I didn’t downsample and optimize my images. In addition, the largest size Flickr will display for us Flickr Amateurs is 1024×768, so I don’t see much point in uploading larger images. Obviously, while I want to downsample and compress for the Web, I want the highest quality for printing, so, if I print directly from Flickr, I’ll be printing with images with a lower quality than I would ordinarily use for printing. Target is offering ten free 4×6 prints for new users right now, so I’ll see how these Web-optimized images look.
I’m starting to hit the threshold where I may need a Flickr pro account. In addition to spending a bit too much time adjusting photos in Photoshop, I may hit Flickr’s 200-image rule. I can upload more than 200 images, but only the 200 most recent images will display. I’m not sure that $24.95 a year is worth it. (Perhaps one of my kind readers will buy me a subscription.) I’ve got more to say about my mixed feelings about Flickr, but I think I’ll stop here with an image I uploaded yesterday. Be sure to click through and see the notes my friend Eric added.
No Comments
linkdump for 2006.11.25
-
Punch in your Zip code, and this little Web app will show you a map of broadcast facilities in your area, and what interests own what media properties.
-
Among them include the ability for media studies instructors to lawfully circumvent DRM for compiling clip tapes.
-
An educational group has created a “gold” version of Wikipedia for burning to CD and use at educational institutions.
No Comments
play was not reviewable
Oklahoma football fans certainly haven’t forgotten the game against Oregon early this season. In the fourth quarter, officials on field blew a call on a fumble and gave possession of the ball to the Oregon Ducks, rather than the Sooners, which actually recovered the football. This led to an Oregon scoring drive which handed the Sooners their first loss of the season. There is now an instant-replay rule in top-tier college football, but, unlike the NFL, only a dedicated replay official is able to watch tape, and these officials have their hands tied in terms of what they can do. They can only overturn a call from the field if they have “indisputable video evidence,” that is, the call on field stands unless the official has access to an angle that shows the call was wrong.
I sure do feel bad for Gordon Riese, the Pac-10 official who served as the replay ref for that game. In the month after the game, he told the press that he couldn’t sleep or eat and had received death threats. (Boo, Sooner fans.) Now, in an article dated November 23 – over two months since the game – he tells The Daily Disappointment Oklahoman that he knew the Sooners should have taken possession of the ball, but the rules of the replay system kept him from making the correct call. He told The Oklahoman “I can’t let it go,” and I have to feel bad for a guy who’s obsessing over a football game months later.
Reading this news is still pretty frustrating after watching Oklahoma parked in the bottom of the rankings after the losses to Oregon and Texas. OU would probably be held in higher regard if it were a one-loss team. Still, after Texas lost to the Texas A&M Aggies yesterday, OU can play for the Big XII championship – and a top-tier bowl game – if it beats the flagging OSU Cowpokes. Playing a BCS bowl might be a nice end to a complicated season.
No Comments
linkdump for 2006.11.22
-
Videos reveal how street artist Banksy conducted his pranks, such as dropping Guantanamo “detainee” dummy behind a fence at Disneyland.
No Comments
linkdump for 2006.11.21
-
Clay Shirky elaborates on how he thinks the notion of “social facts” applies to peer-produced projects like Wikipedia and Larry Sanger’s emphasis on expertise will grind Citizendium to a halt.
-
A 1939 recording of Cary Grant’s vocal performance of the FCC’s station identification rules.
-
Cross-platform ,Mozilla-based media player that seemingly supports every media file out there. This looks promising, but it’s only up to version 0.2.
-
This amusing spoof of “Encyclopedia Brown” actually contains a useful explanation of how to read Wikipedia critically.
No Comments
getting away with it
Much of the blogosphere is understandably outraged at Universal Music Group’s decision to send cease-and-desist letters to a variety of parties over a hilariously lame adaptation of U2’s song “One.” Produced by Bank of America managers, the adaptation celebrates BoA’s acquisition of student credit shark retail bank MBNA and replaces lines like “You act like you never had love” with banalities like “do you like the Yankees?”
I agree with the blogs that Universal is being ridiculous and that the leaked video is more of an embarrassment to the bank than it is any kind of viral marketing campaign, as the media conglomerate asserts. However, this blogger found something else about the blog-event to be grumpy about. I saw two blogs point to a cover of the BoA adaptation performed by comedian David Cross and guitarist Johnny Marr. Public Knowledge identifies Marr as “the guitarist from Modest Mouse,” and WMFU’s Beware of the Blog also identifies him as the Modest Mouse guitarist.
I’m probably the least hip guy in the blogosphere, but I associate the name Johnny Marr with the groundbreaking 1980s postpunk band The Smiths, as well as Electronic and The The. “Could there be two Johnny Marrs?” I thought, “One known for literate indie pop and one in Modest Mouse.” Of course, I queried Wikipedia for Johnny Marr, and the disappointing article on Marr revealed that the guitarist joined Modest Mouse earlier this year. While I suppose it is factually true that Marr is now a member of the veteran act, wouldn’t it be better to identify him as a member of The Smiths, which is surely one of the most influential bands of the 1980s? I imagine that the policy dorks and NPR listeners who read these blogs are more familiar with The Smiths (and perhaps even The The or Electronic) than Modest Mouse.
2 Comments
fall y’all
A few weeks ago, my mother asked me if the leaves were changing color in Austin. I told her that most of the trees I see are live oaks, and so there’s really no color event like you may see in some cities. In Tulsa, where I grew up, the leaves simply turn brown and drop, unlike Carthage, Missouri where the maple trees would turn a brilliant red each year I went there for a high-school band competition. What the trees in Tulsa lacked in hue, they made up for in volume. My parents have about 35 full-grown trees on their lot, and leaf removal became a dreaded autumnal ritual.
I’d forgotten about Austin’s elm trees however. When I was down in the Barton Creek Greenbelt at the end of October, I was pleasantly surprised to see bright yellow elm trees preparing for winter. Oddly enough, I only got one lame elm picture, but I snapped quite a few pictures of the fall colors for my mom.
