another weblog

Hilarious!

[via MAKE Blog]

David Byrne, the former Talking Heads front man, has been doing some awesome stuff in recent years. After releasing a few so-so solo albums, he spent time touring with the Arcade Fire, which was damn cool. Now, he is exploring new instruments, like ENTIRE BUILDINGS.

The installation is an old pipe organ whose keys are wired to devices that bang and strum on different parts of an old ferry terminal in New York. It’s not much for pop music, but it seems to make some interesting tones.

[via Hack a Day]

I just blogged about Snackr. And then I was thinking “I wonder if I can just add a group from google reader, that way it won’t display items I’ve already read.” It turns out you can, with just a little bit of chicanery.

Step 1: Open google reader

Step 2: click on “Manage Subscriptions”

Step 3: click “Tags”

Step 4: identify the group you want in Snackr

Step 5: make sure the tag is marked as “public” If it isn’t, click on the rss icon in the line so that it turns orange.

Step 6: if the group is public, you should see several options for it on the right side of the page. Click on “view public page”

Step 7: a new window will open up. Copy the url of this page and paste it into the “Add Feed” box in snackr.

That’s it. Relatively simple.

Snackr: an rss ticker for your desktop.

tip for mac users: go to spaces options and add snackr to every space so it won’t disappear when you change desktops

Snackr runs on Adobe’s AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), a pretty cool program that promises to help merge the online and offline worlds.

Last night a guy I used to work with went home, put a gun in his mouth, and ended his life.

I can’t say I ever really knew him. We weren’t friends. I’ve seen him 2-3 times, and then only in passing since I left that workplace, but I am shocked and grief-stricken nonetheless.

This is the closest I’ve ever been to suicide. I’ve known people who have been touched by this specter but I have never felt it myself. It is a strange kind of loss. Senseless and maddening and leaving me wondering what even I, I who am so far removed from him, might have done to prevent it.

I can’t help grieving also for my former co-workers, his family, everyone who was close to him. Their grief must be a thousand fold greater than mine and I weep for them as well as for him.

Health care workers are strange in their ability to see so much loss and death and let it roll away quickly because we are not connected to the person. But when we face the loss of someone close it all comes flooding back, focusing the rage and the sadness of a hundred losses into one.

I hope for everyone involved that they may come to terms with this loss and not be haunted by it.

I have acquired professional-level skills in career counseling, journalism, rose breeding, screenplay writing, and strong amateur-level skills as an actor and play director without ever having taken a course in any of the above.

And how he did it is unbelievably simple for anyone with some time and a lot of self-confidence. For the record, this guy is a top-of-the-field career counsellor and world-class rose breeder.

WWF as in World Wildlife Fund. Not that other thing.

More here.

The world’s data centers are projected to surpass the airline industry as a greenhouse gas polluter by 2020, according to a new study by McKinsey & Co.

Now, I’ve heard a lot about data centers using gobs of power, but this is incredible. Hopefully, knowing this beforehand will help influence the industry to become more efficient. Maybe even building new data centers in colder climates and reusing some of that heat.

In the meantime, if you use web hosting, go with a green provider, like dreamhost who buys credits to offset it’s carbon emissions.

Nike makes some great commercials.

It was never going to happen.