Saturday, January 18, 2014

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious,...

Settle back for a full hour of the Allan Holdsworth Trio recorded live at Leverkusen in 2010. (Thanks Walker.)

In honor of Brian Eno's Grammy nomination for Lux, here's the website for his Day of Light archive. This was a live streaming of the album coupled with listener submitted photos themed around "play of light."

Naked Truth, one of my current music infatuations, has a new website (and hopefully an new album in 2014). The site offers videos and streaming music so check it out.

Call it a youthful indulgence, but here's a 1975 live recording of Do You Feel Like We Do.

You can listen to Frame by Frame from the upcoming Live in Tokyo album from The Crimson Projekct.

Creepy. An artist makes 3D prints of a person's face based on DNA she collects from discarded objects like chewing gum and cigarette butts.
Galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (center) is 3.5 billion light years from earth. This image from Hubble, with assist from Spitzer and Chandra, shows galaxies that are 12 billion light years away in the background. Take a moment to think about this.

Or maybe you'll like this little paradox: galaxy NGC 1277 is only 230 million light years away but all its stars were formed at the same time - about 10-12 billion years ago.

Legislation is moving forward to rename NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center as the Armstrong Flight Research Center after astronaut and first man on the moon Neil A. Armstrong.  While Armstrong's legacy is worthy of honor you have to consider the implications of relegating Dryden's name from the FRC to the Western Aeronautical Test Range (soon to be the Hugh L. Dryden Aeronautical Test Range). There's precedent for this when NASA renamed Lewis Research Center for senator and astronaut John Glenn.

What's displayed on computer screens in films is often laughable. There's always some overly graphical percent complete countdown with huge fonts and swirling animation and flashing red text at the end. But often the computer programming that appears onscreen is real. For examples, see source code in TV and films.

Fort Worth people: did you know you can wear your Tex-Mex pride with a t-shirt from Benito's?

LEGO ALBUMS might have interested me more if I recognized more than a handful of the covers. Plus there is at least one iPhone app and one web app that do something similar.
Things not to say when giving a speech or presentation. #5 Can you read this? Or my favorite variation, "This is probably too small or illegible for you to read but..." Instead of what not to do, speaking.io presents a complete game plan of things to do for public speaking.

More marketing wisdom: booth babes don't work. #1 They are intimidating. Sorry engineer guys but you have trouble talking to me let alone a smokin' babe who's proactively dressed. (I'm certain booth babes are very nice people.)

If you've ever wondered how generous your employer's 401(k) plan is you can get some details here. For example, the average employer annual contribution is slightly over $4,000. The average employee's account balance is slightly under $100,000. There's also a link where you can look-up any company's 401(k) plan.

Colorizing historical photographs does absolutely nothing for me except for the tiny part that thinks it's wrong.

If you are sufficiently in-tune with your emotions and your body you already know this is how you feel after reading this blog. If you aren't in-tune then you should probably look at the body atlas to see where emotions affect the body.
The Academy Award nominations for animated feature and short are in and I've seen precisely zero. From what I've read online, The Wind Rises and Get a Horse! are favorites.

Here's a perfectly sad example of heavy handed service from our friends at the federal government. In this episode, the Customs service "mistakes" a virtuoso's hand-made flutes for agricultural bamboo and has them destroyed. I bet these same idiots would mistake a Stradivarius for a ukelele.

And while we're on the topic, a judge has ruled strongly in favor of the plaintiff in the case of a person who was mistakenly added to the no-fly list

Visa Mapper shows you which countries require a visa before you visit.
Just a little WWII story about a P-51 ace who flew under the Eiffel Tower in pursuit of the enemy. And just a little video of an F-14 flyby at dusk with full afterburner.

Good news. The Spirit of Washington, the B-2 that crashed a couple years ago on Guam has been repaired and returned to service.

One more: video from 1964 of a B-52 flying without a vertical tail (not on purpose).

OK, just one more. A trip down memory lane when the idea of supersonic transport aircraft was all the rage.

"Several mammalian species spontaneously align their body axis with respect to the Earth’s magnetic field (MF) lines in diverse behavioral contexts." Allow Mr. Science to translate that for you: dogs align themselves with the earth's north-south axis while pooping.

This list of manners all kids should learn by age 9 might just as accurately be titled Things Most Adults Still Don't Understand. #12 A hand written thank you note can have a powerful effect.

Bask in the loveliness that is Aviation Week's annual photo contest.
Beer has always been an integral part of college life so this makes sense. You can now earn an Associate in Applied Science of Brewing at Blue Ridge Community College.

Or teach yourself a little Computer Vision with these online notes from a course at Cornell.

I'm sorry, but The Brothers Karamazov does not belong on a list of must-read philosophy books.

Ever wonder who would play you in your life's movie? Sigh. Ben Affleck.

Learn the lingo of winter. So far this year I've learned cobblestone ice and now frostquake.

Average auto miles driven
I feel good about not yet having bought a Blu-ray player now that they're predicted to be dead in 5 years. One other thing on this list of doomed tech products surprised me.

Can a personality quiz guess your politics? It says I'm 78% conservative, 22% liberal. You judge whether that's accurate or not.

One more: how long will your survive after the apocalypse? For me, 5 years.

For Russians visiting the U.S.A: "Women play a greater role in business. Often they insist to be treated exactly as an equal and not as a lady." They insist! Egad!

Apparently, Meryl Streep thinks a Disney ate her baby. If you heard or heard of Ms. Streep's anti-Disney rant at a recent awards ceremony you should know that she has virtually no clue what she's talking about.

Fart captured on FLIR imaging. photo flir-fart_zpsbbeee36f.gif
I just want to know why this fart captured with FLIR imaging this has the Travel Channel's branding.

...than to be able to decide. ~Napoleon Bonaparte

4 comments:

Unknown said...

77/23. You are more conservative than me! DBG

John said...

Don't be offended if I say that surprises me.

Unknown said...

1) Allan Holdsworth is the perfect background while I try to get some bills out today;
2)78/22 Conservative for me as well. Surely we differed somewhere;
3) As often as you mention this Benito's place, it must be good. On one of my frequent forays to TCU, I'll have to check it out!

John said...

Curtis, if you don't have Blues for Tony yet I recommend it as your next Holdsworth purchase.

Benito's is a nice hole-in-the wall place. The wildcard is the pico. It's either pleasantly spicy or inedibly potent depending on who made it and when.

If you're ever in the Magnolia area for lunch, give me a call.