Peter Vidani
I’m really glad the default Photoshop pattern is bubbles because I use it all the time and having it as the default cuts so many wasted tasks out of my day. Thanks Adobe!
June 2009
Listen
Rhapsody in Blue — Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
George Gershwin, composer
In the first 5 seconds, when the clarinet* goes way up, it sounds exactly like a subway train taking off. I thought this the first time I road on the trains and still hear it every time. I’m not crazy.
*correction!
“Steve Swasey, Netflix’s vice president of corporate communications, confirmed late Friday that BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos broke the 10 percent barrier. “This has been terribly exciting. It’s like watching the Belmont Stakes, the Preakness and the Indy 500 all at once — for geeks.”
—Winning Teams Join to Qualify for $1 Million Netflix Prize (via DF)
Listen
Massive Attack - Black Milk
Things that my toilet's flush valve chain is made of:
- 2 rubberbands
- half of a plastic spoon
- a torn portion of a t-shirt
- 4 inches of what looks like used to be the handle of a backback
For those that don’t know, the flush valve chain lives in the tank of your toilet and connects the lift rod to the flush valve. You see, when you push down on the handle of your toilet, you’re raising the lift rod, which in turn lifts the flush valve at the bottom, which allows the tank’s water to flood the bowl. (What you do is still disgusting).
Most flush valve chains are made of metal, like everything else that has chain in its title. Mine’s not. One of the best parts of subletting is that you get to fix things yourself, and stick your hands into the less filthy half a toilet once a week and reconnect the t-shirt to the plastic spoon, moments after what is then considered the 2nd most shameful thing you’ve done all day.
“Yes,” he nods proudly. Then speaks more Polish to me, even though he knows I won’t understand. I love this about people; I’ve found we all do it. I smile and nod because his energy is contagious and, “No, I don’t understand,” seems like such a sad thing to say sometimes, so I nod more and hand him back his pen and he says, No, for you, and I put in in my back and he laughs and claps and they all speak more enthusiastically and I figure I probably just married him without my knowing.”
—meaghano: oh yeah, before I forget
Listen
Plastic Little - More Tongue Less Teeth Ft. MF Doom (Nosaj Thing Remix)
- Brian: hey, know anybody with an 8 bedroom home for rent for the rest of the month?
- Brian: because we're no longer allowed in the property
- Peter: you know I actually don't
“Then, I heard it — the click of the mic button from the back seat. That was the very moment that I knew Walter and I had become a crew. Very professionally, and with no emotion, Walter spoke: “Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check?”
—From a short piece by an unknown SR-71 pilot on being the fastest guys in the sky. (via Craig Hockenberry) (via matthewb)
Keep Google’s calculator handy for this one.
Organizing large music collections
tumblr.quisby.net
jstn:
My advice regarding library organization is always unpopular and always ignored, but hear me out here: delete most of your music.
It’s a convincing argument — especially the external hard drive option.
I hate it when reasonable questions get answered like this. Q: “What’s the best way to keep my fingernails trim?” A: “Cut off your hands!”
I have the exact opposite philosophy: I never delete music, unless it’s something I especially loathe. I’m the kind of person who, when something pops into my head that I haven’t heard in ten years, I want to listen to it immediately. Since we live in the future and storage is cheap, I can actually do this, and I fucking love it.
Everyone consumes music differently, which is fine. If you’re the type of person who only cares about the shit Pitchfork reviewed last week, by all means, delete it this week. On the other hand, if your collection passed four digits of gigabytes a long time ago, deletion probably isn’t in your vocabulary.
Another gem of advice from the same guy: “If you deleted something you ripped from a CD, rip it again next time you want it.” Seriously? Why rip it at all?
One more: “MP3s are a fantastic way to archive your music (but FLAC and OGG are better)”. No, they’re not. Esoteric formats, even if they’re super OMG high fidelity, are usually a terrible choice for long-term storage of any kind of data. MP3s are about as universal as it gets, and they support ID3 tags, which is an organizational godsend that FLAC and OGG lack.
I was reminded of something Alex Payne wrote a little while ago, albeit in a different context: “If you want to store data of differing types within a lightweight organization system, I encourage you to check out the filesystem.” That’s how I do it. I’ve only got ~50GB in my iTunes library at any given time, but I keep everything else in a simple hierarchy on an external RAID. No fancy groupings or playlists, just a folder for each artist with a folder inside for each album (or loose tracks). That’s it. iTunes starts to choke after a few thousand songs, but the total filesystem limit on a Mac is in the billions. You’ll never hit the ceiling.
Does it take time and effort to organize? Of course, but I loves my musics and I think it’s time well spent. The trick is to organize as you go. New downloads go into an “unsorted” folder, and every couple weeks I spend half an hour making sure everything is tagged properly and dropping them into the right folders. I used to be OCD about the filenames, but I realized eventually that having the right track numbers is good enough as long as they’re tagged right.
Sorry for the rant. This is an issue close to my heart :)
I’m with Marco on this. I delete music all the time, and it’s not because I need the free space. I do it because recently, in the past year, I have begun listening to tracks outside of playing the album straight through. This could be playlists, or more importantly, a completely shuffled library.
I used to really dislike listening to tracks without listening to the entire album. Even if the track I really wanted to hear was #8, I would start from the beginning. I still do this with albums I love because I believe a good artist puts thought into the assemblage of an album.
And really, a lot of music I bring into the library is music I’m experimenting with, or bringing in from word of mouth; not something timeless that I’ll crave or even remember a year from now.
Safari 5.0
Rumor is that in Apple’s next major browser release, they’ll finally be able to block the Netflix pop-up on imdb.com.
Today some girl scouts asked me to buy cookies from them, I told them my daughter was selling them too. I don’t have a daughter. MLIA
“While some people in Hoboken remember Frank Sinatra as a lonely child, one who spent many hours on the porch gazing into space, Sinatra was never a slum kid, never in jail, always well-dressed. He had so many pants that some people in Hoboken called him 'Slacksey O'Brien.'”
—Frank Sinatra Has a Cold
Listen
Ryan Adam - My Winding Wheel
