New RadioHead single

Harry Patch (In Memory of)

Thom Yorke, one of my favorite creators of melodically interesting sounds has put out a new song called Harry Patch and debuted it a few days ago.

As usual the Radiohead guys are bypassing labels and selling the song through their website and all proceeds go towards a good cause.

As for background on the song, Harry Patch was the last living UK World War 1 Veteran, he was 111 years old. Radiohead released this single in order to make sure he is not forgotten. The song is a tribute to Harry, as well as a fundraiser for the Royal British Legion.

The Sun reported that the family was enamoured over the song, “Our family is very touched thatRadiohead has reached out to its followers and especially the younger generation through the single that echoes” and that Harry “.

Patch was buried on August 6th 2009 in Wells, Somerset, with a public service taking place in Wells Cathedral.

“All I can do is be me. Whoever that is.”

– Bob Dyaln

Politifact

I heard about this site while listening to an interview on NPR. In this interview the host asked thier guest some questions as to why “they are so angry” at thier local senator. The guest replied that he is a liar and signed bills to allow a rediculous measure in an unwanted bill. She was irate at the situation, what was interesting is how the host then turned to a guest from Pilitifact who seemed to have researched the case and found taht many of the angry protesters points were driven by rumors as the references to documents they made were unsubstantiated. Now I am perfectly aware that Politifact is yet another level of abstraction from the “real truth” just like any other news agency. What is interesting to me, after I browsed around thier site is the fact that they give you thier opinion and consolidate every reference and statement into linkable sources on the right hand gutter of the web page. It’s like having your own senate secratary gathering the facts for you so you can make your own informed descisions on a topic.

They give a summary of statment or claims made by our politicatns and then exmine their refernces and sources and rate how true the statememnt is on a “truth -o-meter”. Their meter varies from basic true or fals all the way down to “Pants on Fire” for those claims made that are not only exagerated but baseless.

They also show you links to all the references and sources they reveiwed so you can digg into the claims yourself and form your own opinion. The site definitely fills a need and will ecome popular enough so that our politicians are more careful when trying to exagerate claims just to gain the viewers attention. ALso a nice reference for Politifact is thier wininnging of the 2008 pulitzer for national reporting after only being luanched in 2007.

Boxee

Isaac just demoed a great peice of software for the mac or PC called Boxee. Boxee is loaded on your computer and plays online video from hundreds of sources including videos from your local hard drive, hulu, youtube, and digg. Simply hook your computer up to your TV and watch these shows and click through options and menus with your remote. Best of all its an open source project so downloading is free and you are able to improve the product or add your own video modukes as you please.

Since Boxee allows you to login to your favorite social networks you can see what friends are watching while you watch and more. The bads: since it’s open source and downloaded software when a web site that boxee pulls from is changed those interfaces in Boxee fail as well until you download a newer build. Its a great tool and relly merges computer with tv experience, definitly a project that has been needed for a long time and meant for the open soure community.

See more about what Boxee can do below:

The Night

Nights are so off putting at times. The complete lack of sound and motion. You are left to you own thoughts and there are not very many ways to allow your mind to discern what is real from what is abstract and what is soley ones own consciousness. I’m not talking about hallucinating or a type of day dreaming, although I could see how easy it would be to fall into a state of delusion, but I’m talking about basic thoughts of life, self, interests, problems etc. The mind begins to swirl and there is no rock or benchmark to bind your mind to as it begins to float away from its dock. When there is no community or bustle around you to remind you that the sun will indeed come up, people must obey the law of gravity and you are not alone, then your world all resides within your own mind and the mind has no bounds. Your empty and dark surrounding becomes the perfect home for you mind to extend into, the world becomes an extension of your consciousness and it becomes less and less clear as to what is in and what is outside your thoughts.

Are the problems of the day as major as they seem? Why after I fall asleep and awake to the morning sun does the intensity of my thoughts or their urgency fade? Maybe the night provides the perfect backdrop for the mind to begin to set itself free and take over the consciousness and drive it into the surreal. Its dark, quite, and no one is around to challenge its attempts to break free. Right now time seems endless and my worries are loose ended and indefinite, however logically I know that tomorrow all will be back to normal and all i need is some sleep.

It is amazing how difficult it is for my day-self to completely understand the emotions of my night-self is experiencing and vice versa. A scary movie in the woods at 2 am is not the same at 2 PM but it is the same woods and I am the same person. Who needs drugs to escape reality when reality is so volatile already between night and day. A man jumps off of the top of the building and commits suicide at night, if he only waited till day break would he be far from those thoughts only hours into the morning? More importantly how much of what we think is fact is nothing more then a delusion, our hatred for another country or race? Do we at times of fear and pain fall into our own versions of these dark and lonely nights, where our minds ever so subtly break away from our cast to reality? Only 2 years ago Iran was full of anti- democratic people, stocks had no ceiling, houses were an easy ticket to personal wealth and so on. Did day just finally break? How often are our minds pulled from reality because of the darkness of rhetoric, and media. If I didn’t remind myself of the day on a night like this I would surely be lost. Lesson learned Descartes, lesson learned.

Screw Microsoft

Okay so only a year ago or so I was a PC MS guy. Since then I have adopted apple like many of you out there for various reasons that I soon shall post, but mostly for iPhone development needs originally. Since then I have set up 3 mac mini’s and 2 imacs. One of the mac mini’s i set up as a remote machine that i screen share to that works as a server for our company. I havent had a single problem and was able to screen share, transfer files, share music, and use any usb or network basd periphreal from printers to ipods to itunes. I was even able to transfer files onto my PC laptop instantly and it took much longer to do the exact same process from the laptop to the mac.

I havent really thought to much about it until tonight. Tonight I installed a new PC for my parents becuase 1) They wanted it cause they are use to it and 2) It was under $600. This one machine has taken me hours to set up, and I am so frustrated right now beucase printing was erroring out, not the pronter but the print option would hang. Installing and startng up the machine felt like an eternity and honestly $1500 does not sound so expensive when i think back to how easy all of my other mac based installs have been. I was ready to punch a baby in the face after this MS/PC set up process. Maybe I;’m spoiled by the MAC and I should be more patient with the PC/MS version of computers….or maybe having to be patient with your computer is f’en dumb. Oh, one more thing is it the PC’s fault or is it MS’s. I wonder what would happen if I installed the OS X on this hard ware, is it all in the software all in the hardware, or both?

“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

– Thomas Edison

Balsamiq, an interesting taste of things

Balsamiq.com is a web application (that also comes in a downloadable software version) that allows users to quickly create mockups for web sites and iphone products. I was skeptical at first, but 2 things made me pretty happy with thier approach to this common problem.

The first was the choice they made to exagerate the concept of fuction over form. Their toolset, or stencils are purposly quasi-poorly hand drawn graphics that have a major lack of attention to detail. As the owners of Balsamiq.com put it, “it encourages critisism” … “so that people don’t get attached to ‘that pretty color gradient'”. The secod thing I liked after playing around with the app a bit was the way they decided to implement the editing process of these draft like stencils. Most implemetations of design toold have properties panels that allow you to change many aspects of a feature, but not only do those properties get complex but since you are given many properties you try to use them in various combinations and often times doing so has unwanted results i.e. certain border style doesnt work well with large boxes with italic text.

At balsamiq.com the stencils are all pre fab and standard, not much is expected of them other then being better then just a place holder. Content is, for the most part, the only thing you can change and they use a simple text edit box when that content needs to be changed. When you double click a stensil the data is presented in a markdow laguage. i.e. buttons that are hard to align and choose width and colors are nothing more then a comma delimited list in edit mode — (button 1, two, and three). When you click of the text box the buttons are created for you.

They truly stuck to the motto of just use the bare essentials and KISS paradigms to set the expctations of the designers and reviews while making the process of creating dead simple. Which in the end created a great mockup tool, allowig you to focus on what you shoud be focusing on ayways — workflow and content placements.

Give it a try @ http://balsamiq.com/demos/mockups/Mockups.html

“Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.”

–Albert Einstein

Tech Alert: FaceBook Ads

“Facebook occasionally pairs advertisements with relevant social actions from a user’s friends to create Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends. These respect all privacy rules. You may opt out of appearing in your friends’ Facebook Ads below.
Appearance in Facebook Ads”

To find the settings and change what FaceBook and advertisers can do follow the instructions below:

Click on SETTINGS up at the top where you see the log out link. Select PRIVACY. Then select NEWS FEEDS AND WALL. Next select the tab that reads FACE BOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes. (REPOST and let your friends know).