Relevant History

Anyone have any experience with Tagbot?

I ran across this program yesterday, and wonder if it's worth trying. I'm pretty blown away by Spotlight, and am not sure I need to tag stuff on my Mac, or would really use the tags. Still, I love being able to tag stuff in other contexts, so maybe I would (particularly if there were a way to standardize vocabulary across my del.icio.us, technorati, flickr, blogs, and files on my computer).

Palo Alto Apple Store, 3 p.m.

People waiting in line for the iPhone.

via flickr

Notice the TV trucks there, too. Today, the line is the point. And now that Paris Hilton is out of jail, I guess the TV people have to go cover something else.

via flickr

[To the tune of Electric Light Orchestra, "Telephone Line," from the album "A New World Record".]

Technorati Tags: Apple Store, Palo Alto

Wifi at Barrone

I'm getting a wifi connection at Cafe Barrone. It's probably from one of the offices upstairs, but if it's provided by the cafe, this could be a small social disaster. Within a week, they're going to have people in tents, living around the fountain, shuttling between Keplers and Barrone.

And if I didn't have children, I'd be one of them.

[To the tune of Amy Winehouse, "You Know I'm No Good," from the album "Back to Black".]

Technorati Tags: barrone, cafe, menlo park

Sand vs. sharks

Via the excellent RISKS list, a great example of how we misjudge dangers: more people have died from falling in sand holes than shark attacks:

More than two dozen young people have been killed over the last decade when sand holes collapsed on them, report father-and-son doctors who have made warning of the risk their personal campaign.

Since 1985, at least 20 children and young adults in the United States have died in beach or backyard sand submersions. And at least eight others died in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, according to a letter from the doctors published in this week's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine....

[T]here were 16 sand hole or tunnel deaths in the United States from 1990 to 2006 compared with 12 fatal shark attacks for the same period, according to University of Florida statistics.

Basically, it sounds like any sand hole deeper than your waist is a problem. Some people die when the sides cave in and bury them-- which can happen really quickly-- while others just fall in break their necks. Yuck.

[To the tune of Sound Tribe Sector 9, "What is Love?," from the album "2004-12-31 - Tabernacle".]

Technorati Tags: beach, risk

Christgau goes to Graceland

The other night I came across a phenomenal review that Robert Christgau wrote of Paul Simon's classic album Graceland in 1986.

Though it's giving in to the album's most suspect tendencies to begin this way, I'm here to tell you that Paul Simon's Graceland is a tremendously engaging and inspired piece of work. If you like him thorny it's his best record since Paul Simon in 1972, if you like him smooth you can go back to There Goes Rhymin' Simon in 1973, and either way you may end up preferring the new one. Simon-haters won't be won over--his singing has lost none of its studied wimpiness, and he still writes like an English major. But at least Graceland gets you past these usages, because it boasts (Artie will never believe this) a bottom.  For Simon, this is unprecedented. Graceland is the first album he's ever recorded rhythm tracks first, and it gives up a groove so buoyant it could float a loan to Zimbabwe.

Alas, that last line is still all too timely....

Amy Winehouse

I've recently been listening a lot to Amy Winehouse. I heard one of her songs-- the unapologetically ribald "You Know I'm No Good"-- on the flight to Singapore, and recently found a note about the song in the margins of my notebook. Some of her songs are just okay, but the best ones are jaw-dropping: like Oleta Adams or Jessica Andrews, she has a capacity to deliver astonishing performances, embedded in a sonic mix of soul, reggae, mbaqanga, and electronic (a combination that reminds me, of all unexpected things, of some of Bruce Cockburn's work). Really something.

[To the tune of Amy Winehouse, "You Sent Me Flying," from the album "Frank".]

Back to work

I took all day yesterday off to stay with my son, and am now back in the office.

For some reason, he decided that the most interesting thing to do yesterday was to watch me play a Harry Potter XBox game. Partly it was a chance to wander around Hogwarts-- he was directing me a lot-- and partly I think he liked watching me fail at various tasks, and get knocked unconscious.

Deceptive design

As part of Operation "keep my son entertained while he recovers from surgery," we bought one of those cheap video games that you plug into the TV-- the kind where the ROM is actually in the joystick.

In this case, it's a racing game, and the controller is shaped like a steering wheel. This is deceptive, because the actual controls are buttons. It's a bit like having a steering wheel in a car, but actually controlling it by honking the horn.

I showed it to my son, and asked him what he thought it was. "I know!" he said. "It's one of those games where you have to jump up and down to control it!" The fact that his first thought was that it was a haptic interface is revealing of just how quickly the notion of playing virtual games in the real world-- or real games in the virtual world-- has become commonplace.

Or maybe it's just an unsubtle attempt to guilt me into buying him a Wii for the family.

Technorati Tags: children, games, interface, video

Off to Berlin

My article on the industrialization of visualization in 19th century astronomy, that is, not me. I hope the editors think well of it. It's a shorter piece, but that's what the journal publishes.

I still need to root around to see if I have any pictures I can run with the piece.

The article is actually one I started ten years ago, but set aside to write a couple other things; but in the intervening years, there have been a number of articles on photography, drawing, and observing practices in Victorian science, so I was able to fill in a couple gaps, and send it off. It's a relatively short piece. We'll see.

Now back to other things, most particularly the end of cyberspace.

[To the tune of The Beatles, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," from the album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".]

Technorati Tags: astronomy, history of science, science, visualization

Home today

My son had his tonsils and adenoids removed this morning, so I've taken the day off and am spending it with him. Otherwise, I'd be at the converging technologies workshop at Oxford, which sounds like it was a great time.

Fortunately, my son's surgery went off without a hitch. One of the signal benefits of living in this area is access to far above-average medical expertise (assuming you have the right health insurance, of course), so we had some outrageously overqualified pediatric surgeon using some cutting-edge tool designed to reduce certain side-effects.

How he's lying on the couch, watching Bob the Builder. Basically he's a low-energy version of his usual self.

I'm finishing off an essay I was supposed to send to Germany yesterday. Or maybe it was Friday. Anyway, it's coming!

Technorati Tags: children