I will be performing in the pit orchestra for a middle school production of “The Music Man” this week in San Leandro!
Come see a really fun and great show!
May 3, 5-6 at 7:30 pm
Bancroft Middle School Gym
1150 Bancroft Ave, San Leandro, 94577
General Admission: $8.00, Students/Seniors: $7.00
Santa Monica, California has issued a request for proposals (RFP) seeking a vendor to deploy, operate and maintain a ubiquitous wireless mesh broadband network in the city. Santa Monica covers an area of 8.3 square miles and has 87,000 residents; it lies on the coast within greater Los Angeles. Responses to the RFP are due back to the city by 5:00 PM, Friday, June 30, 2006 (see the RFP for details).
. . .
The vendor will deliver Internet access to residents, businesses and visitors. The city already provides free access in libraries and parks, and would like the vendor to continue to provide free access there. But it also wants respondents to propose a plan whereby free access would be provided throughout the city, perhaps at lower bandwidth, with a paid-for service at higher bandwidths. In addition to serving end users, the vendor should also sell access on a wholesale basis to other service providers.
Paul Boutin is at it again, this time with his sights on MySpace (it’s what the kids are into these days) and YouTube.
But the focus on the collaborative nature of these sites has been nagging at me. Sites like Friendster and Blogger that promote sharing and friend-making have been around for years with nowhere near the mainstream success. I’ve got a different theory. YouTube and MySpace are runaway hits because they combine two attributes rarely found together in tech products. They’re easy to use, and they don’t tell you what to do.
There are two design requirements for technology meant for the masses. First, you need to automate all the techie parts so people can just press Play. To watch television online, I shouldn’t have to install extra video software, figure out my bandwidth setting (100K? 300K?), and sign up for an account with the player’s maker. Second, Web moguls shouldn’t presume to foresee what 100 million people will want to do with their site. I’m one of many who stopped using Google’s Orkut social network because its hardwired page designs made everyone look like they were there to find a date and/or a job.
The guys behind YouTube hit the sweet spot. Most important, they made it head-slappingly easy to publish and play video clips by handling the tricky parts automatically. Given up on BitTorrent because it feels like launching a mission to Mars? If you’ve sent an e-mail attachment, you’ve got the tech skills to publish on YouTube.
To add to my love of Lost, I just recently discovered that Daniel Dae Kim was in one episode of Star Trek : Voyager that I just watched (and three in Star Trek : Enterprise).
On top of that, Terry O’Quinn played a really badass admiral in one episode of Star Trek : The Next Generation!
I’m going to Sasquatch, the Sunday show. Of these bands, what 10 tracks should I buy on iTunes?
What I’ve already bought:
Blue Scholars – Blue Scholars
Pretty Girls Make Graves – “Speakers Push the Air”
Pretty Girls Make Graves – “Ghosts in the Radio”
We Are Scientists – “It’s A Hit”
We Are Scientists – “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt”
Update: The DJ from Blue Scholars is Persian!
Although you wouldn’t know it given the tundra-like weather we’ve been having lately, it’s almost summertime. What does summer mean? That’s right, it means my favorite music festival (that I haven’t been to in several years, but still) : Paléo Festival Nyon. So if I was in Switzerland in late July this year, this is where I’d be:
Who’s on tap this year?
My favs:
July 18:
Ben Harper
Pixies
July 19:
Depeche Mode
The Dandy Warhols
Ziggy Marley
July 20:
The Who
Louise Attaque
July 21:
Tracy Chapman
Amadou and Miriam
We Are Scientists
July 22:
Diam’s
July 23:
Indochine
Tickets are 60 CHF ($50) per day.
Gadling reports that one of my favorite small businesses from my hometown is closing its doors at the end of May. Everything is 20 percent off until then. Although I only went in there a few times, they always had what I wanted and were helpful and friendly. I bought my Melbourne Lonely Planet there in 2002. I’ll be sure to stop in when I’m home next month.
You might want to consider health insurance for travelers if you’re going to be on a long trip.
Go find your nearest Ben & Jerry’s. Wait about 20 minutes. Enjoy said free ice cream.
I really want a copy of this map to hang on my wall, to replace my National Geographic world map. It combines a political and physical map, along with Internet top level domains and country calling codes. Damn cool!
You can buy it in four different flavors:
48-inch — 24-inch
(122cm — 61cm)
Laminated: $63.75
Unlaminated: $40
34-inch — 17-inch
(86cm — 43cm)
Laminated: $40
Unlaminated: $25
Oh man, I’m so tempted to buy this. For now, I’ve just made it my computer desktop background.
Bush is in the Oval office when Rummy walks in. “Sit down, I have some bad news,” says Rummy. Bush sits. “8 Brazilian soldiers were killed by insurgents in Iraq,” he says. Bush goes pale, puts his hands on the desk, bows his head. “Are you Ok?” asks Rummy. “I’m Ok,” says Bush. “I’ll be alright. Wow. 8 Brazilian. Wow. Just one question. How many is a Brazilian?”
“GETTING THERE”, The New Yorker; April 17, 2006:
A map is a piece of art. It is also a form of language — a rendering of information. A good map can occupy the eye and the mind longer than almost any other single page of data, including Scripture, poetry, sheet music, and baseball box scores. A map contains multitudes.
The toughest, most demanding and most ultimately rewarding professor I ever had, Sam Freedman, has just come out with his latest book, Letters to a Young Journalist. Poynter (a clearinghouse of journalism industry happenings) has a great interview with him:
You’re tough on bloggers, FOX News and citizen journalists. As a former New Yorke Times reporter and tenured professor at Columbia Journalism School, what separates you from charges that you’re an elitist scold?
I don’t mind being called an elitist if being an elitist means being the best, not being snooty and effete. When I hear people complain about the elite, I always ask them if they’d like to apply their principle to sports. Let’s have an NFL season with only mediocre players, because all those elitists like Tom Brady and Donovan McNabb are ruining the game. Somehow people don’t mind the elite all of a sudden. I don’t think an amateur is as qualified as a professional in journalism. There are qualified journalists and scholars whose blogs I do read — Juan Cole on the Middle East, Andrew Sullivan on social and political issues, Gregg Easterbrook on football. But in their cases, the blog is simply an alternative delivery system. These people write out of a body of research, if not for every posting, then certainly over the course of a career. But to just sit down and write your opinions or harvest the day’s gossip — that’s not journalism, even if it is momentarily chic. As for FOX, it’s a fascinating political movement, but it’s not a news organization in any way I recognize. If that’s scolding, then I’m guilty as charged.
But I want to be more than a chastising prophet. I think that the best bloggers and podcasters and webzines of the future can be enriched by an appreciation of the commitment to reporting, unbiased inquiry and lucid expression that the evil MSM can practice at its best. The “old” can inform and enhance the “new.” Just the other day, I was listening to Terry Gross interview the jazz drummer Paul Motian on “Fresh Air.” Now, I associate Motian with modal and free jazz, modern forms, but he was talking about how much he’d been influenced by supposed old-timers like Chick Webb. In journalism, as in jazz, there is a tradition, and that tradition has something to teach modernists, too.
Variety reported last night that J.J. Abrams (the mastermind behind “Alias”, “Lost”, and the soon-to-be-released “Mission:Impossible III”) and his team from “Lost” is going to make the next “Star Trek” feature film, to be released in 2008.
Damon Lindelof and Bryan Burk, Abrams’ producing team from “Lost,” also will produce the yet-to-be-titled feature.
Project, to be penned by Abrams and “MI3″ scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, will center on the early days of seminal “Trek” characters James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, including their first meeting at Starfleet Academy and first outer space mission.
Lost meets Star Trek?!?! Huzzah!
(Oh, and did I mention that in M:I:III that Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a villan? Hellz yeah!)
Clive Thompson is at it again — this time he’s just penned a long piece on Google in China for The New York Times Magazine:
It was difficult for me to know exactly how [Kai-Fu Lee, head of operations for Google in China] felt about the company’s arrangement with China’s authoritarian leadership. As a condition of our meeting, Google had demanded that I not raise the issue of government relations; only the executives in Google’s California head office were allowed to discuss those matters. But as Lee and I talked about how the Internet was transforming China, he offered one opinion that seemed telling: the Chinese students he meets and employs, Lee said, do not hunger for democracy. “People are actually quite free to talk about the subject,” he added, meaning democracy and human rights in China. “I don’t think they care that much. I think people would say: ‘Hey, U.S. democracy, that’s a good form of government. Chinese government, good and stable, that’s a good form of government. Whatever, as long as I get to go to my favorite Web site, see my friends, live happily.’ ” Certainly, he said, the idea of personal expression, of speaking out publicly, had become vastly more popular among young Chinese as the Internet had grown and as blogging and online chat had become widespread. “But I don’t think of this as a political statement at all,” Lee said. “I think it’s more people finding that they can express themselves and be heard, and they love to keep doing that.”
It sounded to me like company spin — a curiously deflated notion of free speech. But spend some time among China’s nascent class of Internet users, as I have these past months, and you begin to hear such talk somewhat differently. Youth + freedom + equality + don’t be evil is an equation with few constants and many possible solutions. What is freedom, just now, to the Chinese? Are there gradations of censorship, better and worse ways to limit information? In America, that seems like an intolerable question — the end of the conversation. But in China, as Google has discovered, it is just the beginning.
No, I wasn’t imagining things. After 13 months of use, my iBook battery has cycled 279 times, thus reducing its capacity. It now can run on the battery for about one hour. A new battery is about $100 – $120. Damn.
So that reduces the resale value of this iBook when I sell it, whenever the new MacBooks come out.
