The Pool Room

Few weeks ago I visited a luthier looking for instruments parts,...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:57:54 +1100

Few weeks ago I visited a luthier looking for instruments parts, I had an idea in mind for an instrument I wanted to build. My curiosity was to hear the sound of violin, viola and cello strings amplified through the body of a double bass. I came up with a quadruple-neck experimental “something” that I thought to call Experibass.

To play it I used cello and double bass bows, a little device I built with fishing line and hose clamps, a paintbrush, a fork, spoons, a kick drum pedal and a drum stick. I hope you’ll like it!

Thanks to luthier John Wu for providing me the parts, even though I warned him that I was probably going to create a “monster” : )

At this link you can see some pictures with more detailed descriptions: behance.net/Gallery/Experibass/312989

via @notahat

Exactly.

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:20:00 +1100

Simon: Anyone else would be able to see the opportunity I am presenting but not you. You have to be a fucking smart arse about it. All I was asking for was a logo and a few pie charts which would have taken you a few fucking hours.

David: Actually, you were asking me to design a logotype which would have taken me a few hours and fifteen years experience. For free.

Source: http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html

(via @sebr)

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:14:41 +1100

(via @sebr)

"We’re using setTimeout to introduce an artificial two second delay to each request. Run the..."

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:19:53 +1100

“We’re using setTimeout to introduce an artificial two second delay to each request. Run the benchmark again—I get 49.68 requests a second, with every single request taking between 2012 and 2022 ms. With a two second delay, the best possible performance for 1000 requests 100 at a time is 1000 requests / (1000 / 100) * 2 seconds = 50 requests a second. Node hits it pretty much bang on the nose.”

- Node.js is genuinely exciting

via i.imgur.com

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:26:53 +1100

via i.imgur.com

"That said, having participated in this bad behavior, I noticed something else about the way it felt..."

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:16:46 +1100

“

That said, having participated in this bad behavior, I noticed something else about the way it felt to put something on that wall. The twitterwall subverted twitter’s more symmetric conversation model of communication. Posting to the wall was like creating and sharing a public secret about the speaker (a little like political grafiti except it wasn’t anonymous).

The wall made a spectacle of the crowd’s impatience and anxiety feeding on the speaker’s inability to respond. That spectacle united us not as a single group receiving challenging ideas from a thoughtful orator but as quite separate individuals struggling to listen, read, respond, and make sense of the event. We moved from web conference to twitter circus.

”

- apophenia: spectacle at Web2.0 Expo… from my perspective

"The problem with a public-facing Twitter stream in events like this is that it FORCES the audience..."

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:15:58 +1100

“The problem with a public-facing Twitter stream in events like this is that it FORCES the audience to pay attention the backchannel. So even audience members who want to focus on the content get distracted. Most folks can’t multitask that well. And even if I had been slower and less dense, my talks are notoriously too content-filled to make multi-tasking possible for the multi-tasking challenged. This is precisely why I use very simplistic slides that evokes images for the visual types in the room without adding another layer of content. But the Twitter stream fundamentally adds another layer of content that the audience can’t ignore, that I can’t control. And that I cannot even see.”

- apophenia: spectacle at Web2.0 Expo… from my perspective

copycats: Nineteen by Heathersoriginally by Tegan &...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:12:23 +1100

copycats:

Nineteen by Heathers
originally by Tegan & Sara

via piratekitten: and this is how you do a cover right - you make it your own and you rock the shit out of it.

"Curious gulls on Sanibel Island, Florida. Meet my friend, “Gull-i-Bel”!!! (Photo and..."

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:47:58 +1100

“Curious gulls on Sanibel Island, Florida. Meet my friend, “Gull-i-Bel”!!! (Photo and caption by Richard Rush)”

- National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009 - The Big Picture - Boston.com

"Taken at Kwena Croc Farm in South Africa (Photo and caption by Wayne Holloway)"

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:47:40 +1100

“Taken at Kwena Croc Farm in South Africa (Photo and caption by Wayne Holloway)”

- National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009 - The Big Picture - Boston.com

"When the wave conditions are right a wave appears, infrequently, as a result of the splash back off..."

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:47:23 +1100

“When the wave conditions are right a wave appears, infrequently, as a result of the splash back off the cliff connecting with an incoming wave. This causes the incoming wave to pop up, creating fan-like shapes. On this particular day, over the two hours I spent on the rocks, this wave only appeared once. This is that shot. (Photo and caption by Aaron Feinberg)”

- National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009 - The Big Picture - Boston.com

This is about one hour of firefly activity near my home in rural...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:47:06 +1100

This is about one hour of firefly activity near my home in rural Ontario. The precision of the background star trails is an interesting contrast to the chaotic pattern of the firefly flashes. (Photo and caption by Steve Irvine) (via National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009 - The Big Picture - Boston.com)

National Geographic’s International Photography Contest...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:46:22 +1100

National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009 - The Big Picture - Boston.com

This was the one thing I missed. I wanted it so badly. Mind...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:44:00 +1100

This was the one thing I missed. I wanted it so badly.

Mind you, regards the speech at the end, they went totally over curfew for this too. The lights were up for the entire last encore. They didn’t give a fuck. Rocking it!

"Tweetie 2 simply took this idea from Tweetie 1, that reloading was simply “loading newer”, and..."

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:25:14 +1100

“Tweetie 2 simply took this idea from Tweetie 1, that reloading was simply “loading newer”, and “loading newer” put new messages at the top of the list… and activated the action based on a finger motion that you were already doing. Why make the user stop scrolling, lift their finger, then tap a button? Why not have them continue the gesture that they are already in the process of making? When I want to see newer stuff, I scroll up. So I made scrolling itself the gesture.”

- Loren Brichter, Tweetie Reloaded: An Interview with Loren Brichter (via petervidani)

Copy Cats | wordsbycodi: 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Paul...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:20:40 +1100

Copy Cats | wordsbycodi: 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Paul...:

Fuck yes.

(via @maxine)

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:29:10 +1100

(via @maxine)

Video

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:50:44 +1100

CM: Well, I don't know what of our culture is going to survive, or if we survive. If you look at the Greek plays, they're really good. And there's just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that's the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there's going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them. I don't care whether it's art, literature, poetry or drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it will wash it out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don't think so.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:43:55 +1100

CM: Well, I don't know what of our culture is going to survive, or if we survive. If you look at the Greek plays, they're really good. And there's just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that's the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there's going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them. I don't care whether it's art, literature, poetry or drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it will wash it out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don't think so.

JH: No, you're absolutely right. Just as an example, the Toronto Film Festival is one of the biggest in film festivals. They have made it, for the first time ever, much more difficult to submit a film. They charge an entry fee and they still had 4,000 submissions just this year and they boiled that down to 300.

CM: This is just entry level to what's coming. Just the appalling volume of artifacts will erase all meaning that they could ever possibly have. But we probably won't get that far anyway.

Cormac McCarthy

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:17:00 +1100

WSJ: How does that ticking clock affect your work? Does it make you want to write more shorter pieces, or to cap things with a large, all-encompassing work?

CM: I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.