WNYC - Soundcheck: The Year 2004 in Jazz, Poetry & Spoken Word (January 05, 2005)

WNYC - Soundcheck: The Year 2004 in Jazz, Poetry & Spoken Word (January 05, 2005): "The Year 2004 in Jazz, Poetry & Spoken Word
Wednesday, January 05, 2005

The jazz world experienced many highs and lows in 2004. The biggest news was the long-awaited opening of Jazz at Lincoln Center's new $128 million complex on Columbus Circle. The most ambitious and expensive jazz venue in history, it opened in October to rave reviews. But not all the best music happened in big halls or on big labels. Artists like trumpeter Don Byron and pianist Vijay Iyer were busy pushing the art form's boundaries. Joining us today with a look back at the year in jazz is Gene Santoro, critic and author of Highway 61 revisited: The Tangled Roots of American Jazz, Roots, Rock and Country Music. Also on the show: Bob Holman, WNYC poet in residence and proprietor of the performance space Bowery Poetry Club. He joins us here to offer a roundup of the best in spoken word and poetry from this past year, from Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, to late greats Allen Ginsburg and Lenny Bruce."

UPS Tracking With RSS

UPS Tracking With RSS: "UPS Package Tracking With RSS

Note: This article was originally in the form of a post on my blog.
Overview

I always hated the fact that there was no good 'push' mechanism for getting UPS shipment tracking updates. I don't want to go to their website every hour to see where my package is. I want to be notified when it moves. Of course I immediately thought of RSS, but I couldn't find anyone who had turned the UPS data into a feed. I then decided to make it myself in ASP.NET using C#!

I threw together a working version. The url is in this format: http://www.young-technologies.com/utilities/packagetracking/rsstracking.aspx?Type=UPS&TrackingNumber=XXXXXXXXX where the XXXXXXX's are the UPS tracking number you want to track.

It doesn't use screen scraping, which can be unreliable. If I wrote it that way, I would have to change my interface every time UPS decided to change their website. I found out that UPS had an XML interface to get their tracking information directly. I wrote a .NET dll to make the request, and process the response into an object.

To turn the actual data into an RSS feed, I used a handy class called RSSMaster. They did a great job of making it easy to create an RSS feed from a data source."

I'd rather get Alzheimers...

Boing Boing: Curry cures Alzheimer's?: "Curry cures Alzheimer's?
The pigment that makes curry yellow, curcumin, does a better job at treating Alzheimer's than the majority of drugs being tested. (Interestingly, India has one of the lowest Alzheimer rates in the world.)

The new UCLA-Veterans Affairs study involving genetically altered mice suggests that curcumin, the yellow pigment in curry spice, inhibits the accumulation of destructive beta amyloids in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and also breaks up existing plaques.

Link "

Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism

Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism || kuro5hin.org: "Wikipedia has started to hit the big time. Accordingly, several critical articles have come out, including 'The Faith-Based Encyclopedia' by a former editor-in-chief of Britannica and a very widely-syndicated AP article that was given such titles as 'When Information Access Is So Easy, Truth Can Be Elusive'.

These articles are written by people who appear not to appreciate the merits of Wikipedia fully. I do, however; I co-founded Wikipedia. (I have since left the project.)

Wikipedia does have two big problems, and attention to them is long overdue. These problems could be eliminated by eliminating a single root problem. If the project's managers are not willing to solve it, I fear a fork (a new edition under new management, for the non-techies reading this) will probably be necessary."

Doctorow v Anderson

Must Read

Boing Boing: Cory responds to Wired Editor on DRM: "Cory responds to Wired Editor on DRM
Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, has responded to my blog-post in which I take issue with Wired's latest product-review magazine, which breathes hardly a mention of DRM even as it reviews devices that are all crapped up with studio-paranoia-generated restriction technology."

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William Gibson

William Gibson

In the night of 12/24/07, though sensors woven through the very fabric of the house had thus far registered a complete absence of sentient bio-activity, I found myself abruptly summoned from a rare, genuine and expensively induced examples of that most priceless of states, sleep.

Even as I hurriedly dressed, I knew that dozens of telepresent armed-response drones would already be sweeping in from the District, skimming mere inches above the chill surface of the Potomac. Vicious tri-lobed aeroforms that they were, they resembled nothing more than the Martian war machines of George Pal’s 1953 epic, “The War of the Worlds”.

And while, from somewhere far above, now, came that sound, that persistent clatter, as though gunships disgorged whole platoons of iron-shod mercenaries, I could only wonder: who? Was it my estranged wife, The Lady Betty-Jayne Motel-6 Hyatt, Chief Eco-trustee of the Free Duchy of Wyoming? Or was it Cleatus “Mainframe” Sinyard himself, President of the United States and perpetual co-chairman of the Concerned Smart People’s Northern Hemisphere Co-prosperity Sphere?

“You’re mumbling again, big guy,” said Memory, shivering into hallucinatorily clear focus on the rumpled sheets, her thighs warm and golden against the Royal Stewart flannel. She adjusted the nosecones of her chrome bustier. “Also, you’re on the verge of a major fashion crime.”

I froze, the starched white tails of an Elmore of Shinjuku evening shirt half-tucked into the waistband of a favorite pair of lovingly-mended calfskin jodhpurs. She was right. Pearl buttons scattered like a flock of miniscule flying saucers as I tore myself out of the offending Elmore. I swiftly chose a classic Gap t-shirt and a Ralph Lauren overshirt in shotgun-distressed ochre corduroy. The Gap t’s double-knit liquid crystal began to cycle sluggishly in response to body-heat, displaying crudely animated loops of once-famous televangelists of the previous century, their pallid flanks streaked with the sweat of illicit sexual exertion. Now that literally everything was digital, History and Image were no more than Silly putty in the hands of anyone with a BFA and a backer in Singapore. But that was just the nature of Postmodernity, and, frankly, it suited me right down to the ground.

“Visitors upstairs, chief,” she reminded me pointlessly, causing me to regret not getting that last chip-upgrade. “Like on the roof.”

“How many?” And this was Samsung-Sears’s idea of an “expert” system?

“Seventeen, assuming we’re talking bipeds.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That Nintendo-Dow micropore sensor-skin you had ‘em stretch over the Realistislate? After those Columbian bush ninjas from the Slunk Cartel tried to get in through the toilet-ventilators? Well, that stuff’s registering, like, hooves. Tiny ones. Unless this is some kind of major Jersey Devil infestation, I make it eight quadrupeds – plus one definite biped.”

“It can’t be Sinyard then.” I holstered a 3mm Honda and pocketed half a dozen spare ampules of gel. “He’d never come alone.”

“So maybe that’s the good news, but I gotta tell you, this guy weighs in at close to one-forty kilos. And wears size eleven-and-a-half boots. As an expert system, I’d advise you to use the Mossad & Wesson bullpup, the one with the subsonic witness protection nozzles—“ She broke off, as if listening to something only she could hear. “Uh-oh,” she said, “I think he’s coming down the chimney…”

Enemy of the State - Enterprise Integration Patterns

Enemy of the State - Enterprise Integration Patterns: "One of my favorite pastimes is to argue with people whether a solution is stateless, whether it should be stateless and what it means to be stateless in the first place. Ideally, the debate would involve alcoholic beverages and the other person would pick up the check. After 'loosely coupled', 'stateless' must be a close runner-up as the ultimate nirvana in buzzword-compliant architectures. It is also equally hotly debated. Today, I 'd like to share my view on state and lessness. If you disagree you are welcome to argue with me, but you are buying! :-)"

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs OpenCourseWare

MIT OpenCourseWare | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | 6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Fall 2002 | Home