Sandow on Indie Rock

Another nice post by Greg Sandow, this one on indie rock. It's great to see a another "serious" classical music person understanding this stuff (like Alex Ross). Hopefully people like Sandow and Ross can help classical music find ways to be more relevant and accessible.

Running Numbers

I've often wondered what it means to "run numbers," something that Harvey Keitel's character does in Mean Streets; this article answered the question.

The Sleeper Curve

I just finished reading this article on a topic near and dear to my heart, television. I instinctively recoil at the hand-waving arguments made in the piece, but I do agree with its overall gist that television drama has become more complex. Couple things, though: Johnson doesn't mention film at all, and I can't imagine that trends in television are unrelated to what's going on in movies. I know that David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, aspired to bring the complexities of film to a television series, and that his vision for the show was deeply influenced by the intertwining of domestic and mob life in Goodfellas. Given the similarity of the media, it just seems like an obvious point to address. Also, as a nitpick, Johnson left out discussion of two great shows that would fit nicely into his arguments. The first is The X-Files, which used all kinds of obscure terminology and was really fun to watch until it jumped the shark. The second is The Wire, which I blogged about recently. In terms of plot complexity, it's probably harder to follow than any of the shows mentioned in the article.

How To Do a Film Festival

So I was looking at the schedule for the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival, and I was completely overwhelmed. Tons of films, lots of which could be good, and few of which I'll actually have time to attend. Does anyone have a strategy for picking out films to see in a situation like this? If so, I'd love to hear about it. For now, I used this GreenCine Daily post as a sort of filter. Perhaps the interface on the film festival web site is not ideal; I remember the web site for the Seattle International Film Festival being better last year.

Sandow

Greg Sandow writes a great blog on the state of classical music. Reading this entry made me wish I had been in Pittsburgh at the time. There's lots of other good stuff there; check it out.

The Wire Rules

I just finished the second season of The Wire today; wow. It was even better than the brilliant first season. The show doesn't have the same hype as The Sopranos, and it's not as good, but it's the closest I've seen another HBO show get. So, when you have some time, get the DVDs; you won't regret it. But, seriously, wait until you have some time. I have the 3rd season too, but I need to wait a couple of weeks to start watching it to avoid the distraction. Anyway, it's past my bedtime.

GreaseMonkey

GreaseMonkey is perhaps the coolest Firefox extension I've found yet. You can do all kinds of cool web page modifications with it, as listed here. Right now, I have all links to New York Times articles going to the single-page format, and a script that fixes some of the crappiness in allmusic. Once you've installed the extension, to install the linked scripts just right-click and select "Install User Script...".

WHRB

Just wanted to give a quick plug to the online stream of WHRB, which is the best classical music station I've found online since Andante Radio, which is no longer free. I just heard a fantastic performance of Das Lied von der Erde on there the other day, and you'll rarely find a station that plays pieces like that in their entirety anymore.

Speeding Up Windows

I just managed to speed up my parents' computer a huge amount by disabling indexing in Windows, as shown here. Seriously, it's like having a whole new computer; for people who don't use the Windows search feature often, this thing should definitely be off. And Google Desktop is better for searching anyway. I went pretty nuts for a paper deadline before break, and now I'm relaxing; my usual pattern, which hopefully I'll be able to break and actually do work ahead of time. I know, unlikely, but one can dream.

OKCupid

I must admit, this test was kind of fun. What I won't admit is the results of the test :). The last thing I need is another web site to waste time on, but maybe you need one.

It's a Retirement Community!

I was reading this article about an F.B.I. agent who infiltrated the New York mob, and this part caught my eye:

The agent infiltrated the crew of Gregory DePalma, who was charged yesterday as an acting capo, or captain, in the Gambino family. The agent discovered that the DePalma crew held planning meetings at the United Hebrew Geriatric Center in New Rochelle, N.Y., at the bedside of Mr. DePalma's son Craig, law enforcement officials said.

David N. Kelley, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said Craig DePalma had been comatose and in a "vegetative state" at the home since he tried to commit suicide in prison several years ago.

The elder Mr. DePalma and his crew had the "lack of grace" to plot strategy in a nursing home, Mr. Kelley said, "and we were right there with them."

Here the parents have the child in a nursing home, but it still sounds a lot like the first season of The Sopranos.

Also, check out the cover of "Creep" by these guys (via Alex Ross).

Listening to CD's With

Here's a cool article where Pat Metheny explains why he likes some of his favorite CD's . Hopefully the Times will do more of these; the Watching Movies With... series was great.

Woyzeck and Wozzeck

Here's a nice writeup on Woyzeck the play and Wozzeck the opera.

Rambling

First, go here to opt-out of getting pre-approved credit card offers (via Lifehacker). I find that these offers are most of my junk mail, and I've heard of problems stemming from others getting ahold of your pre-approved cards and signing up. Good riddance.

I bought a bunch of CDs at Amoeba today: Peter Grimes, Quartet for the End of Time, Miles Smiles, and Mingus Ah Um. Total cost: $8, after the use of a gift certificate. Thanks Sylvia!

While I'm sort of on the topic, I just put together a semi-decent stereo. I got a Technics SA-DA10N receiver (thanks to AJ), the JMlab Chorus 706s speakers (used from Craigslist), and a Sony DVP-NC875V 5-disc CD/DVD player. I'm really happy with the whole setup. I found the AudioReview and Audioholics sites to be very helpful. Oh, and my speaker wires were created exactly as described here, same parts and everything.

I visited the Legion of Honor for the first time a couple weeks back and loved it. The views are amazing, and the art collection is solid too, with a lot of great Rodin. It made me want to watch Vertigo again, as did this thought-provoking writeup (via GreenCine Daily). And this page, which contrasts shots from the film with the current appearance of the same San Francisco locations, is also worth a look.

To conclude, Elephant is a powerful and disturbing film, and The Wire is a good show through 8 episodes of the first season. Enough for now. Wait, one last thing: Alex Ross has more on applause.

Electronic Dance Music Guide

Check it out. A bit biased, and not really clear on the differences between the genres. But very fun to play with.

Package Tracking RSS

If you have a UPS or USPS tracking number, you can use this page to make an RSS feed to track your package. Sweet.

Lifehacker

I ran into this site Lifehacker that "recommends the downloads, web sites and shortcuts that actually save time." Then I wasted a bunch of time surfing the site. Something is wrong here.

Random Friendster Idea

I had an idea for a Friendster feature the other day. Sometimes I'll click on the link that shows all the ways I'm connected to some person who isn't a friend, and the list will be really long, with many paths of length 2 to the person. This is someone who I should in some sense already know; he or she is connected closely to a lot of my friends and is likely to be in my social circle. It'd be cool to see a list of the people who are not your friends (on the site) but who are most closely connected to you in this way. They might be people who you know and want to add as friends on the site, or if you don't know them it might be fun to wonder why. It would also be interesting to see some score representing this closeness measure on the person's profile, instead of just seeing one path to the person like the site shows now. Anyway, of course I can't work on this, and it might just be a dumb idea, but why have a blog if you can't post possibly dumb ideas and see what happens?

KCRW

I saw this article in the Times last Sunday on KCRW, a radio station from Southern California playing all kinds of cool and eclectic music. Then I remembered hearing about the station before in this Frontline documentary. Anyway, I finally took a listen online, and I really like what they've played in the last 40 minutes or so. And, they've got a reasonably high quality MP3 stream; good stuff. Incidentally, I read the Times article while flipping through an actual print version of the magazine, and I doubt I would have read it otherwise, a phenomenon discussed before.

Well, He's Left

I just found out that Robert O'Callahan, a mentor and friend while I was at IBM Research, has moved back to New Zealand and is now working full-time on Mozilla. My time working closely with Rob was really fun and an incredible learning experience, and I know others who have interned with him and feel the same way. Anyway, he's got a blog now that definitely looks like a worthy read. I'm looking forward to seeing how much better Mozilla will get now that Rob is devoting all his work-related energies to it.