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Main page June 30, 2006Peek at the future: Net access anywhere in R.I. -- on the go and in the woodsMultimedia citizen journalism: I was in the newsroom late putting together a traditional portal about Newport on Wednesday, June 21 while the folks driving the RI-WINS project -- seamless mobile statewide wireless broadband Net access wherever you might go -- were speaking around the corner at AS220. Consequently I missed the opportunity to report and blog the RI-WINS Town Hall -- an airing of perhaps the most innovative project ever to fly under the radar anywhere. Fortunately, Providence Geeks made a video of the event (QuickTime, or plays in RealPlayer for me) and Brian Jepson -- the moderator of the panel -- blogged it in two parts on that site. Part two is a transcript of the Q&A session that followed. Here's the nut:
What will the hardware look like from a consumer viewpoint? Users with a WiMAX card in their laptop? A WiMAX enabled home router that creates a Wi-Fi cloud? And yes, Brian notes, you'll hear in the video that they are working with a community in RI to provide access to citizens who can't afford access. Universal access (and computer literacy!) are essential to participating in the wired environment we are about to live in. In an email exchange that followed, Brian and I goofed a bit about the scarcity of Web access in the woods. This niche is an example of the sort of applications the project is inviting innovators to develop. It's a great package -- project insiders, intelligent questions, good explanations, primary sources, well-documented. It would be well worth your time this weekend to go to the Geeks site and take a look at our future. Free time: I'm heading to Boston in a few minutes to be part of a blogging panel at the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' annual convention. After that, I'll be on vacation for two weeks. I'll be playing with a new camera, a new laptop, and will finally have time to think. Expect a different sort of blogging, after I get some much-needed sleep. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 29, 2006Graffiti reporting: A tech viewAs Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline announced his graffiti task force today, Jim Willis sends along a pointer to his item on the Summit Neighborhood Association blog, City takes first steps towards addressing graffiti problem: (Link fixed) ...Another initiative referenced in the release is that citizens can file a graffiti report electronically at the city’s website. Unfortunately, the graffiti reporting tool is yet another government run roach motel (in that data goes in, but it never comes back out). Providence must follow the lead of other large cities (Chicago’s ICAM data drives chicagocrime.org or Washington DC’s Service Request data) that are using technology to increase transparency and visibility into city services.In a comment, he points to this reporting tool from the Lewisham section of London, where photos of trash document the problem and citizens are encouraged to upload the photos from their cellphones. (Jim is IT director for the Secretary of State's office, and a Summit resident.) Posted by Sheila Lennon Raw links III'm very busy... more raw links, for now. Video Site Cheat Sheet: " What does each site offer and what does it cost?" Sony Patents Car Communication Invention: "The invention is reliant on special headlights with built-in LEDs. Via these lights, you could send a message to the car in front of you, as long as that car has a special encoding modulator. The car would then speak the message to the driver." Google Checkout launches: "The company is introducing Google Checkout today, a service that will allow users to make purchases from online stores using payment and shipping information they keep on file with Google." net.anecdotes: A growing collection of anecdotes from around the internet. Suggested by a reader. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 27, 2006Raw linksCustomer Service Phone Numbers & Email Addresses: I found these numbers after I went looking, unsuccessfully, on the Amazon site for a way to talk to a human. Yoko update, via Robot Wisdom ESPN's Bill Simmons: The You Tube Hall of Fame. The sports columnists' 33 favorite video clips. Some are music, some TV, these are not: 28. New England @ Denver Broncos Related: The Joke Project, "short clips of ordinary folks telling their favorite jokes on the street or in other simple settings," writes A. Adam Glenn at Poynter's E-Media Tidbits.
SmartUSA -- the video site. Longtime Miami Herald staffer Liz Donovan points to Fred Tasker's history of Knight Ridder, which officially ceased to exist at 4 p.m. today when its sale to McClatchy became final. The wrapup was a Sunday piece in that KR paper. Bonus link from Liz: MOMA collection database art works at Museum of Modern Art. With photos. Following blog obit links for Mandarin Meg, whose blog I'm only learning about posthumously, I find the fine smart blog and big photos of Stu Savory. Posted by Sheila Lennon Woodstock is history: Stories I wrote in '89 will be part of a college textbookI learned last night that the first three of my Woodstock stories -- written in '89 about '69 -- are to be republished in a college textbook about the '60s. Prentice Hall is producing "Time It Was" in the fall, probably for release early in 2007. The book's editors, Tim Koster and Karen Smith, had seen the series on the Web and emailed me several years ago asking if we could talk about including them. We had several nice phone conversations about history and memories, but I told them the Providence Journal owned the stories, and they'd have to negotiate with them. Over the years, I forgot about it. I shared your story with some of my history students last year and they loved it. Most felt they had only had a few vague ideas about Woodstock before reading it, and they really appreciated the detail. I have enormous respect for the interface of history and journalism, for firsthand accounts and primary sources. The 50 people I interviewed for that series each experienced a different festival, every one of them describing events the others hadn't witnessed. They were all curious about what others had told me, and when I told them a little, they'd remember more. I'm glad their overlapping stories will represent that watershed event in this history textbook. No one person's account would be enough. Woodstock ended the '60s, but the idea of Woodstock has been a long thread draping over the decades of our lives. I wrote that first trilogy in three weeks in the summer of '89, a raw reconstructed history that will now be studied, fer pete's sake, by our grandchildren. If I'd known it would be in the history books, I would probably have asked for a little more time.
Posted by Sheila Lennon June 26, 2006Warren Buffett on giving his wealth to Bill Gates' foundation; Wi-fi 'clouds' need to be free
It's a Movement: Warren Buffett gives away his fortune Loomis and Buffett are old friends, and follows her news story with a comfortable interview that took place in advance of the announcement. It's both funny -- second-richest man giving billions to first-richest man -- and a revealing conversation about how Buffett thinks about life. ...(as) someone who was compounding money at a high rate, I thought, was the better party to be taking care of the philanthropy that was to be done 20 years out, while the people compounding at a lower rate should logically take care of the current philanthropy. Why he changed his mind: The short answer is that I came to realize that there was a terrific foundation that was already scaled-up - that wouldn't have to go through the real grind of getting to a megasize like the Buffett Foundation would - and that could productively use my money now. In the main story, Loomis notes, "The Gateses credit Buffett, says Bill, with having "inspired" their thinking about giving money back to society," and now he's prodding others with overflowing wallets. It's great that the wealthiest are championing service to others -- and in descending order, too. Basking in the glow of public approval, rather than merely envy, might be the hot new investment for those who already have everything else. Paul Allen -- owner of the Seattle Seahawks, Portland Trailblazers, co-founder of Microsoft and Number 3 on the Forbes 400 -- should be a pushover. After that come Oracle founder Larry Ellison (Oracle database software) and Michael Dell (dude!), followed by five WalMart Waltons. But what about the children? Buffett cites the silver spoon: "In effect, they've had a gigantic headstart in a society that aspires to be a meritocracy. Dynastic mega-wealth would further tilt the playing field that we ought to be trying instead to level." More: NYT Wi-Fi clouds need to be free. What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It? (NYT): Peter Shyu, an engineer, spends most of his day out of the office, and when he needs an Internet connection he often pops into one of the many coffee shops in this city that offer free wireless access. Some think unique content will generate subscriptions, but that seems dicey, and defeats the goal of universal Web access and literacy. Nobody needs another AOL. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 25, 2006New free streaming TV portal: I'm 'at' an acoustic club in L.A,(Ack! A misplaced tag made this item nearly blank. Fixed now, obviously.) I'm at Streamick.com (beta, of course) watching full-screen acoustic music performances from a storefront L.A. club. Right now, the Streamick stream is flawless, but not a lot of people know about it yet. Can it scale? We'll see. I'm sending the audio via usb through a tuner to my stereo floor speakers -- sounds terrific. One quibble: I'm watching a playlist. I switched streams to check out some other stuff, and the show started over again from the beginning. There are no controls, so What I'm watching: Kulak's Woodshed Kulak's is operated by volunteers and with donations. I'd love to see this from local clubs and musicians -- record, archive and Webcast live performances. (It would also popularize the clubs; audiences would show up to be part of the video.) This is what I always hoped local public-access cable would be. There's a lot more here, including live TV stations. But acoustic is just perfect for this rainy afternoon. Posted by Sheila Lennon Mexico voters weigh a 'New Deal'; R.I. helps the rich; Springsteen video: Bring 'Em HomeThe West may be experiencing global warming -- or maybe just the inevitable folly of living in the desert -- but here in southern New England, we're stuck in the shower. It's muggy and pouring, in the mid-70s with 100 percent humidity. We sweat and it can't evaporate. The low pressure has us always on the verge of a nap. Forgive us our apathy. This just in, from the National Weather Service Forecast Discussion: Long term /Monday through Saturday/: Woe to gardens, basements, spirits. What kind of lighting did Noah have on the ark?
QUERETARO, Mexico -- Presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is often compared with South American leftists, has found a model in an icon from the north: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lopez Obrador is currently leading slightly in the polls, and these jobs would probably help keep some folks in Mexico who might otherwise head for Arizona. The AP photo shows Lopez Obrador at a rally yesterday in in Guadalajara City. It's startling to hear a serious Presidential contender with the slogan, "For the good of all, first the poor." (Another: "Smile: We're going to win.") Here in Rhode Island, the Democratic General Assembly has just passed a budget that has the poor -- and everybody else -- helping the wealthy. According to Journal reports, The 8-percent flat tax would benefit 516 Rhode Islander filers and 1,171 filers who live elsewhere but had Rhode Island income, according to Division of Taxation calculations on 2004 tax returns. Helping wealthy people who don't even live here is a baffling act of generosity on our behalf. It was framed as a trade-off in return for reducing the cap on property tax increases from 5.5 percent to 4 percent over six years. Just one senator, Harold Metts of Providence, voted against what he called, "that tax cut for the rich." Mexico's election is next Sunday. According to AP, A poll published by Reforma newspaper on Friday, the last day on which polls may be legally published, gave Lopez Obrador 36 percent, Calderon 34 percent and Roberto Madrazo of the PRI, 25 percent. Twelve percent were undecided. Bruce Springsteen & The Seeger Sessions Band: Bring 'em Home ...the media, along with the heads of most powerful organizations, many of whom grew up during the 1960s and are the only vestiges of that era’s “rebellion,” are the ones who have the ability to dictate topics of discussion while simultaneously ensuring that they remain without any real public depth. Matt Taibbi, formerly of the New York Press, summed this up nicely, stating “In a glib, permissive age where dissent, protest, certain forms of civil disobedience, and even the occasional arrest are superficially acceptable and even encouraged, the only real taboo when it comes to having political convictions today is meaning it.” Rainy day reading: Legends by Robert Littell, unusually layered for a spy novel. Sidekick 3 looks official: Cartoony graphics and a preview at sidekick.com promise a July 10 launch. This is an odd interest for me. Wired as I may be, I refuse to own a cell phone. What I like about this tiny appliance are the camera, audio and "portable Web" parts. I eye it, but won't buy it. What I really need is a camera that can easily tag along with me to catch those slices of life. I'm looking at this one. It's 6 megapixels, does wide-angle (28mm) video and corrects for shaky hands, Street weight is just under 5.4 oz. It' only 3.7 x 2.01 x 0.95 inches. Recommendations are welcome. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 23, 2006An amazing story: Fox gone wild -- and rabid, tooIt's the stuff of nightmares; you probably bring scary stories and childhood fears to rabies as well. When I was a kid, a bite from a rabid animal involved a series of painful injections in the stomach with a long needle every day for 14 days. Now it's just five shots -- on days 0, 3, 7, 14 and 28 -- and adults can get them in the arm, kids in the thigh. Knowing that the bite may now be worse than the treatment, here's the harrowing tale as compiled by my colleague Mike McDermott: NORTH KINGSTOWN -- A woman and her two children -- ages 1 and 3 -- were treated at Kent Hospital today after a rabid fox bit the woman and dragged the 1-year-old boy across a lawn here. Apart from that zinger at the end -- in an election year is a politician part of every news event? -- we know there's more to come. Overnight there'll be a longer story by a bureau reporter, and I'll add the link when it's out there. We hear tell that Projo.com now lets you read five stories before you'll be prompted to register -- and registration isn't so onerous any more, a single page. But this is hearsay to me, since I'm already registered. (Obviously, the blogs have never required it.) If you've never registered for projo or any other Belo property, I'd be grateful if someone would volunteer to try it out later tonight or tomorrow and tell me if what I wrote above is true. We're all curious. By then we may know more about the truly unfortunate fox and his impact on the neighborhood he's been roaming. Later: As promised, here's the update. A bit more detail, and another victim, a cat named Marco: The politician's cat. Posted by Sheila Lennon 3 musicians play a 'Basement Fort' tonight, spreading the word via YouTube video
The email from Will Brierly was simple: Basement Fort A tent made from sheets draped over a couple chairs. The old dryer in the corner whirring and rumbling. A bag of slightly warm candy in hand under these sheets. June 23rd 2006 The first Basement Forts will take place at the Mediator. (50 Rounds Ave Providence RI) 6:00 doors 7:00 (sharp) music – performance ends by 10:00 $5 All Ages
Interesting way to promote a performance that's not a tour, not quite a concert -- there are stories -- and not in a commercial club: Make a video, put it on YouTube and hope for a buzz. There's a boatload of creativity here, a viral spreading of the word. In the future, I can imagine projo.com with a local music blog devoted to videos of bands playing tonight, just like this one. I emailed Will with some questions. Here's our exchange, slightly edited: Tell me about how you made the video. Chris, Trevor, Danny (Trevor's drummer) and I wanted to do something other than the traditional fliers, to let people know about the show. So with the help of some cameras and video editing equipment we shot a short sort of commercial for the show. We didn't want it to be like a regular commercial though, but more just a nice minute or so of video to let people know about the night and learn a little bit about what we are trying to do. I have a feeling that a lot more local companies, bands, artists will use a similar technique, with the cost of video editing equipment and cameras going down, and with programs being easier to use. That video was shot over the course of 5 or 6 hours, and within a week it has over 1000 plays on youtube.com. I don't know who is watching it, but I'm hoping its people in Providence, because this is going to be a real fun show. What kind of camera did you use to shoot it? Who shot it? Did you edit it on a Mac or a PC? (Did you edit it, or someone else?) We edited it on a Mac, Trevor did most of the clicking, but we all came up with ideas sitting together to direct it. The guitar playing in the background was just a little improv that I did, playing right into the mic on Danny’s laptop. Luckily it seemed to fit right with the video. Will all the Forts be at the Mediator?
"The name Basement Forts came from the idea of having your own place, where you feel comfortable to express yourself" -- aside: (For most adults, that's the bathroom/shower.) (: So you haven't rented the next hall. But you're committed to three? Yup we’ll definitely be doing three shows, after that we’ll see where we can take it next. We haven’t rented the next place but we have some ideas on where we’ll be doing it, which we’ll let everyone know about once it’s all set in stone. Do you have any mp3s of this trio? Yup they are available at - www.chrisrosenquest.com  We don’t have any mp3s of the three of us performing together. Most of the night we’ll each be doing separate sets, but we’ll have many guests, and we’ll also be sitting in on songs as a full group too.We will also be recording Friday night's performance to release limited edition CDs available at the following Basement Forts show. Hmmm. Is there such a thing as a "limited edition" CD any more? (You gonna put DRM [digital rights management software] on 'em?) Hehe well we’ll only be making 50 copies with the original artwork and everything. (Want to talk, as a musician, about this part of it?) Yeah we’ll probably give it away online for free as mp3s, maybe if we have copies left we’ll sell them too. But we want to give something special to the people who make it out to this place, so we’ll only be doing this short run of cds. (We’ll make sure to send you a copy though) (Back live) Here's the last bit of Will's original email -- who they are: The Performers- Will Brierly – Nationally known singer/songwriter, Rehoboth MA native. Will has toured many times though every state in the country playing everything from arenas to under bridges and in basements selling thousands of cds along the way. To quote Will, “I’m really into Jay-Z, Primus, GG Allin, Bjork, Ben Folds, and Harry Nilsson, I don’t think I sound much like any of them, but I do happen to sound like the sound that happens when my guitar strings and vocal chords vibrate, so that works out good.” Chris Rosenquest – Providence resident, has truly proven himself as a musician to pay attention to. Chris uses acoustic guitars, loops, and samples to create incredible orchestrations of his compelling and thoughtful songs. Chris recently performed with the Slip and Erin Mckeown at the Sustainable Living Music Festival. He is leaving for his first east coast tour August 1st, up and down the East Coast. Cadence Green – AKA Trevor Bowman, hailing from Newport Rhode Island. Trevor’s pristine voice and haunting lyrics have been captivating audiences of Rhode Island for the past two years. He recently completed a 2 week Canadian tour and will be heading out on another east coast tour ending it to record a new EP in Florida. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 21, 2006Crowdsourcing: Amateurs work cheap; Looking for more R.I. blogs; Camel recipesMany hands make cheap the work: The Rise of Crowdsourcing: "Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D." This story begins with a freelance photographer whose $100 stock images were undercut by $1 images from iStockphoto: iStockphoto, which grew out of a free image-sharing exchange used by a group of graphic designers, had undercut Harmel by more than 99 percent. How? By creating a marketplace for the work of amateur photographers – homemakers, students, engineers, dancers. There are now about 22,000 contributors to the site, which charges between $1 and $5 per basic image. (Very large, high-resolution pictures can cost up to $40.) At the other end of this four-part story, there's a profile of an Amazon beta site called Mechanical Turk where Requesters make micropayments for tasks people do better than computers -- identifying which view best represents a storefront in a photo lineup of neighborhood businesses, for example. When I explored the relatively few "jobs" (called HITS) visible here, most paying pennies, one caught my eye: A blogger paying for bloggers who link to and discuss one of his posts. He gets to decide if your effort is worth the 85 cents he's offering. At Turk Nation, people discuss their experience. Here, I learned that you have to alphabetize that "All HITS" listing or the "1 2 3 4 next previous" links return pages with random hits. Can this be true? What sort of engine returns random, repetitive, incomplete results pages? That's what I experienced before I alphabetized. This is one strange story. Name those blogs: Thanks for the pointer to that last item go to blogger Marshall Votta (Things Worth Knowing). He notes unintended consequences to having chosen that name: I intended to change the title of the site before… having company over. I might owe an apology to anyone who’s found me while searching for “things worth knowing”. As of this moment, this site is the #1 result on Google and the #5 result on Yahoo for that string, which means I’ve probably disappointed a few folks researching philosophy papers, and pleased a few more pursuing pretentious website titles. TWK also tells us that Pete's Bits "is home to Pete Gustin, the man who does much of the voiceover work and other comedy bits for WEEI. The man behind the curtain…" It's time for me to update the Greater Rhode Island Blog list again. I'll start digging, but I'd appreciate it if you'd shoot me an email with the link of local blogs you know of that aren't already listed. Use the envelope icon below. Ingenius: S.F. Chronicle profiles the puzzling mind of Will Shortz, editor of the New York Times crosswords. A fun read.
The most offended people ever got, though, was by a puzzle that ran on the day of the 1996 presidential election. Two of the answers were clued as "lead story in tomorrow's newspaper!" The second word was ELECTED, and the first word was seven letters. The crossword provoked something like a popular uprising. Shortz got dozens of phone calls. How dare the Times presume the winner of the election? Furious solvers called in accusing Shortz of being biased, presumptuous, wrong and worse. Bonus: The photo comes from Lisa Rein (On Lisa Rein's Radar), and links to Shortz on The Daily Show in 2003. Exposed! Former Chinese Restaurant Employee Tells All: The Peng Da Restaurant in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province. This goes way beyond cats, into toxic. This is just bait and switch, but it raised my eyebrow: ... One day in April 2000, a wholesaler brought over some camel humps. Rong asked the wholesaler to cook it and let the kitchen staff taste it. Everyone said it had good texture and told Rong to try it. Rong hesitated and took one bite. I saw Rong secretly spit the meat into the sink drain. From then on, the camel humps became a hot dish in the restaurant. Many customers came back repeatedly and ordered the dish. I liked the texture and snacked on the dish from time to time using the excuse of tasting for flavor. Rong smiled and asked if I really liked the camel hump dish. The question came out of nowhere. I was confused and asked her what was wrong. She chuckled, "Those so-called camel humps are in fact breasts from female pigs." I was quite shocked by what she said and did not believe her. Rong smiled and told me that the wholesaler had admitted it to her. She had been keeping it a secret all this time.
Yeah, I'd rather eat camel humps, wouldn't you?
Camel recipes: Camel Fillet with a Shiraz Butter Glaze. And another pair, from an Australian chef in Australia, where they have a lot of wild camels. She praises it as low-fat, low-carb and low-GI. Scroll down this page to read her earnest endorsement, which ends with how to make Camel with Caramelized Onions and Casserole of Camel and Seasonal vegetables. Art to wear out: brown dress: a year-long performance projectThe year ends July 7 in grand fashion. Just asking: Crunch time for Planet Pluto BBC At its conference this August, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) will make a decision that could see Pluto lose its status as a planet. If the planet named for the god of war gets demoted, does the Big Neighborhood get more peaceful? Related: Pluto's Newest Moons Named Hydra and Nix. They[re the "candidate satellites" in this Hubble Space Telescope image that discovered them.
Six years in the making: Jeff's Famous Pizza: A man perfects a clone of his favorite pizza parlor's product. (It must taste better than it looks.) He begins, This pizza is modeled after Patsy's on 117th street in NYC. I have been working on this for SIX years, but FINALLY I can report that I have achieved my goal. Many people have tried my pie and swear it is not only the best pizza they've ever had, but a clone of the original Patsy's recipe. This pie is incredibly light and perfectly charred. It took just 2 minutes and 10 seconds to bake at 825F. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 20, 2006Folks behind the "statewide wi-fi cloud" to explain it at 5 p.m. WednesdayVery busy here -- we're making a special Newport section for the crowds expected this weekend for the U.S. Women's Open Championship golf tournament. But I had to blog this... The first town-hall meeting sponsored by Providence Geeks looks really interesting -- the folks behind the statewide "wi-fi cloud" project are slated to speak and answer questions from the public downtown after work tomorrow (or today, if you're reading this on Wednesday). The R.I. Wireless Innovation Networks (RI-WINS) Town Hall speakers include:
Details: The RI-WINS Town Hall is) open to the public, and will start at 5pm on Wednesday, June 21 at AS220 (115 Empire Street, Providence, RI) and end at 6pm. The speakers will present short talks on their involvement in and perspective on the RI-WINS project, and will then field questions from attendees. If you have any questions, please contact Brian Jepson (bjepson AT gmail DOT com) ... If you want to see the future, drop by. (It's free.) More info in this post at Providence Geeks, the source of what's above. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 19, 2006Cheap Dells through dawn Thursday; Connie Chung swan-song video; Mars: Life?; Nestle buying Jenny Craig?Really cheap laptops: Dell Home has the following new coupons on notebooks. Restrictions apply. Inspiron notebook coupons: (exp 6/22 6am CT, or after 4000 uses). These include free Bluetooth wireless and a free Netgear router. 30% off $999 Inspiron notebooks w/ coupon code: DL6QX6MSHQV03B
At checkout the page showed a price of $1613 although the running total was $1290, with a 20% discount they were automatically applying. I applied the coupon code below, and it went down to 1129.10 (free ground shipping, $8 handling) I used this code, but there might be others: 2ZT4G81K9BLPD2 By the time tax was added, I paid $1,216.69, so that coupon made it tax-free and legal. You can start real low if you just want a basic system. (There are other models -- a 14 inch, and a 17-inch, 8-lb. widescreen that will take these coupons, too.) What clinched it for me was the dual core processor, which is reviewed as blazingly fast. It's getting hot in the computer corner here, and I'm ready to take my wifi laptop out to the porch. But I dropped my beloved Acer TravelMate, breaking the pins inside that connect the power cord, and its keyboard had stopped working, too. The deadline here made me just do it. I didn't want to waste weeks researching, and it wouldn't have helped. There aren't really other low-end laptops with the dual-core processor. I spent a coupla hours configuring, applying coupons, reading reviews, then I bought it. Google "Dell coupons" to go in via a lowest-priced, configurable link. (Some of the preconfigured systems can't be downgraded if you don't want Office included, for instance, and the basic E1505 link goes to a solo core and doesn't upgrade the processor.) There's also a 35% coupon off Dimension desktops. Cancelled again: CONNIE CROAKS ADIEU, jabs the N.Y. Post. There's video. Connie Chung did a parody of Thanks for the Memories that fell flat, apparently. So did she, collapsing at the end of a swan song in an evening gown atop a white piano. I don't watch TV at 10 p.m. Saturday, so I never noticed the show. At Slate: A Prairie Home Conundrum The mysterious appeal of Garrison Keillor. Fox buying henhouse? Nestlé set to purchase diet firm Jenny Craig. Nestle's sells you the chocolate that makes you fat, now it wants to sell you diet food to fix that. Corn burner: Dutch Company Unveils Motorcycle that Runs on Vegetable Oil We knew it: Martian Life: The NASA Cover-Up? Made you click: Way Beyond Stoned Why were a couple of gay Republican potheads blown away by the FBI? Posted by Sheila Lennon June 16, 2006New garden blogs
After the plants have grown a few inches, pinch back the shoots to promote bushy growth. It will first bloom in mid summer. After harvest, trim back the plants again. With luck, you will get three harvests in a season.How does she keep the cats from munching it all away? I had to put my catnip plants in a hanging basket, where the "boys" couldn't get to it. While they were in little pots on the porch they were nearly defoliated. Arboreality - Tree Blogging. (link fixed) Jade Blackwater writes, Arboreality (is) a blog about trees, forests, and other plants, currently based in the Philadelphia area of Pennsylvania. I recently relocated from the Seattle area of Washington, leaving behind my gardens to quietly go wild among the evergreens until my return.This blog has the greenest photos I've ever seen. In My Backyard: Beverly of Des Moines, Iowa, has roses and clematis in bloom now. Some are doing well, some not so well. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 15, 2006Whole Foods Bans Sale of Live Lobsters; Amazon now sells groceriesWhole Foods Bans Sale of Live Lobsters. You can still get them pre-killed. A book and a box of cereal? Amazon's Grocery Beta offers non-perishable groceries and sundries. Free Super Saver shipping and Amazon Prime (free shipping for a flat annual fee) apply. Now you never need leave your computer again. Posted by Sheila Lennon Dixie Chicks London gig webcast tonight; Real old trucks; World radio stations portal; Netscape recast as mishmash; Reporting from GuantanamoThe Dixie Chicks play London again tonight -- where the whole flap started -- and the show will be webcast live on a MSN Dixie Chicks site at 7 p.m. Thuckster? That's a combination of "truck" and what? Radio Gambia is missing: Live radio.net is a UK site that hosts thousands of radio stations from around the world -- no streaming playlists, just real, live stations. Windows Media, Real and MP3. If you're still using IE, note this from the FAQ: Question: Why does Internet Explorer show "This page cannot be displayed" when I click on some of the "Live Feed" links? Remember Netscape? Owner AOL has launched it as a news portal (beta) that's more like Digg than Google News. (Obscure stories rise on Digg as a result of prominently displayed "number of votes" by readers.) But while Digg is currently telling us Why breeding White Tigers is wrong (With PICS) and that Scientists Produce Flatulence-Free Beans, Netscape's serving up Paris Hilton, David Hasselhoff and Coverage of Us. The second lead story is a video of Matt Lauer's confrontation with Ann Coulter eight days ago. This hodgepodge is a bizarre "Web 2.0" demo, unfortunately, and confusing to boot, as what's leading changes as you're reading it. There are also tabs, a cool "beta.netscape.com" URL and a "cloud" of tags (the bigger the type, the more popular the topic). Maybe this is what happens when you hire a programmer but no bloggers. Somewhere, original Netscape wunderkind Marc Andreesen must be shaking his head. No way to hide: Military probes release of Guantanamo info: The Charlotte Observer had the only reporter at Guantanamo when the three detainees committed suicide Saturday. He was there to profile the jail's commander, Col. Mike Bumgarner of Kings Mountain, N.C., but his topic quickly changed to the hangings, and other reporters joined him there. The headline link above is the latest from the Observer. Yesterday's story, Two journalists ordered to leave Guantanamo Bay, includes links to Michael Gordon's original reports, and details the aftermath. Posted by Sheila Lennon 3 more farmers' markets open this weekI put this on the projo 7 to 7 news blog yesterday afternoon, but I know the overlap in readers is slim, so here it is for the rest of you. For just a few month, we get to eat living food, and the farmers are bringing their bounty to a driveway near you, beginning now The season for fresh, local fruits and vegetables is finally under way again in Southern New England. From Noah Fulmer at Farm Fresh Rhode Island comes word that farmers' markets begin at three more locations this week: -- Armory Park at the Cranston Armory, Parade St and Hudson St., Thursday 3 - 7 p.m. -- Downtown Providence, Kennedy Plaza, Friday, 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. -- Pawtucket, downtown at Broadway & Exchange St., Sunday, 12 - 3 p.m. They join two that are already in full swing: -- Wickenden Street, in the parking lot of Doyle Realty, Brook St and Alves Way, Tuesday, 2 - 6 p.m. -- Hope High School, 324 Hope St., Saturday, 9:30 a.m. -12:30 p.m. More markets -- at least 27 in all -- are expected to open as the crops come in. More information about the farms, current crops, "pick your own" fields and roadside stands is linked from that Farm Fresh homepage. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 14, 2006With Dylan's 44th album due in August, here's The Making of 'Like A Rolling Stone'; Fairport Convention rolls inThis week brought the news that Bob Dylan's 44th album, Modern Times, is to be released August 28. Of all the sparse and nearly identical reports, here's to the enterprising reporter who found a way to localize the story: New Dylan album has Poughkeepsie flavor A 5:39 video at YouTube captures some of the 16 June, 1965 recording session of Like A Rolling Stone, from album number 6, Highway 61 Revisited, in 1965, (03:18.07 Video removed from YouTube for use violation) Screen grab: Dylan and Al Kooper -- who basically bluffed his way into one of the great organ riffs of all time and tells about it here -- from The Making of Like A Rolling Stone, Parallel: At the BBC (Greil Marcus on Recording 'Like a Rolling Stone'), "In Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, Greil Marcus recounts the recording sessions for the 1965 Dylan hit." This excerpt ticks off each take in excruciating detail. Overkill? Available Thursday, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia by Michael Gray. Library Journal briefly reviews its more than 800 pages. Bardic hippies Fairport Convention are touring. (They'll be at The Narrows in Fall River Friday night.) You can listen to a bit of Meet on the Ledge, one of Richard Thompson's signature songs in this changing cast's history, at the BBC. (More better clips at Amazon. Know, though, that the lovely female voice belonged to Sandy Denny, who died in 1978 of a brain hemorrhage after a fall, so it will never again sound like this.) Frustration note: These 30-second clips don't work for a song like this. We haven't gotten to the chorus in 30 seconds. I won't dip into the darknet so I can rip 40 seconds of it for you, but I wish touring bands would make a song available for bloggers along their route. At the annual Cropredy Festival -- the Convention's convenion -- 20,000 people belt out Meet on the Ledge every year. Maybe they could let this one go free? Posted by Sheila Lennon June 13, 2006'Official Mosquito ringtone' challenges free Teen Buzz; Old Keith Richards; QB Roethlisberger's bike crash leads Pittsburgh papers;There's an update to the May 25 Teen Buzz ringtone post (Teens share ringtone grownups can't hear), from the Times UK: Inventor hopes to hit big time with silent ringtone. The original Welsh inventor of the irritating "Mosquito" sound that discouraged teenagers from loitering around a convenience store, but is inaudible to grownups, has now released an "official version," in the wake of Teen Buzz, a knockoff of the ultrasonic sound that hit the Web first. explains, The ringtone was initially the work of an unidentified group of Welsh teenagers who decided that a high-frequency ringtone would be the ultimate in teacher-proof technology. Their product, dubbed Teen Buzz (download), spread like wildfire through classrooms in the UK and abroad, allowing pupils to receive surreptitious text messages without their teachers noticing. The other Times, the New York one, got there, too: A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears says, "the ring tone was in effect pirated." Can't anybody make a 17-kilohertz buzzing noise? Doesn't physics own it? Who owns C-sharp? I haven't found a way to listen to the Mosquito version yet without buying the ringtone. Mr. Halloween himself: Old Keith Richards. (There's a tune behind that.)
Roethlisberger accident leads in Pittsburgh: The homepages of the Post-Gazette and Tribune Review are all over the Steelers' quarterback's motorcycle accident. He's okay below the neck. Giving new meaning to 'homepage': June 12, 2006 Revamping the Web Browser: Surfing the Web has meant using much the same technology for years. Now startups are working on new ways to navigate the Net. Browster, for example, offers a free add-on for Internet Explorer and the Mozilla Foundation's open-source Firefox browser that's a simpler alternative to using the "Back" button. The San Francisco company lets people viewing a Web page, say, a list of Google search results, see what lies beyond the hyperlinks simply by placing the mouse over those links -- without having to click on them or open a new window. Fountain of CGK733: Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered. The Korea Times. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 11, 2006Color photo awards; New mp3 links; Student blogger slides into newsroom
The 1st Annual International Color (Photography) Awards nominees are a Sunday morning delight, a wake-up for jaded eyes. The winners galleries are just a subset, adding a layer of famous "judges' " opinions to uniformly fine work. Main page is junky.
This one's called cabbage8 in the food gallery on her own site, where you can see the whole group. Been down: Thanks to readers who emailed concerns about my being sick. Atlanta blogger Jeneane Sessum has the same symptoms and is on the same nasty drugs. In reponse to my whines about side effects, she emails, "...the benefits of breathing and hearing outweigh the after effects of continued unconsciousness." The unconsciousness is the hardest part, especially when the drug won't allow sleep. (Today, I plan to outwit it: I'm feeling better, and plan to use some of this aritificial energy to tire myself out in the garden.) Reader Bill Marsland fills in with some music links: Here is a site featuring Paul Simon Live on BBC2 on 5.25.2006. Some old hits and several songs from the new album.... I can add a couple, too: New Counting Crows (co-written w/ Gemma Hayes): "Hazy" from "the upcoming live Counting Crows release New Amsterdam: Live at Heineken Music Hall (due June 20)" according to I Am Fuel, You Are Friends, which has the backstory. Merry Clayton: "Sho' Nuff" (B. Preston - J. Greene) is Dan Phillips' ode to Billy Preston at Home of the Groove, and it's a good one for the man to go out on. It's supposed to work this way: Danielle Ameden, our Parisian blogger among our R.I. Students Abroad, writes,
This is so cool -- Danielle did some wonderful reporting on the Paris riots this spring, and it's great to see it led to more opportunities. When I get back to the newsroom, I'll probably form another group of student bloggers. If you're a Rhode Island college student doing something interesting this summer and would like to blog about it freqquently, email me at the link on the envelope below this post. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 8, 2006Part 2: Hip media, bloggers, readers and Dems convene in VegasIf you missed Part 1: My projo.com homepage headlines vanished today, I think because I updated a time stamp and that post leapfrogged the latest creation date. Neither of today's two posts got out there for long. The topic: The gathering of self-identified progressive political bloggers at the first YearlyKos convention at the Riviera in Las Vegas. How to check into this stream: "Tags" are keywords -- categories by subject -- attached to blog posts and photos to make them easily retrievable when searched. The tag "yearlykos" at Technorati (blog posts) and Flickr (photos) A couple, though: Nice Flickr photo chronology, with lots of folks' faces matched to familiar names, from Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise, where she's blogging all this Uh-oh: Ezra Klein writes at Tapped (photograph by Lindsay):
Due to Times Select, the NYT's euphemism for locking the bluechip columnists behind the pay wall, I found myself thinking, "Maureen Dowd? Is she still around?" Ker-plunk. At the top of the ladder, the number of readers dwindles sharply. How's that for a kick in the pants? (Mark Glaser at PBS' Media Shift parodies Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall" in an impassioned appeal to the Times publisher to drop the pay wall.) Classic "live-blogging the convention" opening post, from Dave Johnson (Seeing the Forest). We've all been there. From YearlyKos: Is the wi-fi still up? 1,500 laptops on any convention pipe usually bring it down. Meanwhile, back at DailyKos this morning, Markos was chewing out diarists for all blogging "Zarqawi is dead" at the same time, rather than chiming in on the post of the first one to the publish. Posted by Sheila Lennon $4k hypoallergenic kitty; Yahoo launches Flickr-like photo site; Radio Deliro; 'B&W Hansel and Gretel'; Journalist: 'I was Russell Crowe's stooge'; Web downloads via TiVo; Copyright showdown today
The demo at right is Persian, of course. Yahoo photos is open. Free unlimited storage, tagging, etc. ZNet: Yahoo pours AJAX on photo service: Yahoo Photos has been around since 2000, and has gathered about 2 billion photos and 30 million monthly users. It was early in the game and useful, but not quick to take advantage of Web 2.0 or its sibling Flickr's functionality. The new version (in limited beta in the U.S.) pours on the AJAX, giving it the feel of a rich desktop client application, with slick drag and drop, in line text editing, organizational features, such as automatically updating albums based on tags. Yahoo Photos beta also has integration with other Yahoo services, Mail, Messenger, Mobile and 360. It borrows tagging and comments from Flickr, and Yahoo is partnering with Target for photo finishing services. It also allows users to download original high-res versions of photos. Yes, Yahoo bought Flickr last year, but sees different audiences. Yahoo photos are not by default publicly searchable, for instance. If you have a Yahoo login and password, you can get in and try it out. Here's the link again. 3:32 a.m. Radio Déliro, basée sur les préférences musicales de Roland Moreno, est animée et programmée par Sylvain Robert. Push the Power button on the radio to turn it on and wear Roland Moreno's ears. via Doc Searls.
Fascinating: Nightmare On Wall Street: Prosecution Witness Describes 'Chaos' In UBS PaineWebber Attack A journalist's confession: I was Russell Crowe's stooge. Flattery caused Aussie journalist Jack Marx to pull his punches on this story for People (The man they love to hate, 9.24.05). Crowe dropped him anyway, so he writes the story he didn't write the first time, in context. Hundreds of readers respond on his Sydney Morning Herald blog, The Daily Truth. Marx gives it back to them: And another thing... ...Looking over the last few days, I can see very quickly the problems that most people have with me, and they are, in no particular order; lack of "ethics", missing "morals", not a lot of "taste", conspicuously absent "professionalism" and critical shortages of "respect". While I'm sure that neither James Joyce nor Salvador Dali ever cleaned their ears out so as to better hear such criticisms, let alone give answer to them, I feel compelled to explain my feelings about such matters. Footnote: Marx writes in "Stooge." At this point I produced from my pocket a book I had published at the turn of the century. It told the true story of the time I had gone in search of my childhood rock and roll idol, finding him destitute in a small coastal town, a reclusive invalid after 25 years of drug addiction. I moved in with him for a few months, finally moving out after relations reached such critical mass that another few days may have seen a fatality. I fashioned the experience into something of a modern-day fable, a cautionary tale about the perils of getting too close to one's idols. The book was, Sorry - The Wretched Tale Of Little Stevie Wright and if you hurry here and scroll down, you can still hear Stevie Wright and The Easybeats sing Sorry.
Through the new TiVoCast service, people can download broadband video clips to their TiVo boxes for free from a handful of Internet sites, such as woman-oriented iVillage, technology-focused CNET.com (a CNET News.com sister site), entertainment-grooved Heavy.com, The New York Times, the National Basketball Association and Women's National Basketball Association, and news and political video blog site Rocketboom.... Much of it so far seems to be audio whose artist/title info screens double for "video," like Music Choice on cable. Among the offerings: Live 365 Radio Network, with its thousands of niche FM, CD and AM stations. (Free reg. req., ads) (Of course, you can download Web radio to your home stereo speakers several ways. I do it through a receiver with a USB input, and the right jack. No TiVo required.) Related: Copyright Law Faces New Test On Thursday: Should You Pay Multiple Fees For The Same Music? SIRA addresses ephemeral downloads, or what the EFF refers to as incidental downloads, meaning any content that is either temporary or cached in a computer. Chris Norgaard, partner and intellectual property attorney at Ropers Majeski Kohn & Bentley, says that SIRA actually prevents incidental downloads from being licensed but speculates that the mere mention of it has EFF nervous. Posted by Sheila Lennon Part 1: Dems, bloggers and readers convene in VegasThis started off part of the previous post, but it grew and took up too much real estate. Who knew antibiotics would work like No-Doz? Friday Lunch Keynote - House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senator Barbara Boxer Saturday Morning Keynote with DNC Chair Howard Dean, lunch with Virginia Governor Mark Warner, evening reception featuring keynote by Senate Minority Leader Give 'em Hell Harry Reid (D-NV) A lot of bytes have traveled since Joe Trippi's blogging efforts on behalf of Howard Dean grew into this self-organizing group of blogggers and readers shaping their own grassroots event. Matt Bai: Can Bloggers Get Real? NYT, May 28. Here's the nut. ...In (one) way, Daily Kos and other blogs resemble a political version of those escapist online games where anyone with a modem can disappear into an alternate society, reinventing himself among neighbors and colleagues who exist only in a virtual realm. It is not so much a blog as a travel destination, a place where what you have to say can be more important — at least for a few hours each day — than who you are or what you do. DailyKos isn't exactly Cheers. They deal the cards again in life, if you're lucky. Reinventing yourself, another chance, happens when you go to a new school, fall in love, achieve something, like yourself. And...what you have to say -- at least for a few hours each day -- is who you are and what you do. It's not something to do between tending persona and performing. I guess I don't like how Bai gets here, but here's his point: And those who lead the most consequential revolts against the status quo never really vanquish the party's insider establishment. They simply take its place. Yeah, you can become your parents. You can chide the amateurs in the Times. But what the Democrats really need is new candidates, and influencers of candidates who can win, and innovative, effective, positive campaigns. The politician who sees this Vegas crowd as access to the virtual voting bloc doesn't get it: -- There is no top-down access to bloggers. Ideas bubble up and ring true for people or they don't. YearlyKos should tease out the extroverts, the ones who got themselves off their computers and out to Vegas. Some of them can probably get themselves to wakes and beaches, neighborhood barbecues and bocce and baseball fields this summer, too. We here call that the analog world. But don't let the grownups dazzle you with your chosen status, then reinvent you in their image. They'll stiffen you up just as Al Gore's experienced handlers did in 2000. If your ads try to scare me with "terror," I'll turn away. We know better than to vote for whover says "Boo!" If you want to make your religion the laws of our melting pot, please think again. That will tear America apart. I'll likely support you if you want to spend our money at home on the needs of our own people, on the development of good tech jobs, on the computer literacy of the rest of us so we all can work, shop and learn as part of the online society. Put videos on blogs where I'll see them. Say things worth reporting, not just safe lines wrapped in bunting. Don't hire actors to make your radio spots. Use your time to show me who you are, tell me what you'd change and why. And please don't talk mush to me. And... I don't want podcasts pushed to my phone, nor political ads in my inbox or white metal mailbox. "Casey Goodguy needs your vote" will do. Here's where YearlyKos says you can watch coverage. C-SPAN Schedule. This Technorati search should yield the latest live-blogging. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 7, 2006Hear about R.I.'s looming statewide wi-fi 'cloud' June 21A press release from Providence Geeks: First "Town Hall Meeting" to Focus on RI-WINS: "When can I get on it?" will be my question. A week earlier, on June 14, is Providence Geeks' regular monthly "dinner," also at AS220, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. (I put dinner in quotes because eating is incidental. Standing around with a beer talking to folks is just fine, too.) Posted by Sheila Lennon June 6, 2006How to download, save and play a Web video; Net Neutrality; 20 things everyone needs to knowA featured video at YouTube is Save the Internets 04:00 What better clip to illustrate how to save and play a video? 1. Copy the URL of the page playing the video. In this case, it's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOJnKgsWPGw 2. Go to keepvid.com and paste this URL into its form 3. A bar labeled Download will have the word, "Loading" under it until it spits out another URL -- a long, complicated one -- and instructs you to right-click and "Save As..." 4. Rename the file as you save it. It's a Flash Video file, so it needs an extension -- .flv -- so your system can recognize what it is and know how to play it. Ongoing discussion: How To Save Flash Videos From YouTube. 5. You'll need to download a player for FLV files. FLV Player is free, and will load and play your FLV videos when you click on them. Net Neutrality in a nutshell: The idea is that all Web sites should get the same treatment from cable and phone companies for use of their broadband, high-speed Internet lines. The debate centers on whether it is more "neutral" to let consumers reach all Internet content equally or to let providers discriminate if they think they'll make more money that way. -- Tim Wu, Columbia Law professor, in Slate Congress needs to consider that a new pipe could kill the old, democratic Web. The person (whose Website) just wants to kill kudzu couldn’t afford to get in the new pipe. Beyond finances, a two-tiered pipe could see controversial sites shunted over to the slow lane. --Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times, June 6 '06, Congress should tread lightly around issue of net neutrality Phone and cable companies, who control the broadband wires into most houses, could gain an unfair advantage. They could use their newfound power to promote their own content. Under the worst scenario, a few big players could transform the Internet from an unruly but vibrant democracy into a dictatorship. And a funky site out of nowhere such as YouTube might never get any traction at all on such an unlevel playing field. Experts share:... 20 things everyone needs to know: How to change a tyre...iron a shirt...sleep...shave...make a martini...ask someone out...use chopsticks...hit a tennis ball...listen... Posted by Sheila Lennon June 5, 2006Stephen Colbert's commencement address; 'Web jukeboxes' in barsThe nasty sinus bug has moved into my ears, plugging me up. I don't want to sit in a waiting room/ treatment room for a couple of hours just to get an antibiotic. Is there a better way? Just a couple of links today:
Transcript: Comedy Central show host Stephen Colbert's 2006 Commencement Address at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. Saturday. Story. Here's a taste: There are so many challenges facing this next generation, and as they said earlier, you are up for these challenges. And I agree, except that I don’t think you are. I don’t know if you’re tough enough to handle this. You are the most cuddled generation in history. I belong to the last generation that did not have to be in a car seat. You had to be in car seats. I did not have to wear a helmet when I rode my bike. You do. You have to wear helmets when you go swimming, right? In case you bump your head against the side of the pool. Oh, by the way, I should have said, my speech today may contain some peanut products. A few bars of music: Punch line: It was nice to see I could perform some prestidigitation and hear the Replacements in the Blarney Stone. But it was far more significant to find them waiting for me in B61. The former told me I could bend a bar's music to my will, or at least try. The latter told me I might belong. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 4, 2006Dead keyboardist dies; Who: new 11-minute song; Ice lens photos; J. Wyeth 'Red House' house for sale
Here's the San Francisco Chronicle version, and here's the howl of his friend and webmaster at vincewelnick.com, Mike Lawson. Many nice photos. Video: Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Vince Welnick of The Grateful Dead sing The Star-Spangled Banner in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, April 12th, 1993. They pull off the a capella harmonies pretty well, considering how many singers have crashed on that song. Promoting a public culture: The Dead didn't strike a chord with me, beyond a few hits, but I always liked that they set aside sections at their concerts for "tapers," people who would bring standing mikes and openly record the concerts. These tapes were traded among fans (before the Web, on computer bulletin boards) and built a following for the band far beyond their official sales. These live recordings, which vastly outnumber those officially released and retailed, are the precursors of the "recordings of indeterminate origin" at mp3 blogs. Like the AM transistor radio I smuggled under the bedcovers as a kid, these blogs let me hear good music (raw R&B and early rock back then, everything now), an essential function of the culture that radio has largely abandoned to raucous ads and unlistenable "hits." Mainstream radio was forgettable. From airchexx.com, here's a 27-minute clip of early Top-40 format. It's Bud Kelly on WCOP in Boston, hyping a movie promotion, Miss Universe applications, Coke, Body by Fisher and ringing a desk bell. Brenda Lee moans, The Brothers Four coo Greenfields, songstress Gogi Grant belts Restless Wind Sinatra oozes Sentimental Baby, The Don Costa Orchestra toots through Never on Sunday, and yes, Pat Boone, (Moody River), Jerry Vale and Johnny Mathis -- it's abysmal, pablum for kids with hormones rising and pimples. No Chuck Berry, no Dance With Me Henry, no doo wop. I had forgotten how bad it all was. No wonder Dylan had to be next. p.s. Copyright was intended to encourage the creation of a public culture. When thieves would buy a book in the East and republish it in the West with their own names on it, authors started circulating new works just among a small circle of friends. The new law meant you could send a copy to Washington to prove you really wrote it, not the guy in the West whose brother swore he'd seen the manuscript years before. Copyright wasn't ever intended to keep you from hearing new music unless Clear Channel paid to play it. Bonus: Late (1970) Wolfman Jack clip, also from Airchexx.com. Not likely for radio: Since The Who last troubled the top 40, the musical landscape has been reshaped by hip-hop, dance music and grunge. But now the band is set to return virtually untouched by the vagaries of fashion - by releasing an 11-minute rock opera as its first single for a quarter of a century.
A widely recognized red house on Monhegan Island that's depicted in a Jamie Wyeth painting is to be auctioned later this month. Photos through an ice lens: Matthew G. Wheeler makes images in a different light. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 2, 2006Weekend tunes & paperbackMy longtime Canadian correspondent, Eric Lilius of Eagle Lake, Ontario, writes, Have you heard any of Conor Oberst's material? I took notice when he did "When the President Talks to God" on the Leno show.
The photo, by AP, is of Oberst playing the Newport Folk Festival last August 7. More downloads at Saddle Creek, his record label. Closer to home, reader Bill Marsland writes, Here’s a blog with the entire “Beatles live at Hollywood Bowl” available for download....(This never made it to CD) Thriller of the week: Another good one from last weekend's grocery-store book buy: Term Limits by Vince Flynn. Posted by Sheila Lennon June 1, 2006RFK Jr.: Was the 2004 Election Stolen? (and other links of the day)Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone today.
Amazing music-themed wooden sculptures by Philippe Guillerm. Collage: Blogs with a Face: What bloggers look like, with thumbnail links to their blogs. Linda married PC basketball star Noel Kinski halfway through college, and moved with him to Cape Cod. I have vivid memories of her as a child. I wish I could pass those on to her family.
But now she's taken ayahuasca -- the Amazonian Spirit Vine -- a powerful psychedelic herbal blend, with shamans in Peru -- and written about it; there's some video at that link, too. Here's a somewhat dated but thorough profile of Salak from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Tech Crunch describes it: San Francisco based SixApart, which owns the Typepad, MovableType and LiveJournal blogging platforms, will start letting users test their new Vox (formerly Comet) hosted blogging platform on Thursday, June 1. Initially a few thousand people will be let in, and they will ramp up from there.... You can sign up here, and they'll get back to you. Posted by Sheila Lennon |
So I upgraded some more things -- 1.83 ghzprocesor, 1 gig of memory, 100 gig hard drive, 9 cell battery (vs. 6) , TV tuner, integrated Soundblaster card, etc. (I read that the ATI graphics drivers don't always play nice here, so I didn't upgrade that.) 
Just My Garden
The internet is under attack by huge telecoms like AT&T. Do Americans care? Musicians like 
Oberst is, of course, 
my passport photo blogging since 2002 garden blogs archived headlines  Sheila Lennon is features & interactive producer of projo.com, the Web site of The Providence (R.I.) Journal Rhode Island |
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