Monday, 6 June 2011
Sunday, 5 June 2011
How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code
On the whole it looked like a pretty crappy gift for a young boy. But his parents insisted he take it for a spin, not least because they had just bought the thing for more than £129. And so he did. And so, he says, "I was sucked into a hole from which I would never escape."
It's not hard to see why. Although this was 1983, and the ORIC-1 had about the same raw computing power as a modern alarm clock, there was something oddly compelling about it. When you turned it on all you saw was the word "Ready," and beneath that, a blinking cursor. It was an open invitation: type something, see what happens.
In less than an hour, the ORIC-1 manual took you from printing the word "hello" to writing short programs in BASIC -- the Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code -- that played digital music and drew wildly interesting pictures on the screen. Just when you got the urge to try something more complicated, the manual showed you how.
In a way, the ORIC-1 was so mesmerizing because it stripped computing down to its most basic form: you typed some instructions; it did something cool. This was the computer's essential magic laid bare. Somehow ten or twenty lines of code became shapes and sounds; somehow the machine breathed life into a block of text.
No wonder Colin got hooked. The ORIC-1 wasn't really a toy, but a toy maker. All it asked for was a special kind of blueprint.
Once he learned the language, it wasn't long before he was writing his own simple computer games, and, soon after, teaching himself trigonometry, calculus and Newtonian mechanics to make them better. He learned how to model gravity, friction and viscosity. He learned how to make intelligent enemies.
More than all that, though, he learned how to teach. Without quite knowing it, Colin had absorbed from his early days with the ORIC-1 and other such microcomputers a sense for how the right mix of accessibility and complexity, of constraints and open-endedness, could take a student from total ignorance to near mastery quicker than anyone -- including his own teachers -- thought possible.
It was a sense that would come in handy, years later, when he gave birth to Project Euler, a peculiar website that has trained tens of thousands of new programmers, and that is in its own modest way the emblem of a nascent revolution in education...
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James Somers @'the Atlantic'
FOIA Request Unveils Secret CIA-Produced Documentary About CIA Agents Captured & Held In China For Decades
This is fascinating. Apparently, a US plane with CIA agents on board flew into China in 1952, trying to recover a spy in that country. However, the plane went down, and the Chinese captured the two CIA agents who survived the crash... and then kept them until 1971 and 1973. That, in itself, is an interesting story. But making it even more interesting is that the CIA had a professional documentary made about the story (including reenactments), intended for internal audiences within the CIA. Yet, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Associated Press, the CIA is now planning to release the entire (short) movie on YouTube. Of course, as a work created by the government, it should be in the public domain, though I'm curious to see if that's officially acknowledged anywhere.
Mike Masnick @'techdirt'
Mike Masnick @'techdirt'
Two sides to every story...
avimayer Avi Mayer
NRG: Half-hour ceasefire at #Syria-#Israel border subject to protesters refraining from causing damage to security infrastructure
ibnezra Joseph Dana
The army response has been rubber, live bullets, skunk, tear gas canisters as bullets and pepper spray
Via
Doctor Who anime - FINAL. ドクター・フーのファン・アニメ
All 13 minutes of the completed fake Doctor Who 80s-style anime. Drawn, animated and partially voiced by myself. Some bits are good, some bits are poor, but on the whole it turned out okay, I think. Enjoy! This is old school Who, so fans of the new reboot show may be confused by the fact that the Doctor is doing martial arts and Cybermen say "excellent." Watch the classics and you'll understand. You'll also become almost instantly more handsome by watching classic Who.
PS - for those complaining about total lack of story or narrative in this clip, I did always state from the start that it was only going to be an extended trailer with no plot. Think of it as highlights from a 24 epsiode series if there was one.
この私が完成した無認可のドクター・フーの1980年代スタイルファン・アニメ。１３分の長さです。
このフィルムには良い面も悪い面もあると思うが、全体として見たらOKと思う。
１９７０-１９８０年代の原作のドクター・フーを基にしているから、今風の２００５のシリーズのファンは登場人物の言行が奇妙な印象はぬぐえないだろう。往年のドクター・
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'This is what Israel is shooting now and they causing serious injuries in Qalandia'
ibnezra Joseph Dana
Hard to believe I live in a state that behaves this way. It is simply unsustainable no matter your political belief
Hundreds of Palestinians clash with IDF in West Bank Naksa Day protest
Censorship in Venice: sculptures covered up at Azerbaijan pavilion
“I am very surprised as the Azerbaijan government was aware of the works I planned to bring to Venice,” Salakhova told The Art Newspaper. In the official press material for the pavilion, she had written: “I am very proud to represent Azerbaijan, a secular country where Islam and civility are closely woven together.” The Azerbaijan Culture Ministry could not be reached for comment.
The artist is presenting “Destination”, her first sculptures, in Venice. Salakhova, who was a co-founder of First (the Soviet Union’s first contemporary art gallery in 1989) before opening the Aidan Gallery in 1992, intertwines modern and mystical imagery, and has an interest in gender and Islamic themes and their interconnection. Her sculptures in Venice, some of which weigh more than a tonne, are on display at Palazzo Benzon (to 27 September).
@'The Art Newspaper'
Heather Cassils - Tiresias (2010)
The performance, Tiresias, is inspired by the mythological character of the same name. He was the blind prophet of Thebes, famous for being transformed into a woman for seven years. I wore cataract lenses to cloud my vision and held my body against a neo classical greek make torso, carved out of ice, to fit my body exactly. Throughout the event I melted the torso with my own body heat enacting his gender transformation. I cast the myth of Teresias as a story of endurance and transformation, in which masculinity both freezes the body, and melts away.
(For HelenXXX)
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(For HelenXXX)
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Who is Heather Cassils?
These Cheap Online Music Stores Make iTunes Look Like A Joke
Now there are other stores out there with catalogs that rival iTunes in size and absolutely destroy it in terms of price. You can easily grab an entire album for less than a dollar. With prices this low, why bother stealing music at all?
Let's look at each store using a metric called ROCI (Radiohead's OK Computer Index). Each store's ROCI is the cost of OK Computer -- the lower, the better.
HERE
RonHogan Ron Hogan
What's the name of that YA novel where the two girls get their father drunk & have sex with him? Oh, wait, that was Genesis 19.
The Beach Boys vs J Dilla - Pet Sounds: In the Key of Dee
1. Pet Sounds
2. Sloop Jay D
3. Let's Go Away For a While
4. I Just Wasn't Made For These Times
5. Here Today
6. Caroline, No
7. God Only Knows
8. You Still Believe in Dee
9. I Know There's an Answer
10. Wouldn't it Be Nice
11. That's Not Dee
12. I'm Waiting For the Day
13. Don't Talk (Close Your Eyes)
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The Roots - Dilla Joints
J Dilla: the Mozart of hip-hop
'His music is full of subtle things' … J Dilla. Photograph: Johnny Tergo/AP
The classically trained virtuoso Miguel Atwood-Ferguson grew up listening to Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin. He started playing the violin when he was four, began composing orchestral music at 10 and took up the viola at 12. The first musician he truly loved was Bach, but Atwood-Ferguson knows precisely what drew him to the music of James Yancey, aka Jay Dee, aka J Dilla."Dilla is a modern genius," he says. "Everyone has genius within them, but not everyone, for whatever reason, manifests it. But Dilla did. He stood for taking a great risk on different levels, for continuous hard work and for courage. He is a modern genius because he captured and represented the spirit of a particular time. What he did was so deep that he has influenced a huge amount of modern music. In an age when many of his peers are still more interested in vanity, Dilla was more interested in exploration through music. And that is why he is a modern genius."
Born in 1973, James Yancey grew up in the Conant Gardens neighbourhood of Detroit and began making beats at home when he was just 11 years old. His mother was a singer and his father, Beverly, played piano and bass; together they had an a capella jazz group, and there would always be singing at home. By the time he was in his early 20s Dilla's music – full of rich, utterly unique drum sounds, warm, muzzy instrumentation and endlessly inventive melodies – was so popular he was getting called at home by A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Busta Rhymes. In 1996, Tribe were Grammy-nominated for their Dilla-produced album Beats, Rhymes and Life – but he had to be strongly persuaded to even attend the ceremony. "He didn't really want to fuck with none of that," Tribe rapper Q-Tip told Vibe magazine a few years later. "And I don't blame him."
Dilla died from a lupus-related illness nearly five years ago in February 2006. In 2007, on what would have been Dilla's 33rd birthday, Atwood-Ferguson and independent hip-hop champion and producer Carlos Niño released their brass, strings and woodwind version of Dilla and Common's Nag Champa for free download. They created the track in Niño's LA apartment with just one microphone, recording one instrument at a time. An EP that featured more of Dilla's works – Antiquity, Nag Champa, his old group Slum Village's Fall in Love and A Tribe Called Quest's Find a Way – followed a few months later.
In February last year, Atwood-Ferguson put a 60-piece orchestra together to play a special tribute concert for Dilla at an arts centre in LA. Dilla's mother, Maureen, was a special guest and the night, Suite for Ma Dukes, was named in her honour. The CD and DVD recorded that night show Dilla's music to be, by turns, fantastically complex and head-noddingly simple, while Atwood-Ferguson's orchestrations are overpoweringly alive with the possibilities of where this brilliant musician, someone who made startling records with De La Soul, Janet Jackson, Erykah Badu and Common, among a wealth of others, could have gone next.
"There is a depth and honesty in his music, in the way his beats meld together," Atwood-Ferguson says. "His music is full of subtle things that most people aren't aware of – and they shouldn't have to be. People should just enjoy it..."
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Sun Ra: Viscosity And Thermonuclear Breakdown...
When I first heard the universal truth of Sun Ra's message, I was a very young man in attendance at the Ann Arbor Jazz and Blues Festival, an interplanetary landing strip where the Sun Ra Mythic Science Arkestra touched down late one night to became a frequent and welcomed return visitor. I myself was a reluctant product of the times, but I nevertheless became enthralled with the far reaching tones that emanated from the stage --- sounds and circumstances that seemingly originated from somewhere far away in another galaxy. I also enjoyed the rush and surprise of untold stories from deepest space. But as my jazz education continued to flourish, my focus then began to shift more towards Sun Ra's earlier (and dare I say, more conventional) dispatches that reflected his admiration for the Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson big bands that once roamed the hiways of this planet. Obviously before his arrival from Saturn, Ra had studied our ways and our musical pioneers in preparation for sharing his own knowledge and sounds with us earthly beings who happen to occupy this third stone from the sun. It was then that I became convinced that the Ra and his Arkestra were among the finest (and most swinging) of dance bands in the entire solar system...
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The Last Poets - Jazzoetry
DJ Hudson presents Wild Bunch Sound – Massive Attack Samples (1988-98)
“This is a collection of records sampled or covered by Massive Attack from their first three LPs and the singles of that time. Shout out to Tony Hosey who used to bring all the Massive Attack records round to my house way back when.” – DJ Hudson
You Know, You Know – Mahvishnu Orchestra (One Love – Blue Lines)
Isaac Hayes – Ike’s Mood I (One Love – Blue Lines)
So Glad You’re Mine – Al Green (FIve Man Army – Blue Lines)
Five Man Army Dub (Five Man Army – Blue Lines)
Les McCann – Sometimes I Cry (Teardrop – Mezzanine)
James Brown – Never Can Say Goodbye (Better Things – Protection)
En Melody – Serge Gainsbourg (Karmacoma [Portishead Experience])
Funkadelic – Good Old Music (Safe From Harm – Blue Lines)
Led Zeppelin – When The Levee Breaks (Man Next Door – Mezzanine)
Quincy Jones – Summer In The City (Exchange – Mezzanine)
Man Next Door – John Holt (Man Next Door – Mezzanine)
Lowrell – Mellow Mellow (Lately – Blue Lines)
Pieces of a Dream (Weather Storm – Protection)
Isaac Hayes – Joy (Lately – Blue Lines)
Billy Cobham – Stratus (Safe From Harm – Blue Lines)
James Brown – The Payback (Protection)
Be Thankful (Be Thankful – Blue Lines)
Sade – Siempre Hay Esperanza (Be Thankful – Blue Lines)
Mambo – Wally Badarou (Daydreaming – Blue Lines)
Tom Scott – Sneakin In The Back (Blue Lines)
Do the Funky Penguin – Rufus Thomas (Any Love)
Blind Alley – The Emotions (Any Love Remix)
Funk You Up – The Sequence (Any Love)
Daisy Lady (Any Love)
Planetary Citizen – Mahvishnu Orchestra (Unfinished Sympathy – Blue Lines)
Rock Creek Park – The Blackbyrds (Blue Lines)
JJ Johnson – Parade Strutt (Unfinished Sympathy – Blue Lines)
Young-Holt Unlimited – Light My Fire (Light My Fire – Protection)
Isaac Hayes – Our Day Will Come (Exchange – Mezzanine)
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Paris DJs Soul Soundsystem - For Ever Gil Scott-Heron!
Tracklisting :
01. Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - Three Miles Down
(from 'Secrets' album, 1978 / Arista)
02. Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - Angel Dust
(from 'Secrets' album, 1978 / Arista)
03. Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
(from 'Pieces Of A Man' album, 1971 / Flying Dutchman)
04. Gil Scott-Heron - Home is Where the Hatred Is
(from 'Pieces Of A Man' album, 1971 / Flying Dutchman)
05. Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - The Summer Of '42
(from 'From South Africa to South Carolina' album, 1976 / Arista)
06. Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - Willing
(from '1980' album, 1980 / Arista)
07. Gil Scott-Heron - The Klan
(from 'Real Eyes' album, 1980 / Arista)
08. Gil Scott-Heron - Who'll Pay Reparations On My Soul?
(from 'Small Talk at 125th & Lenox' album, 1970 / Flying Dutchman)
09. Gil Scott-Heron - Lady Day & John Coltrane
(from 'Pieces Of A Man' album, 1971 / Flying Dutchman)
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Q&A: Lee 'Scratch' Perry
'My biggest disappointment? I have a very nagging wife.' Photograph: Getty Images
Lee "Scratch" Perry, 75, was born in Jamaica. In 1968 he formed a label, Upsetter Records, to record his own music; his first single was People Funny Boy. In 1969, he had his first British hit with Return Of Django. The same year he began to produce Bob Marley & The Wailers, beginning a long association that led to the popularisation of reggae and dub music. Perry went on to work with the Clash, Paul McCartney and the Beastie Boys. In 2003, he won a Grammy award for Best Reggae Album for his record Jamaican ET. He is the special guest at this weekend's We, The People festival in Bristol. He is married for the second time, and lives in Switzerland.
When were you happiest?
When I wake in the morning and go to the bathroom and go pee pee.
Which living person do you most admire?
Me.
What was your most embarrassing moment?
The most embarrassing moment anyone can have is when you run out of cash and have to ask for a loan. That happened to me in Jamaica 25 years ago. That's why I left.
What is your most treasured possession?
My music.
Where would you like to live?
I believe in Hell and Heaven. I'd prefer to live in Heaven than in Hell.
What would your super power be?
I'd fly from my enemies and turn invisible so they can't see me.
Who would play you in the film of your life?
All the fishes in the sea, all the birds in the air and all the animals in the jungle.
Cat or dog?
One day I had some birds in my house – I think birds are angels – and the cat ate one. I don't like cats any more.
What is your most unappealing habit?
Angels showed me how to live and what to eat, not to drink alcohol, not to smoke. Now I eat marijuana: I make curry and tea with it. If I had carried on drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, I am sure I would not be talking to you now.
What is your favourite smell?
Cherry blossom and Chanel No 5.
What would you most like to wear to a costume party?
A George V gown, boots and crown.
To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?
God. God sees everything we do.
What was the best kiss of your life?
I refuse to kiss human beings as I am scared of getting a virus from things people eat. I prefer to kiss a tree, a rose, a bird or an animal. I used to kiss my cat until the cat ate my bird.
What has been your biggest disappointment?
I have a very nagging wife.
When did you last cry, and why?
When my mother died.
How often do you have sex?
My needs is not dead and my thing is still alive.
What is the closest you've come to death?
The last time I had a spliff, I made an extra big one and it knocked me out for a day, a night and another day.
What song would you like played at your funeral?
I don't think I will have a funeral but if I do, the song I would like to hear is my first hit, People Funny Boy.
Where would you most like to be right now?
In Buckingham Palace, on the throne with the Queen's crown on my head.
Tell us a secret
Before I was a human being, I used to be a kingfish.
Rosanna Greenstreet @'The Guardian'
When were you happiest?
When I wake in the morning and go to the bathroom and go pee pee.
Which living person do you most admire?
Me.
What was your most embarrassing moment?
The most embarrassing moment anyone can have is when you run out of cash and have to ask for a loan. That happened to me in Jamaica 25 years ago. That's why I left.
What is your most treasured possession?
My music.
Where would you like to live?
I believe in Hell and Heaven. I'd prefer to live in Heaven than in Hell.
What would your super power be?
I'd fly from my enemies and turn invisible so they can't see me.
Who would play you in the film of your life?
All the fishes in the sea, all the birds in the air and all the animals in the jungle.
Cat or dog?
One day I had some birds in my house – I think birds are angels – and the cat ate one. I don't like cats any more.
What is your most unappealing habit?
Angels showed me how to live and what to eat, not to drink alcohol, not to smoke. Now I eat marijuana: I make curry and tea with it. If I had carried on drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, I am sure I would not be talking to you now.
What is your favourite smell?
Cherry blossom and Chanel No 5.
What would you most like to wear to a costume party?
A George V gown, boots and crown.
To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?
God. God sees everything we do.
What was the best kiss of your life?
I refuse to kiss human beings as I am scared of getting a virus from things people eat. I prefer to kiss a tree, a rose, a bird or an animal. I used to kiss my cat until the cat ate my bird.
What has been your biggest disappointment?
I have a very nagging wife.
When did you last cry, and why?
When my mother died.
How often do you have sex?
My needs is not dead and my thing is still alive.
What is the closest you've come to death?
The last time I had a spliff, I made an extra big one and it knocked me out for a day, a night and another day.
What song would you like played at your funeral?
I don't think I will have a funeral but if I do, the song I would like to hear is my first hit, People Funny Boy.
Where would you most like to be right now?
In Buckingham Palace, on the throne with the Queen's crown on my head.
Tell us a secret
Before I was a human being, I used to be a kingfish.
Rosanna Greenstreet @'The Guardian'
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