Happy New Year!

This is an attempt at an automatically scheduled post.

Blagojevich gives v-sign

Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois gives a v-sign to the United States. The meanings of his actions are clear to anyone in the US. Now they can be understood in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand as well.

Amazon mp3s

As AndyC noticed, Amazon UK is strongly promoting its mp3 store. In the US the mp3 store has been running for some time. It is convenient and easy to use. It is clear that the record companies are trying to undercut iTunes by letting Amazon sell mp3s while not allowing Apple to do the same thing (with exceptions). A year ago if I had a craving for a song I would buy it from Apple. Now I will usually buy the song from Amazon to avoid the DRM. Amazon seems to be experimenting with two levels of price point. One is the album for $5 like Tha Carter III or Dear Science. This is a tempting price. But they also are trying albums for $2, which, for the right artist, is almost irresistible. Yesterday you could get Purple Rain and Howlin' Wolf: His Best - Chess 50th Anniversary Collection at this price. Today you cannot. I wonder if Amazon is eating the costs on these experiments in order to determine the price elasticity of demand for mp3s. I also wonder how I can find about these offers without having to check the site every day.

Boeing vs. Airbus

What is the ugliest plane in the world?

The Airbus A300-600ST Beluga is a modified A300 which is used (mostly) to carry Airbus components ready for final assembly across Europe to Toulouse or Hamburg. I often see these near Chester because Airbus wings are built in Broughton.

The Boeing Dreamlifter (here seen with downtown San Francisco in the background) is a modified 747-400 used for transporting aircraft parts to Boeing from suppliers around the world.

I think Airbus and Boeing should use each other's planes to ferry their parts around. This would be like Apple and Cray. When Seymour Cray was told that Apple Computer had just bought a Cray to help design the next Apple Macintosh, Cray commented that he had just bought a Macintosh to design the next Cray.

New format for the dot matrix signs in BART

The new format is a bad piece of design. Previously you could see the destination of the next two trains at a glance. Now you have to look at the numbers to see what the second train will be. Here, the next two trains are both for Daly City, but you have to look carefully to see that. Why did they make this mistake? They think they are showing more information in a smaller area. This is true, but it is information that is only of interest to BART. Who cares what the train is in 27 minutes? Only those who are trying to run the system. It's the same mistake they make when they earnestly tell you that the system is running 20 minutes behind schedule. We don't care. We want to know when the next train will pull in.

All you ever wanted to know about the Wilhelm scream.

Laura Marling @ Cafe Du Nord, 28 September 2008

Photo by ipickmynose at flickr.

This was ages ago. Laura Marling is that youngster who did not win the Mercury Prize because some boring indie rock group must always win. She was second on the bill which meant I got to go home at a sensible time. Did I mention that she is young? She is 18 and I kept thinking of Wayne Rooney (a football player), who similarly seemed to appear at age 17 already fully formed. Her songs are nice. I would like to know who did the arrangements for her band, I suspect the wonderfully named Charlie Fink who seemed to be her main associate. She is intense and the crowd are intent. She looks down when she speaks but stares above the watcher's heads when she sings (Yes, I know she is not doing that in the picture).

Compare and contrast with Taylor Swift, another precocious talent who has taken the quicker route towards stardom. Will Marling ever try to take that step upwards? One of her last songs, a new one, sounded like she has discovered Bob Dylan. I wish her luck.

How to block that infuriating blinking icon on New York Times pages

Anything moving on a web page is very distracting. So I browse the web with flash turned off, ads filtered, and (experimentally) with xss filters in place. But despite all this NYTimes has a tiny icon on their news pages that flashes. To get rid of it you should use your ad blocker to block

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/article/articleShare.js

and, hurrah, one less flashing image.

A basketball game

Image from CCSF vs. SJCC (i.e. not the game I saw)

G. has been enjoying playing basketball and I wanted to take her to a game. We went to see the City College women's team (CCSF Rams) play against Santa Rosa Junior College (SJRC). The game was in the new gym at CCSF. It is a very impressive place, with a large hall big enough for 3 basketball courts. In this case the game was played in two thirds of the hall, with one set of bleachers for spectators. There were referees and scoreboards and we had to pay $13 for both of us to get in.

I don't really know much about basketball but any competitive sport is fun to watch. I quickly picked out a few favourite players to follow. CCSF started well but they started swapping out my chosen players very early. SJRC had one outstanding player (possibly a point guard) who played nearly the entire first half and had enough spare energy to continually shout at her teammates. At half-time the game was tied. In the second half CCSF put their starters in again and kept them there. Now I realized that they had been giving the whole squad a run out in the first half. The fresh CCSF team quickly took a ten point lead. Even the SJRC star was looking tired. Suddenly it wasn't very competitive and while a free throw was in progress we snuck down the sidelines and out.