- I like Doctor Who. I’m not sure I like it enough to have a A Doctor Who-themed wedding, though.
- Thomas Pynchon on plagiarism:
Writers are naturally drawn, chimpanzee-like, to the color and the music of this English idiom we are blessed to have inherited. When given the choice we will usually try to use the more vivid and tuneful among its words.
- A visual diary documenting a flight from New York to Berlin (with a layover in London). [via]
- You know, it is kind of funny that programs like Word still use a disk as the save icon when lots of computer users these days don’t even know what a disk is.
- And finally, even qwerty keyboards are falling by the wayside:
Like the “Enter†key that becomes a “Search†key, the self-leveling card deck may at first seem trivial. But it’s also a sly way that digital technology that uses real-world iconography destabilizes experience. What, after all, is a more recognizable symbol of the capriciousness of life than a deck of cards, out of which your fate is randomly dealt? And yet here the deck icon is only superficial. At heart it’s not a random-card generator but the opposite: a highly wrought program with a memory, an algorithm and a mandate to keep children in the game. An app posing as a spatiotemporal object.
As a populous commercial precinct, the Web now changes in response to our individual histories with it. Like a party that subtly reconfigures with each new guest, the Web now changes its ads, interfaces and greetings for almost every user. Some people find this eerie. But it’s nowhere near as shiver-worthy as the discovery that digital “things†— apps carefully dressed as objects — change as we use them, too. And it’s weird enough when those things are being solicitous and cooperative. What if the keyboards and decks of cards all turn on us? Let’s not think about that, not yet. [via]
Month: August 2010
Train of thought
My father overslept this morning, so we caught the same train into Manhattan. Of course, we didn’t ride in the same car, since I work further uptown than him and it makes more sense for me to be at the very back of the train. I was a lot further back from him this evening, too, but only because summer hours at work get me to Penn Station with little time to spare, and no time to be choosy. It’s unfortunate, since in my car we were again packed in like sardines — tighter, in fact, than yesterday and with less cool air getting through — and apparently not packed at all in my father’s car. The LIRR is naturally still predicted delays and canceled or combined trains again for tomorrow, but maybe it won’t be so bad. And Friday, I get to leave early.
I’ve pretty much gotten into the swing of summer hours…so of course they end after next week, right before Labor Day.
Song of the day
Today is the birthday of Declan Patrick MacManus, better known to the world as Elvis Costello. There were a lot of songs I could have picked to mark that occasion, but why not “All This Useless Beauty”?
♫ “All This Usless Beauty” by Elvis Costello
It’s at times such as this, she’d be tempted to spit
If she wasn’t so ladylike
She imagines how she might have lived
Back when legends and history collide
Wednesday various
- The Star Trek: TNG casting that almost was. Personally, I would have loved to have seen Yaphet Kotto as Picard or Wesley Snipes as Geordi.
- It is possible to over-think things, even when you’re Superboy.
- Alligators in the sewers: not just an urban legend anymore!
- I think I’ve discovered a reason to visit Kansas City. [via]
- And finally, we are doomed: The Jersey Shore‘s “The Situation” will make $5 million this year. Maybe their visit to the NY Stock Exchange wasn’t so crazy after all. Still: doomed.
Cloudy day, take two
Today wasn’t too significantly different than yesterday — hence the near-identical image up at top. I did see someone getting arrested outside a Duane Reade drugstore from the train this morning, which is unusual for my morning commute. I felt a little weird watching them handcuff the guy — for what, I don’t know — but we were sitting in the station for a few minutes, and the car I was in overlooked the drugstore’s parking lot. This evening, nothing half as exciting happened. Although the train was packed and very slow — they say because of a cable fire yesterday that’s been causing delays ever since — and at the stop before mine, the guy next to me got his umbrella caught in the door and it would only open halfway (the door, not the umbrella). A few of us standing there — yeah, I stood for the whole hour-plus train ride — tried to pry the umbrella loose, my headphones briefly becoming wrapped around it, but even when we did, the door didn’t open any further. Which led to a whole lot of grumbles by the people who had to squeeze through the narrow gap to get out. Luckily, the door wasn’t damaged and closed, or we’d have been stuck there instead of finally getting to my stop.
Anyway, that was Tuesday. The stuff in between the train rides was even less exciting, believe me. Onward to Wednesday and the second half of the week.