Category: Collection

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Playlist

Playlist of the Month: October 2016

It just now feels like it’s getting towards the end of the year, it’s weird.
5AM – Amber Run
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions in the Sky
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako
SWORD – ΔUGUST
Home (Tim Palmer Mix) – Blue October
Sight – Sleeping At Last
Touch – Sleeping At Last
All I Want – Kodaline
Half Light – BANNERS
Be Somebody – Kings of Leon 1
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Atlas – Coldplay
Ghosts – BANNERS
Shadow and a Dancer – The Fray
 Remains (Bastille Vs. Rag N Bone Man Vs. Skunk Anansie) (Crossfaded Version) – Bastille
When The World Sleeps – Lowland Hum
I Love You (Quintet Version) – Woodkid
Better Man (Feat. Peter Gregson & Iskra String Quartet) – FYFE
Kill V. Maim – Grimes
Kusanagi – ODESZA
Live in This Moment – Kakou
Little Higher ft. Xavier Dunn – Terace 2
Postcards feat. Sam Island – Equal
Folding Hills feat. Xavier DUnn – FØRD
Stay High – One Room
Summer Heat – Solidisco
Division – Tycho
Gods in Heat – Tobacco
The Void – IAMX
Haunt / Bed – The 1975
Two Blue Eyes – Tall Heights
Fallingforyou – The 1975
Saturn – Sleeping At Last
Where’s My Love – Syml
Dead In This House – IAMX
Lethargy – Bastille
Speed Of Sound – Communist Daughter
Killer Queen – FIL BO RIVA
Campus – Bastille
An Act Of Kindness – Bastille
Warmth – Bastille
8 (circle) – Bon Iver3
Doing the Right Thing – Daughter4
Worth It – Moses Sumney
America – XYLØ
Slack – Tycho
She Way Out – The 1975
 22 (OVER S∞∞N) – Bon Iver5
Receiver – Tycho
Atlas: Life – Sleeping At Last
City Club – Los Growlers
Facedown – The 1975
Let It Happen – Tame Impala
Reality In Motion – Tame Impala
 715 – CRΣΣKS – Bon Iver
Paranoicosis (Whale Roads) – Polymath6
Fossa – Daughter
White Ferrari (Vasta Remix) – Frank Ocean
Pluto – Sleeping At Last
Masters – Local Natives
Field – Tycho
Neptune – Sleeping At Last
Actualized – DANAE
Direction [Acoustic] – DANAE
29 #Strafford APTS – Bon Iver
You Don’t Get Me High Anymore – Phantogram
Sun – Sleeping At Last
Small Crimes – Nilüfer Yanya7
Fake It – Bastille
Precious – Kevin Garrett
Light – Sleeping At Last
Everybody Knows – RAEKO feat. Mating Ritual
Brooklyn Baby – The Code
Mine – Tony Pops
Jellyfish – Local Natives
Hallelujah – Pentatonix8
Emphasis – Sleeping At Last
All We Do – Oh Wonder
No Care – Daughter
Horizon – Tycho
Epoch – Tycho

  1. They have a new album out but I haven’t acknowledged it yet, so don’t expect anything from that in here. ↩
  2. Other than “make it less of an awful pile of crap” I think my main request for the iTunes team would be “better metadata for multiple-artist songs.” ↩
  3. The song names on this album are the most “pretentious hipster” thing ever. ↩
  4. Props to Taylor for making me listen to Daughter, I’m a fan. ↩
  5. No, seriously, I’m just copy/pasting this over, I’m too lazy to dig through the ‘insert special character’ thing for this. ↩
  6. Now that is how you do a weird song name. No obnoxious characters to type. ↩
  7. “ü” doesn’t count as a weird character by my definition, because I have to type umlauts a lot. I’m in Austria. ↩
  8. Not my favorite version of this song ever, but that goes to the version I sang in my senior year of high school, which I don’t think is recorded anywhere because copyright law is fun like that. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: September 2016

Definitely writing this a few days early, but it’s not like I’ve never done that before, and I’d rather do it a bit early and need to tweak it than post it late because I was on a plane to England.1
5AM – Amber Run
I Need My Girl – The National
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions in the Sky
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield
Midnight – Lane 8
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako
SWORD – ΔUGUST
Home (Tim Palmer Mix) – Blue October
Sight – Sleeping At Last
Hearing – Sleeping At Last
Let Me Go – Albin Lee Meldau
Touch – Sleeping At Last
All I Want – Kodaline
Half Light – BANNERS
Be Somebody – Kings of Leon2
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone3
Atlas – Coldplay
Ghosts – BANNERS
Shadow and a Dancer – The Fray
9 Crimes – Damien Rice
Wake the Dead – Nassau
Remains (Bastille Vs. Rag N Bone Man Vs. Skunk Anansie) (Crossfaded Version) – Bastille
When The World Sleeps – Lowland Hum
The Fault In Our Stars (MMXIV) – Troye Sivan
I Love You (Quintet Version) – Woodkid
Thinkin Bout You (Frank Ocean Cover) – Midnight Pool Party
Better Man (Feat. Peter Gregson & Iskra String Quartet) – FYFE
Shots Fired – House of Heroes
Kill V. Maim – Grimes
Kusanagi – ODESZA
Roma Fade – Andrew Bird
The Box – Damien Rice
Running Up That Hill – Track & Field4
Fever – Roosevelt
Live in This Moment – Kakou
Little Higher ft. Xavier Dunn – Terace
Ghost, Teacher, Girl, and I – White Violet
Postcards feat. Sam Island – Equal
Folding Hills feat. Xavier Dunn – FØRD5
Gold in the Dirt – DANAE
Stay High – One Room
Summer Heat – Solidisco
All4You – The Palms
Find You – BAYNK
Division – Tycho
Gods in Heat – Tobacco
The City – The 19756
The Void – IAMX
Haunt / Bed – The 1975
Thankfully – White Violet
Prove – DANAE
Two Blue Eyes – Tall Heights
Eternity – IAMX
Umbrellas – Sleeping At Last
The Spring – Sleeping At Last
Trend – Polymath
Hallway – White Violet
Fallingforyou – The 1975
Saturn – Sleeping At Last
Turning Crimson – IAMX
Porcelain – Sleeping At Last
Glory – Bastille7
Where’s My Love – Syml
Dead In This House – IAMX8
Your Mothers Eyes – The Head and the Heart
Lethargy – Bastille
Speed Of Sound – Communist Daughter
Blame – Bastille
Undo – The 1975
Killer Queen – FIL BO RIVA
So Far (It’s Alright) – The 1975
Campus – Bastille
The Currents – Bastille
An Act Of Kindness – Bastille9
Warmth – Bastille
Four Walls (The Ballad Of Perry Smith) – Bastille
Soundtrack To The End – Communist Daughter
Seasons – Klangstof
Woman – The 1975
Doing the Right Thing – Daughter
Worth It – Moses Sumney
Arctic – Sleeping At Last10

  1. Oh yeah, that’s a thing I’m doing on the 1st. Exciting! ↩
  2. I think they’ve got a new album coming out soon, and I am very excited. ↩
  3. I heard a remix of this song in a steampunk-themed restaurant in Prague, and I want to figure out which version it was because I liked it. ↩
  4. Definitely just made someone watch Warehouse 13 the other day, so I’m looking forward to a few weeks from now when they’ll look sad when I play this song. Because how can you not, it was used so well in the show. ↩
  5. The fact that iTunes doesn’t have a metadata field for “featured artist”, or allow multiple entries in the “artist” field really annoys me, and is one of the things I’d add if I were to design a music library management app. Not that this is something I think about doing all the time or anything. ↩
  6. I know I’m way behind to The 1975, okay, you don’t have to tell me ↩
  7. Oh my god their new album is so good ↩
  8. This song always plays at weird times and I’m a little bit worried about what it makes my host-family think of me ↩
  9. Listen to this one with headphones on, they do some fun stuff with panning that doesn’t really come across on speakers. Unless you have an iPhone 7, in which case maybe it will? ↩
  10. Definitely got a bunch of Sleeping At Last music as a birthday present, in case you couldn’t tell by the sudden influx of it here. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: August 2016

I really should’ve written this up over the weekend when I had more time, but oh well, here we are.
5AM – Amber Run
I Need My Girl – The National
Your Hand in Mine – Explosions in the Sky
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield
Midnight – Lane 81
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako
SWORD – ΔUGUST
Home (Tim Palmer Mix) – Blue October
Jericho – Westerman
Thursday – LostBoyCrow
Lou Lou – Albin Lee Meldau
Sight – Sleeping At Last
Hearing – Sleeping At Last2
Let Me Go – Albin Lee Meldau
Touch – Sleeping At Last
All I Want – Kodaline
Half Light – BANNERS
Be Somebody – Kings of Leon
Withdrawn – White Morning
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Atlas – Coldplay3
Ghosts – BANNERS
Shadow and a Dancer – The Fray
White Square (Demo) – Rebecca McDade
9 Crimes – Damien Rice
Wake the Dead – Nassau
 Remains (Bastille Vs. Rag N Bone Man Vs. Skunk Anansie) (Crossfaded Version) – Bastille4
When The World Sleeps – Lowland Hum
The Fault In Our Stars (MMXIV) – Troye Sivan
Fly Away For A Summer (Achtaban Remix) – FLAUSEN feat. Ben Cocks
I Love You (Quintet Version) – Woodkid
Control – Mountains Like Wax
Sunlight (Jody Wisternoff Remix) – Lane 8
Monster – Mumford & Sons5
Thinkin Bout You (Frank Ocean Cover) – Midnight Pool Party
Better Man (Feat. Peter Gregson & Iskra String Quartet) – FYFE
Shots Fired – House of Heroes
Kill V. Maim – Grimes
Kusanagi – ODESZA
Roma Fade – Andrew Bird
The Box – Damien Rice6
Running Up That Hill – Track & Field
Fever – Roosevelt
Live in This Moment – Kakou
Stop Us (Radio Edit) – SIYYU
Little Higher ft. Xavier Dunn – Terace
Ghost, Teacher, Girl, and I – White Violet7
Second Wind – White Violet
Since You’ve Gone (Original Mix) – Loframes feat. Anoraak
Postcards feat. Sam Island – Equal8
Folding Hills feat. Xavier Dunn – FØRD
Gold in the Dirt – DANAE
Stay High – One Room
Love’s Song – KIDS
Summer Heat – Solidisco
 Years & Years – King (Røse Summer Edit) – Røse
Outside – Tender
That’s Not Me – CONDITIONER
Something More – RALPH
All4You – The Palms
Find You – BAYNK
Golden Grave – Leo Islo
Don’t Panic – Coldplay
Antichrist – The 1975
The Attic | Demo – Rebecca McDade
Division – Tycho
Gods in Heat – Tobacco9
Mothers – Daughter

  1. I call these first five songs “the steadfast” in my head. ↩
  2. At least once a week throughout all of August I had a conversation with someone about how amazing Sleeping At Last is. ↩
  3. People dissing Coldplay is the number one cause of me saying “fight me” in public. ↩
  4. I haven’t typed this name in a while, I just copy/paste it out of iTunes. ↩
  5. Fun story: I’ve got a Mumford & Sons poster on my wall right now. Turns out my host family is full of people who like their music. ↩
  6. Now that I’m copying over links from previous posts, instead of just searching Amazon for them each time, you wind up with little blobs of songs like this. Mostly because, if I like it enough to link to it, I also like it enough to keep it in the next month’s playlist. ↩
  7. Even if I didn’t like this song I think I would’ve had to include just because the name is cool. ↩
  8. This one gets stuck in my head, but in a good way, y’know? ↩
  9. “Not the best thing to listen to with a hangover” – the friend I sent this to ↩
Categories
Photography United States

Swamp

You can’t go to Louisiana without visiting a swamp. It took us until the last couple weeks of the program, but we did eventually get around to it, and boy was it wonderful. Some of the best weather (in my opinion, at least) that we’ve had the whole time – it was a cool summer day, and the brief spat of rain we had while we were out there was very light, of that nice kind where you never get wet enough that it won’t dry off after a couple of minutes. It was wonderful.
I brought my camera, of course, because how could I not? By the end of the tour – it lasted a couple of hours – I’d snapped almost 500 pictures. It was one heck of a trip, and I’m incredibly glad that I went. (It also turned into one heck of a road trip getting back – the Atchafalaya Bridge had a couple accidents in the direction we were heading, and we wound up taking a detour that more than doubled the actual length of the bridge. It was an Adventure.)
As I write this, I have been sitting down for a couple hours, working away at sorting those pictures. By the time this goes up, I’ll have posted a few on my Instagram, because I’m not above a bit of shameless self-promotion. For the ones I kept for this here site, head below the fold.

Continue reading “Swamp”
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: July 2016

I got so caught up in everything going on at the end of the month that I nearly forgot to put this post together, oh my. It’s been a busy couple of weeks.
5AM – Amber Run
I Need My Girl – The National
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions in the Sky
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield
Midnight – Lane 8
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako
Disintegration Anxiety – Explosions in the Sky
SWORD – ΔUGUST1
Home (Tim Palmer Mix) – Blue October
Jericho – Westerman
Hold Me Down – YOKE LORE
Daydream – Leo Kalyan
stard(us)t – johan
Thursday – LostBoyCrow
Shouldn’t Have Done That – Two Another
The Lucky One – Blue October
Lou Lou – Albin Lee Meldau
Sight – Sleeping At Last
Hearing – Sleeping At Last2
Let Me Go – Albin Lee Meldau
Touch – Sleeping At Last3
SeeThroughDreams – Kellen
Lovers – Albin Lee Meldau
Darling – Albin Lee Meldau
Someone Like You – COBRYAMA feat. Gibbz
All I Want – Kodaline
Half Light – BANNERS4
Be Somebody – Kings of Leon
Teardrop – Massive Attack
Withdrawn – White Morning
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Atlas – Coldplay
Ghosts – BANNERS
Shadow and a Dancer – The Fray
White Square (Demo) – Rebecca McDade
Wona – Mumford & Sons
Mood – Porches
Crimewave – Crystal Castles
9 Crimes – Damien Rice
In the Dark – JUDY
Wake the Dead – Nassau
 Remains (Bastille Vs. Rag N Bone Man Vs. Skunk Anansie) (Crossfaded Version)  – Bastille, Rag N Bone Man, Skunk Anansie
When The World Sleeps – Lowland Hum5
The Fault In Our Stars (MMXIV) – Troye Sivan
Fly Away For A Summer (Achtaban Mix) – FLAUSEN feat. Ben Cocks
Fast Car – Navarra
I Love You (Quintet Version) – Woodkid6
Three Strikes (feat. Jack McManus) – Afrojack
There Will Be Time – Mumford & Sons
Control – Mountains Like Wax
Untitled – Mountains Like Wax
Sunlight (Jody Wisternoff Remix) – Lane 8
Monster – Mumford & Sons
Fountain of Youth – Local Natives
I Don’t Know You – Uniform Motion
My Ride with the Enemy – Uniform Motion
3-4 Eyes – Uniform Motion
Thinkin Bout You (Frank Ocean Cover) – Midnight Pool Party
The Dawn Has Hit the Summit – Uniform Motion
Walk Away – Uniform Motion
South Seas – Ménage À Trois
Better Man (Feat. Peter Gregson & Iskra String Quartet) – FYFE7
The White Shirt – Uniform Motion
God – House of Heroes
Shots Fired – House of Heroes
We Make Our Stars – House of Heroes
Get Away – House of Heroes
Holocene – Bon Iver
Kill V. Maim – Grimes8
Kusanagi – ODESZA
Clearest Blue – CHVRCHES
Roma Fade – Andrew Bird
The Box – Damien Rice9
Running Up That Hill – Track & Field
Fever – Roosevelt
Live in This Moment – Kakou

  1. This song is the reason that I’m copy/pasting the links in from last month’s playlist – it is stupid to try to find on Amazon. ↩
  2. I seriously love this album so much. The songs are beautiful and peaceful and I just really like them, okay? ↩
  3. “Touch” and “Sight” are actually tied for my favorite of the album, but “Hearing” is close behind. ↩
  4. Seriously, BANNERS is great. ↩
  5. I really wish this song was longer, because it’s so fun to sing along to. ↩
  6. Apparently this is called the ‘acoustic’ version, but I like my label better. It’s got more character. ↩
  7. This is, I think, my favorite song that I found this month. And that was a tough competition. ↩
  8. This song is so fun, I actually looked up the lyrics at one point so I could sing along more accurately. I’m gonna have to find some more music by Grimes. ↩
  9. Another in the “super fun to sing along to” category. ↩
Categories
Photography United States

New Orleans

Recently, we (the REU group) spent a day in New Orleans, wandering around and basically being Touristy McTouristface.1

Anyhow, I took my camera with me – how can I be a tourist without it?2

So, if you want to see some pictures of New Orleans looking pretty, head below the fold. (And I’ll add that ‘in pictures’ is one of the better ways to experience the French Quarter – it’s old, the water table is very shallow, and that means that it’s a rather fragrant area, even after the invention of sewers.)

Continue reading “New Orleans”
Categories
Photography United States

Capitol

This is the 'featured image' up above but I'm putting it in here so you can see the whole thing for certain. Isn't it a fun picture?

So, not mentioned in my last post was the fact that, before going to Myrtles Plantation, we’d tried to go to the Louisiana State Capitol Building. Not that we were prevented from going or anything – it’s open to the public. (Though, admittedly, the fact that the main doors are blocked off is a bit foreboding.) The problem was more that it was very rainy, and we figured that the view from the top wouldn’t be the best through the clouds.

So instead we put it off for the next day. The weather was a bit better then – still cloudy, but not rainy and gross, and the clouds actually made it better, in my opinion.

The Louisiana State Capitol Building was constructed in the 1930s, and it looks like something out of Gotham City. It’s very cool. Photos below the fold.

Continue reading “Capitol”
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: June 2016

This month has been a bit interesting for my iTunes Library – I’ve been using it as the primary data source for a bunch of neural network research. That said, it hasn’t changed much, doing all that, other than the fact that I sat down for an hour and cleaned up the ‘genre’ tags of everything. Beyond that, it’s been a read-only operation.
Anyhow, here’s the list:
5AM – Amber Run
I Need My Girl – The National
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions in the Sky1
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield
Midnight – Lane 8
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako2
Disintegration Anxiety – Explosions in the Sky
Sorry – Liss
SWORD – ΔUGUST
Heart Go Bang – Blue October
Home (Tim Palmer Mix) – Blue October
Jericho – Westerman
Hold Me Down – YOKE LORE
Daydream – Leo Kalyan
stard(us)t – johan
Insomnia – IAMX
Elodie – Ten Fé
Hands On You – Tony Pops
Thursday – LostBoyCrow
Atlantique Sud – M83
Used To Be – Beauvoir
Shouldn’t Have Done That – Two Another
LATE AT NIGHT – GENERIK
The Lucky One – Blue October
Lou Lou – Albin Lee Meldau
Fools and Their Gold – PLGRMS
Cold to the Touch – RALPH
Sight – Sleeping At Last3
Smell – Sleeping At Last
Memory Lane – KOLIDESCOPES
Hearing – Sleeping At Last
Let Me Go – Albin Lee Meldau
Touch – Sleeping At Last
SeeThroughDreams – Kellen
Lovers – Albin Lee Meldau
Darling – Albin Lee Meldau
Someone Like You – COBRYAMA feat. Gibbz4
All I Want – Kodaline
Half Light – BANNERS5
Riptide (String Quartet Tribute to Vance Joy) – Vitamin String Quartet
Be Somebody – Kings of Leon6
Wilder Mind – Mumford & Sons
Hopeless Wanderer – Mumford & Sons
Uprising – Muse
Elysium – Mendum7
Teardrop – Massive Attack8
Withdrawn – White Morning
They Shall Be Called (Part II) – White Morning
They Shall Be Called (Part I) – White Morning9
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Safe & Sound (feat. The Civil Wars) – Taylor Swift
Thru – Vallis Alps
Atlas – Coldplay10
Ghosts – BANNERS
Shadow and a Dancer – The Fray11
White Square (Demo) – Rebecca McDade
Wona – Mumford & Sons
There Will Be Time – Mumford & Sons
Mood – Porches
Crimewave – Crystal Castles12
9 Crimes – Damien Rice
Burning In The Skies – Linkin Park
In the Dark – JUDY
Wake the Dead – Nassau
Remains (Bastille Vs. Rag N Bone Man Vs. Skunk Anansie) (Crossfaded Version) – Bastille

  1. The “Friday Night Lights” version. ↩
  2. It’d be interesting, at the end of the year, for me to go back and pick out the songs that were the most permanent. And hey, since I’ve been doing research using my iTunes Library, I know how to automate that process pretty well now, I guess. Hmm. ↩
  3. I’m gonna wind up buying everything by Sleeping At Last at some point, based on the little ‘senses’ series of songs alone. They’re all wonderful. ↩
  4. This song makes me want to listen to Kings of Leon. ↩
  5. The lowest star-ranking I’ve given a song by BANNERS is 4 stars. I have, I believe, every song he’s put out. ↩
  6. I blame “Someone Like You” for this song being back in here. Not that it’s a bad thing at all. ↩
  7. I’ve been digging back through some of my playlists from the past couple years. That’s my favorite part of doing these monthly playlists, actually – the fact that I can do that. ↩
  8. My sister and I watched a lot of House when we were kids; both the show and this song are, in a strange way, a bit of a ‘happy place’ for me because of that. ↩
  9. I’m glad I don’t have comments enabled at the moment, because I know some of you would complain about these being out of order. ↩
  10. Someone told me that I was losing ‘hipster cred’ by listening to Coldplay. I have never before said “I don’t care” with such vehemence. ↩
  11. Seriously, Helios is such a good album. ↩
  12. I spent a while listening through some of my older playlists this month. And by ‘some’ I mean ‘all, in order.’ I do a lot of listening to music at work. ↩
Categories
Photography United States

Myrtles Plantation

I’m sure I’ve mentioned somewhere that I’m doing a bit of traveling this summer, though I’m definitely too lazy to go back and find where, exactly, I mentioned that.

Still, it’s a thing. I’m spending the summer in Louisiana, doing research on neural networks at Louisiana State University. Which is a full-time job, 40 hours a week, 9-5 and all that, but my weekends are free and I do occasionally leave my room in my free time, so I’ve got some photos to show y’all.

This first set are from Myrtles Plantation, which markets itself as “the most haunted house in the American South.” Went with my family, when they made the trip down here to visit – my sister is a big fan of all things spooky.

I brought my camera with me, of course, because what’s a paranormal investigator without a camera? Photos are below the fold – I’m not a fan of making people load lots of images on the front page, even with the new CDN up and running. It’s rude to people on mobile, or with metered connections.

Continue reading “Myrtles Plantation”
Categories
Collection

Finding a simple algorithm for intelligence

Michael Nielsen:

I don’t believe we’ll ever find a simple algorithm for intelligence. To be more concrete, I don’t believe we’ll ever find a really short Python (or C or Lisp, or whatever) program – let’s say, anywhere up to a thousand lines of code – which implements artificial intelligence. Nor do I think we’ll ever find a really easily-described neural network that can implement artificial intelligence. But I do believe it’s worth acting as though we could find such a program or network. That’s the path to insight, and by pursuing that path we may one day understand enough to write a longer program or build a more sophisticated network which does exhibit intelligence. And so it’s worth acting as though an extremely simple algorithm for intelligence exists.

Making progress is all about dreaming big.

Categories
Collection

Word processors

Baldur Bjarnason:

I don’t write primarily in markdown because the format is nice but because markdown apps like Ulysses and Byword value the joy of writing as well as the need for structure. They recognise that writing is equal parts emotional and executive reasoning. Favour emotional logic too much and you get Apple’s glossy, wrapped-in-plastic writing experience. Favour executive reasoning too much and you get Microsoft Office’s kitchen-sink-included helicarrier.

I do all of my writing in Ulysses, and it’s a joy – full Markdown support, with one or two extra touches1 that make everything easy.
As to the Pages vs. Word debate, I tend to use Word – Pages is distinctly easier to use, but it lacks a couple features that I need whenever I’m using a ‘full’ word processor.2

  1. Like their footnote macro, which replaces markdown’s clunky [^footnoteID]/[^footnoteID]: content syntax with a quick, easy (fn) and typing into a popover. ↩
  2. And I have Office anyways, because the terabyte of OneDrive space and my need for Excel’s power features necessitate it. ↩
Categories
Collection

WWDC Wishlists

Six Colors pretty well covered what I’d like to see in the next version of macOS:1

I’d like to see an entirely new and simplified version of iTunes for Mac, perhaps multiple apps. iTunes can become the hub for Apple’s media sales, as it is on iOS. A new Music app will need to support Apple Music as well as local music files. And as for syncing, updating and configuring iOS devices, let’s move all of that to a new iOS Sync app that’s completely separate. Break up the iTunes monopoly—it’s way past time.

  1. I’m still not sure if I like ‘macOS’ or ‘MacOS’ better, but ‘OS X’ just doesn’t feel right anymore. It’s been around as a brand for too long. Plus, now that Windows 10 is out, there’s room for verbal confusion- did they mean ‘OS X’ or ‘O.S. 10’? ↩
Categories
Collection

“The Computer for the 21st Century”

I was given this paper to read the other day, and I thought it was fascinating. I didn’t really check the date it was published until I was partially through the paper, and found the whole thing to be still applicable to the modern day.
A few select quotes:

Pads are intended to be “scrap computers” (analogous to scrap paper) that can be grabbed and used anywhere; they have no individualized identity or importance.
Pads, in contrast, use a real desk. Spread many electronic pads around on the desk, just as you spread out papers. Have many tasks in front of you and use the pads as reminders. Go beyond the desk to drawers, shelves, coffee tables. Spread the many parts of the many tasks of the day out in front of you to fit both the task and the reach of your arms and eyes, rather than to fit the limitations of CRT glass-blowing. Someday pads may even be as small and light as actual paper, but meanwhile they can fulfill many more of paper’s functions than can computer screens.

On the death of the user interface:

Prototype tabs, pads and boards are just the beginning of ubiquitous computing. The real power of the concept comes not from any one of these devices; it emerges from the interaction of all of them. The hundreds of processors and displays are not a “user interface” like a mouse and windows, just a pleasant and effective “place” to get things done.

On ubiquitous software:

Today’s operating systems, like DOS and Unix, assume a relatively fixed configuration of hardware and software at their core. This makes sense for both mainframes and personal computers, because hardware or operating system software cannot reasonably be added without shutting down the machine. But in an embodied virtuality, local devices come and go, and depend upon the room and the people in it. New software for new devices may be needed at any time, and you’ll never be able to shut off everything in the room at once.

There’s some really interesting ideas in there. We’ve done one or two – some computer settings are mobile, if you stay within one ecosystem, and we’ve definitely got little screens on the ‘tab’ scale. But still not in the ubiquitous way they discuss – we’re still tethered to specific devices, rather than genericized hardware with software that adapts to the person using it.
With the advent of cloud computing, though, that seems more possible. I spent a couple days this week running software that simply couldn’t run on my laptop. Artificial intelligence of the flavor I’m researching this summer requires a lot of processing power, and GPUs meet that need quite nicely. My laptop does not have a GPU; it definitely doesn’t have 8 Titans. And yet, there I sat, in a classroom, running 8 Titans along at peak capacity, all from the comfort of my laptop.
We’re getting closer to some of the ideals that Weiser wrote about 25 years ago. It’ll be interesting to see where we go from here.
(Oh, and you should absolutely read the rest of the paper– there’s more interesting ideas in there that I didn’t pull out, and a nice narrative-style exploration of some of them at the end.)

Categories
Music

GSV Empiricist

The GSV Empiricist, or General Systems Vehicle Empiricist is a ship in Iain M. Banks’ Culture series of novels. In its first physical appearance, the Empiricist is described as having “no single outer hull surrounding [its] hundreds of individual components, just colossal bubbles of air held in place by field enclosures.” And it’s enormous:

Comfortably over two hundred kilometres long even by the most conservative of measurement regimes, fabulously, ellipsoidally rotund, dazzling with multiple sun-lines and tiny artificial stars providing illumination for motley steps and levels and layers of riotous vegetation – belonging, strictly speaking, on thousands of different worlds spread across the galaxy – boasting hundreds of contrasting landscapes from the most mathematically manicured to the most (seemingly) pristinely, savagely wild, all contained on slab-storeys of components generally kilometres high.

In short, it’s a mobile city with a population of ten billion, and I wanted to try to capture a little bit of that here. In truth, exploring a space this vast would take hours, even moving incredibly quickly, so I composed the work from the perspective of a drone, put in place simply to watch the passage of this massive construct. Its motion through the ship brings forward several novel acoustic spaces.
(Both quotations are from Iain M. Banks’ The Hydrogen Sonata.)

 

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Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: May 2016

Since I’m working a desk job at the moment, you’d think I’d have more time to listen to music, but I have even less. There’s a lot of audio involved in that desk job. My headphones are in, but not hooked up to iTunes. Sad day.
5AM – Amber Run
I Need My Girl – The National
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions In The Sky
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield1
Midnight – Lane 8
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako
Afterlife – XYLØ
SCRAM – Mogwai
Lou Lou – Albin Lee Meldau
Tangle Formations – Explosions In the Sky2
Disintegration Anxiety – Explosions In the Sky
Hallucinations – dvsn
Logic of a Dream – Explosions In the Sky
Sorry – LISS
Land of All – Woodkid
I’ve Fallen For You – Tom Redwood
SWORD – ΔUGUST3
Break Ground – Blue October
Driver – Blue October
Heart Go Bang – Blue October
Houston Heights – Blue October
Home (Tim Palmer Mix) – Blue October
Jericho – Westerman
Cara Mia Addio – Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory
Landing Cliffs – Explosions In the Sky
Hold Me Down – YOKE LORE
Pripyat – Mogwai
Daydream – Leo Kalyan
Coal Makes Diamonds – Blue October
Heart Go Bang (Night Mix Prod. by The Egg) – Blue October
stard(us)t – johan
Insomnia – IAMX4
Happiness – IAMX5
The Background Noise – IAMX
Bridges – Koresma
Say Hello Melancholia – IAMX
Elodie – Ten Fé6
Hands On You – Tony Pops
Thursday – LostBoyCrow
Atlantique Sud – M837
Used To Be – Beauvois
I Want It – Blue October
Shouldn’t Have Done That – Two Another
LATE AT NIGHT – GENERIK
The Lucky One – Blue October
Road Blaster – M83

  1. For some reason, this song isn’t on the Amazon version of the album, so I’m linking to it on iTunes instead. Weird. ↩
  2. I’ve just noticed that some of their songs are filed under “Explosions In The Sky” and some are under “Explosions In the Sky.” Dangit iTunes. ↩
  3. Still not done laughing at the fact that this group is named “?UGUST” in Amazon’s database. ↩
  4. Note that this whole album is distinctly NSFW, if you listen to the lyrics. ↩
  5. I’m linking this one, though, because I find the lyrics hilarious. ↩
  6. I’d be more annoyed about how often this one gets stuck in my head, but it helps to drown out the stupid clocktower here, so I’ll take it. ↩
  7. I wasn’t too much a fan of their new album, but this one was nice and calm compared to the rest. ↩