Saved (Public Feed)

Matthew is a serious PHP expert who loves pushing code. Matthew is a Friday hacker who seems to work best in the morning.

A lot of people writing seem to think that trainspotting, being able to identify sample sources and lyrical allusions, is the essence of criticism, and to me that kind of identification in and of itself is not very interesting unless it goes into these other realms, of thinking more deeply how the music works and (especially) articulating how it feels from the perspective of the listener.

Everyone appreciates the labor; they just don't think it changes everything.

SelfControl is a free and open-source application for Mac OS X (10.5 or above) that lets you block your own access to distracting websites, your mail servers, or anything else on the Internet. Just set a period of time to block for, add sites to your blacklist, and click "Start." Until that timer expires, you will be unable to access those sites--even if you restart your computer or delete the application.

Hackathons can spur creativity, can inspire a concerted amount of development effort on a focused project for a short period of time, and can increase attention to a critical issue. For people who feel disaffected and hopeless, a hackathon can rekindle a sense of creativity and possibility. But the tangible products of a hackathon (hardware, software) are rarely of adequate quality for real-world use.

You know you’ve done something right with broccoli when the person you made it for describes it to someone else the next day as “better than biting into a steak.”

There are quite a few recipes out there for Pad Woon Sen, but the basic ingredients are cellophane noodles, eggs, onions, carrots, mushrooms, protein, and fish sauce. We started with the following recipe from the Thai Kitchen and added a few vegetables we like best. The savory, salty seasoning paired with smooth noodles and soft vegetables makes for a great, healthy meal. The possibilities are endless!

This recipe couldn’t be easier. You just toss the cucumbers in salt, let them sit for 5 or 10 minutes, then gently squeeze out the excess water. Then you mix the cucumber slices in a fragrant blend of sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/dining/02mini.html?_r=0

Basically, it's not that people born after 1980 are narcissists, it's that young people are narcissists, and they get over themselves as they get older.

It’s difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform. Even before the genuinely heroic Ramsey came along, some viewers had expressed concern that the laughter directed at people like Sweet Brown plays into the most basic stereotyping of blacks as simple-minded ramblers living in the “ghetto,” socially out of step with the rest of educated America. Black or white, seeing Clark and Dodson merely as funny instances of random poor people talking nonsense is disrespectful at best. And shushing away the question of race seems like wishful thinking.

Looking expectantly at the rest of the world to validate your interests, hobbies or art is a set-up to feel bad, to brood and be jaded that you are not understood. You need to reprogram your relationship with money as a creative person, because the one you have is like a hex. You need to grow-up your success dream and stop this focus on how it'll make you feel better.

I’m done with being passive about any kind of status quo that allows anyone to suffer or to be disrespected.

The reality is that whether it’s at school, home or in the open space, lots of little city boys just don’t get the physical activity their restless bodies need. I’m focused on my boy, but the same is surely true for many girls as well. The results to me are obvious: a city of little boys with ants-in-the-pants who become grown men affected by it. I wonder if it’s worth it.

In an exclusive in ELLE's May issue, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon talks candidly about her next chapter, and what really happened between her and Thurston Moore.

Coffee shops and other establishments to work in in New York City.

Detective work regarding the mysterious Bandcamp-released ‘Jai Paul’. To me, it sounds like a collection of demos, the majority unreleased. The record was rumoured to be called Rayners Lane, which wouldn’t fit in with the self-titling of this album. It doesn’t sound like a huge budget XL album release, and would appear to be a mixtape, rather than a fully formed album. Despite Paul’s unusual way of approaching promotion, it would be very unlike XL to allow any artist to put out a record in such a colossally understated manner.The bitrates are hugely variable, particularly on the skits of which many seem to cut short (track 8), which wouldn’t fit with it being a proper album release.

There are all kinds of files. A song is just a file, as is a book, and so is a movie. People have been pointing this out for years, usually to explain piracy. For a long time, folks were gnashing their teeth and wailing that no one would pay for anything on the Internet ever; it was just too easy to steal. They went from renting their garments to renting out music. As solutions emerge, and marketplaces for licenses emerge, you have to wonder if new kinds of media will remain part of the free, “remix” culture of the Internet, or if they’ll want to participate in a for-pay market. Maybe the reason so much great creative work on the Internet is free is that it’s been too hard to charge. A Pandora, but for podcasts! A Spotify for funny animal videos! Once the framework is in place, the pitches will come. Then the licensing can start. After all, they’re just files.

Bitcoins appear, for the moment, at least, to be immune to the machinations of inept or crooked bankers and politicians…

But the thing about this particular brand of low-key wealth is that it can lead to a false sense of self, on both a micro and a macro level. Consumption is still consumption even if it's less conspicuous. Class may be harder to see here, but that doesn't make it any less real. Mark Zuckerberg's still a billionaire, even if he's wearing a hoodie and jeans. And if you don't feel or look rich, you don't necessarily feel the same sense of obligation that a traditional rich person does or should: Noblesse oblige is, after all, dependent on a classical idea of who is and is not the nobility. As that starts to fall away, obligation — to culture, to the future, to each other — begins to disappear, too.

To listen to this LP on headphones is to be air-dropped into a teeming megacity in 2017: industrial runoff, overgrown wild vegetation, human multitudes, handheld devices, improvised survival technologies, strange weather; bodies and machines in a necessary, dignified symbiosis.

How to make an incredible ‘native web app’.

Up until very recently, I'd recount my online experiences with some degree of shame or sheepishness, but in this apocalyptic year of 2012, that embarrassment is beginning to fall by the wayside. I've been having more and more conversations with people grappling with what is gained and lost by how some of our most meaningful musical discoveries-- not to mention life experiences-- have happened in front of, or facilitated by, screens. We're starting to come to terms with the fact that modern life is a constant, awkward/elegant oscillation between the digital and physical, faces and FaceTime, and we're starting to hear music that reflects this reality, the beginnings of a new ordinary.

But as much as he was teaching me about movies, Roger Ebert was also showing me how to write-- I became a student of clean and concise sentences that emphasized clarity and the right balance of humor, thoughtfulness, and accessibility, as well as how to shape my raw impressions into well-rounded opinions that cohered on the page into narratives. The idea that the most interesting part of a movie happens after you see it-- during the post-mortems you have with others and with yourself in your own head-- was something that carried over easily to the songs and albums I was discovering at the time.