Boing Boing: Cameramail: sending disposable cams through the post with a note asking posties to take pix
“Matthew McVickar designs these Cameramail packages with disposable film-cameras taped to their front and a note exhorting posties to take pictures of themselves and environs as the package passes through their custody.”
“I love the idea of this project by web designer Matthew McVickar. He sent this camera in the mail with a message asking the postal workers to take pictures on the camera’s trip to its destination. The result is fun and educational, and it would be a great school project for any teachers out there.”
thestar.com: Smile, you’re on camera mail! A camera’s journey across America
I was interviewed by Debra Black at the Toronto Star this morning.
“For Matthew McVickar the idea of sending a disposable camera attached to a piece of cardboard was intriguing. What kind of pictures would one get, he wondered? Would the camera make it to its destination?”
Vulture: Bon Iver’s Indie Soft-Rock: Transcendent or Torpid?
Nitsuh Abebe dares to say Justin Vernon is a little boring. Reading this, I think I understand why people aren't as impressed or as moved by stuff like Bon Iver and The National as I am — it has a certain New England, autumn/winter feeling and I think a lot of its appeal is in its power to evoke that snowed-in cabin, that 2am rainy city street, that drunken goodbye that we experienced or imagined. That’s how it is for me, anyway.
NYTimes.com: Economic Scene: The Real vs. Imagined Deficit
“Eventually, the country will have to confront the deficit we have, rather than the deficit we imagine. The one we imagine is a deficit caused by waste, fraud, abuse, foreign aid, oil industry subsidies and vague out-of-control spending. The one we have is caused by the world’s highest health costs (by far), the world’s largest military (by far), a Social Security program built when most people died by 70 — and to pay for it all, the lowest tax rates in decades.
“To put it in budgetary terms, the deficit we imagine comes largely from discretionary spending. The one we have comes partly from discretionary spending but mostly from everything else: tax rates, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”
NPR: The Zombie Network: Beware 'Free Public WiFi'
“When a computer running an older version of XP can’t find any of its ‘favorite’ wireless networks, it will automatically create an ad hoc network with the same name as the last one it connected to—in this case, ‘Free Public WiFi.’ Other computers within range of that new ad hoc network can see it, luring other users to connect. And who can resist the word ‘free?’”
Petapixel: Disposable Camera Captures Its Own Trip Across the United States
“Five years ago, web designer Matthew McVickar decided to give one lucky disposable camera a free vacation, sending it through the mail from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Honolulu, Hawaii with the instructions ‘Take a photo before you pass it on!’. When he got the camera back, there were seven photographs taken by various workers in the United States Postal Service that show the cameras journey (and the inner workings of the USPS!).”
Honolulu Pulse: Scene+Heard: Showcasing at Kaleidoscope
Sabrina profiles the weekly music showcase.
Ross: “But Kaleidoscope may have some form of a legacy. I think it’s helped organize and increase the quality of music, to a point where I feel like a number of our bands are at a stage where they can crossover. We’ve played some role in that. And a role as well in the transformation of Chinatown. I know for absolute certain that we’ve been at the heart of some indelible moments in peoples lives. And that is a hell of a thing.”
Yahoo! Developer Network: Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site
“The Exceptional Performance team has identified a number of best practices for making web pages fast. The list includes 35 best practices divided into 7 categories.”
Vulture: Nitsuh Abebe: What’s Really Wrong with the Grammys
“The people complaining about the loss of these "non-mainstream" categories aren't really asking for a fair distribution of categories; they're asking for patronage. They're asking for the Recording Academy to act as a booster club and preservation society — to recognize and support these traditions as a special interest. Never mind that this is a kind of support new and fragile musical traditions don't get. Never mind that people in each of these genres are more than capable of recognizing their own achievements, and probably more effectively than the Academy does.”
Dan Savage live-blogs the Weiner apology press conference.
“A reporter asks if Weiner was drinking or using drugs—if he has a problem—because only a man who has a drinking problem or a drug problem could get caught up in something like this. Do reporters know what men are like? (And lots of women too?) This desire to pathologize behavior that isn't sick—that is, indeed, very common and human and completely and instantly understandable—is itself pathological. Weiner does not have a problem. He has a computer. The whole world has Weiner's problem: same old horniness, brand new box.”
“…analysts say more than social equity is at stake. A dearth of ideas and participation by women in the technology churn has business consequences as well.”
(Also, reading about what chauvinist boys-club assholes so many venture capitalists are makes me angry every time.)
Zammuto: Sketches and fragments from "Bring Me the Head of Phillip K. Dick"
“These are some of the music and little recordings I made for Gregory Whitehead's BBC Radio Play ‘Bring Me the Head of Philip K. Dick’ from 2009. They feature the clavinet (often times feeding back like an electric guitar) and a 'nail violin' which Kelli Rudick let me borrow.”
Saccharine and cliché of course, but that doesn't make it any less important.
“For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five.”