The Ramblings of a Generalist

Blues for America

2006-02-10T14:56:00.000+11:00

I always enjoy reading articles by Kurt Vonnegut, his latest is titled Vonnegut's Blues for America which is an excerpt from his latest book A Man Without A country: A Memoir Of Life In George W Bush's America. The excerpt just seems to take all that is wrong with the world and put it into beautifully written words.

[M]usic. It makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up. And I really like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today – jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock-and-roll, hip-hop, and on and on – is derived from the blues.
A gift to the world? One of the best rhythm-and-blues combos I ever heard was three guys and a girl from Finland playing in a club in Krakow, Poland.
The wonderful writer Albert Murray, who is a jazz historian and a friend of mine among other things, told me that during the era of slavery in this country – an atrocity from which we can never fully recover – the
suicide rate per capita among slave owners was much higher than the suicide rate among slaves.
Murray says he thinks this was because slaves had a way of dealing with depression, which their white owners did not: They could shoo away Old Man Suicide by playing and singing the Blues. He says something else which also sounds right to me. He says the blues can’t drive depression
clear out of a house, but can drive it into the corners of any room where it’s being played. So please remember that.

It's hard to believe he is 80 years old.

Make Snack Fly, See Spot Run

2006-01-24T09:09:00.000+11:00

I found this great new product over at Boing Boing this morning.

It is called Snackshotz. Basically it is a toy gun designed to fire a specially designed dog food pellet for the dog to run and eat. The theory is that it will give you and your dog more precious bonding time as well as help the dog fight the growing risk of obesity that is so common in pets today by running before he ingests the tasty treat.

To anyone thinking this product sounds appealing... How about you help your own obesity and just throw the damn dog food pellets yourself?

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Seven Days Without Prayer Makes One Weak

2006-01-23T15:26:00.000+11:00

Here it is! You can now make your own clever wordplays and have them displayed on a church sign that you can save for future use as demonstrated below.

Enjoy!

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Monopoly Rules

2006-01-18T16:32:00.000+11:00

I absolutely love the board game Monopoly, so I was pleased to discover a page listing people's variations on the standard rules.

There are some great ideas. Like this one...

Six Railroads
Rule: The two utilities are treated like additional railroads. They cost $200 to buy and can be mortgaged for $100. The rent for five railroads is $400 and for six railroads is $800.
Reason: Makes the utilities actually worth having and a railroad tycoon a serious opponent.

Makes me think a bit more about the various possibilities. I guess the possibilities for variation is one of the things that makes Monopoly such a great enduring game.

All I need now is to convince somebody to play a game with me.

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Could I Have a Moment of Your Time?

2006-01-17T12:37:00.000+11:00

I found this nifty little counterscript for dealing with pesky telemarketers.

Telemarketers have things just like these for talking to you. There are standard responses to circumvent any resistances you might have to giving them some of your cash.

With this counterscript you can be just as fast on your feet. It is printable as a nice PDF, so go ahead and have one handy by the phone.

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7 Lists I Don't Want to See in del.icio.us

2006-01-16T12:13:00.000+11:00

I was reading over at the Problogger blog that a good way to increase traffic to your blog is to get it listed as a popular site on del.icio.us. A good way to do this is to make a list. Great! We are going to start witnessing a deluge of lists like 4 ways to poach an egg.

I thought I would preempt all of this by being a bit postmodern and making a list of lists I don't want to see. Here it is.

5 Good Things About Having a Rootkit Installed on your Machine
8 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Read Blogs at Work
6 Things That Make Norton AntiVirus Worthwhile
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
12 Bad Things About Open Source Software
9 Ways Big Business Helps The Environment
This List

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The Beatles for Trainspotters

2006-01-13T15:37:00.000+11:00

What Goes On - The Beatles Anomalies List

I discovered this page in my web travels. It has extensive details on anomalies and items of curiosity to be found in the Beatles recordings.

I was aware of some of them, like the swearing in Hey Jude that once you know is there stands out a mile, but whoever has documented all of this sure is thorough.

Read it and marvel.

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Elliott Smith Rarities

2006-01-12T14:19:00.000+11:00

One of my favourite blogs aka::Raff pointed me to an awesome page which has downloads for Elliott Smith tracks that are not available anywhere else. There are also copies of demos recorded during the making of each of his albums.

I absolutely love Elliott's music and I was shattered when he died. If you haven't heard any of his stuff, you should go straight to Amazon or your nearest record store and buy a copy of XO. It's the best album to get a taste for his music.

Or, just download some of the stuff... either way, you won't be dissapointed.

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Economics of Pricing

2006-01-10T14:08:00.000+11:00

Today I read, a very interesting article over at Slate.

The subject of the article was about Starbucks' invisible short sizing for coffees. It is supposedly a better coffee due to the fact that it has a higher espresso to milk ratio, the milk has better froth due to the smaller quantity, and it's cheaper. But you won't see it on any of their menus. Why they offer it and not publicise it was what I found most interesting about the article.

A dilemma that a lot of businesses face when selling a commodity is how they price it. Too low and they won't make enough money, too high and the customer will go elsewhere. If a company offers a low priced product that appeals to everyone, who would buy the more expensive products with the higher profit margin? The trick is for the company to offer these products but make them unappealing to anybody who can afford that little bit extra.

Have you ever found yourself buying the more expensive box of tissues because you don't want to see a plain black and white box in your house? Join the club!

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More Record Industry Reactionism

2006-01-06T10:59:00.000+11:00

These guys know no limits to the stupidity of trying to control how people listen to music?

Proud owners of the relatively new Coldplay album, X & Y have been greeted by a rather nice list of things they cannot do with their CD.

You are prevented from playing the CD in "some" CD players:

CD-recordable or rewritable hard drives
DVD players
Game consoles such as a Playstation or Xbox

Great! Why don't they just make a big law that it will be 1993 forever? Which other industries would benefit from a law like this? I'm sure the photographic industry would have liked something that made it illegal to capture an image without using film.

A nice reply to the record industry regarding this is over at the Consumerist blog in their article.

Dear RIAA - here’s an interesting question for you. When you tell your customers (by definition, the only people who are actually guaranteed to have paid for the album they are listening to) that they didn’t actually purchase anything for their twenty bucks, what is stopping them from loading up DC++ next time and just downloading a pristine DRM-less copy of your next shitty release?

There is a nice parody of the Coldplay DRM restrictions. It asks the question, what if these rules were applied to a take away pizza?

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Witness Protection

2006-01-05T11:48:00.000+11:00

I had an idea the other day for people in the Mafia that have been 'flipped' by the feds. For those of you that don't watch The Sopranos, this means that they have been arrested by the FBI and rather than do prison time are forced to turn against the family by becoming an informant and ultimately getting some damning information on tape.

These people are no longer any use the family, so why don't they tell their boss as soon as it happens? Then, instead of getting whacked because they have given over information to the FBI, they can be given a new identity by the family and dissapear. Kind of a mob version of witness protection if you will.

Some of you might say that those true to the family should do their time in prison, but this way there is another option for these people.

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On Resource Trading

2006-01-03T11:43:00.000+11:00

I was watching part two of the TV version of The Corporation last week. Comments from Michael Walker, who is president of the obviously neo-liberal think tank the Fraser Institute was talking about how wonderful the world could be if we would just commoditise natural resources.

I can't remember his exact words, but basically he said, if we could take the current pollution levels and grant licenses to the polluters and sell licenences for similair levels to others, there is an incentive for the organizations to reduce their pollution. Or, they can buy excess usage from lesser polluters with licences. The more we do this the better.

My thoughts are this. How can we continue to allow the devastation of our environment to people who have the most money?

Would Michael Walker happily drink a glass of water that I had pissed in, if I told him that I bought a licence from someone who hadn't pissed in their glass of water?

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Email Yourself in the Future

2005-10-03T12:30:00.000+10:00

Further to my post the other day about writing letters to yourself, I have discovered a website that allows you to do just that.

FutureMe.org is simple, just put in the email address, the date and the message. It will hold it until you want it sent and then out of the blue a message from the past will arrive in your inbox.

It's a great idea, now all I need to do is think of something to say.

Stupid People

2005-09-29T10:08:00.000+10:00

Somebody has come up with a good explanation for what makes a person stupid.

According to The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, there a four types of people in the world. They are identified by their interactions with others and the end benefit to both parties.

Helpful People - Generally the other party will be better off at the end of the interaction.
Intelligent People - Both parties will be better off after the interaction.
Stupid People - Both parties will be worse off after the interaction.
Bandits - The bandit will be better off at the end of the interaction.

Obviously it's much more detailed than that. The most important thing for you the casual reader to know is the fifth basic law.

A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

The corollary of the Law is that:

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

Remember, there's no such thing as a stupid question... only stupid people.

Brian Wilson will call you

2005-09-29T09:33:00.000+10:00

According to his website, Brian Wilson would like as many people as possible to make donations to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

As a bonus, if you donate US$100 or more, Brian will call you personally and let you ask him one question... and he will match the donation. Sounds like a great thing for any Beach Boys fans out there.

According to Boing Boing, it's true...

Reader comment: Paul says: "In case anyone asks you 'is this real,' the answer is yes. My friend David called me on Monday all excited. He had donated $160 and Brian Wilson called. Brian asked David 'so, do you have any questions for me' and David said 'no, I'm just a big fan,' and then Brian and David chatted star-to-fan for a couple of minutes."

Let me know if you do it.

Simply Rerecorded

2005-09-28T11:32:00.000+10:00

In order to get around the fact that Warner owns the recordings to all of Simply Red's hits, Mick Hucknall has decided to re-record the entire back catalogue.

"Warner has all of the rights to the original recordings, but they don't seem to be doing an awful lot with them," says the band's manager, Ian Grenfell. "We think we can do more with those recordings than they can. We've got a dozen people and all they work on is Simply Red."

The band hopes that they will be able to licence the new recordings for commercials and movies. But don't have any plans soon to exploit the fans by rereleasing their albums in the new form.

I think this would be worthwhile if they also redo the album photography with the band as they look today! I can't wait for other bands to follow.

Thing Generators

2005-09-27T16:47:00.000+10:00

If you're looking for a band name or a blog name or random plotline for Law and Order this is your site, the Generator Blog.

It's basically one place to find all of your name generator requirements. Take a look.

Deadly Dolphins

2005-09-26T14:45:00.000+10:00

Alright! I can't believe this one is actually true, but there it is from one of the worlds most trusted news providers.

Dolphins trained to attack and kill by the U.S. Navy may have escaped from their training facility in the wake of floods caused by Hurricane Katrina. They are denying whether it is true or not. You'll have to read the story for yourself as it's too fantastic to believe.

What I want to know is, if it's true, where did they get the idea for this from? It sounds like the sharks with lasers attached to them that Dr. Evil wanted to use in the first Austin Powers movie.

Better be careful when your swimming out there.

100 Most Misspelled Words

2005-09-26T14:42:00.000+10:00

Take a look over at yourDictionary.com at this list of most commonly misspelled words. There were a few there that surprised me!

Cooking Lessons

2005-09-26T14:34:00.000+10:00

Over at AZCentral.com there is a basic cooking course available for those of us who wish to know a little more about cooking. It starts of with basic skills like organizing the kitchen, knife basics and boiling water (there's more to it than that?) and then leads on to more detail like roasts, making sauces and baking pies. There's even an exam at the end. It looks good.

Just remember, don't try to feed the food you make to your computer!

Writing to Yourself

2005-09-23T09:53:00.000+10:00

A nice article over at D*I*Y Planner about occasionally writing letters to yourself. It gives you the chance to step outside of yourself and view your current situation objectively.

"If you’re thinking about quitting your job, describe what is going on to make you want to quit; pretend you are listening to your best friend talking and give them advice."

And reading them later can be a great way to remember how you felt after a particular thing or stage in your life.

Cute Book Labels

2005-09-23T09:46:00.000+10:00

Over at the Martha Stewart website there is a link to some cute book labels for kids that you can download as a PDF and print in colour onto sticky labels.

Spyware Phonies

2005-09-23T08:50:00.000+10:00

Here is a list of spyware programs that are in fact spyware. This website contains lists of the good and the bad.

The real shame is a lot of these phonies have taken good product names away from potential software developers!

Finding the Next Book

2005-09-22T09:37:00.000+10:00

What Should I Read Next? is a website that allows you to enter the author or title of a book you have enjoyed reading and it will make recommendations based on what others have enjoyed. It even gives a link to Amazon for each book if your feeling impulsive.

Beat Blisters

2005-09-22T09:26:00.000+10:00

I got this great tip from Lifehacker today.

MacGyver Tip: Got blisters? Use Duct Tape.

Are blisters ruining your day? Do band-aids keep sweating off? No moleskin on-hand? Try duct tape! It cushions the blister and won’t come off. Many walkers and runners swear by it.

Apply the duct tape when you first feel burning and, hopefully, before a full blister develops. Lay it as smoothly as possible, avoiding wrinkles.
Blisters already exist? Shield them from the duct tape glue. Cut out a circle of paper or gauze, attach it to the center of the duct tape and cover the wound with the non-sticky part.