Rock & Roll

Rock & Roll: "

I don’t drive around town that much, but when I do, I like to listen to the radio, and what I mostly like to listen to is rock & roll. Being a certified old fart, over the years I’d spent quite a bit of time with classic-rock station, but gimme a break, there’s only so much time in the world you wanna listen to Pink Floyd and AC/DC. So of late I’ve been finding the radio parked on CFOX (‘The Fox rocks!’) and you know, it’s a not-half-bad rock station. I don’t recognize ¾ of the music they play, which is perfectly appropriate, but I like at least ⅓, which is not bad at all for anything that hasn’t passed through the filter of decades.

"

(Via ongoing.)

Call for Entries: RiffRumble X Online Song Collaboration Contest

Los Altos, CA - Sonoma Wire Works announces RiffRumble X, an online song collaboration contest for RiffWorks(tm) recording software users. The theme for songs will be "Moms Rule!" Contestants worldwide will team up into virtual bands of two to five musicians, record songs together, and compete for free international flower delivery for their moms. One song, written by up to 5 musicians, will win the Contestants Choice Category prizes: free flower delivery for their moms from 2flowers.com. Another song will win the Popularity Category prizes: RiffWorks logo items. There is no contest entry fee.

http://macmegasite.com/node/4217

Rhododendron Software Releases FolioCalc 1.1 for Mac OS X

Rhododendron Software announces the release of version 1.1 of FolioCalc, an investment portfolio manager and performance tracker for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. FolioCalc automatically receives current share price data from the internet at configurable time intervals for all associated stocks, with all financial quantities dependent on share price automatically updating periodically.

http://macmegasite.com/node/4218

James Cameron Supercharges 3-D

Terrific, extensive, technical interview with James Cameron on the state and future of 3-D filmmaking:

For three-fourths of a century of 2-D cinema, we have grown accustomed to the strobing effect produced by the 24 frame per second display rate. When we see the same thing in 3-D, it stands out more, not because it is intrinsically worse, but because all other things have gotten better. Suddenly the image looks so real it’s like you’re standing there in the room with the characters, but when the camera pans, there is this strange motion artifact. It’s like you never saw it before, when in fact it’s been hiding in plain sight the whole time. […]

[P]eople have been asking the wrong question for years. They have been so focused on resolution, and counting pixels and lines, that they have forgotten about frame rate. Perceived resolution = pixels x replacement rate. A 2K image at 48 frames per second looks as sharp as a 4K image at 24 frames per second … with one fundamental difference: the 4K/24 image will judder miserably during a panning shot, and the 2K/48 won’t. Higher pixel counts only preserve motion artifacts like strobing with greater fidelity. They don’t solve them at all.

http://daringfireball.net/

‘There Will Be Blood’ Two-Disc Special Edition

Simply the best new movie I’ve seen in years. You can also save a few bucks and get the Cheapskate Edition instead.

One of Hitchcock’s gifts to cinema was the insight that the key to building suspense is to let the audience know something the characters do not. With its title alone, There Will Be Blood accomplishes this before the film even starts. There’s an ominous dread hanging over even seemingly innocuous scenes that wouldn’t be there if the film were titled, say, Oil! (which was the name of the Upton Sinclair novel from which it was loosely adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson).

http://daringfireball.net/

iPhone Headphone Adapter Roundup

Dan Frakes surveys the field of adaptors that let you use headphones with standard-size jacks with an iPhone.

http://daringfireball.net/

FIRST-CLASS SCOUT

Before being awarded a first-class scout’s badge, a scout must pass the following test in addition to the tests laid down for a second-class scout:
1. Swim fifty yards. (This may be omitted where the doctor certifies that bathing is dangerous to the boy’s health).
2. Must have at least fifty cents in the savings bank.
3. Signaling. Send and receive a message either in semaphore or Morse, sixteen letters per minute.
4. Go on foot or row a boat alone to a point seven miles away and return again, or if conveyed by any vehicle or animal go a distance of fifteen miles and back and write a short report on it. It is preferable that he should take two days over it.
5. Describe or show the proper means for saving life in case of two of the following accidents: Fire, drowning, runaway carriage, sewer gas, ice breaking, or bandage an injured patient or revive an apparently drowned person.
6. Cook satisfactorily two of the following dishes as may be directed:
Porridge, bacon, hunter’s stew; or skin and cook a rabbit or pluck and cook a bird. Also “make a damper” of half a pound of flour or a “twist” baked on a thick stick.
7. Read a map correctly and draw an intelligent rough sketch map.
Point out a compass direction without the help of a compass.
8. Use an axe for felling or trimming light timber: or as an alternative produce an article of carpentry or joinery or metal work, made by himself satisfactorily.
9. Judge distance, size, numbers and height within 25 per cent. error.
10. Bring a tenderfoot trained by himself in the points required of a tenderfoot.