July 23, 2004
Dido Tour Blog
We have all heard of politicians who keep blogs, and of course some musicians do the same. Soon after Sunday's concert I discovered that Dido also has a blog about her world tour, that is somehow out of the ordinary. Instead of blogging herself, or having members of her tour band blog, she hired a friend of hers to exclusively tour with them, only to take pictures and blog. This leads to longer if somewhat more artificial posts, that are...
Posted on July 23, 2004 04:50 AM
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July 21, 2004
See You When You're 40
I don't usually write songs that are targetted against one single human being, but sometimes people REALLY piss me off. This was Dido right before she started singing See You When You're 40 (lyrics). As the crowd started laughing I had to think of how it must feel to be the person the song was written about. To millions of people he was now known as an immature child, rather than his actual self. And this, of course, reminded me...
Posted on July 21, 2004 03:57 AM
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July 19, 2004
The Last Concert in Schönbrunn?
The next few days will feature lots of posts on yesterdays Dido concert. I will start it off with some rather sad news on the concerts location. According to the Austrian TV and Radio agency ORF residents of Schloss Schönbrunn (former residence of the Emperor's and now a huge tourist attraction and home to a few people who actually live there) filed a complaint against the concert operators, alleging that the events disturb their daily lives. Dido was not the...
Posted on July 19, 2004 02:57 PM
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July 18, 2004
An Evening With Dido
I just came back from a Dido concert with Nora in front of the Schönbrunn palace in Vienna. I am again completely aware of why Dido is probably my favourite musician. It was an astonishing evening of music, that served as the perfect ending to an amazing weekend. If only we had had a camera with us, like everyone else. Much more on the concert and weekend tomorrow; now go and buy or download Life for Rent, sit-back and listen!...
Posted on July 18, 2004 02:51 PM
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May 03, 2004
This is How Rap Should Be
I am now listening to Jaspora from the album The Carnival by Wyclef Jean. This song reminds me of why I liked Rap so much when I was in high school and cannot really stand it anymore now. I think that having to listen to stuff like 50 Cent and Ja Rule spoiled my appetite for Rap forever, but I will try to listen to some good Rap music, to not completely ignore this type of music. Having said that,...
Posted on May 3, 2004 12:03 AM
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April 25, 2004
Big Fish
I just saw Big Fish. I could write about how the movie made me think of Ulysses and Stephen Dedalus' theory about the author constantly recreating himself in his writing, or how it in some way mirrored the consubstantiality of the father and the son (also from Joyce, not Christianity). Instead, let me say that for a moment I was moved. More moved than I have been in quite a while. This movie has made me happy and reminded me...
Posted on April 25, 2004 09:49 PM
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April 08, 2004
Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager
I will be reviewing Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager for OSNews. I am very excited because I would love to learn more about the implementation of Linux, and Prentice Hall is known for its high quality Unix books (I have at least 10). Furthermore, this fits in perfectly with CS 240, and to some degree also with my research project. I cannot wait until they mail it to me, and will try to get a lot of work done,...
Posted on April 8, 2004 04:10 PM
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April 05, 2004
Reflections after the Movie
I just saw The Last Samurai, and like most movies it made me think about many things. Latenight movies often inspire my imagination very strongly, almost stronger than books do. But rather than philosophize about my thoughts, that I always do when walking home, after them, I simply want to describe the feeling. I know that when most people walk out of movies, they start thinking about things in the movie, analyze its plot, discuss it coolness, ridicule its flaws,...
Posted on April 5, 2004 01:25 AM
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March 31, 2004
The Irony of Copyright
I am currently reading Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. The book is about Copyright and the Public Domain in the internet age and available as a free download under a Creative Commons license. The book mentions an H. G. Wells story called The Country of the Blind that I found online at a site called the Litrix Reading Room. Ironically the story had the following disclaimer: The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted....
Posted on March 31, 2004 04:58 PM
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February 29, 2004
Web Bloopers & Blog Design
I just watched a CS 547 talk by the author of Web Bloopers, Jeff Johnson on (not too surprisingly) Web Bloopers. The talk was very interesting, and Johnson went over a lot of common problems with many commercial websites. The talk itself is publicly available, and I encourage any professional web designer to watch it. Unfortunately, for people trying to design their own site, their is very little important information. My objective in watching it was to find out things...
Posted on February 29, 2004 12:22 AM
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January 26, 2004
I am Air
In high school I had great disdain for electronic music, especially for the intellectual French electronica duo Air. I used to think that making electronic music is as simple as stringing together a few melodies made by others, and saving the entire thing as a file. People who called this high art annoyed me, and Air definitely fell in this group. The terrible quality of popular German Electronica did not help at all. I realized how wrong I was and...
Posted on January 26, 2004 03:06 PM
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January 26, 2004
Lost in Lost in Translation
I am currently Lost in Translation. I am, of course, speaking of the movie with Bill Murray and Scarrlett Johansson, by Sofia Coppola. It is about about Bob and Charlotte, two Americans who meet in Tokyo and become friends in this strange foreign city. Coppola paints an amazing picture of the city, and it's influence on the characters is the most fascinating part of the movie. Most scenes have long lapses of silence, where people stare around, unsure of what...
Posted on January 26, 2004 12:10 AM
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October 10, 2003
Insanely Great
Tristan made read this book on the Macintosh by Steven Levy and though not as fascinating as Tristan claimed it was still an interesting read. Steven Levy is able to make mundane things seem fascinating. Levy made the excitment of the people involved with the Macintosh project perfectly clear, and described all the major people of the project. More importantly he brought accross the feeling of how working on the Mac team must have felt, and what an indredible experience...
Posted on October 10, 2003 01:47 PM
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July 07, 2003
Finished Part 2 of TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 3
I just finished Part 2 of TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 3 and it was quite a short read. The second part was about HTTP and NNTP, the former of which I knew a lot about, and the latter of which was only covered briefly. This part was definitely the least interesting of the book, but I had to skip Part 1 (T/TCP) because I had to read Volume 2 first. I am now reading Part 3 (UNIX Domain Protocol) which is...
Posted on July 7, 2003 09:11 AM
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July 01, 2003
TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1
I finally finished TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1 by Richard Stevens - what a great book. I have read books about TCP/IP before, and had quite a bit of knowledge about the topic before starting the book, but Stevens method of showing the actual transactions using tcpdump made everything much clearer, than anything I had read before. I spent a bit of time looking at what the tcpdump output for my own network, which was quite interesting. I think that I...
Posted on July 1, 2003 01:08 PM
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June 16, 2003
Taking The Red Pill
A very interesting read for every Matrix fan. Like most of the Matrix books, it is a collection of essays by different authors, most of which are quite well known in their particular fields. I had already read the last chapter, which can be found at www.simulation-argument.com, and Why The Future Doesn't Need Us by Bill Joy, but still enjoyed reading them again. The chapter on finding god in the Matrix was enlightening, but also amazingly boring, mainly because the...
Posted on June 16, 2003 11:10 AM
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June 04, 2003
Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life
This was an OK book, that had some very interesting sections. Most of the explanations about Feynman's research are very superficial, and are targeted at people who do not know much physics. There is quite a bit of depth about the interaction between Murray Gell-Mann and Feynman, which I found very interesting. The fundamental question of the book was, however, how to find out what to do with one's life, and how to make it interesting and worthwile. There is...
Posted on June 4, 2003 04:28 AM
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May 29, 2003
Exploring the Matrix & Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It
Today I finished Exploring the Matrix, and interesting look at several aspects of the Matrix. There is coverage of some of the Science Fiction sources the movie draws from, which for someone who is mildly knowledgeable about modern science fiction, but not an expert, is definitely worth reading. There is an essay on Woo-Ping, Martial Arts and wire shots, which is fascinating. More importantly there are several essays about why the Matrix is as popular as it is, (e.g. Neo...
Posted on May 29, 2003 03:59 AM
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