blessingx

Hope it's a great, sugary one.

Lou Ottens, Inventor Of The Cassette Tape, Has Died https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lou-ottens-inventor-audio-cassette-tape-dead-obit-1139657/ https://www.npr.org/2021/03/10/975598869/lou-ottens-inventor-of-the-cassette-tape-has-died

What about this? That, some Monk LPs, cheap wine, and my old Eagle One, and I'd probably be happy.

You have another possibility... https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Dynavox-Record-Model-132-Phonograph-High-Fidelity-Needs-Needle/114427000117

Fun read today. Offering up for sports fans... "Fleming Field was the appropriately abysmal home of possibly the worst team in the history of paid play. They were called the Yonkers Hoot Owls, and their story is a lot like the movie “Major League” … albeit without the uplifting arc or happy ending. In amenities, in attendance and in the independent Northeast League’s standings, the Hoot Owls were dead last, then dead altogether. They lived for just a single, financially ruinous summer." https://www.mlb.com/news/featured/the-worst-baseball-team-ever

Speaking of lists, in case anyone else wants to follow along with Waits’ faves. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/tom-waits-favourite-albums-list-dylan-rolling-stones-beefheart/ Tom Waits’ 20 favourite albums of all time: In the Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra Solo Monk by Thelonious Monk Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart Exile On Main Street by the Rolling Stones The Sinking of the Titanic by Gavin Bryers The Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan Lounge Lizards by Lounge Lizards Rum Sodomy and the Lash by The Pogues I’m Your Man by Leonard Cohen The Specialty Sessions by Little Richard Startime by James Brown Bohemian-Moravian Bands by Texas-Czech The Yellow Shark by Frank Zappa Passion for Opera Aria Rant in E Minor by Bill Hicks Prison Songs: Murderous Home Alan Lomax Collection Cubanos Postizos by Marc Ribot Houndog by Houndog Purple Onion by Les Claypool The Delivery Man by Elvis Costello

Thanks much! Also it’s a reminder to watch Cabin Boy again.

Watching Chris Elliott impersonate people a long time ago

The polymath John Herschel, nephew of the trailblazing astronomer Caroline Herschel, coined the word photography in 1839 in his correspondence with Henry Fox Talbot — a onetime aspiring artist turned amateur inventor. (The invention of photography and how the new technology revolutionized both art and science occupies Chapter 14 of Figuring, titled “Shadowing the Light of Immortality,” from which this essay is adapted.) For several years, Talbot had been experimenting with techniques for transmuting the impermanence of light and shadow into permanent prints on paper coated with receptive chemicals. But his images failed to last — exposed to natural light, the prints faded over time. Just as he finally perfected the process with help from Herschel, who had proposed using a sodium thiosulfate coating to make the images more permanent, Talbot got word that a French rival by the name of Louis Daguerre had devised an image-making process, which he had named after himself and was planning on presenting at a joint meeting of the Academy of Sciences and the Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris on January 7. Talbot realized that the revolution he had spent years planning was already afoot and might have another leader. He wrote to Herschel frantically in the last week of January that he must present his own findings before the Royal Society, for “no time ought to be lost, the Parisian invention having got the start of 3 weeks.” He scrambled to rally excitement for his “art of photogenic drawing.” In a letter of February 28, 1839, Herschel objected to the term “photogeny” to describe Talbot’s new image-making process, noting that it “recalls Van Mons’s exploded theories of thermogen & photogen.” This associative defect, Herschel argued, is amplified by the word’s poetic deficiencies: “It also lends itself to no inflexions & is not analogous with Litho & Chalcography.” Instead, Herschel proposed “photography.” On March 12, he read before the Royal Society a paper titled “Note on the Art of Photography or the Application of the Chemical Rays of Light to the Purposes of Pictorial Representation” — the first public utterance of the word photography. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/04/03/virginia-woolf-julia-margaret-cameron-photography/

I’ll pop this over here too

Doesn’t really matter as we’ll all be back on turntable.fm soon, right? Right? https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/21/03/04/2226217/turntablefm-is-back-from-the-dead

Does this damage the “artist owned” Tidal argument?

Okay, this may not be the most efficient way to solve autofocus detection problems (or is it the most efficient?), but definitely someone at Fuji is attacking from a different perspective. Reminds one of the ever decreasing on-time San Francisco busing rates. After several failed attempts to fix they solved by eliminating the schedule.

Thinking outside the box here’s Fujifilm’s recommended dog and cat list for optimal animal autofocus performance and pet photography. Something to consider when looking for a new pet. 🐈 https://www.fujifilm.com/products/digital_cameras/pet/index.html

The reason the great Jamaican stuff deepens over time, over years, not with nostalgia but with meaning and nuance, is that it's a spiritual music. That's the anomaly underlying its power... In the States, rock 'n' roll is always on some level a move away from God into the devil's music, but in Jamaica the cultural conditions were different. Pop grew toward Jah. https://www.gq.com/story/bunny-wailer-john-jeremiah-sullivan

Hope it’s a great one.

Four part HBO doc. So much to talk about, including different POVs, one of which is seeing in the shadow of Trump.

Where Are the Iconic COVID-19 Images? https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/where-are-iconic-images-covid-19-pandemic/618036/

I think this may work better separately than with the film.

With God Only Knows Wilson showed off the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique

Goofy day so all Taylor songcraft filling the pandemic air

There were so many computer superstores I can no longer remember names, but think of when driving by their old locations. Still a couple Computer Centrals, though one near me burnt down a couple years back and the rest are pretty dead. Micro Center shrunk and vacated the area. It still seems strange Silicon Valley can't support a large store for quick pickups, when there was once so many. Guess it's all Amazon and fast delivery now, same as everywhere else. Will be strange not to be able to pick up things on a lunch run. A ton of problems with Fry's over the years. I often wondered how Apple's big comeback affected them as they never really played in that space. And as Apple Stores popped up. Sold some Macs like Best Buy, but Fry's wasn't a general electronic store, though in the end tried to be. This is worth a read - https://mondaynote.com/the-frys-era-8709a7e602eb