Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Culture

  • Columbus Ohio Gets Bike Share

    It’s sweeping the nation. Or at least Columbus. And other than the paint job, it’s the exact same bike as in NYC.

    Columbus:

    columbus_hero_short

     

    NYC:

    homepage-hero

    After a bit of Googling, this is the bike, from PBSC Urban Solutions. And it’s in quite a few cities.

  • Little League

    A great Little League sign, courtesy of Slate:

  • Music Can Be Timeless

    I walked into our apartment tonight to hear my girls listening to the Counting Crows version of “Big Yellow Taxi”.

    I’m the son of a liberal Protestant minister. I was born in the 60’s. You can make many assumptions based on those facts and they are probably all true. One of which is that I grew up on folk music. I grew up on the music of Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie (Woody also), and also Joni Mitchell.

    What, you thought the Counting Crows wrote that song? It’s over 40 years old.

    It has always been a great song (and I do really like the Counting Crows version). Joni Mitchell has always been a great song writer.

    Later, Tori and one of Danielle’s friends were practicing gymnastics moves to “Sweet Home Alabama”.

    The original.

    Now I didn’t grow up in the South, but as a teenager I did test my stereo speakers on Lynyrd Skynyrd full blast.

    So amusing to see my kids listening to the music of my youth.

  • Jay Z Magna Carta

    So Jay-Z did a deal with Samsung to make his new album available for free for Samsung Galaxy owners. The app became available today, so as an S3 owner I installed it.

    The first thing it asks is to login with Twitter or Facebook. You cannot continue until you do so.

    I tried Twitter first. Twitter does a good job of telling you the access the app is asking for. Among other things, it is asking for access to:

    • Follow new people (presumably Jay-Z)
    • Update your profile (what?)
    • Post tweets for you (double what?)

    Needless to say, I did not click accept.

    I tried the Facebook login. Facebook gives zero warnings about what saying Accept means. Do I think that means I’m giving up less if I use Facebook? Uh, no. I think it means that Twitter is honest and Facebook is not.

    But I frankly don’t care a ton about my Facebook account and I think people on Facebook are used to random Facebook updates from apps that aren’t real. So I’m going to try the Facebook login as an experiment.

    It’s not like I’m a big Jay-Z fan. My tastes go to Jazz in the 50’s. But my girls do like Jay-Z (and I appreciate him as a Brooklyn guy) so I’ll give it a whirl.

    If you follow me on Facebook and get random Jay-Z stuff, you know why…

    UPDATE:

    After you login to Facebook, it does warn you that you are giving them access to your timeline, friend list and birthday. It did not say it could post for me or update my profile. Creepy enough, but I’m giving it a shot.

    Free stuff = give up your privacy.

  • Early Access

    It takes money to make money. Imagine paying extra to get knowledge two seconds earlier than everyone else. Today, it’s worth a lot.

  • Learning to Share

    This is not a blog post about my daughters or Kindergarten. My day today has seemed like a collection of shared resources. After dropping my daughters at school I hopped on a shared bicycle (CitiBike) and rode to my shared office space (Green Desk).

    Of course at work I’m using shared infrastructure (Amazon, Google, et al). Today I had to run an errand to our storage place (shared warehouse) so I booked a shared car (ZipCar) online. The garage was a few blocks away so another shared bike ride to and from the garage.

    Later today I’ll ride another shared bike home to our co-op apartment (shared ownership).

    Sharing is a good thing.

  • Kill the Violin Section

    Today is the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”. I’ll assume that most readers have never heard (or barely heard) of it. This was a ballet and orchestral work. Stravinsky was one of the early avant-garde classical composers and this is a classic work. I was about to write that most readers would not like this music, but frankly most readers don’t like highly accessible classical music, so that’s not a profound statement.

    But I think this is:

    When first performed, … the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a sensation and almost a riot in the audience

    Think about that. It’s 1913. You are at an orchestral ballet performance. You are probably dressed in full formal attire. Had a nice dinner before. All the best of the best are in attendance.

    And a riot almost breaks out. Seriously, think about that.

    This isn’t Rhianna showing too much skin in a country that doesn’t like that. This is a classic music performance in Paris where they love classical music.

    And it almost caused a riot. Mind boggling.

    It’s worth listening to just for that fact (you’ll often see it as Le Sacre du Printemps, the French translation). And if you aren’t used to modern classical music (“modern” in the classical music sense means post 1900) it will be somewhat jarring.

    But a riot?

    Anyway, Stravinsky was brilliant, but not that accessible to most folks so you may have to take my word for it. Russian born, moved to Paris and then the US. No modern (in our sense of the word) classical composer was not influenced by Stravinsky.

    So this is the 100 year anniversary of a brilliant musical debut that nearly caused a riot. That sentence may never be written again.

  • Space Oddity

    First of all, welcome home to Commander Chris Hadfield after a long stint on the International Space Station. He’s done more cool space videos than anyone (many posted on this blog).

    And in case you missed it, his version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity:

  • Spiderman in Dumbo

    Spiderman is filming outside my office today. I had to go through a gauntlet of checkpoints just to get in.

    Unfortunately I couldn’t see much. They didn’t let me linger and my office window faces the wrong way.

    This is a block from my office. And these shots of how they transform the area are interesting.

    These must have been shot over the weekend, but also a block from my office.

    Never a dull moment in Dumbo…

    UPDATE: The filming is either done or they all took a break, so I wasn’t rushed along. This is the view from our door. That bus way in the back is the one Spiderman keeps from tipping over.

    SpidermanZoom

  • Clumsy, Ungrammatical, Repetitive and Repetitive

    A hilarious take on author Dan Brown’s style…