This is amosbray's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following amosbray's activity
amosbray
Recent Activity
Thank you, my dear, I as always appreciate the support. And I enjoyed your Joan Rivers post, thanks for letting me know about it.
The Virtual Personality
Virtuality, that word that reeks of the 1980s somehow, is back in mind. More and more of what we used to call "computing" is now just daily life, just the way we do our business, professional and personal. When we are in the presence of so-called real people now, I'm not sure how much of a diffe...
Thanks, Jordans. I am making a donation to the Non-Sequitur-itis Foundation in your honor. -ab
You Can Go Your Own Way
I'm not really sure what use Facebook is, or that its half-life will be any longer than AOL's, but one thing it most certainly has the capacity to do is put you in the purview of people you used to know. It doesn't have all the people it should have or is going to have, but in the event they ever...
Ah that's some beautiful information, Brian, many thanks. During my lucky tenure of listenage, I was a little kid up late listening across the summer air to Beaker Theatre as it crossed time and space. I never got the chance to hear the players. I mostly remember Chandu. But that would have been great. Now those sounds are streaking well out to the edge of the galaxy, no doubt. I'd like to be there when they get picked up but that seems, shall we say, a possibility that is radically remote.
Beaker
What a jolt to the memory centers... back in the late 1960s, early 1970s there was a show on radio called Beaker Street hosted by a guy named Clyde Clifford, featuring a segment called Beaker Theatre. I don't remember it as well as I'd like to, I wish I still had access to the actual programs rat...
Thanks for posting, Mace. I too remember best of all Chandu, that wonderful series from the 1930s. Wikipedia has a nicely detailed article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandu_the_Magician_(radio)
Beaker
What a jolt to the memory centers... back in the late 1960s, early 1970s there was a show on radio called Beaker Street hosted by a guy named Clyde Clifford, featuring a segment called Beaker Theatre. I don't remember it as well as I'd like to, I wish I still had access to the actual programs rat...
amosbray is now following Account Deleted

Jun 5, 2010
amosbray is now following Daily Routines

Jun 5, 2010
amosbray is now following rodcorp

Jun 5, 2010
Thank you. And yes, there is commenting and as always most welcome: I just tested it out myself and it seems to be working OK. Let me know!
Elsewhere, It Begins Again
I am reposting herewith my 1st post from a new venture, and one of my new homes: Piano + Players. As a matter of honor, this first post really should in some way involve Glenn Gould. So I'm going to briefly take on a philosophical point of order, in the hopes that it not only satisfies honor bu...
amosbray is now following The Typepad Team
Mar 15, 2010
Yes I read The Art of Memory some years ago, but haven't read anything else. Speaking of the art of memory, what did Frances say?
Theatre As You'd Like It
It was while listening to Emili Blasco play Strauss tonight that I realized why I walked out at intermission on Sam Mendes's production of As You Like It at BAM tonight. Oh I suppose I knew the immediate reasons well beforehand, in real time, or I would have stayed and tried to figure out what I ...
I hear you and I appreciate the sentiment. Like an old penny, I'll turn up again.
Deux-Bee-Deux-Bee-Deux
I have to admit that in the 15 seconds it takes to grok TeuxDeux, the new to-do webapp from studio-mates swissmiss and Fictive Kin, it already emerges as a great favorite. No, I don't think I'm going to be able to give up my combo of Things+TaskPaper, but this beauty is so simple and so right, I ...
Many thanks! Yes it's going along swimmingly or rather sleddingly. Thanks again for the positive vibrations. -ab
Deux-Bee-Deux-Bee-Deux
I have to admit that in the 15 seconds it takes to grok TeuxDeux, the new to-do webapp from studio-mates swissmiss and Fictive Kin, it already emerges as a great favorite. No, I don't think I'm going to be able to give up my combo of Things+TaskPaper, but this beauty is so simple and so right, I ...
No I didn't know but I'm glad to hear it. I was an actor in Shakespeare plays once upon a long ago and I guess you could say I'm a nut too, it's certainly a worthwhile way to spend life.
Thank you for the link. I hope you enjoy the "problem play", it's a dandy. Now pardon, I must exit (pursued by bear).
Kickstarting Shakespeare
I know! It's right up my backalley, ain't it? Sometimes I think maybe my Jekyll or my Hyde is actually writing it!
Favorite? Yes!
I think this is my favorite blog on the web. Why? Well I just don't know. The answer to that may be as broad as my biography.
I agree with you in every respect except the last: when it comes to the App Store, not only is MS NOT the Man, they aren't even the son. They're like the kid who lives down the street and wants to be in the group so bad and tries so hard to do everything the Man does, with sadly pathetic results. No, when it comes to whatever you want to call the SmartPhone industry, MS ain't shit. Apple is the Man. Marketshare bears this out pretty clearly. And the Man with respect to its App Store approval policies, it's becoming ever more widely recognized, is making big big mistakes. Not mistakes of reason or totalitarianism, mistakes that literally make no sense (except Orwellian).
Why 2009 Is Really Like 1984
OK so we all know that http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=Aapleach man kills the thing he loves, but does he need to turn into his evil twin while doing so? Apple Inc (formerly Apple Computer) famously and now perhaps infamously fought The Man back during its introduction of Macintosh. Now, not onl...
You're very sweet! Thank you for your support. You're my only fan. (!) I do have two other (alternate) blogs planned. I will let you know as soon as they're live.
10 Reasons Why My Blog Is Going To Die Soon (But Yours Doesn't Have To)
Because I make it a point never to read those helpful articles by the probloggers that begin with a number of reasons why. Because this blog is titled "Built to Be Destroyed". Get it? I factored in its obsolescence at the start. (1000 posts and, ka-ching, I cash out.*) Because my eclectic subje...
His show, The F Word, also on BBC, is completely different format and also quite good.
Ramsay
My first exposure to Gordon Ramsay was in trailers for the US series Hell's Kitchen. I was so put off I couldn't imagine wanting to do anything but smack the fucker in the puss every time I heard him yell straight up in someone's face like a bully with the backing of a camera crew. Lo and behold ...
Interesting and good to have evidence from natives. But I still don't understand how prices can be that different in England (London puts NYC to shame for housing, food, transportation, fuel, everything is outrageously expensive). In any event, it is some kind of reality check for me.
I'm Really Confused and/or Out of Reality
I've been watching a lot of the Gordon Ramsay BBC series Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. It's brilliant, just outstanding, and so far from his US series Hell's Kitchen there's no point in even imagining they involve the same star. But something has me tremendously confused. Several times over the co...
My response/impulse (as a happy viewer of Apocalypse Now that would not cut a single minute): this thing is too bloody long by about 90%. Fun idea, should have been encapsulated in 30-60 seconds tops. It's fun but it's nowhere near as fun as they (and I guess you) think it is. To me.
Makes Me Want To Watch - Makes Me Want To Share
Awesomeness. My impulse upon seeing this was to spread it. The stuff that cuts through the clutter gets shared. Would I buy the camera? Not so sure. Will I remember the brand? You bet. Do you want to share this? Can't see the video. Click here.
Beginning near the end. We're all under a hundred....
Beginning near the end. We're all under a hundred. Let's be cousins. Let's call each other Centurions. Continue reading
Posted Oct 1, 2009 at
Comment
0
Grant, you know it was almost a decade ago that my cousin and I conceived your #3 idea, but by the time I got to thinking about it, and actually wrote a blog post about it 4 years ago (http://builttobe.typepad.com/destroyed/2005/12/nameshare.html), well, the estimable Grace Lee had not only beaten me to the punch, she actually made a film about her endeavors! (A book was as far as my enthusiasm was prepared to take me.) If you look in the comments to my post, you'll see links to the relevant material. As I said there, nothing new in the world, not that there's anything wrong with that. -ab
Culturematic: a device for making culture in two easy steps
The culturematic is a device for making culture. It has two steps. Step 1 Think up a pretext. It will usually start, "what if I..." Some examples: What if I ate all my meals at McDonald's for a month? What if I swam across Connecticut using local swimming pools? What if I reached ou...
With PhotoBooth (using laptop isight).
I Love Delueze, But He Can Stuff It
Bat and I are good pals. We do stuff for each other. Is that what makes us good pals? No. We're pals cause we just like to be togeddah. Reference: Gilles Deleuze's ABC Primer with Claire Parnet Directed by Pierre-André Boutang (1996) "A as in Animal"
@Miriam: your comments remind me, in part, of my own attitude toward MySpace some years ago (and truth be told, still): a place where I wouldn't do x (for x substitute whatever "serious" intention you like) because that's just not a place where you do that. As a musician, I put up a site there but more out of duty than anything approaching enthusiasm. There were add'l reasons for my tepidity, but let's just say I understand in part your angle toward Facebook, though I do not share it. Facebook (and Twitter), in contrast to something like MySpace, has built and is building tools that make it for me big enough and generic enough, or genre-swallowing enough, to encompass funny, stupid, serious, biz, light, heavy. Some of this is aesthetic, I must admit. Facebook is more like a well designed building and MySpace is more like a graffitoed shantytown. Further, some of my inclination is toward fewer webvilles and webapps rather than more specialization, especially when it comes to anything like social media. (I'm not this way in other aspects of technology.) For me it would be akin to having to own 3 or 4 telephone books for my town. (Oh Mildred isn't in this one, maybe she's in this one? No. OK, she's got to be in here, no? Impossible! Where the hell is Mildred?!) Social media should be as encompassing as possible. I do not happen to like LinkedIn. In fact I hate it. Perhaps precisely because it does what FB refuses to do: for all its tentacles, it narrowcasts. And I don't want that in socmed. I don't predict, but I shouldn't be surprised if Twitter ends up being the biggest swimming pool of all because it has so many tentacles you can't even see them, and the barrier to entry is just so tiny, even by Facebook standards.
MFFB: missing from Facebook
It's a veritable treasure trove. I just found a Outlook database created when I was the head of the Institute of Contemporary Culture in Toronto. It's large (4000 names) and it's old (about 16 years old). It was great to see familiar names, and I thought I would plug some of them into Facebook...
I often store my passwords here too. Feel free, Georgey.
Burn
Early this morning I dreamed I was riding a bicycle on Montauk Highway. It was very sunny, more Arabia than Atlantic dune, and I was very hot. Riding along that cloudless road my skin began to burn. I had some kind of towel or large cloth and I covered my head and as much of my body as I could, r...
Ce serait excellent!
This Is Greenland
Prince Christian Sound was dramatic, though not the fjords of Norway or Alaska. The point in question, the real issue before us, the reason at least in part for the hastiness of the visit, was the fact of global melt: cyclic temperature change upon the globe. Gaiasm. Nothing to compare it to, it ...
More...
Subscribe to amosbray’s Recent Activity