Xmas in a box

Here's the latest from Tomiland Studios ... enjoy!

Mr Bragg's bees

Here's a nice interview with Melvyn Bragg, host of one of my dearest podcasts, In Our Time. Why don't you take out a trial subscription?

The End of an Era

That image says more about the end of 68 than all the brilliant analyses taken together. Good job, LV! Their apparent concept of displaying iconic characters in their very own, private fin de siècle really plays out nicely.

Interesting numbers

Accumulated time spent on building Wikipedia ... 100'000'000 hours
Total time spent watching TV in the USA ... 200'000'000'000 hours per annum
TV time of global web-connected population ... 1'000'000'000'000 hours p.a.

That's what Clay Shirky calls Cognitive Surplus. An interesting thought indeed.

Alumni meeting

Yesterday, I went to a meeting of an Edinburgh alumni group at the Member's Room of the Swiss Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Schönenwerd. The group consisted of MBA alumni who were kind enough to invite us others, so we were a motley crew from different faculties and graduation years, and I happened to be the most senior of the lot, at least in terms of the graduation year. It was great fun to meet everybody, and I hope we will be able to do that again. The icing on the cake was that I got to see the Member's Room, which I've never been to despite of all the years that I'm a member.

Rule Britannica!

Coolness! Being the web publisher and blogger that I am, I have been accepted into Britannica's Webshare programme by virtue of this blog (among others). This programme gives its participants free access to Encyclopedia Britannica online and lets them (me!) share whatever article they fancy with readers - yes, you! So, here goes, and most appropriately to start with, hell! This looks like a great way to compete with Wikipdia - you better get used to the thought of not getting any more Wikipedia references from this source.

Oy, Google!

What have I done?? Since about 16 April, the amount of search based traffic that Google has directed my way has fallen off the cliff quite dramatically, as witnessed by the chart. Not that it matters much, as most of that traffic has been after the globe's most expansive posterior (I paraphrase, obviously), which I talked about in an early post, but it's strange anyway. Ah well, somebody else must have come up with a more relevant reference, then ...

Voyager

Ever wondered what the golden disk aboard spacecrafts Voyager 1 & 2 contained? Unsurprisingly, you can find out online here.

The Ampersand

Ever since reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman ("learned wit" - bah!), I like using and (&) per se and in any language, whatever the rules - learn more about its meaning & history here. Thanks to kottke for the pointer!

Xentonality

Wow - this article in NZZ Folio reports the Xentonality work of William Sethares - with plenty of free music samples. It's experimental music of the best kind: strangely harmonic even though it defies all conventional rules of harmony. Fascinating!