This can’t last, but: LOTSA GOODIES. Silents, TV shows, copyright violation galore. The stuff I want is outta (c) anyhoo, but, dig.
La Perdida
Eric at Fanta noted this village voice feature on Jessica Abel’s La Perdida, which struck me as a unique and successful piece on initial publication. I never read the last couple of issues – maybe I’ll pick the book up.
A-Weem-A-Wep
In the Jungle, the Unjust Jungle, a Small Victory. [NYT].
Sing it with me now.
Three things
The first thing is something I noted at about 8 am, and have since forgot.
Aha! It was a guy on a bike with an iSight taped to his helmet, facing forward.
The next two are pictures.
“Huckleberry Blue Has a Posse”
“Support our Pants”
O, woe
Crappe! Yon synkical operation ‘pon ye faithfulle communications device yclept ye Treo has cast forth all trace of names, telephonical contact coordinates, &c. from ye device! Fie!
Several centuries later:
I was able to locate a system-level address book backup – from NOVEMBER 2005. So I feel like I’m moving again!
Data Disquisition Followup
Per request, here is a followup to a previous post.
To reiterate, I’m thinking through the best way to present a uniform UI atop varying data tables. I am reluctant to invest the time and effort into developing import routines for the data in order to apply full normalization to the data tables for reasons which are sufficient and not under discussion.
Therefore the choices are:
Can I present data in an Access UI where the display fields draw from more than one data datatable, using if-thens and string concatenation to present the data as appropriate to the record?
or
Must I create a supertable which unifies the schema without any attempt at normalization in order to do the same thing for each record?
The answer is partially embedded in Access’ limitations on tying tables to the UI, it looks like. When I experimented with relating two tables to one “Form” (Access’ term for the UI) Access required the tables to contain a join; the data is not inherently joinable. Therefore if I want to do if-thens and concatenation to conduct normalization as each record is displayed (which is conceptually what I’m talking about) I will need to create supertables. Yuck.
One of the issues with doing this is Access is that Access does not permit dynamic column population at import. Therefore I can’t test the inbound data for specific characteristics to record the data source in the new record. That’s part of the MS upgrade-path strategy which is so irritating – leaving out simple-to-implement features as the consumer-grade app is upgraded forces advanced users to look at MS-SQL, in this instance.
So what it looks like I will be doing is recoding Access applications for each datasource and requiring the user to switch between them as they work with the data, which kinda sucks. Oh well.
Scratchy but sweet
In How Pop Sounded Before It Popped, the NYT’s Judy Rosen brings the rest of the country into the secret knowledge of the fantastic greatness to be had online amongst the mp3 transcriptions of early recordings of popular tunes, a topic I have gabbled on about here previously.
Chaucer's Bloggetrye
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog, via MeFi. Laugh out loud hilarious.
Apres le Deluge
Editor B announces that ROX #93 is up and available for perusal.
Orbital Home
I had an epic dream last night in which I visited Bloomington for the first time in five years and made it out to my childhood home to see it from the inside due to the generosity of its’ new owners.
While there, a party started. Amidst the ruckus I found a set of bookshelves that my dad made for me and my sister around 1972. On the bookshelves remained a broad selection of detritus from our family’s life in Bloomington.
When the new owner arrived home from work, we spoke breifly, catching up, in the basement. During the course of our conversation the basement grew massively, eventually morphing to an outdoor airport tarmac, on which sat a large collection of antique airplaines of all ages.
The house my friend had bought had become a grounded 747, and he and his family were living within the plane. As I wandered around the aviation boneyard, I accidentally activated smallish two-engine prop plane, and the silvery relic plowed into and through the wing of my friend’s formerly airborne home.
After this debacle, my party decided to leave the premises, climbing back up the stairs into the rest of my childhood home before driving away. I was seated in the back seat of the automobile, and looking up and back toward the house and airfiled we’d just left, I saw a small craft with NASA markings launch another craft. The carrier was clearly inspired by the recent news coverage of a secret space plane.
This second craft rocketed away and then a series of craft issued, all different, one after another. Each of these craft catapulted some distance from the carrier and began to unfold, improbably. As their falls slwed, then stopped, it became apparent that each was some sort of lighter-than-air craft, all built on different plans.
Soon the sky was full of these pseudo-zeppelins, in many shapes and sizes. Somehow it became clear that they were some sort of alien invasion fleet. After this was realized, we found ourselves able to clamber aboard one; as we ascended we noticed other groups of people doing the same on other ships, all about us. Once we arrived inside the fuselage of the ship, it seemed that the party I’d dreamt of earlier has come aboard the craft.