8tracks mix: jazz born again

A mix of today's artists playing great jazz and reviving it from the death-by-smooth-jazz status it was once at.

Change for America

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country

- President John F. Kennedy, delivered in 1961

I think the biggest downfall for any culture or society is a breakdown of values. Without the ability to come together on any foundation how can there be progress, movement, or stability?

I think America is in disarray. I find many destructive lines drawn between religion, class, race, and beliefs. To much ignorance to the real issues of war, health, family, and business. Some how between the lines drawn, the sides taken, and the ignorance of the issues America is broken.

This is not something that should be left up to the government to fix. It's a problem for the people to solve. But to start we need awareness.

I'm not big on politics but I've been paying lots of attention to Barack Obama. Everything up to now shows me that he's just the kind of person we need to build this awareness. It's what America needs.

Even if you don't vote, don't vote democrat, or don't care...listen to this message:

Musica Forte

One thing that drives me crazy about a lot of music recorded today is the lack of dynamics. Through the song the volume of all instruments are pegged. I feel like the song is shouting at me. If I change the station, wham! Another song shouting at me.

"In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but also to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic (staccato, legato etc.) or functional (velocity). The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics." - wikipedia

Nude (radiohead cover)

Big Ideas (Don't get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

Kalisty

My past Pelco manager, Barry, has released a pretty cool social networking service called Kalisty:

"Kalisty is a collaborative tool that lets you organize and share through the use of simple Lists.
You can keep private lists, share them with others, collaborate with friends, and make your lists public so anyone can watch or add to them."

Here's a neat list:

One App A Day For the Month Of May for iPhone

Mix Tape Mastery

Remember how fun it was to make mix tapes and CD's?

Here's some quotes:

"The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules." - John Cusack, High Fidelity

"Picture this: You're in love. Great. Everything's perfect. Well, at least that's what you think in the beginning. Slowly you'll realize there is a missing void, a certain something begging to fart out. And what's worse is that this certain something is tearing up your relationship. So what is it and how can you fix your relationship? It's a mix tape is what it is, and you can start by making one." - How to Make the Perfect Mix Tape

Film Scenes:

Boogie Nights has the scene featuring the tape titled "awesome mix," a utterly warped scene with Night Ranger blasting in the the backgound. Side A of the mix ends abruptly mid-song (don't you hate that?) adding tension to an already tense scene. - The Art of the Mix Tape

Data Centers Pollute more than Airlines

Here's a twist:

"The world’s data centers are projected to surpass the airline industry as a greenhouse gas polluter by 2020, according to a new study by McKinsey & Co." -nytimes

I think this is very interesting. As programmers we've been preaching about trading CPU cycles for programmer cycles. Meaning, why write efficient code (uses less servers for the same amount of process) when we can use higher level languages to write (less efficient) code.

These tiny tradeoffs become huge factors when scaled up.

At a $100 million per data center could they factor in solar cells?

eSolar describes its approach as a "market disrupting solar thermal power plant technology." Generation can be scaled from 25MW to over 500MW at energy prices competitive with traditional fossil fuels. The company, which ios based in Pasadena, Calif., intends to provide modular solar power plants that scale in increments of 25 megawatts.