Tune to KWLC on select Saturdays from 12:30pm–2:00pm (CST) to hear Freeform Faust.

Notes

Missing in Action

Jeff Mitchell had “something suddenly come up” and will not be joining us today. I repeat, “Jeff Mitchell will not be joining us today.” Though that makes him the fourth announced guest in a row to say “something suddenly came up”, he will not be put on any “On Notice”, “Dead to Me” or “Never Existed to Me” list. We just don’t do that type of thing here on the Freeform Faust show, at least not yet.

Better Late Than Never

A certain member of the class of ‘95 and winner of the prestigious Medal of Valor in Procrastination tuned in her senior paper. Congratulations! The Freeform Faust show salutes her with some songs about procrastination.

Music for Time Trials

By special request, the final hour of the Freeform Faust show features music dedicated to those taking part in the 16th Annual Decorah Time Trials.

Let’s Have A Bicycle Race

In case you are interested, the China Record Corporation carefully lists Li Shi as the composer and Ma Wenliang, Yu Shengchao, and Zhu Chenyu as the artists.

Pink Floyd’s ‘Bike’

Some see this song as early evidence of Syd Barrett’s impending mental breakdown. I see it as evidence of a joyful childlike whimsy. Po-TAY-to. Po-TAH-to. To-MAY-to. To-MAH-to. Let’s call the whole thing off.

‘Bicycle Race’ Triva

As part of a promotional event for the double-A-side single of ‘Bicycle Race’ and ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, Queen held a bicycle race featuring naked models. Not only did it anger some who found it misogynist, but the company who leased the bicycles refused to take back the used seats.

SMiLE and the Whole World SMiLEs with You.

Music lovers may have found it clever how I tied the procrastination and bicycle parts of the show together with the three outtakes from the 1966-1967 sessions for SMiLE, an album it took Brian Wilson a mere 37 years to complete. Of course, I didn’t notice it until after the show.

My Beautiful Mistakes

If I didn’t publish these playlists, some listeners might find it more difficult to check my work and let me know when I mispronounce and/or mis-announce an artist, album, or song. Thanks to all of you who hold me to a higher standard. I appreciate your feedback and participation.

Faust’s Top Ten Bicycle Movies

1. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
2. The Bicycle Thief
3. E.T. The Extraterrestrial
4. Breaking Away
5. Better Off Dead
6. Jour de fête
7. The Day I Became a Woman
8. Messengers
9. Beijing Bicycle
10. I’m No Fool with a Bicycle

Jeff Zelevansky/Reuters

The NYTimes.com has a great review of the expansion at the newly reopened Morgan Library and Museum in NYC. Nearly three years in the making, it sounds like they did a splendid job. So this is a shout out to all my librarian pals: this is something we all should aspire to, no? I have visions of the North Exhibition Hall decked out in the splendors of Special Collections.

My HP Pavilion zt3010us laptop just bit the dust this week. Looks like something on the system board went out. They’re going to swap it out, and hopefully things will be back to normal soon. It’s a little disconcerting though. In my experience, electronics either fail fairly soon after purchase or not for a long, long time. This one was somewhere in between as I’d had the laptop for two and a half years, and wasn’t really looking to get a new one at this point. I’m still a little doubtful of whether it can be repaired. The other rule of electronics in my experience is that it’s built to be disposable, no matter how expensive the device. Repairing electronic equipment is anathema in this day and age. My hope of course is that they fix it—it’s a decent little laptop, and it has served me well.

Metafilter had a post on Easily Mispronounced Domain Names such as Molestationnursery.com. Ooops! That’s MoleStationNursery.com. This of course reminds me of Faust’s favorite place to buy customized pens: penisland.net. That’s Pen Island of course. What were you thinking? Of course, for that special someone you may want to check out Whorepresents.com. Damn it! I mean, whoRepresents.com.

The astute observer will note that Faust has been playing a lot of songs about MONKEYS on his radio show recently. What gives? Why this predilection for monkeys? Perhaps there is something appealing about monkeys. Maybe it is because we are monkeys. Yeah, that’s right. You and me. We’re monkeys. At least that’s the thesis behind a little filmstrip on the web called Dance, Monkeys, Dance. There is a lot to love about this filmstrip video. Somehow it makes our world more understandable. After watching it, I don’t feel so alone and afraid. My existential angst has melted away into a pool of warm fuzzies. Give it a try. Watch Dance, Monkeys, Dance and see if you start to feel better about the world. Monkeys, indeed. Thanks, Faust, for giving it up for the monkeys.

Tune to KWLC on select Saturdays from 12:30pm–2:00pm (CST) to hear Freeform Faust.

Helena Keeffe presented an interesting challenge with $50 prize money for the winner:

Can you imagine a speech given by president Bush that would convince you that he has had a change of heart and could actually be the president of your dreams? It is all too easy to criticize our president and his administration. Life changing events (often of the extremely painful variety) force us to reevaluate our values and actions. What if something like this happened to our president. What if he were humbled in some way which caused a profound change in his outlook on life and his role as the leader of our country - turning the aggressive posturing of an all-attack-all-the-time leader into a gentler, wiser soul determined to demonstrate the power of honesty and vulnerability.

Five kids, ages 7 to 10, took up the challenge and wrote speeches of a President Bush who has accepted his mistakes. A change of heart, indeed. Helena had a Bush impersonator read the speeches, and the wonderful MP3s of the students’ texts are up on her site.

If you’re looking for a web analytics program that’ll analyze the log files from your website and make some pretty reports, today’s your lucky day! Quest Software’s Funnel Web Analyzer has been released as freeware. Formerly costing upwards of $1,000 for the enterprise version, the program is no longer being developed. Hence, Quest has released the software for free. I used to use Funnel Web Analyzer to run reports on the web stats for various servers at a previous job, and it does a really nice job. Attractive, easy-to-read reports is where Funnel Web excels. There are lots and lots of configuration options if you want to get into it, and now that the program is free, you can! They have versions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Dan’s Funnel Web Enhancements

Because I’ve worked with Funnel Web in the past, I had made some customizations that you may find useful. I had enhanced the FWASettings.txt file. This lists all of the browsers, robots, and search engines that Funnel Web Analyzer recognizes. The default file that comes with Funnel Web is far from complete. Also, if you selected to use the report with frames, there are a couple of bugs on the HTML template file.

The FWASettings file goes into the main program folder, and the template HTML file goes into the templates/web directory. Here are the files:

• FWASettings.txt
• default_framelist.html

If you’re looking for some small icons to spice up the user interface of your blog or website, check out N.Design Studio. They have a set of Mini Pixel Icons. These icons, which are all 14 x 14 pixels, come in a whole variety of styles and colors. There’s bound to be something of use, and best of all they’re free to use. There are over 320 icons in the set, which are available for individual download, or check the bottom of the page for a link to download a zipped complete set.

In a slightly bizarre way, Ali G interviews Noam Chomsky. Here’s the interview at YouTube. Noam, being the cool cat, plays along but doesn’t equivocate. The interview is brief and is focused on Professor Chomsky’s work as a linguist rather than on his political analyses. [via 3QD]

planetdan linked to a site yesterday called StateMaster.com. It’s a site chock full of statistics that compare various indices nationally, state by state. Lots of great stats to peruse and amuse. For example:

Iowa, where I reside, is:

• #48 in number of murders per capita
• #14 in most educated
• #42 in percent of people below the poverty level
• #20 in Iraq war casualties per capita, and
• #23 in per capita income

How does your state compare? StateMaster has over 2,613 different stats that you can compare. Perhaps interesting and definitely useful to win those arguments about whose state is better.

Mike G of Iowa Liberal alerts us to the existence of an audio recording of Noam Chomsky’s lecture last week at the Englert Theatre here in Iowa City. We’ve added some metadata and made the MP3 iPod friendly. The entire lecture is available here:

Noam Chomsky - Live at the Englert Theatre 2006-04-10

The file is 44 MB in size, and the recording is a full hour and 35 minutes. Feel free to mirror this file and spread it far and wide.

Dave Shea of mezzoblue has a great little photo set up on Flickr that documents his process for roasting coffee beans at home. He buys green coffee beans from a local roaster and puts them into his air-popper normally used for making popcorn. The photo set has photos showing the process along the way and contains annotations that describe his procedure. Looks like a fun home activity. Certainly there is home roasting equipment that you can buy, but Dave’s home roast idea looks like it works fairly well if the photos are evidence. Here’s the coffee roasting Flickr set.

Morning After 6, originally uploaded by psalakanthos.

The National Weather Service is reporting that the tornado that hit the heart of Iowa City last night was an F2 scale tornado with sustained winds of over 150 miles per hour. It cut through 3.5 miles at the heart of the city and was 1/3rd of a mile wide. Luckily, there were only a few minor injuries and no deaths. Story here. More about F-scale tornados here. All in all there were 5 or 6 tornados that touched down in the area last night.

Tornado Car IV, originally uploaded by julay.

This was the scene last night in Iowa City, as our fair city got hit dead on by a couple of tornados. St Joseph’s Catholic church had it’s roof blown off, as did one of the Sorority Houses. The Press-Citizen has a photo gallery of the destruction here. Iowa City made the national news this morning. Check the Press-Citizen for reports.

I’m out of town at the moment so am only hearing reports of the storm remotely.

Lawrence Lessig mentioned this morning on his blog that Creative Commons licensing has launched in Malta. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works. This blog, for example, is licensed under a CC by-nc-sa license. Creative Commons Worldwide has a page about the Malta licenses here. If you’re a Maltese content creator, you can add a Creative Commons license to your digital works via this link:

http://creativecommons.org/license/?jurisdiction=mt

If you’re looking to learn a little bit about why the current copyright “war” is important and why it’s good to support organizations like Creative Commons, get the lowdown with Lessig’s 20-minute talk called Who Owns Culture? This is a great primer to the notion of copyright in the digital age. It’s very accessible, and in my opinion, it makes a lot of sense.

If you’ve ever read the book Freakonomics then you’ll know that naming your baby—if and when you have one—is an important task. People who give their children freakishly bad names cause much harm to the lives of their young, which reminds me of that old Johnny Cash song, A Boy Named Sue.

If you’re interested in doing a little research on baby names, the Social Security Administration has a great website where you can do lookups for the top baby names for any year since 1879. They have from the Top 20 names to the Top 1000 names. You can also lookup the popularity of a particular name over the years.

I see that my name, Daniel, has gone from being the 15th most popular name in the US in the year of my birth to the 7th most popular boys’ name in 2004.

The SSA Popular Baby Names site is here. [via Strange Culture who reports that Gwyneth Paltrow’s youngster, Apple, hasn’t hit the Top 1000 ever]

Overflow crowd for Noam Chomsky, originally uploaded by dstout.

The Englert Theatre filled up fast for Noam Chomsky’s lecture last night. Pictured here is the overflow crowd that spilled out onto the street. The organizers setup speakers outside so people could hear the talk.

This iPod meme has been making the rounds, so here goes. Remember those Magic Eight Balls you’d see in the toys aisle of whatever store you used to go into as a kid? Well, neither do I, but pretend for a moment. It’s a black plastic ball filled with a mysterious blue fluid. You ask of the Magic Eight Ball a question, preferably of the yes or no variety, and a little multi-sided cube would bubble up from the blue depths. Whatever side landed up had a particular answer to your query. It was a fortune teller and was always always right.

The game today involves an iPod set to Shuffle. Basically you go through a series of questions that are somehow answered by what song comes up on your iPod. This, of course, works best with your iPod and not somebody else’s iPod, you know? This one is a bit more of a Rorschach test than the old Magic Eight Ball could ever be. This is me looking at some splattered paint on a piece of paper and making sense of it.

Okay, so here are the official rules, which I pretty much explained in about three times as many words:

Directions: Put your iPod (or other mp3 player) on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING.

Dan’s iPod as Magic Eight Ball

1. How does the world see me? “Turning Against The Master” by Noam Chomsky. Funny. It could be interpreted a couple of different ways depending on who I chose to call The Master. Is it God? Is it the Government? Especially timely considering that Noam Chomsky is coming to town in two days to speak.
2. Will I have a happy life? “Shiver and Shake” by the Cure. That sounds like a “no” to that question. “Shiver and Shake” sounds like someone in a fever, which it could very well be.
3. What do my friends really think of me? “I Want More” by Suicidal Tendencies. Yes, my friends probably do actually think I want more. More of what is the question I’ll leave unanswered.
4. Do people secretly lust after me? “Jonathan II” by Dennis DJ. That’s an emphatic YES! That song comes off the Brazilian compilation called “Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats.”
5. How can I make myself happy? “Locomotion” by OMD. Another one I’ll agree with. Locomotion, which I’ll take to mean “being busy,” is good for the soul.
6. What should I do with my life? “Sitting Still Moving Still Staring Outlooking” by His Name Is Alive. What a poetic answer, you Magic Eight Ball iPod! That’s the perfect activity. Very true to me.
7. Will I ever have children? “Ilhabela” by Bia. Another song from Brazil, but this time it’s soothing and soulful. Answer is unclear.
8. What is some good advice for me? “Take Control” by Lords of Acid. I just had a long conversation this afternoon with someone about this very topic. Take control, indeed!
9. How will I be remembered? “Number One Spot” by Ludacris. Yeah, that’s right. #1 spot. Sounds good to me.
10. What is my signature dancing song? “Let Me Go” by Heaven 17. Fairly accurate. That song comes from a rare 4-disc compilation I have called The Perfect Beats, which is composed entirely of early electro-beat music from 1980-1985.
11. What do I think my current theme song is? “Atelier” by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Yes, I like to think I’ve got a refined taste in music, and since I don’t load any of my classical CDs onto my iPod, this is about the next closest thing.
12. What does everyone else think my current theme song is? “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm (Stuhr Remix)” by Kay Starr. Well, it was my theme song a couple of Christmases ago.
13. What song will play at my funeral? “Release The Bats” by The Birthday Party. Oooh, that’s weird and eerie. An appropriate song for a funeral it seems to me.
14. What type of men/women do I like? “Stay This Way” by The Brand New Heavies. Hmmm…I like women who don’t change?
15. What is my day going to be like? “Faith” by Kristin Hersh. Yes, this hits the nail on the head. Today was very much about faith—mine and another’s.

Wow. I’m totally blown away. There were a couple of duds, but most of the songs really fit the questions. I still think the best one was the answer to “What should I do with my life?” Sitting still, observing, looking. That is all I have ever done. What does your iPod say about you?

We’re posting this story for the benefit of Scott who is a Mentos fanatic. Mentos are apparently some sort of disc-like candy that have highly addictive properties. Not only that but if you mix them with Diet Coke, you get an exciting lesson in chemistry.

Here’s what you need:

• 8 or 9 pieces of Mentos candy
• 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi
• a budding sense of adventure

Check out this video if you have neither the time, patience, nor interest in performing science experiments you read about online. The moral of the story: dropping a few pieces of Mentos into diet soda results in a geyser of Coke. [via bb]

Tune to KWLC on select Saturdays from 12:30pm–2:00pm (CST) to hear Freeform Faust.

My alma mater invited me back for a long weekend of conversation this summer on the topic of philosophy and vocation. After receiving a $2 million grant from the Lilly Foundation, Luther College has been exploring a sense of vocation. My old academic advisor and now professor emeritus Kent Simmonds will be leading the discussions. In preparation for this trip, I went through various bookcases and selected books I’d like to re-read before the weekend in July. I started first with Simone Weil.

Simone Weil has interested me since I first discovered her my freshman year of college. Most of her work was published posthumously, as she died at the age of 34. I highly recommend Waiting For God and The Need For Roots.

On the topic specifically of Weil and vocation, I found an essay online by John Marson Dunaway available here.

We will also be seeing a performance of Candida by George Bernard Shaw at the Commonweal Theatre.

A font walks into a bar, and the bartender says, “We don’t serve your type here.”

Rumors had been swirling for a few months that Apple was going to release their dual-boot solution for running Mac OS X and Windows XP on the new Intel-based Macs. Well, the blogosphere is all a twitter this morning. Boot Camp has been released as an 83 MB beta download. Information here. Apple has some helpful information about the differences between Mac OS X and Windows XP:

EFI and BIOS
Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

So true, Apple, and yet so childish. Pretty funny nevertheless. Apparently Boot Camp will be coming standard with Mac OS X 10.5 once it is released, though perhaps under a different name.

A woman who claims her name is “Abby Darlington” wanted me to post her haiku about the Aegis Client. The help desk here at the university recommends installing the Aegis client to manage your wireless connections on Windows laptops. In her experience, it tends to lead instead to a lot of Blue Screen of Death mayhem. So without further ado, here is A Haiku:

A Haiku, by Abby D:

Blue screen of death, NO!
Aegis Client’s creator
is Satan’s minion.

Meetinghouse Data Communications is the progenitor of the Aegis client. What has your experience with the Aegis Client been?

On April 1st, 1976, began a computer company like no other. It was the dawn of Apple. I was in the fourth grade on December 25, 1981, when my family got its first computer, an Apple II+. That was long before the Macintosh—even before the Apple //e. You’ll notice the sample screen shot of Apple DOS 3.3, the first operating system I ever used. The screen shot is a little misleading. The user in the screen shot entered “catalog” to get a directory listing, but you’ll note that the shorter “cat” did the same thing.

Wired Magazine has a fun little round up and screenshots of various Apple operating systems over the past 30 years. They’re missing an important but never-quite mainstream operating system that Apple first released in 1988 called A/UX, or Apple Unix. Wikipedia has an interesting but brief entry describing it here.

If you wanted to run Unix on your Mac instead of System 7 or whatever, you could. But like most proprietary Unixes, it was godawful expensive. I seem to recall the operating system alone being in the $1,000-$1,500 range. Anyway, it’s important to note because most people think that Apple only recently got into the Unix business with their acquisition of NeXT in 1997, which led to the release of Mac OS X 10.0 a few years later. But in reality, Apple released it’s first Unix-based operating system much, much earlier. A/UX was a System V (AT&T/Bell Labs) variant, and Mac OS X is a BSD (Berkeley) variant (in case you were wondering).

This site has a lot of great history and data on the original Apple II line. You can even find emulators out on web for PC and Mac if you want to get in touch with old skool geekery. I still remember that the Apple II+ had a 1MHz 6502 CPU. I taught myself AppleSoft BASIC on that thing, and later, assembly language machine code.

My history with Apple goes way back, and it’s good to see them doing so well again after the ups and downs of the 1990s. In 1981 when we got our first Apple, Steve Jobs was very much a part of the company, and it was really his leadership at that time that gave Apple a distinctive name and brand. Even back then, Apple was making cool computers like the //c, which I think was designed by frog design. Yes, indeed, it was.

I frequent this coffee shop near where I live, and it’s laptop heaven in there. Everybody goes there with a laptop, and it’s usually about 90% Apple laptops. That’s great to see because it’s mostly college-age students. So the kids are picking up the Mac habit.

Congrats on 30 years, Apple Computer!

Second verse, same as the first! There will be no Freeform Faust show this week. No foolin’.