Circadian Shift

Bunch of links on memory, courtesy of del.icio.us user Acid Zebra:

• Buffering and Human Memory
• Short-term Memory
• Super Memory: Forget About Forgetting -- a site about "improving memory, self-growth, creativity, (and) time-management" from the makers of SuperMemo software (Wikipedia also has an entry about SuperMemo)
• Mnemonic Techniques and Specific Memory Tricks to improve memory, memorization
• Memory Links -- a list of recommended sites from Red Deer College; the aforementioned Super Memory site also has a list of links

On creativity:

• Gaping Void has more musings about your private Mount Everest
• Detailed Instructions for Running a Brainstorm Session
• The Snowflake Process for Writing a Novel (via del.icio.us)
• Researcher links storytelling, math ability -- "Math and storytelling may seem like very different abilities, but a new study suggests that preschool children's early storytelling abilities are predictive of their mathematical ability two years later"
• Daydream your way to your dream job -- "With visualization techniques, you can learn to use your imagination in a purposeful way to get you where you want to go"

Addendum: Two more creativity links:

• The TRIZ Journal -- "'TIPS' is the acronym for 'Theory of Inventive Problem Solving,' and 'TRIZ' is the acronym for the same phrase in Russian."
• fans of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies can get a daily hit via an RSS feed

I've mentioned them before, but it bears repeating: TinyApps.Org is an excellent source of software -- most of it free -- that can fit on a floppy disk. A number of the programs are also recipients of the "Green Award", meaning that the software

• does not require installation
• does not write to the registry
• does not create or modify files outside of its own directory

I'm less familiar with Under1mb.com, but it too boasts "Freeware that Fits on a Floppy".

I've found it useful to have a number of these minimalist utilities copied onto floppy disks, or burned to mini-CD -- you have a little Windows toolkit that you can take with you wherever you need it.

Over at Blamblog, Brett has been exhorting (to put it mildly) his readers to stop using Microsoft Internet Explorer. The ensuing comment thread noted that, when one websurfs at work -- almost invariably on a PC running Windoze -- one doesn't always have the option of using an alternate browser.

Or do they? I responded:

If your user settings don't allow you to 'install' software on your workplace PC, you can still use the ZIPped version of Firefox, available here:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.9.1/

Addendum 30 July 2004: You can now find version 0.9.2 at
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.9.2/

Addendum 12 August 2004: Whatever the latest release of Firefox is, find it here:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

Just unzip the contents into a directory on your hard drive, and you can run it from there.

Should you require a ZIP program, may I suggest 100K_Zipper. It doesn't handle any kind of compressed file other than ZIP, but it does benefit from not requiring installation. Find it here:

http://www.quickzip.org/quickzip/information.php

Heck, even my Mom and Dad have made the switch to Mozilla (albeit, at the insistence of my brother and I, who serve as de facto tech support to the parental household). After all, there are many things that Mozilla can do which IE cannot.

On my main desktop PC here, chez Hovel, I use Opera, which works just fine for me on Win98SE. However, I've had less luck with Opera on my notebook PC, which runs WinME. (The "ME", I believe, stands for "Multiple Expletives", which is what it usually drives me to using, thanks its overall crappiness.) So on my notebook, I use Firefox.

Twelve minutes, forty-seven seconds of... something. Vodka is optional.

• "Edge of the Ocean" by Ivy (Amazon.com link, requires free registration) (via POP77)
• "Elevator Loveletter" by Stars (scroll down a bit for the download link) (also courtesy of the aforementioned POP77)
• "Together In Electric Dreams" by Lali Puna (again, scroll down to download) (cover of Phil Oakey/Giorgio Moroder tune, and much better, IMHO) (don't remember how I found this)

Over at Gaping Void, Hugh has started a list of thoughts about how to be creative. My favourite ones:

2. Creativity is a process, not a fixed state.

You never really reach your goals. By the time you get near to fulfilling them your criteria has already changed. Results-driven definitions of success are counter-productive to being creative, to finding new markets or possibilities.

3. Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what seperates successful people and failed people is time and stamina.

12. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don't make at least one seriously honest effort to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

Meanwhile...

Contentious writes about How Arranging Ideas Spawns New Ideas.

And Good Morning Thinkers passes along a list of Idea Facilitation Tips. (This will to come in handy on Thursday, when I'm locked in a brainstorming meeting chez office.)

Just my luck that my acquisition of high speed 'net access has coincided with an explosion of MP3 blogs offering all sorts of goodies for download. I've taken to using the MP3Blogs Aggregator as a starting point each evening, and clicking madly from there.

mixoftheweek is back after a two-month hiatus, with three new mixes for download. According to the track listings, they're rather heavy on the hip-hop and reggae.

Meanwhile, retro fans will be pleased to hear that Broken Sky is making Japan's 1977 demo album available in its entirety for your MP3-harvesting enjoyment.

Let's have a look at David Sylvian and the boys, shall we?

More info about Japan to be found at nightporter.co.uk.

Jerry at Red Wheelbarrow (who, I note, has me listed in his blogroll under "People, Politics, Madness" -- not sure I want to know which one I am) has come up with a few snappy retorts for annoying pretentious anti-pop-culture wannabes.

And he's come up with a "Guilty Pleasure Meme", wherein you bold the items in a list of cultural detritus of which you covertly partake, and then add one more of your own. What the heck -- I'm game:

1. Melrose Place
2. Who Wants to Marry my Dad?
3. The O.C.
4. Backstreet Boys
5. John Tesh
6. Joe Millionaire
7. Friends (only the first five seasons)

and, my adddition
8. Teletubbies

Yeeeeaah, that's right -- I used to watch the Teletubbies. 'Twas during a period of eight months after I quit my first corporate gig to go back to school. All my classes were evening classes, so I used to stay up all night and then sleep until 3 or so in the afternoon. Then I'd enjoy the brain-damaged hijinks of Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, LaLa, and Po over my "morning" cup of java.

(Ah, those were good times...)

So, anyone else want to take a crack at it? I dare ya!

The Observer Music Monthly is running a nifty little 'Abba to Zappa' quiz:

I performed reasonably well on my first try. However, even with subsequent runs through the same questions, I couldn't for the life of me figure out who the heck this was supposed to be:

Any ideas? Anyone?

Addendum 04 August 2004: Thanks to Graig for identifying the mystery rocker as Har Mar Superstar. And here be an actual photo of the man himself:

I guess that outfit is a favourite of his.

silence is a rhythm two features a number of early 80s 45s. Should you have missed downloading B-Movie's "Nowhere Girl" when Torchomatic posted it, several months back, now is your chance.

Brain Tags pointed me to DiceLaRed, a Spanish site that monitors several other sites and blogs and outputs these visual "barometers" on what's being discussed:

For those whose Spanish may be a tad rusty -- no worries. Most of the sites being monitored are in English. And, as I discovered, they even have the good taste to include little ol' me:

Adding a toolbar or two to your web browser can be useful, but is it possible to take things too far?

(via Information Nation)

Some neat little animations from b3ta.com...

A Typical Day at the Factory:

And there's this one:

Which scales very nicely....

The websites for two 80s/90s-era bands offer a bunch of audio downloads for your listening pleasure:

• The Cocteau Twins feature rarities and unreleased tunes as "FM radio quality" MP3s -- check out their Fruitopia commercial jingles (!) (via largehearted boy)
• The Primitives released a spate of short (under three minutes) sharp pop songs, heavy on the 60s garage and girl-group influences -- give "Crash" and "Dreamwalk Baby" a listen (via this Mixtaper page)

Addendum: Chromewaves points to an incredible new CD boxed set from Rhino called Left of the Dial: Dispatches From the '80s Underground. Drool!

• Pete has put together a Canadian spelling quiz. Since we Canucks use British spellings for some words and American spellings for others, it does get a wee bit confusing sometimes.
• Shaolin science examines the principles of physics which underlie those amazing feats performed by Shaolin monks (via MemeMachineGo!)
• Handedness develops in the womb -- "In one study, nine out of 10 fetuses at 15 weeks' gestation preferred to suck their right thumbs. Hepper's team followed 75 of those fetuses after birth, and found that at 10 to 12 years old all 60 of the right thumb-suckers were right-handed, while 10 of the 15 left thumb-suckers were left-handed and the rest right-handed." (via Anthropology in the News)
• Yawning is catching in chimps -- "Chimpanzees yawn in response to seeing other chimps yawn, reveals a new study." (ibid.)
• Human smarts based on volume, location of gray matter (ibid.) (see also commentary from FuturePundit)
• Research shows brain's role in stuttering -- "New research from Purdue University shows that even when people who stutter are not speaking, their brains process language differently."

"typoGenerator is a random generator for 'typoPosters'. a typoPoster is a poster, created from images and letters/text that doesn´t have any sense, just to look good"

(via MetaFilter)

Some blog posts that are particularly relevant right now:

• Curt Rosengren writes about Comfort, inertia, and the positive side of pain
• David St. Lawrence puts forward A question to ask yourself when things aren't going well

A while back, Curt also pointed to this article on Monster.com:

• Set an Expiration Date for Your Job

Good advice, all around. The tough part is applying it.

Not being at the office means that I can web-surf with impugnity. And play simple, addictive little games like this.

(via Milk and Cookies)

Addendum: Oops. Fixed bad HTML tag. Sorry.

(Apologies for the bad pun -- these things happen when you're wracking your brains for a blog-post title.)

Whiskey River provides this charming little blurb:

Rene Descartes walks into a bar and has a drink
The bartender asks him, "Would you like another?"
Descartes pauses and says, "I think not," and promptly disappears.
The bartender is enlightened.

I know I just posted a 'toon from toothpastefordinner yesterday, but I laughed out loud when I saw this one:

My friends Belinda and Tim have sent along another picture of their cat Bam Bam (yes, he of the famous haircut).

The pic is largish (625 kb), but it's utterly gosh-darned cute. Should you have the stomach for such things, by all means, click through.

I took advantage of the recent outage here to put a few new things up over at Circadian Shift: The Outpost. The links list has been revamped, and I've put a new retro MP3 online:

• You Remind Me of Gold by The Human League (MP3; 3,286 KB)

While I do have the song on vinyl (as part of the Fascination! EP released in 1983), this particular digitisation is courtesy of Torchomatic from a few years back.

I remember hearing this song for the first time through headphones, and being blown away by how the high-pitched metallic synth effect sounded in my head -- it was like there was a shower of gold particles inside my skull. Very neat.

Anyway, I'm hoping to bring back retro MP3 posts as a regular monthly feature, barring technical difficulties and other interferences. I hope you like it.

Addendum: Right, so I did some Googling and turned up the following linkage which has more information about The Human League, plus various goodies:

• Blind Youth -- "The Early Work of The Human League"
• Secrets Online -- "The Continuing Adventures of The Human League
• www.humanleague.dk
• The Human League: Love and Dancing

Lastly, how about a pic? This is them circa 1984:

Sadly, there are times when this seems true:

Thank you, toothpastefordinner.

[I meant to post this on Monday, but my fancy-ass new home internet connection has been muy uncooperative for the last two days. I am not happy.]

Kudos to Richard for providing these links about website piracy:

• Copyscape is a Google-powered search-thingy that hunts down online copies of any URL you provide
• a few months back, there was a Slashdot discussion about website theft
• Pirated-Sites.com

Awright, just one more post on the Shaolin Monks....

Did some Googling, and found a number of references to a Windows Help file that goes into greater detail about the 100 action principles. The text is based on a book written by one Bill Fitzpatrick.

The original page by whoever made the help file is gone, but I did find a copy of the file hosted elsewhere.

I've also gone and mirrored the file here:

• 100 Action Principles of the Shaolin Monks (ZIPped Windows Help File, 73.3 kb)

Further to the previous post, Matthew M. Boedicker has put a Shaolin Action Principle Randomizer on his site. To draw a different principle from the deck, just refresh the page in your browser.

Thanks, Matthew!

Also found squirreled away on a ZIP disk was this list of 100 Action Principles of the Shaolin Monks (plain text file, 2.59 kb). I have no idea where I got it from.

Taken out of context, some of the points don't mean much, but others are simply good common sense:

While doing some ZIP disk archaeology last night (I have a ton of ZIP disks dating back to the late 90s), I came across a copy of David Allen's workflow diagram that I have in my Daytimer:

A quick Googling about yielded the following additional goodies:

• Some downloadable tools that someone put together, based on David Allen's work
• an advanced workflow diagram (PDF, 321 kb)

I actually do own a copy of the book Getting Things Done -- The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, and it's... somewhere... here in The Hovel... um... partially read...

Really should get that done.

I've really been enjoying Blamblog's "Happy Creature" comics. I can't explain why; they're just weird.

His latest is one of the funniest yet.

I decided to copy blackbeltjones's idea and take my del.icio.us tags and magnify them according to how many posts had those tags:

Mookie points to the following goodies that you can add to Mozilla Firefox:

• Download Manager Tweak
• Googlebar
• Yahoo Companion

I'm still really liking SeattleTech -- the last set has gone from Fleetwood Mac to Vivaldi to Bach to Massive Attack (!) -- although yesterday evening/night the feed was choppy to non-existent.

Sleepbot was also missing last night, but seems to be back now.

Of the several feeds available at Digitally Imported, I've enjoyed 'Hard Trance' and 'Goa-Psy Trance' the most; 'Mostly Classical' ain't too shabby either.

Faves on SomaFM are 'Drone Zone', 'cliqhop', and 'Secret Agent'.

Anyway, I'll just kick back and enjoy the music, 'cuz bitching about work gets boring for all of us.

  Work on project that has suddenly become a train-wreck
  Work on project that started out as a train-wreck
  Work on report that is always a train-wreck

Been spending some time hunting around for online streaming audio feeds to listen to. In addition to the aforementioned SomaFM, I've taken a liking to:

• FlashbackAlternatives.com -- 80's retro overload; bring it on
• Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast -- ambient sounds for that peaceful late-night environment

I'd really prefer feeds that use SHOUTcast, or some other streaming MP3 technology. That way, you can use the MP3-playing software of your choice, and the operating system of your choice (like, say, the creaky old Linux box I have that I'm planning on making into a jukebox).

It's annoying that many of the local radio stations only stream their broadcasts in (blech) Windows Media format.

I did try to listen to streaming RealAudio using Real Alternative, but didn't have much luck with it. I eventually broke down and installed RealPlayer, using the version provided by the BBC, which doesn't install a whole bunch of extra garbage on your computer like the regular one does.

The CBC, bless 'em, does allow you to choose between Windows Media, RealAudio, and streaming Quicktime, but everytime I click on the Quicktime link, my download manager kicks in because it thinks I'm trying to download a movie. (I could change that, but I usually want my download manager to work on .MOV files.)

Anyway, the search will continue...

Addendum: Via this list of Ogg Vorbis Internet Radio Stations, I found SeattleTech. They bill themselves as "Ambient Techno Classical Rock" and they seem to mean it -- the set I've heard thus far has played The Orb, J.S. Bach (some harpsichord thing), The Art of Noise, some kind of dub thing with tabla and sitar thrown in, and now Travis. Definitely one to bookmark.

Addendum 2: More info about Ogg Vorbis here.

Speaking of retro tunage...

My most recent CD acquisition (a week-and-a-half ago) was 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats by The Fall.

IIRC, it was DJ Martian who alerted me to this compilation's imminent release. The minute I first spotted it in the store, it was mine. Yeah.

You can download one track, "U.S. 80's/90's", for free here.

Addendum: Oops. Sorry, the above-noted link goes directly to the MP3 itself (4.4 MB) -- I meant to link to this page, which -- now that I look at it again -- has the same sales blurb about the album that the first link does.

If you want to browse around the site (insound.com) there are many more MP3 downloads from other groups.

Addendum 2: By all means, do browse the other MP3 downloads noted above -- there's some very good stuff there.

So, I've taken the first step towards updating Circadian Shift: The Outpost -- I've reinstated the two-column layout, because the three-column one looked like crap in several browsers. Also, links to the Gaping Void Galleries are gone, as Hugh no longer emails cartoons out to people for syndication.

Next step would be to update the list of music links and put some new MP3s up...

I think. Sorry about yesterday's outage. While I did briefly entertain thoughts of putting in some work on my other websites during that time, I wound up just surfing the net instead.

Meanwhile, Modulator provides a handy list of acronyms seen on an ER dry-erase board. I think "AMS" deserves a place in my lexicon.

• What is a Polymath? -- "A person of great or varied learning; one acquainted with various subjects of study."; Ming the Mechanic explains and provides more linkage
• Protect your intellectual property -- quick overview of the differences between trademark, copyright, patents, and trade secrets
• Stocking the Virtual Ready Reference Collection -- linkage to existing reference sources and to help for creating your own
• 125 Public Information Symbols -- signage from Japan
• Information Literacy - Sources of Information -- a webliography from the University of Sköde
• threetwoone.org -- "devoted to the display of information with diagrams"
• Tips to Avoid Information Overload -- geared to those in direct marketing
• No Rest for the Weary -- "It seems companies expect mobile technology to increase productivity outside the office in addition to what goes on inside, not instead of it"
• Social Effects of Mobile Technology -- "I know that I, personally, am often overwhelmed by the speed at which information moves and changes (being in the information business). There is too much to know and sometimes my brain simply shuts down!"
• Interruptive Technology and the Death of Deep Thought -- "the interruptive nature of our current technology makes it much harder to sustain concentration"

Another joy of finally getting high-speed access: internet radio.

IIRC, I think I first heard of Soma FM from Josie's blog; recently spotted it again on del.icio.us.

Wow. Each of the six channels is freaking amazing -- I'm having trouble staying with one for more than five minutes.

Perhaps having something like Replay Radio installed on the PC would be a good thing. (Thanks to Complex Distress for the pointer.)

I must have dozed off at around 9pm yesterday.

Which means that I am awake now.

D'oh!