Lee.org

(via JWZ)

This is art that sells itself. Literally. And that’s why it’s art.

I love it!

The art is currently selling itself on eBay

…
WHEREAS:

A. Artist has created a work of art titled “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009)” (“the Artwork”) which consists of a black box that places itself for sale on the auction website “eBay” (the “Auction Venue”) every seven (7) days. The Artwork consists of the combination of the black box or cube, the electronics contained therein, and the concept that such a physical object “sells itself” every week.
…

I might put this under the category of “Today’s Affirmation”

A Ted Talk

David Blaine: How I held my breath for 17 min

local version:

That place is a disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals. And JWZ put up the sign to show it.

FNA

I have trouble giving myself a day off because I’ve got a million things on my todo list. But today, I was off.

Went to the shooting range with Schuyler and his friend Mitch. While I was officially Schuyler’s Parent or Guardian because of his tender young age (!), I spent the most time with Mitch, giving him a shooting lesson. It was fun and sometimes funny watching him load the magazine backwards, try desperately to operate the slide, and hold the gun in a position where he’d surely bonk himself in the head if he were to fire the gun for real. All that said, he did great on the range! I was thinking it would just be good if he got out there but in his last round, he took 7 shots, all on the paper, most inside a small circle. And darn we had fun!

(and click on that image to the left. I wasn’t trying to but I caught the slide and kick of the gun perfectly!)

After, Schuyler and I came back home, we chatted and cleaned the gun and then off to Papalote, where I got 2 more stamps on my Burrito Card. My next burrito will be free! I liked the sound of that I asked the cashier to repeat the words, “Your next burrito will be free.” Wee!

I got a call from my dad and emails from my aunts Dorothy and Ernestine telling me how cool it was that I’m speaking at Techkriti and the company I’ll be keeping there.

Laurie came over and we all chatted about all manner of things… from niobium to the magic of twist ties to baking bread. We baked. I figured it would be good practice for my upcoming bread teaching class and, well, there was no bread in the house! Schuyler ended up staying so long that he got to have some and take some home. We opened up the last of my lonza and talked about making some of our own! It might be possible to sweat the meat in a refrigerator inside a plastic container and a drainage rack!

I’m already forgetting many of the nonstop jokes we chatted up. It was a really good day!

Niladri wrote to the SWARM list a few days ago:

I reflashed the daughter board on Orb 3 and Michael Toren and I roll tested it. The moment I hit the joystick the orb took off and wouldn’t stop even when I let go of the joystick.
…
P.S. 1 – The kill switch is not easy to hit when the orb is running away from you very fast.
P.S. 2- The box shop is out of band aids. I would grab a box but it will be a few weeks before I am back.

I was introduced to this absolute gem at Noisebridge 5 Minutes of Fame last night. A fantastic 8 minute piece showing a taste of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton with a decidedly novel approach. And the story is the thing.

local version:

Play All is Love – Curt Smith.mp3

(locally archived) (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License) (this track from Amazon.com, at no cost)

Update 3-7-10: It is now $0.89 on Amazon. I have “purchased” it anyway because, wow, this track keeps resonating in me! If you love this track, buy it.

I wrote on Curt Smith’s website (of Tears for Fears fame)

Curt, Thank you so very much for this song.

I found All is Love when browsing around for for Zoë Keating’s music. I’ve played it 50 times in the last week on your website. It hits me at a very deep level and I don’t know why. Every time the song ends, I get this slow lost feeling, as if I had been on my way to somewhere beautiful and then, despite trying to keep it in my memory, I slowly forget how to get there. So I find the page and hit play again. That’s all I can do. I don’t know what you’ve stirred in me but it’s worthwhile to explore.

Thank you for the message in this song. I look forward to the album release.

Curt writes about the song

Click here to listen to “All Is Love (featuring Zoë Keating),” Curt’s first new solo material in nearly two years. It will be released on January 24. 2010.

Smith is releasing “All is Love” via his KOOK Media label as a standalone single, which will be available in digital format from AmazonMP3, iTunes, CD Baby, thesixtyone and other online retailers.

Smith met guest artist Zoë Keating online. “I was looking for a cellist to play on the track and heard about Zoë through Twitter. I watched a few of her performances on YouTube and thought she was fantastic and innovative.” He sent her the in-progress tracks, and a month or so later she hand-delivered her cello parts to a Tears For Fears concert outside of San Francisco. The two will perform in concert, as a double bill, on March 23 at renowned L.A. venue Largo at The Coronet.

“All Is Love,” began life as a demo track for a television pilot theme song (the original version, called “Halfway Home,” streams on Smith’s website). While the pilot didn’t get picked up, Smith liked the musical idea he’d begun, and reworked it with longtime collaborator Charlton Pettus. In a departure from his usual lyrical themes of longing and loss, All Is Love’s anthemic chorus (“When every mother’s loving every son / When all is love, there’ll be love for everyone”) looks forward with hope to a time of peace and calm. “I was inspired by the 2008 U.S.presidential election” says Smith “The verses are about the negativity of all the advertising, whilst the chorus invokes the inspiration I felt about positive change.”

Like Smith’s previous solo effort “Halfway, pleased,” he’s releasing “All Is Love” under a Creative Commons license. The license Smith uses allows others to freely share, perform, and remix his work,so long as the uses are non-commercial, Smith is credited, and any derivative works carry the same license. “I’m a big fan of Creative Commons,” Smith says.”It’s a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned. It affords you the opportunity to set the ground rules of how people can use your music upfront.”

Background vocalists on “All Is Love” include singer-songwriters Michael Wainwright (who opened for Tears for Fears on its 2009 U.S. tour) and Jason Joseph, as well as Pettus’ daughter Georgica. Charlton Pettus and Smith share writing and production credits.

Smith plans to play several Los Angeles-area solo gigs in 2010, working around a busy schedule of Tears for Fears concert tours taking place in Australia, New Zealand, southeast Asia and the U.S. EastCoast. He’ll continue to release new tracks as he completes them, with the possibility of compiling them into an album when he’s got enough material.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Lyrics to “all is love (featuring zoë keating)”

Written by Curt Smith and Charlton Pettus

Look what you’ve done
You’ve blown it all
On vanity and sympathy
See how you run
A pot of gold
And a bleeding heart to go with it

Chorus:
When all is love
And the hurt is gone
We’ll all reach out
To touch someone
When every mother’s
Loving every son
When all is love
There’ll be love for everyone

Look what you’ve lost
Innocence and faith
And save yourself at any cost
Here’s what you’ll find
When the bottom drops out

Chorus

Close your eyes and it’s gone
Don’t look down till it’s over
Hold on tight, everyone
We’re halfway home

Chorus (repeats)

When all is love
When all is love
There’ll be love for everyone
When all is love
When all is love
There’ll be love

Look what you’ve done

My call to Omnipage Sales…

Short form:
Their sales website is huge and very pretty. They spent a lot of money on it. Omnipage 17 costs about $150, Omnipage 17 Professional costs about $500. And there’s the “Enterprise” version.

I clicked the pretty “chat with a representative” popup on their site to find out what’s up with the extra $350.

Want to know what you are paying for? Salesmanship.

—————————————

Here’s the transcript. My commentary (not from the conversation) is in bold

—–

Please wait while we find an agent to assist you…
Hello, welcome to Nuance Chat. Please briefly describe your goal or question and I will connect you with the best resource to meet your objectives.
Customer: What is the difference between Omnipage 17 and 17 Pro? Can you show me a comparison page?
Erin Sim: That’s a good question. What I can do is transfer you to a sales agent who can answer that question and ensure you are getting the correct product. Would that be helpful?
Customer: sure That’s odd, I didn’t make it directly to sales? Whatever…
Erin Sim: Great! Before I transfer you can you please provide me with your name and phone number?
Customer: I’d rather not, thanks. Why would this guy need my phone number? Followup sales call?
Erin Sim: No problem, I will transfer you now. Your expected wait time is 5-10 minutes as we are currently experiencing higher volumes than usual. Thank you for your patience.
Johannes Wehrmann has entered the session.
Erin Sim has left the session.
Johannes Wehrmann: Hello, welcome to Nuance sales support, please let me review what you have entered.
Customer: Hi, What is the difference between Omnipage 17 and 17 Pro? Can you show me a comparison page?
Johannes Wehrmann: There isn’t a comparison between Standard and Pro.
Customer: There is a $350 price difference. You spent $100,000 on your fricking Omnipage website and there’s no way to compare your products? WTF?
Johannes Wehrmann: I can discuss your requirements with you and explaing the differences.
Johannes Wehrmann: Would you like me to call you? … and fill my head with OCR sugarplums?
Customer: I want OCR that works. You sell a product, I buy it. It works. I want to convert image PDFs into Docs. Not hard. I don’t want to be put into the sales funnel. Thanks. Bye. Ok, maybe I’m a bit punchy. But how many people’s pocketbooks did they slime their way into? I have no respect for this kind of sales.
Your session has ended. You may now close this window.

My car has been running a little rough at idle when cold. It would sometimes cut out for a moment and almost stall. The “Check Engine” light came on. It was due for a Test-Only smog check so I took it in for a smog test. The smog guy said the car passed except for the Check Engine light. He handed me a paper describing a $500 repair credit for smog-related repairs from the State.

I took my car to the mechanic at 400 Guerrero. He said, “I looked for a few hours. Maybe it’s the throttle sensor, maybe the computer. I don’t have the equipment to check the computer. Take it somewhere else. I won’t charge you.”

I took my car to a dealer in Walnut Creek, Michael Stead (because all the local Chrysler dealers are closed because of effing General Motors going into the shitter). They replaced the throttle sensor for $500. Before I got home, the problem manifested itself again.

I took the car to the dealer again and now they say it’s an intermittent open connection in the electrical system. They want to charge me $1,800 to replace the entire wiring harness. Is this reasonable?

The dealer will reimburse me the $500 for the mistaken throttle sensor problem. And I should get $500 free money from the state.

If I get a second opinion, might a mechanic be able to find and replace the one bad wire in the electrical system for less than $1,800? Do I dare try cutting and soldering wires myself? I mean, if it’s broken copper in a wire, it’s $1 of wire that’s gone bad.

Here’s my review I posted to Yelp. Charlotte, Riley and I went there last night. Kern was buying as our holiday present.

1550Hyde
2 1/2 of 5 stars. It was “fine”.

My yellowtail was cooked fine with a bit of bitter green sauce on it. The cooked baby green things beside it were nice if a little bitter. My friend’s salad was entirely arugula (which as we know is rather bitter) with some oil & vinegar. The coffee my friend got was rather bitter (though maybe that’s the style for coffee in San Francisco). I appreciate “bitter” as a culinary tool but hey!

The server was very nice. My friend asked for a substitute side-order. The kitchen missed the instruction and the server promptly brought her the side she wanted. The plate of the side was hot but the side was cold on the inside :-( It was this cauliflower thing which was good if a bit… wait for it… bitter.

For desert, the chocolate pudding stuff was really good. As was the banana bread! And the bread set on the table was very good. Though I suppose none of those items were made in-house.

But we had a lot of fun riding the cable cars on the way home!