New photos in the gallery: projects & excursions/bristol, ri.

I took these like two weeks ago…but what are you going to do? There is a park down on the tip of the East Providence peninsula called Colt State Park. Most of the pictures are from there, some of them are also from a dock area where I was probably trespassing, but the locals just waved and smiled, glad someone was taking notice of their beautiful little corner of the earth. Or something.

There is also another new album which is a series of pictures I took of a very funny bird and his friend. This is where the square thumbnails really get in my way because you’re supposed to see all pictures at the same time, and I’d have to do something weird like combine them all in photoshop to make that possible here. So appreciation of this album has become a project for your imagination.

On another note, I’d really like to do some portraits, so if anyone in RI is interested, let me know (yes, the state is that small).

The Horrible Sickness, an amazing improv/sketch comedy group in LA who we interviewed in the spring, now have short comedy skits on their webpage (here!). So far there are two, but I hope that they will continue to make these and put them up on their site. I HIGHLY recommend Dead Man’s Cliff.

Having ranted about the new videos, I will also say that the videos are very different from their live shows, and in order to fully experience these sick individuals, you need to go see their show. In Santa Monica, CA, if you’re around (full info here).

Well it’s finally happened. What’s that you say? No, smashy hasn’t died. In fact it’s just as healthy as ever — with over 471 days of uptime as we speak. However the good people at Bowdoin (Alec & Co.) who have been so kind as to continue to support smashy for more than a year have made the very reasonable decision to consolidate all of the NOC alumni services onto one machine. So, over the course of the next week vdov.net may be up or down, functional or not, etc. I tell you all this because I know how much your daily lives revolve around vdov.net. That being said, I cannot guarentee that changes made to vdov.net during the next week will be transfered correctly to the new machine (acmma, or Anthony Costa Memorial Multimedia Archive), although I will certainly try to make the transition as seemless as possible. I’d like to request that when you read this you pause and observe a moment of silence for smashy, a machine that has more than lived up to its purpose and potential, and one that will be sorely missed. We love you smashy, may you rest in peace. Smashy will be “put down” by the end of the month. Cheers.

So I was watching Numb3rs this evening with my roommate while doing a little proposal writing. Numb3rs is a ridiculous show where fairly complex methods are used to solve crime. The show itself is barely watchable — it’s like they just open up a math text and write down whatever looks most complex while using absolutely ridiculous metaphors to incorrectly explain mathematical concepts. It’s the CSI of math and physics. However, at the end of an episode they discussed the fact that it is impossible to bend a piece of spaghetti and break it into only two pieces. Feynman was known to investigate this phenomena but was actually unable to explain it. I took it upon myself to do my own experiments. That and a little theory are documented below. (more…)

It looks like vdov’s loss is maximumentropy’s founding. Three of my favorite, prolific, musical malcontents and anti-hipsters have founded their own music blog. They are all three veteran radio DJ’s who I have worked with at one time or another and I have always wanted them to turn to the light side and write for us. However, they have proven that their ΔS is far too much for us to handle. They are currently dropping the best songs of summer in two parts. Its an expansive list and well worth a gander. They also have some inside sheez on new web 2.0 music projects that hope to rival Pandora. You will also find some great and not so great music reviews. It is definitely worth keeping an eye on. (more…)

Rsync is annoying to run as a daemon in Mac OS X. Actually, this isn’t specific to rsync at all, but rather Apple’s less-than-intuitive process management scheme called launchd. The idea behind launchd is quite wonderful really, and if it weren’t so annoying to administer it might really take hold (FreeBSD has an implementation already). If you’d like to read up a bit on launchd, I might refer you to the Wikipedia page here. To get launchd to do something useful with rsync the rsync daemon, you have to create a plist file and put it in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons, because using /etc in a POSIX environment makes no sense (sense the sarcasm). (more…)

Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, Wooden Wand Hassara, Wooden Wand Jehovah, Wooden Wand and Tovah D-Day, and now Wooden Wand and the Sky High Band are some of the monikers taken on by James Toth and his band of players in various configurations that have produced a truly prodigious amount of music since around 2000. Toth et al. have been doggedly releasing music over a wide range of styles centering on a new strain of nearly tribalistic folk. They share that designation with bands like Matt Valentine, Akron/Family, Man Man, and even Vdov.net favorites The Bird Names. Their sound ranges from almost ambient and autumnal drones seen on albums like “The Flood” to nearly polished folk songs heard on Harem of the Sundrum and the Witness Figg. Wooden Wand and like bands seem to be flirting with a second folk revival but seem somehow more earnest and vital than their more alt-country cousins. James Toth has always been the lead man with up front vocals (at least in their style with vocals) and weirdly comforting lyrics that fall into the vein of old American folk with focuses on biblical religion, death, magic, and a mystic experience of life. The phrasing is simple and rhythmic and the overall effect is one of awe and wonder in a purely old-time American mode. (more…)