A fun dream

Normally I don’t remember my dreams, but this one was intense. I got on a subway car with a few other friends, and the sign that had the route number also said “no conductor.” I wondered why. Then as the subway started, it suddenly plunged down a huge ramp and then did corkscrews. This part of the subway was a roller coaster!

Maybe they should do this in real life. In the San Jose area, public transit is pretty slow, so they should at least make it entertaining…

Balancing privacy concerns in my photos

I’ve struggled with finding the right balance of descriptiveness and privacy in my Flickr photos account. Up to now, I’ve almost completely avoided displaying people’s names, because I think it’s a little creepy to be able to go to someone’s photos, and search for someone else to see what they’ve been doing. On the other hand, I ended up with vague, somewhat tortured names like “Wedding in Palos Verdes” or “Entertaining visitors to the Bay Area.”

So I’m going to start using people’s first names in some circumstances. For example, “Entertaining visitors to the Bay Area” is now “Matt and Laurel’s visit”. It makes more sense to me and to those who know them, and those who don’t know them don’t care anyway. I’m still not using last names, nor am I tagging photos with people’s names.

I’m curious to see how people’s privacy expectations online will evolve. They’re generally willing to put up a lot of information without much thought as to who can see it. For example, at CSCW I saw a talk by Cliff Lampe, a Michigan State professor, who said he announced to his class that he had read all of their Facebook profiles, and that you could see each student mentally going through what they had put in their profiles and their resulting grimaces.

A random collection of videos

It’s amazing how much time you can sink watching videos online:

  • Robot Chicken is a satirical stop-motion animation show on Cartoon Network. For example, take a look at how the Emperor reacts when he finds out the Death Star was destroyed. (Thanks to Brian.)
  • Line Rider is a Flash-based game where a little guy goes sledding down the lines you draw on the screen. There are dozens of Line Rider videos online — some of the drawings get really elaborate. (Thanks to Bill Buxton.)
  • Here’s a “kinetic art movement” project by Tim Fort. It’s way more than dominos. (Thanks to Clemens.) Reminds me of the Honda “Cog” commercial.
  • See Sacha Baron Cohen (of Ali G and Borat fame) like you’ve never seen him before: normal.
  • I was intrigued by the music in the TV commercial for “Gears of War,” an Xbox 360 game. The song is “Mad World,” sung by Gary Jules for the movie Donnie Darko. And it turns out that the song is originally by Tears for Fears.
  • Another melancholy song: “Missing” by Everything but the Girl is one of my favorite songs from the 90s.

2 out of 2 economists agree: voting Democratic will improve the economy

Today is Election Day in the U.S., and I’m reminded of a funny thing I saw on CNBC last Friday. Morning Call hosted two economists, one from the AFL-CIO labor union, and the other from the libertarian Cato Institute. Surprisingly, they both agreed that a Democratic majority in Congress would improve the economy.

The AFL-CIO economist said that Democrats would fight to increase the minimum wage (which studies have shown do not significantly increase unemployment) and would allow Bush’s tax cuts, which the country can’t afford, to expire. The Cato economist said that a Democratic Congress would split the government, introducing gridlock and preventing the government from enacting dumb policies. He pointed out that since World War II, government spending has grown the fastest when the same party controlled both the Congress and White House: LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush.

So if you want to vote with your wallet, vote Democrat!

’80s overdose

Maybe it’s because I’ve watched Time-Life’s Classic Soft Rock Collection infomercial one too many times, but when I was leaving for work today, Christopher Cross‘s “Ride Like the Wind” popped into my head, complete with backing vocals by Michael McDonald (“what a fool believes…“).

So I got curious and did a Google search on “ride like the wind michael mcdonald”. And the third hit was an SCTV parody of Michael McDonald singing those lyrics (“such a long way to goooooooooooo…”) posted on YouTube. Really funny, and absolutely hilarious if you know who Christopher Cross and Michael McDonald are. If you don’t, well, you didn’t listen to enough yacht rock as a kid, did you?

And then to top it off, this week VH1 is counting down the 100 Greatest Songs of the ’80s. Take my breath away…

More music fun

When I was in elementary and middle school, I listened to mostly adult contemporary songs (i.e., “soft rock”), mostly because I didn’t know any better. So watching the infomercial for Time-Life’s Classic Soft Rock collection was particularly trippy, because they showed that these songs were sung by real people! With bad hair and funny clothes! I recognized almost every song, but less than half the singers. I also learned some surprising facts (Lotta Love was originally by Neil Young?).

The (not-so-latest) hits

Every once in a while, I’ll hear a song that catches my attention, and then I can’t resist going online to do some research. Like when I first heard Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” and then finding out a few weeks later it was built around a sample of the 1971 hit “Are You My Woman?“ by the Chi-Lites. Or when I heard the background music to a Lincoln car commercial about 4 years ago and discovered it was a song called “Get A Move On” by Mr. Scruff, who sampled “Bird’s Lament (In Memory of Charlie Parker)” by Moondog. Or just recently, when I dug into Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and read that they sampled “Nel Cimitero Di Tucson” by Gianfranco Reverberi, from the soundtrack of a 1968 Italian cowboy movie!

But of course, no one can beat Weird Al. His latest triumph: turning Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’” into “White and Nerdy” After more than two decades, he has not lost his touch.