Moog Interview

On the occasion of Robert A. Moog's birthday, here's an excellent interview from The Guardian.  The original interview was by Don Snowden, published in the Los Angeles Times in 1981.

“Emerson, Lake & Palmer performed at Gaelic Park in New York City and it was incredible,” Moog recalled. “There were 10,000 kids standing on a soccer field and here's Keith Emerson sticking knives in a Leslie cabinet. A New York musician who had bought some of my equipment was there and he was in complete shock. He said, ‘This is the end of the world.’”

Emerson's wild-man-of-the-opera stage antics may have shocked some of Moog's more conventional customers but they thrilled many rock fans. ELP quickly became one of rock's most successful attractions and paved the way for other progressive rock bands like Yes and Genesis.

Postponing Retirement

Record Number Of Americans Choosing To Stay At Work by Mary Turner at Huffpost.

SpaceX Dragon Capsule

And Falcon 9 Booster.  Latest news portal at Space.com.

Image credit:  NASA TV

NASDAQ's Failure

Minute by minute during the Facebook IPO from Business Insider.

Image credit:  Bloomberg

First 35 Years of Star Wars Infographic

As visual as I am, I somehow don't really like infographics.  I'm not sure why.  However, this one is quite fascinating and has a huge amount of information.  It's fascinating to me how many of the actors in episodes I, II and III weren't even born during episodes IV, V, and VI.

Infographic

Big Catch Up

Okay, I've been under the weather for a few weeks.  This is going to be a pretty big dump of articles I've noted over those weeks.

Today's Solar Eclipse

It won't be visible from the Atlanta area, the sun will be setting at about the time of first contact.   It will be visible farther to the west.

Article in Sky and Telescope


Image by NOAA/SEC

The Word “Entity”

I suspect the only reason you see the word “entity” in computer science and such places is that, in school, we're taught not to use the word “thing” because it's not specific enough, it's too ambiguous.

So, I claim that when a person uses the word “entity,” they are trying to be ambiguous without being ambiguous.

Telescope camera - 3.2-Billion Pixels

Is this the most powerful camera in the world? Giant 3.2-billion-pixel device will give us the ”deepest view of the night sky ever seen” from Mail Online.

The Best Statistical Programming Language is

Javascript?  From R-Bloggers by Tony.

Going With the Flow

Google's Secret Switch to the Next Wave of Networking by Steven Levy at Wired.

Anyone else recall when the most complicated sneaker decision was

“Do you want those Converse in hi-top or low, black or white?” RT @Gartenburg

How to stop Facebook apps from sharing your info

from Leslie Meredith , TechNewsDaily.

Remember:  Check your Facebook privacy settings early and often.   (That's from me, not the article).

A Forgotten Principle of Compiler Design

from Programming in the 21st Century.

That a clean system for separately compiled modules appeared in Modula-2, a programming language designed by Niklaus Wirth in 1978, but not in the 2011 C++ standard…hmmm, no further comment needed. But the successor to Modula-2, Oberon, is even more interesting.

Strange Objects Punching Holes Through Saturn’s Outer Ring

From Wired.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Why Did the Cow Cross the Road?

Ihnatko answers this burning question.

Amazon Will Finally Pass Best Buy

in revenue this year&hellip.   And Apple is in the game at about 1/3.   From Dan Frommer.

Instant Web Server on Amazon (AWS) S3

Well, I just tried it and it worked!  If you needed a quick and easy web server set up, you could grab a micro instance of a virtual machine on Amazon Web Services (AWS)  EC2 service, set up Apache or similar, etc.

However, it's much easier than that.  S3 (Simple Storage Service) lets you serve files, including static web pages, directly.  You create a bucket, upload files, set permissions, set up logging, and you have a web site.  It's free unless your web site has a huge amount of content.

Of course this is static, i.e., there's no PHP or programming, or dynamically generated pages here.  This is just a simple site, but it works quite well.

The Beatles on American Bandstand

When I think of American Bandstand, I always think of watching this very show in 1967 when films (like  videos!) were premiered for Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields.  (From Video Cabinet in Limbo.  It looks like the actual music videos have been removed).

Here are color versions of the videos.  The ones on AB were in black and white.

Penny Lane

Strawberry Fields  (Another B&W version)

So Long Dick Clark