Stewart C. Russell

Apparently tree frogs and shoes just go together

His once-promising political career in shambles, Minnesota Senator Al Franken appeared on the verge of resigning after fellow Democrats led by female senators abandoned him Wednesday over the mounting allegations of sexual misconduct that are roiling Capitol Hill.

David Nelson, a University of Maryland alum who went on to co-found Apollo Computer, writes with the proposition that he may have been the first person to use a word processor to prepare a doctoral dissertation, an IBM 360/44 in 1969-70 at the UMD Cyclotron. The 360 used a Selectric typewriter for its output; data was stored on punched cards. Here is David attending to the machine:

He adds:

I believe the name of the program was ‘Format’, likely written by someone at IBM who we worked closely with.  Lacking significant storage, formatting was done on-the-fly by embedding commands of the form ’)c’ – a good choice since closing parenthesis are usually followed by a space or period.  Readers were most impressed at how the system right justified the text and they tried to imagine how that was done.

The dissertation (”The Formation of an Electron Ring in a Static Magnetic Field”) may be found here. Note the justified text and the mention of the IBM 360 in the acknowledgements. Note too the equations hand-penciled in–the reason why Donald Knuth, not long after, would begin his work on TeX. Nelson may or may not have been “first” (I’ve seen other reports of dissertations done on mainframes at roughly the same time) but he was certainly very early and its a fascinating bit of local history from the campus here.

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Diff your entire server config at ScriptRock.com

why wolves howl?

because they have no idea what are they doing

Last year, Sophie's "Bipp" came out and blew a bunch of people's minds. It was XLR8R's best track of 2013 ("On a very basic level, it's almost impossible to define exactly (or even approximately) what 'Bipp' is.") Now the mysterious Sophie is going to be working with equally unusual J-pop star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (of "PONPONPON" fame/notoriety), pointing toward something singular and unprecedented on the horizon. On some level "Bipp" might be a pop manifesto of sorts, or a distilled blueprint for the future - global and k-/j-pop influenced, strange and disorienting, candy-coated and synthetic to an uncomfortably garish extent. A lot of people are wondering what happens next. Well, a post-Bipp (or post-ringtone) era might be underway: enter A.G. Cook, Hannah Diamond, and the rest of the shadowy collective PC Music.

Pigeons & Planes: "PC Music is an independent music label that started last year whose output, at this point, resembles an online art exhibit. Headed by A.G. Cook, a London producer in his early twenties, PC is developing a stable of artists and sounds to provide a manic vision of modern pop that comes out like our best guesses at what the status quo could be in 2025. The music is bright and inane, intoxicating and dumb, catchy and bizarre—considered together as a vision of what's to come, this combination seems both futuristic and vitally current at the same time. The label's driving sound is ostensibly pop, several steps sideways from what has dominated the Top 40 for the past twenty-odd years and deconstructed, melted down into something unrecognizable and captivating. It's as if someone tried describing what pop music sounded like to an alien—major chords, catchy hooks, danceable rhythms, young women singing about love or sex—and then told that alien to try to make a song. PC Music tracks largely follow the same rules as a Britney Spears or Katy Perry song, but the results are utterly divorced from what we hear on the radio."

Influences include Scritti Politti, "J-Pop, K-Pop, Nightcore, Ark Music Factory, Hudson Mohawke and Nadsroic, Frank Zappa." Vaporwave and James Ferraro, the uncanny valley creations of Hatsune Miku, and Tumblr / internet aesthetics also seem to heavily inform this music.

Noisey: Trying to Make Sense of Hannah Diamond and Post-Ringtone Music

A few choice singles:
Keri Baby
Beautiful (Stereogum, Tiny Mix Tapes reviews)
Attachment (FACT, Pitchfork reviews)
Pink and Blue (Portals review)

Or enjoy a 30-minute SoundCloud set: PC Music

(Small note: Try not to knee-jerk dismiss! This stuff consciously straddles the line between repulsion and delight, so approach with an open mind and give it time to sink in.)

A Winnie the Pooh teddy bear, a bike, a fax machine, jeans and a snake were among a host of bizarre items found in Scottish sewers.

John Bisset & Ivor Kallin celebrate something or other, are happy, but occasionally do I'm not sure what.

213TV is Bisset & Kallin's demented absurdist/musical/scatological TV show on the web. Running to an unbelievable 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 seasons, it manages to stay consistently odd. [NSFW: occasional puerile humour, songs about poop, hard to explain away at the desk.]

Individually, they record experimental/improvised music, plus some green screen multitracks. But it's okay, because they involve leeks and John Dowland, surf style.

what is brown and slow and an animal?

A BROWN CHIPMUNK OLD GRANNY