Month: April 2009

music

Deeper Than Rap

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I have been addicted to Rick Ross’s “Lay Back” for over a week now – I just cannot stop listening to it – and I’ve posted it for you here to listen to yourself – you tell me I’m out there or if its a bangin’ track::

Best line by far: “Number 1 at whatever, I get buddles of cheddar, ditch that black cloud, you deserve wonderful weather.”
The walking dichotomy of Rick Ross, a pseudo-gangster, maybe real gangster, and his feud with Fiddy has sent him to the top of the charts and made him stand out from the rest of the rap landscape. I usually only skim the surface of what is going on in the rap world, paying attention to the most famous / popular (unless you happen to be affiliated with the Wu-Tang Clan) and Rick Ross has done that here by elevating himself to a level that even I am paying attention. Not bad for a media savvy former corrections officer. Too bad for his persona though that Freeway Ricky Ross, his inspiration, has denounced him for his law ties.
One of my favorite aspects of his site is that his album drop countdown clock is totally off by one month on his MySpace page– the album has been released yet it says that is coming out over two weeks from now:
rickross.jpg
Last but not least, of course I learned about Rick Ross from the most hip of places – no, not Vibe or The Source but the Grey Lady. Yup, that is right – the N Y f’ing T baby. Believe it or not, they provide some good rap info in the Sunday Arts and Leisure section. Keep in mind that the NYT is the same place that a few years ago I learned about Ghostface Killah dropping a new album.

tech

The First Artificial Contestant on America's Favorite Quiz Show

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Answer: This highly successful television quiz show is the latest challenge for artificial intelligence.
Question: What is “Jeopardy”?
Not content with simply winning at chess, IBM has decided to build a machine that can win at “Jeopardy.” One point that has been decided is that the box will not be hooked up to the net during the match – it will have to reference its memory just like the rest of us. While you might think who cares, it’s brain can be many terabytes in size, just remember the AI has to synthesize the answer and then search this ridiculous amount of data before a human can do the same to figure out the right question. Sounds like a huge query challenge. Because it is.
As Kasparov is to chess, Ken Jennings is to “Jeopardy” so I hope that the AI indeed plays KenJen and that KenJen takes it down to Chinatown…

tech

Ding Goes The Oven – Tweet Goes The Feed

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Twitter is just in the news more and more these days. First Lance Armstrong used it to get his stolen bike back. Then we have the rumor that Google is going to buy it. Now, we have the news that some excellent geeks at Poke have hacked together / masterfully crafted something they are calling BakerTweet.
What is it you ask? It’s a wonderful hardware / software solution for alerting people to the latest oven output from the Albion Cafe, Bakery and Food Store. It’s a wireless Arduino thing that can be customized via a web interface to allow for various custom messages to be Twittered at the twist of a dial and the push of a water/flour-proof button.
What’s brilliant is The Albion actually using it. And it actually works. Check out the video below:

BakerTweet from BakerTweet on Vimeo.

ramblings

Subway Manners

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I read today on the NYT’s City Room blog about how Matt Muro has been riding the subway on crutches for the past few months and how he has been surreptitiously snapping pictures of those who wouldn’t give up from the seat marked “Priority Seating for People with Disabilities” for him. This post is just a snipit of a longer article that will appear in this Sunday’s paper titled Smile, You’re on Selfish-Jerk Camera.
Matt has posted all of the pics he took at People Who Sit In The Disability Seats When Im Standing On My Crutches.com Yes, the name of the site is really that long and yes, he has started a site just to vent about his subway frustrations (keep in mind though that he never asks for a seat, he just notes who automatically gets up for him and who does not).
I would suggest that you look through the photos and see if you recognize anyone (I didn’t). I think its now only a matter of tme before a copycat site for pregnant women pops us, just watch…