I just watched Edmar Castaneda on NPR's Tiny Desk podcast. He does things with the harp you would not believe. Well worth a look.

In the same series is Low Anthem doing interesting things with mobile phones. Take two mobile phones, call one from the other, hold close while whistling and modulate the feedback. Never seen that before. Feedback for the 21st century.

I really like these NPR podcasts, they're acoustic and a bit folky, and it's great to see real musicians up close. Could we see a similar thing from Words Towers please? Word Unplugged? Softly Sung?

In the last podcast talk turned to click tracks. So I thought the Word Massive might be interested in this blog post Revisiting The Click Track in which the author uses a service from a company called Echo Nest to analyse the difference between actual and average tempo of a song. Or the deviation from the click track. Resulting in graphs such as the below contrasting So Lonely from The Police (1978) and I Love Rock'n'Roll from Britney Spears (2002). Demostrating the thesis put forth in the podcadst that since 1980 every track has been in time. Original is here.

You can have fun trying this out on your favourite tracks with their online tool In Search Of The Click Track. There's a drummers gallery too. For example here's a Jimmy Chamberlain analysis.

What gems can the Word massive find?

What with the Flash ads for It Might Get Loud and the animated gifs, the Word homepage is currently a tad painful to look at. I recommend a dose of Firefox with a chaser of the AdBlock Plus and FlashBlock extensions.

BTW: It Might Get Loud is worth watching though the Jack White bits are a bit staged. It's worth watching for the grins on Edge's and Jack's faces when Jimmy plays the intro to Whole Lotta Love. They look like little boys meeting their hero. And I suppose they are. :-) Bless.

So I saw a thing over on Reddit about how awful The Who were during the Super Bowl half time show. I looked it up in YouTube (see below). Not that bad really. Considering. The mix on the recording probably doesn't do it justice. Had to get on and off quickly. Mercifully, no wardrobe malfunctions. Good lights. The thing that struck me was the crowd singing along. It never really dawned on me before how popular their songs are in the US. CSI? What do you think? Not too bad really...

Part 1

Part 2

The Pre-match-half-time-show-interview-report

Featuring the choice quotes: "send the roadies to war" and "endemically classic"

Hands up if you like receiving junk mail... Let's count. Oh, no one. Why is it that when a product or service is purchased from a company, the supplying company assumes that this means it is OK for them to send you junk mail? And not only that, it gets better, they also assume it is OK for them to invite 3rd parties to send you junk as well?

I just renewed my Word subscription. On the final checkout screen I get the junk opt-out form shown below. Here's the problem: the customer - i.e. the person who is keeping your company alive by paying for your content - has to opt-out of junk reception. You're placing the burden on the customer to say "No don't send me annoying ads". Surely the customer is the last person you want to annoy. It's disingenuous. You know no-one wants to receive junk mail.

Notice how sneaky it is at the end. The sense is changed. The first two questions you check the boxes if you do not want to receive junk. The last question you check the box if you do want to receive junk. To me this seems like a sneaky way to get approval from the customer to send junk email without the customer noticing what they just approved.

The only decent way to do this is to assume no-one want to receive junk and only send if they explicitly opt-in.

The text of the above screenshot reads as follows...

From time to time we may also wish to send you details of special offers and promotions.

Please tick here if you do not wish to receive such offers by
- Post
- Phone
- Email

We may also pass your details to other reputable companies whose products and services may be of interest to you.

Please tick here if you do not wish to receive such offers by
- Post
- Phone

Please tick here if you wish to receive such offers by
- Email

OK. I'll admit it. I'm a hoarder. I have the hoarding gene. Genus Hoardicus - the gene for hoarding. Magazines, books, CDs, DVDs, coffee cups, empty notebooks... Anyhoo, when we moved to the current abode we lost storage space and gained the twins. So some things had to go in storage. 18 boxes of magazines, books and DVDs and a moving company later and there's space to breath.

It's now three years later and the 18 boxes are sitting in the hall, dirty, stinking and sprinkled in rat droppings. (Not stored in your 5 star climate controlled box obviously.) So, I'm looking at these boxes and it occurs to me we didn't miss any of this stuff at all. The two biggest boxes are full of Q magazines - about 14 years worth. These things have followed me around the world. From the UK to Taipei to Shanghai. I'm a little attached. But I've never had a burning need to refer to a 1990 edition of Q or any past edition of any magazine ever for that matter. I take a deep breath and say "Chuck 'em".

A brief digression for those unfamiliar with Shanghai: there's no government imposed, different coloured box, separation of garbage recycling scheme. But there is recycling and lots of it. Recyclers set up camp outside of the large apartment complexes awaiting a call from whomever is moving in or out that day and along they come with their portable weighing machine (sometimes electronic but usually a balance held together with string) and give a few pence for the pleasure of hauling off whatever you want shot of.

So the wife goes off to fetch the recycle man. He arrives with his sack and weigher. Takes one look at the huge plastic boxes and his eyes go wide. Clearly he will not be weighing these things. These boxes are big. I can't lift them and could comfortably sit inside of them. The recycle man is a slightly built Chinese person, he'll never be able to lift them, so the wife and I lug the boxes out the door for him. He goes off to fetch reinforcements but not before giving us RMB 60 for them - about GBP 5. I'd have taken zero.

What have you let go of today?

So far I have received 3 out of an expected 6 issues of Word for 2009 via normal delivery. Replacements are always forthcoming when I raise the missing issues via the contact form. So no complaints there. But the situation seems to have gotten worse recently. It reminds me of a few years ago when the reception was a bit up and down. Then it got good. 2008 was a good year. Has something changed recently in delivery? Should I move to Islington for better reception?