Singletons Going Steady

Thinking About Perfect Songs

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 23:45:45 -0600

Right now, I’m sitting around talking with two co-workers about our unforgivably subjective “12 Perfect Songs” after going over Mark Richardson’s 2008 list. I really like the concept of building a list like this because I think it puts me in a place about music that I don’t visit, in that I really have to think critically, and out loud. So, here goes…

Thinking about what I would include, I know the discussion includes “I See A Darkness”. It would probably also force my hand to admit that the next song, Hefner’s “Don’t Flake Out On Me” isn’t as good as I believe it is, but it makes my list. I’d have to bring “Avalon” to the party, and pick up Brian Eno’s “Baby’s On Fire” along the way. That solo! Throbbing Gristle’s “What A Day”, Skinny Puppy’s “Dig It” are coming, too, even of they don’t make the cut. Animal Collective’s “Brothersport” is there, too. Definitely “Paranoid Android”. Harry Chapin’s “Mr. Tanner” or “WOLD”. Elton John’s “Daniel”. Jim Croce’s “Operator”. “My Sweet Lord”. “Suspicious Minds”. Y’know?

And to think of everything I can’t remember off the top of my head. And, anyways, what even makes any of these perfect?

It’s only ever an impromptu list of my favorite songs. I’m having a hard time thinking critically about what is and isn’t a perfect song, and maybe that’s why I hold Mark’s list in high regard. If there’s one person that I’d want to make a list of thy material, it’s Mark. He nailed it. To me, it’s such an overwhelming concept.

Larry Cuba (thx Tamas)

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:26:01 -0600

Larry Cuba (thx Tamas)

Esoteric Ramblings about +

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:45:20 -0600

Esoteric Ramblings about +:

A reminder that placing a single statistic on a pedestal freezes it in time, and that is counterproductive.

Why Does America Love Skrillex

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:42:31 -0600

Why Does America Love Skrillex

Great plainspeak explanation of wOBA

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:40:13 -0600

Great plainspeak explanation of wOBA:

A down to Earth overview of wOBA, where it came from, benefits and drawbacks, and how it plays into wRAA, wRC, and wRC+. Tip: throw this Instapaper or similar for a better reading experience.

Favorite Music of 2011

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:37:00 -0600

Here’s a list of some of what kept me listening. This list is broken into three sections: The Top Tier, 15 albums that I loved; the “Honorable Mention” tier, the overflow bin; the “new to me” tier, material reissued this year or otherwise new to me. All in all, 2011 was a fun year for music.

TOP 15 »

Bon Iver - Bon Iver
Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica
Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost
Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972
How To Dress Well - Just Once EP
Nicolas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise
Grouper - Alien Observer / Dream Loss
Drake - Take Care
Sepalcure - Sepalcure
Julia Holter - TRAGEDY
Sandro Perri - Impossible Spaces
The Weeknd - House of Balloons
Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place

THOSE WHO ALSO RAN »

Every album in this list is entirely worth hearing.

Real Estate - Days
Andy Stott - Pass Me By
Balam Acab - Wander/Wonder
Youth Lagoon - The Year of Hibernation
Shabazz Palaces - Black Up
Dirty Beaches - Badlands
Shlohmo - Bad Vibes
Thee Oh Sees - Carrion Crawler/The Dream
Zomby - Dedication
The Field - Looping State of Mind
Luke Temple - Don’t Act Like You Don’t Care
Patten - GLAQJO XAACSSO
Quilt - Quilt
Pete Swanson - Man With Potential
David Thomas Broughton - Outbreeding
The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This Wall
Four Tet - Locked 12”
Holy Other - With U
Mark McGuire - Get Lost
Colin Stetson - Those Who Also Ran
Jürgen Müller - Science of the Sea
Shlohmo - FACT Mix
Thom Yorke’s Money Back Mix

NEWS TO ME! »

via 5thworldpics

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:25:18 -0600

via 5thworldpics

Art Cloakey’s “Gumbasia”.

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:32:36 -0600

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

Art Cloakey’s “Gumbasia”.

Filed under: Weird artwork for sensitive, conciliatory 404...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:26:05 -0600

Filed under: Weird artwork for sensitive, conciliatory 404 pages.

from Destination Moon by Anna Pogossova

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:42:32 -0600

from Destination Moon by Anna Pogossova

onlinecred: Partially Nude Conditions on early Earth

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:34:40 -0600

onlinecred:

Partially Nude

Conditions on early Earth

Beer, Wine, and Statistics

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:05:21 -0600

Beer, Wine, and Statistics:

Beer makers pride themselves on consistency while wine makers pride themselves on variety. That’s why you’ll never hear beer fans talk about a “good year” the way wine connoisseurs do. Because they value consistency, beer makers invest more in extensive statistical quality control than wine makers do.

Neat.

Brainiac - Bonsai Superstar (live) Brainiac was a big band for...

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:49:00 -0600

Brainiac - Bonsai Superstar (live)

Brainiac was a big band for me in high school. Just hit me that there are probably videos of them on Youtube.

flipflopflyball: First and Last #33: Ron Santo Single. Flied to...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:58:00 -0500

flipflopflyball:

First and Last #33: Ron Santo

Single. Flied to left.

More Firsts and Last plate appearances here: http://www.flipflopflyin.com/flipflopflyball/firstandlast.html

Loving these. Had to reblog Ron Santo’s.

thingsorganizedneatly: SUBMISSION: Morton Bros Piano,...

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:55:58 -0500

thingsorganizedneatly:

SUBMISSION: Morton Bros Piano, dismantled by Tom Fotheringham

Chadwick "cwgame" missing headers patch

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 18:32:00 -0500

Update: This is fixed in HEAD.

Chadwick’s “cwgame” is a fantastic tool for extracting game summary information from Retrosheet logs. When parsing and exporting in CSV format, though, there’s a small bug (as of 0.5.3): the extended headers aren’t printed.

Here’s the patch to fix this:

You’ll need to re-build Chadwick after patching.

Incredible linocuts from Anton Stankowski. Found via but does it...

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:20:02 -0500

Incredible linocuts from Anton Stankowski. Found via but does it float.

Varnish and the error code/redirect hack

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:00:08 -0500

Let’s say you’re using Varnish, and let’s say that you have two domains for what is essentially the same site: one domain for desktop (example.com), one domain for mobile (m.example.com). In this scenario, Varnish receives a request and your VCL configuration determines that you have a mobile user coming to the desktop site. You’d probably like to redirect this reader to your mobile domain, right?

Not so fast. Varnish (as of 3.0) doesn’t natively support redirecting a user. You can get around this, though, with a simple and well-documented hack:

Trigger a custom error code in vcl_recv
Catch the error code in vcl_error, modify the cache object (obj) to set a Location: header and redirect (301, 302) status.

In practice, it looks like this:

This technique, while a bit weird, allows you to work around decisions made by Varnish’s maintainers.

One quick note: never use a status outside of 1-999. Varnish coerces statuses outside of these ranges to a 501, which is quietly converted to a 503.

A homebrew formula for Chadwick

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:06:20 -0500

Chadwick is a tool for scoring baseball games. Even better, Chadwick is a tool for transforming freely available baseball game logs into a more format useful for analyzing the game itself. Building Chadwick is a run-of-the-mill task, but I’d like to share this homebrew formula for installing. It didn’t make the cut into homebrew mainline, but you can still run it yourself:

For more information on homebrew and Chadwick:

Video

Fri, 27 May 2011 15:18:22 -0500