Microlog
Microlog entries posted in July 2011
Notes on New Songdo City
Another epic post from City of Sound, this time on one of the Far East’s latest ‘instant cities’. It’s incredible really, as if someone’s literally playing Sim City with the landscape there (cf. Blog All Bookmarked Web Pages: Shanghai Diary). Also: I never realised China, South Korea and Japan were in such close proximity as to make a bridge between them a realistic engineering challenge. Please make that happen. Permalink ·
New Musical Experiences
Thoughts from Dan Hill on how we discover and listen to music, and the problems that new technology has brought to the table. He’s spot on about metadata and context; even five years on the situation remains mostly the same. (Maybe because most people don’t care about these things?) Permalink ·
A brief history of Japan’s vintage railways
“Historically, the shape of rail’s introduction to Japan and its development into a tourism industry mirrors that of the West. Unlike the West, steam trains have taken on a symbolic strength that permeates the culture… Melancholy, wistful, an image of the voyage and sadness of life itself.” Permalink ·
The Grand Tour: Europe on fifteen hundred yuan a day
Always interesting to see things from an outsider’s perspective, so to speak. Permalink ·
No limits to the law in NoLa
“Something terrible lies at the heart of New Orleans - a rampant, widespread and apparently uncontrollable brutality on the part of its police force and its prison service.” Surely New Orleans isn’t the only example of this, even within the US. Permalink ·
Inventing a game
“Once the game is good enough that it can’t be killed, that means it’s too good to be controlled either.” Permalink ·
Lester Bangs’ Basement: What it means to have all music instantly available
An interesting argument to make, certainly, but Wyman is wrong: the fact remains that not all music is as available as he supposes. For starters, virtually all of his references are to work generated by mainstream artists! For many of the things I like, I still have to do the internet equivalent of crate digging. And the value in that isn’t in procuring things that others don’t have. I can only wish I could find all the things he says are so instantly available. Permalink ·
The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything
In other words, I need to relax about missing all that stuff in my feed reader. See also: Anne Billson in the Guardian on the Fear of Missing Out, or Fomo. Permalink ·
BLDGBLOG: Water Towers of Ireland
Once upon a time I’d see the UCD water tower every day and just for a moment believe I was in the future. Permalink ·
Steven Soderbergh’s media diet
A year of films, books, TV, plays and stories consumed. Including Raiders of the Lost Ark three times. In black and white! [c/o Kottke]. Permalink ·
Is a ‘director’s cut’ ever a good idea?
Director’s cuts are fine if they don’t replace the original. And it goes without saying that they only matter where the film is of sufficient quality and the original version was compromised in some fashion. Permalink ·
Charlie Brooker: How to handle the shop snobs
I maintain that nobody really knows what work is till they’ve worked behind a till. Permalink ·
Why You Should Care About Cricket
My ‘in’ to cricket was baseball (the scoring system and game mechanics are surprisingly similar). That and watching highlights of the World Cup. I couldn’t sit through a full day test match. Permalink ·
Longform compiles the 2011 National Magazine Awards finalists
That’s a lot of reading. Permalink ·
The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology
In short, Scientology isn’t just ridiculous. It’s dangerous. See also: Fact-checking the Church of Scientology and Bobbie Johnson on what Scientology tells us about journalism. Permalink ·
Google Recipe Search Cooks Up Next Gen of Search
Sure, this is more about search than it is about food, but I’m still interested to see if it can find me things more tailored to my improving diet. Permalink ·
Things to do in NYC for people who like transportation
Saving this for the next visit, whenever that is. Permalink ·
McSweeney’s on The State of Publishing
A series of columns about where the book industry is headed. Permalink ·
Erase and rewind
On the recent deletion of swathes of content from the BBC website, which will in the future prove to be as shortsighted as the erasing of archive videotapes in previous decades. Permalink ·
Hamster exoskeleton
Matt Webb on animals and technology, sort of. This guy thinks so fast it’s hard to keep up. Permalink ·
Make your Garageband sound like a NES
Lovely plugin for those 8-bit chiptunes sounds you’ve always wanted. Permalink ·
How live blogging has transformed journalism
Transformed? I don’t know about that. But it’s certainly made things more immediate, and works very well for events such as sports as they happen. In that respect live blogs might be the new radio. Permalink ·
Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth ‘Crying In Rage’
A depressing story about the dark side of the space race. Permalink ·
Mat Honan’s hack for auto-tracking shipments
That’ll save me doing the ol’ copy-paste-return. Permalink ·
What does it mean to be Irish?
Storyful tracks the Irish citizenship test Twitter meme. Permalink ·
Gateways to Geekery: Kurt Vonnegut
Confession time: I’ve never read any Vonnegut. But he really seems like my kind of writer. Permalink ·
Miracle Above Manhattan
The story of how the High Line evolved from urban relic to a model for future city green spaces. Permalink ·
Stop Lying About What You Do
“I read with continuous partial attention and I don’t care that I am frequently interrupting my own reading. I despise the discourse that says we are all shallow, that we are all flighty, distracted, not paying attention. I am paying attention, but I am paying attention to everything, and even if my knowledge is fragmented and hard to synthesise it is wider, and it plays in a vaster sphere, than any knowledge that has gone before.” Permalink ·
Instruments of Politeness
Workarounds for maintaining discretion in an always-on world where our devices tell nothing but the truth. Permalink ·
WeatherSpark weather trends for Dublin
Fantastic site for visualising weather data over time. Also available as an app for Chrome. Permalink ·
Bulkr: The complete solution to backup, browse & download photos on Flickr
Just in case the worst happens. Flickr is a Yahoo! company, after all. Permalink ·
Curation? What the hell does that mean?
Storyful explains it well: “Out of a fast-flowing river of news, curators are the zen-like bears, sitting amid the chaos, selectively plucking out the juiciest, shiniest salmon and then explaining which bits to eat.” Permalink ·
Now and then: How film titles have evolved
The 1950s and ’60s are when things start getting awesome. But they’ve bland-ified in recent years, I feel. Permalink ·
‘What I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text’
On the future of marginalia in the age of the e-reader. I’m of the opinion that e-books make things easier, especially for people like me who can’t/won’t write in their books. I’d never highlight passages or scribble notes in a physical copy, but I’d happy do it all day with an e-book (I did it a lot while reading Moneyball). Permalink ·
The OED and Oxford Dictionaries
The OED makes the distinction between its various dictionaries. Handy to know. Permalink ·
About
This is the personal website of MacDara Conroy, a production journalist, music writer and mediavore in Dublin, Ireland. Read more »
Details
This page is a reverse chronology of Microlog entries by MacDara Conroy published in July 2011. You will find many more in the Archives.
Continuum
↑ August 2011
→ July 2011
↓ May 2011