A literary appreciation of the Olson/Zoneinfo/tz database
— authoritative source for arcane timezone trivia #iPhone game developer looks at piracy rates for their app
— vaguely related: World of Goo’s pay-what-you-like sale results #Google Reader adds personalized sorting and recommended items
— so far, the “magic” sorting is pretty great #Torley's review of the Plogue Chipsounds VST plugin
— faithfully recreates 9 vintage sound chips, including the 2600, C64, and NES; on sale for $75 #TSA responds to the "TSA took my son" blogger
— blogger insisted first video was altered, they responded with raw footage from nine angles #ChinaSmack on Happy Farms, an insanely popular Chinese MMO
— they were forced to limit signups to 2 million users per day #iRobot's morphing blob robot takes its first steps
— hmm, this seems familiar via search.twitter.com #Mark Pilgrim on his publisher's reaction to the resale of his GNU-licensed book
— funny, the copyright notice from the print version is completely contradictory via Hacker News #
Snarkmarket's Robin Sloan posts Twitter's #5,000,000,000 tweet
— technically, they stopped using sequential IDs in March 2007 #Translating Picture Books: Where the Wild Things Are
— academic paper dissects the German, Swedish and Finnish translations and the visual cues they used #Neven Mrgan's tale of the phantom Mint.com account
— he deleted his account with confirmation, and they kept both his login and financial details active #Raphaël, JS vector graphics library
— interactive charts and animation, and works perfectly on the iPhone #Reenacting Pulp Fiction with Google Wave
— also Wave-related: a believable defense of Wave for team collaboration #NYT on San Francisco Panorama, McSweeney's one-off newspaper
— don’t worry, the $55 price is for a year’s subscription via Kottke #Jason Scott's The Atomic Level of Porn
— great NSFW talk covers the early history of digital porn, including teletype, BBSes, and games #6-year-old boy floats away in homemade helium balloon
— at this moment, the scary live video shows him flying through the Colorado skies; update: he wasn’t inside #Metafilter user's story of creating the first "Under Construction" animated GIF
— includes a perfectly preserved animated GIF archive #Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, and the Computer
— includes Bukowski’s poem about the 16-bit Intel 8088 chip via sippey.com #Artwiculate, a Twitter word game
— extra points for playing the game without your friends realizing it #What's Easier to Understand Than Google Wave?
— warning: turn your sound off first via Cal Henderson #Guardian gag order lifted after social media explosion
— #trafigura is still a trending topic on Twitter #Guardian gagged from reporting parliament debate
— reporting on their inability to report; it seems to be related to this issue via @rabble #Derek Powazek on SEO
— from the comments: “SEO consultants are just web designers who are incapable of doing the other 90% of the job” #Visualizing the safety of the HPV vaccine
— in short: extremely safe, but costs $360 so insurance companies are fighting it #Audio Analysis of the Beatles Multitrack Masters
While digging through Usenet, I stumbled on these three unidentified tracks that pick apart three of the Beatles’ original multitrack masters, isolating and highlighting pieces from “She’s Leaving Home,” “A Day in the Life,” and “Come Together.” It’s an astounding, and very listenable, glimpse into their recording process.
Update: Removed the downloads, see update below.
Multitrack Analysis of She’s Leaving HomeMultitrack Analysis of A Day In the LifeMultitrack Analysis of Come Together
Unfortunately, I don’t have any information about the source. In the “Come Together” one, they mention one of the narrators is named “Steve.” Beyond that, I haven’t had any luck finding where they came from. Can anyone identify them? I’d love, love, love to hear more.
Update: It’s from a BBC Radio 6 program called The Record Producers, hosted by Richard Allinson and Steve Levine, that aired last month. Unfortunately, the original BBC broadcast is no longer available on their site.
January 16, 2012: I was politely contacted by Steve Levine, creator of The Record Producers, who politely asked me to remove the sound clips. The BBC was granted permission to broadcast the sensitive Beatles master recordings with strict limitations: they could license it for only seven days after broadcast, and with the condition that they actively prevent non-authorized sources from making them available.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any legal way to purchase or listen to these recordings, and likely won’t for some time.
