I love this version from Kamasi Washington of Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune, or “light of the moon.” Here’s the Paul Verlaine poem that inspired the original composition:
Your soul is a chosen landscape
Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Sad beneath their fanciful disguises.
All sing in a minor key
Of victorious love and the opportune life,
They do not seem to believe in their happiness
And their song mingles with the moonlight,
With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
That sets the birds dreaming in the trees
And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,
The tall slender fountains among marble statues.
But they had an awesome video interview with the amazing Arthur C. Clarke in 1974, which I’ve embedded above, where he said the following right around 0:56.
Interviewer: I wonder though, what sort of a life will it be in social terms if our whole life is built around the computer, if we become a computer-dependent society, computer-dependent individuals.
ACC: In some ways, but they’ll also enrich our society because it’ll make it possible for us to live anywhere we like. Any businessman, any executive could live almost anywhere on earth and still do his business through a device like this, and this is a wonderful thing, it means we won’t have to be stuck in cities, we can live out in the country or wherever we please, and still carry on complete interaction with human beings, as well as with other computers.
Wow, extremely prescient. Remember, this was 1974! The dominant technology companies of today still follow the same office-centric model as when computers took up entire rooms, but the dominant companies of tomorrow will be built and grow in a completely distributed fashion. (And of course, we’re hiring.)
In this video Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka discuss World 1-1, or the very first level in the very first Super Mario Bros. It’s fascinating how every element on the level is designed to introduce you to a mechanic of the game, or how Mario moves and jumps. This is interesting if you like Mario, but also important for any developer in any medium who is thinking about the NUX (new user experience) of their product. I sometimes joke that in WordPress we put people on the boss monster level the first time they enter the dashboard. There have been improvements but still so much to do to naturally introduce people to our interface.
Many of my friends know how obsessed I am with different types of water, from Badoit to Hint Water (yum) to De L’aubier. This definitely hit close to home.
The upside of jet lag, like Om discovering the streets of Paris, are enjoying parts of the day you might not normally be awake for, like a beautiful sun rise. Here’s a time lapse I made of the Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong taken from the incredible view I have in my room.
I really enjoyed this presentation from Andreessen Horowitz on how funding has evolved, and the current tech situation vis a vis the bubble around the turn of the millennium. It’s a pretty strong case for there not being a bubble right now. Go full-screen to be able to read it well.
An interesting and thoughtful conversation over a cup of tea between two food masters of our time, Jiro Ono and René Redzepi, from the MAD site. (WordPress-powered!)
John Oliver is pretty much always fun to watch, but you should especially send this episode to everyone you know, it’s important for people to see and understand it.
