Second and Third Thoughts
Fast Company spoke with more than a dozen executives, entrepreneurs, and storytellers from all eras of Pixar’s three-decade history, all of whom have moved on but attest that Pixar’s influence over their ongoing work is invaluable and profound.
via Building The Next Pixar | Fast Company | Business + Innovation.
Terrific read.
Thanks to Shawn Blanc.
Why it took a year to make, and then break down, an amazing puzzle game | Polygon.
This game is keeping me awake at night.
I’ve been doing some disk housekeeping and came across a bunch of Dilbert strips that I’d saved. Here’s a few last lines. I decided not to identify the “speaker”; I think it’s more fun without.
I don’t buy; I shovel.
For once, it wasn’t all bad.
Here’s a jar to put your conscience in. I’ll put it in the cupboard with mine.
Someone left the supply cabinet unlocked.
You’re thinking of gazpacho.
I make my own underpants from sandwich bags.
I’ll have to run some chaos and complexity simulations, but it looks as if you need more money.
And if you talk about fish to a starving man, you’re a consultant.
That’s the problem with randomness. You can never be sure.
Oh, wait… I just recognised a pattern.
Because sometimes less is more.
I’d rather not take sides until I hear the monkey’s version.
No, you look like a chewer.
His hair parts in the middle. That’s just wrong.
Add a chart.
That’s not what the Mayo Clinic said.
Returning—as one does—to nostalgia: these videos take me back to my early teens and before.
Newley was hugely popular when I was a wee lad. One of my childhood memories is the sound of his voice—my mother was a big fan. I remember the soundtrack of Stop The World I Want To Get Off being frequently played. The first video (audio with a picture) is Newley singing Feelin’ Good, which is one of the great songs (written by Newley with Leslie Bricusse). Do You Mind was a UK Number 1 in 1960.
Michael Flanders and Donald Swann performed some wonderfully funny and clever comic songs and monologues/duologues in their shows At The Drop Of A Hat and At The Drop Of Another Hat. I might have supposed that F&S were completely passé, but clearly I would have been wrong as their Best of album is in the Amazon Top Ten for cabaret and comedy.
I never earned a living as a programmer, though I did once convert a Fortran program to whatever flavour of Pascal used to run on an Apple IIe. The program simulated the weight of lambs based on the breed of the parents—earth-shattering stuff.
Maybe it shows my age—who’s worked with punched cards?—but I laughed and laughed as I read this. And don’t forget to read the link in the letter, The Story of Mel.
Credit: I came across this link on Attila’s Den when I was “researching” my post Apps, Apps, Apps.
I’ve been continuing my vinyl ripping—French section—and, therefore, my forays into the YouTube archives. For your edification and delight, here are some videos of classic songs by Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf.
Les Bourgeois is an amusing song, gently poking fun at the self-importance of youth.
Amsterdam is one of my Brel favourites.
David Bowie covered Amsterdam in English; the version I have is from an album of radio sessions, Bowie At The Beeb, which I can’t find on YouTube, so here’s an alternative.
Of course, I had to include this song:
I have the album for the 1962 concert where Piaf sang this song, La Foule, at the Paris Olympia.
It looks like Piaf is wearing the same LBD, but I don’t think it’s the same concert.
One oddity I found was this video of Amsterdam, in which Brel’s voice has been transformed to sound like Piaf’s.
My final selection is a song from Charlélie Couture—less renowned, perhaps, than Piaf or Brel, but no bum. He’s also not dead, younger than me and living in New York.
I have been slowly—very, very slowly—recording my old vinyl albums to add to my iTunes library. I don’t worry about the argument that analogue is better than digital: my hi-fi kit is probably not good enough, and my ears certainly aren’t, for me to discern any difference. Any potential fetishist satisfaction derived from slipping the album from its cover, placing it lovingly on the turntable and then wiping with the preferred dust removal tool is easily over-ridden by the simplicity of <play><click>.
Anyway, the other day I pulled Roulette Russe by Alain Bashung off the shelf for processing. I discerned from the plastic outer that I’d bought this album in Paris at the delightfully named Maillot Musique (probably not meant to be translated as Swimsuit Music, but was a nod to the Maillot Jaune of the Tour de France) in the shops at the Palais des Congrès. I have no recollection of buying this; it must have been after 1979—that being the copyright date on the disc. Wikipedia can tell you lots about Bashung, who was and probably still is a huge star in France. Roulette Russe is one of his earlier albums.
The first track on the album is the somewhat amusingly entitled Je fume pour oublier que tu bois—I smoke to forget that you drink. The lyrics are not quite so amusing. I was trying to produce my own translation when I discovered this blog that had already done the job. The following is a simplified version leaving out some of the repetitions in the actual song and with a few changes that seem to me to be improvements in the English:
It’s not easy to off yourself
It costs, it costs a lot
I’m going to kill myself, I’m going to flush the toilet
In the bathroom of my little studioIt’s not easy to off yourself
Sleeping tablets are for the rich
Russian roulette is completely idiotic
When you can die with one flush of the toiletI smoke to forget that you drink
I act like I’m home
I blow smoke on a picture of youLife’s like an overdose
You take everything all at once
You die of it and fast
And if you don’t take it, life takes youI am well, very well in my cubbyhole
There are newspapers, so I read them
They say that happiness
Perhaps it’s just a lie
I don’t care, I’m not gonna wait for the end of my storyI smoke to forget that you drink
I act like I’m home
I blow smoke on a picture of youLife’s like an overdose
You take everything all at once
You die of it and fast
And if you don’t take it, life takes youYes but for an apple tart, two or three goldens*
A shot of rum, a cinnamon stick
Roll, roll out the dough well, bring it to the fire
This costs me drop by drop
Taste, taste it !I smoke to forget that you drink
I smoke…
To forget that you drink…
While I was YouTubeing Bashung, I stumbled across a cover of one of his most famous song, Osez Joséphine, by Christine and The Queens.
It turns out that Christine and The Queens is really Heloïse Letissier and the queens are purely imaginary—a reference to real tranvestites whom Heloïse met when she came to London. Christine has a beautiful, haunting voice so I searched further on Youtube and found a bunch of videos of some great songs. Christine sings in French and English—sometimes in the same song.
Here are a couple of my favourites, War and another cover, Michael Jackson’s Who is it?
You can find more videos on the Christine and The Queens YouTube page. There’s also an EP, Nuit 17 à 52 on iTunes.
I’m happy that I discovered Christine and will certainly be looking out for her in the future.
29 Dumb Things Finance People Say – Business Insider.
I’ve been away (on which more later) and decided not to post as Internet access was of variable quality, but I kept note of stuff that I enjoyed.
A little bit of fun today with some screenshots from <loudvoice>Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin</loudvoice>.
WORDOID – Creative Naming Service.
This site is worth a few minutes entertainment, even if you aren’t looking for a project or site name that no-one has thought of before. What surprised me is the number of .com sites that have already been taken from the worded suggestions. Out of 99 words that I generated with different criteria, 50 domains had already been taken.
Props to Seth Godin for the spot.
oddrops 