<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0"><channel><atom:link rel="hub" href="http://tumblr.superfeedr.com/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"/><description>twitter  &amp;nbsp rss</description><title>Interesting Monkey</title><generator>Tumblr (3.0; @interestingmonkey)</generator><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/</link><item><title>Patents and copyright</title><description>&lt;p&gt;I was listening to the &lt;a href="http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/67" target="_blank"&gt;latest episode&lt;/a&gt; of Hypercritical this week, wherein the main host, John Siracusa discussed the patent system. He suggested that we should keep copyright laws on products (whether based on software, hardware, or physical product), but completely abolish the patent system.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The negative Siracusa identified of this system would be that protection of ideas in this system would have much to do with the difficulty of reverse engineering existing products. I agree with this point, and I think that it is indeed enough of a problem that I would not want such a system. The complexity of reverse engineering does not correlate with how good an idea something is, or how much money someone should make from the idea.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Let me start with a toy example from computer science academia (which is in my wheelhouse). I create a new idea for an important problem, and I come up with an algorithm which solves the problem. I publish the paper with both the idea and the algorithm in it, and it passes peer review because it is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Then some other person reads my paper, and says, &amp;#8220;I&amp;#8217;ve got an idea! I&amp;#8217;ll copy this paper and publish it!&amp;#8221; So they take the paper, and copy it verbatim, word for word, and submit it to a journal. Of course, it gets rejected for copyright violation (or if the reviewers don&amp;#8217;t catch it, it eventually gets retracted from the journal). This is good because it is theft.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A second scenario is that some person reads my paper, and says, &amp;#8220;I&amp;#8217;ve got an idea! I&amp;#8217;ll copy this paper, and solve the same problem, but just alter some of the functions in the algorithm so as not to make it a copyright violation!&amp;#8221; They proceed to do just that and submit it to a journal. In this case, the reviewers will again reject it because the paper does not contain any new ideas, and is &amp;#8220;almost as much theft&amp;#8221; as the original. Changing the language, or some implementation details does not lessen the theft, even in proportion to the amount of change they made to the paper. In the case of an academic paper, reverse engineering a paper is particularly easy. All the details are on the page, so it is not hard to avoid the copyright violation while still stealing everything. As &amp;#8220;proof&amp;#8221; of this, many papers containing algorithms do not actually give fully implemented code, but rather, very high level language ideas that &amp;#8220;people in the field&amp;#8221; will be able to turn into real code should they desire to do so given enough time.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now let&amp;#8217;s go to a money making procedure. Let&amp;#8217;s say I make money on some idea + implementation + product that I created. Someone steals the idea verbatim. This is clearly theft and is bad. But if someone applies a (possibly easy) function to obtain a &amp;#8220;new product&amp;#8221;, is that theft? I would argue that it is &amp;#8220;almost as much&amp;#8221; theft as a verbatim theft. In my opinion, the amount of money to be made off an idea + implementation + product should not be proportional to the difficulty of reverse engineering the product, but should be closer to proportional with the significance of the idea. I value products based on good ideas (and perhaps easy reverse engineering potential) over products with less good ideas (and perhaps difficult reverse engineering potential). And in some cases (as is the case with academic papers), reverse engineering is trivial. In no way, does the complexity of reverse engineering give any indication of the importance of the idea.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Someone could make a journal called &amp;#8220;the international journal of not new ideas&amp;#8221; that didn&amp;#8217;t violate copyright, essentially stole everything, and it could get put up on the web without peer reviewers. Peer reviewing is what stops the presses. This is what the patent system should be doing better, or with a different formula. For academics, success  is largely based off of publications in peer reviewed journals, which depends on good ideas. That is how we &amp;#8220;make money&amp;#8221;; by only letting through good ideas, and especially valuing the best ideas. Reverse engineering difficulty is not what dictates success.&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/23242186869</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/23242186869</guid><pubDate>Thu, 17 May 2012 13:55:34 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Print (to PDF) on iOS</title><description>&lt;p&gt;Got a nice little tip for iOS. Every now and then, I&amp;#8217;d like to make a PDF of whatever I&amp;#8217;m looking at on my iPad or iPhone. For example, I might buy a product on the web from my iPad, and would like to keep the receipt. However, there is no way to do this in iOS.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;iOS does have &amp;#8220;AirPrint&amp;#8221; baked in, which allows to print to compatible printers. But I neither have an AirPrint printer, nor do I want to waste paper (that&amp;#8217;s why I have an iPad after all). There&amp;#8217;s an easy way to get around this problem. Two small free utilities are needed, and after installing them, as long as your Mac is running, it will dump the PDFs into a folder on your Mac whenever you &amp;#8220;print&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://pdfwriterformac.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank"&gt;PDFwriter for Mac&lt;/a&gt;: This is a little utility that adds a &amp;#8220;printer&amp;#8221; to the Mac that doesn&amp;#8217;t actually print but just dumps a PDF file in some folder on your computer. You need to read the readme that comes with the utility as you need to do more than just run the installer. By default it dumps the PDFs in a weird spot; not even in your user folder, but in /(your drive)/Users/Shared/PDFwriter. But you can copy the PDFwriter &amp;#8220;folder&amp;#8221; which is actually a link to anywhere you want to put it and the PDFs will show up there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://netputing.com/airprintactivator/airprint-activator-v2-0/" target="_blank"&gt;AirPrint Activator&lt;/a&gt;: This is a System Preference pane that allows to AirPrint to your Mac printers even if they are not AirPrint compatible, although your Mac needs to be running.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then between these two, in any iOS app that has a &amp;#8220;print&amp;#8221; button, such as Safari or Mail, you can select your printer as your new PDF Printer, which will make the PDF in the folder on your Mac. Of course, you can also print to regular printers this way too.&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/23062586165</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/23062586165</guid><pubDate>Tue, 15 May 2012 10:26:24 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Lettuce funk you up</title><description>&lt;p&gt;My good pal Semiring suggested I listen to the band Lettuce. I obeyed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jbmaeqKpq1E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/23052027141</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/23052027141</guid><pubDate>Mon, 14 May 2012 13:48:06 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Blue Jays during April 2012, pitching, BABIP and optimism</title><description>&lt;p&gt;The Blue Jays have had an interesting start to the 2012 season, as the first month heads towards a close. It&amp;#8217;s as if they have flip-flopped their strengths from last year. In 2011, their offence was pretty good, and their starting pitching not so great. This year it&amp;#8217;s flipped, and the results are similar as they are one game over .500. This leaves me optimistic, as I&amp;#8217;ll explain.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Offence, very briefly&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;First, here&amp;#8217;s a look at the Blue Jays starting 9 position players, their career, 2011 and 2012 (thus far) OPS.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;table border="1"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;career OPS&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2011 OPS&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2012 OPS&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Escobar&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;759&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;782&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;554&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; Johnson &lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 784&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 781&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 806&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; Bautista &lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 840&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 1056&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 692&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Encarnacion&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 790&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 787&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 834&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; Lind &lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 779&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 739&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 659&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; Lawrie &lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 876&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 953&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 724&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; Rasmus &lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 751&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 517&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 692&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; Arencibia &lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 689&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 720&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 541&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; Thames &lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 762&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 769&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt; 718&amp;#160;&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;b&gt;average&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;781&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;789&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;691&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Their average OPS is almost 100 points lower than both their average career OPS and their average 2011 OPS. I suspect this will regress towards the mean. Their OPS will get better and so will the offence.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Pitching, BABIP and a hypothesis&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So how can the team have won more games than it has lost? It&amp;#8217;s the starting pitching. And the whole &amp;#8220;regress to the mean&amp;#8221; thing here is more complicated. I&amp;#8217;m optimistic the pitching has legitimately gotten better. There are only five pitchers, and they are less constrained by &amp;#8220;position&amp;#8221; than are position players. You get five buckets, and it is no problem for a pitcher to switch buckets. On offence, you&amp;#8217;ve got nine buckets, but you can&amp;#8217;t really switch who is in which bucket. Adam Lind can&amp;#8217;t play shortstop. Change only two of the pitchers however and things look completely different. You scrap your two &lt;i&gt;worst&lt;/i&gt; pitchers. That&amp;#8217;s a huge delta.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The current Jays rotation is: Romero, Morrow, Alvarez, Drabek, Hutchison. They&amp;#8217;ve got the youngest rotation in baseball right now. Here&amp;#8217;s a breakdown of ERA, K/9, BB/9, and ground ball percentage, for each pitcher for 2011 and 2012 (MLB stats only).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;table border="1"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2011&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2012&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Romero&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;ERA&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2.92&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;3.29&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;K/9&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;7.1&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;5.9&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;BB/9&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;3.2&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;3.3&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;GB%&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;55&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;56&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Morrow&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;ERA&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;4.72&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;3.71&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;K/9&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;10.2&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;4.1&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;BB/9&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;3.5&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2.7&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;GB%&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;36&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;48&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Alvarez&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;ERA&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;3.53&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;4.10&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;K/9&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;5.7&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2.7&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;BB/9&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;1.1&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2.1&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;GB%&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;54&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;63&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Drabek&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;ERA&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;6.06&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2.25&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;K/9&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;5.8&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;6.8&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;BB/9&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;6.4&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;4.9&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;GB%&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;45&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;53&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Hutchison&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;ERA&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;-&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;6.10&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;K/9&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;-&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;5.2&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;BB/9&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;-&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;1.7&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;GB&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;-&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;43.2&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In 2011, the five pitchers who started the most were Romero, Morrow, Cecil (now in minors), Jo-Jo Reyes (released, in minors), and Drabek (his rookie season, he started the season in the majors, but was sent to minors in June). Alvarez came up in August and was great.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The average ERA of last year&amp;#8217;s starting 5 was 4.77 (taken equally) and the cumulative ERA for their starters in 2011 was 4.55, which was the sixth worst in the majors. For 2012, the average ERA of the pitchers in the chart above is 3.89 (taken equally) and the cumulative ERA is 3.73 which is 13th in the majors and is certainly an improvement.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The ground ball percentage of all their starters cumulatively this year is currently 54%, which is the highest in all of baseball. Last year, their percentage was 43.5% which was just about middle of the pack. I will return to this point shortly.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Each pitcher has a different case here. Ricky Romero looks exactly the same as last year, which is to say, pretty great. Morrow looks like a completely different pitcher, as discussed by &lt;a href="http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/4/24/2972184/brandon-morrow-blue-jays-stats" target="_blank"&gt;Jeff Sullivan&lt;/a&gt;. He is an unusual case, as he led the American League in K/9 last year, which has been cut roughly in half this year. He&amp;#8217;s getting way more ground balls, and is pitching to contact. Last year, he was a fly-ball pitcher. Both Henderson Alvarez and Drew Hutchison are &amp;#8220;new&amp;#8221; pitchers (although Alvarez just barely lost his rookie eligibility last year). Both pitchers are known as ground ball pitchers and do not get many strikeouts. Even Drabek is getting more ground balls this year, by using a two-seam fastball which sinks instead of a four-seamer, which is more straight and induces flyballs.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So you can see that the Jays are getting way more ground balls this year. Coincidentally or not, their ERA is also significantly improved. This could be partly to do with the Rogers Centre being a home run park, especially when the roof is closed (which is what happens in April), giving an advantage to ground ball pitchers. But what I think is even a greater benefit to ground ball pitchers, is the infield shift, and Brett Lawrie&amp;#8217;s range. The Rays were the first club to extensively shift their infielders into abnormal positions, based mainly on the hitters tendencies and the contextual situation. The Jays also employed this strategy to a certain extent in years past, but this year more so than ever. They use their third baseman Lawrie as a roamer, who they can place in shallow right field, or behind second base.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In fact, I have noticed the entire league catching on to infield shifts this year. Is it working? Not a controlled experiment but the batting average on balls in play (BABIP) has changed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;table border="1"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2009&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2010&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2011&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;2012&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;BABIP&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;0.299&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;0.297&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;0.295&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;td&gt;0.288&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;s already quite a significant drop. I have to wonder whether the infield shift is causing it. It also makes me wonder whether we will enter a new era of &amp;#8220;pitching to contact&amp;#8221; rather than valuing strikeout pitchers first and foremost. Those interested in baseball statistics tend to value strikeouts and defensive independent metrics more so than those depending on BABIP, which tend to vary with luck. But with the defensive shift and ground ball pitchers, this may start to change.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What about the Blue Jays? Their starting pitchers BABIP is currently the &lt;i&gt;lowest&lt;/i&gt; in all of baseball, at 0.222. That seems to fit with being first in ground ball percentage as well (Yankees starting pitchers have the highest BABIP in MLB strangely. Not sure how they are surviving in their tiny ballpark). So are the Jays the luckiest team in baseball, or is the infield shift combined with Lawrie&amp;#8217;s range helping the low BABIP as well?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This leaves me with optimism for the new &amp;#8220;ground ball style&amp;#8221; pitching staff of the Blue Jays.&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/21919532467</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/21919532467</guid><pubDate>Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:42:50 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Visual style of the Wire</title><description>&lt;p&gt;This is a nice analysis of the visual style of my favourite TV show of all time, The Wire, done by Erlend Lavik.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/39768998?title=0&amp;amp;amp;byline=0&amp;amp;amp;portrait=0" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;(via &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/12/04/the-visual-style-of-the-wire" target="_blank"&gt;kottke.org&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/21085149590</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/21085149590</guid><pubDate>Sat, 14 Apr 2012 09:18:42 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Using a (wired) Mac keyboard with iOS</title><description>&lt;p&gt;I use my iPad all the time, and I use a Mac all the time too. They both have their advantages. For my job, I need to read PDF files regularly, either from students, or when reviewing papers. For both of these tasks, the iPad screen is perfect as it is roughly letter sized, it can be held in portrait, and it can be held in a comfortable way for long reading sessions. But then, I need to also give feedback on the material. So, I use the iPad app &lt;a href="http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/pdf-expert-fill-forms-annotate/id393316844?mt=8" target="_blank"&gt;PDF Expert&lt;/a&gt; to annotate PDFs. The general workflow I use with that app is to select text (using standard iOS text selection just dragging over text with my finger), press &amp;#8220;note&amp;#8221; in the popup menu, type a note, and then that annotation will be associated with the text which is also highlighted in the PDF.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The hard part there is entering the text into the annotation. The iPad should be held in portrait when reading letter sized PDFs, but the onscreen keyboard is not ideal in portrait. Apple sells a wired keyboard dock, but that forces the iPad into an upright configuration which means you are forced to look at the iPad in one position hindering long reading sessions, and it&amp;#8217;s also harder to tap when it is not closer to flat. A bluetooth keyboard can be used, but even ignoring the cost, it means that you&amp;#8217;ve now probably got two keyboards on your desk instead of just one.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What I wanted for a long long time was a way to &amp;#8220;spoof&amp;#8221; my Mac keyboard (either a USB keyboard, or a built-in laptop keyboard) to use as a bluetooth keyboard on the iPad. I wanted to have almost a &amp;#8220;virtual KVM&amp;#8221; to quickly switch between using the keyboard to control a Mac and using it to control an iPad.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For many months now, I&amp;#8217;ve been using a Mac app called &lt;a href="http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/type2phone/id472717129?mt=12" target="_blank"&gt;Type2phone&lt;/a&gt; which does exactly that. It spoofs a bluetooth keyboard on the Mac, which can be selected as a bluetooth keyboard on the iPad. So, if Type2phone is the frontmost application on the Mac, then the keyboard is controlling the iPad, and if it&amp;#8217;s not frontmost, then it&amp;#8217;s controlling the Mac. I use that with another Mac app called &lt;a href="http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/apptivate/id412442297?mt=12" target="_blank"&gt;Apptivate&lt;/a&gt; which lets you make a keyboard shortcut that will switch between bringing to front and hiding an application. So essentially, every time I hit ctrl-option-space, it switches between controlling the iPad and the Mac. That&amp;#8217;s as close to a KVM as I can imagine.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Once it is setup, everything works pretty much perfectly. I did have trouble setting it up the first time. Bluetooth can be a bit flakey at times (I suspect this is largely OS X&amp;#8217;s fault). I had to fiddle with the Mac bluetooth settings and restart the Mac/iOS to get it to connect the first time. But hopefully that was a combination of having really old Macs, and my weird software configuration. Their instructions for setting it up, which will probably work, are not that difficult. Altogether though, after that first setup, it really is  simple. Hit the shortcut and now you&amp;#8217;re controlling the iPad.&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/21025164987</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/21025164987</guid><pubDate>Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:58:34 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>I Mother Earth</title><description>&lt;p&gt;I grew up in the 90&amp;#8217;s, which was a real mixed bag for the music industry. It was at the tail end of the &amp;#8220;video and radio era&amp;#8221;, and before the internet was feasible for music distribution. For the most part, radio and videos sucked (which I suspect is still the case), but you had to listen to the noise to hear the signal.. there was no other place to find it. But when you&amp;#8217;re young, this isn&amp;#8217;t too big a deal because rip-offs sound fresh if you haven&amp;#8217;t heard the original.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In 1996, I attended my very first rock show at age 16. It was the Canadian band I Mother Earth, who had just released their second album, Scenery &amp;amp; Fish. I remember it really clearly. It was an all ages show at Portal Hall, which was a small (1000ish I bet) venue at Carleton University in Ottawa. The opening bands were Salmonblaster and Stabbing Westward (I told you I remember it well). I loved everything about the show. The venue was super cozy, with a low roof. It was really stinky, smoky, crowded, and hot. It was my first &amp;#8220;moshing experience&amp;#8221;. To a 16 year old with too much testosterone, that was the coolest thing ever. I liked the ridiculousness of it all, and I really felt at home in this crowd. Rock was for me.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Half way through the show, there was a fire alarm. Everyone poured out of the venue. And being teenagers, my friends and I climbed the roof and hung out up there. Then eventually the fire alarm was turned off and we went back inside and the band played until 12:30. I&amp;#8217;ve been to many, many shows, and almost always, 11 is the end time due to noise laws. I didn&amp;#8217;t realize we got a nice bonus.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That show was a bit of a turning point for me. I started going to every rock show I could go to, of which there were quite a few at that time in Ottawa. I scoured ticketmaster and was always up to date. I started listening to rock almost exclusively, got a job, bought my first drum kit, played everyday and bought CDs weekly.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The band put out a couple more albums after this one, changed singers, and I stayed a fan. They stopped playing in 2001, and I stopped listening. Then, a few years ago, I went through all my old CDs. I didn&amp;#8217;t have much interest in almost all of it, but I Mother Earth were still great to me. Their music evolved over time and each album was very different. Here was my favourite cut off Scenery &amp;amp; Fish (I think it&amp;#8217;s their favourite cut off it as well). It&amp;#8217;s called &amp;#8220;Earth, Sky, and C&amp;#8221;, and I remember it was dedicated to Santana in their liner notes. It doesn&amp;#8217;t sound out of place with any of the other music I still listen to.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VgGlQHpnvMc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Once a year, I&amp;#8217;d google them to see if anything turned up, and low and behold, this year for the first time, something came up. They recorded a song and played a couple of shows last week. Not sure if anything will come of it, but I hope they record an album and tour closer to me (Western Canada).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s their new cut, We Got The Love, which is great.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F40416416&amp;amp;show_artwork=true"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/20188145991</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/20188145991</guid><pubDate>Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:58:05 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Dance Central</title><description>&lt;p&gt;Even though I&amp;#8217;m tall, lanky, uncoordinated and a bad dancer, I secretly enjoy dancing. Yes, I&amp;#8217;m mildly embarrassed by doing it, enjoying it, etc.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My mammalian partner and I (don&amp;#8217;t worry, we are of the same species sicko) love to watch So You Think You Can Dance. I think we&amp;#8217;ve watched pretty much every episode of every season.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Combine the love of dance, with my obvious mild embarrassment, and I&amp;#8217;m a perfect candidate for the game Dance Central (and Dance Central 2) for Kinect. It&amp;#8217;s really a great game. We play it, on average three times a week, for exercise and fun.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I like a pretty good percentage of the music that comes with the game. There is definitely some nostalgia there for music I liked when I was age 10-15. I was mainly interested in dance, and hip hop at the time. And I have no problem getting into some of the better dance music from that era. After all, there&amp;#8217;s a direct path from Stevie Wonder, James Brown and Parliament to the era that followed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One great cut off Dance Central is &amp;#8220;These are the Breaks&amp;#8221;, by Kurtis Blow. It&amp;#8217;s a little like Talking Heads, but maybe a little more hip moving. Great song.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5ZDUEilS5M4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another one is Eric B. &amp;amp; Rakim (warning: there&amp;#8217;s some booty in the video). I&amp;#8217;ve always loved a good &amp;#8220;rising bass line&amp;#8221; to create a feeling the music is &amp;#8220;going nowhere&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6Y1Emb7Jyks" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/18853279303</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/18853279303</guid><pubDate>Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:16:00 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>YahZarah</title><description>&lt;p&gt;Rdio has been great for me to help discover new music. I like to follow &amp;#8220;similar artists&amp;#8221; starting with artists I know I like. The latest I&amp;#8217;ve found is an artist named YahZarah, who used to be Erykah Badu&amp;#8217;s backup singer. Her latest album, The Battle of the Purple Saint James, is great. It reminds me of Janelle Monae&amp;#8217;s last album that was my &lt;a href="http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/1022143954/janelle-monae" target="_blank"&gt;favourite album&lt;/a&gt; a couple of years ago. It feels very much inspired by 70&amp;#8217;s R&amp;amp;B, Stevie Wonder, and Chaka Kahn. Real instruments, diverse stylistically and lots of soul.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s my two favourite cuts of the album: The Lie..&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/y5riBVM0N3Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;.. and Why Dontcha Call Me No More.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NC0YikQ8Q4Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/17679456590</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/17679456590</guid><pubDate>Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:27:26 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Treme, David Simon and Professor Longhair</title><description>&lt;p&gt;I have finished watching Season 1 of the David Simon show, Treme. Simon is the creator and a writer of my favourite show ever, The Wire. His current show, Treme, does not disappoint either. It follows the city of New Orleans, post Hurricane Katrina.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I love Simon&amp;#8217;s style. He writes in a way that captures the deeply intertwined and dependent nature of real life, coming at a topic from the angle of many different characters, while also varying the &amp;#8220;level&amp;#8221; of the perspective. If he were to write a television show about baseball, he would spend an entire season each, from the perspective of good players, crappy players, managers, and general managers. As he would move on in the seasons, he would keep characters from the previous seasons so that we can see how the decisions at the higher levels affects the lower levels, and vice versa. It becomes this layered gigantic puzzle, where there are a hundred characters all intertwined.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Somehow Simon has a way of demonstrating how messed up the world is without exercising any viewer&amp;#8217;s adrenaline. You do not get the standard, &amp;#8220;something good happens&amp;#8221;, then &amp;#8220;something bad happens&amp;#8221;, then &amp;#8220;something good happens&amp;#8221;, etc.. in a non-stop cycle of ridiculousness. It does not feel as though you are being &amp;#8220;had&amp;#8221; as a viewer, by taking the easy route to establishing a story line, through layers of coincidence. When you watch his shows at first, the things you expect to happen next usually don&amp;#8217;t, because we&amp;#8217;ve been trained to expect rare coincidences in television. If there is a 1 in 100 chance of something happening in real life, it is sure to happen on most television shows. The nemesis will walk in that door at the worst possible time. On a David Simon show, it won&amp;#8217;t happen 99 times out of 100. It&amp;#8217;s refreshing. Life is certainly complex and layered enough to cut out the coincidences, although it takes more effort and time, and is more common to books than television.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On Treme, music plays an important part, as it does in New Orleans. It&amp;#8217;s full of live performances (and like the Wire, zero background music). The musicians are largely not actors, but real musicians playing themselves in this show. So let&amp;#8217;s see, a David Simon show, that focuses on music.. Safe to say, it&amp;#8217;s currently my favourite show.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s one of the real artists featured on the show, Professor Longhair.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/eVFUg1Vs6gc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/17379827817</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/17379827817</guid><pubDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:01:58 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Art forms are computationally equivalent</title><description>&lt;p&gt;(I found this post from my old blog years ago, and I liked it enough that I thought I&amp;#8217;d bring it over here. The old blog was getting spammed too much, so I had to take it down).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Check out this youtube vid:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OIJtKxdRQzY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Non-traditional art, sure. But to me, it just goes to show that essentially any two art forms are computationally equivalent. You can always find an algorithm to encode one inside another. They are all equally complex.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When I was younger, my father used to say that dirty jokes were inherently inferior to non-dirty jokes, and that it was easy to come up with dirty jokes.. and that they were not as complex. I would say that this was not true. There is a really easy algorithm to convert any arbitrary non-dirty joke into a dirty joke. Just add the word &amp;#8216;poop&amp;#8217; to the end (or whatever comes to mind). Then the new joke is dirty and just as complex as the previous joke. How do I know it is just as complex? Because all the information from the original non-dirty joke is in the dirty joke. If you have the dirty joke and my algorithm, you can even uniquely recover the non-dirty joke.. so it must be as complex.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I think the same can be essentially found between any two art forms. Probably you can even turn staples and bulletin boards into an art form just as complex as any other. As a drummer, I&amp;#8217;m always a little bit sensitive to hearing that &amp;#8216;it is easy to play drums&amp;#8217;.. Well, maybe it is easy to play badly, but that does not mean it is easy to play well. You can work on it to the extent that it is just as complex as playing any other instrument. It&amp;#8217;s not as if they reach a point where they stop getting better.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For example, let&amp;#8217;s take a piano piece.. the piano has rhythm, dynamics and melody. Certainly, the drums has rhythm and dynamics. Melody? Maybe.. but let&amp;#8217;s ignore that for now. There are only 88 keys on a piano. It is really easy to encode that information in the drum part. We will map every 16th note or the piano piece to a 1/2 note of the drum piece. Play the first 16th note with the proper rhythm and dynamics of the piano piece, then the next 7&amp;#160;16th notes with a rhythm uniquely determines by the melody of that note (note 2^7 = 128 &amp;#187;88). There! We&amp;#8217;ve encoded the original piano piece into a drum piece. It is just as complex as the piano piece! Again, all the information from the piano piece is in there. I can uniquely recover the piano piece from the drum piece. This may not be the &amp;#8216;most pleasant sounding&amp;#8217; encoding, but you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;(Aside: for any mathies out there, this type of argument may remind you of the proof that natural and rational numbers have the same cardinality&amp;#8230; even though the rationals have another &amp;#8216;dimension&amp;#8217; to them, it does not mean they are more &amp;#8220;complex&amp;#8221;. Or a Turing Machine with a 1-dimensional scratch tape is computationally equivalent to one with a k-dimensional tape..)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Because of this, I try not to say that one art form is inferior to others. It might be that the famous people who do this art form suck, or that I haven&amp;#8217;t taken the time to appreciate an art form, but that does not say anything about the art form inherently.&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/16588915258</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/16588915258</guid><pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:18:08 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Chaka Khan or Plants vs. Zombies</title><description>&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s a cut from the game Plants vs. Zombies. Listen as the song progresses.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/E2u0wbl2Q1Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s Chaka Khan:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6U_hRJHc3eA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Sound similar? Heavy bass on both, plus the synth in the background as the songs progress. A lot of the Plants vs. Zombies soundtrack reminds me of this Chaka song.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;(Note: Chaka came first).&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/16303026089</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/16303026089</guid><pubDate>Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:37:00 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>second favourite TV show theme song</title><description>&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ve already covered &lt;a href="http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/443326701/best-tv-theme-song-ever" target="_blank"&gt;my favourite&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s my second favourite.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kWc_0RZnzWQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/16074880770</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/16074880770</guid><pubDate>Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:48:17 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Tito!</title><description>&lt;p&gt;As I sit here waiting for a website for work to load, I enjoy time by listening to Tito! Tito!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KvVMmVPNv88" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/15416242148</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/15416242148</guid><pubDate>Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:19:13 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Alexisonfire</title><description>&lt;p&gt;Since I didn&amp;#8217;t look for too much new music the last ten years, anything from the last decade that I find seems new to me. And Alexisonfire falls into that category. I do remember seeing some of their videos around 2000 (yes, videos on TV, as this was around the last time I had access to cable television), but I never explored further, and they never got played on any radio that was near me.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#8217;re really good. Super hard music, but it&amp;#8217;s great. Definitely syncopated and melodic too. And I have no problem with screaming. Plus they&amp;#8217;re Canadian (so I don&amp;#8217;t feel so bad about Nickelback or Celine Dion). So far my favourite album is &amp;#8220;Crisis&amp;#8221;. Here&amp;#8217;s a good cut, but they&amp;#8217;re all good. I don&amp;#8217;t think there is a dud on this album.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2nYNCvKWzgM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/13598950761</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/13598950761</guid><pubDate>Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:06:15 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>open links on a Mac</title><description>&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ve always been on the lookout for a really quick way to send links from iOS to the Mac. I almost always just browse the web on an iPad or iPhone, which I usually prefer to a full PC. But periodically I&amp;#8217;ll come across a site that would be better to read on the Mac, whether it be because of a Flash video, or just slugginess of some sites with the lesser CPU.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ve tried a number of different utilities for this problem. I tried the iPhone app Pastebot which is pretty nice, and also ClipTwin. These are both dedicated to exchanging clipboard contents between iOS and the Mac. But I find them to be too clunky overall. There&amp;#8217;s too much clicking at both ends of the transfer just to open the link. I found myself never using them because of this friction, even if I stuck the apps on my homescreen.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of other clever apps that are nice at opening links from the Mac in iOS by sending the clipboard contents as push notifications. But almost always, I want to go in the other direction, from iOS to Mac. You can use the whole &amp;#8220;read later&amp;#8221; thing built into Safari and it will sync between Safari in iOS and the Mac, but I find that to be slow to sync, and requires too many clicks on both ends again.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I came across a new (free) Mac app called &lt;a href="http://send2mac.com/" target="_blank"&gt;Send2mac&lt;/a&gt;. It&amp;#8217;s a tiny Mac app (so tiny it has no interface, just running along in the background). On iOS (or maybe any phone/tablet/PC at all?), you just install a special bookmark with a unique identifier in it. There&amp;#8217;s no app on this end.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Then, every time you click the bookmark when a webpage is open, it immediately opens that page in your default browser on the Mac. There is zero clicking on the Mac. It&amp;#8217;s just there. If your Mac is asleep, it seems to open as soon as it wakes up. I like this whole &amp;#8220;no clicking&amp;#8221; thing. I think this is almost the perfect level of friction for me to actually use it.&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/11963649564</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/11963649564</guid><pubDate>Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:53:00 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>yet more Wonder</title><description>&lt;p&gt;My Stevie Wonder kick came in a couple of years ago, and I can&amp;#8217;t shake it. He&amp;#8217;s the best. Been digging his live album Natural Wonder.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MGlb2FgTQmk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/11441727919</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/11441727919</guid><pubDate>Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:04:00 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Queen - Flick of the Wrist</title><description>&lt;p&gt;One of my favourite Queen songs:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/eNdFeUywHLI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/10850518277</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/10850518277</guid><pubDate>Fri, 30 Sep 2011 10:24:54 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Beck - The New Pollution</title><description>&lt;p&gt;Love the melody floating on top of the fast rhythm. 
&amp;#8220;She&amp;#8217;s .. al .. one .. in .. the &amp;#8230; new .. pol .. lu .. tion&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uxugaMpt1vU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/10728789514</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/10728789514</guid><pubDate>Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:38:00 -0600</pubDate></item><item><title>Jaco</title><description>&lt;p&gt;Love the arrangement on this one. Gotta love Jaco Pastorius.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1ih-TlGZoPM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/10561446200</link><guid>http://www.interestingmonkey.com/post/10561446200</guid><pubDate>Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:42:00 -0600</pubDate></item></channel></rss>

