Jamming on the Lennon Bus

A few weeks ago, while attending the NMC Annual Summer Conference in Princeton, NJ, I got a chance to spend 15 minutes recording on the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. If you're not familiar with the Lennon Bus, take a look at the link - it's a fantastic project to support music education. Usually, the people who get to record on the bus are High School students, but as a special treat for those of us at NMC we were able to book slots.

I was pretty nervous to record something in 15 minutes, but the guys on the bus are cool, brilliant, and supportive, and they helped me get it down without drama. After I got back home, I took the loops I recorded and mixed them in Garage Band. I called it "Summer on the Towpath" - if you want to listen, follow this link and click on the little arrow next to the file name to download.

Thanks to the Lennon Bus folks, NMC, and Don Henderson at Apple for putting together a really fun experience for us.

Essay - "Great To See You. Just Not Around Here"

I love reading Jan Chipchase's blog. Sometimes I have no idea what point he's trying to make or indeed if he has one, but it's endlessly stimulating and often thought-provoking. Anyway, he just posted a link to a nice little essay on how geolocative technologies move connectivity and its social challenges to a new level. Worth reading.

The Library in the New Age

Robert Darnton, writing in the New York Review of Books, makes a good case for the future of the library as... a repository of books. At least, the research library.

He makes some great points, and professes to be a fan of Google, but why is it that every writer on this topic, while stipulating that it's the content that really matters, finally gets to the smell and feel of books. There's a romanticism that seems inescapable, at least with intellectuals who where educated in a certain age. (I'm making an assumption here, not knowing Mr. Darnton's age or background. After I wrote this initially, I looked him up - he graduated from Harvard in 1960...)

So nobody I know questions that there's an important role for the Bodelian, and the Library of Congress, and UCLA Library, and other great libraries around the world. For me, the question is what is the role of the other 95% of libraries? This is more difficult to foresee.

Warning: your analog rug will soon be obsolete!

Yes, the time has come to replace all those old, out-of-date, analog rugs with the newest in High Definition. In fact, in just two years, your analog and even your Standard Definition rugs will stop working, so it's time to either upgrade to HD (you know you want to!) or at least get a converter box. Saw these on sale at Costco today and they were selling like Vizio TV's. God, I love the new Digital Age!

Art Center page on You Tube

Take a look - http://www.youtube.com/artcenteredu. These are all student projects. Here's one of the best: