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April 25, 2008

Baby Doe's Matchless Mine (Birmingham, Alabama)?

While traveling through Denver recently, I noticed that the Baby Doe's Matchless Mine restaurant overlooking Lo-Do had been demolished (I know this is old news, but I live 1,500 miles away, so I don't get all the breaking new s out of Denver...) I was doing some quick searching on the web and found indications that there used to be Baby Doe's in Kansas City (I'd heard that before) as well as Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia.

I'm particularly interested in the locations in Kansas City, Birmingham, Alabama ("near the Vulcan status on Red Mountain") and Atlanta, Georgia. Does anyone have more specific information about the location of these restaurants? Also interested in knowing when they closed. If anyone has information, stories, photos of these locations of the restaurant, I'd be interested to see/hear about them.

Posted by speedeep at 1:13 AM | | Comments (0)

April 15, 2008

My first PC

My first real IBM PC-compatible computer was an IBM PS/2 Model 50. It was purchased sometime around the summer of 1987. I was about 12 years old and about to enter middle school. I'd previously had a Coleco Adam (which was sort of an Apple IIe mixed with a gaming console.)

It had a 10Mhz Intel 80286 processor, 1 MB of RAM, a 20MB hard drive, a 1.44MB floppy drive, 4 MCA slots (they all went unused), a IBM 8514 VGA Monitor, an IBM 5842 2400bps modem and a IBM 5201 dot matrix printer.

The original IBM PS/2 mouse.The fact that it had 1 MB of RAM was a bit of an early confusion to me as DOS could only use 640Kb until memory manager and extended memory utilities became available.

I remember distinctly saying that I'd never be able to fill up the 20MB hard drive. A little research lists a replacement 20MB drive for the system at $795 (~$40/MB) at today's market rates (cost/MB) that drive would cost approximately three tenths of one cent (.003 dollars) These days my digital camera takes 10MP RAW photos that are almost 20MB each. A 1TB drive (which are available for approximately $200) holds 50,000 times as much data as that 20MB drive. I've long since stopped saying that I'd never fill up a give hard drive...

I remember running IBM DisplayWrite 4, Harvard Graphics, Deluxe Paint (DPaint), F-19 Stealth Fighter. I briefly ran a couple of starup BBSs using Renegade and Wildcat! that never amounted to much. It was mostly an outgoing BBS terminal with occasional application distractions here and there.

I had a 2400bps modem, but all the BBS were 1200bps in town. I used to call long-distance (remember that?) to take full advantage of my modem's speed for the first couple months. The phone bills hurt.

I made the mistake of using DoubleSpace disk compression for the first and only time on this system.

This computer ran MS-DOS (3.0 - 6.22), PC-DOS, DR-DOS, GEOS, Windows 3.0, OS/2 (1.something.) I cut my teeth on BASIC, Turbo Pascal, REXX

Now my computers(!) run at multiple gigahertz with multiple processor cores, have gigabytes of system RAM, and terabytes of storage. I can't wait to see what happens in the next 20 years...

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Posted by speedeep at 3:50 AM | | Comments (0)

March 22, 2008

"Give Me Some Money" - Spinal Tap goes mainstream

Does that song in the American Express sound strangely familiar? It's "Give Me Some Money" by Spinal Tap. Who would have thought that we'd ever see mainstream advertising using a mostly fictitious spoof band's mostly fictitious spoof music in an advertisement? Anyone want to bet whether or not anyone will use "Sex Farm" or "Bitch School" in an advertisement?

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Posted by speedeep at 5:54 PM | | Comments (0)

July 11, 2006

R.I.P. Syd Barrett

Syd Barrett (founder of Pink Floyd) died peacefully on Friday, July 7 at his home in Cambridgeshire at the age 60. His creativity was reigned only by his madness. A great creative spirit has moved on. Shine on you crazy diamond...

Links:
Wikipedia article on Syd Barrett
BoingBoing nod to Syd
NME
CNN
ABC


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Posted by speedeep at 2:43 AM | | Comments (1)

December 16, 2005

Battersea Power Station Chimneys To Come Down?

Battersea Power Station
Photo originally posted on Flickr, used with
permission of the photographer, Niznoz.
The Battersea Power Station was turned into a international pop-art icon by Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis when he and a team of photographers used it as a centerpiece (along with the large helium-filled flying pig balloon) for the cover of Pink Floyd's 1977 album, Animals.

Recent news articles indicate that the wrecking ball of change has started swinging to bring the chimneys down. The stated goal is to demolish the chimneys (citing structural instability) and then rebuild them. In order to understand the entire issue, it should be noted that the developer, Parkview International, is based in the British Virgin Islands and is outside the reach of the Wandsworth Council should there be needs for legal recourse during the renovation. This means that the plans to demolish the chimneys as they exist now and rebuild them could very well stop with their demolition and nothing could be done to force the developer to rebuild. Some are suggesting that demolishing the chimneys is the first step in demolishing the entire structure, preparing the site for luxury condos the developer plans to build.

There are a couple community groups who follow the status of the planning on the property. You may want to check out Battersea Power Station Community Group or The Brain-Damage.co.uk Campaign to save Battersea Power Station.

More information on Pink Floyd.

More information on Storm Thorgerson.

Flickr photos tagged with 'battersea' (Most Popular)

If you'd like to keep track of the chimneys' current status you can take a peek via this live cam of London. (Someone post a comment if you notice the chimneys are missing between the London Eye and Big Ben in the background.)

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Posted by speedeep at 11:59 PM | | Comments (0)

October 6, 2005

20th Century Remixed

I just listened to the coolest history and background on the bastard pop/glitch/remix/cut-up/mashup/bootleg/sampling scene that was put together in the form of a large mix. It's a 60-minute, 71MB remix documentary by DJ Food about the events and technology that begat the current state of sampling, mixing, and mashups. ubu.com has some background information on how this project came to be as it is today.

The mix strings along short interview snippets through a huge variety of tape loops, sounds, and samples we've all been listening to in our pop music for the last 50 years or so. I'm trying not to make it sound too pedantic. It's high-paced ride with all kinds of tunes and clips that you've heard in various songs mixed with insightful interview clips and quite entertaining. Even if you don't like these genres in general, I encourage you to check this out if only to gain a little more insight into the history of the samples behind the tracks you listen to every day.

In-jokes and references abound, keep an open ear for Madonna's "What the fuck do you think you're doing" overlaid with her "Ray of Light" and (Whitney) "Houston we have a [drinking] problem" samples towards the end. If you are ready for an audio roller coaster ride, start downloading...
Direct Download or BitTorrent Link (both are 70MB+ mp3 files)
(thanks, BoingBoing!)

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Posted by speedeep at 7:58 PM | | Comments (1)

July 11, 2005

Look out: 80s nostalgia coming your way

I remember fairly clearly watching an intro to a weekly show during the 1980s that I now find deeply embedded in my mind. The scene is of a very low-slung sports car that is in some sort of high-speed chase and the driver evades his pursuers by sliding the car laterally underneath a moving semi trailer (nevermind the spare tire rack that usually sits there.)

I've checked out a couple obvious sources and tried to pick a few of my friends' brains, but we can't come up with where the scene is from.

Obvious Sources:
80salive.com
series-80.net

Could it have been:

Hardcastle and McCormick - The Coyote: Found the intro to this series on-line. It's got the low-slung sports car, the chase scene, but the closest thing to the semi is when they drive the Coyote up the back of an auto transport and jump the car over the cab.
Simon and Simon?
Magnum P.I.?
Miami Vice?
It's not Automan (though that was another series that completely embedded itself in my mind. I recently found a complete set of Automan episodes. Wow those special effects were bad!)

I remember seeing this scene over and over, so I'm assuming it was the intro or outro to the series each week. I could be wrong about this. A couple people I've pinged on this seem to remember the scene as well...

Anyone got any leads or memories about this? I'm trying to identify the series and if possible find a video clip of the intro.

Posted by speedeep at 11:55 AM | | Comments (5)

July 2, 2005

Pigs Fly! Pink Floyd at Live8 with Roger Waters!


By swamysk. Used w/permission.
Wow! That was great! Pink Floyd with Roger Waters just got done playing at Live8!

MTV managed to show most of the performance with no commercials and no MTV VJs interrupting with interviews of frat boys sharing their thoughts on Africa. ("Will I get laid if I say that I care on live TV?") Correction: Then they cut off the end of the end of "Comfortably Numb" so Ahmet could tell us to "stick around." Is nothing sacred MTV? I don't need to be told to stay put or see commercials for AIDS/sexual assault/Big Dave's Fireworks/Kotex/Vonage, dammit I want to see the performance! This is Pink Floyd! Maybe if they had done this as a fundraiser they could have done more uninterrupted live coverage. AOL's live Internet feed was much better than MTV/VH1's ad-littered coverage.

MTV bleeped the heck out of their broadcast. Thanks, MTV, for at least not editing out "bullshit" on Money. ABC's replay of selected parts of the concert was heavily censored, including obscuring the "bullshit" in Money. One of these days I'll blog on my thoughts about censorship and otherwise modifying an artist's work. AOL's feed was uncensored.

The camera flashes were popping, so I how to see some good photos on Flickr (Search 1, Search 2, Search 3) maybe an audience audio or video recording via BitTorrent (Search 1, Search 2, Search 3, Search 4)? They just released the DVD of the first Live Aid, how long until the Live8 DVD is released?

Setlist:
Breathe
Money
Wish You Were Here
Comfortably Numb
(kinda surprised Roger didn't get "Each Small Candle" or one of his other two new songs in there...)

David Gilmour did all the vocal duties for the first two songs, Roger Waters did WYWH with Dave doing the scat lyrics. Roger and Dave split duties on Comfortably Numb. Roger spoke very little, but dedicated Wish You Were Here to Syd Barrett. Nice touch.

A great performance, couple of new backing artists. Good sax solo on Money, don't know the performer's name.

Good London camera work by whoever is filming this for broadcast including a fade to a zoomed-in view of the Battersea Powerstation's silhouette on the London skyline. A nice fade away to the London Eye. Great coverage of the band, closeups of the performance. Couple of really nicely composed shots of Dave and Roger.

There was an ad for Pink Floyd: Echoes about an hour after their performance. You could order it from them or just buy it on Amazon.

First time they've been back on stage together since 1987. 24 years later. Wow!

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Posted by speedeep at 5:10 PM | | Comments (5)