From Wikipedia:
Reginald Fessenden:
The Ghost of Radio Past
On the evening of December 24, 1906 (Christmas Eve), [Reginald] Fessenden used the alternator-transmitter to send out a short program from Brant Rock, which included his playing the song “O Holy Night” on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible. On December 31, New Year’s Eve, a second short program was broadcast. The main audience for both these transmissions was an unknown number of shipboard radio operators along the Atlantic Coast. Although now seen as a landmark, these two broadcasts were barely noticed at the time and soon forgotten—the only first-hand account appears to be a letter Fessenden wrote on January 29, 1932 to his former associate, Samuel M. Kinter. There are no known accounts in any ships radio logs, nor any contemporary literature, of the reported holiday demonstrations. In addition, Fessenden does not appear to have made any additional broadcasts intended for a general audience, and was actually promoting the alternator-transmitter as ideal for point-to-point wireless telephone service. Still, in retrospect, it was an important glimpse of the future of radio.
BEHOLD! THE GHOST OF RADIO FUTURE:
Oh, Ryan Seacrest. What will it take to wipe that glassy grin off your faux-tanned California mug?
Originally reported by Slashdot.
After many months (and even more all-nighters), That Other Paper has finally launched.
That’s right — Austin finally has a paper to call its own. Don’t believe me? Check out this highly accurate timeline of publishing in Austin.
In an interview with UT-Austin’s alumni magazine the Alcalde, I discuss the inspiration for Four Kitchen Studios and the process of working creatively without a rigid hierarchy or division of labor. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction (penned by assistant editor Tim Taliaferro):
Four Kitchen Studios operates as a hub for quirky people with specific skill sets, a one-stop shop for companies desperately in need of talent. Between the four founding members there’s a freelance writer, a computer scientist/political campaigner, a cartoonist, and a graphic designer/Webmaster/writer. Then there’s the talent pool — a small army of freelance writers, editors, designers, comics, ninjas, and artists with other full-time jobs but on whom the founders can call when a project requires their expertise.
Read more about Four Kitchen Studios’ creative mission »
Some background info: Four Kitchen Studios is a creative solutions firm I co-founded with some colleagues from the Texas Travesty. Four Kitchens specializes in design and publishing for print and the web in Austin, Texas, and throughout the country.
This guy is my new best friend. If only I knew his name…
As if UT football recruiting needed any help this year:
Annual Princeton Review ranking of top colleges for partying, sobriety
by The Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Here are the nation’s top party schools and the most “Stone Cold Sober” schools as they will appear in the Princeton Review’s 2007 edition of “The Best 361 Colleges,” which goes on sale Tuesday:
Top 10 Party Schools
- University of Texas at Austin
- Penn State University
- West Virginia University
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- University of Mississippi
- Ohio University
- University of Massachusetts-Amherst
- Louisiana State University
- University of Iowa
- University of California, Santa Barbara
It’s true. I used to study upside-down to practice my kegstand. And now the BORING part:
Top 10 “Stone Cold Sober” Schools
- Brigham Young University
- Wheaton College
- College of the Ozarks
- Grove City College
- U.S. Naval Academy
- U.S. Coast Guard Academy
- U.S. Air Force Academy
- Queens College
- Wellesley College
- Calvin College
Source: The Princeton Review (Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
I was getting pretty depressed about the diminishing quality of Viagra spam. There are only so many ways one can spell “Viagra” using non-alphabetic characters before it starts to feel a bit, well, cliché. But just as I had given up hope, those maverick geniuses in the unsolicited email industry delivered this gem:
Literary references in penis-pill junk mail!!! Lewis Carroll must be rolling in his grave. Or rolling halfway and getting stuck—’cause, you know, you can only roll halfway when you’re suffering from priapism.
Okay, so “…I show you how far the rabbit hole goes” is actually a reference to the (much less literary) film The Matrix. Excuse me for taking the high(-brow) road.
Looks like the Bad Breath Dragon is at it again. This time he’s (she’s? they’re?) going after Senator Ted “the Internet is a series of tubes” Stevens.
At Send Me an Internet, you can send Senator Stevens your very own Internet (that is, email). Stick it to the Old Man and get your parody on.
Man, I don’t even know where to begin with this thing. I’m speechless: The Happy Clown.
There’s all kinds of funny going on there. It’s created by some cryptic person (or group?) calling themselves Bad Breath Dragon. Mysterious!
I work at the University of Texas at Austin’s Registrar’s Office. As part of an effort to improve its image (or enhance performance, or Buzzwordy McBuzzwordson), someone sent an email this morning asking all of us to take an online survey of the “Registrar’s Office Values.” (As with most UT surveys, they hired SurveyMonkey. Why, you may ask, would a world-class university with a top-notch information systems team numbering in the hundreds pay SurveyMonkey when they could write a better survey script for free? That’s a rhetorical question. Ponder it whilst you watch your tax and tuition dollars flit away.)
The survey consists of just one question: What five values do you feel are important for a Registrar’s office to have? After seriously considering submitting five synonyms for “credibility” (and realizing that I’d probably be sent a very stern email about not being a “team player”), I opted for the half-serious, half-comedy option:
- customer service
- credibility
- legitimacy
- an unstoppable robot army sent from the future to approve grade changes
- a sense of humor
Hopefully #5 will be implemented before #4.
Iced tea and one free trip to the salad bar. ONE TRIP.
God speed, spaceman.
