Links and write-ups about beautiful things from around the web!
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Timekeeping with electron spin states in diamond
From Physical Review A, a new method for keeping precise (like nearly atomic clock precise) time using a diamond and a laser:
Frequency standards based on atomic states, such as Rb or Cs vapors, or single-trapped ions, are the most precise measures of time. Here we propose and analyze a precision oscillator approach based upon spins in a solid-state system, in particular, the nitrogen-vacancy defect in single-crystal diamond.
Oh good, now if Jay-Z is still worried about his Rolleys that don’t tick-tock, or his Audamars that’s losing time hidden behind all those big rocks, he can just shoot a laser at them.
(yep, I just attempted a Watch the Throne / Nature magazine crossover joke. goodnight, everybody!)
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Antiphonal Geometry — Harmony and proportion in responsive web design
One thing of note is that none of them express the golden ratio, that so-called best of proportions. 5:8 comes quite close but, as far as I’m aware, no web device matches the golden section in its screen aspect ratio. I’m not sure why that is, but I like to think that it’s because the golden ratio is for the weak.
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The musical interval ratios also provide an opportunity, not only to create connectedness between the parts of a layout, but to bind the content to a device. Just as a textblock and page resonate together, so too can web content and the screen on which it is displayed.Owen Gregory (@fullcreammilk) on musical intervals, device aspect ratios, and how we should be seeking these harmonies when designing for the web as a responsive medium. A good read. And I like the jab at the golden ratio.
See also: Cennydd Bowles’s The Music of Interaction Design talk.
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The Ethiopians — Hong Kong Flu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOTlo7PKwqo
`The Ethiopians — Hong Kong Flu. Heard on today’s Jamaican Gold radio show, I think this might be the catchiest song about infectious disease I’ve heard in a long time. Part of the “beautiful melodies telling me terrible things” category of music, to paraphrase Tom Waits.
(PS to the folks of the 1960s: in the future, we use our magic-like portable computer video screens to watch recordings of other people’s records.)
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Chinua Achebe on Aspiring Writers and Work
I don’t get the deluge of manuscripts that I would be getting in Nigeria. But some do manage to find me. This is something I understand, because a budding writer wants to be encouraged. But I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it. Just think of the work you’ve set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can. Once you have really done all you can, then you can show it to people. Chinua Achebe, on being solicited for advice from aspiring novelists. Quoted from an 1994 interview with the Paris Review.
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Chinua Achebe on History
That was the way I was introduced to the danger of not having your own stories. There is that great proverb—that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It’s not one man’s job. It’s not one person’s job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail—the bravery, even, of the lions. Chinua Achebe, RIP. Quote from a 1994 interview with him in the Paris Review. Things Fall Apart was one of the novels we read in middle school that really changed my understanding of the workings of the world, and remains one of the books that I hope to always have on my bookshelf. (hat tip to @hawkt)
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Where the Flippers Still Flap
If there is a pinball renaissance, as boosters like to claim, it seems to hover somehwere in the middle distance, unless you live in pinball-mad cities like Portland, Ore. In New York, fans still have to work at it, but the rewards are just as sweet. Like great poetry, pinball transports.
Nice writeup from the NYTimes on finding pinball in NYC. So glad that we have Pinballz here in Austin!
Bonus trivia from the article: did you know that pre-famous Tina Fey did the “damsel” voices for the 1997 Williams pinball table Medieval Madness?
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Finnegans Wake New Yonks
Happy new yonks, everyone!
(From Finnegans Wake, p. 308)
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Six Way Banana Venn Diagram
This Venn bananagram (?) might be my favorite infographic of 2012. Science!
(From a Nature article on mutations of the banana genome and the evolution of related plants. Also available as a high-res graphic or PPT slide for the banana-science-inclined…)
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Dave Brubeck on Guaraldi Peanuts Music
There is a mixture of sadness and joy in the Peanuts characters. Their all-too-human disappointments and minor triumphs are reflected in Guaraldi’s music. It is a child’s reality. Dave Brubeck, as quoted by Charles Solomon in a recent interview with Chronicle Books about his newly-released The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation, a book that I need to pick up.
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Slime Mold Music
What happens if you grow slime mold on electrodes hooked into a sound oscillator? This, evidently. Slime mold music. Science!
The recorded signals from the electrodes were eventually fed into an audio oscillator, with each recording representing a different frequency. By mixing the sounds generated from all of the recordings the researchers were able to create an eerie type of music – reminiscent of the sound effects used on early science fiction movies. As an added feature, the researchers report that they can cause different sounds to be generated by shining light on different parts of the mold, in effect tuning their bio-instrument to allow for the creation of different types of music.
I’ll picture the setup looking something like a Bleep Labs Bit Blob.
(Via arXiv)