Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

Reaching the Limits of Adobe Stupidity – whitespace
Oy. You don’t know how good or bad engineering can be until you look at it at the bytecode level.

EXO9 Aluminum
Form and beautiful function.

A Brief Field Guide to Post-UDID Unique IDs on iOS
Brandon Creighton runs down the current state of post-UDID user identification on iOS and concludes that you can’t win, break even, or opt out of the game.

I flew into London yesterday morning, and my arms aren’t tired. And surprisingly the rest of me isn’t either. I got almost ten hours of sleep last night, and while I did wake bolt upright at 4:30 this morning I’m still feeling pretty good and not particularly jet lagged. It’s been gorgeous here, much nicer than it was when I last visited twelve years ago (granted, that was in February).

Things I’ve done so far: 

1. Walked around the south side of Kensington Park, taking in the sights.
2. Gotten lost in Harrods.
3. Watched people queue around a city block for hours to go to the French Embassy to vote in yesterday’s election.
4. Learned how much you can pay for unreliable hotel wifi.
5. Evaluated several pubs in the vicinity of my hotel and found a keeper. 
6. Figured out how to navigate the Underground (or reminded myself) and to get my tickets for the National Rail Service.

And that was the first day. Should be a fun trip.

U-Va. historian debunks campus myths for student tour guides – The Washington Post
It astonishes me that, with access to the writings of Philip Alexander Bruce, Virginius Dabney, John S. Patton, and others, some still feel it necessary to embellish or invent stories about the University. It’s storied enough.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a new mix. This one, My heart’s beating is all the proof you need (Art of the Mix), has been interesting–a little more upbeat than some of my past efforts, a few songs that have been kicking around my library for many years. I think the subtheme of this mix is in the second song: “It’s getting better all the time (can’t get no worse!).”

So there’s some party time stuff, both benign and wild; some funny tracks (I dare you to listen to “Bloody” with a straight face);  and some contemplative stuff. There’s not a lot of deep digging (outside of the Tom Waits/John Lurie track and maybe “Amen Brother,” which features what must be the most sampled drum break in the prehistory of hiphop), just some really fun listening. Just right for early spring.

1. River of Men – Tom Waits/John Lurie (Fishing With John – Original Music From The Series By John L)
2. Getting Better – The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band)
3. Just Like Heaven – The Cure (Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me)
4. Mondo ’77 – Looper (The Geometrid)
5. Amen’ Brother – The Winstons (Color Him Father (Original Masters))
6. In The Street – Big Star (#1 Record – Radio City)
7. Happy Kid – Nada Surf (Let Go)
8. Don’t You Just Know It – Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns (Don’t You Just Know It [EP])
9. Pictures Of You – The Cure (Disintegration)
10. Near Wild Heaven – R.E.M. (Out Of Time)
11. Friends Stoning Friends – Mclusky (Alan Is A Cowboy Killer)
12. The Ox (Original Mono Version) – The Who (The Who Sings My Generation)
13. Head On – Pixies (Trompe Le Monde)
14. No Hiding Place – Elvis Costello (Momofuku)
15. Bloody – Golinski Brothers (The John Peel Singles Box)
16. Do You Wanna Hit It? – The Donnas (The Donnas Turn 21)
17. Yard Of Blonde Girls – Jeff Buckley (Sketches for My Sweetheart The Drunk)
18. Codex – Radiohead (The King of Limbs)
19. Steam Engine – My Morning Jacket (It Still Moves)
20. Calling My Children Home – Emmylou Harris (Spyboy)
21. Things behind the Sun – Nick Drake (Pink Moon)

Boston Classical Review » Blog Archive » Dohnányi, BSO let the departed rest in sluggish Brahms Requiem
The Boston Classical Review didn’t like much of anything.

Naturgesetz: Music Lover: BSO — 2012/04/5-7 Info and Reviews
Naturgesezt liked Jeff’s blog (he hasn’t heard the performance yet).

The Boston Musical Intelligencer » Moving, Sublime Moments in BSO Brahms Requiem
The Intelligencer liked our precision and commitment.

BSO Masterfully Performs Brahms’s “Requiem” | Arts | The Harvard Crimson
The Crimson liked our precision.

Concert Review: Boston Symphony Orchestra/Christoph von Dohnányi at Symphony Hall » The Arts Fuse
ArtsFuse says we redeemed ourselves after the Missa.

User Experience vs. User Interface Infographic as Cereal
Clear now.

World War 3.0 (Vanity Fair)
Excellent, exhaustive article covering the state of the state of Internet security in all its dimensions.

CHARLIE BERG – Miles Davis was an Agile Genius
Miles Davis, scrummaster.

If-by-whiskey – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If by “if-by-whiskey” you mean a duplicitous conversational device used by politicians to avoid taking a stand, why of course I’m against it. But if by “if-by-whiskey” you mean one of the finest pieces of blarney written about that Old Mountain Dew and its city companions, then of course I’m for it.

What’s in a Name? | The Intercom Blog
Far be it from me to take the high ground and not link to this; it’s meanspirited but it’s also funny. So: Let’s play the product name game: Android phone or condom?

Keynote Kung-Fu: Wireframe Toolkit for Keynote
Wireframe toolkit for Keynote.

ESPI at work: The power of Keynote | Edenspiekermann
Interesting discussion of using Keynote as a prototyping tool for web design. I’m getting more and more comfortable with Keynote but hadn’t thought about this use case.

rNews is here. And this is what it means.
NYTimes gets the structured metadata religion.

RSA Conference | RSA Conference USA
Archives from the 2012 RSA conference.

It’s been four years since I last sang at Carnegie Hall, and Tuesday I’ll be there again, performing the Beethoven Missa Solemnis with the Boston Symphony, under the direction of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus’s John Oliver. It’s been an interesting run, for a host of reasons that have little to do with the music and everything to do with the musicians.

But one thing about it that’s particularly interesting to me is that I find myself still trying to figure out this work. Even though it was the first major work I sang with a symphonic chorus, eighteen years ago. Even though I sang it once more with Robert Shaw fourteen years ago.

It shouldn’t surprise me how much there is to learn about this work. Beethoven wrote it at the height of his powers, and close to the end of his life, at the same time he was composing the Ninth Symphony. I think it’s equally as great a work as the Ninth, but more difficult to approach. Because where the Ninth resolves eternal conflict through the relatively accessible lens of joy and brotherhood, the Missa doesn’t really resolve the conflict at all, and uses religion as the lens through which the conflict is examined.

The movement I’ve been fixated on is the “Agnus Dei.” It’s the last movement of the piece, and as Maestro Oliver points out, it’s unique in that it’s a classical composition–as in, big C classical, partaking much more of Mozart or Haydn than does the rest of the work. It’s very structured, relatively formal, and can seem either light hearted or too mannered if you approach it in the wrong way.

I’m coming at the piece through a gout attack–the first one I’ve had in several years, only the second major one I’ve had–and I think I understand it a little better. I see the “Agnus Dei” as Beethoven trying to come to terms with what was happening to him at the end of his life–his total deafness, his approaching mortality. There are shifting tones in it of fear and of utter desolation. (Which also became clear to me for the first time on this concert run, when we sang the “Miserere” section after hearing Maestro Kurt Masur’s announcement that he could not conduct and his quiet confession that the Missa was too much and that he would never conduct it again.) And I certainly feel an echo of that in my frustration in being unable to stand without pain, or at the worst even to have something touch my foot.

But then comes the “Dona Nobis Pacem.” And where in Berlioz or other masses it’s a cry for help, there’s something quietly assured about the way Beethoven sets this text. It’s a fugue in a major key that keeps returning even over outbreaks of “Miserere.” Done lightly or thoughtlessly, the contrast is jarring. Done in the spirit of the thing, it is meditation, a plea for self control.

It reminds me of The Waste Land, actually. As Eliot’s associative madness pulls in imagery from Hieronymo to bats to women fiddling on their hair, the poet reaches for “Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata.”–”give, sympathize, control”–and then “Shantih, shantih, shantih.” A mantra in the strictly correct sense of the word. And while it’s debatable whether Eliot truly achieves “the peace that passeth all understanding” even by the end of the work, it’s pretty clear that Beethoven’s “pacem, pacem” performs the same function for him. It’s a reaching of acceptance of all that is in life, an acknowledgement of peace and its power.

And it will be very hard to convey that in performance. But now that I know that it’s there, maybe I can try to make it happen.

CMXtraneous: Undocumented Dreamweaver: Working With External Applications and Processes
Very interesting set of undocumented DreamWeaver commands to kick off external processes.

Apple – Mac OS X – Download the free Messages Beta.
Do I dare? When I’ve tried FaceTime with my parents, it doesn’t work, but iChat does. I’m reluctant to download this beta if it blows away the iChat app.

Daring Fireball: Walter Isaacson’s ‘Steve Jobs’
Writing a book about Steve Jobs without getting product management and product design is like writing a book about Winston Churchill without understanding warfare and politics.