life it ain’t real funky, ‘less it’s got that pop…
Today my employer announced that we’re now publishing our newspaper on Amazon’s portable wireless reading device, the Kindle. I don’t have one, but if you do, and you want the LA Times on there, you can subscribe here. Big deal? Not big deal? Let me know.
Loading ...Bo Diddley died today. But his beat lives on. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Try to tell what these songs have in common.
Has anyone else seen @hemingway, this weird Twitter feed that just spouts Ernie quotes every once in a while? Well, tonight I decided to code up my own twist on the idea. Follow @mistadobalina to receive hourly bursts of verse from one of my favorite albums, I Wish My Brother George Were Here by Del Tha Funkee Homosapien.
The whole thing is automated by about 30-45 minutes worth of work. So don’t expect any miracles. But all the code is over on github if anybody wants it. I had a couple problems (no matter what album I asked for, I was only getting track listings for Staind), but the LyricWiki SOAP service is a pretty sweet Web service.
Evidence is mounting that my blog is considered too hot for a variety of Web filter programs. Another screenshot — this time submitted by a friend at an anonymous American newspaper — is displayed below.
Today our A1 features Rich Connell’s look at the effectiveness of all those automated red light cameras positioned around Los Angeles. Here’s the nut:
In Los Angeles, officials estimate that 80% of red light camera tickets go not to those running through intersections but to drivers making rolling right turns, a Times review has found.
…
One of the most powerful selling points for photo enforcement systems, which now monitor 175 intersections in Los Angeles County and hundreds more across the United States, has been the promise of reducing collisions caused by drivers barreling through red lights.
But it is the right-turn infraction — a frequently misunderstood and less pressing safety concern — that drives tickets and revenue in the nation’s second-biggest city and at least half a dozen others across the county.
Our web package includes some hot tape put together by Rich, an awesome interactive explainer by Raoul Ranoa, the now perfunctory Google Map, and my own little goofy idea: portable downloads for TomTom and Garmin GPS devices (check out the roadblock halfway down the main story).
Loading the points into your device will not only map them on your dashboard monitor — but you can also easily program your system to give you an audio warning as you approach upcoming lights. And in that same soothing computer voice that already tells you when to turn.
I’m not sure how interested readers will be in this sort of product, but it seemed like a fun experiment. And since Rich had put in a great effort collecting the data from LA’s many fragmented municipalities, it seemed like we had to look for some extra yard to go for.
The technical part is pretty easy. Both manufacturers have handy developer guides that — once the data is prepared — only take a couple hours to suss out. Here’s TomTom. Here’s Garmin.
Any thoughts on other newspapery data projects that might work for GPS? The most dangerous intersections? The location of famous landmarks around town?
I must admit, I’ve fallen in love with that amazing video of Bill O’Reilly flipping out during his old Inside Edition days. Especially the hot remix. So, in homage, I’ve cut down the first 20 seconds into an mp3 file that should be easily portable as a ringtone to your smart phone of choice. Be it iPhone, Treo, Motorola, Nokia or LG.
Just right click the file below and save it to your computer. After that, you’re on your own.
Everyone loves Milton Glaser’s classic I Heart NY t-shirt, but not everyone is from New York. This is a tragic circumstance best captured by the following Venn diagram.
As you can see, some of us are from other places. Like me, for instance. I was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
And maybe I’d like a t-shirt of my own. And maybe my hometown has its own bizarre logo. And maybe I’m not that concerned about copyright laws. And maybe there’s a crazy Web site that lets you design and print your own t-shirt in a matter of minutes.
And maybe you have 13 bucks to spare and want one for yourself. So just click here already.
Today we sprung what might be the LAT’s first ever data app plugged directly into the front page. Some new foreclosure numbers came and we were able to quickly turn around the data so users could pop in their zipcode, or drill down and browse around the vast five county area we call “SoCal.”
Anyway, with a little free time this evening, I ferried the data over to Many Eyes and cooked up a couple data visualizations. They’re too much fun to keep to myself.
First, a visual version of the zipcode search, via ME’s “block histogram.” Try popping in “LA” or “Santa Monica” or 90210. The data isn’t adjusted to account for variations in population, but you can see what a cool spin on the classic search-and-return mechanism this gives you. Not only can you easily learn more about a particular locality, you can — at the same time — see where it falls on the distribution curve.
The second is a bit fancier. It’s a three-dimensional scatterplot charting foreclosure frequency on the Y axis against median household income on the X axis, with the size of the zipcode dots determined by the number of foreclosures per 1000 households (the Z-axis), a number that gives you a nice angle for comparison. Try flipping the Y and Z around, for a fun twist. It gives a quick way to explore the richest and poorest areas hit by the foreclosure boom, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun to mouse around with.
Or at least I think so. What do you think?
Last weekend I finally got around to seeing Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, a really good 70s movie starring Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro. I had a light bulb go on in the first couple scenes when I realized that one of my favorite one-hit wonders from the 2000s took their name from DeNiro’s character, the self-destructive Johnny Boy. I’m sure everybody else had this figured out by now, but it seems like a good enough excuse to put two great YouTubes together.
from Mean Streets, “Be My Baby,” by the Ronettes.
“You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve” by Johnny Boy.
Knowing this now, it’s clear JB aren’t shy about any inspiration from the Ronettes.
Just to join in the fun, here are the most common commands in the bash history on the Ubuntu Linux machine I run at home.
ben@loftbox:/home$ uname -a Linux loftbox 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Feb 12 07:42:25 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux ben@loftbox:/home$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head 163 python 152 vim 55 ls 35 cd 16 rm 14 sudo 11 curl 10 vi 7 clear 4 mount |
Basically what you’re looking at are the commands I used to write the python recipes I put up on the blog this past week.