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Welcome, Gawker readers picture-viewers. 

(Photoblog's over here, by the by.)

Things I learned today from the New York Times:

• The St. Honore Patisserie (which I can vouch for, incidentally) in my old neighborhood makes some good-looking macaroons;
• The "cloak of innocence" is emblazoned with a flaming skull made out of rhinestones;
• The world's earliest sound recording (from 1860!) has been uncovered.

Woo-hoo!, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

I made the Flickr Blog yesterday!

(The shot in particular is here, and here's the full Easter Parade set.)

From the News & Observer's David Menconi, a nice piece on what's become of The Connells, my favorite North Carolina band. 

Every summer, I feel the need to break out their music, which seems designed for blasting out open car windows.  Nowadays, I don't have a car, so headphones and my home speakers will have to do.  But it still makes me remember what it was like to have a good band from your hometown that made everyone proud.

And I walked, and I breathed, and I tried to not let it change me.
Don't it make you wonder, man?

Statue Bunny, #2, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

Nice article in the Gruniad about rickrolling -- and I especially enjoyed the interview with Astley himself at the end.

I just love that there's an Alfred Hitchcock cameo that apparently wasn't spotted until three years ago -- almost fifty years after North By Northwest's release

I'd forgotten all about the Long Duration Exposure Facility -- NASA's simple-yet-audacious project of launching a school-bus-sized thing up into orbit and just leaving it there for a while, then pulling it back in to see what hapened to the stuff that they'd festooned on its exterior.  (I followed the shuttle program fairly closely as a kid -- no surprises there -- and remember reading something about the shuttle's fixing the Solar Max mission satellite.  That shuttle flight also launched the LDEF.)

But I recently ran across this blog post featuring some gorgeous images of the LDEF that made me very happy indeed.  (Lots more images here, which is part of the official LDEF report site.)

On Saturday, I took the Transatlantic Quiz, a trivia competition among people in the UK, Canada, Norway, and all across the US.  Fun, but hard questions.

The results are in, and I'm pleased.  (That and a dollar-fifty will get me a cup of coffee, but hey, how often do you get to say you're the best in the world at anything, no matter how small or inconsequential?)

Last Thursday (as noted below) I performed in a John Cage tribute concert in Brooklyn.  Chico's posted some photos (and a video), and a music blog reviewed the show.

I'm also looking forward to participating in another Cage piece that Kurt Gottschalk (one of the tribute concert's organizers) is putting together:  "49 Waltzes for the 5 Boroughs" is a piece for performers, recording makers (recordists?  recorders?), and listeners scattered throughout New York City.  Should be fun.

Ever opened a lot of tabs in Firefox?  Of stuff you wanted to refer to later, things you wanted to blog about, things you wanted to send to other people, and the like?

Ever noticed that your computer was running a bit slow as a result, and decide to reboot?

Ever relied on the useful "restore session" feature when Firefox crashes or you kill the process?

And ever close down Firefox by mistake rather than killing it from Project Manager, which then makes the "restore session" feature unavailable?

And ever have it slowly dawn on you that all that stuff that you wanted to do nifty things with is gone?

 

 

Yeah, me too.

(I try to tell myself that it's a clean slate and liberating and all that, but I think I'm still in a minor amount of shock.)

Urn, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

At the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Given by Emperor Hirohito to the church.

This one's for Monkeytime, originally uploaded by dogwelder.

From my friend Dogwelder. Brilliant.

So, um, yeah, I live after all.  Work was nuts, then I went on vacation, then I got back and played catch-up for a while, and here we are.

B. and I went to the Bahamas for six days, which was blissful indeed.  So much of the time when we go on vacation, we do so much stuff that we return from Yurp or wherever fairly exhausted.  This time was different; we lay on the beach, we lay by the pool, we read novels, and generally lounged and loafed around.  We ate and drank and went to the zoo and an art museum and explored Nassau, and we returned completely, wonderfully relaxed.

So what am I up to now?  Well, tonight I'll be performing along with some friends in a John Cage tribute concert at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn.  (C'mon out for some atonal static-filled deliciousness, stay for the skronky noises.)