a writer's notebook
Octothorpes are hashtags and backlinks that can be used on regular websites, connecting pages across the open internet regardless of where they’re hosted.
As with all indieweb stuff, I lost the will to live less than halfway through the “getting started” section of the docs, but maybe this will be useful to someone, and maybe I should return to it after more coffee.
Technology is always changing, quickly becoming dated or even obsolete as new updates are released. Remember LaserDiscs? What about 8-tracks? For Japanese musical trio Open Reel Ensemble, analog contraptions meet digital combinations to make unique and experimental sounds. Using reel-to-reel recorders from the 1970s and 1980s as musical instruments, the stage and studio setup is just as interesting as the recordings.
Delving into a nostalgic technology, the group describes their hybrid contraptions and techniques as “magnetic folklore instruments. They tap into a sense of nostalgia for reel-to-reel, also known as magnetic tapes. They’ve described their genre as “Magnetikpunk.”
China and Japan are also building “maglev” (magnetic levitation) train lines, the article points out — though it also includes this quote from rail expert and author Christian Wolmar. “Hyperloop is unworkable. The infrastructure it needs would be amazingly expensive to build and it can’t deliver the capacity to compete with high-speed railways or airlines. “It doesn’t integrate with existing transport modes, the infrastructure required to reach city centers would cause intolerable noise and disruption. And there are doubts over energy costs, capacity and passenger safety if something goes wrong at such high speeds…. “[T]he economics of it just don’t work.”
Scientists have captured an exceptionally rare, high-resolution view of an active region that produced two powerful X-class solar flares—an achievement rarely possible from Earth. Using the GREGOR solar telescope in Tenerife, researchers recorded the explosive activity of the sun’s most energetic sunspot group of 2025, revealing twisted magnetic structures and the early stages of flare ignition with unprecedented detail. The flares triggered fast coronal mass ejections that lit up Earth’s skies with vivid auroras in the nights that followed.
morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.
My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/
Comments closedErrant Space Podcast 128: Spacing Out, Outside ColorantComments closed
The Sleeping Forecast: Hunker down and drift away
American statisticians released the results of a survey. Buried in the data is a trend with implications for trillions of dollars of spending. Researchers at the Census Bureau ask firms if they have used artificial intelligence “in producing goods and services” in the past two weeks. Recently, we estimate, the employment-weighted share of Americans using AI at work has fallen by a percentage point, and now sits at 11% (see chart 1). Adoption has fallen sharply at the largest businesses, those employing over 250 people. Three years into the generative-AI wave, demand for the technology looks surprisingly flimsy.Comments closed
UNDERTONES is a composition for percussion idiophones, electronics, and variable field recordings, originally composed for four channels. It develops in four movements and is expressed through a graphic score which provides multiple instructions to the musicians and, simultaneously, requires their input and interpretation of the given instructions, including a particular part of the instrumentation.
Very immersive and meditative.
Parts of it vaguely remind me of something Hello Spiral did at Konsztrukting Soundz the other month, but in a more delicate and mindful way. Fragile.
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Excellent record – one of his best, I think.
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Popped down to the Jazz Centre for an hour.
Missed a chunk of the Sakamoto due to two loudly wittering old biddies behind me whom I eventually had to tell to shut up. The Three Argentine Dances and the Rhapsody were very good.
Comments closedORGAN MUSICS:
Last Saturday night at the Fishermen’s Chapel in Old Leigh. Here’s the details of what was. I want to make some notes while it’s fresh in my mind.
First off, the sound art of event organiser Lev Dudas, which that night seemed strongly radiophonic to me.
Saulius Bendoraitis & Brian Webb: the former providing complex and gorgeous musique concrete soundscapes while the latter did some (slightly muffled) spoken word over the top.
And finally Sunfish Starfish, who to my mind owned the night with an absolutely IMMENSE sound reminiscent of Philip Jeck, only more expansive and meditative – like listening to eight sunken bands and orchestras. Made my fucking week, it did.
Special shout to Karina Townsend, who performed with an assemblage of plastic tubes, sound pickups, a straw and a Marigold washing up glove that I can really only describe to you as an electronic bagpipe…
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