Shale playlist

It’s springtime rainy days in London—as good a time as any for a new playlist heavy on differing versions of St. James Infirmary Blues. Introducing Shale, thirteen songs to brood and sulk by.

01. Knock Knock. The Accidental.
02. Oh My Heart. REM.
03. St. James Infirmary. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.
04. Mostly Waving. Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton.
05. St. James Infirmary. Bobby Bland.
06. Western Eyes. Portishead.
07. Life in a Glasshouse. Radiohead.
08. Going to Georgia. The Mountain Goats.
09. So. Central Rain. REM.
10. St. James Infirmary. Snooks Eaglin.
11. What’s a Girl to do. Bat for Lashes.
12. St. James Infirmary Coda. Decembler.
13. Where Did You Sleep Last Night. Nirvana.

Jed's Other Poem on the Commodore 64

Stefan Post of PostWare recently took it upon himself to port the source code for our Jed’s Other Poem music video from its original Applesoft BASIC form to Commodore BASIC. This means Jed can now run on the Commodore 64! You can read Post’s notes and download his C64 port here: http://www.postware.nl/site/Jed2.html

Mac OS X users can download Vice 2.3 which is a package of several related emulators. When downloaded, open the x64sc emulator and from the File menu select Smart attach Disk/Tape (or hit Command+O). Select Posts’s PRG file and before long you will see Jed’s blinking cursor. Adjust the emulator’s speed as necessary.

Of course you can still download the original Applesoft BASIC code and run it on an Apple 2 emulator. For OS X we recommend Virtual ][ which emulates the Apple ][, ][+, and //e. And if you happen to have an actual vintage Apple laying around you can use the audio file included in the source code package to load Jed onto it via the cassette port—just like the guys at Panic Software! See their blog post about it: An Apple //e, an iPad, and Jed.

Stewdio Grave

Grave is a rigidly geometric typeface with a spooky demeanor. We’re revealing it today, on what would be Kurt Cobain’s 45th birthday. No correlation, really. Check out the Stewdio Grave project page.

Balancing act

Some projects in our queue are massively long-termed. Some are rapid-fires. Here’s a quick link to the Bloomberg article Apple Bites Into Core of School Textbook Monopoly by Byron Brown, complete with Stewdio illustration.

Using Wikipedia during the blackout

Today Wikipedia is blacking out its entire english catalog (aside from the following links) to protest SOPA and PIPA. This is a worthy thing for Wikipedia to do, however, it can leave us information seekers in the lurch. We wrote this quick bookmarklet to unblock Wikipedia and we hope you find it useful. Just drag the following link to your browser’s bookmarks bar:

Unblock Wikipedia

Now load up any “dark” page on Wikipedia—for example, Devo’s discography—and click your new Unblock Wikipedia bookmarklet. You will see the black overlay disappear and the original content restored. (Tested in Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Firefox for OS X.)

How does it work? Wikipedia is still serving up its content, but it’s configuring those content pieces to be invisible. When you load up a topic page you’ll actually see the content payload appear for just a fraction of a second before it realizes it should be invisible. Here’s the code that the bookmarklet uses to hide the dark overlay and reveal that content payload:

javascript:(function(){$('#mw-sopaOverlay').hide();$('#mw-page-base,#mw-head-base,#content,#mw-head,#mw-panel,#footer').show();})();

If you found this post useful give us a retweet on Twitter. You can also live chat about the Wikipedia blackout in the Chatttr: Wikipedia Blackout room. Please note, the Wikipedia blackout protest is not a strike in the traditional sense. (How could it be when the majority of Wikipedia’s essence is the result of free crowd-sourced labor? Are you personally on strike right now as a Wikipedia contributor? If you are on strike, what does your strike entail?) The protest is a grab for media attention (one that we support) in order to alert and educate as many people as possible about the dangers of SOPA and PIPA before these measures can be snuck into law. Finding a way around the blackout is not “being a scab” or devaluing the protest.

Wikipedia agrees: Our purpose here isn’t to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it’s okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message. This is why they honor a page request by sending the actual content, superficially marked as “invisible” rather than send a page with no content other than the protest message. As a result of their protest’s architecture a user can disable JavaScript or merely hit Escape before the protest script loads, bypassing the blackout overlay altogether. But you have to be quick. If you forget to hit Escape, or if you’re just not fast enough, you’ll have to reload the page and try again. As that’s all a bit annoying anyway having the above bookmarklet is still helpful.

Warm regards to the following sites for linking to this blog post:
Gawker. What Even Non Nerds Need to Know About SOPA.
Print Magazine. Black Out.
Poynter Institute. How to access Wikipedia during Wednesday’s SOPA blackout.

Word-a-coaster at Selfridges

Word-a-coaster is a New Years fortune dispenser created by It’s Nice That and Stewdio for the main window display of Selfridges’ flagship store in London. It contains 30,000 unique fortunes for 2012 randomly assembled from a collection of typefaces, phrases, and thousands of choice adjectives. The printed fortunes will be randomly dispensed to Selfridges customers from a custom-built roller-coaster beginning on Thursday, January 12th. Visit the Word-a-coaster project page for more information.