Yearly Archives: 2015

Rolling Stone:

He had one last chance to make it real. Or at least that’s how the story goes. With 1975’s Born to Run, a 25-year-old Bruce Springsteen felt like his very life was on the line, which is probably why he drove himself — and the E Street Band — to the brink of breakdown over the tortured months of its creation.

In November 2005, a couple of hours before going onstage for a show on his solo Devils and Dust tour, Springsteen called Rolling Stone to talk about making Born to Run. On the 40th anniversary of the album’s release, here is the full transcript of that conversation, published for the first time.

I’ve never been the Springsteen fanatic my friend Sly is but I certainly appreciate just how amazing this album was, and still is, 40 years later.

Documentary Heaven:

“Some people can not believe that a magician can fool them in such a way that they can’t figure it out, but magicians can and magicians do. Swindlers do, conmen do, all the time, they’re not magicians but rather are fakes. They are lying to us, they are deceiving us. It’s okay to fool people as long as you’re doing that to teach them a lesson which will better their knowledge of how the real world works. No matter how smart or how well educated you are, you can be deceived.”

These are the words of James “The Amazing” Randi, a world-renowned enemy of deception and in this feature film we get a first hand glimpse into his legacy of exposing psychics, faith healers, and con-artists with quasi-religious fervor.

I saw this documentary when it first came out and it is a fascinating story about how James Randi (a fellow Canadian!) became “amazing”. His life story is incredible.

Drivers are steering clear of some new technology in cars, according to a survey released Tuesday, raising questions about whether car makers are moving too quickly to incorporate sophisticated technology.

This surprised me a lot when I first read it. Then I saw the numbers:

But the 2015 Drive Report from market research company JD Power found that 20 percent of new car owners had still not used approximately half of the technology features available in their vehicles after three months of purchase – the period after which drivers are less likely to adopt new features, researchers say.

Another way to say it is that 80 percent of drivers are using the technology. It makes sense that some tech systems in cars are not being used either because of the drivers age (older people may not like the technology) or because they are using a smartphone with similar technology. It seems the headline was written before the story in this case.

Marketwatch:

Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook’s decision to give a rare midquarter update on the company’s performance in a private email to CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday may have violated federal disclosure rules, lawyers said Monday.

“Obviously I can’t predict the future, but our performance so far this quarter is reassuring,” Cook wrote.

However, the private disclosure, which was tweeted by CNBC reporter Carl Quintanilla and read on air at CNBC, may have violated the Securities and Exchange Commission’s fair-disclosure regulation, white-collar lawyers told MarketWatch. The rule, deemed murky and often contested by companies, addresses how publicly traded companies disclose material nonpublic information to certain individuals or entities.

When I first heard of this email, I thought this might happen. I’m sure Cook’s intentions were pure but this is something the SEC will at least have a little chat with him about but will likely result in little more than a “Bad CEO! No cookie for you!” warning.

Chasing Delicious:

Have you ever stood in the pasta aisle at the grocery store and thought to yourself, “why are there so many damn pasta shapes?” If so, you’re not alone. But before I answer that question (hint: the answer is sauce – spoiler alert), let’s look at where pasta came from, and what makes up pasta.

It wasn’t until I started dating a native Italian that I found out not all pasta is created equally. Pastas have good reasons to be the shape they are.

Logic Pro 10.2 gives you even more power to create electronic music with Alchemy, a next-generation synthesizer. Alchemy works hand in hand with all the beat-making and music-production features introduced in Logic Pro 10.1 to create all types of music, including EDM and Hip Hop.

Lots of big changes in the new version. I haven’t seen any of it in action yet though.

The Washington Post:

There’s one food, though, that has almost nothing going for it. It occupies precious crop acreage, requires fossil fuels to be shipped, refrigerated, around the world, and adds nothing but crunch to the plate.

Salad vegetables are pitifully low in nutrition. The biggest thing wrong with salads is lettuce, and the biggest thing wrong with lettuce is that it’s a leafy-green waste of resources.

I’ve always hated most salads. I knew it was a waste of chewing. While I love a good Greek Salad, any salad that consists mainly of variations on lettuce is unpalatable to me. This article helps justify my non-eating of that useless rabbit food.

Petapixel:

Back in July, Cafe Art handed out 100 Fujifilm disposable cameras to homeless people in London, connected them to photography training with the Royal Photographic Society, and asked them to shoot photos with the theme “My London.”

80 of the cameras were returned, and over 2,500 photos were developed. 20 photos were then chosen by a selection panel consisting of representatives from Fujifilm, Amateur Photographer, The London Photo Festival, Christie’s and Homeless Link. Those photos were then presented to the public, which submitted over 2,400 votes earlier this month to select the images for an upcoming calendar.

Here are the 12 photos that made the cut.

There are some lovely photos included. My only quibble is the Cafe Art site doesn’t explain how the photos were edited and by whom.

New data published by Wristly on Tuesday shows that 55% of people currently subscribed to Apple Music will purchase the service once their trial expires. However, the conversion rate could get even better for Apple.

“A 55% conversion rate would already be a big win for Apple, but if we additionally consider that a portion of the “undecided” will also convert to a paid subscription, then the total conversion rate from trial to purchase could rise as high as 65%-70% — which would be an astounding result!,” wrote Bernard Desarnauts, co-founder of Wristly.

The report also notes that 17% of people surveyed are not interested in streaming services at all, and 11% are satisfied with a competing product, like Spotify. A total of 71% of the people survey started a free trial of Apple Music.

Apple said earlier this month that Apple Music has 11 million trial members, which isn’t a bad number for a new service, but there is quite a bit of room for growth, given the amount of iOS devices out there.

I see what you did there!

Andy Ihnatko:

Before I begin what’s going to be a multi-part, in-depth Apple Watch review, I thought it’d be valuable to write down all of the fundamental observations that I believe to be true of all wearables, as of August 2015.

In his usual long-winded but wonderfully entertaining style, Andy Ihnatko makes some great points of what smartwatches need in order for them to be successful.

Everyone posts “A week with [insert device here],” but Lee Peterson spent a week without the Apple Watch and missed it. I’ve become dependent on my watch now and wouldn’t want to go a week or a day without it.

Apple:

Apple has determined that, in a small percentage of iPhone 6 Plus devices, the iSight camera has a component that may fail causing your photos to look blurry. The affected units fall into a limited serial number range and were sold primarily between September 2014 and January 2015.

If your iPhone 6 Plus is producing blurry photos and falls into the eligible serial number range, Apple will replace your device’s iSight camera, free of charge.

If you have an iPhone 6 Plus, it doesn’t hurt to enter you serial number to check to make sure your iPhone isn’t on the list of affected phones. If it isn’t and you’re still taking blurry photos, you might want to take a photography class.

Apple Inc’s China business experienced “strong growth” in July and August, Chief Executive Tim Cook told CNBC on Monday, seeking to assuage investor concerns over the company’s prospects in a market considered critical for its growth.

IPhone activations in China had accelerated over the past few weeks and the App Store in China had its best performance of the year over the past two weeks, Cook told CNBC in an emailed response to questions about Apple’s business in China.

Considering everything that’s been happening in the stock market, it was important that Cook did this. Apple has consistently bucked the trend in selling its products and this appears to be no different.

BBC:

Some words refer to things Americans don’t seem to have: toque for a kind of fitted knitted hat; poutine, Nanaimo bars, and butter tarts for three of Canada’s great culinary gifts to the world if the world would but accept them; Caesar for a bloody Mary made with clamato juice (tomato plus clam).

These Canadianisms stand as evidence of the difference between Canadian and American culture. It is very important for Canadians to maintain that difference, even if people from Vancouver sound more like people from San Francisco than people from San Francisco sound like people from San Antonio.

Until I moved to the US, I had no idea that Butter Tarts were Canadian. If you get a chance, try them. They are delicious.

The Next Web:

The next version of iOS comes with a major new feature called ‘content blockers’ which will allow users to install apps that block trackers, advertisements and other unwanted content for the first time.

Much has been written about the impending threat of ad blocking on iOS — it’s the first time blocking mobile advertisements en masse will be possible and publishers may face an existential threat to their revenue streams.

I spent the weekend with my new found family in Ontario and surfing my usual web sites on iOS was a torturous process. Most of the time, I was on 3G or – gasp! – Edge and some popular web pages would take several minutes to load enough to be readable. It’s going to be interesting how this whole ad blocking things shakes out but, if the examples included in the story are any indication, it’s going to be great for users in some ways.

This is a bit of a wild ride. A colleague of ours died about a week ago, and this hit me right in the middle of processing all that.

Don’t read this if you are not in a solid place. But it did help me connect some dots.

Thanks to MiStand+ for sponsoring The Loop this week. MiStand+ your tablet, any angle. Innovative, multi-axis adjustable stand for use with any tablet.