Wheee!

We went over to our neighbor's house to see their new Wii video game system. Very impressive, especially on their new Sony LCD TV.

If you've been living under a rock, the Wii uses wireless handheld controllers with built-in accelerometers, allowing you to move the controller around to swing a bat or throw a ball or slay a dragon.

The Wii Sports package is the most fun. It comes with tennis, bowling, golf, and baseball. As you swing your controller, the on-screen character swings his bat.

But what bothered me was how easy it was. I've never played tennis, but managed to look quite professional on the video court. And our 8 year old neighbor boy bowled a 250 on the video bowling game. I think when we take him for his first actual bowling game he'll be a bit frustrated.
Jim on 03.30.08 @ 11:05 AM ET [link]

squeeze

My latest middle-aged eccentricity is the concertina. I picked up a used Rochelle Anglo concertina from The Button Box in central Massachusetts, which is a small shop that sells nothing but accordions and concertinas, and makes their own beautiful and expensive concertinas.

The Rochelle instrument I bought was not made by the Button Box, but was actually made in China under direction of a British company. It's considered a fairly good low-end concertina.

An Anglo style concertina is tuned a bit like a diatonic harmonic (one of my earlier eccentricities). While a single button is pressed the instrument plays different notes when it's pushed and pulled, just like a harmonica plays different notes when blown and drawn.

The other major concertina style is called "English" and didn't appeal to me. The English concertina plays the same note on the push and pull. The Anglo is favored for Irish music and has a "bouncier" sound. I'm just starting, but can play simple tunes.

Now I have to go into a far corner of the house so the kids don't complain about the noise.
Jim on 03.27.08 @ 09:42 PM ET [link]

Tufte

I took a one-day course in Boston by Edward Tufte who is something of a rock star among the analytical-data-presentation crowd. The course included his four books on graphical representation of data, which he would happily sign if you stood in line long enough. (I didn't)

There were probably about 500-600 people in the hotel ballroom today, and this was one of three days the course was offered in Boston, and one of many around the country. I'm guessing the guy pulls in several million dollars a year between the courses and his books. His hobby seems to be collecting rare books, and he displayed an original Galileo volume and a 500 year old book of Euclid's Elements.

In the course Tufte used his four books as high-resolution handouts. Very little information was projected onto the big screens in the room, which emphasized his conviction that high quality printed material is the best way to use the bandwidth between eye and brain. He would continually ask us to turn to a specific page in one of the books, and a few times stopped so that the entire room could read the section before he continued on with his lecture.

Tufte is a good speaker, though I think he's getting a little worn out. Several years ago he left his academic position at Yale and he's been touring the country giving basically the same course since then, adding new material as his new books come out.

He seems to be a big Mac fan and had nothing but vitriol for Microsoft in general and PowerPoint in particular. He even played a little video segment where he critiqued the iPhone interface, favorably for the most part. I noticed quite a few iPhones in the crowd.

His last video segment was one in which he showed the large sculptures he has designed for his estate in Connecticut. Seemed a little self-indulgent.

Jim on 03.05.08 @ 08:44 PM ET [link]

Puzzling Piano

I just stumbled on the archives of a great little NPR radio segment called The PT Piano Puzzler where a composer takes a relatively well known melody (folk, broadway, classical, etc) and rewrites it in the style of another composer. It's then played for a contestant on the phone who has to guess not only the original melody and it's composer, but the composer in whose style the piece was rewritten.
Jim on 03.02.08 @ 08:17 PM ET [link]