Stairway To Musicians’ Heaven

A fun way to do exercises for piano lovers…

Social Media and Media Convergence

From The Economist – An excellent overview of the evolution and convergence of media. As we know Social Media is in rapid expansion. The figures presented in the video are staggering! This is more than evolution or transformation, this is a total revolution in many ways and we are all active participants. Meanwhile the International Olympic Committee wants to limit Olympic events photo sharing on the Internet.  The photographer in question – Richard Giles -  wrote an extended blog post about this issue. In this era of accessible technologies supporting people-to-people communication through Social Networks this is going to be virtually impossible to control.

A Little Math from Seth Godin for a Change…

I like Seth Godin (who doesn’t?) and I read his posts everyday. Today he tickled our minds with a simple math problem. Think about it…

Several people seem confused with the mathematics involved in his post:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/not-so-good-at-math.html

Not so good at math

A simple quiz for smart marketers:

Let’s say your goal is to reduce gasoline consumption.

And let’s say there are only two kinds of cars in the world. Half of them are Suburbans that get 10 miles to the gallon and half are Priuses that get 50.

If we assume that all the cars drive the same number of miles, which would be a better investment:

.        Get new tires for all the Suburbans and increase their mileage a bit to 13 miles per gallon.

.        Replace all the Priuses and rewire them to get 100 miles per gallon (doubling their average!)

Trick question aside, the answer is the first one. (In fact, it’s more than twice as good a move).

We’re not wired for arithmetic. It confuses us, stresses us out and more often than not, is used to deceive.

—————

Actually it is very simple:

The Suburban gets 100 miles for 10 gallons

The Prius gets 100 miles for only 2 gallons

With option A the Suburban gets 130 miles for 10 gallons or 100 miles for 7.69 gallons. A saving of 2.31 gallons per 100 miles

With option B The Prius gets 100 miles for only 1 gallon. A saving of 1 gallon per 100 miles.

Option A is 2.31 times better at reducing gasoline consumption.

—————

But please don’t get a Suburban! Don’t forget this assumes 50% of the people are using Suburban and 50% are using Prius. To reduce gasoline consumption it would be immensely better to get  the Suburban drivers to switch to Prius each saving 8 gallons per 100 miles. This is 3 times better than Option A!

Live iPhone musical performance by the Mentalists

The Mentalists play Kids by MGMT on their iPhones and iPod Touches, using only apps downloaded from the Apple App Store. Apps used Ocarina, Retro Synth, miniSynth, DigiDrummer Lite.  Cool!

Cooking – according to Walkman :-)

Traditional Japanese cooking – not exactly!

more about “eyeVio“, posted with vodpod

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Angels We Have Heard On High – The vegeterian version!

OT – Queen’s guitarist Brian May to complete astrophysics doctorate

I am digressing here on this beautiful sunny Saturday morning. This post barely has to do with music and certainly not with royalty free music. Nevertheless I couldn’t resist. I have always been a fan of Queen. “We will rock you”, “We are the champions” or the “Bohemian Rhapsody” come immediately to mind but while reading the following article, it is another success from 1980 that I thought about. I wondered if Freddie Mercury was singing about Zodiacal Dust with “Another one bites the dust”? I guess not – it was just the regular earthy dirty dust. But then is all dust the same? We should ask Brian May…

Source: CBC Arts

Queen guitarist and songwriter Brian May, who gave up studying the stars to become one, will soon complete his doctorate in astrophysics.

May, 60, will submit a thesis titled Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud next week at Imperial College London.

Brian May on the left, is shown performing in Las Vegas in May 2006, is near to finishing his doctorate in astrophysics.

May joined with Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor to help form the rock group Queen in 1969.

The group became an international success with hits such as Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You and May left his doctorate unfinished.

After Mercury’s death in 1991, May recorded several solo albums, including 1998’s Another World.

He continued his interest in astrophysics and co-wrote Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, which was published last year.

May has also appeared on the BBC program The Sky at Night with Patrick Moore.

Now he’s ready to complete his doctorate.

“I didn’t want an honorary PhD. I wanted the real thing that I worked for,” he told the BBC.

To gain his doctorate he has studied the night skies at an observatory on the island of La Palma, in Spain’s Canary Islands.