Retro-futurism and Disney’s “Magic Highway USA” (1958)

This cartoon is a brilliant piece of retro-futurism. It’s fascinating to look back half a century at how the visionaries of the day imagined the world we live in now. Many characteristics of the imagined cars have come to pass (most involving video screens and computerized assistive devices). Superhighways that “expand the commuter’s radius” have too, but they’re not the panacea they were imagined to be. Nor are they built in minutes by the absurd devices envisioned here. Also not represented: rampant health problems resulting from living in a world where even the smallest amount of physical exercise is made obsolete.

The music is beyond awesome. The latent sexism, not so much. The idea that technological advancement equals utopia is not only incorrect, it’s become laughable.

I still want a “sun-powered electro-suspension car that needs no wheels” though.

Source: Take a guess.

Top 5 Albums of 2009: The Contenders (Revised)

Death Cab for Cutie: great, but not in contentionA little over a month ago, I prematurely posted a list of the “contenders” in my annual top 5 albums list. Premature for two reasons: 1) there were almost two months left in the year, and 2) a few albums were conspicuously absent from the list, because I had suffered a hard drive crash a month or so earlier and had not yet re-ripped some of the (few) physical CDs I purchased this year.

Now, with just over a month to go in the year (still plenty of time to regret this post, too), I present this revised list of the contenders. As before, the leaders are in bold. The new additions are in italics. I am also including a separate list of the EPs I acquired this year, all good but technically out of contention as top “albums.”

  • Air: Love 2
  • The Bird and the Bee: Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future
  • Crystal Method: Divided by Night
  • The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love
  • Dream Theater: Black Clouds & Silver Linings
  • El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez Lopez: Cryptomnesia
  • The Flaming Lips: Embryonic
  • Flight of the Conchords: I Told You I Was Freaky
  • Green Day: 21st Century Breakdown
  • Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
  • Heartless Bastards: The Mountain
  • Hypnotic Brass Ensemble: Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
  • Jet: Shaka Rock
  • Dylan Leeds: Bit by Bit
  • The Mars Volta: Octahedron
  • Phish: Joy
  • Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
  • Pomplamoose: Videosongs
  • Porcupine Tree: The Incident
  • Prince: Lotusflow3r
  • Regina Spektor: Far
  • Tortoise: Beacons of Ancestorship
  • U2: No Line on the Horizon
  • Umphrey’s McGee: Mantis
  • Various Artists: Kind of Bloop
  • Weezer: Raditude
  • Wilco: Wilco (the album)
  • Zero 7: Yeah Ghost

Strangely, I’ve been on an old-school prog rock kick for the past month or so — really, ever since The Current drove me away with its latest pledge drive (I’m a member, which makes me hate listening to the pledge drives even more) — which makes it less likely that I’ll be discovering a lot of great new music to add to this list before the end of the year. Maybe, mid-2010, I’ll finally learn to appreciate this year’s equivalent to TV on the Radio’s Dear Science.

EPs

As promised, here are some good EPs I purchased this year.

  • Bon Iver: Blood Bank
  • Death Cab for Cutie: The Open Door EP
  • Deerhunter: Rainwater Cassette Exchange

Reason enough (for me) to install Windows (and Google Chrome)

Sure, I own a real NES. Two, in fact. I also own a GBA Micro, Nintendo DS, and a Wii, with emulated versions of all of my favorite NES classics. And then, of course, there’s emulation.

But as a web developer, I just have to geek out on this: the very idea of a working NES emulator running entirely in JavaScript… wow. I’ve known about JSNES for a few months, but I hadn’t had the time and/or inclination to fire it up in Google Chrome (still Windows-only), the only browser so far that has a JavaScript interpreter efficient enough to run it at a decent frame rate.

The last time I tried running it was on the iPhone. Yes… it did run… at about 1.5 FPS. And, of course, there’s no way to access the controls. But in Chrome… it’s actually playable. A smidge slower than the real thing (which would be at 60 FPS), but as you can see, I got it up to 46 FPS. Not bad. Especially considering that I was running Windows 7 with Parallels Desktop on the Mac. Nice!

JSNES