This would be perfect for Kraftwerk to do a cover of Lady Of Spain

The Amazing Ultra-Light V-Accordion
Features

The FR-2 V-Accordion offers the incredible digital advantages of Roland’s Physical Behavior Modeling technology, providing true tone and characteristics of the world’s best accordions, but they are significantly lighter than previous models. Perfect for students, stage keyboard players, and traveling musicians.

* Piano-type keyboard
* PBM (Physical Behavior Modeling) enables the true tone and expressive characteristics of the world’s finest accordions
* Additional sounds onboard, including piano, organ and strings
* Eight user programs for instant storage andrecall of your favorite settings
* Lightweight for young students and travelingperformers
* Pad function for triggering percussion sounds and rhythms
* Song function for “minus one” play-along fun
* Battery powered for convenience and portability

Check it out on Roland’s Website.

[via Engadget]

Oh, I so hope this is a real book. Favorite line? “When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, the daddy wants to give the mommy a special gift.”

[via Digg]

I was having dinner with a friend of mine two weeks ago, and she asked me what kind of music I listen to. In reality I listen to a lot of stuff — too diverse to lump into a single category — but for a few years now I’ve jokingly used the term Electro-Acoustic Soundscapes of the 70s. (My friend Martin coined that phrase after unsuccessfully searching through my iPod for 80s music). She had no clue what kind of music I was talking about and she pressed on, so I half-seriously elaborated with “You know, electronic boops and beeps, like outer-space stuff” even though I mostly don’t listen to that; it’s just a small sliver of my collection. And then the conversation moved on.

Little did I know that the 30 seconds I spent rattling off that term would pay me back so heartily. The next week she invited me out to a bar in San Francisco and warned me not to be late. After a quick drink, we walked down the street a few blocks until we came to an old looking wood-paneled building.

Opening the door revealed a museum-esque interior with a ticket booth, stationed by a very distinguished looking older woman. We purchased two tickets at $15 each, and we’re handed two programs labeled Audium: A Theatre In Sound-Sculptured Space. At this point my friend tells me that she remembered me talking about electronic beeps and whooshes from the previous week, found out about this place just by blind luck, and took me here sight-unseen because she thought it might “have some of that kind of beeping stuff in it”. Little did she know how right she was.

We stepped into a very serious looking room filled with sound-related sculptures as well as an array of speakers playing ambient noise: gentle water gurgling, hummingbirds zipping from one side of the room to the other. But this was just the lobby. Clearly this place was built in the 70s, and it looked like not much had changed. And after a bit of waiting around, the ambient noises got louder and the lights in the lobby grew dim, at the same time a spotlight appeared on a wood-paneled hexagonal door, where an gray-haired gentleman appeared.

He informed us and the other two dozen-or-so people in the lobby that we were about to enter the Audium, where we would be treated to a 139 speaker audio-performance-in-the-round dealing with “space and time travel”.

And it was going to be completely in the dark. For an hour.

And then we went inside. The theater itself looks as if the designers were going for 2001: A Space Odyssey but instead ended up with a set from Dr. Who. It was exactly what I was hoping for. The theater is arranged in a circle, with speakers all over the place … hanging from the ceiling, built into the walls, and under grates on the floor.

The real kicker, however, was when the lights dimmed out to complete blackness and the experience started. The soundtrack was straight out of the 1970s and didn’t sound like it had ever been updated (although I found out later that it had). But this was not music. Electronic beeps and boops were everywhere, “flying” through air, along with droning Wagnerian-style synth power chords, abruptly shifting to lo-fi organic recordings of nature, before popping back to beeps. Despite the 139 speakers in use, most of it sounded like it was just coming out of the four big speakers in each corner. It was largely rhythmless, and had no apparent story arc or narrative that was discernible from just listening. And the fidelity matched the decor. This was cliche 70s sci-fi art-school-project-on-drugs sound effects with a dash of the Space Mountain queue soundtrack thrown in. And it just kept going and going.

Half way through the performance there was a 5 minute (lighted) intermission and half the audience left, never to return. At this point I turned to my friend and asked her if she had it in her to listen to the second half, because she had no clue going into this what she was in for, isn’t into electronic music, and even I was kinda worn out by it. But she was gung-ho for soldiering through the second half … which ended up feeling like it was twice as long as the first half.

After the show was over, I was in shock. An hour in the dark listening to 1970s sound effects will do that to you. A zillion questions raced through my mind. Why have I never heard of this place? How did my friend find it? How has it not changed since the 70s? Why were they still getting crowds? I desperately wanted to talk to the gray haired guy, who turns out is the founder and sound designer, but I was worried he was going to chew my already-tired ear off with space and time travel theories.

The entire night was a completely surreal experience. If you’re into the mid century space-age movement at all, you need to go check the Audium out before it closes or gets remodeled. Even though I didn’t “get” what the soundtrack was about, and I thought it was a little long to sit through, I absolutely loved it and now I want to take all my friends. It’s definitely worth doing once for the sheer novelty effect even if you’re not into electronic music. But you better go soon … it really feels like it could close its doors for good any second.

Check out the Audium‘s website.

Audium 8 is performed every Friday and Saturday at 8:30pm. Price $15
Arrive by 8 pm since part of the fun is the lobby.
Please double-check before showing up, I really get the feeling this can change at any time.

1616 Bush St. (@ Franklin), San Francisco
Information: (415) 771-1616

*For the record, the 1970s electronic music I prefer is actual music, with percussion, melody, and harmony. The Audium had none of that. And yes, I did apologize to my friend for fibbing a little about my musical tastes.

… I’m more of an electric pickle girl, myself. How long ’til we see it on MythBusters? My money’s on Busted.

[via TUAW]

Details available on tikiweekend.com!

So, I broke down and bought an iPhone (about 20 minutes after the price drop was announced) — my first purchase of an Apple product. I didn’t even have an iPod, that’s how out if it I’ve been. Of course, now I’ve drunk the Apple Kool-Aid, and I think this phone is the greatest thing since, I dunno, the Newton. It’s fab (especially now that we’ll get some legit third-party apps soon). But this video is fabber.

Make it Happen

This has been kicking around in low-quality form for awhile, but this version was uploaded to YouTube by someone who was at the video’s original mid-’80s presentation, and he had a high-quality copy. He says:

[W]hen I saw this ‘live’ at the Mac introduction, we, as Apple Dealers, all LAUGHED OUR ASSES OFF at time marker 02:47 – when the guy carried a 60 pound LISA computer under his arm like it was a laptop!

What I really want to know is — where did this wooden sign wind up? I hope it’s still up in someone’s cube in Cupertino.

I want two.

It’s not exactly good dinner conversation, but this sure as hell ain’t dinner. Consider this your last TMI warning.

A short time ago, I’d never heard of menstrual cups, and now I’m wondering if I’d been living under a rock. I first heard about them via a post on Jonniker‘s blog, and my initial impuse was similar to hers: something along the lines of OH DEAR GOD NO.

The names of the brands don’t help any — scratch that — the names of the brands are nearly an insurmountable problem. The leader appears to be the Diva Cup. Ugh. I do not want my “sassiness” affirmed by anybody, much less by menstrual products. As if that isn’t bad enough, the Diva Cup packaging is so bad, so juvenile, that I think even Mattel’s Barbie packaging designers would reject it as being too little-girly. And — get this — it comes with a lapel pin that says “Diva.” Oh hell no.

The other contenders trying to get into your cooter are the Moon Cup and the Keeper. The whole thing smacks of hippy-dippy-ism — I’ve known and loved plenty of hippies in my life and they’ve got all kinds of great ideals, but when I think of hippies & menstruation, I think of sea sponges and cloth pads and yuck yuck yuck.

But here’s the thing — as long as you aren’t too squeamish about your own anatomy (and really now… if you are, you’ve got bigger issues to deal with than figuring out a menstruation solution), and dealing with fresh blood, this thing is the anti-yuck. It’s plastic! Long live plastics! Long live indeed — as a matter of fact, these suckers are supposed to last for up to ten years. They can be sterilized by boiling in a bit of hot water. It’s a whole lot more sanitary than having a bunch of moisture and rotting blood in your knickers. And that gross tampon string that’s always trying to get into your butt. Jeebus, they just make a hell of a lot more sense.

Pros:

• You only have to change it twice a day. On my heaviest flow day, I did have to change it every three hours, but ordinarily I would have been changing tampons every half hour. HUGE improvement.
• No odor. Turns out that the odors that develop are due to the blood oxidizing. The blood doesn’t hit the air until you’re removing the cup, so there’s no smell, whatsoever.
• It’s very comfortable — I don’t feel it at all. 90% of the time, I don’t feel tampons either, but sometimes that damned string gets tucked somewhere weird, or the tampon rides down funny.
• It’s cheaper. It cost me about $30, and I don’t have to buy any more tampons ever again. In theory.
• No more loading up my handbag with an assortment of different sizes of tampons & pantyliners. No more taking up half a bathroom cabinet with boxes of same. No more going “argh!” in the grocery store when the only way I can get light-flow tampons is by buying a massive assortment pack.
• I don’t feel like there’s a swamp in my underpants.

Cons:

• There’s a learning curve involved. Insertion, I learned, is no cake walk. Or at least it wasn’t for me — I’m a very undersized woman, and I’ve got some pretty seriously cramped quarters to contend with. I think if I had a more standard-issue anatomy, it might have been easier. Regardless, I got it figured out, and after a few days I feel pretty confident about using it.
• I hear tales of leaks. I had none, not even a little, not even when the cup was full to overflowing. That may be the plus side of my freakishly small anatomy, I don’t know. It sounds like any leaks that occur can be minimized by trying a different manufacturer or a different size, or just getting better at making sure it’s seated properly.
• Taking it out is messy, especially when it’s full. Yep, you’re going to get blood on your hands. But seriously — it washes right off, and it was just inside you. It’s not that bad.

Harry and his menstrual cup dress

If you want to learn more, here’s the Diva Cup website, the Mooncup UK website, and the US website for the Moon Cup and the Keeper. There’s a Live Journal group for menstrual cups that has a ton of useful information (though some of it gets a bit weird — people there actually wear their Diva lapel pins. And not ironically.). And then there’s this webpage at Roadside America about the Museum of Menstruation, which I’m only including because I found this awesome picture of an old guy holding up a dress made out of menstrual cups.

If nothing else, the fact that I’m willing to not only readily admit, but ANNOUNCE that I use a product with as dippy a name as the Diva Cup should tell you that it’s worth considering.

I’ve renamed mine the CooterMatic 3000.

Bloody coasters from Mumbai

The coasters were printed using a special red dye that only appears when the coaster gets wet — so when a drink’s condensation runs down the glass to the coaster, it creates a ring of blood. Yowzers!

This is a pretty good, if unsettling, use — I wonder if we’ll see this special dye used again in a more jovial form at Halloween. [via BoingBoing]

Protein folding on the PS3

Now comes another really cool advance in distributed computing: the use of video game consoles! The latest generation of video game consoles couple some pretty impressive computing power with an internet connection… that makes it a perfect resource to tap into. Stanford’s Folding@Home project has announced a client for the new Sony PlayStation 3. Since the PS3 has such great graphics capabilities, that means you can also watch Folding@Home in action in real time, and can see the 3D dimensions of the protein being folded. [via Kotaku]

After the jump, I’ll offer up my grossly oversimplified explanation of why protein folding is so important. Read on, if you’d like to know more…

Proteins are what make things happen in your body. They are the critical cogs in the machine that is your body. Proteins are created by following instructions in your DNA (read my A Molecular Happening post to learn more about how that happens). Each protein is made of a chain of molecules, called amino acids. There are 21 different amino acids. When these amino acids are linked together, the chain they form doesn’t just stay in a line — it tangles up into a sort of knot. The way it tangles & collapses into a small knot is identical each and every time — and that’s the key to how proteins work. Your body is essentially creating many identical copies of a self-assembling, 3-dimensional puzzle piece. It’s pretty fascinating, and very cool. These proteins, once they’re finished forming and collapse into their functional shape, then go and find other proteins and bits and pieces that fit, perfectly, into their shape. A dance of proteins combining and releasing like dance partners at a square dance, is how things get done in your body. (Keep in mind — this is just my grossly oversimplified version of how it works.)

Now, sometimes, things go wacky. If there’s a mutation in the DNA, for example, then the wrong amino acid might enter the chain, and the final protein won’t collapse exactly right. And then, it can be like a clumsy elephant is trying to take part in the square dance, and everything goes kerplooie. Now, things go wrong all the time, and your body is fascinatingly good at keeping the square dance running along just fine, but sometimes these sorts of things can be the root of disease. We need a much better understanding of how proteins do their thing if we’re going to get serious about treating and preventing disease — everything from cancers, Alzheimers, multiple sclerosis, diabetes; the way we treat these diseases today is going to look like leeches from the not too distant future.

With advances in genomics and genetics over the past couple of decades, there has been an explosion of data around what the sequence of amino acids are in proteins. But knowing how that particular sequence actually folds — ah, now that’s a slippery fish. These proteins, you see, are damned small. And some of them are terrifically rare. It’s not like you can catch them in action in a petri dish.

But what we can do is take what we do know about how proteins generally fold, and what we know about the sequences of proteins, to start predicting the folding patterns of proteins that are implicated in disease — and get a look at how variations in the protein might affect folding. It’s possible, but boy howdy, does it take some massive computers. Or — it takes a massive amount of small computers. And that’s where you and your little old Dell desktop come in.

If you’d like to put your computer to use, take a look at the World Community Grid (my former co-worker and Twister buddy Rich Bonneau has worked with the World Community Grid on protein folding) and Folding@Home projects.

p.s. — I’ve just created a new team on the World Community Grid for Junkyard Clubhouse — if you choose to run the World Community Grid software, please join the Junkyard Clubhouse team (you can do a search when you sign up, or click this link after registering)!

[Via John Nack]