For the second Presidential Debate of the 2008 Obama / McCain presidential race, I tried an old psychedelic expirament: synchronization with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It worked better than I expected, and I microblogged the entire experience.
Try it yourself. Queue up Dark Side of the Moon and begin playing as Tom Brokaw says “Good Evening”.
Yes, this is silly.
I noticed synchronicity a few times:
I’m watching tonight’s debate on mute with Dark Side of the Moon playing. I call it Dark Side of the Town Hall. 6:41 PM Oct 7th
Started Dark Side right when Tom Brokaw said “Good Evening” – the pulse background is kinda creepy, laughing, screaming 8:03 PM Oct 7th
Awesome: They shook hands just as Breathe kicked in. IT WORKS! 8:04 PM Oct 7th
Obama answers his first question to the first stanza of Breathe ♫ “Don’t be afraid to care / look around, choose your own life” ♫ 8:05 PM Oct 7th
McCain answers his first question to creepy synth pattern of ♫ On The Run ♫ 8:08 PM Oct 7th
“Not You Tom” didn’t synch, then he pauses, then the plane wreck sound effect at the end of ♫ On The Run ♫, then McCain’s answer. 8:09 PM Oct 7th
Obama “other folks” eh? Oh all of them that come across your desk? ♫ Time ♫ is revving up – clauses end in that droning low E 8:11 PM Oct 7th
McCain on Obama’s cronies as the Gilmours’ solos in ♫ Time ♫ “Buy up these bad loans” wailing blues 8:13 PM Oct 7th
Obama rebuttal during solo refrain, nicely synced, contine through last verse of Time and end right as the song ends 8:16 PM Oct 7th
McCain rebuttal backed by Clare Torry. Oohhh “The American workers are the best in the world” 8:18 PM Oct 7th
Obama makes promises of investment (with what $?) to Ms. Finch during mellow lull in ♬ The Great Gig in the Sky ♬ 8:21 PM Oct 7th
♬ Money ♬ and McCain’s rebuttal sync perfectly. “Let’s look at our records instead of rhetoric” “Money…root of all evil today” 8:22 PM Oct 7th
As the sax solo winds gives way to guitar solo in ♬ Money ♬ McCain describes order of priorities. He’s really good at this. Gilmour I mean. … 8:25 PM Oct 7th
Obama compares himself to JFK as ♬ Money ♬ winds down. Really? /that/ JFK? Really? “Giving none away” ♬ “Giving none away” ♬ 8:28 PM Oct 7th
McCain describes eliminating government departments by specifically solving defense spending problems to ♬ Us and Them ♬ Clinton-omics? 8:30 PM Oct 7th
♪ “Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words / the poster bearer cried Listen son, said the man with the gun / There’s room for you inside” ♪ 8:32 PM Oct 7th
McCain on nailing Jello to the wall as ♪ Any Colour You Like ♪ begins (I’ll take Lime with vodka, in a dixie cup) then describes his tax plan … 8:37 PM Oct 7th
Obama describes his tax plan to ♪ Brain Damage ♪, then McCain plays up his maverick record to the same. 8:41 PM Oct 7th
♬ Eclipse ♬ ends as McCain comments on environment. Nuclear power, or something like that. 8:45 PM Oct 7th
Debate continues, The Dark Side of the Town Hall does not. ♬ “There is no dark side of the town hall really. Matter of fact its all dark.” ♬
For Halloween I borrowed some candy from a neighbor. See, I was counting on nobody liking the candy by the end of the night, so by borrowing it instead of wearing a great costume and earning it up front, I was going to make out like a bandit. I didn’t even say trick or treat to my neighbor!
“I’ll be back in costume at the end of the evening to say trick or treat and my costume will be cool enough to justify your lending to me this bunch of candy now. This is some great candy, I’ll probably come back as a fully mechanized T. Rex on stilts or something.”
I gave out the candy all night to people wearing really good costumes. I mean full face-paint zombies with fake broken-arms, and kick-ass home made impressions of characters from my favorite movies, and cute kids in animal suits, not those cheap rubber face masks and cartoon-character store-bought kits.
“Trick or treat!”
“I love your costume! You are going to love this candy!”
I was giving the stuff away by the fist full.
Then as the night wore down, I went back to the people I got the candy from, and I had on one of those crappy store-bought costumes.
“Your candy is crap and every kid knows it. Across the neighborhood, little plastic pumpkins and pillow-cases are being dumped and sorted, and the candy we gave out will be first up for trade tomorrow in the cafeteria, after apples and ziplock bags of popcorn.”
“So? Are you seriously wearing just a Scary Movie mask and the same clothes you wore all day? What happened to the dinosaur rig?”
“Yes, you see, I’ve shorted on you. I knew this candy was crap, and I got the value of seeing some amazing costumes tonight in exchange for your candy, because they didn’t think it was crap, but now the consensus is that it’s crap.”
“…”
“Trick or treat, sucker.”
Quotation collections are history’s microblogs. C.S. Lewis’s microblog of apologetic missives is very popular amongst Christians, but we’ve substituted every proper noun with Folgers Crystals, lets see if he makes more sense…
“Coffee tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys…”
“Coffee and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness.”
“Coffee dispenses with modesty.”
“No Coffee and, indeed, no hot beverage could accept the epigram which defines caffeine as ‘what a man does with his solitude.’”
“It is in the process of being worshipped that Coffee communicates Its presence to men.”
“Man’s conquest of Coffee turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Coffee’s conquest of Man.”
“Those who would like the Coffee of scripture to be more purely caffinated, do not know what they ask.”
Play along at home.
gs_linkedin
Dynamically present Linkedin.com profile hresume data
Summary
gs_linkedin is a port of Brad Touesnard’s Wordpress plugin LinkedIn hResume. It grabs the Microformated hResume block from your LinkedIn public profile page allowing you to add it to any page with a simple textpattern tag and apply your own styles.
Thanks to Mariano Absatz for help reporting bugs.
Download
gs_linkedin is released under the GPL. Download it.
Setup / Installation
Your LinkedIn profile must be configured to “Full View”. The default view is “Basic”. Once the Linkedin API is public this could change.
The hResume classes and ids are left in place and can be styled as you wish. Below is the css Brad Touesnard created for his plugin, as well as my modified version.
The plugin does not currently use any cache, fetch images, or require any non-standard php configurations.
Usage
gs_linkedin requires two attributes.
- linkedin_src – the url of your public linkedin.com profile
- name – your full name
Example
<txp:gs_linkedin linkedin_src="http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=5919187" name="Grant Stavely" />
CSS
I prefer a very basic style and hide much of the linkedin-specific content.
#overview, div.profile-header, div.actions,
#summary h2, summary h3, #additional-information,
.info, .skills {
display: none;
}
#experience ul.vcalendar li.experience {
position: relative;
}
abbr {
text-decoration: none;
border: none;
color: #999;
font-style: italic;
font-size: .9em;
}
.organization-details {
font-size: .9em;
color: #999;
}
.org summary {
font-size: 1.2em;
font-style: italic;
}
