Relive The Hand of Clod. Love that Lego smile.

Insanely detailed. A sample from the 2700 word commentary on my favourite Beatles song You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away:

The form is a cross between the two-bridge pop song and the verse / refrain alternating folk ballad, with a central unit of two verses plus a refrain repeated twice, preceded by a scanty intro and followed, quite unusually, by an instrumental verse that wraps the whole thing up. The verse pairs are internally differentiated between a “primary” version and a slightly modified variant that leads more smoothly into the refrain.

UK radio commentator James Cridland makes a good point on the cost of streaming radio via 3G. The main problem with non-broadcast radio is the availability when you’re in the car:

In the US, 50% of total hours (TSL) is spent in a mobile situation, like in a car. In the UK, the figures are rather lower, but at least 25% of all total hours is spent listening to radio in a car.

Who’d be an air-traffic controller? Terrific reporting from 1996 that brings home the tension:

Then, for an instant, his mind wanders — don’t forget to pick up milk on the way home — and suddenly he looks back at the scope and it’s gone: no picture, no pattern, just a mad spray of blips (and more blips now than there were five seconds ago) heading — where? North or south? Climbing or descending? He can’t remember, and though he tries to catch up, he’s already behind, conflicts arising faster than he can react — one here, one there — jets streaking across the sky at 300 miles an hour, the controller’s stomach in knots because he knows he’s going down, nothing to do but leap from his chair, rip off his headset and yell to his supervisor, “Get me out of here — I’m losing it!”

Timeless English folk - easy to enjoy acoustic rhythms and melodies, but with sharp and biting lyrics once you start hearing, sung with a compelling worldly wisdom.

And I tried to be a girl who liked to be used

I’m too good for that, there’s a mind under this hat

Pitchfork review.

Folk musicians Martin Carthy & Tom Robinson drawing neat parallels between Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, and Public Enemy.

Nice flash app from The Guardian showing the twitterverse reactions to events as each match unfolds. I’m surprised there wasn’t a “nooooooooooooooo” trend at the howler during the England-USA game.

Lego recreations of famous photos

Interesting post about improving web typography. I got totally sidetracked when the author mentioned frequency distribution of letters in the English language:

aaaaaaaabbcccddddeeeeeeeeeeeeeffgghhhhhhiiiiiiijkllll

mmnnnnnnnooooooooppqrrrrrrsssssstttttttttuuuvwxyyz

That got me thinking about Scrabble, and how the ‘x' always seems overvalued, and the ‘v' undervalued. Compare the breakdown: 

          a b c d e  f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

English : 8 2 3 4 13 2 2 6 7 1 1 4 2 7 8 2 1 6 6 9 3 1 1 1 2 1

Scrabble: 9 2 2 4 12 2 3 2 9 1 1 4 2 6 8 2 1 6 4 6 4 2 2 1 2 1

Which means the letter distribution is pretty right - amazingly it has never been changed nor needed to be adjusted since invented by Alfred Butts in 1938, who famously did things like hand counting the letter distribution on the front page of the New York Times to work out the numbers. ‘H' is about the only really wonky one.

Next look at the points per letter:

         a b c d e  f g h i j k l m n o p q  r s t u v w x y z

Tiles  : 9 2 2 4 12 2 3 2 9 1 1 4 2 6 8 2 1  6 4 6 4 2 2 1 2 1

Points : 1 3 3 2 1  2 2 4 1 8 5 1 3 1 1 3 10 1 1 1 1 4 4 8 4 10

Again, it’s all pretty spot on - more points for the scarcer letters and those hard to use. But given their similar scarcity, ‘x' being worth 8 when ‘v' is only worth 4 seems slightly wrong. Especially when “ox” or “ex” or “xi” on a two way triple letter can be win you the game, whereas using a ‘v' is tricky and not rewarded accordingly.

(via Tim Bray)

New and interesting Comic/Graphic Art festival Graphic coming up 7-8 August at the Opera House, featuring Neil Gaiman and Kevin Smith amongst others.