Brian Jones @jonesbp@sunbeam.city

Sahel Sounds will be releasing an EP each month in 2020 for a “Music from Saharan WhatsApp” series. Each one will be recorded on a cellphone and transmitted over WhatsApp to be available on Bandcamp for one month.

The first installment is from Agadez guitar band Etran de L’Aïr. https://etrandelair.bandcamp.com/

Interesting recent episode of Afropop Worldwide on the power dynamics involved in vinyl reissues of African music, particularly on the way that Western tastes shape what has been saved. https://afropop.org/audio-programs/reissued-african-vinyl-in-the-21st-century

Some of the “outsider pedal steel” referenced here is new to me and I’m interested to check it out. Drag that Ricky wasn’t named and given credit for a broader influence across the Phosphorescent output. Also, don’t sleep on Gary Newcomb playing with Lil’ Cap’n Travis. https://www.npr.org/2020/01/07/793989801/the-endless-potential-of-the-pedal-steel-guitar-an-odd-duck-by-any-measure

Looking forward to get the hardcopy of Issue #0 of new code::art journal.

PDF version is freely downloadable, and there’s some interesting stuff in here. https://code-art.xyz/about/

We brought this guy, Antonio, home yesterday to start the new year.

I love this colorful installation of felt pieces by Masako Miki. I would love to learn how to felt things; I’d like to understand how to exert a little control over the magic that goes on between the initial construction and the felted product. http://www.masakomiki.com/2019-03.html

I’m catching up with reading I’ve socked away over the last month, and this from Laura Kalbag on personal websites was very good. https://24ways.org/2019/its-time-to-get-personal/

Back on Belgium time with most of the workday ahead of me before I expect to hear from U.S. collaborators. The best.

The redesign/reboot of the Public Domain Review that I’ve been working on is finally online. https://publicdomainreview.org

In the final week of a project I’ve been working on all summer and fall. Looking forward to being able to talk about it.

20 years of late-20th century contemporary music journal Contact archived by Goldsmiths, University of London https://www.contactjournal.gold.ac.uk/

_The Public Domain Review_’s Selected Essays Volume VI is available for order today. https://publicdomainreview.org/product/the-public-domain-review-selected-essays-vol-vi

Bless the nerd who put this list of Dutch-language Smurfs DVDs and their episode titles on Wikipedia. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_dvd%27s_van_De_Smurfen

I have the Berlin/Kantstraße issue of Flaneur, but haven’t kept up with it. This new Taipei issue looks like it has some amazing colors and typography. https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/flaneur-studio-yukiko-publication-250919

Columbus Marathon starting area

🎵 Quality time with the PayPal Subscriptions API and the Friends of Dean Martinez cover of “Wichita Lineman” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf7Xhb3R83o

This episode of Upgrade with James Thomson is interesting throughout, but particularly enjoyed the final third or so where a history of DragThing provided lots of 90s Mac shareware development nostalgia (ColdWarrior, Kagi, etc.) https://www.relay.fm/upgrade/267

So stoked on Kipchoge’s sub-2-hour marathon yesterday in Vienna. Seems like it must be only a matter of time now that one will happen in proper race conditions. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/sports/eliud-kipchoge-marathon-record.html

When trying out a Chromebook a few years ago, I remember being impressed by the Markdown editor Caret, but more as a parlor trick than a reliable tool. Revisiting it at version 4.0, and it has come a very long way. https://caret.io/

Avoiding starting to work by creating unnecessary git repositories that will never be filled with documentation.