Tag Archives: Wikipedia

Rabbit hole: the Jawb market

Previous: Rabbit hole: subway mysteries of New York

It's so easy to get caught in the current on Wikipedia. Find the thing you're looking for then... link... link... link... link... and then you're miles downstream of where you intended to be. Sometimes the results are interesting.

It all started with a friend at a Jawbreaker concert in Boston... which is a blast from the 20th century.

"One two three four / Who's punk? What's the score?"

And then we had a quick chat about the jawb market, since 90s contemporary Jawbox is back and on tour.

I listened to more Jawbreaker than Jawbox in college—which is academic anyway since both bands had already broken up. But bits of Jawbox turned into Burning Airlines, who I also liked during college.

I didn't think much then or now about where Burning Airlines got their name, but Wikipedia quite helpfully explained that they got it from a Brian Eno song, "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More", from his 1974 album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)

And here is the delta where this current left me: during the development of Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt developed a deck of cards called Oblique Strategies to help them through the creative process—ideas and prompts and dilemmas that would help them think of things from a different point of view.

Here's a website (in 90s style—hello there, beautiful) from Gregory Taylor that explains the cards: A Primer on Oblique Strategizing (1997).

I think this sort of thing—random but thoughtful prompts—is great for getting a pushstart on work of various kinds. Stuck on writing a post? Draw a card. Stuck on a piece of code? Draw a card. Stuck on some work? Draw a card. The card need not have the answer, or even be a relevant question—it really just needs to nudge your internal trajectory so that you get to a thought you wouldn't have got to otherwise—which is kind of how this whole link-following episode turned out for me this time.

And a few other links to send you off:

And finally, from minimaldesign.net, a version of Oblique Strategies on your browser.

Try faking it.

Wikipedia Coffee Break 9 Mar 2008: Transnistria

Inspiration from Strange Maps blog: 253 - Germany Surrounded by Switzerland. The town of Büsingen am Hochrhein is one of two foreign enclaves enclosed within the territory of Switzerland. (The other is Campione d’Italia, an Italian exclave in southern Switzerland.)

  1. Start, Büsingen am Hochrhein: Since the early 19th century the exclave has been separated from the rest of Germany by a narrow strip of land which is less than 1 km at its narrowest and contains the Swiss settlement of Dörflingen.
  2. Exclave. Land ceded to a foreign country... About 24 m2 of land that surrounds the Suvorov memorial near Göschenen in central Switzerland, ceded to Russia.
  3. Alexander Suvorov. Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov (Алекса́ндр Васи́льевич Суво́ров), Count Suvorov of Rymnik, Prince of Italy, Count of Holy Roman Empire (граф Рымникский, князь Италийский) (November 24, 1729 – May 18, 1800), was the fourth and last Russian Generalissimo... Suvorov founded Tiraspol, today the capital city of Transnistria, in 1792.
  4. Transnistria. Transnistria, also known as Trans-Dniester, Transdniestria and Pridnestrovie (full name: Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic), is a breakaway republic within the internationally recognised borders of Moldova.

Prior to this, I had no idea that Transnistria existed.

Wikipedia Coffee Break 28 Feb 2008: Alfred Wainwright

  1. Start. "Today's Featured Article:" M62 Motorway
  2. M62 Motorway. The M62 motorway is a west–east trans-Pennine motorway in northern England, connecting the cities of Liverpool and Hull.
  3. Pennines. Britain's first long distance footpath, the Pennine Way, runs the full length of the Pennine chain and is 429 kilometres (268 mi) long.
  4. Pennine Way. A popular guide was authored and illustrated by the writer Alfred Wainwright, whose offer to buy a pint of beer for anyone who finished the Pennine Way is estimated to have cost him up to £15,000 until his death in 1991.
  5. Alfred Wainwright. Alfred ("A.") Wainwright MBE (17 January 1907 – 20 January 1991) was a British hillwalker, guidebook author and illustrator.

Back to work...

Wikipedia Coffee Break 25 Feb 2008: Mukurthi National Park

If I'm going to take a break for five minutes at work, I figure I might as well learn something. I suppose I'd have a cigarette if I was a smoker, but I'm not, so I don't. A five minute Wikipedia cruise is more interesting to me.

  1. Start, Wikipedia Main Page: "Did you know..." ...that the railcar that ran on the Shimoga-Talaguppa railway in India had to be reversed on a turntable, so that it could start its return journey?
  2. Shimoga-Talaguppa railway: British Indian authorities started laying the metre gauge line in the year 1938 from Shimoga to Talaguppa to provide access to Jog Falls.
  3. Jog Falls: created by the Sharavathi River falling from a height of 253 meters (829 ft) is the highest plunge waterfall in India and the 7th deepest in the world. From the "Western Ghats" navigational box at the bottom of the page: Sispara Peak.
  4. Sispara Peak: Sispara Peak is in the core area of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. Location is 11°12'N, 76°28'E at the northeast end of Silent Valley National Park and the southwest end of Mukurthi National Park.
  5. Mukurthi National Park. See especially: link to photos on Flickr tagged as Mukurthi.
  6. Back to work.