Things I Like – “I Skipped February & March” April 2006 doubleplusgood edition

1. The online collection of the journal Design from 1965 through 1974.

2. Ansel Adams’ photos of Los Angeles.

In any case I was running a search in the Los Angeles Public Library’s immense online collection of photographs when something in a record caught my eye, the name “Ansel Adams.” The image attached to this record was of a parking lot with a cars jumbled together around a prominent No Parking sign. I don’t normally associate Ansel Adams with ironic snapshots of parking lots or small format urban photography at all. Like you, a photograph by Adams means the classic evocation of the great American wilderness. It never crossed my mind that he had photographed any of the cities of men, much less Los Angeles. But there it was. Maybe, I thought, there were more.

See the Flickr set for these.

3. The Day Britain Stopped. Another in a series of BBC’s “documentary futures” programs, this one covering the domino effects generated by an overloaded and overworked transportation network.

4. Igor Oleynikov’s blog. I’ve hit link fatigue with many of the illustration blogs lately – too much similar work that’s all above-average, but Olejnikov’s work continually gives my retinas a much-needed recalibration.

5. Nils Olav. A King Penguin who lives in the Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland, Nils was recently promoted to Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian Royal Guards.

AppleScript to rename files

Another AppleScript problem that was vexing me this morning. Again, you would think that this would be easy… I wanted to rename a file to append the name of the enclosing folder onto it.

For example, the file “Testfile.txt” inside a folder called “Folderstuff” would be renamed to “Folderstuff Testfile.txt.” Here’s the (drawn out) AppleScript code:

(*
Renames the selected file to append the enclosing folder name to the front.
*)
tell application "Finder"
activate
set theFile to selection as text
set TheName to name of (theFile as alias)
set SourceFolder to name of (folder of the front window as alias)
set NewName to (SourceFolder & " " & TheName)
set name of file theFile to NewName
end tell

I know it’s faster to do this with a shell script, but I want to keep it in AS for now.

Separated at Birth, Part V

Recently retired host of CBS’ In The News Christopher Glenn and sinister Eldon Tyrell from Blade Runner.

In The News was part of my daily diet of Sunday morning television throughout the 1970s. Glenn’s voice was a natural, but what I liked even more was the then-state-of-the art computer graphic globe and the greatest “bleepy bloopy” electronic theme ever. Listen to it here:

 

 In The News’ Jump The Shark entry

Play

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Disneyland In Los Angeles

A couple of weekends ago I went on Charles Phoenix’s “Disneyland Tour of Downtown.” Oddly enough, with all this food and LA history obsessions I have I’ve never been in Clifton’s Cafeteria before. I’m not sure if my eyes survived all the retinal damage.

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater was a complete riot. I seem to recall that Baker was a semi-regular feature on Hobo Kelly’s KCOP television show in the early 1970s, but I can’t quite recall for sure.

Chinatown crittersAll you can eat - 64 cents!Victor Clothing Co. muralBob Baker onion puppetsDowntown at sundownDowntown LA fountainUnion Station Harvey House Restaurant

See the complete Flickr set.

The LA Times was along on the tour too.

Time Capsule / Record Store for sale

Every so often you’ll hear a story about an old car in a barn that turns out to be some impossibly rare sports car that’s been sitting there for thirty years. What blows my mind about this story is that it isn’t a car but a entire record store that’s been sitting in Miamisburg, Ohio – closed for thirty-five years and with all of it’s contents intact.

You can imagine the excitement as we drove down Main Street in the small town south of Dayton, then there it was just like we expected it, a old building with Popular, Rock, Solid Soul, Bluegrass and Golden Oldies, written in old print on the windows, and they truly were as you can see. When we walked into the shop it was like stepping into the Time Machine, all the LPs on display were from the late ’60s and the bins were full of vintage ’50s and ’60s LPs. Sealed Beatle LPs, all the Rolling Stones, both mono and stereo, Pink Floyd on Tower, also all the Standells on Tower, the Hollies, the Animals, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, it was all there! And from the earlier era, Eddie Cochran’s “Singin To My Baby” on Liberty, the Duals “Stick Shift”, Link Wray and the Rockin Rebels on Swan. Obscure soul Lps, lots of James Brown King Lps, and hundreds of Starday and King country LPS, all sealed or mint.