Radio Lab podcast

Science meets theater meets fun. How do they make it so fun?

http://www.radiolab.org/ or on iTunes. From WNYC – NY Public Radio.

Jonathan Coulton

I went to my first Jonathan Coulton concert last night.

Jonathan Coulton is a folk/pop songwriter/singer for the geek crowd with a weird twist: he’s talented. He’s like Paul Simon channeling Weird Al Yankovic, but he can control the throttle.

I heard my first Coulton song a couple years ago when a co-worker forwarded a link to Code Monkey. I loved it, but didn’t pursue it any further. Then my son started forwarding me links to more songs: Skullcrusher Mountain, Re Your Brains, and others. They were very funny, geek-friendly songs, and I loved them. So when I (finally) got an iPod, I subscribed to his Thing A Week podcast.

That’s when I discovered everything I knew was wrong.

Thing A Week is a collection of 52 songs, one a week, for a year. That concept alone is impressive. And of course, with that output rate, some songs were Not As Worthy as other songs; but surprisingly fewer than I expected.

The duds were the unfunny songs. Boring. I deleted most of them, but kept a few around that I kinda liked. I’d listen to them when I felt burned out listening to the funny songs. Then I found myself listening to those unfunny songs more. Then I found myself re-downloading the ones I deleted. Now I listen as much or more to these songs as the funny ones.

Thats why I was especially thankful at the concert. At one point, Coulton asked the audience for requests. The din was explosive. I could barely make out the titles being shouted, but those I could were the classic, funny ones. Then the room became totally silent as Coulton was trying to decide. And a lone voice said: “I’m Your Moon”. “Yes!” I said.

I’m Your Moon is a quiet love song with one lover encouraging the other who has been deeply rejected by the world. It’s one of my favorite Jo Co songs. The fact that it’s sung by Charon to it’s moon, Pluto, who was declared no longer to be a planet by the International Astronomical Union, doesn’t reduce the pathos for me.

Coulton chose that song. (“Because it’ll be a challenge,” he said. I’m not totally sure what he meant by that.)

I really enjoyed hearing Coulton’s voice and acoustic guitar, all at nicely reasonable amplification. (No earplugs needed! What’s up with all the other concerts?) On one song he shunned his guitar for his new toy, zendrum; very cool!

BTW did I mention all the songs from Thing A Week are available for free download from iTunes?

I encourage you to support Coulton by purchasing bananas, monkeys, or robots on his home page, http://www.jonathancoulton.com/.

Grammar Girl podcast

One of my favorite podcasts is Grammar Girl.

When I write software, I’m used to following rules that are way more restrictive and unbending than mere grammar. But (almost always) software rules are consistent and make sense.

Not so with grammar. And since, for some reason, my customers are uninterested in reading my code, I have to resort to prose when I communicate with them. (Go figure.) And then I run into things like the following.

When a comma or period follows a quote (i.e., is not actually part of the quoted text), you move it inside the quote. However, when the comma or period follows a closing parenthesis, it is left where it is.

I would have at least expected the opposite. Since a quotation is trying to accurately represent what someone else said, punctuation and all, it seems wholly incorrect to change it.

(Thankfully, though inconsistently, the same is not true for an exclamation point or question mark following a quote; they remain with the part of the sentence – quoted text or not- that they belong with.)

In software you can’t move things inside or outside quotes just because “it looks better”. (See there! Without thinking I just put the period outside the quote.)

But I like Grammar Girl’s outlook on most issues. Plus her warm, helpful tone eases the stress during my commute. She’s just fun. And Squiggley and Aardvark rock!