Arts, Briefly : Footnotes
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The playwriting debut of the filmmaker Ethan Coen sold out before its first preview on Wednesday night Off Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Companyâs Stage 2. Featuring F. Murray Abraham, Jonathan Cake, Mark Linn-Baker and Mary McCann, the three short plays, under the title âAlmost an Evening,â open officially on Jan. 22 for a run through Feb. 10. ... Kate Winslet will replace Nicole Kidman opposite Ralph Fiennes in âThe Reader,â Variety reported. Ms. Kidman, citing her pregnancy, dropped out on Monday. The film, directed by Stephen Daldry (âThe Hours,â âBilly Elliotâ), is based on a Bernhard Schlink novel about a German teenager who falls in love with a woman who once worked in Auschwitz.
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Tycho: This podcast covers the writing process for today's comic (and a number of other tangents). Of course, it's entirely possible you had already subscribed to the feed and are currently listening to it. In which case, I apologize profusely.   (CW)TB
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A lot of things are happening in the Ruby world right now, and I wanted to highlight a few of them here:  At FOSCon this year, Amy Hoy has asked people to start writing more instructive articles about parts of Ruby or Rails so that newbies would have more "fine manuals" to read.  I've tried to do my part with two short series (so far), one on RubyInline and the other on ruby-prof.  The RubyInline articles are: RubyInline, making making things faster easier, and RubyInline: Going a bit Further.  The ruby-prof articles are:  Profile and ruby-prof, ruby-prof and call graphs, and Profile and ruby-prof:  getting specific. Another blog related event is the current blogging contest being run by Ruby Inside.  They're offering $100 US to their favorite informativ, ruby related blog post this week (Aug 14-20).  There have been a lot of interesting entries so far.  It would be pretty cool to see more contests like this crop up. We're getting close to a couple of Ruby conferences, I wrote about RubyConf*MI in my last post.  RailsConfEurope is also comingu up quickly.  If you're reasonable close to either of these, you should consider registering. O'Reilly has released the Ruby Cookbook.  It's a massive tome, chock-full of Ruby goodness.  I haven't had time to read the whole thing yet, but what I've read looks good, and I'm hearing good things from folks I trust.  Looks like another good book to add to your Ruby bookshelf. APress is getting ready to jump into Ruby and Rails in a big way.  They've got ten titles listed on their 'Rails Roadmap', and have lined up some well known Ruby names to write for them.  They're still looking for some Ruby authors according to this blog post. No Starch Press is also starting to make some Ruby related noises.  I can't be specific yet, but there's a good looking Ruby book on its way into their catalog.  If the book is half as good as what they've talked to me about, it's going to be another 'must have'. The Pragmatic Programmers also look like they're set to add some more titles to their Facets of Ruby line.  James Gray has said that he's writing a book for them that should be announced soon, Ezra Zygmuntowicz also has a book on the way, and I've recently signed a contract with them for a Ruby related book.  It looks like the PragProgs aren't going to be content to sit on their Ruby laurels. Finally, Developerdotstar is close to announcing a couple of books about programming.  Neither of these is Ruby specific, but from everything I've heard I think they're going to be solid, language independant books about becoming a better programmer.  Just the kind of thing you'd expect from these guys.
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By Frank Michael Russell, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Sep. 24--Here's a quick rundown of news you may have missed last week, culled from reports by our staff and wire services.
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Tycho: New one's up, for last week's "The Spore Cult." Feed is here. (CW)TB
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Merce Cunningham and colleagues have presented a retrospective series of evenings about his choreography called âHistory Matters.â
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Readers remark on lunar landings, the future of Apple music and journalistic integrity. Plus: Links to our most popular blog posts.
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Events in Ukraine continue to dominate the European papers. A Budapest daily takes everyone to task over the invalidated referendum on citizenship for ethnic Hungarians abroad. Two German dailies comment on Mr Schroeder's visit to China. And in France a sniffer dog forgets to sniff!
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roundup Plus: Macromedia taps into AIM...Hewlett-Packard packages services for blades...Corel updates Painter.
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Tycho:  I'm super depressed.  I thought I had invented a new word - mirthquake - and then I was going to say that you should prepare yourselves for the aforementioned, as today's comic strip was rated this or that number on the rictus scale.  I mean seriously, I've been excited all weekend.  A simple Google search put me in my place - the word is practically ubiquitous.  Expect it soon on Urban Dictionary, that mausoleum of once vibrant language.
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A listing of news events to watch for in the coming week.
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By Rick Romell, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel  May 25--Musicnotes Inc. of Madison said Thursday that it has signed licensing agreements with several thousand music publishers and administrators as part of a bid to build a Web site offering free, legal guitar notation for copyrighted songs.
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Tycho: Some of you have probably already heard it, since I put it up yesterday - but we're trying new hosting for the podcast, and I wanted to make sure everything made sense before I dropped it on the front page. The podcast is for Wednesday's strip, "The Ungift, Part Two." You can download it here, or subscribe to the feed here. The levels are a little crazy in a couple spots, for which I apologize. I think we've got those ironed out, now. (CW)TB
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roundup Plus: Holiday Inn welcomes Priceline...More colleges get cheap online music...Glitches hit some EarthLink-hosted sites...More money for fuel cells.
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Readers remark on nanotubes, counterfeiting the euro, personal homepages, and the word of the day: IRONY. Plus: Links to our most popular blog posts.
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Tycho:  Page Two of "In The Service Of The Queen" will be available shortly, as he's taking the process very seriously.  Writing ridiculous poems used to be something I did with much more frequency, though it still happens occasionally. I did, at one point, seize the entire site to host a comic musical about TRON.  The urge just rears up sometimes, swiping at the air with its claws, and I must feed it tender, rhyming couplets to bed it back down.
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Adobe late with Photoshop Elements for Mac...iStockphoto tightens model release requirements...Canon 5D Mark II rumor...PDF now an ISO standard