Those of you who have visited google’s homepage today no doubt found their logo had a “strummable” guitar, in honor of Les Paul’s 96th birthday. Les Paul helped shape the guitar, and I have him to thank for some of the heavy sounds I really love. But he also contributed to recording and signal processing: …
Author Archives: Jonathan Sterne
Good IP Practice
Since I routinely use this space to complain about the intellectual property practices of various academic publications, I thought I would say something nice for a change. I recently signed publication agreements with Duke University Press (for a coauthored piece with Tara Rodgers that’s going in differences) and the Canadian Journal of Communication. Both had …
Rebuilding a Macbook Pro (inside a new one)
It made no sense to get a fancy new desktop and run off to California, so last summer I hotrodded my out of warrantee 2007 Macbook Pro laptop. I replaced the CD drive with a solid state hard drive for the system files (it makes the computer feel faster) and I upgraded the RAM and …
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Canada: What a nice country . . .
A few days ago, we received letters from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) giving us notice to appear at citizenship tests . . . on June 3rd! That was about two months earlier than I expected. Unfortunately/fortunately, we’ll be in Oregon as Carrie’s giving two talks at UO, so I called their toll-free number. I …
Sometimes when you think you see a zebra in an unlikely place, it’s actually a zebra
Slow blogging the week before the end of the world. Actually, we were away for a few days, plus I’m cooking up some stuff. We went down to the wine region in Central California — Paso Robles. Carrie got to visit and taste at her favorite winery — which is also beautiful — and we …
Things I Don’t Miss About the United States, Part I
Being back in the US for more than a couple days has brought into focus some things I haven’t missed since moving to Quebec in 2004. Top among them would have to be all the crazy forms of religion that freely suffuse public life here. For instance: As we have traversed various California highways over …
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Canadian Census Review
This afternoon, I filled out the Canadian census and the voluntary Canada Household Survey. I’m not sure how close the latter is to the Long Form census that Harper nixed, but it was certainly more thorough than the short form, which asked almost nothing demographically, sociologically or historically useful. The survey asked questions about religion, …