Masters of Doom, Musicophilia and ...

I have to thank dino for recommending the book Masters of Doom for my personal challenge.
In the late 90s I was invested in Eidos (ticker: EIDSY) for a while and it was quite interesting for me to re-read the history of Ion Storm and Daikatana in some detail.
But the book mostly follows id Software and in particular John Carmack and John Romero, the creators of Doom and several other games. However, reading about that time, when PCs were still young and the internet just getting started, always fills me with melancholy, because it reminds me of those years when I still thought computers and the internet would be a great step forward for mankind and make the world a much better place for everybody.
Obviously I was quite wrong about mankind.

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During the holidays I also read Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks, which I received as a Christmas gift.
It begins with the incredible story of Tony Cicoria, who was struck by lightning and subsequently developed a case of musicophilia - the urge to hear and play music. He taught himself piano at the age of 42 and became a composer to translate his musical visions into real music.
Besides several other amazing case studies, the book also contains a chapter about Williams syndrome, a genetic anomaly responsible for significant changes to brain development. While people with this syndrome have IQs significantly below average, their verbal abilities are above average (some speak several languages) and they are extraordinarily sociable and inquisitive. Sacks describes them as the "hypermusical species" due to their talent and love for music and dance.

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Btw a little challenge from another book I received as a Christmas gift.
How would you translate the following line (into plain English)?
"My West Coast shorty push the Chrome 740".

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added later:



My 1st iPhone app, which I made using PhoneGap. At this point it is just a simple modification of the Hello World example provided with the software installation. But it already has a push button which displays colored text. Now I need to brush up my JScript skills to do a little bit more with it.

2 comments:

Lee said...

>> My West Coast shorty push the Chrome 740".

My guess is the Chrome 740 is a BMW 740. I suspect the West Coast shorty is one of his West Coast girlfriends. I assume push means drive, but of course I could be wrong about all of it.

Btw, I sat next to Oliver Sacks on a plane for 4 or 5 hours once about 20 years ago. We talked most of the time and he was kind of an interesting guy.

wolfgang said...

Your translation is correct.
The example is from the book Understand Rap.

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