Patrick C. Price

Sorry, this entry is only available in German.

Gestern auf dem Heimweg noch dem städtischen Empfanskomitee begegnet…

Yesterday was the Keith Jared concert in Zurich. I had gone with a friend, with whom I had gotten to know the “Köln concert” (listen) by Keith Jared.

Jared is an pianist who improvises most of his concerts. So there’s a lot of tone-finding and experimenting going on, while he’s playing. So it was unsure what to expect during the concert.

I realized, that other than with most concerts I’ve been to, you normally know one or two pieces of music atleast and can be looking forward for them to be played. Well, with improvisations that’s a different story.

The concert was in two segments of each approx. 40 minutes and each segment consisted of 4-5 individual improvisations. The concert was recored and will be made available as a CD. Of all the parts played, I personally only enjoyed 3.

Non-the-less, it was fun to see, how Jared stands up and silenty sings along as he plays. One could get the impression, in his head, he’s a a way larger concert and it’s just the piano background, that the people in the audience get to hear.

And I must point out, it’s a great thing, he doesn’t sing any louder, than he does. He might be the greatest piano player ever, but at the same time, he’s the worst singer ever.

Another strange thing was, that after leaving the stage for the 3rd or 4th time and returning for an encore, someone seemed to take a picture of him and he happened to see the red light of the camera and went off, as “this being the rudest thing in 61 years of playing the piano…” asking the person to appologize and calling him an asshole.

Well, Mr. Jared, although I have complete understanding, that you do not want your music show up on platforms like YouTube, etc. you might still want to change your approach to the problem.

You might want to come to an understanding, that people want to take home a photograph or a sound example to show their friends and tell them, how great the concert was. Not granting your paying audience this wish, is about as rude as vice-versa.

So why not take a more pragmatic approach by offering a deal to your audience à la: “Ok, I understand you want some pictures and maybe even video, sound, etc.” so here are the first three mintues of the concert, that you can film, take pictures of, share on you social networks, etc. and give them a “released to the public” concert opening. Then after 3 minutes, stopp, ask everyone to turn of their phones, cameras, etc, and shut up and enjoy the concert with no more interruptions at all. I’m sure it would be of way greater value to you, as it would virally spread your concert and be like a free preview to your CD. Think about it. Calling your audience “asshole” is not the finest thing to do.

Recently I was at the Museum für Gestaltung, where there’s a exposition of Michel Compte, who is one of the worlds most renouned photographers and a Swiss citizen.

Here are some of the pictures that where ehibited. If you have a chance to go there in person, you should do so. It’s really interesting.

About 14 yeras ago, I started my interest in the web. As i started hearing about something called “email” and started to realize the possibility to communicate electronically with one another. It was then, when I thought, wow, that’s exactly what I would love to be able doing with my relatives in the US.

Well, it’s taken a bit more than 14 years, and I still don’t have all the e-mail addresses I imagined, and many of the one’s I got, are no longer valid.

None-the-less, this week, I was contacted by at least 4 people through Facebook or have contacted them myself, which I had long believed to be “lost contacts”.

Sometimes you meet people in life, who you instantly feel connected to and yet, you know, although you’d really like to, you will most likely never see them again.

Until now, whenever I met someone like that, I would use one of my favorite sayings: “You always meet twice in life!” (which has already happened to me many times and also has served as inspiration to meet people again).

Today I think Facebook has killed this wonderful saying.

In our modern  world, we can connect and become friends on social networks such as Facebook, whenever and whereever  we may meet, be it yet so remote.

I guess, as of now, we will part by saying “see you around” rather than, “if chance will have it, we will meet again”.

Thanks Facebook for killing my favorite exit-line!

If we take this thought or development a bit further, we soon won’t be using text-based status-updates anymore, but will rather be using near real-time video updates or actual live streams instead.

Well, I guess I’ll see you around…

This is one of the reasons I like Google.

This corporate movie, as most are, is a bit glorifying, but when in comes right down to it, I think the main difference between Google and print publishers is, that Google really enables people to speak, where as print publishers believe they are entitled to speak for the people. Being among the few people with a printing press has really corrupted many publishers making them think, they are the authority, where as it is the people, and they should be voicing that.

After the Simpsons recently declared newspapers as dying, now also the Daily Show produced a movie called “End Times”.

My favorite quote of the movie: “Show me one thing in there, that happened today.”

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

I’m curious to see, how long it will take, till we don’t have any printed newspapers any more.

During the Sept. 2007 Swiss National Publisher Event in Lucerne, I placed a bet with Ursi Klein, that by 2013 we wouldn’t have any printed newspaper in Switzerland with a circulation of 20’000. Well, I guess we still got 4 years till then. Let’s see, what happens

Mad Magazine just brought a great cover. I think, this is how I would feel, if I where Barack Obama right now.

The internet contains many channels, one of them, the predominant one, being HTML -> the web.

HTML stands for Hyper-Text-Markup-Language and is the Code, with which your browser is told, how to interpret the page and make it visible. To see a websites HTML click CTRL-U in your broswer or right-click on the page you want to check and select “show page source”.

HTML is a nice language, as it is rather simple to understand.

Everything starts with a and ends with a .

The “/” marks the end to that “command” started earlier. With this, you can always see from where to where a certain command, function, script, font, etc. goes.

Here is a simple example, I hope you will be able to follow the code:

You can learn more about HTML on HTMLcode-Tutorial or on Wikipedia