The Null Device

2008/6/3

The New Yorker has a podcast, in which music critic Sasha Frere-Jones looks at AutoTune, the pitch-correction software used on many recordings. He does this by going into a studio with a producer and singing (not brilliantly), after which the producer demonstrates various AutoTune settings as applied to his vocal.

(via Boing Boing) audio autotune music podcast sasha frere-jones 0

Someone has posted a remixed version of an old Ladybird book about policemen, apparently from the 1950s or so, with the original text replaced with a vaguely subversive/surrealist alternative:


Note: if you're a police officer, passing this around at work may not be a good idea.

(via Boing Boing) humour ladybird mashups police retro uk 1

Apparently the UK and Scottish governments are in discussion on building a high-speed railway line from Scotland to England. The details of the line aren't known, though it'd be built to Eurostar specifications, and would connect London to Glasgow. It would take a decade or so to build, and prices costs start at £9bn.

Where in London it would terminate is another question; one high-speed rail proposal involves making Heathrow the national high-speed rail hub, with Eurostar trains and trains going elsewhere in Britain terminating there. Which sends the message that, if you're travelling from, say, Glasgow to the continent, you're going to be changing at Heathrow anyway, so you may as well fly; not exactly encouraging environmental responsibility. (Of course, this is assuming that flying remains affordable; if not, then siting a major rail terminus at a site with an airport and not much else is just stupid planning.)

(via Londonist) heathrow public transport railway scotland uk urban planning 2