Computers, but especially the internet, have changed the way that people teach themselves to play instruments. I learned to play the guitar in front of a computer.

Internet learning methods may not have changed instrument learning fundamentally: websites still teach by showing music notation, fingerings, and chord charts; but these methods are now interactive. You can learn music theory, or dive right in and explore chords, listen to them played, learn rhythm, find song chords or a tab immediately, and of course download and stream songs to learn. Put it all together, and you’ve got a cover.

The ease in finding free, quality information to help learn an instrument is astounding, but it doesn’t have to be done alone. Guitar lessons can be found on Google video and other video sites. There are countless message boards and communities of music lovers and other people enthusiastic about learning an instrument and making music.

I have learned and appreciated a lot of music through these routes, and it’s fun (and sometimes cringe-inducing) to hear others do the same and share their results.

Here are some links that have been floating around recently and that might have slipped under your radar.

• The first thing I did after reading about l’Inconnue de la Seine was check ebay for a mask. No such luck.
• Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Street Gangs (But Didn’t Know Whom to Ask)
• An analysis of the type used in Toronto subway signs by Joe Clark. Makes me want to carry my camera on the train.

I make no claim to the discovery of these links. In some cases I don’t remember where I got them, but Metafilter/Kottke/Boing Boing/Digg/All of the Above is a good guess.

This image from Wikipedia (left) shows the formation of the flag of the United Kingdom. On the right are some other early attempts at integrating the flags of England and Scotland. I found this when I was searching for why the flag is called the Union Jack (turns out there is debate, but a jack is a flag flown at the bow of a ship).

Update: More UK flag information than you can shake a stick at, with a whole section on Union Jack history.

In 2002, there was an installation called Moonlight in Austin, Texas, which rendered Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata visual and three-dimensional.

The piece allows the participant to walk among the composition, watching and listening to it unfold. Projecting the note information derived from a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) file, the participant exists simultaneously in the song’s past, present, and future.

Simple color bars and geometric shapes represent each note played, as captured from an actual human performance. Opacity represents volume and color represents harmonic grouping. Abstracted depth and realism is applied by altering the topology of the projected surface.

The image above is the entire first movement. Found here, and the official site, with more pictures, is here. A web-based, interactive flash exhibit sure would be cool.

Middle school science alert: Now, I was aware that the sun’s location changes in the sky through the year, and I have noticed the figure 8 on globes, but I never put the two together. That figure 8 is called the analemma, and it depicts one year of the sun’s movement with each exposure at the same time of day. It can be reproduced photographically with a simple but dedicated technique.

It’s remarkable that the first analemma photo project was not completed until 1979 when all of the science behind it has been around for much longer.

A performance of the Bob Dylan song “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” from 1971.

This song appears on the Byrds 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo (sans Scruggs). If you want to hear Dylan play it, check out The Basement Tapes.

The video is from a documentary called “Earl Scruggs: Family and Friends,” available through thehoffmancollection.com.

Some great optical illusions on this page. I especially like this one, and this one. It’s nice to have interactive features, a concise explanation, and credited sources.

As an early French explorer of North America, Etienne Brule’s life is the stuff of legends. A protege to Samuel de Champlain, he became so close with the Hurons and other natives that the French lost trust in him. He dealt with natives, fur traders, and the government of New France alike, and he cheated death more than once before he was tortured by his former allies. He kept no journals, and there are scattered accounts of his actions, many blended with fiction. He is considered the first “coureur de bois” (runner of the woods).

Here are some of the oldest accounts, already sensationalized in the 17th century, by Gabriel Sagard-Theodat.

Modern sensationalism abounds, with a book of “Amazing Stories” (and more) on amazon. I’d love to get my hands on a respectable biography.

The image above is a detail of the painting “Etienne Brule at the mouth of the Humber” by F. S. Chaneller.

Sometimes better than Wikipedia’s articles are Wikipedia’s obscure and hyper-complete lists. This one is for modern company name etymologies.

Gems include:

Audi — Latin translation of the German name ‘Horch’. The founder August Horch left the company after five years, but still wanted to manufacture cars. Since the original ‘Horch’ company was still there, he called his new company Audi, the Latin form of his last name. In English it is: “hark!”.

Volvo — from the Latin word volvo, which means “I roll”. It was originally a name for a ball bearing being developed by SKF.

Lycos — from Lycosidae, the family of wolf spiders.

Sprint — from its parent company, Southern Pacific Railroad INTernal Communications. At the time, pipelines and railroad tracks were the cheapest place to lay communications lines, as the right-of-way was already leased or owned.

Pixar — from pixel and the co-founder’s name, Alvy Ray Smith. According to the biography “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs” by Alan Deutschman, the ‘el’ in pixel was changed to ‘ar’ because ‘ar’ is frequently used in Spanish verbs, implying the name means “To Pix”.

There are quite a few other good ones (like Seiko), each, of course, with a link to the company wikipedia page.

It may have been the time of day or some other factor, but this list from McSweeney’s (and from the book Comedy by Numbers) struck me as absolutely hilarious.

I can’t think of anything worse than giving someone an asbestos wig as a joke.