The NYC subway system as a string instrument | Hacker News Reader

The NYC subway system as a string instrument

mta.me

276 pointsclofresh38 comments

This is really intense! I salute the mind level that conceives such a concept (and comes up with a cool visualization).

Another weekend, another amazing HTML5 app produced. If only I could put these minds towards making some money..

Right now, it's great to just see people expending their creative energy exploring the possibilities. They are on the leading edge giving us great ideas on how to make good use of this type of technology moving forward.

Apparently the creator, Alex Chen, works at Google Creative Labs. http://twitter.com/#!/cwiggins/status/32178375015530496

I totally agree. I was kind of hoping the authors name would be in the source (http://mta.me/js-conductor/) but no such luck. It is pretty interesting code to read through though.

This might be the author? http://blog.chenalexander.com/2011/conductor-mta/

He also makes wonderful music as http://boyinstatic.com and http://theconsulategeneral.com.

He made a neat (mildly) interactive Flash site for one of his songs years ago: http://www.bellyfull.tv – I loved the concept of doing this instead of video.

At http://www.sonatafortheunaware.com he generated music from footage taken on the Philadelphia subway.

    Registrant ID:DOT-Z21GM2Q2ZICY
    Registrant Name:A C
    Registrant Organization:
    Registrant Address:13 Charter Street
    Registrant Address2:Apt. 3Front
    Registrant Address3:
    Registrant City:Boston
    Registrant State/Province:MA
    Registrant Country/Economy:US
    Registrant Postal Code:02113
    Registrant Phone:+1.2154175999
    Registrant Phone Ext.:
    Registrant FAX:
    Registrant FAX Ext.:
    Registrant E-mail:chenalex@seas.upenn.edu

Don't you think that posting that is a bit rude? Yeah, you could look my address up in the phone book, but I generally don't go signing my posts on reddit with it.

I honestly don't. The question arose as to the identity of the author. It is only a $ whois mta.me away. I saved other the trouble, just like the sister post linked to his blog. If this offends you, I apologize.

I've honestly never understood this mindset, and this isn't the first time I've seen it. I'm willing to learn if someone is willing to explain it to me.

The information is there, but please don't share it visibly. Make people look for it!

It makes shockingly little sense.

By posting someone's e-mail address in a very public web site, you are just making it that much more accessible to spammers. It is easier to spider news.ycombinator.com than to do so for many whois repositories, some of which explicitly try to block their records from spammers.

But even more importantly, as a matter of simple politeness, it is a good rule to honor someone's choice about how much they reveal about themselves on-line, even if you possess the technical knowledge to dig deeper.

We're talking about rudeness vs. courtesy here. The world will not be a better place if your algorithm is simply to find out as much as you can about someone and then broadcast it in as public a fashion as possible without regard to the person's wishes.

Do the Whois databases actually try to block spammers? Any idea how they do it? I also wonder if all the websites out there that allow a view into the Whois data, end up caching it (e.g.: http://whois.domaintools.com/mta.me). If then Google and Coral Cache crawl these this data is permanently accessible.

It is very explicitly and obviously against their terms of service if you run a whois from a cli. The first lines returned: "You are not authorized to access or query our Whois database through the use of electronic processes that are high-volume and automated except as reasonably necessary to register domain names or modify existing registrations."

Perhaps you can argue against the effectiveness of their countermeasures, but from an legal standpoint, they do not authorize that activity. I take that to mean that they probably implement some technical countermeasures, but I cannot speak to their level of sophistication.

> It is very explicitly and obviously against their terms of service if you run a whois from a cli.

You're absolutely right, but I've yet to meet a spammer who cared about anybody's ToS and I know for a fact that they only put that up there after a bunch of spammers abused the heck out of the service.

One practical explanation is that it simply hides the information from "nefarious" elements (e.g., spam bots, etc.) that only have the sophistication to pull low hanging fruit.

Somewhat related: I loaded your profile and then to your linked site[1]. I notice that you don't post your email address anywhere I saw. Is there a reason? I bet it's listed somewhere publicly (and that I could find it if I looked hard enough), but it might feel better to have it somewhat less public.

Privacy issues are tough to compare between people. Each person has a different, often inconsistent, scale. And the metric of choice seems to be how "slimy" something feels.

[1] Also, it may be interesting to note that I actually felt a little uncomfortable even doing that, in order to look for a counterexample to reply to your post with. To me, it felt like it could appear somewhat unnecessary. If it does, I apologize. So it's obvious that my personal scale might be a bit on the touchy side.

edit, formatting

Posterous enforces http:// on related links on the left. It wasn't that I wanted to hide my e-mail, but more that I never felt like throwing it over there since it required editing the HTML.

Since you mentioned it, though, I took the opportunity to add it and do the Google Fonts changes I've been itching to try out. Thanks for the impetus.

Maybe it has something to do Bruce Schneier said once: Privacy is not about hiding stuff, but about controlling what others can see about you (I can't find the exact quote).

There is a huge difference between people who are looking for explicit information and people stumbling upon information.

I agree with you that the information is simply there. But I think context is needed for every little bit of information. And maybe posting this on a very public forum like this will loose some context.

Edit: found the article: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/04/privacy_and_co...

In case you haven't discovered it - you can click-and-drag your mouse across the lines to make sounds in addition to waiting for the lines to 'pluck' themselves

This is very cool. Here's our way of visualizing buses driving around in a novel way: http://labs.transloc.com/streetview/

Does it auto-update as the bus moves? I finally found a street-view image, but it's just sitting there.

It depends on the bus - it randomly chooses a bus and follows it. If the bus is not moving anywhere - the view doesn't move either. Try refreshing..

Loading Sound is always at 0% for me.

There's a video with working sound, here: http://blog.chenalexander.com/2011/conductor-mta/

Did you enable Flash? I had the same problem at first, but after enabling Flash it worked fine.

Ditto for me in Firefox, with adblock and flashblock running. I suspect one of the two is the culprit.

Works fine in the latest version of Opera.

Seems to use flash. Disabled flashblock in chrome, reloaded and worked fine. Not all html5…

Nice work though.

The source says that it uses HTML5 sound, but falls back to flash if it doesn't work.

Chrome loads this beautifully on Ubuntu.

It's wonderful, if a little odd, to think of the NYC subway as a plucked guitar, versus the familiar steel-on-steel "ka-chunk, ka-chunk" as the trains rumble on the (unwelded) tracks.

They should crash and shatter, like lightcycles.

They should be randomly delayed, like MTA trains.

This is amazing. Would you consider offering a tutorial to implement alternate systems(other cities)?

This is pretty creative - does anyone have suggestions on how I can convert this into a screensaver?

If you're on a Mac, you can do it with Quartz Composer: http://www.cybero.co.uk/QuartzComposerJavaScriptGuide-Eng/in...