Last train to Clarkesville

Could a map of London's underground tube stations be used as the basis for charting 100 years of music? Other mapping attempts can be found at Gnoosic and Liveplasma.

Now comes a music map based on a public transit map that might well be called the Rock Island Line.

Dorian Lynskey, the UK newspaper Guardian's music writer, got out some sheets of paper and a box of crayons and transposed the history of both rock and roll onto a schematic diagram of the world's most extensive underground rail line.

Using particular routes for particular music roots, Lynskey's diagram neatly maps many of music's intersecting points (for all the details firsthand, visit her Guardian Unlimited blog entry here).

Lynskey's efforts are based on the London Underground map designed by Harry Beck in 1933. Beck moved away from the strict geographical design of previous maps and based his simple layout on an electrical circuit diagram. The format has been copied by transport systems around the world.

Lynskey's full map can be found here as a .pdf, and can be purchased here for only £7.95.

How to impress your boss

A recent article in the Washington Post features a picture of U.S. National Security Agency director Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander giving President Bush a tour of the super-secret agency's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Alexander and Bush are photo-opped in front of a giant computer screen in an apparent update of the Bush background generator ploy that White House press flaks use whenever they can. Trouble is, the super-secret security screen that Alexander is revealing to Bush is available to you and I and even the dreaded Axis of Evil.

Compare for yourself. Here's a blow-up of the NSA security screen and here's a live link to the same screen, also known as the Talisker Computer Network Defense Operational Picture.

The Talsiker page is a product of Computer Network Defence Ltd. located in the UK (whose site also features some neat/geek-friendly security cartoons) using data from DShield.org and SANS, home of the Internet Storm Center.

Now, if you want to impress your boss, set the Talisker screen as your home page and tell him or her you're on the watch for those pesky cyber-terrorists. And to get your boss to buy you coffee, show him or her the level of threat your IP address poses on the net. Hey, if it's good enough for the leader of the free world ...

JD'd rather be somewhere else

Once heir and hair apparent to sit in Walter Cronkite's old chair, veteran CBS News White House correspondent (and Canadian) John Roberts is joining CNN. Roberts, 49, made his last appearance for CBS News covering American President Bush's State of the Union address on January 21st, 2006. He starts at CNN February 20th.

Roberts' departure effectively ends the chances of another Canadian bringing home the news to Americans on a major U.S. network. Toronto-born Peter Jennings held the outpost at ABC from August 9th, 1983 to April 5th, 2005 before dying from cancer.

CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves made no secret of his dislike for Roberts. The network's contined non-decision in announcing Dan Rather's successor (who left March 9th, 2005) prompted Roberts to jump to the CNN cable network. No doubt the doors at Fox weren't open too wide to accommodate a Canadian. Or was it something in Roberts' past?

What most American visitors to this site may not know is that John Roberts was once known as JD Roberts, a VJ on Much Music -- the maple-flavoured version of MTV. JD first hosted "The New Music" in 1979 on Toronto's CityTV, which with "City Limits" helped the station's owner CHUM launch Much Music in August, 1984. Joining JD on "the nation's music station" was Christopher Ward, and soon Michael Williams and Erica Ehm (pictured with JD). Viewers who remember JD's "backstage condition" interviewing pop stars of the day on the New Music show have no doubt often wondered how much CBS knew of their once-golden boy's early broadcast style.

And what of Erica Ehm? The former miss Miechowsky (we guess that's where the 'Ehm' came from) is now a mother of two, writing songs and plays while occasionally hosting radio talk shows.

You can keep up with the divine Ehm at www.ericaehm.com. Her current project is hosting Yummy Yummy, a parenting TV series that's running on the various forms of the Discovery and Life networks.

Longtime fans of Erica can leaf through a gallery of photos covering her career. We especially like this one (that's her, far left). Yummy yummy indeed!

What's up?

What's Up?

Tired of scouring the internet in search of up-to-the-second news? Dissatisfied with bland RSS feeds? Well, look no further and clock in with What's up?

A product from the mind of Jeroen Wijering, What's up? displays news feeds from around the world in balloon captions displayed against a world map -- and it's in near-real time.

Jeroen will soon be releasing What's up? as a screensaver. But even in its current form it will be sure to make your cube station a must walk-by visit on the way to the local watercooler.