Musings on computers, music, productivity, psychology and other such things.
This weekend has been very busy with wedding preparations and socialising. However, I’ve still found time to install the latest version of WordPress on this blog, set up some backup scripts for all my home and work computers, and also to install KDE4 on my laptop.
I’m still not sold on KDE4, but I think it has potential. I may try and use it for a few days to see if it actually does what I need it to.
As promised, a few scribbles on things I’ve downloaded this week (mostly from Jamendo). All are rated on the Sound Opinions “Buy it/Burn it/Trash it” scale.
Ze first cidi by Delph’ sans les pattes – Very French, but very beautiful, this is a style of music I like a lot but didn’t own much of until recently. It’s what I refer to as “Paris Cafe Music” but what other people call Chanson. Definitely a “Buy it”.
The Dreamer’s Paradox by JT Bruce – An instrumental Progressive Rock album that makes great background music. I would never pay for music like this, but it’s totally inoffensive, and worth a listen. I think this would have to be a “Burn it” at best.
Encore des chansons (2008) by Saint-Jean – More wonderful French music. I may have to download more of this as it fits the beautiful summer weather perfectly. This would have to be a “Burn it”, because I think I’ll grow tired of it eventually.
Who is on my Sofa? by Poxfil – I don’t know how to classify this. There’s a bit of dub, a bit of pop, a lot of strangeness, and very few reference points to hang it all off. Think the Beta Band crossed with ACR in a loft in Paris. I did put this as a “Burn it”, but a week on I actually really like it.
The Asylum theory by Ghostfog – German Darkwave, which is an excellent example of German Darkwave. It totally doesn’t work at this time of year but I might go back to it in winter. Probably a “Burn it”, although I might end up trashing it at some point.
Feed the Animals by Girl Talk – Not from Jamendo, but released under Creative Commons so it belongs here. Girl Talk mix bits of existing songs into new compositions, which works a lot better than you would think. They’ve been on my radar for a while, but have just released their new album on a “pay what you want” deal, so I thought they were worth another mention. This is a total “Buy it” album, and should be played loudly at cooked meat events throughout the summer.
The new Girl Talk album is now available for somewhere between free and whatever you want to pay for it.
I like this stuff, if only because my inner music geek likes to work out where all the samples come from.
For anyone looking for something off the beaten track to listen to, http://www.jamendo.com/en/ has lots of free/creative commons music, some of which is actually rather good.
I’ve downloaded three random albums to try out, so might write more when I’ve finished listening to them.
Wilco are today’s featured article on the Wikipedia main page.
I think this is the 21st century equivalent of New Order on Top of the Pops.
As people may know, I’m a big fan of many of the so-called Web 2.0 technologies (although less of a fan of the term itself). I’ve been blogging since 2001, and like to at least create an account on anything new that comes along, just to see if it can add anything to my online life.
I’ve been exploring Twitter today, and while it seems fun, I’m not sure it does that much that existing things I use can’t do. That said, it did give me the chance to interact with two services that don’t seem that well know as yet (to the point where I have my first name as a username on both) , but which I find very useful.
Firstly there is onXiam which simply creates a profile page detailing all the various online services I use, and what my username is in case people want to add me (or in case I forget what I’ve signed up to).
And then there is Mugshot, which is a Red Hat devised social networking site which I generally use to spice together RSS feeds from LJ, Facebook, LastFM and about 20 news based websites. I don’t use it for social activities, but it does act as an intelligent feed aggregator and a way of keeping up with the news.
In theory, this blog post should aggregate to Mugshot, which should then in turn feed through to Facebook, thus informing pretty much everyone I interact with online that I have something of vague interest to say. Of course, this wouldn’t be required if I’d made any effort to add everyone I know to every site I use and not just one or two, but until I get organised I think this is the best form of “mass broadcast” available.
“The Slip” now available for free download.
I’ve not heard all of it yet, but I thought NIN fans might need this album asap.
An interesting idea, but I don’t think I’d actually want to wear one.
The video for one of the tracks from the new R.E.M album is available for free on the UK iTunes store at present. It’s been up a couple of days so could disappear at any point.
The new album sounds really good from the two tracks I’ve heard (Living Well is the Best Revenge and Supernatural Superserious).