I’m excited to see that Quake IV will have Linux support via a client patch within a few weeks (the game went gold last week).
You have to love iD Software for doing the right thing – whether it’s Linux clients or GPL’ing the source of their games when they are done with them.
Though the PC Gamer review score of 70% is a little worrisome.
But it’s Raven and iD, and I love both studios for their quality work.
Minnesota Public Radio’s music station, 89.3 The Current has launched a group blog called the Current Cue for their DJ’s.
One of the more interesting posts so far, their computer which houses all the music crashed. Apparently they rip all their CDs to PC to play on the air. Interesting story on what happened.
It makes me wonder though – if they’re playing music over the air digitally, what format are they using? It has to be a lossless codec, and there are only a few of those that would work. FLAC? SHN? Windows Media Lossless? Or do they just rip it straight to wav? I wonder what kind of RAID redundancy they have set up for something like that.
A few new releases came out this week I just had to pickup:
I enjoyed Fiona’s first release, what, 10 years ago? Her second was good, but not as good. I’m looking forward to this after all the press about Fiona over the last two years. (Free Fiona!)
I’m a huge Liz Phair – have been since Exile in Guyville and have bought everything she’s done. 2003’s self-titled album was a bit of a shock as she transitioned to pop, and Somebody’s Miracle is in the same vein. Listened to the album almost twice now, and while her last album had 3 or 4 songs that popped at me right away, so far the new one only has one, which is her current release, Everything to Me, which is catchy as hell.
Public Enemy’s newest album in quite some time, New Whirl Order, was another must have. Other than the Beastie Boys, they’re the only rap group I’ve ever really, really gotten in to. I picked up their greatest hits disc a month or so back, and that was phenomenal. I’m looking forward to New Whirl Order.
Minnesota Public Radio has launched the Minnewiki, a Wiki page dedicated to the music scene past and present in Minnesota.
Users have the opportunity to add to the articles on the Minnewiki, discussing musical acts, venues and the various musical history of Minnesota.
As with any Wiki, some pages are more comprehensive, but it’s off to a nice start.
I missed 45 minutes of Destination: Lost Wednesday night because of a major storm that ripped through the Twin Cities. (It was no Category 3 or higher storm, but it did a little damage).
The local ABC affiliate, Channel 5 KSTP, used the hurricane system and people’s fears of those storms to sensationalize the storm reporting for as long as they could, including 45 minutes of Destination: Lost and the first 20 minutes of the season premiere of Lost.
I have it on my TiVo – it’s just them repeating themselves for an hour – high winds, look at the radar, blah blah blah.
But that gets me to my point: ABC is unwilling to re-broadcast the premiere this weekend, due to cast contracts and the residual payouts. At least they’re admitting it’s about the money, so they can screw over their viewers.
Being technologically aware, I just went out and downloaded it from an HDTV rip and burned it to DVD. 42 minutes long now and no commercials – just because my local affiliate wouldn’t broadcast it.
And the television industry considers this an illegal act. An over the air television show, currently stored on my TiVo, and I can’t go download a copy and watch it on my TV. I purchased Lost Season One on DVD a week and a half ago. I’ll spend money where it’s deserved, for a quality and innovative program like Lost.
But yet, god forbid you miss one show in a series, you are not supposed to download them. What if it’s a show like Lost, Alias or 24 where you miss one episode and it can seriously set you back in understanding the plot?
The TV industry needs to get with the times then and offer a technological solution if they want to make this illegal. They should be ashamed of themselves for being the Luddites they are. Sony Betamax vs. Universal was settled over 20 years ago and yet here is history repeating itself.
I signed up for an account at Last.fm and downloaded and installed the XMMS plug-in. (I manually downloaded the plugin from their site, and then thought to check Synaptic. Sure enough, it was in the Ubuntu repository!)
It’s pretty cool so far – after listening to only two or three different artists it already had Weezer at the top of the recommended list for me, and I’m a huge Weezer fan. It will be really interesting to see it when it really kicks in with other users in addition to just figuring out my listening habits.
If you’re really curious about my musical tastes, you can see my Last.fm user page here.
I’m very intrigued by Last.fm, formerly Audioscrobbler.
Download a plugin for your favorite music player (Linux players included!) and start listening to music. From there Last.fm will start recommending music to you based on what you and others listened to that’s similar.
I can’t do justice to explaining it, so go read the FAQ. I’m very intrigued in Last.fm as a way to get introduced to more music, but not sold on using XMMS as my music player as I love Muine and am starting to test Banshee.
But I love the concept of Last.fm. Social networking tools own me.
Someday I’ll get myself to Burning Man.
For those of you going, have fun. For those of you who don’t know what it is, hit the link – it’s the ultimate experience in alternative culture. Located in Black Rock City, Nevada, one week a year the desert is turned in to the playa. Communities form, art is created and much fun is had.
Damn, this sucks: V for Vendetta has been delayed from November until March.
I recently bought the graphic novel again, which I hadn’t read in years, and it was still as powerful as ever. I highly recommend it. The movie adapation from what I’ve seen and heard isn’t 100% true to the book, but I still have high hopes.
The RIAA has ordered a take down notice to RPG Films. RPG films is a machinima site that takes animation made from video game / video game engines to make short movies and films. Some of them included music video’s – which is where the RIAA had a problem.
How is this not fair use? There is no MP3 to download . Only the most sophisticated computer user could figure out how to seperate the audio from the video, and even then the quality would be awful – with a video file you’re trying to compress it down as far as you can to save your users’ bandwidth.
If anything, this probably helps promote more music you’ve never heard, that will spark you to find out who to make it and go buy it.
The RIAA just doesn’t get it.