More goodness via Alice:
Alice came across a picture of herself in Second Life with her avatar hanging on the wall, by a player named always_black.
She then links to a story he wrote and calls it the best piece of gaming writing I ever did read.
And I agree. Go read it.
Almost a month ago Icculus announced in his .plan file he was porting a game called Second Life to Linux, and included 3 screenshots.
Second Life is a fascinating experiement in the MMO genre. In some ways made for developers, it lets you own land, create and trade various items, all with a built in content creation tool. From the What Is page:
It is a palette for creative self-expression like nothing you have ever seen. Jump in, find a sandbox, and start building.
Icculus’ timing was amazing, as Cory Doctorow, Copyfighter, EFF employee, and sci-fi author, was having a book release party in the game.
Already available for Mac OS X and Windows, I’m anxiously awaiting the Linux port to try this out.
The trailer for V for Vendetta has been released. Available in standard Quicktime, or 1920×1280 HD in Quicktime 7 using the h.264 codec.
I had read the graphic novel over 10 years ago, and bought it and re-read it 3 weeks ago. I absolutely love the author, Alan Moore, and this particular story – though his books are 10x better than the movies that are turned out based on his source material, as he’s never been involved in any of the movies made from his books.
The imagery and themes seem very true to the comic book, though I’ve heard a few things about the movie that don’t ring true.
We’ll see – the Wachowski brothers adapted and produced it, and it stars Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman.
Via Slashdot, comes a story at the Guardian that the BBC’s free downloads of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s symphonies have become the most popular songs ever legally downloaded.
Amazing:
Final figures from the BBC show that the complete Beethoven symphonies on its website were downloaded 1.4m times, with individual works downloaded between 89,000 and 220,000 times. The works were each available for a week, in two tranches, in June.
What does this teach? Free music works. And Classical has proved it – the music industry is amazed by it. And scared:
Not everyone was so positive. Some from the recording industry expressed concerns that the BBC was setting itself up as unfair competition in the recording market.
Mr Cosgrove said: “I would be worried if the BBC repeated the experiment. We would take an extremely dim view if it happened repeatedly.” But, he added: “It’s caused quite a bit of controversy – but it has also provided us with an amazing piece of free market research. I don’t think anyone had any idea in their wildest dreams that there would be this level of response. Yes, the downloads were free – but if charged at a commercial rate that would have been a huge amount of revenue.”
You know what music industry? Screw you. This music is in the public domain, and you haven’t served your market for offering classical music downloads as the article says. Once again, your arrogance has failed you.
Kudo’s to the BBC – They put on the concert, broadcast, and distributed it. And consumers listened and downloaded and the BBC gained customers.
And I was one of them, I downlaoded it.
Two Minneapolis Star Tribune writers have a back and forth discussionon what they like and don’t like about 89.3, The Current.
It’s an above average article, and while I agree with most of it, there are parts I disagree with, though it does give you a good feeling for the station as a whole.
JB: What I want from a radio station is a DJ I could talk music with. On the Current, I could definitely talk music with Mary Lucia and Bill DeVille — my two favorites. I loved the other day when Mary said, “I’m still loving this, and I’ll slap anyone who says otherwise. Here’s the Redwalls.” And I could talk with Mark Wheat and Jill Riley, who I think is really improving. But for Thorn [DJ Skroch], I think our conversation would have to be via e-mail.
CR: Ultimately, I don’t care what their personalities are; I care about what they play. Bill DeVille definitely gets my vote in that department. I did a road trip on July 4th and didn’t once put in a CD thanks to him. He played sets such as Boomtown Rats with Betty Serveert with Gram Parsons with one of those especially weird new White Stripes songs.
Bob Mould recently did an interview on 89.3 The Currentand after listening to the interview on-line (I only caught part of it in the car) he mentioned he had a new album coming out.
Sure enough, Googling for Bob Mould turns up his weblog with a big link to pre-order his new CD. The album comes out July 26 unless you pre-orded from Yep Rock Records in time, which I did. It shipped last Tuesday, and I received it yesterday.
The album is great. Vintage Bob Mould, he returns to his 90’s sound with guitar driven sound, and hints of his recent foray into electronica with his last album Modulate. A good example of where the guitar + minor bits of electronica is (Shine Your) Light Love Hope, which mixes both sounds very well, as does I am Vision I am Sound. The next track on the album, Paralyzed is a great example of the power guitar that made Sugar and Bob Mould’s albums so well done. Best Thing, Underneath Days and Missing You are a fewyou have to check out for the signature Bob Mould guitar sound.
A few ballads are even thrown in to mix it up – High Fidelity slows it down, while Gauze of Friendship is well done on the acoustic guitar.
I purchased the 2 disc special edition, and am happy and sad at the same time. Happy that I got the 2nd (bonus) 9 track CD, with 2 remixes of (Shine Your) Light Love Hope and a remix of Paralyzed. The 2 disc set comes in a box, with extra artwork and the second disc (photo below).
I’m disappointed in that both discs are enclosed in a paper case, rather than a nicer jewel case. The artwork, while well done, as loose sheets that are jewel case sized, will probably never see the light of day outside the special edition box. I would have preferred a slightly larger box with both discs in a hard jewel case, which would make using in the car and treating right much easier.
The price for the pre-order was right – at first I thought $25 + $4 shipping was a bit high, but looking at Amazon’s pre-order price with a $29 retail and everyday price of $26 I actually got a deal. The music is vintage Bob Mould, well done, and well worth the money spent.
Technorati tag: bob mould
I have never read a Harry Potter book. As avid a reader as I am, once something hits the mainstream, especially so ferociously, I just have to be different and not do it. (I’ve never seen Titanic either).
With that said, I took Alex this morning to Target post-haste and we purchased Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
A number of years back when Harry Potter was just starting to become popular, my wife bought a couple of the books and read them to decide if we could read them aloud to Alex or let him read them when he was older. She loved them, and he has loved them for the past couple of years.
Which led to being a good little American consumer this morning. I figure I won’t see Alex for a day or two until he’s done reading it.
I’m back from California, and getting caught up on misc. stuff.
I’ve updated the theme to K2 Alpha 3, added a new Flickr badge, and still don’t care that it doesn’t work in Internet Explorer. Go get Firefox already.
I mentioned the Burn It Club a while back. The summer Burn It session is now on if any of my three readers want to do it with me. I have to say I’m struggling with the theme, but I really want to participate.
I have a ton of stuff do this weekend, more as my muse wills later.
On the Fourth of July, 89.3 The Current did a special, 50 Songs for 50 States, from 2pm until midnight.
Our timing driving back from Milwaukee was perfect, as the Rochester signal came in about quarter to 2, and we listened to it for the last few hours of the drive home, and I listened to it over the web for most of the night after that.
What a great mix of music – picking anywhere from 1-3 songs per state, either with the state’s name in the song / title, or an artist known for that state (like the Ramones for New York). It wasn’t just one song – it was over 150 songs, including some deep dives into specific cities in the U.S., including Athens, GA, Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, New York and Detroit.
You can see and listen to the entire playlist (by hour) here.
William Gibson is another one who gets the remix culture.
In an article on Wired, Gibson writes of some of his early influences, including William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, one of the first authors to use sampling in literature.
Later, attempting to understand this impact, I discovered that Burroughs had incorporated snippets of other writers’ texts into his work, an action I knew my teachers would have called plagiarism. Some of these borrowings had been lifted from American science fiction of the ’40s and ’50s, adding a secondary shock of recognition for me.
By then I knew that this “cut-up method,” as Burroughs called it, was central to whatever it was he thought he was doing, and that he quite literally believed it to be akin to magic. When he wrote about his process, the hairs on my neck stood up, so palpable was the excitement. Experiments with audiotape inspired him in a similar vein: “God’s little toy,” his friend Brion Gysin called their reel-to-reel machine.
It will be interesting to see if Mr. Gibson follows up on what he says he believes here, and introduces any type of Creative Commons licenses on his books or how it affects him going forward.
