my friends' blogs
- Richard Thomas — I've added 4 new (old) songs!
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- Hi friends, I've recently added four new songs to my page, relatively old for me but new for this site: Two more or less spontaneous instrumental improvisations (category: humor) and two songs, 'Bushmensong' and 'Mystery to Me'. The latter being based on an improvisation of words, guitar and Groove Agent. The lyrics seemed meaningless at first but in retrospect they reveal some meaning, at least to me. I hope you like them. read more...
- rodney — computing humor
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Quotes of the day:
Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up. ...The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?)
Now you're thinking "oh God, another Linux zealot going off about Windows"... until you see who wrote it: Bill Gates. Full story at Gizmodo Note: this is actually an old story about Windows XP. Vista, as we all know by now, is even worse. read more... - rodney — Symbian is Free Software
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- News just in is that Nokia have bought up Symbian, and intend to release it as Free Software (under the Eclipse Public License) as of today. As far as I'm aware Symbian is currently the most widely used Operating System in the world - there were 100 million phones running Symbian in 2006 - so this means that as of this moment Free Software is now more widely used than proprietary software. That's a pretty significant shift in the way of things, especially considering Symbian own 67% of the smartphone market, with Windows Mobile holding only 13%... read more...
- rodney — Real World stuff
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- Oh, forgot to mention in the last post: I've been spending some time recently talking with The Cedars, winners of the MI7 Real World contest. Looks like the plan is for me to produce the session at Real World Studios sometime next month, if all goes well. I'm very much looking forward to it, they are a great band, and I think we could create some damn fine tracks there. Let's see... read more...
- rodney — back from being a hermit
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I haven't been posting much in the past couple of months, mainly because I've been taking time to work on a new book and get some personal business stuff out of the way.
Things are looking interesting though... we've been approached about a new record deal, and asked to play some more festivals at the end of the year / beginning of next year. So the plan is to spend as much time as possible in the studio over the next few months and finally finish off all of the things that have been sitting on the hard drive for ages in a half-finished state.
So someday soon I might even get round to putting some new songs on the music player! :-)
read more... - Live Ullmann — New website
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Check out www.liveullmann.com
read more... - Live Ullmann — New album coming up soon
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- Please have a taste. read more...
- rodney — looking for the mouse
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- Very possibly the best article ever written about blogging, MMOs, and the participatory culture of the Internet: Gin, Television, and Social Surplus read more...
- rodney — April is the cruellest month
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Well, April is nearly over now, and I can't wait to see the back of it. It's been a horrible month. My home office got burgled twice - and the second time while I was still at home! I lost a ton of my gear, computers, phones, passport, credit cards etc.
Luckily all my data was backed up and I'm slowly getting back to normal, but it's taken some time. So if you've been trying to get hold of me and didn't get an answer, now you know why...
read more... - rodney — back in the studio
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Been up in Manchester at the studio last couple of days, and it's been fun so far. Managed to recreate the lost backing track of a fabulous Cassandra Complex song that we've never been able to play live before, so I think we'll be premiering that at the Bath gig on Friday. Also I think we may have finalised work on a cover song that we'll be playing there too. So far everything sounds fantastic... let's see what the gig itself brings...
read more... - Eduard — ISC Awards Grand Prize to Kazakhstan Songwriter
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US-Based 2007 International Songwriting Competition (ISC) Awards Grand Prize to Kazakhstan Songwriter For Immediate Release, April 11, 2008 -- The prestigious US-based International Songwriting Competition (ISC) is pleased to announce that Eduard Glumov from Aktobe, Kazakhstan (lyrics by Z. Mulls) is the winner of the Grand Prize in this year’s competition for his song “I’m Not Your Friend.” This is the first time that a Kazakh artist has ever won the highest honor in any major songwriting competition. This prestigious honor is a major achievement for Glumov and throws the spotlight on the Kazakhstan arts community internationally. ISC covers all genres of contemporary music, including rock, jazz, r&b/hip-hop, pop, and much more and is recognized as the pinnacle of excellence in rewarding achievements in songwriting throughout the world. Renowned for its celebrity judges, ISC received over 15,000 songs from amateur and professional songwriters from 100 countries worldwide, confirming ISC's status as the leading global songwriting event. The competition’s judges range from celebrity recording artists to presidents of major record labels, and they collectively select all ISC winners. More than $150,000 in cash and prizes is shared among the 59 winners, including an overall Grand Prize of $25,000 (US) cash, the largest cash Grand Prize of any songwriting competition in the world, and $30,000 in merchandise and services. For a complete list of 2007 ISC winners and to hear the winning songs, go to www.songwritingcompetition.com/winners.htm The song, entered in the Rock category, was written by Glumov with lyrics provided by Z. Mulls of Swarthmore, PA, USA. This collaboration – from Kazakhstan to the USA – from one side of the globe to the other – perfectly reflects ISC’s mission of creating a competition that is inclusive of songwriters worldwide. Glumov, a singer/songwriter, and Z. Mulls, a lyricist, met each other on MusesMuse.com, a songwriting resource website, and their musical collaboration produced the winning song. Candace Avery, the founder and director of ISC, states, “It is amazing the way technology and the Internet allow songwriters from different parts of the world and cultures to collaborate, culminating in international partnerships such as this. I’m very proud that “I’m Not Your Friend” is the ISC Grand Prize winner because it epitomizes the core intention of ISC, to foster songwriting around the world. Eduard Glumov is such a talented songwriter and musician, and we are thrilled to bestow our Grand Prize to a Kazakh songwriter. The judges applauded his song for its creativity and haunting melody.” Glumov, born in a small province town in the Soviet Union, started writing songs very early but became serious about songwriting at the age of 13 when his father was arrested and imprisoned for anti-Soviet activity. Later in the '80s, the era of political turmoil and unrest gave way to Perestroika, enabling Eduard to tour with his rock band. In the '90s, he began a studio career, writing, recording and producing songs and instrumental music for different artists, for theaters, and TV. He plans to release an indie CD in the near future. Z. Mulls professes that writing lyrics is not a profession, but an avocation, stemming from a lifelong love of musical theatre and songwriting in general. He posts his lyrics on various websites, looking for collaborations with artists. He calls himself "a wordsmith in search of a melody." In addition to the Grand Prize winner, many other deserving songwriters also share in the prestige and kudos of winning their respective categories in ISC 2007. With a total of 19 categories and First, Second, and Third Place in each, (along with a list of Honorable Mentions). ISC judges include: Tom Waits; Loretta Lynn; Julian Casablancas (The Strokes); Nelly Furtado; Ray Davies (The Kinks); Kenny Wayne Shepherd; Ornette Coleman; Youssou N'Dour; Sean Paul; Jerry Lee Lewis; "Weird Al" Yankovic; Black Francis (Pixies); Robert Smith (The Cure); Cassandra Wilson; David Cross; Craig Morgan; John Mayall; Joe Satriani; Toby Mac; Michael W. Smith; Chris Hillman (The Byrds); John Scofield; Hinder; Amy Ray (Indigo Girls); Cheech Marin (Cheech & Chong); Darryl McDaniels (Run DMC); Macy Gray; Peter Hook (New Order); Paulina Rubio; Tiesto; Charlie Walk (President, Epic Records); Monte Lipman (President, Universal Records); Mona Scott-Young (President, Violator Records); Cameron Strang (President, New West Records); Steve Lillywhite (Producer - credits include U2, The Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Peter Gabriel, and more); Bruce Iglauer (Founder/President, Alligator Records); Cory Robbins (Founder/President, Robbins Entertainment); Betty Pino (DJ, WAMR Miami, pioneer of Latin radio); Angel Carrasco (President, 605 Discos and Sr. VP A&R, Sony BMG Latin America); Thomas Brooman (Co-Founder/Artistic Director, WOMAD); Dan Storper (President, Putumayo World Music); Nancy Wolpert (VP Home Entertainment and Nick Records, Nickelodeon/BMG); Leib Ostrow (CEO, Music For Little People); and Paul Majors (CEO/Founder Majors Music). 2007 Sponsors include: Electro-Voice, ASCAP, Berklee College Of Music, Cakewalk, Shure, D'Addario, Thayers, Sam Ash, Hear Technologies, Disc Makers, Sonicbids, Musician's Atlas, Sibelius, Karian Studios, OnlineGigs, The Music Business Registry, Mediaguide, ArtistMonitor, Platinum Blue Music Intelligence, Alphabet Arm Design, George Stein, Esq., SongU, Shari's Berries, The Indie Venue Bible, and Taxi. ISC is now accepting entries for 2008. The 2008 competition will include many new judges and a new Music Video category. Visit www.songwritingcompetition.com for more information and an entry form. For a complete list of all ISC winners, please go to: http://www.songwritingcompetition.com/winners.htm ### Information on ISC and Winners: For more information and photos of winners, please contact Candace Avery at cavery@songwritingcompetition.com. Contact information for Grand Prize winners: Eduard Glumov: eduard_glumov@yahoo.com http://www.eduard-glumov.narod.ru Z. Mulls: z@zmulls.com http://www.zmulls.com
read more... - rodney — linux starting to hit the mainstream
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Seems like the market for low-cost Linux-based laptops is just a teeny bit bigger than was previously thought:
Since its launch in October 2007, Eee PCs have shipped more than 1 million units, as of the end of March, and Asustek is optimistic that it will reach its goal of shipping 5 million units of the low-cost notebooks in 2008, the sources said.
That's pretty staggering. I think the discussion of "Is Linux ready for the average user?" is pretty much over now. It's still not trivial to install Linux on machines that weren't originally designed for it, but actually using it is not an issue any more in the great majority of cases. read more... - rodney — The Cassandra Complex in Bath
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For any UK members in the South West, we're playing in Bath next Friday...
read more...
- Eduard — GRAND PRIZE...
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- I have just won the GRAND PRIZE at the INTERNATIONAL SONGWRITING COMPETITION! http://www.songwritingcompetition.com/winners.htm read more...
- rodney — the robots are on the way...
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I think we just took another step closer to SkyNet:
Open source 3D printer copies itself
Seriously though, this is really quite remarkable.
read more... - rodney — Climate target is not radical enough - study
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Nasa scientist warns the world must urgently make huge CO2 reductions
One of the world's leading climate scientists warns today that the EU and its international partners must urgently rethink targets for cutting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of fears they have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem.
In a startling reappraisal of the threat, James Hansen, head of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, calls for a sharp reduction in C02 limits.
More at The Guardian. It's pretty scary.
read more... - rodney — EeePC
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Spent much of the past couple of days playing with my girlfirend's new EeePC 701. It's a wonderful device, a typically solid, well thought out Asus design. And it's so small! Though admittedly that just makes it look exactly the right size when I see it perched on her lap, since she's a teeny speck herself.
The screen is super small too, but very clear, so the fact that it's only 800x480 isn't too big a problem. And you can connect an external monitor and get more screen space that way, which is nice. It's also incredibly light, which is great, since I'm getting increasingly tired of lugging huge laptops around. There's no Hard Drive, instead using a 4GB Solid State Drive, so you can shake it around as much as you want without fear of problems. Very nice in a portable device.The Xandros Linux OS is almost brilliant, though it has a couple of very annoying niggles:
- When you update the installed software, there's a bug that makes the icons for some programs disappear, thus making it near-impossible to run them
- The Xandros software repositiories don't have some very common and necessary Linux programs in them (e.g. GIMP, GnuCash), so installing them means adding new non-Asus repositories, and possibly ending up in dependency hell. Yes, this has happened to me already - I'll probably have to wipe everything I've installed and start again from scratch later this week. Ho hum.
So basically if you want to use it as a real computer, rather than just a Web and media appliance, that means installing another version of Linux. And without a DVD drive, that looks like a bit of a bitch. So I reckon getting an external USB DVD drive is the way to go, then putting Xubuntu on it. Or maybe Mandriva, since the new version of that is specifically tuned for the EeePC.
Would I recommend it? Right now, probably not for most people, unless you spend a lot of time walking, or on trains and planes, and/or are a Linux geek. However once Asus fix the OS bugs, and the whole thing generally gets a little more mature, it'll be a killer A1 purchase.There's a new version coming in a few months, the EeePC 900, with a bigger screen, bigger Solid State Drive, and also available with Windows XP. Might be a useful box for portable music applications, like DJing...
read more... - Eduard — The winners are announced
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The winners of GREAT AMERICAN SONG CONTEST are finally announced and I've won the first place in Rock category.
http://www.greatamericansong.com/winners.html
read more... - Eduard — If anybody is still interested...
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I've just received e-mail telling that my track 'I'm Not Your Friend' has been selected as the first place winner in the rock category of the 9th annual Great American Song Contest
Contest results will be posted March 28 on the Great American Song Contest website, at: http://www.greatamericansong.com/winners.html
read more... - rodney — bork bork bork
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My Swedish-English translation software just produced this wonderful exhortation:
Barley your matrix!
That's a real translation of some business term. Don't ask me what, if I knew the answer I wouldn't need translation software... I will try to keep that advice in mind for the rest of today though. read more...
