skynoise

Mp3 blogs are becoming one of my favourite ways to find new music. Wander/wade through the ginormous collection of them, subscribe to the one’s you like (via RSS), and watch the daily flow of great mp3s roll in.

Such as these Slayer covers via Cake and Polka:

Commodore 64 Sid Chip Tune Slayer!
Lunatic – Seasons In The Abyss (mp3)

NES Chip Tune Slayer!
lonytynch – Angel Of Death (mp3)

The demented acapella version of Slayer’s Angel of Death is well worth a listen too.

And shout-out for this post goes to Emile Zile, who suffers that most awkward of birth-dates – January 1st~! Watch Emile’s videos and drop him a line b4 the clock strikes~! ( Look out for ‘Larry Edmur’s Suit’, where Emile hilariously out-gestured the goofy host on the national television gameshow ‘The New Price is Right’.) Here’s hoping NYE 2005 is a rockin one 4u in Europe, EZ~!

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tags: slayer, c64, nes, mp3blogs, mp3

After a weekend of race-related clashes on Cronulla beach in Sydney, Australian Prime Minister weighed in with his important contribution : “Keep up the Christmas decorations,” declaring a need to keep our countries shopping malls covered with Christian tinsel. In all of the media coverage surrounding the sad events, a debate about what it means to be a ‘real Australian’ has emerged, generally referring to caucasians or Mediterraneans born here or there, and it seems striking that no-one seems to have considered looking at the Aboriginal perspective on this at the same time. The Queen of the empire will be out to Oz in March for the Commonwealth Games, so no doubt there will be plenty more letters to editors and talkback radio complaints about people using terrorist technologies like SMS and email to gather at this time. One site ( www.blackgst.com) already suggests a few changes to the Goods & Services Tax ( Genocide to end, Sovereignty acknowledged, Treaty to be made) and promises an Indigenous Gathering and Convergence of Supporters at Melbourne, March, 2006.

tags: cronulla, commonwealth, australia

Sometimes the human population is usefully imagined as a sea of nipples, seamlessly joined, a tactile surface area of however many thousands of square kilometres. Or a trampoline perhaps? Point being, there’s a lot of us, and nipples seem to have this inherent goodness about them. Cruelly we are limited to just two in this lifetime, but thankfully the transhumanists amongst us are busy trying to rectify that. As such, sites like www.humanupgrades.com are a good option for a third ( or fourth ) nipple, while ‘trad’ body mod sites like bmezine.com are good for replacing your fingernails. And some people think brass knuckles embedded under your chest skin are passe already.

From a media perspective, another body part worth shoving under the anatomical spotlight is the tail, specifically the “long tail”, which refers to the way in which our culture and economy is beginning to focus less on a small number of giant hits, and more on a giant number of small hits ( the long tail). Chris Anderson who coined the phrase, has of course a site and blog on the topic. Also of note, Tim Berners Lee now has a posse. Or a blog in fact, which has just started up. Given it’s by the man founded the world wide web, it’s already saturated with comments from the fawning, appreciative masses, but will no doubt prove an interesting read over times to come.

While not all science fiction authors are religious, there’s arguably some merit in the idea that all religious authors are ultimately involved with science fiction. Moving right along – if you had said to the high school companions of Ron Hubbard back in the day, that he would become a science fiction author and later found a religion ( scientology ) based on interplanetary beings, which people would take seriously ( mainly Tom Cruise ), they’d have understandably scoffed at the idea. But how would they have reacted to Ron’s music? We will never know, but can remain thankful that some of Ron’s rock genius has been preserved online for future generations. Religion starters tend to be a multi-faceted bunch, and so of course, there’s more : Ron was also an apparent pioneering user of the Australian made
Fairlight CVI video synthesiser. Let us pray for Tom’s album.

After another year spent spinning around the sun, it’d seem we’re still keen to get out of this place. With 5 billion years of sunlight still up our sleeve, people are already tripping over themselves to pay for space travel. Despite an abundance of crazy events on the earth’s surface, and a bubbling population of homo sapiens, the skies and beyond still mesmerise us in unspeakable ways. At least if you’ve just finished watching the BBC series ‘The Planets’.

While yes, Virgin Galactic has raised 100 million in deposits from people wanting suborbital rides, and 34,000 have registered to fly aboard their rocket planes, the SETI project remains a more modest way to stay involved with space exploration. The Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence has used the spare processor time of gazillions of home computers for years now, to share the computing load of analysing potential signals from space. While they haven’t had any significant results yet, it’s a significant technical achievement whose merits are being mirrored in many other online projects. Noteworthy on the same tip – www.worldcommunitygrid.org – who aim to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity.

Almost there. Those looking for annual-lists will find them covered sufficiently in the Fimoculus ‘list of lists’. Until we cross this next line in the sand, my random scatter rifle stays trained on the usual internet and media-tech suspects just a little while longer.

Alongside books about the Suicide Girls, and a DIY guide to everyday chemistry, renegade publishers FeralHouse Press recently released ‘The VJ Book: Inspirations and Practical Advice for Live Visuals Performance’, by Paul Spinrad. Featuring a stack of interviews with long-time and newbie VJs, it’s filled with reference material for would-be Visual Jockeys, and a companion DVD provides examples of good VJ work as well as sample clips and software to play with. Test Drive Below.

Eep~! Stupendous time-annihilator that it is, the 3D topographic globe exploring tool ‘Google Earth’ is finally available for mac download ( via uneasysilence). Just in time for capturing some fly-thrus I can use VJing at an outdoor forest party near Maleny, Queensland tonight.

Noticed via Comic Lifestyle, that Tim Danko ( a fine, fine Melbourne comic maker now in New Zealand ) is publishing his comics via ebay at 2.99$US a pop plus postage. His gorgeous comics are meticulously crafted and deserve a wider audience, hopefully this helps.

Micro-payment systems have long been sought after by online artists, and championed by comic artists such as prime evangelist Scott McCloud. Although criticised elsewhere ( Clay Shirky’s article & Sean Barrett’s visual essay), micro-payments remain a valid path for chasing income in the age of digital reproduction.

If it wasn’t for the massively popular success of itunes_etc, and the collective willingess to pay for downloading ephemeral mp3s and now videos, I’d once have argued that having physical products such as Tim’s print comic will always prove more successful in tempting people to spend money. On the physical front, both Lulu.com and Cafepress share interesting publishing models, where users can have their self-published books, t-shirts, coffee mugs etc ‘printed on demand’ and distributed by the sites for a slice of the profit. They seem to have huge databases of users, and are even being used by established authors to print books they think might be suited for a smaller print run. These can be delivered printed and bound to your door, or like Kevin Kelly’s review book of Documentary films, can also be bought as a digital PDF file for $3 US. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops alongside improvements in legibility on portable devices.

UPDATE : More info by Tim & John in the comments, it’s actually another person in the states who is distributing Tim’s comic this way ( and it is apparently up to $41 in the auctions! )

Ray at Vidvox pointed out this pretty great “guerrilla movie maker tool”, a homemade way to make your video more film-like by reducing it’s depth of field. Another project for summer maybe, to be filled alongside the DIY steadicam – ( or another steadicam design with less construction involved ), making a Track Dolly and making a Lens Hood for a Camcorder. And while on the DIY tip, is worth mentioning the old photographer trick of keeping a string tripod in your pocket to help stabilise a still camera ( a bolt that fits into your camera tripod hole, with string attached which u stand on and pull taut – presto less camera movement ). And I’m not going to bother, but the DIY LCD projector system is cute too.

Hooked up with an old friend recently, a slap bass maniac back in the day who is now busy satellite-mapping the planet. He’s been reading the Lev Manovich classic: The Language Of New Media, and various Marshall McLuhan books and asked if I could recommend any interesting contemporary writers tackling video. It made me realise I get a lot of reading from RSS feeds, websites and email lists, and that I’d like to find some more theoretical writing about video today, beyond dissecting it’s technical capacities and unfolding distribution potentials. Will add to the list below as I gather links… Drop a line if you have something to recommend…

Whether for amplifying the fun of a carnivalesque ride like Critical Mass ( wikipedia entry ), or just for the exhilaration of cruising along on your own custom modded two wheeled monster, there’s much merit and joy to be had in freaky bike modifications. Luckily for would-be builders, these people live on the internet too.

The legendary and piss-funny ( nein speaka de australiana? ) Chunk 666 collective of extra-long forked bikes, is a great starting point, offering tutorials, and plenty of photos for inspiration. Chunk 666 started when “a few geeks found that the urge to create choppers and tallbikes was too strong to resist. They didn’t know it, but they were being goaded by messages from the future, which were intended to prepare their recipients for the imminent apocalypse.” Once we began riding these devices, it was difficult to stop.

The Chunkers also now have a blog ( complete with jousting photos on bikes 2 frames high ), and seem an endless spring of events and hilarity – “Neverending war abroad provides neverending excuses to act retarded in the streets. No, YOU calm down.”

No doubt inspired by Chunk 666, are – www.mcthree.ca – another gnarly chopper collective;
& The Rat Patrol – more crazy bike makers;
the ’ full fleet of fabricated freak’ makers at Dead Baby Bikes;
and Cyclecide who make heavy-pedal bikes out of primarily discarded bike parts, and have a bike-rodeo show. Don’t forget to see their two person pedal powered ferris wheel~!

Curious about how to make your own carboard bike cover that let’s you ride around looking like a 2 wheeled car? Wonder no more.

Vanilla style bicycle evangelism is still of course, plenty worthy in times like these.

TV broadcasters used to believe they were the centre of the universe. Newspaper publishers used to believe the earth was flat. Radio? Got squashed by a falling video star. Moral of the story = when looking to
connect people with diseases and bicycles, that multi-headed internet beastie’s always gonna win out.

Net Bicycles
“We’re not blocking traffic… We ARE traffic!”

Back in 1992, a San Francisco cyclist encouraged other cyclists to “coincidentally meet” on the last Friday of the month to ride home together. Through word of mouth it grew into a raucous monthly two-wheeled celebration, with up to 5,000 cyclists on the ride. In 2005, with the internet behind it, there are now over 400 such ‘critical mass’ rides happening in cities all over the world. Decentralised masses swarming their pedals together on the last Friday of every month the globe over.

Although no-one claims responsibility for the rides ( “it’s an organized coincidence” ) a vast array of sites have helped popularise the monthly rides – www.critical-mass.org – www.criticalmasshub.com – http://critical-mass.info. Email lists keep people in touch and discussing the rides, and other sites show how to start a critical mass in your own city.

Sydney and Melbourne snare Australia’s largest mass rides, with Melbourne’s recent 10 year birthday ride having over 1000 grinning pedallers on it, including a cycling turntablist lizard – complete with fat speakered sound system in tow! Sound systems on bikes – surely a National Day of Celebration in waiting. Must’ve been near a dozen amplified sound systems on that bike ride ( see the group flickr photos ) , which doesn’t count the noise from a variety of horned and stringed instruments, drums, bells and accordians. There were a few scuffles between cyclists and motorists, but most drivers and pedestrians seemed to revel in the spontaneous spectacle, the unfolding carnival passing them by. The smell of summer. E-mail if you’ve come across any good sites / ideas for attaching portable sound systems to bikes, and will gather them here.