AMP

Hey folks, just a very quick post to let you know I presented the AMPed podcast this week. It’s the weekly round up from the Association Of Music Podcasting which I joined quite recently. The show contains music submitted by some of the various member podcasts. It’s only 37mins long but still had plenty packed in.

You can download it here if you’re interested.

Should have mentioned it in my last Weekly Rewind but forgot. Now you know

See ya,

Dan

Just a quick post to let you know about an interesting event coming up in Liverpool next month. I mentioned in recent updates that I’ve been chatting with Ross Dalziel of Sound Network (amongst other people), about events in the city next year. He organised Open Source City which I attended, and did a really great job. He’s into creating music with technology, hacking and general geekery. What’s not to like about that? Well, Ross has an event of his own coming up soon at the FACT building in Liverpool City Centre. It will feature what he’s calling the “DS Orchestra” and anyone is free to come and join in. As the name suggests it will feature a lot of people using special software to make music with their Nintendo DS handheld consoles. There’s some custom software that’s been written for this by PixelH8, who some of you may well have heard of already. He’s pretty well known in the chiptunes scene and should even be there to play alongside everyone else on the day. You don’t have to have a Nintendo DS to join in you can use any geeky device as long as it’s capable of paying notes and making a tune. That’s good news for me as I don’t have a DS. I wonder if taking my laptop and midi keyboard along would be cheating? It might be a bit hard to carry around anyway, I’d need to invent some kind of harness, a true geek approach to the problem hehe

If you’re interested in getting involved have a look at this article on Wired.com. It’s 6pm to 8pm  on Thursday the 17th of December at FACT and it’s gonna be a lot of fun. Part of the idea is to get kids excited about technology and show them that games consoles can do s much more with a little imagination. Who knows, maybe we’ll inspire a new scouse Kraftwerk somewhere along the way, “Kaftwerk La!”.  So if you have kids with a Nintendo DS bring them along to see what’s happening, it’ll be fun. I’ll see you there!

Beep beep,

Dan

The Weekly Rewind

Weekly Rewind time again and it’s been an eventful week, so I’ll waste no time in getting into it. It all began as usual with Linux Outlaws recording on Monday night. The live show went well and was enjoyed by all who took part I hope. Episode 93 “Danish Weekend” was then released on Wednesday night due to some sterling editing work by Fab. On Tuesday we passed the 1000 member mark over at the Linux Outlaws forums. Thanks in part to much promotion by me on recent podcasts but that’s beside the point. Considering I was the one who wasn’t even sure starting a forum was a good idea in the first place, I should probably stay quiet. I was worried that with so many other Linux forums out there already we’d just be adding to an already crowded space. I have to admit though I was totally wrong. It’s really taken off and I’ve made so many good friends on there, it offers a great place to interact with people if you’re too lazy/busy (take your pick) to keep up with IRC. Thanks to everyone who’s taken part and helped us build such a great community. It’s very much appreciated. I also re-installed Chakra Project on Tuesday and did a lot of research on that between writing and other general admin jobs. I published another Jargon Jam article later in the day. Read the rest of this entry »

Libre.fm

If you’re anything like me and you’re dangerously obsessed with music (I really am); then chances are you’ve already tried the music-based social networking service Last.fm at some time. Like a lot of web services it doesn’t give much away about how it works internally. This is fair enough and it’s their right to do that as a company of course but it goes against the principals of Free Culture and Free Software. Now there are plans afoot to create a completely free (as in freedom) alternative called Libre.fm. I’ve been on Last.fm for a couple of years now and the main benefit for me is keeping track of the music I listen to whilst also advertising my fabulous *ahem* taste and sharing with friends. It keeps track of the music you play through a back-end system called Audioscrobbler which records song names, artists, albums etc and shows them on your profile page.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just thought I’d give you an update on both recent and upcoming events in my little world. Had a great time at both Liverpool and Chester LUGs recently, salivated a little over all the Google G1 phones on display at LivLug as well I have to admit. They’re really nice I think, despite some disagreements with friends on aesthetics (it’s ugly apparently, fashion victims) if I had to choose one smartphone at the moment this would be it. Of course this is all academic as I don’t have the money and couldn’t afford one anyway but I like to kid myself along. I’ll be interested to see what other Android handsets come out later in the year. If I have some money then (stop laughing) I might get one as an all-in-one Linux based media player, phone and Internet tablet, I can dream.

6ix Toys Album Cover

I finished editing Linux Outlaws 76 this afternoon and hopefully it’ll be released later tonight. I’ll have another Software Freedom Law Show to edit next week and probably plenty of other Linux Outlaws related stuff to do as always. I need to sort out our European merchandise store and perhaps something for all our loyal Aussie listeners as well if I can, though that might be a bit harder to arrange. I’m looking for a UK manufacturer or supplier who’ll offer top quality stuff at a reasonable price for the fans. We want people to feel they’re getting good value and a good service, that’s vital! It’s not so much about making money for me as giving people the things they’re asking for, t-shirts, mugs, flame throwers… ok maybe not the flame throwers. I have some leads to chase up and I know I’ve been saying this for ages but I really am looking into the options, hopefully I’ll have something to report soon. Fab’s done some great new t-shirt designs and I can’t wait for people to see them.

This Thursday (Feb 12th) it’s the Liverpool Twestival which I’m gonna head along to. In case you don’t know what a “Twestival” is it’s essentially just a name given to an event organized on Twitter the microblogging site. I don’t know who came up with the term and it smacks a little of “web 2.0″ or “geek chic” style buzzwords to me but there we go. The event looks like it’ll be a lot of fun, there’s gonna be live bands, a raffle, an auction and all kinds of other things. It’s all raising money for charity too so it’s nice to support a good cause. I’m not sure if there’s any tickets left at the moment but it’s free to book so head over to the site if you can make it along. 6ix Toys are playing and I’ve really fallen in love with this band in recent weeks, they’re a 7 piece funk band from Liverpool with an amazing sound. I’ve always loved funk and these guys are certainly funky. I first heard them on the Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show on BBC 6 Music and bought their CD off the website not long after. Well worth checking out I’d say. I’ll report back on the event next week.

Looking forward, I have a review of Handbrake for Linux about 80% done and I’ll post that very soon. From there I’m gonna get distro hopping again and my first stop will be Sabayon 4 I think. It’s a recent release, a distro that makes some rather large claims about itself and one I’ve looked at before. So it’ll be interesting to see how it’s coming along. Right that’s it I think, as always any thoughts or comments on anything you see here or perhaps would like to see, just let me know.

Take care, over and out