Random Tangent

Peter Gabriel, one of my all-time favourite musicians, continues to be at the forefront of technology usage — particularly when it comes to technology for music and human rights:

• Back in 1993 he launched Xplora, the first music and multimedia CD-ROM created by a musician
• In 1999 he helped set up OD2, which was one of the first online music download services (and is now owned by Nokia)
• This year he is MIDEM‘s 2008 Personality of the Year (more on PG & MIDEM from Reuters)

On the human rights side:

• In 1992 he co-founded WITNESS, “an international human rights organization that uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations”
• In 1999 he started TheElders.org, which is a “new gathering of world leaders who [have] come together to guide and support our ‘global village’”.

So it’s no surprise that he is involved in recent areas of music technology as well:

• First there’s we7, which is a free, ad-supported music download community
• Then there’s TheFilter.com, which is a music, video, literature, and news discovery service (more in this CNET article by Greg Sandoval)

Both sound really interesting and I’ll write more about them once I’ve played around with them a little more.

[More PG: Wikipedia, Last.fm, Real World Records, WOMAD]

Tags: Internet, Life, Music, Technology by Ameel
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Inspired by the hard-core science fiction of Arthur C. Clarke that eventually became real science, awesome article in Popular Mechanics on The 10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Movies Ever.

Tags: Film, Life, Technology by Ameel
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We’re still nine days away from the release of Moby’s latest album, Last Night. Says Moby:

“last night” is basically a love letter to dance music in new york city. what i love about the new york approach to dance music is the eclecticism and the open minded-ness on the part of the musicians, the dj’s, and the people in the bars and clubs. in making ‘last night’ i essentially tried to take a long 8 hour night out in new york city and condense it into a 65 minute long album.

To keep us busy till then, here’s some fun Moby related stuff that you can do:

• Stream or download his excellent Last Night album sampler 
• Become a fan of Moby on Facebook
• Check out his website (FYI: Moby’s blog was the first blog I started to follow on a regular basis)
• See what he has to say about Bauhaus releasing their first album in 24 years (Bauhaus on MySpace)
• Watch the video for ‘Disco Lies’:

• Watch the video for ‘Alice’, the first single from Last Night, on Vimeo.

Enjoy :)

Tags: Music by Ameel
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Reuters is reporting that Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Grand Master of science fiction and one of my favourite authors, passed away earlier today. Rest in peace, Arthur. Rest in peace.

Tags: Books, Life by Ameel
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I recently wrote about my entry in the Melbourne Business School Class Profile Brochure on my professional blog. Since I wrote that post on the day I submitted my profile to Career Services, I didn’t have a copy of my professional photograph that will be used in that publication (MBS hired a professional photographer and got all our pictures taken).

This morning, however, I was e-mailed a copy of that photo and here it is:

Good photo, eh? I don’t look half bad, either :)

Tags: Life by Ameel
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Every time I’ve written about tablet PCs on this blog it’s been about how that form factor will improve my productivity, efficiency, and will make my life a great deal easier.

What I haven’t mentioned is how I expect a tablet PC to improve my computer-based entertainment experience as well. Specifically, how I expect to use it for reading books, playing computer games, watching movies, recording and editing music, listening to music and podcasts, and so on. I’ll write about all that some other time but, meanwhile, James Kendrick has posted a video on how he uses his new Fujitsu P1620 for entertainment. It’s an excellent video and I suggest you check it out.

Tags: Tablet PC by Ameel
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One of the best ways I have of remembering my mother is through music. When we were little she used to sing us to sleep and it’s mostly thanks to her that we’re a very musical family (we start to sing at the drop of a hat, for example). Since it’s been three years since she died I thought it would be nice to post a few videos of the songs that she really liked or that we used to sing a lot.

She was a big fan of Edith Piaf, for example, and her favourite Piaf song was ‘Non, je ne regrette rien‘:

Her other favourite songs included Dean Martin’s ‘Under the Bridges of Paris‘, Harry Belafonte’s ‘Jamaica Farewell‘, and Frank Sinatra’s ‘Three Coins in a Fountain‘. I’m sure there were others she liked, but these are the ones she knew the lyrics of and sang most often.

Here’s Harry Belafonte singing ‘Jamaica Farewell’:

Bed Time Songs

A lot of the songs she sang us to sleep with were folk songs like ‘Lavender Blue‘, ‘Red River Valley‘, ‘Danny Boy‘, and ‘Tom Dooley‘.

Here’s a video of The Kingston Trio singing ‘Tom Dooley’:

And, since this is too good an opportunity to pass up, here’s the Muppets version of ‘Danny Boy’:

I remember Ami having a good laugh over this when we first saw it :)

I believe she was more familiar with the Elvis version of this song, though, so here’s the tribute video made for his 29th death anniversary that features it:

Travelling Songs

There were also a number of songs that we always sang in the car, particularly on long journeys. One of those was The Three Stooges song ‘Swinging the Alphabet‘:

Other songs included ‘The Animal Fair‘, ‘Why Shouldn’t My Goose‘, ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat‘, and ‘Ten Green Bottles‘. There were, of course, many more.

It’s still hard to believe that she’s gone…and I’m glad we have all this music to help keep her memory alive.

Tags: Life, Music by Ameel
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Calling all of my LUMS B.Sc. Class of 1999 classmates!

If you haven’t read the news item I posted on our MyFamily.com site or seen the message I sent 50 of you on Facebook, please read this blog post.

It is time, once again, to write our class notes for the LUMS Alumni Annual. Like we did last year, we are going to do compile them using this wiki: http://bsc99.wetpaint.com/

So please: visit the site and update your (or anyone else’s) class note entry. Oh, and make sure you do this before Monday, 26 May. On the 27th, I’ll copy edit the notes (tweak grammar, flow, etc.) and will mail them off to the Alumni Relations Office.

Finally, please tell all our other classmates that you’re in contact with to do this as well.

Thanks!

Tags: Life by Ameel
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I’d heard a couple of Jonathan Coulton songs before but, thanks to this episode of TWiT, I went and explored more of his music…and I love it!

If you’re a geek and you love good music with fun lyrics, be sure to check him out. I mean, who couldn’t love these lyrics:

Heya Tom, it’s Bob from the office down the hall
Good to see you buddy, how’ve you been?
Thing have been OK for me except that I’m a zombie now
I really wish you’d let us in
I think I speak for all of us when I say I understand
Why you folks might hesitate to submit to our demand
But here’s an FYI: you’re all gonna die screaming

All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re not unreasonable, I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here, maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains

[From Re: Your Brains]

:)

Tags: Music, Technology by Ameel
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