Phew. I have spent four out of the last five working days virtually in non-stop meetings on a wide variety of issues - from research and teaching planning sessions to team meetings for the ACID Press project (which has a very outdated outline on the ACID Website, I'm afraid), meetings of the AoIR 2006 conference organising team, preliminary work for a new book project, and a PhD confirmation presentation by Creative Industries student Stephen Harrington - and tomorrow is looking no better, with an all-day meeting of the team of our teaching and learning project using blogs and wikis at QUT. In between all the meetings about what work needs to be done, it would be nice to find some time to actually do some work... (At least I did find the time to accept an invitation to join the editorial board of New Media & Society, and I look forward to being part of it.)
Following up on my "[weblink:343]" post a little while ago: in his diary, Robert Fripp has now responded to some of thereports about the launch of DGMLive, and clarified some of the usage restrictions for downloaded music which apply for DGMLive downloads. "Act rightly" is the governing phrase - an idea which is positively alien to the mainstream music industry, of course.
OK, I really have to get back to blogging again. I suppose I blog the most when exciting and interesting things are happening, but the last few weeks, filled with chores between the end of one semester and the start of the next, have been difficult to say the least. I have tried hard to keep my weekends free from work-related tasks at least, though - with varying levels of success. Will try and post a few updates on current projects over the next few days.
One thing I have been able to do is to compile Iceworld, a CD of some ambient soundscapes I've tinkered with over the last few months. These are mainly improvs very much in a 'drone, bleep, blurt' mode, recorded live and edited into a series of individual tracks. The CD clocks in at just over 70 minutes and generally has a somewhat antarctic feel to me (hence the title); I've made it available here in MP3 format under a Creative Commons licence. Having listened to them a few times today, I'm quite fond of these tracks - "The Factory Ship" in particular has some very impressive bottom end on a good sub-woofer... Any comments are very welcome. (I might write a little more about how I've recorded these at another time.)
The Inside The Music series is a "pot of gold" for Bob Carruthers & classic rock productions. It addresses a valuable & useful area of popular music studies; but in a cheap, nasty & cynical fashion that exploits everyone & scams the artists, the music & the fans.
The latest dispatch from the filesharing frontlines - interesting reading. As predicted, movie filesharing is now joining music, and legal actions or legal services have little impact so far. Interesting to see the IFPI CEO say that "of course, over the longer term we expect a steady fall in illegal file-sharing; something we've already seen happen since the RIAA announced lawsuits early 2003" - wonder what makes him believe in that 'steady fall', since so far there's no indication of it whatsoever.
The Musik.Ger-FAQ, not surprisingly, is the list of frequently asked questions, and sometimes even some of their answers, for the German-language FidoNet echo Musik.Ger, which is best described as 'an experience'. Equally unsurprisingly, the FAQ in its original form was all in German, 450k, and pure ASCII, so I've come up with a vitamin-enhanced Web version of it, which you'll be able to read here. It's still all in German, though -- tough luck. If you still want to go on, grab a comfy chair, get yourself a nice cup of tea enriched with your favourite ingredients, plant your tongue firmly in your preferred cheek (to avoid suffocation from swallowing it) ... and ... click ... right ... here. Wuhaha[[tm]] !
Iceworld
