Still As Life

The Payable on Death website has recently been updated to reflect the album art of their new CD, "When Angels and Serpants Dance", which is due out on the 8th of April 2008. There is a sample clip from one of their new songs, by the same title as the album, playing in the background of the website once you enter it. However, there is also a download available from inside the website that is of the full song. So if you want a preview of what the new album is sounding like, get in there and have a listen. It's sounding awesome in my opinion.

There is also a special offer at the moment that ends March 16th to pre-order the album for $9.97 US which comes with a special edition booklet and your name gets printed on the Warrior Wall.

Nice.

Labels: music

"A failed effort to soften the noise from British military helicopters led to a breakthrough enabling surfaces from mobile telephone screens to car roof liners to be turned into stereo speakers."

How interesting. An article on the Sydney Morning Herald outlines the results of an attempt to dampen noise from military helicopters that resulted in creating noise instead.

By the looks of it, they've created this honeycombed material that actually produces sound, and can be used in all sorts of scenario's, such as on an LCD instead of frame-mounted speakers. This works because it is see-through, and results in the sound being pointed directly at the user who is looking at the screen. So it doesn't affect what they are seeing.

It has been called "SurfaceSound" and looks like it could pave the way for a lot of interesting developments. From the article it seems like the audio quality is quite good, but as a bass player, I am interested to hear how it goes with lower frequencies and the reproduction of these frequencies, even more so, if they can produce the same feel as traditional sub-woofers, or even woofers. You can't just here the bass, you have to feel it or it is incomplete.

Labels: music, technology

If you are like me and have trouble studying with regular music, but like to have something in the background, then you will like ambient music. If you are even more like me then you are very, very picky about the ambient music you listen to and find it quite difficult to find decent ambient music.

I just came across this great netlabel called Ansiform. They have a great selection of ambient music available for download under the creative commons license, along with streaming music from their website and podcasts.

The music is all very much to my liking for ambient music and is really great for studying to.

They accept music submissions as well, however it should be within their area of ambient music which they describe as:

"The ansiform flavor of ambient is unobtrusive, beatless, finely textured, and stable. Many tracks in our collection demonstrate inspiration drawn from disparate genres such as noise, dub or pop music. It's ideal for sleeping, meditating, and cleansing the aural palate."

This is so true and this is exactly why I like it so much. If you like ambient music I really recommend having a listen to some of the music on Ansiform.

Labels: internet, music

John Williamson is a great guy, don't get me wrong, I like his songs (unusual for me, I know), he portrays the Aussie way so well, but you can only here the same albumof his so many times.

My boss has had one album of his playing at work for the past 2 weeks. The same album, over and over. It has some great songs on it,but you can only hear it so many times without starting to go slightly crazy.

Even if it was rotating with a couple of other CD's it would be fine, but in a 5 hour shift, you hear the same songs at least 5 times! That's a little much if you ask me. Especially after an ITB006 (Networking) exam at 8:30 this morning!

The exam went pretty well I think, there were a few things I couldn't remember, like how to do the working on a cyclic redundancy check, and a couple of other questions that I no longer remember, but aside from that it was pretty good.

Again it surprised me how much of it was exactly the same as from the two practice exams, but hey, who's complaining right? Even better, there was nothing from the practical tutorials, it was completely based on the lectures and the theory from tutorial's. Which is particularly good since I didn't actually go to all of the practicals.

I followed most of the lecture material fairly well so I didn't think the question's based on them were very hard, and 30 of them were multiple choice anyway, with the other 5 being short answer questions split into 3-5 questions each.

The most any individual question was worth from memory was 4 marks, with 1 and 2 each being the average marks per question so I think it should be a pretty easy exam to do well in.

I also donated blood after the exam. It's the first time since I moved up to Brisbane that I've been able to donate when I've been near one of the blood banks or the mobile donor centre's. Every other time, I've had to be somewhere in the next 5 minutes or so, or I've been sick or had a headache or something like that. I almost walked past it this time without thinking but they had a big sign up saying they particularly need O blood types at the moment, so since I'm an O positive that caught my eye and lo and behold they took my blood. Filled a bag in 12 minutes, that's a personal best!

Now everyone that's able, go donate blood! It's good, I promise. It doesn't hurt much at all and whatever pain you do get usually goes away within a few minutes anyway, so do it!

Labels: music, rants, university, work

I was just stumbling around on the net, and I came across this really interesting site, Musicovery.

It's a pretty nifty idea really. It's an online radio, but it plays music based on things like your mood, by dance tempo, or by music similar to your favourites and so on. You can further restrict the music based on genre and time periods.

I found it also seemed to load and buffer music a lot more efficiently than a lot of online radio's, which is a big plus for me who is quite regularly capped.

It is available in four languages which is pretty cool, so hopefully you'll be able to find something thats right for you at any time! Enjoy.

Labels: internet, music, software

From - Microsoft Clipart

Why does it not surprise me in the slightest, that despite the fact that a study has proven that P2P music downloading actually has increased CD sales in Canada as quoted below, the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) swears black and blue that this could not possibly be relevant in Australia?

"...our analysis of the Canadian P2P file-sharing subpopulation suggests that there is a strong positive relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file-sharing increases CD purchasing. We estimate that the effect of one additional P2P download per month is to increase music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year."

According to a telephone survey conducted in Australia, apparently it has the opposite effect, and of course logically, if people are getting music for free, then why would they download it, right?

I disagree with this. I am inclined to believe that the Canadian study is correct, and relevant in Australia. I mean seriously, who is going to go out and buy CD's of a band they have never heard of? Thats no sales for that band from thousands of prospective listeners. However, if someone downloads some of their songs because they were recommended by someone, or even just because they were curious to see what they sound like, if they like what they hear, they are far more likely to go buy an album.

The same study found that there was no clear relation between legal and illegal music downloading, but according to some figures shown as part of an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, legal download sales have increased!

"Sales figures for the first six months of the year, released by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), show total physical music sales dropped by almost 16 per cent in unit terms, but legal download sales increased by just under 90 per cent." From - Sydney Morning Herald

So if legal download sales have increased by almost 90% shouldn't that be a pretty good reason for physical music sales to drop? Even if it's not the entire reason that should really be taken into account rather than saying it is caused entirely by illegal downloads.

As Rob, the author of the www.demonbaby.com blog points out in his article after OiNK was shut down almost 2 weeks ago, the music industry is outdated and has not kept up with technology. I know I myself am in no way interested in legally downloading music. It's all low quality and far too expensive! I would much prefer to buy the CD's and actually know that I am getting high quality music rather than the legally downloadable music that at most seems to be 192kbps and is full of annoying DRM. Seriously guys, why would I pay more to get something of lower quality that has its usage restricted through digital rights management? I'm not interested in single tracks and entirely digital collections. I want entire albums in a tangible form that I can do what I want with. Why on earth would I not buy anything I download when I want it as high quality as I can get it. 192kbps does not cut it. Update your business model or lose customers is all I have to say to the labels that are part of the RIAA. I know I personally will be doing exactly as Rob suggests, and I won't be buying music that is published by any label that is part of the RIAA. Thanks to the RIAA Rader website, it's really easy to tell which are and which aren't.

Nine Inch Nails have the right idea, making their entire new album available online for free for the basic version and only $US5 for the higher quality versions. With an offer like that, I wouldn't even have to think twice about buying it.

I wholeheartedly agree with Rob, if we stop giving the major labels our money by purchasing CD's from them, they will have to change the way they do business, and maybe then we can get a reasonable service from them. You know, maybe Google should start up their own label, they would no doubt do a better job than the major labels out there at the moment.

Labels: music, politics, rants

So it's the end of the semester, and thus the end of university for the year. With this I begin this blog. This blog where you will hear about things ranging from work, university, current projects, design's, fractal's, bass guitar, and more.

Web design, web development, computers, games and anything technological describe the majority of my interests.

I offer web design and development services through TerraMedia and sub-contract my services through a variety of other companies.

I am currently studying a Bachelor of Information Technology, majoring in Web Services and Applications, and a Bachelor of Creative Industries, majoring in Communication Design at the Queensland University of Technology. This gives me a background in both web development through the BIT and a background in web design through the BCI.

Having spent this week at uni working on assignments, and when not at uni, at home working on assignments, this weekend has finally come, and with it, I can have a break. The assignment I have been working on is for KIB102, Foundations of Communication Design 2. It's my final major assignment. Put simply it is an interactive Flash web site based on a movie that we studied for earlier assignments. While this is my first shot at a Flash based website, and I am far from a Flash expert, I will be posting up my completed assignment in the next few day's and will also be going through some of the thing's I learned that I had a hard time finding information on while I was doing the assignment, so hopefully they will be useful for someone else.

Of course, like many student's, I left too much to the last minute and so there are things in the site that are uncompleted, but you know, it happens. You would think I would have learned by now to start things sooner...

And with that I leave you as I have to get some sleep so I can spend tomorrow night and Sunday working on yet another assignment that is due on Monday and study for an exam that is also on, you guessed it, Monday. Busy busy busy.

Labels: art, music, software, university