Myspace Music Share 1: Benni Beard

After the other day's comment on various things I realised that one area where I could give this blog some content that people will actually want to see is through piggy-backing the talent of musicians of a generous heart.

 

Decoded that means that I will try to find artists everyday who allow their music to be downloaded for free and enjoyed by the masses. Fun times eh?

 

Right well the first victim to my failing attempts at description is, as the title may suggest is Benni Beard. A singer-songwriter from the Lancaster area who seemingly cannot get a gig no matter how much talent he shows to the world.

 

Three songs (EP 1 anyone? ;-) ) of an acoustic bent covering a wide range of topics with a unique northern delight - Benni is well worth a listen. Catch him at www.myspace.com/bennibeard.

 

"Pull your socks up Billy Timon. "

 

Technorati Tags: Myspace Music,Free Music,New Music,Acoustic

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Final Template Post - Plus!

 

Ok, At last a template I am almost happy with.

 

I will not comment on this again, though I would like to get some sort of feedback. I am not 100% happy with the background colour as of yet, but it is a much improved one over all the others I have tried.

 

Anyway.

After a shot discussion with a Benni (Pictured and linked above! Great singer-songwriter from Lancaster) the other night I think it would be much easier if I just posted here the things I use to make voyaging the internet much much easier.

 

Firefox. Nuff said.

Windows Live Writer. When looking around for some form of program to compose my blog postings I saw that for a change no-one was really ripping apart the 'Live' suit of products from Microsoft. Enough to say that I find it incredibly easy to use and its form which attempts to mirror the layout and style of your blog is a nice touch. As far as features go, it has a budding addon community (See Social bookmarking tags at the bottom) and everything else you would want. (Sorry for the reviewing cop-out but if you drank the amount I did last night... Well... you will probably be ok. But meh.)

Feed Demon . This is a program which aggregates, manages and generally holds in one nice place all the RSS feeds you are looking at. Not quite as friendly from a user's standpoint as WLW but VERY powerful. It used to be a paid program until recently and though I think their model of economics is now based upon selling the data of its users I do not believe that any of this is personal or individual to you. The major benifit, though I am yet to have a situation that will use this, is the fact that the management of the feeds is online based. This, much like a POP3 email service to a client, means that you can look at your feeds from two different computers and keep both up-to-date and current.

 

Well meh, there are a few things that I use to keep the Internet in order. Any advice on alternatives that would be better then just say. :-)

 

One issue I am having at the moment is what media player to use. I mean I used to be WinAmp through and though but now I am not so sure; it simply went too unstable for me. Now I use an odd codec-and-DRM-driven combination of iTunes, VCL player and media player... None of which I am happy with. Oh well. :)

Ok, layout number 2.

Ok, well that last one sucked also. Right I will get this right at some point... Its just a shame I lack the ability to make a site myself. I mean it wouldn't need to be too complicated... Just something that Was clean, simple, slightly different and had was easy to make small html (or whatever) manipulations.

...Anyone? ^_^

 

Right well this one is staying until I get fed up with it; though the probability will be how it looks in Wondows Live Writer when you "enable the style of your blog in the program" or something. Well trust me. It looks terrible.

Oh well. Right now. Its Easter. So  that means ignoring the Christian origins and enjoying a few weeks of drinkin' and playin'. No more theology. No more essays. No more typing into Microsoft products in a semi-cohesive way.... err...

 

...Hang on!

 

What am I doing here?!

 

Buh bye!

Moonwalking bear

 

Just do the test. Comedy, missing the seriousness of the issue... Right?

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

new layout, because the old one sucked.

Technorati Tags: Twitter

Does what it says.

 

Anyway, a quick update before I go and have a shower.

(Damn I need to get out of twitter mode and stop telling people every little insignificant thing that is happening or going to happen or I am thinking or looking at... a wall at the moment. GAH!)

Yes. I am on Twitter. Please follow me. I am lonely and keep bugging the various people I find interesting and enlightening on the Internet; The Devils Kitchen (link right for main site) for one, and then Will Harris of Channel Flip fame, on mediocre points that could only be annoying for the both of them. Well thankfully they answered my questions and I am a happy Internet stalker.

So yes. Come on twitter. Follow me and hear even less thought out comments on there from me. Honestly, its worth it. It will make me happy and you all want that. Right?

Ok, well its good as well to keep tabs on your friends (if you get them on here) as well as people like the before mentioned Internet goliaths that produce online tit-bits of goodness for your pleasure.

Good good...

 

UPDATE

I failed to really explain what twitter was. Click here for a short snappy vid on the phenomenon. Its actually worth watching even if you are not interested in the big T.

eBooks for Universities

An odd little idea I have had that seems remarkably sensible in almost any way is for all university students to be advised to buy ebook readers by their university at the start of their first term.

The point of this is simple. All universities, even if the legalities of this are uncertain, give out an incredible amount of photocopied handouts from books to allow all their students to read the important readings on a course. The solution to this time wasting, tree destroying and ultimately annoying situation would be a single eBook reader that was able to access the documents remotely and allow the student to carry the work in one handy module.

So yeah, this seems to me to be a good idea. I picture it like this. The student will by an reader. They will go to their first lecture and be informed that a reading is on the course's virtual workspace and that by using a secure password etc. the student could easily pick up the work and carry it around with them.

The ease of this method cannot though be without some disadvantages. The chief of which I see is the difficulties to which publishers have with the digitalisation of work. Thus I can only assume that DRM has to be involved somewhere, it would be desired not to be the case, reliant on the fact that the institutions only gave out parts of people's work. Another solution to this problem would be that a subscription service paid for by the universities to the publishers could be made so as to allow for this activity to happen. Even so there is always some way around the difficulties to which will be faced with the possibility of people simply taking the files and making them publicly available after the event.

There is more to the above point than is expressed. And there are more difficulties to be faced. Even so I believe that this would be a remarkable change to universities across the world. Benefiting everyone involved. The Students will have less to carry and will be able to access work often more comfortably. The use of paper will be severely reduced within out institutions. The Institutions will not only be likely to save money, but also will be able to save staff time by making this the only way in which students could obtain any readings, lecture notes or other important articles.

Meh, its an idea. Not very well looked into at the moment, as I am tired. But still I think it holds some merit.

 

Anthony