Read an interesting article on Wired today about new consumer level services that allow real-time collaboration in music over the Internet. The website they talked about is called eJamming, and they had some great things to say about it. Essentially you can jam over the net with other musicians around the world. I think I remember seeing similar ‘promises’ in Sympatico Internet advertisements over 5 years ago. As I currently do not have access to high-speed Internet I am unable to explore the product. Takers? The service is free during the beta.
Archive for April, 2007
An entrance to the underground trains in Sydney. How come Toronto doesn’t have this much character? Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
As last.fm continues to make headlines with increased song offerings, another round of VC, and a rumoured purchase by Viacom, I’m personally impressed by how far they have come since I first joined in January 2006. For me it was a place to track my music habits in the hopes of finding new and exciting bands — as well as wearing my wanna-be hipster catalogue like a button. Just being able to see my weekly top 10 albums, songs, artists, and all time lists was enough for me. Today I have ran across an even more powerful feature, and it is one that I’ve been seeking on and off for some time.
Last.fm has a growing source of concert information localized around the world. They already know my listening habits, and how those habits link with people of similar habits. With this information they are able to provide me a list of upcoming shows, in my area, of bands I listen to or they think I will like. Sure, other sites do this, but last.fm provides it completely automatically. The best part of it all is that I can get this concert information in an iCal feed. What you say? It just means I can plug that feed into my online calendar and know exactly what is going down. As my habits change, and as new bands come Down Under, my concert feed will be updated and adjusted, with no extra work from me.
I use(d) Upcoming.org for this purpose, but the ease and automatic nature of this new last.fm feature will probably convert me as long as they can maintain a high quality database of concert data. Yahoo has an extensive concert database as well, so I am curious as to why this is not used to populate upcoming.org.
The sun is back out today so I can finally tackle the laundry. Waves look small to medium so a surf is also in the plans. And homework. It’s not all fun and games. Helensberg, New South Wales, Australia.
Over the last 24h or so this blog could not connect to the akistmet.com servers, for a still unknown reason. Akismet is the service that eliminates spam from the comment section on this blog. It is a plugin for WordPress, the software running this blog. In that time span I received in access of 250 comment and trackback spam messages. When akismet works, it works. I’m just upset it was broken for so long.
Learned about this band from Edmonton, Alberta thanks to the R3-30 on CBC radio 3. The track they’ve been playing, and the one that grew on me, is Secret March. The EP is available FREE from their website. The band is made up of Lyle Bell of Shout Out Out Out Out/Whitey Houston and Trevor Anderson of The Vertical Struts.
Transmission, a lightweight BitTorrent client for OSX, is now compatible with many private tracker services.
Melbourne Museum. Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
It rained for almost 30h straight over the last two days. It’s still overcast, but the sun is trying to peak through. Beach doesn’t look like it’s holding the big swell well. Temperature is dropping: 18-20C over the next few days, which is fine when the suns out, but is cold when overcast. Just want to surf. photo: Johanna Beach, Victoria, Australia.
I had the opportunity to return to Sydney this past week as part of a Science Field Trip. As Science Teachers they want us to be familiar with destinations that we can utilize to extend the learning of students. Thus we departed for Sydney to visit Sydney Aquarium, Sydney Wildlife World, Sydney Museum and Centrepoint Tower. Did I mention it was free? It’s nice to finally get some tangible perks for being a student teacher.
Doing some math I reckon I haven’t been to a true aquarium since Sea World in Florida in the early 90′s. My recent experience with the life of the deep since then has been courtesy of the Discovery Channel. At the aquarium it was mesmerizing to stand in an underwater tube and look up to see swimming fish of all kinds — including many species of shark. This is my first time seeing sharks in Australia, and I hope the only other time I see sharks is while diving the Great Barrier Reef. I wonder if the sharks in the exhibit eat the other fish in the exhibit, or are the fed so regularly they feel no need to display natural tendencies? A new section of the aquarium is the Great Barrier Reef exhibit and it is absolutely amazing. They have an entire underwater cube where fish of all colour, shape and size swim past seemingly oblivious to their lot in life. The oceans are the last unexplored frontier on earth. We search the cosmos for new life while countless species of bizarre looking creatures live in the waters that surround us. Continue reading ‘’round Sydney’
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