This is MP3Monster's blog. The blog covers music, technology, photography and anything else Monster considers worthy of blogging about.Monster moonlighting as a model again
Posted by monster in General
Looks like monster has been moonlighting as a model again, this time for Tesco’s as you can see in the picture.
Last photo shoot I know of … 
LinkedIn recommendations
Posted by monster in Work
A former colleague of mine added a Recommendation to my LinkedIn profile today that is very pleasing to read. It is always pleasing to read that a former member a team you’ve run thinks you’ve done a good job.
classic Lenny Henry
Posted by monster in General
The comedian Lenny Henry is on classic form with a new Radio 4 comedy called “Rudy’s Rare Records” (listen to it from the BBC here). The premise of the show is that Lenny plays a classical record shop owner in London, however when his father reportedly has a heart attack he is drawn back to Birmingham with his son to help his father Rudy, and run Rudy’s Reggae record shop.
Lenny’s character (Adam) is almost an inversion of his late 80s Delbert Wilkins with a dose of his Chief character from the 90s comedy - completely obsessive to the point of being anal about classical music, a completely elitist thinker. At the same time his son (Richie) is very much an updated Delbert.
If the first episode is anything to go by the next four Tuesdays will be very funny after the news.
For the BBC page on the series go here and Lenny’s own site here.
Interesting Download pricing model
Posted by monster in Music
I’ve just read about an interesting pricing strategy on Digital Music News for an online store (article here). Amie Street sell their downloads with a price based upon the demand ranging from free to 98-cents. This is great for new artists, have a better chance at attracting sales than say on iTunes.
We just have to wait and see if it can develop by getting deals made with some of the major labels (currently only deals with significant indie labels) and come to the UK.
Duffy’s PR in overdrive
Posted by monster in Music
The PR for Duffy must be in overdrive. There is no doubting that she has a good voice, but before her debut album is out she’s clocked up performances on Later with Jools Holland, a BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge and a iTunes Live In London Session.
I hope that the album (due out next week) lives up to all of this.
Tom Baeyens - jBPM
Posted by monster in Work
I had the chance to have a chat with Tom Baeyens, the lead for JBoss’ jBPM development programme who has a blog at Process Developments. He has recently blogged, giving SeeWhy a little mention as a result of our conversation.
SoundtrackNet - Top 10 of 2007
Posted by monster in General
A slightly different Top 10 to the usual ones when it comes to music, the Top 10 soundtracks can be found at SoundtrackNet : Top 10 of 2007.
The Brits
Posted by monster in Music
Another year, and another Brits award, and yet another farce. A few years back the Brits showed signs of becoming credible by acknowledging new artists and new music. But this years’ Brits giving awards to Arctic Monkeys (3rd year running), Take That (just for doing a comeback tour) seems a little retrenchment to say the least. This sort of thinking contributes to the death of the UK music scene. Reading the Guardian blog shows that I’m not the only one holding this view. The only success is that the Osbournes did a relatively reasonable job of hosting the show.
You can see the results from the awards at http://www.brits.co.uk/
del.icio.us tags: Brits, music, Osbournes, awards
World’s Greatest Music Collection - turns out not to be mine
Posted by monster in Music
Bah, I’ve found someone with a bigger music collection than mine. At 3 million records and 300,000 CDs Paul Mawhinney has a slightly larger collection than I have, but he is selling it on eBay. I might have to just get in there a make a bid (I wish).
If you’d like to know more about Paul Mawhinney and this amazing collection then checkout an article here and Record Rama here.
del.icio.us tags: music, collection, CD, records, sale, eBay
Play & HMV offers DRM free music with Amazon coming soon
Posted by monster in Music
An online MP3 war seems to be developing here in the UK. With word that Amazon will arrive in the UK this summer. Play the online music/games retailer have just introduced PlayDigital with DRM free tracks from EMI and Indies (and probably others to come) at prices below that of iTunes (65p a track and £4.95 for an album). Today HMV have launched their service which offers unlimited Streaming at £5.99 per month as well as track purchases from as low as 49p, although chart prices appear to range between 79p and £1.
The Killer App for CEP
Posted by monster in Technology, Work
The online journal ebizQ are providing a webinar on ‘BAM:The Killer App for CEP’. Although SeeWhy would suggest that this is not exclusively the domain of Complex Event Processing, but any tool around Event Processing with a real-time capacity. It would seem that SeeWhy is not the only organisation that sees how BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) is a natural partner for Event Processing as SeeWhy has produced an extension to its real-time Business Intelligence platform called ‘SeeWhy for JBoss jBPM’.
The webinar is sponsored by SL who provide a real-time style dashboard so will give some basic visibility of business activity, but doesn’t have the richness of SeeWhy’s intelligence or ability to feedback into the source system such as jBPM or event a third party.
JBoss World Orlando 2008
Posted by monster in Technology, Work
We’re back from JBoss World in Orlando now - and a few pictures of the trip can be found at Flickr: JBoss World Orlando. A very busy trip indeed with only an hour in the sunshine at the end of the conference before heading back to the airport. For SeeWhy initial impressions are that the conference was a success, but it is still early days to really tell. Thankyou to all who came to see our stand and talk about Event Driven BI and the new jBPM BAM solution. Plus a special thanks to David Barnes at Packt publishing and Matt Cumberlidge the brilliant author of the book Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM.
Links to articles mentioning SeeWhy from JBoss World:
- http://java.sys-con.com/read/502052.htm#
- http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2209946/jboss-extends-relationship
- http://adtmag.com/article.aspx?id=22086
- http://reddevnews.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=9561
- http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid26_gci1301878,00.html
Laptop & The Presentation
Posted by monster in Technology
Over the years the number of people who attend conference presentations and have laptops out to take notes has grown and grown - understandable given how laptop prices have dropped. But watching a presentations here at JBoss World Orlando, has left me thinking that there is an opportunity to be had in terms of allowing peoples laptops to show and record what is being shown on the presenters screen, and allow the laptop user to annotate as things went along. After all if you’re in a medium sized conference suite amongst a see of upright laptop monitors it can be hard to see the presenters screen clearly. The basic idea isn’t exactly new either after all web meeting tools such as GoToMeeting pretty much do this. The only difference is that the server would need to run on the presenter’s computer equipment through a local wireless hub.
Rendition
Posted by monster in General
I managed to catch a film I’ve been meaning to see for sometime on a flight to Orlando, that being Rendition (IMDB here). The film certainly lived up to expectation, with a fine performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, and brilliantly muted Reese Witherspoon. The heart of the story is the question of whether Rendition achieves anything? As Douglass (Gyllenhaal) says in thevfilm : In all the years you’ve been doing this, how often can you say that we’ve produced truly legitimate intelligence? Once? Twice? Ten times? Give me a statistic; give me a number. Give me a pie chart, I love pie charts. Anything, anything that outweighs the fact that if you torture one person you create ten, a hundred, a thousand new enemies.
Recommended viewing.
Baftas & Grammys
Posted by monster in Music
Whilst in the UK the British Oscars (the Baftas) have been award the US have been celebrating music with the Grammy’s. It looks like Amy Winehouse has cleaned up pretty well with (ironically) Rehab (from the Back to Black album). Its good to see that Alison Krauss and Robert Plant also picked a gong for their work together - a stunning album in the form of Raising Sand.
On the Baftas side, again music inspired films did well with gongs going to La Vie En Rose (also called La Mome) which is about the life of Edith Piaf - a little justice after having part of the film slaughtered for a mobile phone advert. Plus Control the bio of Ian Curtis of Joy Division.
Full the full list of nominees and winners in 110 categories go to http://www.grammy.com/GRAMMY_Awards/ and for the smaller number of Baftas here.
Delays next single & album release confirmed.
Posted by monster in Music
Exciting news! The Delays third album and first for Fiction records will be ‘Everything’s The Rush’, out 28th April. The first single from the album is ‘Hooray’, out 21st April.
Music ‘beats faster’ in the north
Posted by monster in Music
It must be a slow news day, as the following new item about differences in music preferences have a geographical factor made the main news bulletin. The BBC news site has the details at ‘Music ‘beats faster’ in the north‘.
new Jesse Malin album
Posted by monster in Music
Jesse Malin is following Cat Power with a Covers record called "On Your Sleeve" to be released through One Little Indian in April. The CD will have 14 tracks with three more via iTunes.
Jesse will be on the road again in the coming months to promote the album as well.
More info about Jesse Malin on his website or MySpace.
