This is MP3Monster's blog. The blog covers music, technology, photography and anything else Monster considers worthy of blogging about.SeeWhy for jBPM video demo
Posted by monster in Technology, Work
SeeWhy for jBPM now has three videos that have been put together that illustrate SeeWhy what it is, and what can be done. Although the videos are aimed at jBPM they’re just as applicable to any BPM solution, not just jBPM. The videos also give some sense as to what SeeWhy has the potential to be able to do.
The videos are freely available from Google, and higher res versions that can be downloaded from the SeeWhy website. With the higher resolution versions you can see in detail what is being done.
Part 1 - Introduction to SeeWhy for jBPM
Part 2 - Business Activity Monitoring
Part 3 - Event Driven Business Intelligence
Paul Westerberg :: 5:05
Posted by monster in Music
The strangeness around Paul Westerberg’s 49:00 album is ever increasing as Aquarium Drunkard explains here with the disappearance of the album and the appearance of 5:05 which just coincidentally is the difference in running time between the original album and its title. We blogged about the original appearance of 49:00 here and Aquarium Drunkard did here.
Free Dido mp3 - Look No Further
Posted by monster in Music
The promotional engines have stepped up a gear for Dido with her thirds album finally due for release soon. As part of this a new song is being made available as a downloadable free MP3 download called Look No Further taken from the new album.
Dido related site:
- http://www.didomusic.com/
- http://www.myspace.com/dido
- http://www.facebook.com/dido
- http://uk.youtube.com/dido
- http://www.bebo.com/dido
Anonymous, Open Source P2P with MUTE
Posted by monster in Music, Technology
With the increasingly aggressive position being taken by organisations such as the RIAA, BPI, MPAA, the British Games Organisation it is not surprising that a new advancement in peer to peer technology has occured to make the P2P data transfer anonymous. This article on O’Reilly describes a new bread of P2P that makes the traffic anonymous - ONLamp.com — Anonymous, Open Source P2P with MUTE.
The effect of P2P clients such as this getting traction is that it will become increasingly harder for industry bodies to understand how to at least try and contain losses to piracy (real or perceived) and utilise the technologies to propel marketing and promotional activities - so shooting themselves in the foot.
After the disco madness, domestic Bliss - Sister Bliss
Posted by monster in General
The Daily Telegraph have written any interesting article about Faithless’ Sister Bliss who recently released a solo effort called Nightmoves.
The article can be found at : Telegraph - Sister Bliss. The Nightmoves album is available here.
Cutting edge rocker blazes trail in digital age
Posted by monster in Music, Technology
The International Herald Tribune has interesting piece on Peter Gabriel and his subtle but important influence on music in the digital age - Cutting edge rocker blazes trail in digital age - International Herald Tribune.
In a Galaxy not so far far away
Posted by monster in General
It looks like the Imperium has arrived at the planet earth, or at least San Francisco, checkout this video footage …
The footage is very clever.
Remote PC Support Tools Mini-Guide
Posted by monster in Technology
As someone who is known amongst friends to work in the computer industry I often get asked to help sort out people’s problems. Talking someone over the phone to deal with problems can be difficult, and often it is easier to understand and solve a problem if you can see the machine which brings with it a host of practicality issues. Remote management tools aren’t a new thing, but having one that doesn’t cost you anything to help friends and family with and works over HTTP/HTTPS without needing to know the IPs involved is important an relatively new.
MasterNewMedia.org has a nice little article with plenty of links to tools and services in this area with a review of what they offer which can be found at Remote PC Support Tools: A Mini-Guide, worth checking out. I’ll be trying out TeamViewer which is free for personal use doesn’t require client installation and a small app at my end to sort things out. Good security - the client has to send you details independently of the tool for connecting to them (they suggest the phone). The client tool doesn’t need to be installed - just launched via the website.
Fuel Prices
Posted by monster in economy
This month carries good news on fuel prices - they’re dropping! Although the drop is being pushed by a price war between the supermarkets more than the drop in the barrel price. This does make the price drops a lot more variable and this is reflected in the latest figures having the highest regional variation since I’ve started doing the measurements. It is also worth pointing out, that the drop so far has only taken fuel prices back by a couple months rather than to last year’s price plus annual inflation.
Source figures courtesy of the AA.
The Times front page - Computer games industry threat to downloaders
Posted by monster in Technology
This article (Computer games industry threat to downloaders: ‘pay up or we’ll sue’) makes up the front page of the The Times today along with a photo of Christine Ohuruogu the Team GB athlete. It is surprising such an announcement made the front pages of the paper, but also the fact that compared to the downloading of movies and music the games industry has been relatively quiet about the illegitimate downloading activity. It is interesting to observe that the print edition of the article acknowledges that often people will download games and never play them, begging the question as to what proportion of the downloads do actually represent lost revenue?
I hope that the games industry don’t make the mistakes that the music industry (particularly the RIAA) have fallen into which has done the industry no favours at all.
Chemical Brothers iTunes EP
Posted by monster in Music
The Chemical Brothers have released an EP on iTunes called Midnight Madness which includes a Soulwax remix of Hey Boy, Hey Girl.
Jerry Wexler Dead at 91
Posted by monster in Music
After a hectic weekend, I’m catching up with news to discover the sad news that the great Jerry Wexler has passed on. I’ll not write reams about his exploits, but recommend you read about them your self, but looking at his book - Rhythm & Blues (also called My Life in Rhythm & Blues), if you wan the shortened details then check out Stereophile: Jerry Wexler Dead at 91.
One Man’s Quest to Digitize and Publicize Rare Vinyl
Posted by monster in Music
Thanks to BOfH for bringing a very interesting article about a a music fan in the US who is bringing his collection of 78’s into the twenty first century by converting them to MP3. The full article can be found at Listening Post from Wired.com. Clif Bolling has been ripping his notable collection of old 78s to MP3 and posting them to his website so that he could access the MP3s from anywhere he wants. Hits in the website had been low until information about Cliff’s activity hit Reddit and StumbleUpon at which point interest and the number of hits his site had went through the roof.
The interesting thing is issues of copyright, it would seem that concern was not over possible copyright breach; Cliff is working on the principle of no takedown notice must mean all is ok - a little naive, but given the likelihood that this material isn’t available anymore (some of the recordings at 70+ years old) it would be hard to prove he has inflicted losses on the record companies. Given the copyright risk, it is strange to read that Cliff’s wife was more concerned about how the music might be perceived as the recordings weren’t subject to modern political correctness or legislation over sexism or racism.
It will be interesting to see if the interest in Cliff’s efforts result in the master recordings for some of this material are tracked down, cleaned up and made available through more legitimate channels. In the meantime we can probably look upon Cliff’s efforts as twenty first century equivalent to the great archivist Alan Lomax.
New Paul Weller single from 22 Dreams
Posted by monster in Music
Paul Weller’s next single from the 22 Dreams album is going to be ‘All I Wanna Do (Is Be With You)‘. The digital release will be on the 18th and the physical formats will follow a week later.
The CD single is released with three tracks with a radio edit of ‘All I Wanna Do (Is Be With You)‘ along with ‘Push It Along’ and ‘Big Brass Buttons’ featuring Bobby Gillespie.
There will also be collectible 7″ vinyl options, the first coming in a Green Island Records 7″ bag with ‘All I Wanna Do (Is Be With You)‘ Radio Edit backed by ‘Push It Along’. The second comes in an Artworked 7″ bag with an acoustic version of ‘All I Wanna Do (Is Be With You)‘ backed by an acoustic version of ‘Pretty Flamingo’. You can order all the formats as part of a multi-buy special offer for just £4.99 exclusively from Townsend Records here.
New website borrows Radiohead’s ‘pay what you want’ plan
Posted by monster in Music
The NME has reported here that a new website has been launched following Radiohead’s recent experiment with In Rainbows model; namely, you decide how much you’d like to pay for the music. The site is called Aralie.com. But before you get too excited at the idea of being able to buy all of Radiohead’s back catalogue for not much money, the site wont have any major artists as it is currently aimed at Independent artists.
I hope the site succeeds and that perhaps artists like Radiohead and Paul Westerberg sell albums through the site to help support them and get the rest of the record industry thinking, oh and new indie artists get more punters checking them out.
big Autumn album releases being announced
Posted by monster in Music
According to AlbumVote, U2 will be releasing their first new album in four years (the last being ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb”) in October. Keane have also announced their next album called Perfect Symmetry to be released on October 13th 2008. The next Verve release - to be called Forth is now well known about which is released later this month.
Other interesting looking releases coming according to metacritic:
- Ray LaMontagne - Gossip in the Rain
- Lindsey Buckingham (sometime Fleetwood Mac guitarist) - Gift of Screws
- Chemical Brothers
- Dido
- Jem - Down To Earth
- The Killers
- Massive attack
- Starsailor - All The Plans
- Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads (13/10)
- Snow Patrol
Counting Crows - official bootlegs
Posted by monster in Music
As the Counting Crows hit the road to promote their latest album, they’ve have decided to follow what is starting to become a well warn path of official live concert releases. The are are available from livecountingcrows.com. The concerts can be downloaded in MP3 or FLAC formats, or purchased as CDs with prices at $9.95, $12.95 and $21.00 respectively. It is intended that the site will make all future shows available via the site.
main site - http://www.countingcrows.com/
Lego Bohemian Rhapsody!
Posted by monster in Music
A series of music videos have been animated with Lego including Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody! Complete with the Lego version of some of the famous visual effects.
It is certainly worth taking a look at. Must have taken IrishVixen2008 hours of effort to animate. A mass of other videos in Lego can be found here.
