This is MP3Monster's blog. The blog covers music, technology, photography and anything else Monster considers worthy of blogging about.SF Metropole Hotel - Stay
Posted by monster in General
SF Metropole Hotel - Stay
Originally uploaded by Phil & Catherine Wilkins
business trips can sound very glamourous and fun. But the reality is are from it. San Fransisco in the winter is still wet and cold, as you can see from this set of pictures taken whilst there on business.
Some Simple things to protect MySQL
Posted by monster in Website
MySQL is one of the most common DBs for web hosting. This article has a bunch of good basic steps to help protect your MySQL instance from attacks. None of them are rocket science for anyone with some fmiliarity with PHP.
Depeche Mode mini album
Posted by monster in Music
Depeche Mode are to release a new 8 track mini album on December 8th in time for their forthcoming UK tour. The album features track pulled from their recent ‘Sounds of the Universe‘ album as well as some special remixes. The full track list runs:
‘Fragile Tension’ - radio mix, ‘Hole To Feed’ - radio mix, ‘Perfect’ - Roger Sanchez Club Mix, ‘Come Back’ - SixToes Remix, ‘Fragile Tension’ - Laidback Luke Remix, ‘Hole To Feed’ - Popof Vocal Mix, ‘Fragile Tension’ - Peter Bjorn And John Remix, ‘Hole To Feed’ - Joebot Remix
Watch for Depeche Mode new releases at Amazon here.
The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody
Posted by monster in General
My favourite bit is about 1 minute in with Animal.
Gomez @ Southampton Uni
Posted by monster in General
Photo0325
Originally uploaded by Phil & Catherine Wilkins
Photos from Gomez’ gig at Southampton university on my flickr site. Admittedly taken with the Samsung Soul mobile, which to be frank isn’t that great for this sort of thing.
A reasonable gig, but I’ve seen Gomez perform a lot better. he big surprise of the night was Frightened Rabbit, the support band who put in a very impressive support set. This is a band with lots of potential.
Amazing piece of video
Posted by monster in General
The warped media industry
Posted by monster in General
The Electronic Frontier Foundation have a rather good article about the frustrating and crazy behaviour of the media industry (film, TV & music) towards innovation and technology. Although a lot of this is not new thinking it is well expressed, and also highlighted in the light of the fact that recent findings have shown Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) actually have helped advertising not hindered it.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/11/dvr-tvs-new-bff
Cookie Monster ……
Posted by monster in General
Free Joseph Arthur tracks
Posted by monster in Music
Free Joseph Arthur downloads according to his website …
“Do you have friends whom you know will love the music of Joseph Arthur? Send them a message using this form and you’ll receive a free mp3 of the track “Can’t Let You Stay,” one of the bonus tracks from the newly released Nuclear Daydream re-issue! Be sure to let them know that if they join Joseph’s Mailing List they will receive a free mp3 of Joseph solo performing “Slide Away” from the Montreal Jazz Festival from July 4th, 2008, only available for signing up on the mailing list. For those of you already on Joseph’s Mailing List, you can fill out the mailing list form again and we’ll send you a link to download the mp3. We’ll make sure you only receive one email copy of Joseph’s newsletters.”
Where science meets music & video with brilliant results
Posted by monster in Music
I cam across an amzing site, that has combined video clips from science documentaries such as Carl Sagans’ stunning Cosmos with music, with the video samples having their images and audio very cleverly massaged to meet the tempo of the music. The clips are such that the science still makes sense ….
If you’d like to see more then where you can download quality versions of the video or just audio.
Google logo in my honour …
Posted by monster in General
That was nice of Google UK - a logo in my honour. Well not quite, its a relative - cookie monster, and its Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary.
Stephen Fry on technology and its impact on culture
Posted by monster in Technology
This ia brilliant video of Stephen Fry discussing technology and how it has affected culture. A recommended 12 minutes.
ISPs to be rail roaded with anti-piracy legislation in the UK
Posted by monster in Music, Technology
Despite a lot of opposition is looks like the current government are going to force the 3 strikes and your connection is cut off approach as an attempt to cut down piracy (more details at the NME). With ISPs reporting that the process is very difficult and costly to implement I can several scenarios playing out of a lot of incorrect cut offs, service pricesses increasing and/or service quality dropping as ISPs try to claw back the investment (and reduced revenue as they can’t earn from a cut off service).
Aside from what happens with ISPs I think the process is likely to stiffle media development, consider how the Arctic Monkey’s got going - a lot of buzz generated by allowing people to download live performances, and who easy that will be to mixup with illegal material. Those who are intent on sharing will find means to defeat the ISP checks - more sophisticated file hiding etc. The fact that technology will always run faster than legislation has been missed. What the industry needs to wake up to is to make it more attractive to people to pay for music. This doesn’t mean bigger and heavier prouncements about piracy, look at the anti taping campaigns of the 70s and 80s to see what that did, or didn’t do.
Fortunately a few artists have started to try and develop their approach such as the Nine Inch Nails. The record industry shoul look to develop the ‘long tail’ by supporting more smaller artists as the proportion of copyright theft drops as you move down the tail. So rather than pooring millions into a big ad campaign for one artist, whos ‘product’ is then panned by a fickle audience (to be a little more blunt - a poor quality product trying to cash in on a fad or fashion), costing lots and resulting in labels simply blaming piracy for dumb thinking.
We’ll see what happens in July 2011. I hope to be proven wrong, but I suspect it will all endup being a repeat of RIAA mess, and we’ll see court battles about being denied people’s inealiable right to surf the web etc.
Faithless free track
Posted by monster in Music
As a sweetner to get people to sign up to the immenent face lift of the official Faithless website there is a free download song (all part of the promo machine for the forthcoming new album). The song is called Sun To Me. As a track the lyrics are pretty weak; but musically this a real club/gig number that will have the place bouncing like a bunch of nutters in the same way as God Is a DJ does (yes I’ve been to a few Faithless gigs). All of which looks promising for the new album. But what is also really cool is that as there isn’t an official video to go with the track a fan has created one, which has been picked up by the blog Arjan Writes. The video is in some ways rather reminicent of I Want More.
Fingers crossed of a top album, and another tour.
Matthew Ryan - new album
Posted by monster in Music
Matthew Ryan has a new album out called Dear Lover, if you cant wait then the digital release is available from now from Amazon, iTunes and via his own website here. I what suggested that if you want an old fashioned CD then you would have to wait until next year. But the latest check on the website is saying ordering from the website and you’ll get it as quickly as the US Postal service can deliver it.
Unkle’s Psyence Fiction
Posted by monster in Music
As many are currently doing, DJ Shadow has just released a deluxe edition of their classic Psyence Fiction album. The special edition is available through DJ shadow’s site here. In addition to download version, he has followed Radiohead with the exclusive special pack of CDs, t-shirts etc - although they’ve already sold out. Atleast DJ Shadow isn’t just trying to extract money from old rope, he is also regularly releasing live performance recordings and remixes as well. Although I’ve yet to try such a recording (I didn’t enjoy the last studio work) his last live CD was a brilliant piece of work. The album includes brilliant vocal performances from Thom York and Richard Ashcroft.
Free Prodigy download
Posted by monster in General
The Prodigy are giving away a free download of a remix of the title track of their recent album ‘Invaders Must Die’ from their official website, Theprodigy.com. The free download will be availbe until the 28th Octber - so get in there quickly.
Delays
Posted by monster in Music
I was lucky enough to catch the Delays performing at The Joiners Arms in southampton on saturday - absolutely cracking gig.
Plus some pics I took with my mobile phone -here
more freebies from Moby
Posted by monster in Music
Moby seems to have a sussed the nice balance between record label managed websites for artists which tend towards the dull with just announcements for releases and tours, or the other extreme where artists blog about every little detail of life in the studio. not to mention there is the regular sweetener of free tracks. The latest being a remix of ‘One time We lived’ which can be found via Moby’s site here.
Moby
In addition to the remix, NPR (US National Public Radio) have got a full Moby gig that can streamed or downloaded here.
