all the world's a stage...
I'm a Computer Science undergraduate in my final year studying at Reading University. I like music, movies, photography, reading and if I can ever get around to it, writing. Also a fan of horror, sci-fi and fantasy so there's plenty of re/blogging on those areas.
I write gig/event reviews at From The Pit
Elsewhere on the web:
Many tweaks to this and web presence in general in the pipeline... when I get around to it.
Weekly Top Artists (via Last.fm):
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Avengers cocktails! :D
Makes me want to try them out!
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Facebook’s initial public offering has many people asking:...
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Will get round to finishing this game when I have the time but in the meantime I’ve got the soundtrack on repeat, especially this track, and now I’m out of plays on Spotify. To Grooveshark!
foobar2000: A better audio player
Yesterday I switched to foobar2000 and found it to be my favourite audio player. It has everything I want from an audio player: it’s light on system resources, can scrobble to Last.fm and supports media keys so I can easily play/pause/skip without needing to activate foobar2000. The UI is easy to customise to your preferences and there are various components that you can add for extra functionality. One of the components I’ve added is the lyrics component. I’ve changed the layout so that the lyrics window is docked into the main window rather floating separately.
I don’t use iTunes or WMP because all I want is to listen to my music. I don’t need all the extras. There are specific things I dislike about those two but I won’t go into it here.
For a long time, I’ve used Winamp for playing music. However, I started noticing how it was not lightweight and would slow, freeze and/or crash if I left it running. This in turn would slow down my system. This I did not like.
I looked at what I already had installed and started using VLC instead. VLC is one of my favourite programs. No more worrying about having the right codec. Highly recommended and you should try it if you haven’t already.
Anyway, VLC is much lighter than Winamp and does what I need it to do. Only down side is that it doesn’t support the media keys on my keyboard - its global hotkey settings literally will not let me bind the media keys. The only way to get it to kind of work is if I install mk2mp and even then it only works if the VLC window is active- which sort of defeats the point of using the media keys.
I did also look at Media Player Classic, which does support media keys but doesn’t scrobble. Personally, the Last.fm support is more important to me than media keys support, so VLC, it was.
But I have foobar2000 now and I’m not going back.
Screenshot was taken while foobar2000 was in use. I was listening to Tapping the Vein who are one the many bands I adore. Female fronted gothic metal, yay. Go have a listen on Grooveshark or find the band on Amazon.
![futurejournalismproject:
Bjork’s upcoming Biophilia is being touted as an “album app” that will contain periodically released, dedicated apps for each song.
In an interview with Evolver.fm, apps creator Scott Snibbe explains that the forward thinking innovation is actually a throwback to the days of vinyl.
[I]n some reviews of [the first two tracks released in] Biophilia, people said, “Wow, I haven’t had this experience in 20 years. Before CDs came out, I’d buy an album and hold the 12-inch cover in my hand, sitting cross-legged on the floor while I listened to the music, read the liner notes, and looked at the pictures.” People used to have this very tactile, multimedia experience when they bought an album.
But with the digitization of music, we’ve lost that special moment. You can think of the app as, finally, that chance to unwrap the box and have a personal, intimate experience again with music. It might be the case that people spend a lot of time with the app when it first comes out [as they did with album covers] and then perhaps they’ll move on to purely enjoying the music after that. But we’ll really have to wait and see.
Publishers take note: replace music and vinyl with news and print, and the music industry Bjork might be teaching us something.
Image: art from the “Virus” song app.
Innovation is not dead. Hurrah!](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp18i0vIrs1qedj2ho1_500.png)
Bjork’s upcoming Biophilia is being touted as an “album app” that will contain periodically released, dedicated apps for each song.
In an interview with Evolver.fm, apps creator Scott Snibbe explains that the forward thinking innovation is actually a throwback to the days of vinyl.
[I]n some reviews of [the first two tracks released in] Biophilia, people said, “Wow, I haven’t had this experience in 20 years. Before CDs came out, I’d buy an album and hold the 12-inch cover in my hand, sitting cross-legged on the floor while I listened to the music, read the liner notes, and looked at the pictures.” People used to have this very tactile, multimedia experience when they bought an album.
But with the digitization of music, we’ve lost that special moment. You can think of the app as, finally, that chance to unwrap the box and have a personal, intimate experience again with music. It might be the case that people spend a lot of time with the app when it first comes out [as they did with album covers] and then perhaps they’ll move on to purely enjoying the music after that. But we’ll really have to wait and see.
Publishers take note: replace music and vinyl with news and print, and
the music industryBjork might be teaching us something.Image: art from the “Virus” song app.
Innovation is not dead. Hurrah!
(via fastcompany)
It’s exam season… so I have rather more important things on my mind. After exams, other things need seeing to. Going to make a note of the various things I’m going to miss which I’ll look up at some point in the future when things are calmer.
Definitely can’t:
21st April: Bitter Ruin at St. Pancras Station (for The Station Sessions: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheStationSessions)
14th May: Levellers at O2 Academy Brixton
21st May: The Last Republic at O2 Academy Islington
Probably won’t:
29th/30th/31st May: Belle and Sebastian at The Roundhouse
2nd June: Moby at The Roundhouse
19th June: 3 Doors Down at The Roundhouse
15th July: They Might Be Giants at KOKO
Currently not… but maybe, just maybe:
11th June: Jonathan Coulton at Union Chapel, Islington *CONFIRMED*
25th/26th June: Ludovico Einaudi at Barbican Centre *CONFIRMED*
22nd July: Voltaire at The Purple Turtle (London)
23rd Sep: Bitter Ruin at Spice of Life
11th Oct: Josh Groban at HMV Hammersmith Apollo
1st Nov: Ryuichi Sakamoto at South Bank Centre
New post on From The Pit, a music/entertainment sister blog. Looking at a common suggestion that much of mainstream popular music is manufactured and all the same, with a little help from Rob Paravonian’s Pachelbel Rant and Axis of Awesome’s Four Chord Song
It’s taken 7 years but Ben Moody FINALLY speaks out.
(via mistresspassiongreed)
Perhaps some may mock me for saying this but I did love Evanescence’s Fallen when it came out. It was an instant hit with me and Ben Moody’s influence in it was made especially conspicuous by it’s absence in Evanescence’s follow-up album The Open Door- which was also simultaneously a demonstration of Amy Lee’s own creative abilities.
While I may not have liked The Open Door as much as Fallen, I’ve never thought any less of Evanescence or Amy Lee for it. It was just the case that as Evanescence’s musical direction deviated from my musical tastes, I moved on to other bands. Should Evanescence’s music ever again coincide with my tastes, I’ll go right back to them without hesitation.
When I heard about Ben Moody’s new band We Are The Fallen were doing their debut gig in London, I didn’t hesitate- I made sure I got down there to see them. I missed the sound of Fallen-era Evanescence. They’re definitely not a Evanescence clone though. Similarities in sound were to be expected and that was fine. It was great to see Ben Moody with a band again.
For me it’s always been about the music. The idea that there might be some new Amy vs. Ben feud between fans hadn’t even occurred to me. I first became aware of it when I got some rude comments about Lee on one of my WATF videos that I uploaded on Youtube. I thought it was silly and evidently Moody thinks so too.
I reckon that these fan-feuds are really the last thing either Amy Lee or Ben Moody want… if they even care about them at all. They’ve long since moved on. I hope the fans will too: move on and get along.
And so it begins…
I woke up at around 9:30 this morning after a pleasant night’s camping. Getting an early entry ticket was worth it for getting a good spot for the tent and for getting settled in.
My excitement is growing and I can’t wait for the bands to start coming on.
I’m excited for other reasons too: there are several firsts for me here. This is my first music festival. I went to Hard Rock Hell in December but that isn’t a “proper” festival… it was far too comfy! :p. This is my first time camping too, which has been fun.
Today, I’m looking forward to seeing:
* Delain
* Turisas
* And So I Watch You From Afar
* Terrorvision
And maybe:
* 65daysofstatic
* Black Spiders
With the aim of being sensible and not spending too much, I think I must choose between God Is An Astronaut and This Will Destroy You.
I think they are both excellent post-rock bands in their own right- or rather, I remember them better because they were the first two post-rock bands that I found I really liked.
GIAA have a show in London on 12th November and I last saw them in February this year. TWDY have one on 30th September and I last saw them in October ‘09. So I have to decide which one I feel I really can’t miss.
Now that I think about it, it turns out that the choice is easier than I thought it would be. Listening to some tracks on MySpace, I’ve realised that I like GIAA quite a bit more.
GIAA wins - for me anyway.
For the upcoming release of their new album Hung, Drawn & Quartered, Bitter Ruin decided to play a headlining show at The Spice of Life. They arranged it to be for 22nd May but that sold out within two hours so they decided to hold another one the day before.
Anyway… I went to the one on the 21st…
They are amazing. I’m listening to Hung, Drawn & Quartered. Again. I’m glad we went :)
(via bonethief) #spreadtheplague #EmilieAutumn
