The Love Commandos new site

I've recently finished putting together the Love Commandos new look website. Designed as a new blog style site for the West Midlands rock band it will hopefully attract more people to the band - especially once we get out and start gigging again after completing the album "Siren".

Three things I learned to day...

1. Joomla 1.5 is NOT compatible with PHP 5.3 so don't use XAMPP v1.72 for windows as a development tool (use v1.71 - it has PHP 5.2.9)

2. Audio CDs (I mean the complete package, CD box & booklet) were heavier 20 years ago than they are now.

3. Online job application forms are very annoying and require far more time to complete than downloaded word documents.

Les Paul dies at 94

Sad, sad news - the passing of a man who was already a legend in his own lifetime. Les Paul dies in White Plains, NY at the age of 94. Not only did this musical genius develop one of the first solid body guitars "the log" in 1941, his designs later marketed by Gibson, he was also a pioneer of what we now call music technology. This is the man invented multitrack recording and ushered in an entirely new way of capturing bands' performances that would revolutionise the rock'n'roll era and influence all future recording.

We mourn a great guitarist and phenomenal musical inventor.

More from Associated Press - Guitar legend-inventor Les Paul dies at age 94

Does Pirate Bay verdict spell trouble for Google?

Let's be honest, this was hardly a surprising outcome was it? But the ultimate ramifications could be far wider.

The media industry really would rather the internet would go away, since it's a distribution channel that they find hard to control (but they're willing to spend the cash to get there) and it tends to destroy their revenue boosting conceit of "regionalization"

My real concern is that once the media giants get a stranglehold on illegal distribution of their own content the next logical step will be to shut out any independent producers. There's no real proof that piracy alone is responsible for their huge loss of revenue, yet once they've done all they can to stamp out piracy they'll have to find another excuse for their failing business model.

The technological push is already there - SACD, Blueray & HDMI all require huge budgets to create masters that will play in commercial players. So if they can just kill off DVD, CD & mp3 they'll really be happy.

Paranoia? Perhaps. But one day I could be busking on the corner of a street somewhere awaiting the arrival of "the man" to serve me with a "cease and desist being creative notice" for infringing the rights of the media giants to make money.

Legal downloads swamped by piracy - BBC News

10 years ago the recording industry was losing money because of people duplicating CDs and 20 years ago it was because of us all taping vinyl. The bottom line is that the music industry has been in decline since the 70's as more avenues open for everyone's disposable income.

The IFPI can whine all it likes, people will only buy the goods that they can afford to spend on and music is still a relatively expensive disposable income choice - most blockbuster films can be bought when released on DVD for only a pound or two more than a chart album and they seem to get discounted sooner too. The situation also complicated by newspapers and magazines "giving away" "free" albums. That says sends out the message that music is valueless - if it's free on the Daily News why shouldn't it be free on the internet?

Even us artists are starting to realise that we can be better off going it alone than trading our output to the media giants so that they can make a vast profit and pass us scraps. The days of multimillion pound deals ensuring vast profits is gone (look at Robbie Williams recent failures) so why bother? If you can record your songs at home for the price of a computer and the software that often comes free with it then ANY money you make selling them on iTunes or your own website is more profit than you might realise from any record deal.

Apple to announce resolution to iTunes charges? - Silicon.com

Apple is expected to announce steps to resolve European Commission
charges that its iTunes stores broke EU rules by setting prices country
by country in Europe.

http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39169599,00.htm

Talking Photo Software

This is so cool. Thanks to the coders at PQDVD you can now make any photo talk or sing. Better than that if you blog about it before Xmas they'll give you a copy of the software free! Click on the applet below to get to their site.

Why the future may not be Steam-powered

Well OK you've probably guessed I'm not talking about coal-fired robots, though Boilerplate is fun :)

No I'm talking about that dratted games software overlord that combines all the worst bits of DRM, download manager and favorites browser for your games. Playing a game used to be as easy as inserting the CD and double clicking an icon. Not any more. Now I have to launch steam - that in itself seems to take more resources than Bioshock - then double click a link in the window.

But today I've done something punishable by the gods of gaming because instead of launching the game Steam is going to verify all my game data. Why??? And why does it take sooooo long? Have they not heard of one way hashes?

I don't play many games, I simply don't have the time. I like stupid, pointless first person shooter madness, because it's quick and a little challenging and I don't have to think about it too much. I love my Wii and I love my PS2, but frankly if the future of gaming on the PC is Steam I just don't have the time.

I won another router!

For the second year running I won a router at the annual Cisco Academy Forum Day. Yippee! This year it's a 3640 with a voice card so if I figure out how it works and can get the other bits I need I can show my students VoIP.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.

And the winner is...

I guess it has to be egg as I used the new card information in a delayed amazon order yesterday and the CD turned up this morning. So congratulations to egg for being the first company to come through in an emergency.



In joint second place are LoydsTSB debit and credit cards. Both arrived this morning ready to go.



The losers? Two MBNA cards (I've had just had one of the pins) and, disappointingly, my Halifax Amazon card (no card, no pin).



Since the MBNA cards were taken out for balance transfers I think they're finally going to go - MBNA seem to move payment dates randomly (I wouldn't want to accuse them of doing it deliberately to cash in on late fees, but that's how it felt at the time) and obviously aren't in a hurry to get cards out to me. Sorry Dogs Trust, I'll make it up at Xmas, in the meantime get another card provider!



As for my Amazon Card... well the Amazon vouchers are a nice bonus, but that payment date is slowly slipping backwards towards my payday. If it gets to be the wrong side of it, it's off to where the cut-up cards go.