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yawn

7/31/2007

so our leader is out west praising dubya. i guess one must acknowledge the alpha male when playing monopoly, so its expected.

what isnt nice is continued coverage of beckham. ffs, dafur! what is not nice is smelly food on the train home. what is happening to society you ask? keep asking, coz asking is easier to dismiss than doing.

40 hour week or more? is it your decision to make? what influences it?

seeing prince soon. saw simply red. saw metalica. lets hope tiny is trumps.

-- tnn [mobile]


Here Goes

7/27/2007

Ok, i return, and i return with purpose.

far too long have i watched what goes on, and thought endlessly about it.

time to get it off my mind.

-
like the thought of new housing. have you noticed that a significant
percentage of new buid houses are one and two bedroom flats or houses?
what impact will this have on society in ten to fifteen years time?
does this mean that our government has concluded that the family unit
beyond one child is extnct? does anyone believe that two parent
families are going to persist?

- look at the duplicity of
immigration. these persons arrive and largely begin working as income
here is better on returns. yet we hear an argument to limit 'their'
entry. 'they' take our jobs ad homes. which proud person would want to
do the jobs they do for the price they get? its not about xeno or
housing, its about money! figure it out.

- civil
liberty...regular readers know i care. but ask yourself 'what freedom
do you want, and what limitation will you tolerate?' example, freedom
to trial by jury - any ideas why this is important? example - if
detention went up to four months, why should you care if it was limited
to those with brown skin? freedom to vote for a person or party who
really doesnt understand you, only understands economy.

so many thoughts.

finally
a word on governing. has Anyone ever tried to decipher how govt works?
My conclusion is that it is a business. increasingly it is becoming a
short range business. by this i mean shareholders are told of plans
that wet appetite for investment, but as attention spans shorten, newer
plans are announced to jazz up new interest. the agm is, u guessed,
every two years or so.

so please, think away.


tnn [mobile]


New Blogs, New Blogs, lots of new Blogs

7/25/2007

Yes, its been 6 months and I haven't done much, but I've been busy elsewhere see.

Some cold chick has a new blog, and business to boot.

And some bloke is thinking, interesting, could I...

So he hops about his old online bloggy mates, and reminds himself when it was a small thing. Its great how its grown!

So, I guess I might poll people soon, should this blog go: Gadget/Tech/Politics/Humour/Odds and Ends. If no answers, then it plods along quite happily.

If you are a veggie - do check out the new link!
--
tnn


From Wired

7/14/2007

DJ Spooky: How a Tiny Caribbean Island Birthed the Mashup

Paul D. Miller, also known as DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, has been producing beat-heavy electronic music for more than a decade. From his early solo trip-hop efforts to his more recent collaborations with jazz giants, Spooky has always approached music from multiple angles at once. He has the chops of a musician, the genre-blending ear of a disc jockey and the conceptual vision of a performance artist.

It was therefore no surprise when Trojan Records, a reggae label entering its 40th year, asked DJ Spooky to put together a mix showcasing tracks from its massive archives. When assembling >In Fine Style: DJ Spooky Presents 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records, one of several mixes commissioned to mark the Trojan birthday, Miller found countless parallels between the Jamaican reggae scene of the 1960s and '70s and the digital mashup ecosystem of today. (See Upgrading Jamaica's Cultural Shareware: Trojan Records at 40.)

In his liner notes, DJ Spooky writes, "you can think of the whole culture as a shareware update, a software source for the rest of the world to upload."

Wired News asked DJ Spooky to elaborate.

Wired News: Jamaican culture as "shareware update"? Brilliant. Please tell us more.

DJ Spooky: The whole idea of people like King Tubby or Prince Jammy (reggae producers who pioneered the "dub" remix) was to use technology to show their community how to make music for the world. Jamaica is the loudest island in the world! Dub used tech of the day -- analog tape loops, old-school mixing boards, you name it -- to create a radical departure from music made in the main areas of 1960s pop music.

Forget Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band or Hendrix's Electric Ladyland as studio masterpieces, I'm talking about rare dub tracks that cut across the whole idea of what a song was meant to be. It changed the way people listen to music and the way that music was produced. Trojan was at the heart of all these changes, and I wanted to go through their archive to show the hidden connections between dub, techno, hip-hop, drum and bass, dubstep and more. I guess you could say I wanted to show how to connect the dots.

WN: Many of the songs on your reissue, and I imagine the others in the series, are covers of American standards ("Summertime") or pop classics ("Come Together"). Was reggae way ahead of today's culture mash?

DJ Spooky: Reggae is all about the mashup! The Caribbean is a place where so many cultures were in collision: Spanish, Portuguese, Indian, British, Chinese. People tend to forget that one of Bob Marley's producers (Leslie Kong) was Chinese-Jamaican, or that Lee Gopthal who was one of the co-owners of Trojan Records was Indian. Even the term "Ganjah" is pronounced Hindi style; it's the Ganges river! And don't even get me started about dreadlocks. Any holy man on the Ganges could tell you that they're Indian too. ?

Everyone borrows from everyone. That's what digital culture is all about. Information, the cliché goes, wants to be free. I guess Jamaican culture got there a little before everyone else.

One of the funniest things I noticed when I was going through Trojan's archives is how many cover versions of American pop culture were in play. Jamaica was tuned into all the pop music coming in over the coast from Florida, and the songs people heard really left an impression. I mean, c'mon, a whole box set of Jamaican covers of The Beatles? Every possible James Brown song you can imagine has a Jamaican cover version; ditto for Curtis Mayfield. Trojan put out a lot of that kind of thing, which is very, very cool.

WN: How has the technology used by the music business changed since these songs were made?

DJ Spooky: When you think about it, so much music is mediated by software these days, and that's a mixed bag, at best. One of the things that made early dub so unique is that even though everyone had access to the same rhythms, they really made different "versions" of the songs by using special effects as a new kind of instrument. .

The problem with today's music is that so many people are using the same software. I can hear it when someone uses the ProTools edit, or when someone like Paris Hilton has so many pitch corrections on her last album, she might as well as have had the computer sing everything and just stand back, kind of like Warhol or something.

The U.S. government has the Library of Congress, Jamaica has dub. That's one of the best things the 21st century can offer: Wikipedia, Youtube, MySpace, Facebook: All these say "Do it your own way, but there's a formula." King Tubby and Scientist, and all these producers, singers and MCs were saying the same thing.

It's all about pattern recognition. Call it Wikinomics: Mass collaboration changes everything, and that's a dub plate special y'all


Do Not Overreact

7/01/2007

Dear Prime Minister,

please do not over react to what has happened.

Please ask the community to renounce these acts, and ask them to turn on and turn in those who do these things that threaten the peaceful existence of civilians.

Please do not reduce our liberty and freedom of movement because of these few who have no shame. Please do not lock people up without charge. Please do not turn us into an unlikeable place to live.

Internet readers - please instigate a campaign of 'Do Not Overreact'. We must tell the leaders, we will live on as we are, but we will not stand for erosion of our liberty.

--
tnn


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Weekly musings from a confused mind. This blog, and all posts within it, are just ramblings. They are in no way affiliated with any past, current or future employers. Neither do they represent my deep felt views, or those of my friends or family. Really, its just a blog, which is a new thing, and has new dimensions. So please, dont take anything seriously. If you do, contact me via a comment, and I will get back to you to resolve the situation. Seriously, enjoy life, ignore this blog, and views within it.

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