June 19, 2009
Grazing and Plugging
I didn't have time to plug Dengue Fever before yesterday's show at the Scala, but what you need to know is this: Andy Kiang of Proper has been telling me how good they are for a while, and finally persuaded me to go to a free record shop gig on Wednesday. Since when I have downloaded three of their albums from eMusic and have been listening to Dengue Fever pretty much solidly. So yup, they rocked and I felt enormously lucky and privileged to be seeing them at the very front of a crowd of about 80 or so. No Spotify for Dengue Fever but you can download a lossless live version of their song Tiger Phone Card from the also awesome B&W Society of Sound.
The record shop in question was Pure Groove in Farringdon. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what a record shop was like; Pure Groove is not like that at all. It consists of an shop-sized open space (they put a few cafe tables in it during the day) with a stage at one end, some comfy chairs, magazines and so on, and a counter down one side behind which is a small selection of interesting rarities, vinyl, signed CDs, t-shirts and so on, a coffee machine and some beer. It reminded me strongly of I Knit London, though the space in the middle is optomised for listening to live music rather than for knitting. They have a in-store gig every evening (and many lunchtimes), they sell nice bottled beer and some snacks, and they're clearly a fantastic place to just chill.
I couldn't get to the Scala because I was off seeing the Greek Theatre Players, slightly displaced this year from the Greek Theatre. This was The Comedy of Errors, marvellously played. My heart sank when I saw that nobody else had brought kids; but Marianne enjoyed it all and even Jonathan enjoyed the second half, once we'd said "Right. There are *two* sets of twins." If you're taking kids, even teenagers, to The Comedy of Errors I would recommend explaining Egeon's initial speech to them in advance because it's long and hard for kids to follow and without the set up the entire play is incomprehensible. Once again I benefitted from my appalling ignorance of Shakespeare; most of the ending is telegraphed long in advance, but I got to enjoy one delightful reveal. Another benefit of advancing years is that Shakespeare's language, which I remember struggling with in school, seems to me pellucid now. You can catch The Comedy of Errors tonight or tomorrow at the Holy Family College in Church Hill Road, Walthamstow, or on Sunday at the Capel Manor Gardens.
Finally, I must mention Graze, who send little boxes of tasty treats to your home or workplace. Each box has three things to graze on, a mixture of fresh and dried fruit, nuts, seeds, little yoghurt coated things, and so on. There's loads of different possibilities, you can rate items to get them more or less often or not at all, and the presentation is lovely. The boxes are £2.99 each, which is pretty comparable to what the same sort of thing would cost you from, say, Marks and Sparks or Pret. I'm in two minds about Graze. On the one hand this is fantastic stuff to get you through the work day, far better than crisps and choccy bars, and I love getting the boxes through the door. On the other hand this is a lot more expensive than, say, peeling and chopping fresh pineapple yourself, so if you're committed to the cult of Cheap then it's clearly not for you. I have a code -- 3GH2D5JE -- if you enter that on the website you can get a first box free to try, and a second box half-price.
Posted by Alison Scott at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2009
Two adult games and a tantalising preview
When GTA: Chinatown Wars
I was intrigued by the reviews so I got a copy, despite a longstanding hate of both driving games and crime simulations (I'm very law-abiding). It is fantastic fun and well worth a tenner. It is possibly a bit immoral; you certainly find yourself gunning down people with abandon, and although the drug-dealing sub-game is 'optional', you will quickly find yourself unarmed and penniless if you don't join in. There's a good range of missions and some of the plotting is genuinely funny. GTA is famed for its sandboxes and there are lots of fun things you can do in this game that have nothing to do with the main plot. For example, all the service vehicles can be stolen and then used, so you can drive a cab and pick up fares, drive a police car and respond to crimes, drive a fire engine and put out fires, and so on. And the pacing is fantastic for a DS game; you can pick it up and have fun in just a few minutes. The graphics beat anything I've previously seen on the DS by some margin too; Liberty City is huge, and it's all distinctive, and I don't know how they have done it.
GTA: Chinatown Wars is an adult game that says 'here, come and play at doing things you'd never dream of doing in real life, in a ludicrous fantasy world where you are much tougher than a pack of hardened goons, your car automatically drives in a straight line and nobody fires straight.' One of the reasons that people criticise GTA is that it 'glamorises' crime but I think it is just doing the same thing as any simulation game; making a hard thing (making crime pay) seem much easier, just like Guitar Hero or Wii Tennis.
In other adult gaming news, I'm playing the new Mac version of Braid, the thinky, philosophical puzzle game disguised as a platformer. The premise is that of Super Mario; Tim (I do not know whether Tim is a plumber by trade) has lost his princess and is searching for her. He has to collect jigsaw pieces which are cashed in for the ending, and like in Prince of Persia, he can rewind time to avoid getting killed by monsters. That description misses out three key things. The first is that rewinding time is not merely a death-avoidance gimmick. In practice you have to rewind time, in many and variously tricky ways, to solve the puzzles, nearly all of which are fiendish. The second is that this game is exceptionally beautiful, and I am a sucker for pretty games. And the third, of course, is that Tim is not an uncomplicated little plumber. The game is framed with his ruminations on time, loss, princesses, and the general weight of living. The game has an ending, which I have been somewhat spoilt for by randomly wambling round the internet; so you will want to be careful about that.
I downloaded the demo and was hooked; it does not feel to me particularly pricey at $14.99 but perhaps I am an easy target. I understand it crashes on many Macs; fortunately not on mine. Most of the puzzles (but not all) are self-contained and lend themself to prolongued thought; this is a game where setting it down, going away for a while and returning often renders an impossible scene straightforward. There is a puzzle early in Braid which is widely decried as unfair; I solved it without help and was enchanted when I did it. I think I've collected about half the puzzle pieces now. These puzzles are difficult, and the learning curve is quite brutal. The designer, rather arrogantly, has released a 'walkthrough' that says, roughly, all the puzzles are fair, figure it out and don't use a walkthrough.
Braid then, is an adult game about the nature of gaming, and about life. It is saying 'games can tell us about our life' and a deliberately artificial situation can nevertheless teach us profound lessons that are similar to those acquired from a movie or book. I do not doubt that this is true of games in general; I am not yet sure it is true of Braid.
And finally, the gameplay trailer for The Beatles: RockBand is jolly great and I'm sure the game will be fine. But the opening cinematic is just extraordinary. I'm only a moderate fan of the Beatles and I'm seriously excited.
Posted by Alison Scott at 03:13 PM | Comments (1)
June 02, 2009
Two of those big yellow taxi moments
eMusic has finally hooked a major label, and will shortly have Sony back catalogue. In return, they are 'adjusting' their prices in two directions; plan costs rise, and tracks per plan reduce. There's no sign that existing users will be grandfathered. Like many longstanding emusic regulars, I have the October 2006 email that guarantees to honour my existing plan as long as my account is in good standing -- US members have been told that these plans are now being 'retired' which is an interesting use of the word 'guarantee' that m'learned friends are now considering. People with grandfathered plans like mine are facing typically a doubling of per-price track. Guess what, chaps? If I download 45 tracks instead of 90, you do not make any more money. If I download 0 tracks instead of 90, which is not impossible, you make less. The good news is that there will, finally, be a per album price for some albums with many tracks. So, we shall see. It seems very strange given Spotify, too; but yes, I have a workaround where I can listen to albums on Spotify and then choose whether or not to buy them.
Meanwhile, I learn that Birdsong Radio has gone off the air. Since getting a radio that could have multiple alarms tuned to different stations, we used this as our weekend 'alarm'; instead of being woken suddenly by music we were woken gently by birdsong. Apparently some radios do it themselves now, and this radio can use music on an SD card as an alarm. But still.
Posted by Alison Scott at 09:12 AM | Comments (1)
May 31, 2009
May Music
UK handspun folk label Talking Elephant have a load of new releases out. Mostly rarities, repackages and so on I think. I have picked up Hard Works
But my main haul from Talking Elephant was various Morris stuff. Now, they've been repackaging some of the Morris material, and so some of the stuff on Sweeps
Simon Care, one of the leading lights of Moulton Morris, has released a second anthology album, Oh What a Caper
showcasing all the fantastic work he does with other people. Tracks here from Whapweasel, various incarnations of Albions, Edward II, Tickled Pink and so on; mostly demonstrating how Care, as well as being a thoroughly nice bloke, is the undisputed master of the driving melodeon beat.
No relation to Talking Elephant is acid croft live favourites Elephant Talk I discovered that they have a newish album out, Natty Loon, that I didn't know about, so I bought it. But really, their brand of somewhat-celtic trance is best experienced late at night at a festival.
My 'back catalogue special' this month was John Renbourn's Sir John Alot
Giles Lewin is a fiddler and piper with the Carnival Band, and for a while with Bellowhead, and one of Maddy Prior's band (no, not that band). The Armchair Orienteer
Steve Knightley has re-recorded his 1999 solo album "Track of Words" to produce Track of Words: Retraced
The Handsome Family have a new album out, Honey Moon
Walthamstow Folk Club continues to inspire my listening. I saw the fine interpreter of ballads Chris Foster there, and picked up his new album Outsiders
I totally failed to buy any CDs by Bill Caddick when I saw him at the Cellar Upstairs; he didn't have any for sale. Not on his website either; I do think this is an almighty mistake for a singer/songwriter. We did spend the entire evening going 'gosh, did he write that one', though, so you'll know his songs.
Another great friend of the folk club is Anne Lister. I won her most recent album in the folk club raffle, and set about picking up the rest. So this month I have got Singing On The Wind
Finally, the nice people at Proper sent me a copy of the 2009 Folk Awards compilation album
Examples of many of the musicians and songwriters mentioned in this post are included in my May Music Spotify playlist.
Posted by Alison Scott at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2009
The Glories of Spotify With Worked Example
I'm pretty excited by Spotify, though with so many of these things I do not understand its business model. Or rather, I understand Spotify's business model, but I am not sure why labels are happy with Spotify but not with other free all you can eat music services. The free version of Spotify is ad-supported (I am listening to some ads now). You can get rid of the ads for 99p for a single day, or £9.99 for a month.
The lovely thing about Spotify is that it finally delivers a workable modern form of mixtapes. I can tell you how wonderful a band I'm listening to is, and link to a Spotify playlist that includes their music. You can listen to all the tracks I've chosen in full, and then use Spotify to explore further. I am not sure what its reach is yet (in particular, I'm not sure it reaches the US). Even better, there are collaborative playlists that several people can edit.
As an example of this, I've complied a short list of tunes and songs in five time -- A Bunch of Fives. You'll need to have Spotify to play it of course. Do add the tracks I've missed (though not 'other weird time signatures' please, just fives). For the benefit of people who can't get Spotify, this currently includes Dave Brubeck's "Take Five", Mawkin Causley's "Ye Mariners All", the second movement of Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony ("Pathetique"), Shirley and Dolly Collins' "Searching for Lambs", "When Your Mind's Made Up" from the film Once, Jethro Tull's "Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow", "Everything's Alright" from Jesus Christ Superstar, the Mission:Impossible theme (Lalo Schrfrin), "River Man" by Nick Drake, and "Mars: the Bringer of War" from Holst's Planet Suite.
Here's a second collaborative playlist -- at present with no tracks in it. Recommend music for me here.
Posted by Alison Scott at 10:30 AM | Comments (2)
April 29, 2009
Free Big Fish Games
Edit June 2009: Not any more, for the large number of you googling this! That's Free as in Beer. Casual Gameplay explains that Big Fish Games is giving away four of its best games for absolutely nothing for a month or so. That's Azada, Hidden Expedition:Everest, Fairway Solitaire and Spa Mania, all available for Windows or Mac. I have already bought the first three of these, and really enjoyed all of them. You need to have a (free) Big Fish account, and you need to be careful when using the coupon codes (FREEAZADA, FREEEVEREST, FREEFAIRWAY and FREESPA) to uncheck paid-for options. When all is well, your checkout total will be zero. And obviously, they're hoping to reel you in and sell you loads more games. Which would not be such a bad thing.
Posted by Alison Scott at 11:56 PM | Comments (1)
April 24, 2009
Current Listening
I realise it has been months and months since I did a 'new music' post. So obviously I can't tell you everything. First, how to buy this stuff: eMusic now has Topic, Fellside, Navigator, Fledg'ling and Talking Elephant records. Most wanted label for me is now Free Reed. Some of the stuff that's not on eMusic is on iTunes, and iTunes is now entirely "iTunes Plus", which is sort of "DRM-free". Sort of because the music has your unique ID in it so they can track it back to you; but the important thing is that you can use it how you want. You are not going to be sitting in 20 years time befuddledly trying to work out how to play music you've paid for. And frankly, that's a sight better than the position I'm in with cassettes. Finally, you can buy CDs by pressing tenners into the sweaty hands of your favourite musicians after gigs in pubs. That's neither the cheapest nor the most efficient approach, but it's very satisfying.
One of the most exciting things going on in my music collection at the moment is Navigator Records. You may remember that their launch lineup of artists was notable because I had seen every single one of them live; that's no longer quite true, but still. Of 17 albums on eMusic on the label, I own 14 of them. I keep hearing that bands I like are signing to Navigator or that Navigator is releasing an album that was previously self-pressed. Fantastic label. Highlights include the various projects of Jon Boden and his mates, the various projects of Kris Drever and his mates, and the new Mawkin:Causley album.
I've bought a couple of songs specifically to learn to sing: a field recording (by Alan Lomax) of William Rew singing "The New Mown Hay", and Ian Dury's "England's Glory", specially for St George's Day.
A request for French music in the melodeon forum (not by me) resulted in a recommendation of La Chavanée, which contains Frederic Paris and several of the other musicians who contributed to Mel Stevens' fantastic collections of tunes from the Massif Central. I grabbed one album from eMusic, but I want more.
On eMusic, I'm filling in my collections of Ashley Hutchings, particularly Albion Band and Morris On, and John Kirkpatrick.
Amazon launched its mp3 store with a huge range of cheap albums
Finally, I took advantage of iTunes' 'upgrade your iTunes purchases to de-DRM them' offer. In my case this cost me the staggering sum of £2.79. I have been very, very, careful not to buy that stuff; all but one of those tracks were bought with a free gift certificate I got once.
Posted by Alison Scott at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
A couple of bits and pieces
I have done a proper blog post! Except that I've done it at the Proper Blog. It's a review of the Mawkin:Causley album launch, and it's exactly like I would have written it here. So go read it.
There's going to be an Utterly Fantastic Free Folk Concert in Trafalgar Square tomorrow, celebrating St George's Day. I'm multiply booked and can't go, but it's got a fantastic lineup including Seth Lakeman, Eliza Carthy, Jim Moray, Kathryn Tickell and the Demon Barbers. Free. Wow.
I can't go because we'll be holed up here planning the next plokta.con, happening at the end of May. Do all please come!
Posted by Alison Scott at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2009
Trying Something Once: Geocaching
We found ourselves in darkest Suffolk with not much to do, and the weather was fine, so we went Geocaching. Geocaching is the outdoors equivalent of making vegetables into smiley faces; it turns out you can get children to walk for miles and miles if they believe they're hunting hidden treasure. I think a lot of grownups do it too. The idea is that people hide containers in random bits of countryside, and note the exact co-ordinates using their GPS. You then note down the co-ordinates, and go and retrieve the container, sign the logbook contained inside, take one of the treasures contained within, enclose one of your own, wrap everything back up and put the cache back exactly as you found it.
This would, I'm sure, be fun under any circumstances. But once you combine it with the iPhone, it's unstoppable. You click a button to get a list of caches near you, pick one, and start driving/biking/walking towards it. Health Warning: that can lead you to walk off the edge of a cliff. Not, however, in Suffolk. 2/3 of the band LAU come from lumpy places; their word for the trauma induced by the flat open spaces of East Anglia is 'horizontigo'. If you were in the Lake District, you'd probably want to have decent maps with you. If you're going after 'easy' caches in a flat, dry, industrial park on the outskirts of Ipswich, the main hazard is the local traffic. And dog poo.
How many caches are there? Well, here in London, there are at least a dozen within two miles of here. Out in rural Suffolk, there were still plenty around. Worldwide, there are 3/4 of a million. Which is, well, quite a lot.
Our first cache was noted as 'tricky'; after a little while of fruitless hunting, we became discouraged, and went after a nearby 'easy' cache. We found it and were very jolly. We quite failed to be stealthy because we were too busy whooping about. We set out after another, but the iPhone ran out of charge. So now we have a plan for future geocaching; take an iPhone charger with us. I think we will also take our 'better' GPS, the Garmin 305 bike computer.
We also have a small puppy; a trackable object called Tosca the Travel Puppy. Tosca is trying to get to Windsor Castle, and as we're a lot closer than Ipswich, we're helping him on his way. Unfortunately, our weekends are in the wrong order; last weekend we were in Sunningdale Park, which is within spitting distance of Windsor Castle.
Later we went searching for a cache by the side of the Lee Navigation, but once again couldn't find it. Perhaps we will stick to easy ones. Meanwhile, the kids have walked for miles and miles, and are now sleeping soundly. Don't let them in on the secret.
The Groundspeak Geocaching Logo is a registered trademark of Groundspeak, Inc. Used with permission.
Posted by Alison Scott at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2009
Another MacHeist Bundle
Yes, I know I keep plugging MacHeist. That's because I love it so. This year the bundle is even cheaper at $39 (though I'm not sure that's not more than $49 was in real money a year ago) and the bundle's bigger.
There's always a contingent worrying that developers who sign up for MacHeist don't get a lot of cash in return for giving away tens of thousands of licenses. I observe that they're consenting adults; and besides, the iPhone has shown that selling your app very very cheap can be a terrifically successful business model.
So, what's in the bundle this year?
- iSale, an eBay helper app (I use GarageSale)
- Picturesque, a photo improving program (I use PhotoShop)
- SousChef, a recipe storage app (I use YummySoup)
- World of Goo, an award winning game (ooh yummy I can't wait)
- PhoneView, an access-your-iPhone utility program (sounds jolly useful)
- Little Snapper, a screen capture program (I use Skitch mostly, and Snaps Pro X when I need heavy lifting)
- Acorn, a not-so-bloaty image editing program (I use PhotoShop)
- KineMac, a 'realtime 3d animation program' (I have absolutely no idea what I might use this for)
- WireTap Studio, an audio grabbing and editing program (I use Audio Hijack Pro/Fission).
There are also three not-yet-unlocked apps, BoinxTV, 'a live-editing tool for video podcasters' (I think this is a very cool program but I'm not sure what I'll use it for; but honestly, anything that's a product of Boinx and the Coding Monkeys is likely to be fantastic), The Hit List, a task manager (I use Remember the Milk, and I've tried a huge range of programs in this space; I would struggle with anything that didn't have both a strong cloud presence and a separate iPhone app at this point), and Espresso, a web development tool (I don't do much, and when I do I handcode, and perhaps Coda or similar is in my future? Who knows). There was some considerable discussion last year about why unlocks always happen (so much so that bundles with locks that are selling weakly always end up releasing their locks early to push sales).
Finally, although the bundle is great, for me the real joy of MacHeist is the build-up, with ingenious puzzles, loads of free software (including some super programs like Fresh and Scribbles) and a great web experience. Worth the bundle cost for that alone and I recommend that people jump on board earlier next year. Anyway, you have two weeks to get the bundle. If you want.
Posted by Alison Scott at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
