I was forced to listen to what some might call music, last night in the car on the way home. It got me thinking. The term “music” no longer means what the dictionary has, see Wikipedia’s definition of music.

<Start Rant>
To me, music was always something that you could potentially tap your foot to, hum the tune of, or perhaps sing a word or ten. Admittedly, one can make music with practically any instrument, even ones fashioned from naturally occurring items such as sea-shells or tree-trunks. Bang a stick on a tree-trunk and you have some make-shift drums. Fine. But nowadays, the word “music” is used to describe “songs” that you might hear on any given radio station. I can accept that too. However, when you get “artists” that shout, mumble, or talk (ie. rap) a “song”, it doesn’t sound like music to me.

The “song” in question was one of Eminem’s newer numbers. Dear god, can somebody please put that man out of his misery. And give him some anti-bacterial cream for his crotch, he seems to be holding it so often, I’m sure there’s something wrong there. This “song” was a mixture of weird sounds and talking crap. “Wait wait, this is a good part” I was told. I shut off completely, I couldn’t bare to subject my ears to such utter nonsense.

Now don’t get me wrong, I believe all forms of music have the right to be called music, including rap. I used to listen to Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and even the 2-live-crew about a decade ago, so I have some appreciation for rap. Heavy Metal? Ugh. Marilyn Manson? Shame, poor guy. He must have had a really fucked up childhood. These “metal” type “music” where the lead”singers” shout and scream some incomprehensible gibberish into the mic, how is that music? The screaming is spoiling the good backtrack the drummer and base guitarist is doing. For the love of all things good people, stop screaming and let those guys with the instruments do their thing!

I’m a bit of a fence-sitter when it comes to answering “So what type music do you like?”. I don’t like any specific type of music, and generally like any songs that the radio blares out at me. I don’t buy albums, I buy compilations, generally of the Pop variety. Compilations just give you a better spread of “good” music than an album would. (There are exceptions, i own some Blink 182, Green Day, Lenny Kravitz and other’s albums, they’re all good…), but it’s rare that I buy a CD. When it comes to music, one could call me a sheep I suppose. There haven’t been a lot of REAL good groups that made music since the 80′s. The 90′s were filled with electronic groups. 70′s? God knows, I was born in the 70′s, so never listened to the music from then. The new millennium? Well, there’s just over 4 years left to make an impression. From what I’ve seen, things can only improve.

But please, I wish, I wish that Eminem and his cronies get a pain in their ass and never release anything ever again. And what’s with the changing of names all the time? Prince changed his name to some stupid symbol thing (What was *that* all about???), P Diddy’s changed his name a couple of times, Eminem tried it, Marriah Carey tried it, and now there’s talk of aliases being for some artists to minimise piracy? Pah. If it’s out there, it’s going to get pirated, and when it gets pirated, the RIAA is going to slap some phantom monetary figure of how much piracy is costing them, bla bla bla. George Michael had the right idea with releasing his album for free. I’m no economist, but I’d bet that if an album was released simultaneously online (for free) and sold on a CD in stores, the CD sales will still happen. Probably as much as it is now.

<End Rant>

OK, that’s it. Finished ranting. I know, it’s a bunch of unrelated complaints, if you don’t like it, screw you, and go read Garfield or something.

Quite an interesting idea this.

This guy took the Voice Changing Darth Vader Mask (Buy it at Amazon.com or locally at Toyworld.co.za), pulled it apart, and modded a miniBTX PC into it.
Lots of pics. Go see here.

(via Adrenaline Vault)

The guys over at Joystiq point to the ever popular gamestop.com’s Xbox 360 ‘super-bundle’, with a lot of Xbox 360 goodies, that will cost just under $1,200.

That’s a whole lotta Xbox 360 kit.

To summarise:
There’s the Xbox 360 Premium Edition console (includes harddrive, headset, etc), 11 games, and additional wireless controller, an extra battery, and more.

Not sure I’d buy it, but for the enthusiast that has $1200 to blow, I’m betting this will on their Xmas list.

Update (2005-09-02):
Gamestop.com added yet another XBox360 bundle to their arsenal, this time coming in at $1999. The call it the Omega Bundle, it comes with more games (20 in total), more wireless controllers. That’s one big bundle.

So yesterday I found Google’s Google Talk app. Downloaded it (along with the new Google Desktop), and installed. The two interface very nicely together, Google Talk becoming a panel in Google Desktop [googleblog.blogspot.com].

I already had Skype installed and running (With the Pamela voicemail app to take free voicemail.), so I decided to compare Google Talk with Skype.

First impression? I’m not impressed. Google Talk had a very obvious “International Phonecall” feel to it, with a two second-or-so latency, even though we are on the same ADSL network and 15km from eachother. Also, when comparing it to Skype in terms of quality, Skype’s quality just seemed more superior than Google’s, more crips, louder, clearer.

Google Talk is a brilliant concept, and its release was timed perfectly. However, I think Google needs to do a bit more work on getting the call quality up and the latency down, before it will become a viable competitor to the likes of Skype or VoipBuster.

Google Talk also seems to be lacking in the feature department. The great thing is that its Instant Messaging is based on the Jabber chat protocol [wikipedia.org], which makes it nice and open and gives you the ability to connect to the Google Talk server using any Jabber enabled IM client (such as Gaim [wikipedia.org] or Trillian [wikipedia.org]). What it’s missing is the ability to break out of the Google server onto land or cellphone lines, which I’m sure is in development right now, and I look forward to it. Another great thing that Google has there is the fact that you use your GMail account to authenticate to the server, which just adds to the value of GMail accounts. There’s also now talk that Gmail is about to become a non-invite-only sign-up-if-you-don’t-have-one system, see the Google Blog entry here [googleblog.blogspot.com].

I’ll be running both Skype and Google Talk (The two seem to be able to work just fine when running at the same time, I’m not sure what happens when you get a Skype call when you’re already in a Google Talk call. Heh.), and will definitely be keeping an eye on Google Talk’s development. Google has yet another goldmine there, and I think with the next version it’s bound to become a very viable alternative to the other more mature VOIP services out there.

Google Talk’s release was all over a lot of news sources yesterday, so I gathered some links about it here:

• Google poised to unveil new messaging system [iol.co.za]
• Google gets everyone talking [iol.co.za]
• Google Talk takes a bow [news24.com]
• Google gets to talking [GoogleBlog]
• Google Talk Far From Superior [cbsnews.com]
• Google Talk (Beta) [pcmag.com]
• Google Talk lives… [zdnet.com]
• Google News Search on “Google Talk” [news.google.com]

Thanks to nbm, I just discovered a fantastic little project called Bub & Bob Brothers.

I’m yet to play it, but I’ll be trying it out tonight. It’s basically a multi-player clone of the famous Bubble Bobble! It’s better, due to supporting up to 10 players over a network, and has many many more improvements over the original.

They have a Windows, Linux and MacOSX client, so no excuse not to try it out. Go now.

Thanks to Vhata, I discovered protopage.com. It’s a user changable homepage creator. What does that mean? Well, it allows you to drag small windows around, *inside* the webpage, edit the contents of the window, color scheme, background, etc. You’d use it as your default start-up page for your browser, where you’d put all your usual links that you visit every day.

It’s something you have to see for yourself. Javascript very much required.

Oh yes, the Big G has done it again.

This time, Google has released Google Talk, a jabber-combatible messaging server, and a Windows client to accompany it. They have detailed instructions on getting most of the popular IM clients out there to connect to their server.

Several things stand out to me about this new service, one specifically being the second-last column on their IM Clients page, being:

Voice calls to other Google Talk users

Their Google Talk Windows client allows you to VOIP other Google Talk users. Excellent!
I will be trying it out tonight when I get home. Meanwhile, fire up your favourite IM client, and connect now.

It seems you need a gmail account. If you still don’t have one, where have you been? I have lots of invites to send, so let me know if anybody wants one.

Go Go Gadget Google!

Oh, and for some interesting Easter Egg goodness, see this slashdot.org post about a ‘hidden’ game.

Hehe, the guys over at Engadget mocked up a nice little post called Engadget 1985. They have a look at popular technologies back in 1985, what was hot, and what was in demand.

Some of the things they mention I either (a) used myself, or (b) still own (as is the case with the Famicom gaming console). The post is a nice trip down memory lane.

I’ve recently been in the market for a portable digital audio player.
The main reason would be to listen to podcasts and the odd music CD that I end up deciding to rip to mp3. For this reason, I needed a player that at least has the ability to play multiple playlists. An LCD screen was not too high up on my must-have list.

Naturally, I first looked at the iPods. Nice range, I’ve had the pleasure of playing with both the 3rd generation 40GB iPod, and also a 4GB iPod mini. I’ve seen the U2 iPod, and I’ve held the 1GB iPod shuffle. I’ve also seen how the BMW iPod adapter works (The official Apple+BMW branded ones, not 3rd a party one). The all look nice, and seem to do the trick. However, I found them lacking. Lacking that extra bit of ‘WOW’ factor. I browsed around at other players, ranging from hard disk based to flash based players, JVC, Samsung, Creative, I looked at them all. I’ve come to the conclusion that none of these companies are learning from each other.

That got be thinking of what would be the ideal portable audio player. I came up with the following list of features that I feel would make up the ultimate portable audio player:
Read the rest of this entry »

OK, so they’ve finally done it.
Technologic Systems TS-7200 SBC uses NetBSD OS to control Toaster

It’s always been said that NetBSD is portable to a multitude of devices, except perhaps your toaster. Well, they’ve stuck it on a toaster.

(Thanks daniel for the link.)
(Here’s the slashdot link…)