The future for pianolas in Australia looks grim, with the country’s only manufacturer of pianola music set to close down. A collapse in demand for the music is sending the unique business to the wall. For 45 years, Barclay Wright has operated the Master Touch Piano Roll Company in Sydney. It is one of only two companies in the world that makes the rolls that guide the keys on pianolas. He has now been forced to put his building on the market
Download all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies the day after they are broadcast in MP3. All the symphonies are performed by BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda — via boingboing
The UK is considering doubling the copyright term for popular music to 100 years. That means the Beatles’ Love Me Do
and Please Please Me
, scheduled to to go into the public domain in 2013, would earn royalties for record companies until 2063
Penn Jillette‘s latest stunt did not involve his usual sidekick, Teller: He became the father of a baby girl. Jillette, 50, and his wife Emily, 39, welcomed Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette on Friday. We chose her middle name because when she’s pulled over for speeding she can say, ‘But officer, we’re on the same side’,
Jillette explained. ‘My middle name is CrimeFighter’
— va BoingBoing
Chris Claremont is returning Excalibur to its British roots and bringing back Pete Wisdom. To which Warren Ellis commented: He’s not my character, I don’t own him, and if Chris can wring some more mileage out of a character who is basically Jack Regan out of ‘The Sweeney’ stuck in a superhero comic and made to play James Bond (seriously. That was pretty much the entire thought process), then good luck to him.
I can just see that a Pete Wisdom not running about at the behest of Warren’s twisted imagination is going to suck horribly
Two men have been arrested after shots were fired during a meeting in which it is believed they were trying to sell stolen copies of the next instalment of the adventures of Harry Potter
Two Star Wars fans are in a critical condition in hospital after apparently trying to make light sabres by filling fluorescent light tubes with petrol via Charlie Stross
The original 1922 film Nosferatu, the film that Bram Stoker’s estate almost succeeded in killing, has been digitised and placed online as a permanent fixture of the Internet Archive. Available as a stream or a download in various resolutions for various speeds. All free — via Warren Ellis
Foxtel is exploring the delivery of its digital pay-TV services using Telstra’s copper network in an effort to tap into 780,000 apartments nationwide
Sometimes a movie is only worth watching for its stars — and sometimes a star is only memorable for his or her voice, so filmcritic.com decided to rank the top 100 movie star voices of all time.
It says a lot about the insular nature of the reviewers in that the actors chosen are only from American films. The amazing Jean Reno only rates a mentioned because he does a lot of US film work.
It’s a pretty good list, but is more notable for its absences. How could they have forgotten to include Bruce Campbell and Bruce Lee? Or Rutger Hauer, Tchéky Karyo, Daniel Auteuil, Jürgen Prochnow, Jean Rochefort, Henry Rollins and Christophe Lambert?
I think the film critics need to get out more.
In the four years since its introduction, the iPod has proven to be a versatile little device. Despite a relatively closed architecture, hackers have found their way in. Content creators and software makers put information at your fingertips when you’re on the go. Would-be designers have added to the fashionable stylings of the now-ubiquitous white ear buds. Hardware makers and enthusiasts have augmented the iPod with new add-on gadgets. For fun, Jason Kottke has compiled a bunch of hacks, add-ons, accessories and such
The government of Idaho has commended Jared Hess and his film Napoleon Dynamite for their contributions to the state.
The text of bill HCR029 lists the aforementioned contributions with bureaucratic zeal. Highlights include the following:
16 WHEREAS, the friendship between Napoleon and Pedro has furthered
17 multiethnic relationships; and
18 WHEREAS, Uncle Rico's football skills are a testament to Idaho athletics;
19 and
20 WHEREAS, Napoleon's bicycle and Kip's skateboard promote better air qual-
21 ity and carpooling as alternatives to fuel-dependent methods of transporta-
22 tion;
The bill was unanimously passed, possibly due to the clause stating:
2 WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the
3 Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent
4 resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!"
Yahoo plans to launch a trial version of Yahoo Music Unlimited, a new, aggressively-priced online music subscription service. For an introductory price of $59.88 a year, or $6.99 when paid monthly, the service will give users access to over 1 million songs from all major record labels and most independent labels. Don’t get too excited, Yahoo will offer tracks in the appalling Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio format
iiNet has registered key trademarks — iimovies, iimusic and iimedia — which reveal it is considering a push into movies and music delivered over the Internet
My videogaming pals and I are looking for solid four-player console games for our next marathon gaming session. We have enough hardware to support four players on GCN, PS2, PSX, and XBOX, so the system isn’t an issue. Likewise, the subject matter is unimportant as long as the game is fun with four. So it can be a shooter or a minigame collection or a kart racer or whatever. So far we have picked up:
GameCube
- Super Monkey Ball
- Mario Party 5
- Super Smash Bros
XBox
- Halo 2
PS2
- Midway Arcade Treasures 1 & 2 (Gauntlet, Rampart etc)
- Red Faction 2
PSX
- Crash Team Racing
- Micro Maniacs
- Overboard
- Worms World Party
The things I’m considering at the moment are Twisted Metal Black, Mario Kart DD and Timesplitters 2. Any other suggestions?
Aiming to prevent mass piracy of digital TV programs, especially over the Internet, the Federal Communications Commission has mandated a new copy-protection scheme called the broadcast flag
. The FCC’s ruling, which goes into effect this July, lets you make a backup copy of flagged shows, but no further copies
I can’t believe it’s a Full size stuffed Tiger – Only $149 with the purchase of a new CPU or Tiger OS X!. So what are they gonna offer for MS’s Longhorn?
Succint article on: The Difficulty with Originality
Li’l Brudder vs. Li’l Brudder
John Gruber’s: Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Adobe’s ‘FAQ’ Regarding Their Acquisition of Macromedia
Howl’s Moving Castle trailers. Same guys who did Spirited Away.
Got GarageBand?
Like the Nine Inch Nails?
I haven’t played with it yet, but how cool is that? Far cooler than this and this that’s for sure.
Doctor Who fan site Output Gallifrey is reporting that David Tennant has been cast as the tenth incarnation of the Time Lord. Tennant, who has recently appeared in BBC dramas Blackpool and Casanova, has been linked with the role of the Doctor since the announcement of Christopher Eccleston’s departure
Downhill Battle have a new open source video platform — a publishing tool based off of BattleTorrent and a video player written in Python. They’ve started a whole new organization to sponsor the project. They say TV channels
will be made out of RSS feeds and anybody can subscribe to another user’s content channel. The system is being designed for the express purpose of putting broadcasting in the hands of individuals. I like this idea of using recent advances in filesharing and syndication to allow aggregated content to be delivered to your desktop
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