R.I.P. Director John Mackenzie

John Mackenzie
He directed The Long Good Friday. It stars Bob Hoskins. I went to see it opening night in New York City. It floored me. Continues to every time I see it. So does its theme, which I embed in tribute of the director.

Marketing Music Differently

GUEST INFORMANT: Kim Boekbinder

A few weeks ago I played a concert in Portland, Oregon which was attended by exactly 18 people. After everyone else got paid, I made exactly $12.50 USD. I know that independent musicians all over the world play to empty rooms all the time. I’ve played to quite a few myself. But the thing about me is that: I’m actually famous.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Bob Lefsetz constantly writes about how the music industry is all broken and how music is greater than the machine that has grown up to exploit it.

Now here’s an example of a musician taking control of her trajectory with a new idea. Go read the post to see.

Writers should pay attention to this.

Why?

I once attended an appearance by a famous writer. I won’t name him. And one of his books had recently been adapted into a movie with major stars that got rave reviews. The turnout was about that for the above musician. The writer’s jaw dropped. I was puzzled too. But it was also a warm NYC evening and it could be people wanted to be somewhere other than a small bookstore.

So that’s why it applies.

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Nook Touch Browser To Be Unhidden?

That’s if this post from an XDA Developers forum member is to be believed:

Went and picked mine up from B&N today and while paying for the unit there was a tech engineer in the store from B&N. I asked him about the browser and he said they are planning to have it available without going to the search feature in the next release. They wanted to get the unit on the market and did not have time necessary to complete everything they had planned for the unit. But he did say it was developed to be a simple ereader and that not a lot will be done from B&N. He was fully aware of what we have done to the Nook Color and was very supportive of XDA efforts.

That sounds half-plausible. But I expect being “supportive” of XDA efforts was probably that engineer’s personal opinion and not official Barnes & Noble policy.

Watchmen: The High School Years

If someone told me that I’d have more fun watching a no-budget YouTube production than a multi-million dollar Hollywood movie today …

… I would’ve said: Bring it!

The Internet did.

You have to see this!

This Is Just Not Funny

No. No it is not. No.

Video: Batman/Dark Knight Match Edit

OMG, the Internet! What it brings!

This is just so great. Make it full screen for the full hit.

Another Egress Movie

I sit here gobsmacked.

Hollywood seems to have an endless appetite for stupidity.

Even when they’re not doing some puerile comedy, what they wind up making has an IQ of zero.

Source Code — make the stupid stop.

How Far Sony Has Fallen

Now there’s an entire site called Has Sony Been Hacked This Week?

Yet Howard Stronger has not resigned.

Nor been thrown out.

Brewster Kahle Is Already A Hero

When Hard Books Disappear

A prudent society keeps at least one specimen of all it makes, forever. It still amazes me that after 20 years the only publicly available back up of the internet is the privately funded Internet Archive. The only broad archive of television and radio broadcasts is the same organization. They are now backing up the backups of books. Someday we’ll realize the precocious wisdom of it all and Brewster Kahle will be seen as a hero.

We’ve had silent movies rot. We’ve had TV shows rot. We’ve had talking feature films rot.

That is what capitalism does. It does not preserve. It spends.

It doesn’t care about yesterday or tomorrow. Only today.

This is the world designed by capitalism:

God bless Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and all other initiatives that understand what true value means and which stand in opposition to the smothering, suicidal forces of money money money.

And you, you reading this: Have you set up your blog or site to be preserved by the Internet Archive? Do it! NOW!

More Testimony Why Twitter Is Worthless

The Earthquake that killed Twitter?

Initially I was a little concerned as most of the reports were from outside Christchurch, with few from the city itself, but this cleared up as networks, phones and power quickly came back to life. For about twenty minutes I, and the world, had a great source of news on the happenings, and a great sense of relief that, basically, everything was fine.

Then, just as we wondered why this thing wasn’t trending, even in New Zealand, the #eqnz tag finally got noticed by Twitter and the inevitable happened.

Spam.

Rapidly created accounts with nonsense but early in the alphabet names flooded the tag, and those for popular movies and memes, with links to modestly disgusting porn and SEO sites. Fine, try to scam some movie or the latest tween obsession, but an Earthquake? Please.

Listen, this crap has to stop.