April Fuel Prices

07 Wednesday May 2008

Posted by in economy

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A new graph showing April’s fuel prices is here …

fuel-prices-apr-08

The figures show that in the last month prices have jumped %1.3 on average for petrol and 3.5% on a month on month calculation this is on top of last month’s 2.9% and 5.4% respectively. If fuel prices are to climb in step with inflation (suggested to be 2.5% p.a.) we should be seeing monthly changes in the order of 0.2%. The question is, how long before this kind of fuel price acceleration is going to trigger inflation in the cost of necessary products such as food.

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Elvis Costello – Momofuku will be on CD

07 Wednesday May 2008

Posted by in Music

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Initial announcements about Elvis Costello’s latest album Momofuku was that it would only available as vinyl or download – no CD.  As I blogged here, it seemed a strange decision given Elvis’ fanbase.  Either this was a marketing ploy, which is based on column inches generated was successful, or Lost Highway have had a change of heart as the album will be made available on CD, as can be seen by the Amazon listing here.

 

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More free tunes from Nine Inch Nails

06 Tuesday May 2008

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Following Nine Inch Nails Ghosts album earlier in the year with it would seem that Trent Reznor can’t give away his music quick enough with another free album download,  (in MP3, Flac or M4A formats) called The Slip. According to Filter Magazine (here) there will be a CD release of the album later in the year.

 

Follow on about MSN Music service (Why DRM is so Evil)

02 Friday May 2008

Posted by in Music, Technology

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Following my recent post (here) about MSN Music discontinuing the ability to move DRM’d music, it would appear that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have the same view that I have and have written to Microsoft outlining what they believe Microsoft must to make good the service discontinuation – see EFF’s statement here.

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Lester Bangs

02 Friday May 2008

Posted by in Books, Music

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As a celebration of the anniversary of the death of gonzo music critic Lester Bangs Glorious Noise have pulled together a set of links to some of his writings Lester Bangs in Creem. Although if you want read a good collection of his writings then I can recommend the book Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung which was compiled by Greil Marcus.

 

For those who haven’t made a connection as the who Bangs is – perhaps you may remember Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Almost Famous (a fine presentation of Bangs).  For a brief bio of Lester Bangs try wikipedia.

Educational videos

29 Tuesday Apr 2008

Posted by in Technology

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A number of Universities, particularly from the US are starting to video record lectures and posting them on YouTube.  The problem is that YouTube is also the home for a lot of personal material with a limited potential viewer-ship, resulting in trying to find some interesting and educational material can be crowded out by a lot of videos of little or no interest.  However I came across Ted Talks.  The site has a great library of videos talking about a wide spread of subjects from Music Video development through to Open Source Economics and onto String Theory.  Each video is accompanied by a brief bio of the presenter, and the videos can be downloaded for example David Pogue (New York Times Tech Columnist) on the Internet Music Wars at the other end of the spectrum is a presentation by the architect Frank Gehry on his work.

Overall a fascinating site and worth having a browse through.

 

Jeff Skoll talking about his production company trying to make films with a view to produce films that get people to stop and think about issues such as the environment.

 

Ansel Adams’s Yosemite

28 Monday Apr 2008

Posted by in Photography

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  The New York Times have created a lovely article on one of my favourite photographers – Ansel Adams. The NY Times have a some on Ansel’s famous Yosemite images, with a map showing the locations and some audio explaining the significance of the picture.  To see the site go here.  Therei is also an article on the New York Times site here.

 

I’ve been fortunate enough to have been to Yosemite, and you can see some of my photographic efforts here.

Other interesting links:

 

Record labels kill of startup trying to help legally license music for blogs

28 Monday Apr 2008

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It appears that the major record labels have managed to  effectively kill off a new start up Sonific who tried to create a business around properly licensing music for podcasting & blogging sites thus creating a more controlled environment revenue rather than the currently Wild West situation that predominates outside of the top tier of blogs not to mention revenue for the record labels. According to Sonific they have wound things up because of the licensing situation with the record labels. Tragic that the record industry again appears to have architected a situation where they may potentially earn some revenue and at least slow the amount of unlicensed music flying around has failed.

 

Sonific announcement here.

 

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Coldplay give away 1st single from next album

28 Monday Apr 2008

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According to Coldplay ….

We’re very pleased to announce that Coldplay’s new single, ‘Violet Hill’, will be available as a free download exclusively from Coldplay.com for one week starting tomorrow, Tuesday April 29th, at 12.15pm UK time. This is a full week ahead of the single’s conventional paid-for digital release, on Tuesday May 6th.

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Ed Harcourt goes to America

25 Friday Apr 2008

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All Music are reporting that after Ed Harcourt being dropped by EMI recently has been signed to the US label Dovecote Records with the right to distribute Ed’s last album The Beautiful Lie (a fine one at that). The sad thing is that like many other small American indie labels I’m sure that Ed will start to do well and will continue winning ‘hearts and minds’ with his work, with us UK fans probably having to wait a lot longer for the material.