WARNING: Vehicle transforms into a robot

(sticker from Diesel Sweeties)

Music Monday #079 – All Hallows’ Eve 2011

All Hallow’s Eve. Monday 31 October 2011

The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even (“evening”), that is, the night before All Hallows Day. Although the phrase All Hallows is found in Old English (ealra hālgena mæssedæg, mass-day of all saints), All-Hallows-Even is itself not attested until 1556.
– wikipedia

And now for some music …

This weeks links (2011-10-31)

QANTAS

Alan Joyce’s hoovering of the cash while standing firm against the claims of staff was just one of two appalling errors of judgement. The second was to offer no public pre-warning at all for the grounding of flights. Unions must give 72 hours notice of industrial action. That gives time for a possible late settlement. It also allows consumers and suppliers to make other plans.
– Joyce’s wildcat move has mauled the Flying Kangaroo [The Punch]

In brief:

* Social Thievery: Will Your Tweets Get You Robbed? [INFOGRAPHIC] (2011-Nov-01) [Mashable]

* 2 Reasons Videoconferencing Remains A Niche (2011-Oct-31) [InformationWeek]
“… Probably the biggest reason video calling/conferencing isn’t as popular as text- or voice-based communications is interoperability: There’s no universal directory, call-routing system, or system-agnostic client, as exists with email or voice. When I send an email or place a phone call, it doesn’t matter what client or device either I or my recipient use–if I’m accessing my Gmail account via Postbox on a Mac and the recipient is on a corporate Exchange system using Outlook on Windows, it doesn’t matter. Likewise for phone calls. It’s simple to use Skype on my PC to call Aunt Millie on her landline. Unfortunately, there’s a systemic breakdown when it comes to video. …”
interoperability … and we are still waiting ;

* 78 Geeky Pumpkin Templates. Let us show you them. (2011-Oct-28) [Think Geek]

* Anonymous, child porn and the wild, wild web (2011-Oct-28) [The Conversation]

* Art Endures, Capitalism Degenerates: The Evolving Career of Amanda Palmer (2011-Oct-31) [PopMatters]

* Amazon Kindle Most Highlighted Passages of All Time [Amazon]

Some reading/listening:

* Cory Doctrow’s For the Win available in various formats
For the Win, published in May 2010 by Tor (US) and HarperVoyager (UK) is my second young adult novel: a game about workers who toil in virtual sweatshops, “gold farming” wealth in video games for sale to rich western players. They form a trade union called the Industrial Workers of the World Wide Web, using the games to organize under their bosses’ noses. It’s an action-adventure story about games, economics and labor politics.

QuickTime 7.7.1

APPLE-SA-2011-10-26-1 QuickTime 7.7.1
For: Windows 7, Vista, XP SP2 or later
Released: 26 Oct 2011
This patch addresses critical several issues affecting Quicktime running on Windows. Impacts include application termination or arbitrary code execution.

Evaluation:
Update now

LINKS:
[1] About the security content of QuickTime 7.7.1 HT5016 (2011-Oct-26) [Apple]

iOS5 Music app & audiobooks :(

If you use your iDevice to listen mainly to audiobooks rather than music, you might want to hold off on that update to iOS5. Why? With iOS 5, the iPad’s Music app has been completely overhauled no longer “iPod” it is now “Music”. The whole handling of audiobooks has been damaged; to the point where a track will sit and repeat rather than moving to the next track – and last position sync is gone entirely. In short:the iOS5 Music app is utter rubbish for playing audiobooks. What massive step backwards!

===UPDATE 2011-OCT-27===
Many of these problems are solved by migrating to the Audible for iPhone & iPod Touch App. For non-audible audiobooks – Select ‘My Library’, and then choose the ‘iPod Library’ category.

You can download the Audible app from the App Store.

All Hallow’s Read

All Hallow’s Read is a (new) Hallowe’en tradition. It’s simply that in the week of Hallowe’en, or on the night itself, you give someone a scary book. This can be traced back to Neil Gaiman’s modest proposal [1];

I propose that, on Hallowe’en or during the week of Hallowe’en, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books they’ll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they’ll enjoy.

I propose that stories by authors like John Bellairs and Stephen King and Arthur Machen and Ramsey Campbell and M R James and Lisa Tuttle and Peter Straub and Daphne Du Maurier and Clive Barker and a hundred hundred others change hands — new books or old or second-hand, beloved books or unknown. Give someone a scary book for Hallowe’en. Make their flesh creep…

Give a scary book.

If you don’t know what kinds of books there are, or what would be appropriate for the person you’re giving a book to, talk to a bookseller. They love to help, most of them. (The ones that don’t tend not to be booksellers for long.) Talk to librarians. (Do not plan to give away their books though, unless they are having a library sale.)

That’s it. That’s my idea.

Scary book. Hallowe’en.

Who’s with me?
Neil

… and spread the joy, well the terror.

LINKS:
[1] A Modest Proposal (that doesn’t actually involve eating anyone) (2010-Oct-23) [Neil Gaiman's Journal]
[2] All Hallows Read News, and stuff (2011-Oct-21) [Neil Gaiman's Journal]
[3] All Hallow’s Read [All Hallow’s Read]
[4] Book Drop Sticker [All Hallow’s Read]
[5] All Hallow’s Read Tor.com Staff Picks (2011-Oct-19) [Tor]

The Sword and Laser – 2011 Book list

The Sword and Laser (S&L) is a science fiction and fantasy-themed book club and podcast, started by Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt. The main goal of the club is to build a strong online community of sci-fi / fantasy buffs, and to discuss and enjoy books of both genres. — About S&L [www.swordandlaser.com]

The following is the list of books read by The Sword and Laser book club during 2011. This page is designed as is a quick reference page so that I can quickly jump between the forum pages and good read listings.

Music Monday #078 – Armageddon It

This past weekend saw the hosting of the Melbourne round of Armageddon Expo.

Armageddon Expo has to be seen to be believed, and is a must for anyone interested in imagination just beyond our reach. Gaming, comics, wrestling, TV and movie stars, anime and sci-fi lovers and celebrities alike converge on the one venue to celebrate all that is freakishly fabulous about the cult of weird and wonderful entertainment.

This weeks Music Monday theme is of course “Armageddon It”. And now for some music …

This weeks links (2011-10-24)

In brief:

* Short Cuts: James Meek (2011-Nov-03) [London Review of Books]
… I don’t care for the feeling I had when I realised that the virtual book I bought and downloaded new for £3.99 was noting my annotations and reporting back to the Amazoverse: a syncing feeling. I am only grateful the ebook has no e-spine breakage to snitch about, or worse. ‘Eight other people threw this book in the recycling bin in disgust.’ ‘Eight other people skimmed the first third of this book, looking for juice, then put it to one side, intending to look at it later, and though they never did, always spoke about it afterwards as if they’d finished it.’ …

* 8153.0 – Internet Activity, Australia, June 2011 (2011-Sep-28) [Australian Bureau of Statistics]
This release contains data from ISPs with more than 1,000 subscribers operating in Australia as at 30 June 2011. The Main Features section contains all data reported by ISPs with more than 1,000 subscribers, even for census cycles. Separate data for census cycles are contained in the associated data cubes.

* Occupy Melbourne: eviction (2011-Oct-22) [Overland]
Written by Jacinda Woodhead
As one of the judges for the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards for this year, I’ve been surprised in the past 24 hours to hear myself referred to as a ‘professional protester’ by the Lord Mayor – an ‘arrogant liar’ who had had their ‘little self-indulgent moment in the sunshine’ and ‘caused at least $15,000 damage’ to City Square. Because I have been active in Occupy Melbourne. I was part of the occupation yesterday that was forcibly evicted and I joined the post-eviction protest. I wonder, how I can be capable of deciding the best writing in Melbourne, while simultaneously fitting the above descriptors? …

@silencewedge: When you send in riot police against unarmed citizens, it doesn’t matter what their agenda is. I know which side I’m on. #occupymelb

* State fury over cattle ban (2011-Oct-) [The Age]
… Mr Burke told ABC yesterday the issue had been resolved. ”It’s no surprise that there’s a handful of farmers who would love to be able to feed their cattle for free, but it’s not the way you treat a national park,” he said.

* Digital Australia 2012 (DA12) (2011-Oct-10) [iGEA]
Digital Australia 2012 (DA12) is iGEA’s latest research report into video games. DA12 is the 5th report in a series conducted by Bond University and is based on a random sample of over 1200 Australian households . DA12 provides data on video and computer game use and attitudes, as well as the broader consumption of digital media.

• 95% of homes with children under the age of 18 have a device for playing computer games.
• Females make up 47% of the total game population, up from 46% in 2008.
• The average age of video game players in Australia is 32 years, up from 30 in 2008.
• 75% of gamers in Australia are aged 18 years or older (Without a doubt something to consider for an 18+ Classification).
• The average adult gamer has been playing video games for 12 years, 26% have been playing for more than 20.
• 57% of all gamers play either daily or every other day.

Some reading/listening:

* Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1)
Jenny’s touch spreads a deadly supernatural plague. She can’t control her power, so she devotes her life to avoiding contact with other people in her small Southern town. Her senior year of high school, she meets the one boy she can touch…but if she’s going to be with him, Jenny must learn to use the “Jenny pox” inside her to survive his devious, manipulative girlfriend, who secretly wields the most dangerous power of all. : Not recommended for readers under eighteen.
[AMAZON Kindle Edition $0.00]

**November Challenge – Horror**

The Aussie Readers group on Goodreads has the November Challenge – Horror;

*Thundery clouds strike lightening into the ground making the world shake to its very core* BOOOO! Did I scare you? Oh, I’m sorry (not), tonight we dine on human blood…oops…I mean HORROR!
Are you sick of your ‘normal’, humdrum routine, same day in, day out? Would you like some HORROR to spice up your life? Well, November is the month to make it all happen!