Songfight! vs. Wikipedia

Here's a pretty rough exchange between Fightmaster Jr. (one administer of Songfight!) and an editor at Wikipedia as Fightmaster tries to get some inaccuracies fixed in the weird Songfight entry. The editor's rant is indented. I can understand the editor's perspective and the difficulties inherent in an open editing environment, but can't understand the seriously nasty attitude. The current Songfight entry weirdly fixates on the number of fight entries -- which has never been that big of a deal -- and ignores a lot of other good Songfight info. Which is fair enough, but it's kind of insane that hissy fits get thrown when the best authority on the item in question offers some revisions.

GeneralBrad TurcotteGeneral Comments
Remixes and Update

Here are some of the remixes and news that it's taken me forever to post. A bunch of the remixes are ones I downloaded from Remixfight from before it got hacked (by the same security hole it seems that took out my forums and server some weeks ago):

Latest source is for Sick as a Dog and you can get it here. Get your remixes in to me and you could be on a remix compilation coming out in the new year. Ooh la la!

Other junk:

  • You can buy individual songs off my album on MSN Music now. Previously you could only buy the whole album, glad that's fixed.
  • Apparently Australia's Triple J station played something by me and mentioned me. That is sweet.
  • Drew Tetz tipped me off to my songs being used in yo-yo videos (1 and 2) The first one is from "The 2004 World Yo-Yo Contest" and is pretty hardcore.
  • I've lost track of all the Podcasts that are playing me. I think one was plph.radio and I did a semi-custom intro for the Reel Reviews back when I had time to spare.

That is all for now.

music, newsBrad Turcotteextras, media, remixes Comments
Google Suggest Poetry Generator

After I posted my Google Suggest Poetry idea the other day I found the SuggestGetter PHP class by Adam Stiles and threw it together. The Google Suggest Poetry Generator does what I described in my earlier post except that it randomizes which results it chooses so you should get a different poem on each load.

Sometimes the results are interesting, other times they're not. The first couple of lines are usually the best part and then it just veers off into randomness. It would be interesting to try to keep it relevant to the original five queries somehow to keep things on topic.

Also it hits Google with 40-50 queries each page load and is about the dumbest use of Google's vast resources I can think of. I asked around and my conscientious web elite buddies seem to think this is okay. If Google objects, I'll take it down.

Brad Turcottemisc Comments
Google Suggest Poetry

I've been thinking about making a lyric/poetry generator from Google Suggest by stringing together its suggestions. For instance, enter a first phrase like "back in the ", it autocompletes to "back in the saddle". Take the last word and enter "saddle ", first result is "saddle club", last word "club ", etc. Following that example a few times you get:

back in the saddle club med line 6 second abs cbn news of the world of warcraft 3 mobile phones 4 u haul master card games online dictionary

Which until it gets stuck on "online dictionary" forever is obviously pretty moving and great pop poetry, fit for immediate publication. You could randomize the suggestion selection and formatting to mix things up a bit.

Here's another:

i am an idiot savant syndrome x factor v leiden university of washington post office depot america west wing nuts and bolts and nuts and bolts and nuts and bolts and nuts and bolts and nuts and bolts

Brad Turcottemisc Comments
Brad Sucks Remix Album I

So with Sick as a Dog, I'm half done releasing the source for my album I Don't Know What I'm Doing. I've gotten a lot of remixes and I want to release a compilation album of my favorites so far to show off a lot of the great work that's been done. This would hopefully be followed later by a second part with remixes of the rest of the songs if remixer interest keeps up. The plan is to offer the remix album for free download on the net and I'll also burn and mail copies to those who want them for $5 including shipping like I've done with Outside the Inbox and my album.

There's still time to get your mixes in if you're interested in being on this thing. Send them to me. I can tell you now that I'm probably not going to pick too many songs that stick closely to the original songs' structures. I want this album to be significantly different than mine.

Over the next while I'll start sorting through the mixes and getting in touch with the remixers to make sure they're cool with being on the compilation. Also thinking of a catchy title is of top priority as well.

GeneralBrad TurcotteGeneral Comments