Gizmodo had a contest to make songs out of the sounds of hard drives failing. Very neat. Check out the write-up here. The winner is awesome.

Screenwriter John August was nominated for a Grammy for writing "Wonka's Welcome Song" from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He has an amusing first-hand account of attending the Grammys.

I've put up a $100 jackpot in this Worth1000 contest for a Brad Sucks logo. I've been trying to put together a semi-decent press kit forever now. I hate doing that stuff, it's awful and I'm terrible at it.

I thought a cool logo might help, but art is hard to come by. I talked to a few people about it but after pricing it out I decided I'd give the Worth1000 community a shot. They're enormously creative over there (check out their previous corporate contests) and I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Victor sends word that I'm the 2nd most remixed artist on ccMixter. Because being number one would be uncool

Boing Boing has a good rundown on Songbird, "the open source iTunes killer." The interview's an interesting read and it sounds like a project that will be great if it can approach the usability of Firefox.I've actually been shopping around for a new software MP3 player. If I don't get distracted I'll post some reviews.

List of problems solved by MacGyver - I don't think there can be any dispute that Wikipedia is awesome when it has a page of all the problems that have been solved by MacGyver.

That's Good Enough for Me - Amusing and interesting article on the death of Cookie Monster vocals in Death Metal today.

Here's a list of some of the podcasts that have been playing my stuff lately:

• eCodeLibrary Weekly Countdown
• BandTrax
• Clubside Breakfast Time
• Hate the Radio
• The Word Nerds
• Corrosion
• Jesus on the Radio
• Journey Inside My Mind
• All Axis Radio Canada
• Podcast Outlaws
• Lodebearing
• RSM: Robert Smoove Music
• Jawbone Radio
• Soundcheck
• New Music Lab
• DJAJ Podcast
• Japundit Podcast
• Rainbow Music Champloo
• Podcastre

I'm also in this Japanese Podsafe music network now and have been played on a bunch of podcasts I can't figure out the names of.

And as for traditional radio my album's in the Top 5 of the Top 30 on WMEB, the University of Maine station. Thanks to everyone playing my music!

Nine Inch Nails Lighting Article - very interesting (and technical) article on the lighting and general show production for Nine Inch Nails. Crazy amount of stuff in there.

Hyperscore - Make your own ringtones with this Windows app.

Matt posts about his TV Time Capsule idea and this is actually something that I've been wanting to build into junklog. Being able to log and discuss episodes of TV. But I have my own thing someone should build because I don't have time. It would be an open episode guide service with some sort of API. My idea is that it would be like Wikipedia but for episode guide (and movie listings, and so on) data in a structured format. This would make it possible for services like junklog to identify unique episodes and group them. I think there are a ton of tv-based services that could exist if this data were available.

But maintaining a database of that size and keeping it up to date seems virtually impossible for just one guy (me) to do, so some sort of open wiki-style episode guide would do the trick.

There has been some discussion (1, 2) about my comments in my 2006 resolutions. When I said that rants about the music industry are depressing and exhausting to me, that's all I meant. I'm not saying everyone should shut up or that there's nothing to complain about, just that I personally find it hard to read these days. As a shaky musician analogy, it's kind of like watching your parents fight. Fans are your mom, looking out for your emotional well-being, trying to keep you from getting hurt, and the music industry is your dad, telling you to straighten up, quit your bitching and get a job. I'm sure both sides have great points and both mean well, but I'd rather not be in the house while it's going down.

Grandaddy split up - Aw man, Grandaddy broke up. Sumday and The Sophtware Slump are great albums.

I like being in press releases. Podcast Network Releases Indie Album by Brad Sucks:

TAMPA, Fla., April 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Release of the indie album, "I Don't Know What I'm Doing" by Brad Sucks, marks the debut of Slo-Monkey, the music label behind the Emergency Podcast System (http://www.emergencypodcastsystem.com). The quirky, witty album's release is backed by a TV campaign on Former Vice President Al Gore's cable network, Current TV. Current TV serves over 20 million households nationwide and has an energetic youth audience.

Smart lyrics and danceable tunes made indie band Brad Sucks an obvious choice for the Slo-Monkey label. Says music contract guy Lil' Dawgg, "If we find ourselves singing the tunes around the office, we know we have a winner."

Here's the ad that'll be (or is) running (.MOV). If you see it on TV, let me know. I like the idea that the girl in the video might have been paid to dance to my music.

Anyway they seem like nice dudes over there. It's a non-exclusive deal and it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Musical Prototypes 3 - great photoshops of musical prototypes from Worth 1000. [via]

Flash MP3 Player - This is a pretty slick Flash MP3. It looks all iPod-y, oooh.

The Beer Hunter - find out when beer and liquor stores are open in Ontario. Awesome.

The Groupies - "Purportedly edited (in stereo!) from an actual series of interviews with groupies from New York's Greenwich Village music scene, circa late '60s."

I got a sexy Moleskine notebook for Christmas. It's very nice and it's the sort of thing I would never buy for myself but was curious about, so it was an excellent gift. So far I've learned that none of my thoughts or feelings are fancy enough to be written in such a nice notebook. "Would Hemingway or Picasso have written that in their Moleskines, Brad? Honestly." It's still blank and I'm trying to work up the balls to wreck it with language.

Months ago I made up this quick site called junklog to track my reading habits. I had been rolling through a lot of books and wanted a simple del.icio.us style tool to let me log and rate them and nothing I tried did what I wanted. I've decided to open it up and see if it's useful to anyone but me. Still pretty rough around the edges but I've been using it for a few months and it seems to work. It has tagging, rss feeds, uses the amazon.com database, lets you log books, music and dvds, etc. You can check out my logged items here. And here's where I test posting my last 5 read books to my blog:

• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein This had some interesting ideas in it but mostly bored me. I nearly gave up reading it right near the end but forced myself to stay with it. (tags: scifi mars)
• The Time Traveler's Wife (Harvest Book) by Audrey Niffenegger This was more of a romance novel than anything sci-fi which was disappointing to me. And I found it kind of just wandered and ultimately was pretty boring. (tags: timetravel romance scifi)
• Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden Pretty good. A simple story told in an interesting setting with some fun characters (like Hatsumomo). (tags: geisha fiction)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey This is a great book. I've read it twice now and I guess I should see the movie. (tags: mentalillness classics)
• The Stand : Expanded Edition: For the First Time Complete and Uncut (Signet) by Stephen King This was the first Stephen King book I read. It was pretty good, though some of the god mumbo jumbo lost me. (tags: stephenking horror)