Joystiq has a collection of videos of people playing the Monkey Island theme song. I don't think any live up to how awesome the actual song is, but it's nice to see it getting respect.
Other notable classic game themes I can think of are Star Control 2 and Ultima 7.
I guess I can see why Youtube is worth 1.65 billion dollars.
Rob Hampton from A Guitar Teacher's Lesson Notebook posted some great advice on how to make a living teaching guitar. Surprisingly most of his advice focuses on using the internet.
Splice is a web-based audio-remixer. Basically a light-weight sequencer that lets you remix other people's tracks and import Creative Commons licensed audio clips. Also has lots of social network love as well. It's pretty cool -- the sequencer is sort of annoying for me to use but that's probably due to years of Cubase usage.
Any show that's preceded by me locking my keys in my car (while it's running, even) is dead to me. The locksmith showed up in about ten minutes though so that was all right. $53 later and half an hour later I made it there in time for sound check. Other than that, we had a pretty good show last night, though I was in a bad mood about my dumbness.
Okay maybe a Bollywood version of Michael Jackson's Thriller video is the greatest thing ever:
I just don't know anymore.
It's the second year in this house and I guess we've relaxed enough about bills and renovations to think about doing some hardcore Halloween decorating. This year we're going to damage some kids' minds.
Here's the coffin we built:
That took about three hours and $15. And this is the body of the scarecrow -- we still need the head and to dress it up a bunch, but it's off to a good start:
I'm predicting all time lows in candy giving. But there's still a lot of work to go.
Due to, uh, the Chinese, I've had to put a little thang in place to block multiple mp3 downloads from the same IP. For some reason certain IPs (and most of them Chinese) would suddenly swamp my server for no reason grabbing every mp3 at the same time, ruining everything for everyone.
So anyway, if you have trouble with the limits please let me know.
Hey, the Zune (Microsoft's maybe-maybe iPod killer) gets released on November 14th, which is my birthday. I guess I should want one but I still barely leave my house.
The Zune-to-Zune wireless stuff is intriguing but as I have no friends I don't know what I'd use it for. I'm kind of wondering if the wireless would be good for anything else, like checking my email while I'm on the couch and if the screen would be good for reading books. That's kinda how I roll: boringly.
When I read this post by Jay it got me thinking. He posted an audio ad for his own podcast and asked anyone to include it in their podcast and that he'd reciprocate by playing their ad in his podcast.
Which made me Google around a bit and now I'm asking: is there a site for ad-trading like that? Seems like it'd be a nice thing to have especially for the more hobby-level podcasts. You could organize straight-up paid advertising but then also simple ad trades between podcasts.
I met Jay Moonah in Toronto when I was on the Blogrolling panel at Canadian Music Week. He's an excellent speaker, podcast-enthusiast and all-round smart guy. He's got a new podcast called Online Music Marketing if you're into that sort of thing.
I read the other day that the guy who wrote and played saxophone in the song Tequila and the fellow who wrote Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini had both passed away. What's more I read that the Polka Dot Bikini guy had lost the rights to his famous song and received nothing from the huge hit.
Today the story got way weirder:
On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported on the death of a 68-year-old man named Paul Van Valkenburgh of Ormond Beach, Fla., who claimed to have written the song under the name Paul Vance. The story cited the man's wife as the source for that claim.
But the music industry's real Paul Vance, a 76-year-old man from Coral Springs, Fla., is alive and well, and says the other Paul Vance appears to have made the whole thing up.
The Paul Vance who wrote the songs  and provided proof with royalty payments he is still receiving for the hit  said he has been inundated with calls from people who think he died.
What's more, the dead impostor's dead man's wife said she was "surprised" and "kind of devastated" at the news. Here's what I'm kind of devastated by:
The living Paul Vance estimated he has made several million dollars from the song, which was recorded by 16-year-old teen idol Brian Hyland, surged to No. 1 on the Billboard charts in August 1960 and has been pop culture staple ever since.
...
"It's a money machine," Vance said.
In other news: the Tequila guy is still dead.
WFMU has an awesome overview (with mp3s) of Atari Music -- "quickie albums released to cash in on the booming video game craze" during the Eighties.
Been too busy to mouth off around here. I've been meaning to say that when I upgraded my computer I was (as usual) unhappy with the noise level of the stock CPU fan. I saw something about this Cool n' Quiet mode on my processor and switched it on. Holy cow. It is indeed both cool AND quiet. My processor temperature is 32C right now and it's ridiculously quiet. Very happy with it and it's looking like I won't have to buy myself a $100 specialty fan -- woo, a savings!
Hey there's a Brad Sucks show tonight at the Rainbow starting at 9:30. Jacquie in the Kitchen are opening for us and they're totally sweet.
I put up ceiling drywall in our rehearsal space (aka my parents' garage) all weekend so I think I might just lie down on the floor real still with for the whole show. Requests will be honored for any massage therapists or acupuncturists in the audience.
The other day I tried to watch Jonathan Coulton's Second Life performance. It was way too much for my computer to handle and it nearly exploded. Anyway I decided to ignore being totally broke and go upgrade my computer, hooray.
Athlon64 X2 4200+, fancy new motherboard, gig of ram and a brand new SATA drive. Seems like everything should be instant now but it's still not quite. There's significantly less churning going on though and the onboard 3D graphics are better than my previous card.
Back to reinstalling all my crud...
Not sure why, but Magnatune's been down for a day or two.