Dark Room & JDarkRoom

I've been jealous of Write Room for the Mac for a while but now there are two Windows (or cross-platform) clones: Dark Room and JDarkRoom. They're all stripped down full-screen text editors:

It's sort of stupid that with all the amazing multitasking and features on the average desktop that a full-screen and nearly featureless text editor seems exciting and fresh. I think it reminds me of my days writing in Telemate. (Wow, there's no Wikipedia page for Telemate.)

Brad Turcottegear, writing Comments
Status Report

Too busy to blog. Got a cold. Not actually all that impressed by the iPhone or Apple TV. Maybe I would be if iTunes for Windows didn't suck a ball.

Hey, there's a Brad Sucks show coming up on the 27th of January, we're on at 9pm. BE THERE OR BE ELSEWHERE.

Brad Turcottemisc Comments
New Music Stores

I'm trying out two new (to me) music stores.

Jamendo

All music on Jamendo is free to download and licensed through one of several Creative Commons licenses or the Free Art Licence, making it legal to copy and share, as well as to modify and make commercial use of for some, depending on the licence. Jamendo allows streaming of all of its thousands of albums in either Ogg Vorbis or MP3 format, and downloads through the BitTorrent and eDonkey networks. (via Wikipedia)

I had tried to join Jamendo a while back but the "Jamuploader" software "jammed up" and "crashed my computer". It worked this time and my album is here. Nothing in particular has happened since then. It's a very creative commons friendly site and I've received a strange amount of email mentioning this site so I thought it'd be worth checking out.

Amie Street

Amie Street is an online music store and social network service created in 2006 by Brown seniors in Providence, Rhode Island. Based on a demand algorithm to determine song prices, artists upload music onto the site to allow users to purchase it for whatever price the song is currently listed at. Users can also earn credit by recommending ("REC") songs to their friends. If the REC was for a good song and leads to users purchasing it, the price of the song will increase. The user will earn credit based on the increase in the price of the song after making the REC. (via Wikipedia)

I like the idea of this one though whether it will work in practice should be interesting. My page is here. Songs start free but user recommendations drive the prices up and the users who recommended the songs get kickbacks.

So far there have already been a bunch of reviews of my music and the cost of my song Fixing My Brain has rocketed up to 7 cents.

One catch: looking at the album info I see that Fixing My Brain's revenue is currently at $0.19 and there's a "storage fee remaining" of $4.81. So I guess you have to pay Amie Street five dollars before you can make any money on each individual song (which is $60 total for a 12 track album). I'd assume at such low prices very few artists pay off the storage fee (at 7 cents I'll have to sell 71 copies of Fixing My Brain to pay off its storage fee) so each semi-failed song is money right into Amie Street's pockets. I'm not sure if they take a cut after the $5 has been paid.

businessBrad TurcotteComment
T-Qualizer Shirt

I would very much like a T-Qualizer shirt:

Product Features

  • EL Lit Glowing Equalizer animates to ambient noise or music
  • Battery Pack fits in small interior pocket inside shirt
  • Each Equalizer bar reacts differently depending on sound frequency
  • 4 AAA Batteries Required
  • Battery pack is removable, shirt must be hand washed
Brad Turcottegear Comments
Happy holidays + year in review

Happy holidays everyone. I've had a busy but basically sweet year. Lots of live shows, the band unit really came together to a level of tightness I'm shocked to be a part of. I quit sulking and got my ass back in gear about making music again, I turned 30, I discovered a love for sushi and ultimately a dislike for paying high prices for sushi.

Thanks to everyone who helped out and was supportive of the whole Brad Sucks thang this year. All you podcasters, listeners, emailers and most especially all the people who gave me money. Man I love you guys.

Also of course a huge thanks to Brad Sucks band members Bruce, Rob, departing bassist Richard and newly-hazed bassist Matthew. I'm not a sentimental guy so I'll just say: hey what's up.

2007 looks like it'll be fun. I've got a lot of projects I've been working on that should be ready this year as well as more playing live with the hard-earned confidence and so on.

Now I have to go drink.

newsBrad Turcottemisc Comment
Teenar

The award for the creepiest guitar I've seen all day goes to the Teenar:

Here is Lou Reimuller (a.k.a. Sunset Lou, musician, collector, luthier, artist) and his invention: Teenar, The Girl Guitar - a vintage mannequin transformed into an electric guitar (1986, Richmond, VA).

Totally sweet.

Brad Turcottegear Comments
Google Reader

Still so very impressed with Google Reader. It's changed the way I read the web and I thought I was pretty good at that already.

While I felt like I  was on information overload with Bloglines with 117 feeds, since switching to Google Reader a couple months ago my subscriptions have spiraled up to 243 in Google Reader in a short time and I still find myself looking for new stuff to add. With Bloglines I always kept an eye out for subscriptions I could drop. That's such a nice change.

Here's my obligatory braindump feedback:

  • They shold integrate Google bookmarks. I hit "share" on any item that I kind of like, which then creates this useless feed. It would be great if I could quickly Google bookmark this stuff, which Google could then do nice stuff for me with -- let me search, syndicate, personalize my search based off of it, remind me of it later. I also find myself wanting to "share" stuff when not inside of Reader, such as for sites that only offer excerpts in their feeds.
  • Integrate with Gmail. No brainer here. I'm using integrate with gmail greasemonkey script, but it lacks a level of awesome integration that could exist.
  • I wish "v" would open in new tabs in the background instead of focusing on them. Not sure if this is anything they can do much about, but I WANTS IT.
  • That "Loading..." screen gets old real fast and I've been using Google Reader for a while now. Could use some speed improvements.
  • Better blog search. Lately I find myself going to Bloglines to find feeds to subscribe to in Google Reader. How weird is that?
  • Everyone has complained about it, but the whole tags/folders/labels issue at Google is confusing. I can understand not wanting to use the word "tags" -- it's a little jarring for the moms of the world. But like, I tag a post and it makes a folder (with a different icon) on the left side. And the "tag" then shows up under "change folders" in the Feed actions pulldown. I don't get it.
  • Speaking of tagging entries, I don't get what the point of tagging entries is. Why would I do this? What is it for?
  • Also don't get starring versus sharing. Starring seems to just be sharing without an RSS feed. What's the point? (Full disclosure: I also don't really get starring things in Gmail, but having a share option makes it more obvious.)
  • It would be nice to prioritize my feeds a bit. Some (like friend's blogs, important news sites) I'd like to see first thing when I hit "all items". Others, like ebay searches I'm tracking can hang out near the bottom. Maybe just let me prioritize certain folders instead of individual blogs, that'd be good enough for me.
  • A few feeds like to show up as new all the time. Pitchfork and Technorati searches for two.

Also may I also say I'm tired of comics not offering their comic image in their feeds.

guitar, softwareBrad Turcottereview Comments
Helsinki Complaints Choir

Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen collected the pet peeves and angst-ridden pleas of people in Helsinki and then composed this choral work around the list of complaints. Music composed by Esko Grundström.

musicBrad Turcotteart Comment