Music Galore

Here's a couple radio/music resources that I totally dig:

MP3Blogs are awesome. There's a great wealth of them out there, practically a dozen for almost any genre out there, here's some of my favorites:

http://stereogum.com - independent music, making fun of Brit Brit and other top dollar celebs.
http://fluxblog.net - all sorts of genres, all under-exposed, check out their HUGE blogroll as well.
http://sixeyes.blogspot.com - mostly rock, covers great contemporary folk music as well.
http://cocaineblunts.com - hippity hop.
http://www.catchdubs.com/ - a writer for Fader magazine who is a DJ and covers some great music.
http://www.londonlee.com/blog.html - soul music.
http://www.negrophonic.com/words/ - "dj/rupture does critical thinking about digital culture and drops the occasional bizarre great mp3, that is really a cyberculture site/modern ethnography site with an occassional mpfree" says Chris Jay, media minded educational film programmer and rapper (and my partner in crime).
http://ofmirroreye.net/blog/ - eclectic and analytical. Check out that great Rolling Stones picture!

Audio Programs:
Sonar/Cakewalk goodness. Sonar is an interestingly complicated audio program, but once you get a short introduction it's really easy to get the hang of. There's trial versions on their site, and if you like 'em you can buy 'em
Fruity Loops is a sequencer in which you can make beats, loops and other fun things. They also have a trial version, but be warned, this is just as addictive as Garageband.

Radio Fun:
KEXP's webstream plays a great eclectic mix of music from college radio indie rock, to hip hop to bluegrass to live DJ's. They also have podcasting.

Old Time Radio. This is the good stuff.

Other Things:
Finally, this is the first song I ever made in Garageband. It features the funky bass line Bret used in class and lots of recorded vocals with effects, there aren't any lyrics yet because I haven't had a chanced to record/write them yet. Feedback appreciated. It's for a band that I just got involved in that I can tell you more about if you leave me a comment saying you're interested.

Also, you can find some great bands on MySpace.com . I'm on it, and from there you can reach some of my favorite Shreveport-area bands, including the Pillage People, and The Vidrines.

Please share your favorite music things with me! theenchantingsarahebert [at] gmail [dot] com.

warning: harry potter spoiler

Bryan mentioned this briefly during our talks today. Apparently, this video has inspired others to run around screaming the ending of the new Harry Potter book to unassuming readers (or perhaps just some of my pals in Shreveport). So I guess the analytical question is why even record your stunt and stick it on the web?

Some links for CSS

http://www.w3schools.com/ - Great resource for learning web standard goodness
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=60 - Not really for CSS, but helpful for poking around websites to see how they're coded.

A Study of RetroRaunch

A look at the media content of RetroRaunch presents us with an niche in the internet pornography market. The site contains images of women in "retro," naturalistic pornographic style. The text on the site claims that these women are more real, how they were back in the 40's-60's. The imagery mimics black and white photography, which brings to mind the idea that these pornographic images are artistic rather than images made for pure pleasure. The media grammar tries to reveal a darker side to a time stereotyped as safe and less sexually promiscuous. However this darker side is not vulgar and offensive, but rather alluring and secretive. The use of a webpage allows this site to be a paid service; however, it also allows for a sneak preview of the site which is the hook which entices the user to make the purchase of a subscription. The site also plays on the institutional moral ideals of pornography by allowing "Miss Lacey, (history teacher by day, nasty girl by night!) [to] take you through the full range of what we have to offer (and strip down to the naked truth while she's at it)." Here the writer of the text is playing with what is institutionally acceptable (a history teacher) and what is culturally acceptable in pornography culture (nasty girl).

a technobiography

Here's a post for your mother.

A technobiography:

A stream of important technological progressions in my life:

Learning grammar, how to spell, Computer games on an apple, too poor to get a computer, - got a TV instead, sister's computer, following princess di's death from the wreck, taught self html, published art, angelfire, first email account, nintendo.com, im chatting, role playing, alternative source of entertainment, reboot, paint shop pro, creating animated gifs, learning how to make jpegs not look jpeggy (single frame gifs), photoshop, dreamweaver, first webpage created with wysiwyg, redesigning it in one night, working on Centenary's english dept website, college classes (cyberculture, multimedia writing and lit, communication design, art studio multimedia design, animation design, ecology technology and culture), writers: ray kurzweil, marshall mccluhan, scott mccloud, hell.com, donna haraway, umberto eco, marvin harris, evan eisenberg, jeffery zeldman, eric meyers, benjamin, philip k. dick, william gibson, cronon, webcomics, academic papers linking ecology technology and culture, blogging, websteaming.

These things connect linearly but as the timeline moves on more concepts intersect. How can I represent this in a more nebulous manner that reflects how I connect them in my brain (ex. too poor to get a computer, following princess di's death from the wreck, to college classes (cyberculture, mulimedia writing and lit, ETC), to writers (marvin harris, evan eisenberg)). Naturally this comes easiest in some sort of visual context, but what about representing it in a different way? A sound collage - the sounds could merge into one sound sort of like a re-mix of ideas or a mash-up of time. Hypertext is naturally built to make something like this orderly, but it is difficult to link to more than one thing with out repeating our initial location. So our web would look something like this:

creating animated gifs - psp
creating animated gifs - photoshop
creating animated gifs - published art
creating animated gifs - benjamin

It becomes less like a web and more like a list with connections.

In essence, it is the connections that have brought me here to study technology, and less the events. These intersections have created an interesting potion of knowledge that has caused me to be passionate about something.