Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. That’s me, sitting down in the suit — clean-cut, respectable and still the right side of thirty — on 30 June 01995. Standing behind me are (from left) Ian Gow, Pro-vice Chancellor at University of Sheffield, Mike Bower, then leader of Sheffield […]
Month: June 2005
FIQL: a further playlist service
Following my review of playlist sharing services, Mike Wu of FIQL.com got in touch to point me to his site. Mike writes, FIQL.com is also a playlist sharing site and we have close to 2,000 community contributed playlists divided up by genre, mood and occasion. Our playlists are hooked up to itunes, msn music and […]
Playlist sharing services: a comparative review
Since my series of postings about different playlist sharing experiments, Wired has picked up on the theme with a feature on the playlist phenomenon a few days ago. This focuses on the social and community potential of sharing playlists, though, in my opinion, it’s important not to get carried away with the everyone-a-DJ concept: if […]
An American ballad collection: Playlist #3
A few weeks ago, I started reading the collection of essays The Rose and the Briar, which re-imagines America through the lens of its ballads — mostly from the twentieth century, though the origins of some go back much further (and to parts of the British Isles). As soon as I started reading, I realised […]
Evaluation of Learning Activity Management Systems
I’ve finally finished the rigorous evaluation report of Learning Activity Management Systems (LAMS). Seb Schmoller has an overview of the report and commentary on the small number of actual LAMS implementation cases. One strand of the report jumped out at me. It observes that “it is less easy to adapt [a] lesson ‘on the fly’ […]
Licensing of BBC music audio and video
For those of us trying to read the tea leaves concerning how different parts of the enormous BBC archive may be licensed in the future, this Guardian article on a Universal-BBC deal makes interesting reading. “Anything ever recorded or filmed by the BBC by Universal artists since the 1920s to the present day could be […]
Slow walk for longplayer on summer solstice
I’ve written a few posts recently (1, 2) related to the Longplayer 1000-year-long piece of music, and here’s one more, including a request for your credit card contribution. On 21 June, Ohad Fishof will be doing a fundraising slow walk across London Bridge and back, a total distance of 563.8m. For a contribution of £5 […]
Incense and Playlist #2
An anecdote from yesterday evening’s Twisted Folk gig. Arriving a few minutes early, and alone, I went straight to my seat rather than hang around in the bar. There were only four or five people in the stalls when Devendra Banhart jumped down off the stage, and criss-crossed the rows of seats carrying a smoking […]
Doris Lessing and Laurie Anderson: rough notes
Here are my notes of last week’s Artangel Longplayer Conversation 2005, which I previewed a few weeks ago. Michael Morris of Artangel introduced the event by saying that, after five years of Longplayer — just 995 to go — they’re instituting conversations like this as an annual event. Doris Lessing and Laurie Anderson hadn’t met […]