Webreading 15th August

Stuff I’ve been reading/surfing today: 

* 1up has a week of coverageof the English version of gorgeous Japanese painting-action game Okami, where you play Okami Amaterasu, wolf warrior and sun-goddess.
* Bookmooch – online book swapping, inspired by file sharing. It’s got a lot of positive press and blog coverage, and I’m really keen to try it and see if it lives up to the hype.
* Nice web 2.0 coverage, with some good finds on the social software front: Mashable
* Londonist: not an insult or prejudice, but a decent-looking blog about the capital.
* The Daily Show on Net Neutrality – as clear and funny an explanation as you could ask for. If only the politicians were watching.

Emusic UK pricing: Operator, get me the President of the world!

As I mentioned in the last post, online music retailer eMusic has launched a UK version of their site. Emusic is interesting because it sells MP3 files without onerous DRM restrictions. You can therefore use the files on any portable MP3 player, and copy and burn them as you see fit; it’s also accessible through the web, not a special app like the iTunes Music Store, which makes it more flexible. Ars.Technica ran a decent article charting the rise of Emusic earlier this year. However, as some peopehave noticed, the introduction of Emusic UK means prices have gone up:

The charges on the US site are as follows:

  • eMusic Basic: $9.99 per month/40 downloads – that’s $.25 a song
  • eMusic Plus: $14.99 per month/65 downloads – that’s $.23 a song
  • eMusic Premium: $19.99 per month/90 downloads – that’s $.22 a song (best
    value!)

And the UK site charges:

  • eMusic Basic: £8.99 per month/40 downloads – that’s 22p a song
  • eMusic Plus: £11.99 per month/65 downloads – that’s 18p a song
  • eMusic Premium: £14.99 per month/90 downloads – that’s 17p a song (best
    value!)

A quick conversion at Xe.com/ucc shows that $8.99 is £4.75, a fair bit less than the UK is charged. Emusic’s email to me this morning blamed the price rise on VAT, but even if you add 17.5% to either of these amounts, it’s clear the new UK prices still represent a big increase, as Emusic subscribers have noted on the message boards.

However, it’s fair to say that one reason the US price seems so low is Dubya’s stirling work with the US economy and the natural dollar-discount people paying with pounds get; it’s also probable that Emusic is paying higher fees to sort out licensing in the UK – the UK version of the site adds a lot of tracks that weren’t available to UK users before, like the White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand and the Arctic Monkeys – far bigger names than many on Emusic. Then of course, there’s the fact Emusic probably want to make some more money 🙂 This is not the first time Emusic has changed its service and come in for criticism – the used to have an unlimited downloads plan, as Boing Boing notes.

As an existing subscriber, I get a special VAT-free rate if I continue my sub, which is nice, although it will still cost more as I will be charged in £s not $s. I’m not quite sure exactly what this amount will be, as the email doesn’t mention it, so nil-points for communication there Emusic, as we say in Eurovision.

So for new subscribers, is it good value? Well, a new CD will generally cost £10 or more from the high street, a bit less from Amazon, and an album from iTunes will cost you £7.99, so in that way, £8.99 a month for 40 downloads is a pretty good deal… And Overall? Well, for me, the addition of some more mainstream acts like the Arctic Monkeys makes the service better, and the promise of getting rid of the ‘not available in your region’ notice has got to be good (although it’s not totally sorted – there’s no Arcade Fire EP, for instance, in the UK Emusic). Emusic didn’t communicate the change to EmUK too well, but it’s still decent value, and there’s still no DRM, which is more than you can say for most other online music stores.

(The post title comes from the first song on the Tokyo Police Club’s excellent A Lesson In Crime EP, the last thing I downloaded from Emusic. Very good it is too. Like the Strokes but more committed and interesting, and rockier and more fun than Bloc Party.)

Webreading 13th August

Master topic list for first-time readers of Neomarxisme, the only blog that makes the use of the word ‘orthopraxy’ look like a good idea. (Via Jean Snow).

"Once the "pop sociology of pop" and now a "post-blog," Néomarxisme primarily analyzes the social mechanics and historical circumstances behind contemporary Japanese pop culture."

* Guardian Photographer Dan Chung visits Prague, and gets a good shot of the remarkable astrological clock there; if you have even the slightest interest in technology, you really should check it out. The ability to see things working, which is inherent in a big clockwork machine such as the Prague clock, gets a bit lost with modern electronic technology which is a shame (although learning how to open up a PC and take it apart is a good counter to this trend).

* Emusic, the legal music download site that sells MP3s without crappy DRM restrictions has opened a UK specific site. On the downside, prices have gone up slightly as they now include VAT, but they have sorted out some of the legal stuff so that the White Stripes etc are available for download. Try Tokyo Polic Club for starters.

* Chopstix, Chinese food blog with good recommendations for eating in London. Dragon Castle in Elephant & Castle is indeed fantastic.

* Diamond Geezer. Added this blog to the links panel a while back, well worth checking out for a perspective on London. Take his advice, don’t buy the Evening Standard.

* Binary Bonsai discusses the problem with Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion – the cop-out which is the levelling system, whereby bad guys levels up as you do. So there is no point to improving your character, as the bandits who waylay you later in the game will have awesome magical swords (in that case, WHY ARE THEY BANDITS? Don’t they have anything more heroic to do with their amazing skills?). Fortunately, you can fix Oblivion by modding it. Phil rounded up a bunch for Bit-Tech, here.

Arrivals Desk: Helping Out Those Who Just Got Off The Google Express

The stats program I use for this site lets me know how peole arrive; a few use the wiredjester.co.uk URL, which is nice, because it means they’re people who actually wanted to come and read the site, but a lot arrive through Google. Looking through the terms they use really makes me think that perhaps Google is not quite the uber search-engine it appears to be (or once was, perhaps?). I use a free stats program, so it only holds the last twenty search engine queries.   

So let’s see now….
1. ‘CC Torrents UK’ – well, the whole site is Creative Commons licensed, and I’ve written a couple of posts about CC and IP rights, here and here. I guess I’m not a bad suggestion for this search. 7/10, Google.
2. ‘Jester pictures’ – a common misconception. This is not a blog about Jesters. Try a search on Technorati. I have one picture of some Jesters. It’s here, but it’s not great.
3. I’ve been to Taiwan (pictures here) and I live in England. I’ve not exactly written a lot about it though. Perhaps I should.
4, 5. See 2.
6. Pass. Spaceman just makes me thing of that bad mid-90s song. Spacccceeee-man, etc.
7. Ah, now this I can help you with. My original post was here and you can buy them from JList (www.jlist.com).
8. Look, stop it. This is not the best place to look.
9. Blackpool, every time.
10.I’ve been to the Ossuary at Sedlec, the famous ‘Bone Church’ in the Czech Republic. My pictures are here.
11. Not sure, what sort of issues? Try the usual things: uninstall drivers, re-install the latest ones.
12. No, I’m not lying, I don’t have a secret cache.
13. See 7.
14. Ah, yeah. Nexus War (www.nexuswar.com). Excellent online game, well worth a go.
15. Jesters are, by their nature, quite low-tech, I feel. Perhaps a modern monarch could get an RSS feed of his foolery, though? Prince William and Harry, if you are reading, YOU CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN. Spend our tax pounds on something more fun than polo, go on.
16. You probably dedicate your life to WoW – does your wardrobe need to suffer, too?
17. See 7.
18.STEROID-INDUCED PSYCHOSIS LAWSUITS? Well, where to start… I am, to put it bluntly, not expert on anything these words imply. Google has failed you.
19. If you’re in London, try Abeno on Museum St (reviews here). They make great Okonomyaki.
20… Umm, there’s only 19. Maybe reader number really wanted to be here 🙂

original

Email issues

For some reason, my alex [at] thewiredjester.co.uk e-mail address has stopped forwarding my email on. It’s all just disappearing into a big black server hole somewhere… So if you want to get in touch, leave a comment, or drop me a line at alexwatson117 [at] hotmail.com. Thanks 🙂

Genre Bending

Just because Top Of The Pops is dead doesn’t mean the Top 10 is no longer a cultural force to be reckoned with. Everyone loves a list, and the Guardian is no exception. Their Books site often posts up ‘Top 10s’, list of books on a specific theme, written by an author with a related book to plug. The newest is ‘Genre-defying novels‘ sounds a bit too theoretical on first glance, but there’s a great, tub-thumping intro that nails why they’re worth reading:

“Genre is all very well, but it’s a cage as much as a support. Who knows how many books a person who won’t touch women’s fiction or only reads sci fi is missing out on that they’d otherwise love? But for a writer, the effect is more insidious. A work of art needs to be complete on its own terms: it needs to ring with internal rightness, never mind whether it makes sense in terms of genre. A writer who forces a trope in or leaves an idea out because they’re worried about genre categories has mutilated their book.”

I’ve always been interested in the odd little barriers of ‘properness’ that people insist on sticking up around their areas; how things are ruled in or out because someone rules that they don’t fit. The idea of ‘what belongs’ can all too often become a nasty notion that closes down interesting possibilities and original approaches, so it’s always something I’ve wanted to challenge, both in my writing for work and the fictional stuff that I’ve written, so the list definitely appeals to me. I’ve read a couple of the suggested titles, and will certainly be using it to bulk up already pretty-obese Amazon wishlist. To it, I’d add:

* Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’, a great blend of cloning sci-fi and study of memory and youth and…
* Taichi Yamada’s ‘Strangers’, a ghost story and tale of urban life.

The Guardian’s list was written by Kit Whitfield, whose literary fiction/werewolf novel has just come out. Looks really cool, one for the wish list I think. Whitfield also has a neat blog here. Worth reading to find out why it’s not called Bareback in the US (LOL) and for the post ‘There’s Always Someone Sensible‘, which does some interesting digging in an old tome for timely advice…

[Updated for clarity, grammar]

New Links

A few years ago, I went to UEA and did an MA, the Creative Writing One that is pretty well known and has turned up quite a few good writers (Kazuo Ishiguro etc). As student-writers, we were encouraged to keep notebooks with us at all times. Possibly this was to prepare the majority of us for glorious careers as skilled phone message takers/office dogsbodies rather than literary superstars, but the reason we were actually given is that it’s a good thing for a writer to be observant and sensitive to things going on around them, and to never let life go unnoticed. (This is a good thing for anyone, to be honest).

As a result, I have lots of little notebooks filled with bizarre fragments of sentences. I have saved text messages on my mobile phone for when I haven’t had a notebook with me (one of which reads ‘mobile phone screens in the dark, like stars, each a far off galaxy that wants to communicate’, which I like very much, but do not have a clue as to its meaning.) When it comes to online life, a notebook isn’t always practical, but Delicious has proven to be very handy. I add stuff to Delicious like crazy (full list of stuff is here) , but I don’t go over it too often. So I did that this lunch time, and added a few more links to the side panel.

All are worth checking out, but in particular, the London Review of Breakfasts is very good. They didn’t think much of Kalendar, a hip new cafe that’s opened close to my house which I’ve yet to check out, but the write up of Wetherspoons at Stansted Airport is very funny:

“[The breakfast is]… eaten quickly, and it’s surprisingly good although everything on the plate has the same texture: mushy and soft. It’s not Rembrandt, it’s not even Damien Hirst. It’s more Rolf Harris; simple, accessible and easily digestible.”

I’ve also finally added Yahoo’s Tom Coates’ blog, Plastic Bag, a favourite across the blogosphere which I’ve been checking every so often for ages, and Going Undergound, a blog about the Tube, which has a good post about the ‘voices of the tube’ here:

“Emma Clark who is the voice of the Victoria, Bakerloo and Central Line also gets a bit tired of hearing her voice but being Miss Mind the Gap had it’s
moments. In an brilliant interview with b3ta, she said: ‘You should have heard the multiplicity of ways they made me say ‘Marylebone.’ Mahree-lee-bone. M’ree-labbon. Mary Lob-on. It was bleeding hilarious.” She also admitted that there were some spoof recordings to pass the time “Me and the producer did record some spoof announcements after the LU suits had left the session, purely for our own amusement. Stuff like: ‘The man in the green coat is sitting in tramp’s piss.’ And ‘Passengers are reminded that reading ‘Captain Corelli’s f**king Mandolin’ is strictly prohibited.’ “