June 1, 2006
Mosquito, Party Mode, Music
You may remember the Mosquito youth repellent? Well, there's an article reporting that kids have been using the noise as a ringtone, so poor teachers can't tell when students get calls/messages. (The article does ask why the students don't just set their phones to vibrate, but vibrate can actually be pretty loud.) Some people seem to be quite skeptical about whether most cell-phone speakers would be able to produce these tones; I can report that I could hear the noise through a good set of headphones, but not out of a Mac laptop's speakers. :)
Another thing some of those students might benefit from is the anti-flatulance chair pad, though I'd have to ask the teachers in the audience. Teachers?
And honestly, who doesn't need a snake-skin stapler? There's actually some interesting stuff there, but when people start feeling they need to order an Italian leather monogrammed blotter online, something odd is going on.
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A crazy thing I've run across is this automated dorm room. Although, when I say crazy, I mean awesome. I mean, who doesn't need a big button that you can hit to switch the room into full-on party mode? I mean, like, in case of a party-emergency, or something?
And sticking with the tech/geekery theme for a moment, Creating Passionate Users seems like an interesting blog. I think it would be quite cool to be in the position to be developing a product like that, but I've certainly experienced some of the things they're talking about just as a programmer.
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A lot of classical music is in the public domain (though finding good recordings pre-1955 is tricky -- the Naxos Historical line is good for this). But even if you know you like the piece of classic music that goes... you know... "Dee, dee, dee, dee, deedle-deedle, dee, dee, dee, dee, deedle-deedle, dee, deedle-dee, deedle-dee, deedle-dee", how are you going to translate that into looking for Greig's "Morning" from his Peer Gynt suite?
Well, one cool site that C turned up in the course of looking around for the 48 Hour Film Competition was Kick-ass Classical, which bills itself as "Word to your moms, we came to drop Brahms." It lists the top 100 classical pieces in popular culture that you and others are likely to recognise, and where you'll probably recognise it from -- advertising, computer games, movies or cartoons. One of the big advantages of something like this is that you know beforehand that the piece can work as background to something visual, since someone else has already used it in that way well enough to make the list. And handily, they list the date the composer died, so it's easy to tell who makes the copyright cut-off date. (Gershwin is a couple of years off, thanks to the twenty-year extension given to composers at the beginning of this year. Though I kinda doubt that the extra revenues he's getting will inspire him to create much more... him being dead for more than sixty years, and all. Okay, sorry, sorry, tangent.)
But anyone doing the 48 Hour Film Competition next year should seriously consider buying as much of Rhian Sheehan's output as they can (assuming that the LOOP set-up continues). His tracks seem uniquely suited to background movie music, and he's got both uplifting and subtly melancholy offerings. (And with the "Music for Nature Documentaries" remix album, you get some stuff that's suitable for both actively menacing scenes and fight scenes... in fact, we used one track for both in our offering.)
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Two posts in two days?! Am I crazy?
Posted by svend at June 1, 2006 8:10 PM