On Lisa Rein's Radar

Hey guys, time to put good taste aside this weekend and come to the premiere of the comedy-horror flick I'm in - and I sing the theme song for - premiering this weekend in San Francisco. I'll be there for Friday night's 7:30 show! Hope to see you there! Don't come if you're squeamish. Like, seriously. It's a gross flick :-) Funny as hell. Arguably more funny than gross, but I won't mince words. Here's the poop from the directors (Rick Popko and Dan West): SF world premiere of "RetarDEAD," a feature-length horror/comedy from the creators of "Monsturd." The premiere will be held at San Francisco's Victoria Theatre Located at: 2961 16th Street (BART accessible! - 16th Street Station) San Francisco, CA 94103 (415) 863-7576 Tix are $10, and advanced tix can be purchased online at: http://www.victoriatheatre.org/calendar.htm Showtimes are: July 11 & 12 (Friday and Saturday): 7:00 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. July 13 (Sunday): 5:30 & 7:30 p.m. Important: Limited edition barf bags will be handed out to the first 500 ticket holders! The filmmakers will be on hand to host a Q&A after each show. The trailer and a Creative Commons MP3 of the end theme song can be found here: http://www.4321films.com/retardead/index.html Story synopsis: Evil has come to the Butte County Institute of Special Education, and its students will never be the same. After surviving a ferocious battle with his own monstrous creation, Dr. Stern returns to continue his horrible research in this blood-drenched sequel to the cult hit "Monsturd." Armed with a fatal hyper-intelligence serum, the mad doctor transforms a quiet community into an army of flesh-eating zombies. It's a showdown of limb-chopping, head-bursting proportions as Stern's nemesis, F.B.I. agent Susan Hannigan, and the local sheriff's department take on the zombie plague in the ultimate battle royale.

I don't really feel informed enough about the situation to say anything too useful. But suffice to say, it ain't too cool, and I'm concerned. I've already expressed my concerns in a song a few years ago [lyrics]. Same company, different country, and in many ways, same shit, different day. This is becoming the rule, and not the exception, for technology companies, nowadays. What do we do when using technology to support over zealous government authorities is just "good business?" What do we do when it's a company like Google. Who, arguably, none of us could live without? (Hey, I'm just speaking for myself.) I don't have any answers. Sorry. Just concerns. Maybe a little evil: Google outs Indian man to authorities By Jacqui Cheng, for Ars Technica. An Indian man was arrested over the weekend for allegedly posting derogatory and vulgar content about Indian politician Sonia Gandhi on Google's social networking site, Orkut. 22-year-old Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid had posted his comments in an Orkut community called "I hate Sonia Gandhi" through an Orkut account associated with his Gmail account. With Google's help, local authorities were able to verify Vaid's identity and make the arrest... Google admitted today that it had forked over Vaid's information after it was requested by Indian law enforcement. A spokesperson for Google told IDG News Service that, while the company is committed to protecting user privacy, it must obey local laws and legal processes.

Come play at Wishfest 1.0 ! Last night's Wishfest 1.0 show started off our festival with a big bang. About 24 people showed up -- that's actually a lot for an SL event! As you can see from the movies, it was really hoppin! Here's my favorite of Cylindrian's songs, "Sweet Alice." I've made it available both as a big 54 MB and a smaller 20 MB file. I've also made an audio file available as an MP3 (6 MB) and a higher fidelity wav file. There's also a lengthier movie (19 MB) of the same song that includes some pre-song conversation with the crowd, and clip of another song (64 MB), that I'm sure Cylindrian will soon tell me the rightful name of :) Photo below links to LARGE version (54 MB)

This is from the April 7, 2008 program. More on the Congressional hearings on virtual worlds. Video files: 17 MB -- 56 MB Sound files: MP3 -- aiff The Daily Show - The best news on TV.

(Click on picture to play movie.) The Node Zero Gallery opening on March 13th went great! "Sheep Vortex" is an interactive art installation created by Spot and artist/SL programmer Somatika Xao. Here's a little video I made of the night's events. Teleport Now to Sheep Vortex Music by Nine Inch Nails under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license that the whole album is released under! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Spot said he was "pleased and gratified by the experience." Here's another installment from my interview with him (below). Lisa: Now, when it sort of gets wispy for a minute, before it settles in on its next thing... Spot: That's a "transition." Lisa: What's going on when that happens? Spot: Well, it's doing interpolation in this genetic space, and it uses cubic splines, so that everything stays smooth. The reason it gets maybe fuzzy or wispy is that it's kind of like noise or dissonence, kind of, in music. It's like, when everything is out of tune. It's like, highly structured geometry - like triangles and squares with sharp, straight lines - would be the equivalent of like pure tones, like sin waves, or a flute. You know, the visual equivalent of a flute sound in the metphor I'm trying to give - a line or a curve or a circle. Lisa: So is that during the interpolation phase, because it's trying to figure out what it's doing? Spot: Yeah because to go from one harmony to another harmony you have to go through chaos and disharmony, because you're going from one domain of organization to another domain of organization, and in between, you're disorganized. So that's the principle. Lisa: This metaphor of virtual worlds in virtual worlds is one that comes up a lot lately. Are you saying that when somebody votes on a picture, that that information is stored somehow in this format, and then tallied up? Is that how that works? I'm trying to understand what information is expressed in the XML. Spot: The XML controls the shapes, and the colors, and the motions. The votes don't get stored in there. The votes get transmitted to the server, and tallied up. Lisa: The shapes -- like the way a vector-based format, like SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) works? Spot: Nope. Are you asking about the renderer and the way the visual language works? Lisa: Yep. Spot: It's based on...what you're sort of seeing is the interference pattern between geometric transformations of the plane. So, you can imagine like, one map of the plane to a plane might be something like "rotation," ok. That's one transformation of a plane. Another transformation of the plane is like "scale," "rotate" and "translate," are the three basic linear ones. But there's also, non-linear transformations, like you know, you can imagine "bending" or "warping" the plane. So there are a zillion transformations of the plane. Lisa: So that's what is expressed? Spot: Yes. The XML is a list of transformations of the plane. And then, what the renderer does -- See, in order to actually turn the genetic code, the "genotype," into the "phenotype," you actually have to solve the equation. Just like, the only way to find out who a child is going to turn into, you have to let them grow up. It takes time, right. So, in order to draw the image, you have to do all these iterations, and so you generate billions of particles that move according to the transformations, and then the "interference"-- what you see as the particles move - the results make the pictures. Lisa: So, particle systems are another thing that you hear a lot about in Second Life. Spot: Right. This is like a custom particle system. One that generates so many particles, that everything you see, when you see a line here, it's not a line, it's particles that happened to have combined and ganged up to form a line. And so these particles are like intelligent dust, can reconfigure themselves into any of the shapes that you see, just by changing the rules that they're all following.

My pal Kevvy writes a great post looking back on the protests of March 20, 2003. Oh the good times! Being threatened by officers donned with clubs! Trampled by horses in broad daylight, and to a good soundtrack even! This was one of the first flashmob protests too! Even we didn't know where we were going until the people that had text messaging/blackberries told us :-) This will still always be the most frightening cilp i think. (blog entry that goes with it) (But that's only because I never got the horse trampling footage up.) So what's changed between now and then? Not a whole hell of a lot, except we're not in the streets anymore. What the hell's up with that? We're spending billions of dollars a day on this fucking war, and it has all played out just like we said it would - corrupt war profiteering businesspeople and politicians have openly traded blood for oil -- which was why we were protesting in the first place, but somehow, when what we said was gonna happen, happened, we got discouraged and just... I dunno... just gave up I guess. It's pretty lame. There was a pathetic little protest in Berkeley today, and they couldn't even agree whose turn it was to speak -- I mean they were arguing about it. And I didn't know which was worse, that their protest was so pathetic, or that I had the nerve to call their protest pathetic, when I was even more pathetic for not having gone to a protest in years. (Years!) And then Kevin sent me this link, and I realized that five years had gone by since I cared enough to stand up against this war, and then I realized that, over the last five years, since the war has actually started, I don't feel like I've done enough, not nearly enough, to try to stop this war. Damn. Thanks Kevin! For the Reminder! Let's rekindle our protest tradition soon! And please protest organizers! Let's make sure we have good DJs and musicians for the protests ok!? I'll do my part to help out with that, I promise. Email me and I will hook you up with great talent - free of charge!! I know lots of great musicians/artists/djs that are ready to come together to make a difference! That's why this protest was so cool, for instance...

Where: Node Zero Gallery, Second Life Date: Thursday, March 13 Time: 6-9 pm SLT Live Q & A w/Spot at 7pm Teleport to the Sheep Vortex Vortex SLURL Teleport to the Main Node Zero Gallery Main Gallery SLURL Join us this Thursday evening from 6-9pm as the Node Zero Gallery takes the Second Life art experience to a new level with its latest collection of interactive exhibits from 8 emerging new artists. (Sponsored by The Wishfarmers.) Spot Draves (SL-Sp0t Schism), creator of the Electric Sheep Screensaver, will be there in person for a live Q and A session at 7pm. "Sheep Vortex" is digital artist Spot Draves' first Second Life art experience (3D Art & Design by Somatika Xiao - a.k.a. David Stumbaugh). Note: You will have to have version 1.19.0.0 or later running. When you get to the vortex, you can click on the circular orbs to interact with the video. (Remember to click your "play" button, and have video enabled in your "Preferences" under the "Audio & Video" tab.) In addition to Spot's creation, this Node Zero Collection features the work of no less than seven emerging new talents: Georg Janick, Feathers Boa, Bryn Oh, Adam Ramona, Aiyas Aya, Ub Yifu, and Crash Perfect. (Keep an eye on the Node Zero Gallery category for more interviews with the artists.) I can't tell you how to interact with these ones yet, or I'd be giving it all away. I'll let the art pieces explain it to you themselves... Sp0t Schism (Spot Draves) in the Sheep Vortex Cory Doctorow says: "This is a distributed rendering application that grabs its users' computers' idle cycles to create computationally expensive, vivid and beautiful animated fractals...The result is a breathtaking, psychedelic form of artificial life whose fitness factor is the ability to tickle the aesthetics of computer geeks." (and about Spot's DVD): "This isn't just trippy wallpaper -- it's not even just art. This is garage-band artificial life. Draves is cooking up a new species made of code, decision and cooperation, and this disc is a petri dish swimming with the organisms that deserve to succeed us here on Earth. I for one welcome our new a-life masters." The main Node Zero Gallery is also always open. (Note: Click on the big doors to enter the gallery after your teleport lands you in the front entrance area.) Spot's work is currently featured on the MOMA website and was also featured on the cover of this month's Leonardo. Here's the first part of a multipart interview with Spot, where he explains some of the background and technology behind the making of these artistic marvels. I'll also be interviewing a few of the other featured artists over these next few days leading up to the opening -- and taking you on tours through some of their interactive pieces. Here's a cool video of some of Spot's older work (2006): The Node Zero Gallery art experience is like no other, and must be experienced to be truly understood. Some of its installations you can literally walk around inside of, bathing in the sights and sounds around you. While, others take you on little adventures, complete with hidden treasures and puzzles for you to find, explore, and work your way through. Teleport to the Sheep Vortex now Vortex SLURL Teleport to the Main Node Zero Gallery now Main Gallery SLURL BTW: Note that Spot and the Electric Sheep Screensaver are not affiliated in any way with the Electric Sheep Second Life development company.-- Just FYI. Everybody asks :-) This post and all the art in it is under the same Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license, as is all of Spot's art.

"Once you figure out what your strengths are, then you really have a responsibility to contribute. That's what this movement's about." -- Jenifer Fox Saturday, March 1, launched the kickoff event for Strengths Island, a groundbreaking interactive educational Second Life environment created by The Wishfarmers, based on author Jennifer Fox's curriculum. Saturday's event featured a lively discussion between Jenifer, author of the book "Your Child's Strengths," and the attending teachers and educators. Here's a clip of the very beginning of the event that will give you a little more information about the Strengths Movement in general. Next, we'll go over some of Strengths Island's specific features. Video: MOV Audio: WAV OGG MP3 Jenifer Fox (Jeni Voom) Explains The Strengths Movement Transcription of Jenifer Fox in this clip: "Virtual Worlds are really something that kids are starting to get turned on to. So if we want to change kids' lives, one of the places to begin is by going where they go, and they go here. Although they're not on this particular island, this is really a test case for their parents, and for educators." "I created the Island so that educators, parents, and anyone else that wants to, can come here and figure out what their strengths are." "So I've been working with The Wishfarmers, and they've done a fabulous job at helping me brainstorm about ways that this island could become interactive." "It goes with the Strengths Movement website, where people can join up into the StrengthsNet, which is an IntroNetworks site where you're able to connect with other people, organizations, schools, parents, college students, anyone around the world, who wants to talk about developing strengths." "Let me say this, that developing strengths really just isn't about feeling good about yourself. It's really about finding the part about you that will help you make the biggest contribution." "So I think that there's a real political piece to this, in that, there are a lot of options for people, and there are a lot of things people can do and become involved in, and, once you figure out what your strengths are, then you really have a responsibility to contribute. So that's what this movement's about." Sign up for Second Life. Then come check out "Strengths Island." (Teleport Now)

Wired just published a piece on the follow up to the lovely little piece of poo that is Monsturd. (My Monsturd site.) Could directors Rick Popko and Dan West think of anything worse than a serial killing shit monster? Of course they could! The new movie is called "The RetarDEAD" -- and I'll apologize to just about everyone ahead of time for its very existence. There's just no excuse. I got to play the wife of one of the main characters this time! I have some 'making of' videos and things to put up with me singing lead in a duet with Girl Trouble lead singer Kurt "KP" Kendall, and also singing backups with the "Retardettes." Here's a link to the mp3 -- I have the lyrics around here somewhere. Oh and the song is totally available for remix: The song is ultimately at the audience's expense. If that helps any.

Wow my worlds collide again. I just met Aubrey last October. Now, he's on the Colbert Report. (sidenote: I have an 45 minute interview of my own with him that I'll be putting up soon, but I really wanted to present it just the right way. I told him I wanted the "homer simpson version" of what the hell he was talking about, and by golly, I think he gave it to me :-) Stephen does a pretty good job of helping Aubrey to summarize his points! Nice work Stephen! You can find out more by picking up a copy of Aubrey's book too. Learn more about Aubrey's SENS platform. All hail The Colbert Report.

You know, everything I have to say about John McCain I already said back in 2004. What was true then is perhaps even truer now. This animation says it better than words ever could.

Hey I just put these links together for someone and decided, if it was my best stuff, that I should put them up here for you too. I need to make mp3s of them still i think. Sorry, I will do that soon! 1. Dead Sunshine 2. Facetwit 3. Democracy 4. Slipping Away 5. Last Digression 6. Dirty Back Road (B52's cover)

Lyrics (below) --I just wanted to link to these two new songs, and let you know that I've got a party going on this Friday night at Ireland's 32 in San Francisco. I'll be playing two sets starting at 7pm. Pizza gets there at 6:30. The party can go on for as long as we want afterwards, but the music will be over by 9 or so... Ireland's 32 is at 3920 Geary @ 3rd avenue - 415-386-6173. I really like these new songs. "Dead Sunshine" was co-written with Devlon Duthie, while "Machines of Loving Grace," my post-singularity song, was inspired by my dear friend Jamais Cascio -- and inspired by the Richard Brautigan poem All watched over by machines of loving grace. (And really also inspired by Paul Saffo's talk at this year's recent Singularity Summit. I went to the summit because Jamais was speaking -- and it pretty much set my life on the strange and interesting new course I've been on ever since...) Dead Sunshine Words by Lisa Rein and Devlon Duthie Music by Lisa Rein Long few days Time slips away and the seagull on the starbucks sign is daring me to cross that line and i'm running away Time slips away You and me got one more day and it's burnt charcoal and dead sunshine is all i got left in my mind and I'm runnin away Machines of Loving Grace Words and Music by Lisa Rein Inspired by Richard Brautigan's (All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace) Can you see without a face and your thoughts will they be lost without a trace? in our machines of loving grace they'll see the love that's in your face can you see a time? i can see it all in my mind can we try to find a way? with our machines of loving grace they'll see the love that's in your face and our machines of loving grace will see the love that's in your face in your face your face

Printable pdf Thanks again to Critter for the great flyer! So I guess I couldn't have waited any later to tell you about my birthday party sunday night - ireland's 32 3920 geary, SF - 415-386-6173 -- i'll be playing around 9 and then off and on all night..as people cluster in. Links below to individual songs - i'm going to put the lyrics to FaceTwit in the More... (My Facebook Twitter Song) I just been busy peeps! It will be great to see whoever can make it! Actually, a lot of people have told me they're coming -- so it should be fun! I know Sunday nights are hard, and I have a friday show nov 30 coming up too at the same place. Then, that will be it for this venue, because it turns out the mobility/accessibility sucks there and I want to find a facility with better access for my events. "Democracy" live (by lisa rein) Democracy Lyrics Democracy Lyrics Resources FaceTwit (Facebook Twitter Song - by lisa rein) (sung by sierra and lisa rein) Running By (by lisa rein) (sung by sierra and lisa rein) Dirty Back Road (B52's cover) (sung by sierra and lisa rein) Everything except "Dirty Back Road" is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution License (v3.0 baby!)

So I've been sitting on these second life movies for months now and I just have to start putting them up! Here's one from July, that I actually edited when I was in Vancouver, of me flying around for a while, ending up at the Long Now Foundation's Alice Wonderland Exhibit, and walking around a bit. The music's cool because it's a Dr. GoldKlang remix of my acapella track on cc mixter that rocks too... (And it mixes me with death metal vocals, which I totally dig :-) This whole thing is now available under an Attribution Non-Commercial 2.5 License...(per the cc mixter song's terms) ok it's late...but I just *could not believe that i spent like days working on this thing and then just, didn't put it up. (Except on Facebook. And that doesn't count...walled garden and such :-) ok hope ya like it...

So I'm so busy trying to not pay attention to Karl Rove on Meet The Press yesterday morning, that I don't bother to watch the rest of the show... Where as, luck, or in this case, NBC, would have it, Matt Cooper apparently let the cat out o' the bag about Rove leaking Valerie Plame's identity. All casual and shit. Then Gregory moves on to another topic...like nothing important was even said. I wouldn't have even known to go back and look if my trusty t r u t h o u t newsletter hadn't have informed me. Gregory: Matt Cooper, let's pick up on an aspect of the interview with, with Karl Rove having to do with the leak case, the CIA leak case, that you were part of as well. And something that's very interesting, he, he went out of his way to say, "I would not have been a confirming source on this kind of information" and taking issue with, with Novak's testimony in his column that he knew who Valerie Plame was. He said he would never confirm that information. That's different from your experience with him. Cooper: Yeah, I, I think he was dissembling, to put it charitably. Look, Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame's identity on July 11th, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn't know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD. I mean, to imply that he didn't know about it or that this was all a leak by someone else... Gregory: Or that he had heard it from somebody else... Cooper: or that he heard it as some rumor out in the hallway is, is nonsense. Gregory: But he makes no apologies to Valerie Plame. Cooper: Karl Rove never apologizes. That's not what he does. Then Gregory just changes the subject..."Back to politics..." I thought they were talking about politics...

It's so much fun: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Second Life A-Z Second Life Step by Step Second Life Utilities (SLUTS) A-Z Losta Hax (Losta Hax's Pad) and I have been messing around with vehicles a lot this past week. Originally, I didn't understand the value of vehicles in Second Life. It seemed like, hell, if you could fly, what else would you need? But as I first learned when Eric Rice (SL - Eric Rice) first took me on a helicopter ride a few weeks ago, vehicles are fun dammit! Here's a little movie of us trying out some hoverpods. You can see Losta floating in the hovercraft while I watch as he throws down another copy of it for me and I apple/click on it, and touch "ride," and hop in.

So now that the grid's back up, I thought you might like this little movie I made of me on a mediation ball located somewhere high over my land. I tried to go back and find it later but I couldn't. I only found it because Losta Hax teleported me over there after he had parachuted down to it from some higher location. That's just the very first few seconds of Hepepe's Lisa and Me as the soundtrack.

I've set up a June 10, 2007 blog category so you can see the all the songs in one place. Zips available soon too... Special thanks to a friend of mine that talked me into including this song in my set. (You know who you are :-) I almost pulled it the day before -- and it ended up being one of the best songs of the night. MP3 (3 MB) Quicktime File (11 MB) IPOD file - M4V (15 MB) Slipping Away Words by Lisa Rein - Music by Lisa Rein and Ron Taylor As Performed and Played by Lisa Rein June 10, 2007 Lately, I can't seem to unwind I'd put my feet in the air But there's too much on my mind And I'm just Traveling with my face in a jar I got one foot in the door And things are fine how they are But sometimes I think I got it made in the shade And then, starts a feeling like it's slipping away In my mind But everything seems ok Everything seems ok Dying I'm dying to win And I'll be killing myself To be born over again Are you lying? I ain't too sure who you are You're just a traveling salesman with your face in a jar It's always when I think that something's coming my way Then I get that funny feeling like it's slipping away For the last time But everything seems ok Everything seems ok Yeah It's always when I think that something's coming my way Then I get that funny feeling that it's slipping away In my mind But everything seems ok Everything seems ok Yeah everything seems ok Everything seems ok Yeah everything Creative Commons Attribution License

Here's a video from my video blogging week on using Animations for dancing in second life. I'm putting it up here for archival purposes - to link to it from my a-z index.... Lots of stuff going up today that still needs to be linked together a fair amount, so bear with me... In today s movie, David Meade and I getdown a bit, while I learn about collecting animations in to my Inventory. First Ryce starts dancing, and asks me to join him, and I tell him I don t know how to dance with him. So he sends me an animation, which I accept and then double click on in my inventory to activate. Ryce sends me an animation called getdown, so I can dance with him. David Meade (Ryce Broderick) does a handstand while we re Dancing I used cdk s Beat as a soundtrack, from CC Mixter. Please visit us at David Meade s Second Life Pad: Teleport Now - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gyeongju/106/166/73 (Note, I originally wrote this for the mefeedia blog. For completeness, since I have learned that things go away sometimes when you don't host them, I republished it here :)

I've set up a June 10, 2007 blog category so you can see the all the songs in one place. Zips available soon too... MP3 (4 MB) Quicktime File (17 MB) IPOD file - M4V (21 MB) Tyrant Words and Music by Lisa Rein As Performed June 10, 2007 There's a tyrant coming soon Thinking 'bout the afternoon There's a monster that you love There's an angel There's a monster coming soon There's a tyrant And it's you Tell me what you gonna do about it Oh there's a place I used to know Things would come and things would go on around me Like I wasn't there at all Saw the writing on the wall Guess I didn't see you fall away There's a monster in the dark There's a ghost in central park Tell me who you really are I ask you Oh there's a place I used to know Things would come and things would go right around me Oh won't you come on out and play Don't leave me alone today Tell me what you gonna do? There's a tyrant and it's you There's a guilded golden cage There's that face won't go away You've been lying to yourself Ain't been listen to the bells No more stories left to tell that matter Tyrant in your head Curled up next to you in your bed There's a memory in your mind Slipping through the sands of time There's a jingle in your head Of everything you never said Tell me What you gonna do about it? Creative Commons Attribution License

This is the first of many interviews from the incredible CHI 2007 conference I went to last May. More on all that later. Let's get started! I have a ton of interviews to get up here...and they all tie back in to my Second Life research, and my continued interest in technologies that help us improve our lives and help us learn. (CHI 2008 is in Florence, Italy -- see you there!) Blue Tuna Website Interview part 1 of many with: Stephan Baumann Head of Competence Center Computational Culture at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence Quicktime (7 MB) IPOD version (M4V 9 MB) MP3 (2MB) Transcription: Me: So tell me about Blue Tuna. Stephan: Blue Tuna is a new kind of application where you can share your music tastes with people near by. So it's like augmenting First Life. Having a First Life again. Meeting people who share the same music tastes. That's a great socializer I think. So if you are a little bit shy, and want to get into a conversation, you could check with a mobile phone to see who in a close proximity has my tastes, and then you could walk up and have coffee or beer and talk about music and...yeah whatever. Me: And how can you tell that this user will have similar tastes to the other users, and stuff like that? Stephan: Ah ok. So, when you MP3s on your mobile phone -- with the new generation of cell phones, this will be no problem -- We can read out the ID3 tags, so the song name, the artist name, the title name. This is part of it. And another thing is that we could connect to these socal bookmarking music sites, such as Last.fm, and there you can track down the profile of your listening behavior to get an even richer profile. And then we compute a kind of similarity match based on how many artists are in common between two people...how many related artists are in common...This is pretty straightforward.

A little double of political ditties just in time for the 4th! A perfect bitter pair of tunes on what it feels like to be an American today... I've set up a June 10, 2007 blog category so you can see the all the songs in one place. Zips available soon too... MP3 (4 MB) Quicktime File (17 MB) IPOD file - M4V (21 MB) James Brown Died on Christmas/Improving Words and Music by Lisa Rein As Performed June 10, 2007 James Brown died on christmas They found him in the morning It came without a warning It seems like only last december I was looking up his police record To settle a trivial family battle And I don't mean no disrespect And I'm not saying anything at all Cause nothing's ever written on the wall But I hope that he's in a better place In a better place It was the first thing I heard on christmas morning I saw it on the tele It was a holiday of tragedy and tyranny When only a few days later We were hanging a dictator As a symbol of democracy And I'm not saying anything Cause no one's even listening anymore And there's not much I really know for sure But I know that he's in a better place In a better place (Improving starts here) Cut off the power lines my friend Shut off the water too The benefits will never end When we're done bringing this to you We're just improving improving yeah yeah yeah improving improving yeah yeah yeah Kill off your family one by one but we'll give you some rights when we're all done yeah It's such a drag but it's not us! If you can tough it out You'll make it. improving improving yeah yeah yeah improving improving yeah yeah yeah improving improving yeah yeah yeah improving improving yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Creative Commons Attribution License

This song's not about anyone in particular. Just a feeling. I think we've all been there :-) I've set up a June 10, 2007 blog category so you can see the all the songs in one place. MP3 (4 MB) Quicktime File (15 MB) IPOD file - M4V (19 MB) No More Of You Words and Music by Lisa Rein As Performed June 10, 2007 Great to see ya baby ya know it's been a long long time Got a minute baby? I got something on my mind Seems like I should be kissing you the whole night through and now you'll never know the things that i was gonna do and it's making me blue that I ain't getting no more of you it's making me blue that I ain't getting no more of you Thinking bout cha lately seems you're always on my brain I try to find some piece of mind but it's driving me insane So say it isn't over even if it isn't true cause there don't seem to be no way of getting over you and it's making me blue that I ain't getting no more of you So tell me that you love me even if it's not true cause i just wanna hear it one more time and I wanna hear it from you it's making me blue that I ain't getting no more of you it's making me blue that I ain't getting no more of you it's making me blue that I ain't getting no more of you Creative Commons Attribution License

archive of songs from this show. Update! - New! MP3 of this song: MP3 (4 MB) Quicktime File (14 MB) IPOD file - M4V (18 MB) Last Digression Words and Music by Lisa Rein As Performed June 10, 2007 In my mind In my head I can't seem to find the answers to my questions I can see them I can hear in their direction through the darkness and the madness and the emptyness getting closer to a vacuum-filled unconsciousness a false impression of my very last digression by my side in your bed you will never find the secret to your laughter and you don't seem to mind that you cannot find an answer to the darkness and the madness ad the emptyness getting closer to the memory of your consciousness a fool's procession towards your very last digression a confession in my mind to your lighter side that's hiding all the answers second chances heavy breathers breathing one last breath surrounded confounded by the sounding of a warning a confession vivisection of your memories and they seduce me Creative Commons Attribution License

archive of songs from this show. This one's called "Futurama." I just wrote it a few weeks ago. Update 07-02-07. New! MP3 available: MP3 (4 MB) I'm trying to figure out how to generate mp3s easily...Now that stupid Itunes generates mp4s instead of mp3's from my .mov clips (like it used to - quite conveniently). Update: 7/02/07 - just decided to extract audio in iMovie and then use itunes... I'll set up another blog post with the whole show in it too... Quicktime File (16 MB) IPOD file - M4V (21 MB) Futurama Words and Music by Lisa Rein As performed at Ireland's 32, June 10, 2007 You, must think I'm a fool I wanna reach over and tell you something You I barely know you and now you got me here sitting and staring at nothing Well I don't know what's happening But I know that something is And I don't know what the future will bring But it's bringing something for me You, don't know about you ya you're just over there working making something from nothing You, feels like I know you Though it couldn't be true I only know one thing That I don't know what's happening But I know that something is And I may not know what the future may bring But it's bringing something for me Something for me Creative Commons Attribution License

Ok so if I haven't mentioned it already - I'm going social networking happy. There are a number of reasons for this sudden change in opinion of these thinggies. But I have become strangely caught up in it all as of late. Since I'm actually locating old friends etc., as a result of using these technologies, I think I'm starting to drink the koolaide a bit. (And I was just being a crank earlier, badmouthing them all, let me tell you...As my friend Lilia can attest to :-) But I digress... I actually started this post with a question for you rather than a rant about my new attitude towards social networking technologies -- How do I configure this stuff? For instance, in the post below, it only shows one of my twitters at a time, although there seems to be room for more. Here's another flash app I've pasted below. I guess I need to twitter on my Facebook page now....so here I go...

archive of songs from this show. This one's called "Futurama." I just wrote it a few weeks ago. Update 07-02-07. New! MP3 available: MP3 (4 MB) I'm trying to figure out how to generate mp3s easily...Now that stupid Itunes generates mp4s instead of mp3's from my .mov clips (like it used to - quite conveniently). Update: 7/02/07 - just decided to extract audio in iMovie and then use itunes... I'll set up another blog post with the whole show in it too... Quicktime File (16 MB) IPOD file - M4V (21 MB) Futurama Words and Music by Lisa Rein As performed at Ireland's 32, June 10, 2007 You, must think I'm a fool I wanna reach over and tell you something You I barely know you and now you got me here sitting and staring at nothing Well I don't know what's happening But I know that something is And I don't know what the future will bring But it's bringing something for me You, don't know about you ya you're just over there working making something from nothing You, feels like I know you Though it couldn't be true I only know one thing That I don't know what's happening But I know that something is And I may not know what the future may bring But it's bringing something for me Something for me Creative Commons Attribution License

Ok so if I haven't mentioned it already - I'm going social networking happy. There are a number of reasons for this sudden change in opinion of these thinggies. But I have become strangely caught up in it all as of late. Since I'm actually locating old friends etc., as a result of using these technologies, I think I'm starting to drink the koolaide a bit. (And I was just being a crank earlier, badmouthing them all, let me tell you...As my friend Lilia can attest to :-) But I digress... I actually started this post with a question for you rather than a rant about my new attitude towards social networking technologies -- How do I configure this stuff? For instance, in the post below, it only shows one of my twitters at a time, although there seems to be room for more. Here's another flash app I've pasted below. I guess I need to twitter on my Facebook page now....so here I go...