The Culture Kills Music Podcast Episode 3

Well, its that same Batchannel, same Batday, so once again, I am pleased to bring you another episode of the Culture Kills Music Podcast.

And with a new recording session came a new found confidence and somewhat smoother presentation. It just sort of worked out that way, though as always, there is a lot of room for improvement.

This time out, I've only played 5 songs, but it still worked out to the same amount of music and general podcast length (and even more surprising, the same amount of banter... who knew I had it in me).

You may notice on this and upcoming shows a few changes to its presentation. I found a couple of additional promotional services which have podsafe music. However, to use their materials, I have to post more information about the songs, so the show notes and such will be a little denser, and after I've played a song, I will mention the service.


The playlist for this show:

Kensington Prairie - Crooked Things Straight from the album Captured in Still Life

Giant Brain - This Is Where the Robot Escapes His Evil Captor, Finds Raygun, Plots Revenge from Thorn of Thrones released by Small Stone Records Rhapsody

Kaiser Cartel - Oh No from the album March Forth

Sandy and the Surfsonics - Playa Encantada from the album Oceanica

Kraak and Smaak - Real Pain from the album The Remix Sessions


You can listen to it on the embedded player below:


Of course, if you want to download it for future listening, it is also available in MP3 form (33 MB). I went with 128 kbps encoding this time out, and I think the reduction in size is a fair tradeoff for whatever minimal loss in sound quality this move may have produced.

The Podcast is also available at Mevio, which has an RSS feed and additional listening options.

The music was provided by Ariel Publicity, the Podsafe Music Network, Killbeat Music and Ioda Promonet.

And if you are an independent musician or represent a publicity or record company that makes music available for podcast and you would like me to know about it, feel free to contact me at campybeaver@gmail.com.

You can also revisit past episodes of the show.

Episode 1: The Pimps of Joytime, Triptic Winter, Val Emmich, Betika, Uma Floresta, The Squarewaves
Episode 2: Ekho, Little Name, Patti Rothberg, Dare Dukes, The Squarewaves, Social Studies

Enjoy!

Tags: kensington prairie, giant brain, crooked thing straight, killbeat music, ariel publicity, ioda promonet, podsafe music network, mevio, kaiser cartel, sandy and the surfsonics, kraak and smaak, real pain, oh no, march forth, thorn of thrones, remix sessions, pimps of joytime, uma floresta, squarewaves, social studies, patti rothberg, little name, playa encantada, finds raygun, plots revenge

Morning Convergence Zone

We do have a convergence zone now...as we often do after fronts...and the air is cold enough for snow above 500ft where precip intensity is great enough.

PS: Note there are TWO convergence lines (more on this later)

PSS: If any of you are interested in the NW weather workshop, please take a look at the link in the upper right and register if you want to go. The agenda is online. This is the meeting for hardcore local weather lovers.

Update on cold and snow

Well, its pretty definite now...we are going to experience an unusually cold period for this time of the year...with a real threat of snow showers on Sunday.

Lets start with right now. A cold front is now approaching..and there are clouds and some light showers associated with it. But the flow is sufficiently westerly that central Puget Sound is being rain shadowed (see images). The showers will move through tomorrow am, with improving weather during the day.

On Friday, an upper ridge will move in and it will by dry and sunny. But the fun begins on Saturday as a major Pacific ridge shifts eastward and an upper trough moves southward down its eastern flanks (image). Behind the trough much colder air will flood the region on Saturday into Sunday. On Saturday, the associated showers will probably be rain...but on Sunday things get interesting. The winds will be westerly, so there will be rain shadowing, but the models are insistent about the creation of a Puget Sound convergence zone...and if they are right it will be cold enough for snow (see model snow forecast).
The cold air will hold in for several days...and there will be a substantial pressure difference across the Fraser River Valley...so Bellingham and NW Washington could be raked by strong NE winds and colder temps than anywhere else. This air is cold enough to allow temps to drop into the 20s at night...so there could well be a serious frost that has the potential to damage sensitive plants...particularly those that are budding and vulnerable...so get ready to protect them.
A positive part of the forecast is that the Cascades should enjoy plenty of snow tonight and over the weekend...with up to foot possible tonight and tomorrow.

Google Code University: New Materials and SIGCSE

By Andrea Held, Google Code University

With SIGCSE kicking off today, we are happy to announce that we pushed a small - but fresh - addition of course materials to Google Code University, a growing repository of open access Computer Science materials. With the credit belonging to Berkeley and UC San Diego, there are now more Distributed Systems materials available which complement some of the other CS resources. As usual, the materials are Creative Commons licensed allowing adaptations and modifications to fit new course designs.

We'll also be participating and presenting at SIGCSE, so be sure to chat with us if you'd like to contribute course materials, or you're welcome to discuss in the forum.

New Weekly Email

By popular demand, I have now set up a weekly email service to Game Theorist. You can subscribe by entering your email address on the sidebar form to the right or clicking on one of the following links:

• Subscribe to weekly Game Theorist email.
  

It is pretty easy to unsubscribe straight from the email should you so choose. Also, if you follow my other blog at Core Economics (click here to subscribe to its daily email using the same service).

(Also, if you are using your Melbourne Business School address, some over-zealous blocking seems to stop that).

Alice in Steampunkland

It sort of makes sense that Steampunk and Alice in Wonderland would at some point be melded together. They are both subversive views of the 19th century after all.

The idea was explored in this awesome picture by Sandra Chang-Adair.



Check it out at the original site for greater detail.

Sandra Chang-Adair, you've rocked my world. I guess I am a closet steampunk fan after all.

Tags: alice in wonderland, steampunk, sandra chang-adair, lewis carroll, tesla, wireless electricity

Introducing Labs for Google Code

Tom Stocky, Director, Google Developer Products

As Google's developer program continues to grow -- already over 60 APIs and tools on Google Code today -- we credit much of this growth to a culture of exploration and rapid iteration, and to the invaluable feedback and insights we receive from you about each product as it evolves.

Reflecting this culture, we're pleased to introduce Google Code Labs today as a home for developer products still in their early stages of development. Our hope, of course, is that all of our developer products grow up to be huge successes, but we realize that not every single one will reach that goal. The Labs program offers engineering teams at Google and the developer community a chance to explore ideas and get involved early.

With that background, we're also announcing that several of our best-known and most-used APIs and tools are among the first set of Google Code Labs "graduates" -- including App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, AJAX Search API, Maps API, Earth API, Calendar Data API, YouTube APIs, and more. See the full list of graduates on the Google Code Labs page.

For these graduates, we're increasing our commitment with published deprecation policies and other critical support services. The Visualization API terms, Contacts Data API terms, and Picasa Web Albums Data API terms include good examples of transparent deprecation policies. They state that we'll support each version for at least 3 years from when it's deprecated or a newer version is introduced. We're working to get policies posted for the other graduates as well, though the time period may vary a bit from product to product. It will be 3 years for most, but it might be less for some. The AdWords API, for example, has a policy of supporting old versions for 4 months.

Of course, even established products need a way to experiment with new features. With that in mind, some products will have features labeled "experimental" that could change (or even be removed) at any time, while the rest of the API is covered by a deprecation policy with long-term support.

There are additional hurdles for an API to graduate from Labs. They include requirements like having a dedicated, ongoing engineering team and comprehensive test suite. We also want to do things like the App Engine System Status Dashboard for more products.

Finally, we'd like to bid a fond adieu to one of our first developer products, the venerable SOAP Search API. It has been deprecated since 2006, when we stopped accepting new developers for the API, and it's finally hanging up the gloves and retiring on August 31st. It has been steadily declining in usage over the last couple years and we believe that the majority of use cases are sufficiently handled by the more comprehensive AJAX Search API (which supports not only web search, but local, news, images, video, and more). For those interested in migrating, there are more details in the AJAX APIs blog.

Thank you for making the past five-plus years such a success. We look forward to doing great things together with Google Code Labs and we hope you'll join us in congratulating the new graduates.