emudir

Cory Doctorow is a sci-fi author and commentator, who is usually to be found in his capacity as co-editor at boingboing. His most recent essay collection, Context covers a diverse set of topics, trying to reconcile the “freemium” nature of the Internet (something we’re strongly in favour of here at emudir) and the need for creators to benefit from their hard work (we all have to eat, right?) What’s more, it is itself a “freemium” product, being a Context, is a Creative Commons licensed free download, as well as purchasable as a physical book.

This give-away model has also inspired Jan Rubak to do a similarly CC licensed audiobook reading of the book, just as he did with Doctorow’s previous book, Content. With not only the author’s permission, but also his thanks. Which is nice.

If you enjoy the book, you can either buy it directly, or donate a copy of either Context or Content to a school or library (which we would highly recommended, by the way).

Context
Homepage: http://craphound.com/context/
Download the book: http://craphound.com/context/download/
Download the audio book: http://www.archive.org/details/CoryDoctorow-Context

Content
Homepage: http://craphound.com/content/
Download the book: http://craphound.com/content/download/
Download the audio book: http://www.archive.org/details/CoryDoctorow-Content_268

We’ve featured a good few albums on this blog before, and they tend to fall into two distinct categories. Either they are from established artists – such as Nine Inch Nails, or Coldplay – as a “thank you” to the fans.

But just as often – as here – the people giving their music away do so as a trailer to their live shows, and the highly regarded indie rockers TheWeeknd do exactly that. In fact, the strategy is so successful, they’re commanding huge fees for sell-out concerts all over the USA. (Forgive me if indie rock isn’t exactly right – it’s difficult to judge genres for people like me who use Deicide as chill-out music…)

And you can find out for yourself exactly why – both their albums Thursday and House Of Balloons are available from their website. (You’ll need JavaScript enabled to experience it properly, and a zip application to extract the files, by the way).

Home page: http://the-weeknd.com/

The hyper-active Mystified (real name Thomas Park) seems to release an album a month, and most of them are uploaded for free to The Internet Archive. This one is just over half an hour, and it’s an ever-shifting soundscape.

The title is apposite, as the atmospheric industrial rumblings that begin the piece remind me of the waste disposal escape scene in Toy Story 3. But it’s not all pounding industrial noises …read more »

Did you see Coldplay at Glastonbury? If you didn’t, it’s perhaps amazing you managed to avoid it, given it sems to have been shown live on the BBC and then again and again for days. Which means you probably did it on purpose, so if I were you, I’d move on to the next post.

Still here? Good… …read more »

Edward Gibbon’s enormous “The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire” was – especially by 18th Century standards – a literary success. Published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, it covers everything from the time of Marcus Aurelius (emperor at the beginning of “Gladiator“, if you’re not up on your Roman history), right through to the 15th Century.

In fact, Gibbon’s history was considered so good it was used as a model for historians until the present day. It even featured as a plot point in an episode of “Hancock’s Half Hour” – although it was only to allow him to reach a copy of Darcy Sarto’s “Lady Don’t Fall Backwards” off the top shelf…

In any event, there’s no struggling with huge volumes here. Simply download the volunteer-read MP3 (or OGG, if you prefer) files from LibriVox and start listening. They are quite large, @historyscientis, author of the excellent History Books Review assures me that the whole thing is worth it – thanks for the information

All 6 volumes are here:

• Volume I
• Volume II
• Volume III
• Volume IV
• Volume V
• Volume VI

If you haven’t seen it, D.O.A. is a film noir classic with a twist – the victim solves his own murder. And if that does sound familiar, it’s possible you might have seen the recent remake of this, starring Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan, but the original 1949 version is somewhat different – and arguably, perhaps, better. …read more »

On Christmas Day 2010, Damon Albarn’s “Gorillaz” project released a new album – “The Fall”.

Recorded entirely on tour -and primarily on Albarn’s iPad – The Fall documents the experience of the 2010 American tour, and was given away to fans as a “Christmas Present” from the band. …read more »

Between now and the end of the year we’ll be rounding up some older stuff that we really love, but that (due to shiny exciting sparkly newness) we haven’t featured on emudir…

In 2008, newly free from record company ties, Nine Inch Nails released a new album – “The Slip“. Critically acclaimed as a return to form, The Slip seems to be part of Trent Reznor’s new prolific period, seeing NIN produce more focused, stripped-down work, and focusing on what they do best: music. …read more »

A couple of weeks ago we pointed you towards Mitch Benn‘s excellent reading of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol“. Well, today, what with it being Christmas Day and everything, we’d like to point you in the direction of the first sound version of that same tale – 1935′s Scrooge. …read more »

The inventor of spread spectrum radio and the radar guided torpedo undoubtedly shortened World War 2 by a few years. Of course, there is also work in this area that is still classified – and still state of the art. So it’s perhaps surprising that quite a good deal of this inventor’s work was widely seen and disseminated at the same time. Take for example, this film – “Dishonored Lady” – where Hedy Lamarr stars as Madeleine Damian, a fashion editor set on the right road after a suicide attempt.

Dishonored Lady is a psychological drama, and Lamarr proves that her day job as an actress was worth the game, and she could indeed act as well as inventing course-of-history changing radio elecronics in her spare time. While it’s perhaps a little more morally uptight than today’s standards, it’s still an interesting view …read more »