It’s really amazing how one longs to get distracted when there are massive amounts of stuff to do. My law school exams are coming up yet again, and guess what I’m preoccupied with? You guessed that right – streaming music services. Just like before.
Anyway, my endless searches and somebody’s advice finally led me to a decent ‘net radio service. The thing is called Grooveshark. It’s loaded with cool features, most of which are free!
Most importantly, Grooveshark uses an awesome business strategy – “Get the basics free, pay extra for more yummy stuff!”, which is successfully used for years by many services, including Google Docs, Dropbox, DeviantArt… erm… John the Ripper, and many other places. Now this is so much better than the “free for a couple of countries, 30-song trial period for the rest of the world” strategy used by some competitors, lol.
Grooveshark supports playlists, shuffles & repeats (things that VKontakte lacks), and most importantly, suggestion of similar songs and artists and genre radio stations, which are all real benefits. You can also annoy your facebook pals by posting what you listen to on your wall, or scrobble to last.fm (as if anyone needs last.fm anyway), and other stuff – all completely free.
Needless to say, nobody’s completely perfect. The free version has a sidebar with ads (easily disabled here, though), the on-line client is somewhat heavy and cumbersome, the songs are poorly organized and not everything I’d like to hear is on there yet. But as the creators say, they’re only just beginning, so I’d expect the service to change for the better. To encourage the makers, I’d suggest that we occasionally click on ads, or better still, get a paid subscription.
Have a melodic day!
I guess that what I’m about to write is very old and trite to the world around me – hell, I’ve read about this several times. But there’s an abyss between knowing about something from the others and experiencing it first-hand.
To the point, I realized that the things that really matter to me – love, inspiration, joy and the like, can only be found inside myself. The real muses and ideas of true value only emerge inside you, you just have to open your mind and “listen” to them carefully. Trying to look for inspiration in others’ heads will only make you lose the little you’ve got left.
For many, including me, listening to myself is a great challenge, because we were raised in a world trying to make us suppress ourselves, to put on masks and behave in a predictable, “comfortable” way.
I don’t say you have to yell about yourself being “exceptional” or “original” on every corner. Just open your mind and receive every little thing it whispers to you with attention and gratitude, and you might as well hear a lot of things that you’ve never heard before even though they were there all along.
Recently, somebody gave me a curious link to Adobe’s official page on “proper use” of the Adobe Photoshop trademark. I first thought it was some joke. But once I saw that it was serious and official, I was petrified by a mix of astonishment, disbelief, hysterical laughter and sadness. Here’s a brief quote for those who don’t like to follow links:
Trademarks are not verbs.
Correct: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
Incorrect: The image was photoshopped.
Trademarks must never be used as slang terms.
Correct: Those who use Adobe® Photoshop® software to manipulate images as a hobby see their work as an art form.
Incorrect: A photoshopper sees his hobby as an art form.
Incorrect: My hobby is photoshopping.
Trademarks must never be used in possessive form.
Correct: The new features in Adobe® Photoshop® software are impressive.
Incorrect: Photoshop’s new features are impressive.
Trademarks are proper adjectives and should be followed by the generic terms they describe.
Correct: The image was manipulated using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
Incorrect: The image was manipulated using Photoshop.
Trademarks must never be abbreviated.
Correct: Take a look at the new features in Adobe® Photoshop® software.
Incorrect: Take a look at the new features in PS.
Now this is simply outrageous. They basically say I can’t say “to photoshop”, “Adobe PS” or even “this looks shopped”. The folks at Adobe are going waaaay beyond the edge for several reasons.
Firstly, if you own a trademark, you only own a proper name, and in some cases, the logo, and the law in some jurisdiction prohibits others to sell stuff with this trademark or logo on it. There are some exceptions (like Google rightfully suing e-squatters for making money off gogle.com, hoogle.com, gppgle.com, etc.), but this rule is generally true for most cases. Owning a trademark, however, does not mean owning the words with identical, let alone similar spelling. Which means Adobe cannot prohibit the usage of these words because they don’t even belong to them, in fact they can’t belong to anyone at all.
Secondly, what Adobe is attempting to do is to control the natural development of human language. Words tend to come and go as the language evolves to better suit the needs of its users. In order to be usable, the language has to have means for short and precise expression of widely occurring phenomena. Hence we have “google it”, “aspirin” (extending far beyond the original Aspirin by Bayer), etc. (see article on genericized trademarks). Having your trademark become so popular that people start using it to refer to a whole category of actions (in our case, photoshopping == image editing and enhancement) is in itself a great honor, and trying to reverse this process is not only obviously stupid and counterproductive for the trademark itself, but it is also as futile as, say, trying to piss against the wind. Good luck with that, Adobe lawyers.
Thirdly and finally, why even write these guidelines if they are unable to have them followed on their very own website? Here’s a quote:
Enjoy tight integration with Photoshop for streamlined use of Smart Objects, panorama stitching, HDR functionality, multiple-layer workflow, and more. See your edits automatically updated in Lightroom.
Let’s compare this to an earlier quote of their own:
Incorrect: The image was manipulated using Photoshop.
Ooops. Now they’re not only making up some ridiculous legalese crap and attempting to limit our vocabulary, but contradicting themselves by being unable to live up to their own standards. Besides, I suppose that “Lightroom” is also a trademark with similar “terms” to be followed.
Therefore, my position is that I’m continuing to use *any* words i choose despite the feeble attempts of legal prescriptivism by some corporation’s smartass lawyers, so go ahead, try and sue me =).
Way back, say, a thousand years ago, the people living in what is now Ukraine were pagan and worshiped many gods instead of one. Then, Christianity came around and imposed its saints, holidays and traditions, displacing the pagan rituals that were in place before, like Halloween for instance.The Ukrainian holiday of Ivana Kupala dates, perhaps, a thousand years back to the pagan festivities when people worshiped the gods of water and prayed for rain.
It seems that much has changed throughout the passing centuries… but not if you look closer.
This is the Ivana Kupala fest in Vinnitsa. A fireman is spraying water out of a firehose on the crowd.
Full version in my dA gallery.
Just a rant on how really messed up it is to be out of home recovering from a sickness. You’re out of territory, out of rhythm and balance and just want to get over with it and move on.
Being sick is just so unfun.
A couple of days ago, we made a glorious shoot at the roof of a new 25-floor building in Kiev. The sun was going down and a storm was gathering on the other side so the light was unique and amazing.
Here is a couple of teasers from this shoot:
More in my dA Gallery.
Credits:
Models: Anya B., Olya M.
MUA: Anya B.
Camerapeople: me, Mary G.
Premises: Olya M.
Lights: Natural
Music: Guns n’ Roses – Paradise City
As I’m in the middle of writing two papers for law school, I´d love to have some nice music playing in the background to somehow sweeten the experience. I do have some music on my PC, but I don´t want to get distracted because I need to switch tracks, etc. Besides, I’d like to expand my musical taste, which I feel is getting a little stale over time. All of this, plus a broadband ´net connection, brings one’s mind to…Internet radio and music services. So, let´s have a brief look of our options.
First and foremost, there´s last.fm. Everybody talks about last.fm, a lot of people have an account there because it´s so cool and it costs you only $3 to use… unless you´re from the US, UK or Germany. Of course, I like Americans, Germans and (somewhat) the Brits, but this is just fucking discrimination against me based on my citizenship. You either make everyone pay, or make it free and seek additional ways to monetize your services (ads, premium accounts with extra features, hundreds of ways, actually). So, I’m either trying to listen to last.fm via a German/UK/US Tor exit node, or just forget about it.
I would even register and buy a subscription if it weren’t for the discrimination issue, because it’s not a matter of $3/mo., it’s a matter of principle. Hinting me that I’m any worse than somebody living in Germany, US or UK, is absolutely outrageous, which decisively sends them last.fm guys down the drain.
Another option is listening to the music on your page at VKontakte. VK lets you add any music to your page and play it free indefinitely. It even has playlists, but, alas! – no shuffle or music suggestion like last.fm. VKontakte enables you to have your playlists with you wherever you go (that is, with a ‘net connection, of course), but after a while it starts boring you to listen to the same music, in the same order. The two solutions I’ve found is 1) to make a group (which I did) lobbying to add the shuffle feature to VKontakte (and possibly music suggestion later on, analyzing the listening habits of millions of people) and 2) listen to music on other people’s pages, which both expands your musical taste and lets you know them better.
As for today, I stopped my search at Jamendo. This place offers a lot of indie music (which is not bad at all, by the way) to listen to and download for free, under CreativeCommons licenses. I believe there’s even a Rhythmbox plugin for Jamendo.
Happy with what I’ve found for now, I can get back to my papers.
Have a great, melodic day!
The folks at Google have made yet another step towards world domination. Just a bit of math analysis and endless amounts of search data allow the folks from Mountain View, CA, to predict the future. The result is called Eurovision 2010 Forecast and is essentially what Google thinks the standings chart of the contest will look like.
Here’s how it looks like now:
The thing changes daily.
On May 27, we’ll know the answer to two very important questions. First, who wins Eurovision 2010 (I can’t help supporting Alyosha from Ukraine, and put my bets on the girl from Georgia, if you wanted to know). And second, just how close Google came to modeling complex mass behavior and world domination, or whatever.
testing blog > twitter > facebook connectivity.
and it works!!!
so i guess all i have to do is connect this blog to VKontakte, and we’re done =)
This is my first post on this blog.
My old blog descended into oblivion a couple of years ago, but i finally decided to revive it. And yes, it’s a TON of pleasure having your own standalone blog where you and only you are in charge.
Like I’ve said, this is supposed to be a logical continuation of my old page, so I’ll be making quite a few reposts of the stuff from it.
Cheers.
