The Space Toast Pages

Matthew Rasmussen's journal of journals on various topics of interest, published here, there or somewhere since 1999.

Amazon.com's MP3 Store

Overall I'm pleased with the Amazon mp3 store. Good interface. Good prices. Previewing tracks and albums is intuitive, the samples are high quality, and you don't wind up with a desktop full of little .rm files after previewing them all.

The selection can be lean, even with slightly out of band tastes. I can only find one full VNV Nation album, while Rotersand turns up a remix album, and Seabound is MIA. That said, discovering new acts based on what you already know is easy and -- dare I say it -- fun, at least in the heavily incestuous world of electronica.

I didn't enjoy having to install an application to download full albums. I also didn't enjoy being forced to purchase using "one click" -- why can't I shop and then check out? I read through the terms of service, and there's no mention of watermarking or inclusion of my account info in the files, but I wouldn't call that conclusive. Will I get a nastygram from Amazon if someone swipes my SD card? Hopefully we won't find out.

Once I'd made my purchase and installed the application, the downloads were quick. On my Mac, the Amazon application created an "Amazon MP3" folder in my music folder and generated subfolders for artist and album in the iTunes style. The tracks were automatically imported into iTunes, although I found it odd that the application didn't create a playlist of the album. One question I haven't found an answer to is whether, like in iTunes, I can purchase the remainder of an album for the (discounted) album price if I have already purchased tracks individually.

Bottom line, Barry Adamson's "King of Nothing Hill" sounds great in iTunes, will play in TCPMP on my Palm Zire and can ride a thumb drive to my client onsites. At the same album price offered on the iTunes Store for a track that's locked to play only in iTunes on my own machine, I'd call that a deal.

Series

The web is littered with incomplete projects, and there's no reason for it. Typically, the author of a podcast, webcomic, art or even written blog series simply grows tired of keeping an open-ended project alive. Updating drops off, then links die or the server stops responding. Lives change and obsessions evolve, but why should so many great projects die a heat death?

Ignore the web for a moment and think about television. Television series are finite. Even "Meet the Press" (USA), "Coronation Street" (UK) or "Hockey Night" (Canada) are purchased by their respective broadcasters in set batches of episodes. These are called "series" in the UK, or, a bit less accurately, "seasons" in the US.

It's a good model. Rather than simply beginning an open-ended project, why not commit to a set "series?" If the project is successful, commit to another series. If interest wanes, tie it off at the expected ending and move onto something new.

To help with the process, I've dashed up a little web 2.0 gizmo. Input episode number, total series length, and series number (if applicable), then copy and paste the code for a little button into the entry's page on your site. JavaScript is required to produce buttons but not to display them, though older versions of Internet Explorer may have trouble displaying them correctly without running the included script.

Happy serializing.

Series:

(blank)123456789 0123456789

Episode:

(blank)123456789 0123456789 of (blank)123456789 0123456789

Copy and paste this code into your page:

Retired Addiction

"Doctor Who," Series 3

DIY Coms

So let me get this straight. Now I get to watch...

• Shitty commercials
• Shitty commercials that look like they were made by amateurs
• Shitty commercials that were made by amateurs

"Dead Dog" by Nicholas Ozment

Pseudopod Horror Podcast #055

Not a bad story. The language was very well used. I found the black dog myth and the narrator's guiltless infidelity a bit hard to lash together thematically, and some of the descripive passages and long flashbacks made my attention wander.

But I have a request. Referencing the "mini generation gap" comment I made on "The Apple Tree Man," could we hear a bit more from the under 40 crowd on future Pseudopods? I'm sure doing abhorrant things with a wife and kids at home is viscerally arresting once you have them, but trust me: down here, clawing our way into a dead and cynical global economy, there is horror aplenty.

Notes on the Matewan "Massacre"

From a description in Christopher M. Finan's "From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America"

The Matewan "Massacre" would make an interesting, if challenging film. Starts out with a classic Western-style showdown. Escalates to open warfare.

"Passengers on the Norfolk and Western trains went through the battle zone crouching on the floors of the cars while glass crashed overhead."

• Sid Hattfield (28). Police chief, former miner. Shot Albert C. & Lee Felts. Gunned down on courthouse steps.
• Albert C. Felts. Shot mayor Cabbell Testerman. PI for Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, deputized in neighboring town. Hired to evict fired miners.
• Cabbell Testerman. Mayor & town druggist. Authorized the arrest of the detectives for carrying arms within town limits.
• Miners. Payed in company scripp. Fired when they joined unions.
• Baldwin-Felts Agency Detectives. Seven killed by miners in initial gunfight, rest fled across river.
• President Warren G. Harding. Sent in Federal Troops.

OUTSIDE

• Rev. John Haynes Holmes. Eloquently denounced the violence on both sides.
• The ACLU. Only a few years old. Spoke out against the underlying causes.
• The courts. Widely abused injunctions to suppress meaningful picketing. Used sedition laws unevenly to ban violent pro-union publications while allowing employer publications to advocate violence openly.

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