Screwing around with a capture program and I decided to make a movie out of it. This is, roughly, a day at work. I say roughly, because it’s really only 6 hours or so. It’s made from 675 images taken at 30 seconds intervals starting at 10am. Then it was lumped together as a movie, and here ya go. I plan on setting up a better one tomorrow, and doing it at 10 or 15 second intervals to make it a little bit longer.
Ok, so they actually didn’t, but they both did do something really cool - made something, then gave it away for free.
Neil Gaiman wrote “American Gods” in 2001. It’s an absolutely amazing book that I can’t do justice in even attempting to explain it, but I’ll try. American Gods is the story of Shadow, released early from prison when his wife was killed in a car crash. Along the way he hooks up with a mysterious fellow named Wednesday, who is more then he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old God, once known as Odin, crossing the country gathering the support of the other old Gods in preparation for an epic battle with the Gods of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired.
In celebration of his blog’s 7th birthday, he decided to place a book online for free - which book, however, was up to us. After a week, it was quite obvious from the results that American Gods won. And recently they put it up, and here it is. Enjoy! And then go out and buy it.
And then Trent. Last year Nine Inch Nails were released from their contract, allowing them the freedom to do more. As such, they decided to follow the lead Radiohead put out there and released their newest album, Ghosts, for free. Really, sorta free. The first 9 tracks were released free of charge, along with cover art, web art and a 40 page PDF booklet. I’ve listened to the free tracks and the first thing that popped into my head when I heard it was Frank Zappa’s “Jazz From Hell“. It too was a very experimental instrumental album, that took sound to a new level - not necessarily with great success. So really, I didn’t like it - but I didn’t give it the 4-5 complete listen that I need to before I can fully appreciate something at this level. In fact, I spent the $10 for the 2-CD set, which also came with an instant download of the entire 36 track album1. I give it the complete listen it needs, and report back later.
So there you go, a couple of free ways to expand your cultural horizon. Enjoy em!
Footnotes listed in the above post:
In multiple formats, which is awesome - from 320kbps MP3, to FLAC lossless or Apple lossless [↩]
