Memos from March 2007


ScrapBlog — A New Way to Blog

ScrapBlog

Just in case you haven’t heard via the web, Scrap­Blog has just launch their pre­view-mode per se. Nick Gon­za­lez has writ­ten an announce­ment regard­ing the launch over at TechCrunch yes­ter­day. He men­tioned that you may go to the pre­view mode via http://www.scrapblog.com/preview.

I haven’t tak­en a detailed look at it, but from what I’ve seen, it may be suc­cess­ful like a catchy tune in the sum­mer time. So yeah, take it for a spin. You can even watch Robin Good’s YouTube screen­casts of Scrap­Blog before hand.

All From the Same Tree

Just want to share this quote w/ every­one. I found it just brows­ing a minute ago…

Only when you drink from the riv­er of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the moun­tain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you tru­ly dance.

Should we all con­fess our sins to one anoth­er we would all laugh at one anoth­er for our lack of orig­i­nal­i­ty.
Should we all reveal our virtues we would also laugh for the same cause.

— Khalil Gibran

Virb.com — The MySpace Killer?

Well, what else can I say about this new site—Virb.com. Bril­liant!

I was going to do a write­up about the new site that is going to be com­pet­ing with the giant in online com­mu­ni­ty, MySpace.com but I just found this review arti­cle by Kevin Sylvia, Virb — Advanced Social Net­work­ing.

Here’s my pro­file, virb.com/sherwin. Time to switch =p

The “Amen Break”

YouTube Preview Image
Can I Get An Amen?. Pro­duced by Nate Har­ri­son. 2004.

Can I Get An Amen? is an audio instal­la­tion that unfolds a crit­i­cal per­spec­tive of per­haps the most sam­pled drum beat in the his­to­ry of record­ed music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Broth­er by 60’s soul band The Win­stons, and traces the trans­for­ma­tion of their drum solo from its orig­i­nal con­text as part of a ‘B’ side vinyl sin­gle into its use as a key aur­al ingre­di­ent in con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al expres­sion. The work attempts to bring into scruti­ny the tech­no-utopi­an notion that ‘infor­ma­tion wants to be free’- it ques­tions its effec­tive­ness as a democ­ra­tiz­ing agent. This as well as oth­er issues are fore­ground­ed through a his­to­ry of the Amen Break and its pecu­liar rela­tion­ship to cur­rent copy­right law.