Went to see Girl in a Coma play the High Noon Saloon in Madison, WI the other night, supported by Venus in Furs (warning: auto-playing music) and Little Red Wolf. Girl in a Coma were great — hard to describe their musical style, but if I tell you that they’re on Joan Jett’s label Black Heart Records and that she plays guitar and sings backup vox on their recent album, that’ll point you in the right direction. Every website I’ve seen describe them takes the Continue reading → Last weekend I attended WisCon, an annual feminist science fiction convention held in Madison, Wisconsin. Along with my friend Gretchen, I ran the now-annual WisCon Vid Party. We showed five hours of fan-made video, including an hour on the theme “vids with a message”, an hour of premieres and nearly new vids (released since the start of this year), and an hour of singalong vids with subtitles. Two of my vids, which I’ve previously posted here, were shown: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Continue reading → I spent today offline. I wrote something. I post it here fully recognising the irony inherent in doing so. Transcript: OFFLINE. Sitting on my front step in San Francisco’s Mission District. May 19th 2011. I am taking a sick day from work, and since I don’t actually have much to do at work it’s a real SICK DAY not “working from home”. I’ve resolved to stay offline til tonight. It’s sunny out and why not enjoy that? I lay in bed til early afternoon sleeping Continue reading → Look, I may as well post about it. I’ve been planning it for months, and a whole swag of people already know, but this’ll make it official. Sometime around early September, I’m planning on heading back to Melbourne, Australia, whereupon I hope to spend a few months bumming around on people’s sofas/the beach/relatives’ farms/etc, before going back to school in 2012 to study sound engineering. Q&A time… So I’m leaving Google, then? Yup, that’s the plan. I’ll have done a year there since Metaweb’s acquisition, Continue reading → I keep meaning to post these things as I find them, so here ya go. A fugue based on Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”. The creator says, “This should show how counterpoint can be fun and up to date.” I’m not sure if it quite succeeds at that, but it is rather good. While we’re at it, I love this cello cover of “Final Countdown”. In fact it has supplanted my previous favourite cover of that song, it’s just that good: Rock out, Latvian cello dudes! Continue reading → 1) When I get back to Australia, I am going to form an all-girl Doug Anthony All Stars tribute band. I’m Paul. If you’re a Tim or a Richard, let me know! 2) I hereby place dibs on the band name Aliens of Extraordinary Ability. (Not for the DAAS tribute band, though. The DAAS tribute band will be called the Tangawarra Baptist Ladies Netball Association.) 3) I am working on an acoustic guitar cover of Cyndi Lauper’s She Bop. It’s gonna be awesome. OK, I am tired of constantly recommending these to people and having them not listen and then, months later, they finally get on the bandwagon and are all like OMG THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING EVAR ELEVENTY!!!1! So listen up. You need these. Do not delay, just signup and/or download, then tell me how awesome I am for recommending them. 1. SonicLiving The website that made me love live music again. SonicLiving lists live shows, like many other sites, and at this point your Continue reading → Friday night, my friend Molly and I went to see Zoe Keating and Kaki King performing at Yoshi’s, and I wanted to take a moment to rec both of these amazing artists. Zoe Keating is an avant-garde cellist whose work I discovered when hunting for music for a Sherlock Holmes fanvid. She uses her cello, her Macbook, and an array of pedals to loop layers of sound over each other, building atmospheric, haunting music. You can see her doing it live in this video of Continue reading → A while ago I wrote about my shifting attitude to live music and how I’ve totally changed my live-music-going ways of late. It’s not that I didn’t used to like live music, but there was so much related crap that bugged me, that I very seldom ended up going to shows. I missed one important thing in that post, though, and realised I should write more about it. So this is my post about how I figured out something about my brain, and stopped being Continue reading → Let’s close some of these browser tabs! Youtube vs. transformative works How I fought against a Youtube takedown and eventually won. The creator of a political remix vid criticising the under-representation of women in video games tells how her video was removed as “inappropriate content”, and how she fought back with the help of the New Media Rights group. (Via Laura Shapiro.) YouTube needs a process (a transparent one even) informing us if our videos have been removed, why they have been removed and how Continue reading →