Games

ultrastar deluxe

Game: UltraStar Deluxe

Genre: Party/Singing/Popstar

Download: http://ultrastardx.sourceforge.net/

Licence: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Short review: This was the one game that REALLY impressed me with it’s quality. The people I played it with were asking me where they could get it from themselves. The initial song choices are a little disappointing, but there are hundreds more popular and free music songs you can add. The software did crash once, but it didn’t really bother me, I just restarted and continued using it.
Rating: 9/10
The good: Excellent concept, works very well, excellent expandability
The bad: Configuring more than one Mic could be a pain.

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Super Tux Kart

Game: Super Tux Racer

Genre: Racing/casual gaming

Download: http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/

Licence: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Short review: Extremely fun. Very VERY fun with multiplayer. I really enjoyed this game, but this is the kind of game you play every now and then rather than all the time. I quite enjoyed the multiplayer aspect of this game, it’s quite like Mario Kart for the Wii and the DS, and in some cases more fun. The graphics were a little underwhelming though.
Rating: 8/10
The good: Extremely fun
The bad: Graphics could have been tightened up a little,

Sites

I found a number of bands giving their albums away for free on their own official websites. Here are a few I enjoyed:

Site: http://www.nehoryn.com/
Band: Nehoryn
Album: Various
Genre: Electronica/atmospheric
Licence:  This work is shared under the Creative Commons Licence BY-NC-ND

Short review: This album was like an acid trip. I quite enjoyed it. I enjoyed the golden hyphen a lot. The album is well produced, easy listening with slow but complex beats that are pleasing to the ear. This band blends odd sounds to create a great fulfilling experience.
Rating: 9/10
The good: Excellent production, complex beats
The bad: some of the songs are a bit long winded

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Site: http://www.lunarmusic.net/complexitykills
Band: Lunar
Album: Complexity Kills
Genre: Electronic/blend
Licence: Unknown, distributed for free though

Short review: This album is impressive. A real journey through music. It starts off with a slow beat along with dance music influences hidden throughout it such as synths, Then in ‘non-toxic’ we have a horribly addictive beat along with excellent drums and a very danceish use of the synth, which then fades into a deep bass and slowly speeds up. The album morphs again and again that giving it a genre is very difficult. Electronic is the only one that I can think of that describes it. The beats throughout this album make it amazingly addictive, similar to Lady Gaga.

Rating: 9/10
The good: Amazing beats throughout
The bad: Nothing I can think of.

Video

Content: Pioneer One
Genre: Sci-fi/Drama
Download: http://vodo.net/pioneerone
Licence: Creative Commons (Unknown, have emailed the creators, will update when I can)

Short review: Absolutely freaking fantastic. No other words to describe it. This episode was AMAZING production quality wise. I loved the storyline, the camera work was excellent apart from a little shakiness at the start and the acting was excellent too. This project is significant for a few reasons though. First off, it’s only officially been released on Bittorrent, and the money to film it was crowd sourced. This show here is a view of the future of internet television and I suggest you watch it.

Rating: 9/10
The good: Amazingly good on a shoestring budget, excellent storyline, top notch production
The bad: A little shaky camera work at the start
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Next I wanted to see what was available in the realms of self learning. That’s when I discovered this:
Content: http://www.youtube.com/user/StanfordUniversity (Self education, lectures from Stanford University)

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/user/StanfordUniversity
LICENCE: Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works).
Short review: I absolutely love the concept. Hundreds of educational videos that you’d have to pay to see otherwise. I was actually very surprised when I found this. I thought Unis would be protective of their lectures rather than giving them out for free. Excellent resource.

Rating: 11/10!
The good: Excellent learning tool, I am sure as hell going to be using this in the future.
The bad: Nothing! Absolutely nothing.

Music

Spinning Into Control by I Am This

Album: Spinning into control – I Am This.
Genre: drumnbass breakbeat experimental dj acoustechno electronic idm

Licence:
You can copy, distribute, advertise and play this album as long as you:
Give credit to the artist

Download: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/6207

Short review: Wow. This album was very, very different. Different in a good refreshing kind of way though. I really enjoyed this album, one of the better iDnB albums i’ve listened to. I enjoyed all the tracks apart from re-break. Re-break was just not that great a track IMHO. Every other track was refreshingly different using instruments such as a guitar and cutting and splicing it to produce a unique sound.

Rating: 7/10
The good: Very unique, but still sounding excellent
The bad: The track ‘Re-break’ was painful to listen to.

First impressions? WOW. Some of this stuff is so well done I wouldn’t be surprised to hear it on the radio. So, onto individual finds:

Music

Step Up Hard by Vampire TNA

Album: Step Up Hard – Vampire TNA
Genre: Dubstep/DNB

Licence:
You can copy, distribute, advertise and play this album as long as you:
Give credit to the artist
Don’t use this album for commercial purposes
Distribute all derivative works under the same license

Download: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/47060

Short review: I am very into Drum and Bass and Dubstep, and I got this album with very high hopes. It satisfied everything I wanted. Crisp mixing along with a sick beat and well produced bass make this album absolutely fantastic. This is on my list of favourite albums of all time, at position 4. I was VERY impressed by this album, and it sets the bar high for everything else. My favourite track was River Princess. I love how dark and drawn out it is; it builds up a lot of tension for the drop.

Rating: 9/10.
The good: Absolutely first class beat and well produced tracks.
The bad: The album could have done with more tracks! I want more!

[update 15:26] OK, first thing that is annoying the crap out of me, half of the Jamendo torrents aren’t even seeded, and the downloads are only available as MP3… [/]

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The Postmen by The Postmen

Album: The Postmen by The Postmen
Genre: Pop/Folk (I’d describe it more as alt-rock)

Licence:
You can copy, distribute, advertise and play this album as long as you:
Give credit to the artist
Don’t use this album for commercial purposes
Distribute all derivative works under the same license

Download: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/68240

Short Review: I am not too fond of pop music, so I had low expectations for this album, but I actually enjoyed it a lot. Very mellow guitar with well harmonized lyrics make for a very uplifting experience when listening to this. Very well produced, studio quality music that i’d quite happily see on a CD. A quite unusual twist to this album was the addition of a cello. This gives the songs a real warmth. Very nice background music.

Rating: 8/10
The good: Very well produced, excellent vocals, addition of a cello adding a uniqueness to the band
The bad: The songs could do with a bit more..bite, something like an electric guitar every now and then

All music I download will come from sources such as http://jamendo.com/

All video I watch will either be freely available (Youtube) or permissive licensed, coming from sources such as http://vodo.net/.

There will be no deviation, no one TV show I have to watch, no one film I must watch, no music I must listen to, for one month I am going cold turkey.

I will also be trying to consume the content in the most open ways possible, for example using formats such as OGG and WebM. I am exempting Flash from the rules simply because so much content is shown with it.

I will be doing this for one month, and at the end of every single day I will post an update on what I found that day.

First off, Click system, preferences , sound. Then set the top four drop down boxes to Alsa.

Next, open skype, click the little skype logo in the bottom left of the skype chats window, then click options, Then click sound devices. In here, set the top one to your microphone, and the bottom two to PulseAudio.
There you have it, now ubuntu and skype can live in harmony!

Open a terminal: CD to the directory where the mdf is located. How? Well:
Type LS, that will tell you what folders you can move into, then type CD foldername, but type the first 3 or 4 charecters and then press tab, it will autocomplete the folder name for you. Once LS is listing your mdf file, type into a terminal:
mount nameoffile.mdf /media/cdrom0 -t iso9660 -o loop
and it should appear in nautilus.

Will fix all 3 of these problems, it just resets apt-get back to defaults