HUPOMNEMATA

“The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards were created in 1998 by the Gaylactic Network to honor works in science fiction, fantasy and horror which include positive explorations of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters, themes, or issues… The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards are juried with an open nomination process and are presented in a variety of categories each year, with works released in the previous calendar year eligible for consideration. Categories for 2004 are Best Novel, Best Short Fiction and Best Other Work. In addition, each year a handful of works originally released prior to the creation of the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards are inducted into the Hall of Fame.”

And the award for the best novel went to Nalo Hopkinson for her excellent Salt Road, which makes us really happy. Nalo was one of our guest during the project Stitch and Split in Barcelona. It was a real pleasure to meet her and she did a great lecture (you can download it in mp3 or ogg).

More details about the awards can be found on the gaylactic spectrum site. (note : Buffy was shortlisted in the other works category!)

In front of the office they are doing some extraordinary constructions. Onle one wall is still standing, and they are injecting concrete, over the wall – they have even moved a crane over the wall.

N wanted to take some pictures, but I beat him to it…
d=(^o^)=b

They resemble insect legs, spiders making their concrete web…

And then all of a sudden, the sun came out and shedded a divine light (-_^).

For this picture, the frame is not correct, but in a way that does not disturb…

For this one, the camera even made a mistake.
Camera’s make mistakes too.

The Matrix Ping pong…

Very well done!
Now, the problem will be format, I have found this in:

– flash
– wmv – No, it doesn’t get any better 🙁
– asx not really working on my machine..

But, try to check it out!

If you want to have a laugh somewhere during the day…

Yet!

Today, somebody I know and appreciate dearly is going to buy this guitar:

Perhaps I will have to learn some chords to…

OK, merchandising is not my thing, but this site is quite cool!

“Automatous Monk is an algorithmic music composition program that uses cellular automata to generate musical pieces.” It is written in Java and you can find it on sourceforge somewhere. You can also simply enjoy its compositions by downloading creative commons licensed soundfiles from the Automatous monk personal website.
“Monk has just finished composing his first punk rock/hard bop work, The Well-Tempered Cellular Automaton, consisting of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys.
Automatous Monk considers this to be his best work yet. He describes it as being, “about 9/10 hard bop, and 1/10 80s hard-core; maybe ‘insistent’ would be the best word for this new record. Or, ‘relentless’, maybe”.”

“With his mastery of the arcane secrets of Noodlecraft, the Pastamancer is a force to be reckoned with. He relies on his Mysticality to get ahead in the world.” The pastamance is one of the characters you can be in Kingdom of Loathing, a free online role playing game.. The same people at Asymmetric also made this beautiful Dancing Tonto!

Spent some time yesterday on Do-it-yourself games, a very good news website about independently produced games, most of them freely downloadable. It’s also a very good place to visit for those who regret the disparition of text or point-and-click adventures and that kind of stuff. Here is their mission stastement :

” * Provide our readers with honest in-depth reviews and previews of games from independent developers without hype or propaganda.
* Publish informative and educational features that cover a wide range of topics.
* Provide timely and insightful news stories that focus on the world of independent games while still covering topics that pertain to gaming in general.
* Commit ourselves to our readers, realizing that they are the reason we’re here.
* Never compromise journalistic integrity while in pursuit of a story.”

Speaking of which (indie games, not journalistic integrity), you could do worse than downloading the very nice remake of the classic Lucasart game Maniac Mansion, produced by a bunch of talented German Lucasmaniacs : it’s great nerd fun! “You guys did an amazing job. My hat is off to you. “, says Ron Gilbert, one of the authors of the original game, about this remake (about Ron Gilbert, his Grumpy Gamer blog, subtitled Ron Gilbert’s often incoherent and bitter ramblings about the Game Industry is a great read).

The net labels page on archive.org is a great place to look for good music licensed under creative commons or copyleft. Each visit fill my harddrive with interesting stuff (mostly electronic, as it is the chosen specialty of most of those net labels).

Last time I downloaded some stuff from Fronha records, a Brazilian label describing itself as :

“an output for experimental electronic music made since the 80’s by artists living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The intent is to freely distribute quality music that otherwise would be unavailable or extremely hard to find. The works range from highly experimental soundscapes to almost pop weirdness. In 2004, due to great acceptance and some nice collaborations, we decided to expand our catalogue by releasing stuff by artists from other places that would fit in our profile.”

My favourite pick at the moment would be one of the Liz albums, dreamy and melodic soundscapes with a lot of textured details, and a kind of lullaby quality. Their own words : “Surprising cut-ups and obsessive repetitions creating a highly detailed atmosphere that always tells a story. Wich story is up to the listener.”

And by the way, she’s a woman making electronic music (it’s always woth noting, some of our readers should be intrested by that fact ^_^). One of those tracks will definitely make it to the next common mix, playlist coming up soon.

Since I began this Common music series of posts, Benoit sent me a whole lot of links to websites with good (and often xprmntl) music. Didn’t listen to all of it yet so I can’t comment further. But trust me when I say you should trust Benoit ^_^

So, here are the links :
centibel http://www.sfu.ca/~pthomson/centibel/
experimental digital audio
CommTom http://www.commtom.com/ specializing
in unique electronic music for the adventurous ear.
EARLabs http://www.earlabs.org/ started
in 1999 as a public stage for composers.
FUKK GOD LETS CREATE http://www.fukkgod.org/
komplott http://www.komplott.com/site_index.asp
established in 1999 as a reaction to the limited scope available for experimental
and electronic music in Scandinavia at the time.
Observatory http://www.observatoryonline.org/
free and online sub-label for independent electronic record label Skylab
Operations. Dedicated to the electronic experimentation of sound and vision.
Observatory releases several free to download and distribute MP3 and OGG
releases a month.
sonus.ca http://sonus.ca/ houses electronic
audio from all exploratory and experimental aestheticsis. sonus.ca is a project
of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community
stasisfield http://www.stasisfield.com/
started in 2002 and is dedicated to releasing challenging works of art which
may not have the chance to find a home elsewhere.
TIBProd http://www.tibprod.com/ …
the main center shall be the music itself … [c.s.]
TILN http://tiln.aesova.org/ founded
2000. Tiln, exists as a non-profit entity under the wings of AESOVA.
Webbed Hand Records http://www.webbedhandrecords.com/
started 2003. Run by artists who wish to bring their own work to the public.
80Hz http://www.80hz.tk/ a series of microsound
compositions by artists around the world.
http://earphone.org/

http://www.autoplate.org/

http://www.notype.com/

http://www.antiopic.com/

http://www.ubu.com/mp3/

http://www.granular.fm/–/home.php

http://www.ergophizmiz.com/

There you can find a series of classic Wonder Woman covers, with also for each issue one inside page, a small sample of the William Moulton Marston stories.

And for something completely different, but still a comics, here are two pages about trucks and their natural habitat, by Isabel Rucker.