It's Hallowe'en! Ergo, today's the day for a spooky song:
http://youtu.be/f1hddcJiGZ8
This was such a fun piece to cover! (Jonathan Coulton is an evil genius.)
I was tempted to make Coraline-style button eyes out of construction paper to really get in the spirit of "Creepy Doll," but I realized that I couldn't see very well out of the tiny buttonholes...
Showing posts with label Jonathan Coulton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jonathan Coulton. Show all posts
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Cover-a-Week #17: "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton
Now with a new external microphone -- thanks, Lucas, Brett, Kat, and Julie!
http://youtu.be/rE7GX7m7nrk
Jonathan Coulton, in my books, is the new Tom Lehrer for the nerdy set. (Is that redundant? The original Tom Lehrer was a mathematician...)
I played this song about a year ago with the band at Stanford's Big Dance, as the tempo works for swing. (I can hardly believe it's been a year since I left California!) The social dance community had a tremendous overlap with the engineering (especially computer science) community, so it was quite well-received. :-)
http://youtu.be/rE7GX7m7nrk
Jonathan Coulton, in my books, is the new Tom Lehrer for the nerdy set. (Is that redundant? The original Tom Lehrer was a mathematician...)
I played this song about a year ago with the band at Stanford's Big Dance, as the tempo works for swing. (I can hardly believe it's been a year since I left California!) The social dance community had a tremendous overlap with the engineering (especially computer science) community, so it was quite well-received. :-)
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Challenge for 2013: Cover-a-Week
It's the beginning of a new year, which means that it's time for New Year's resolutions. I've been thinking about my next big project (NaNoWriMo, which I've been doing since high school, isn't quite new anymore). Here it is: I will record one cover song every week this year.
The idea is borrowed from several musicians I admire, namely Jonathan Coulton with his "Thing-A-Week" project, and Victoria Vox with her "52 Covers" project. I first started considering it because I noticed that, whenever I played the ukulele for my friends, I always ended up playing the same five or ten songs. I've owned a ukulele for about a year, and while I have written a few songs, I haven't really increased my repertoire of covers. So I thought I'd take a leaf out of the NaNoWriMo book (pun intended!) -- having your wordcount on the website for everyone to see really motivates you to get in those 50,000 words -- and make this a semi-public project, so that my friends can watch and poke me if I don't post a video that week. (Having a built-in component of accountability is especially important for this sort of endeavour.)
The rules:
The idea is borrowed from several musicians I admire, namely Jonathan Coulton with his "Thing-A-Week" project, and Victoria Vox with her "52 Covers" project. I first started considering it because I noticed that, whenever I played the ukulele for my friends, I always ended up playing the same five or ten songs. I've owned a ukulele for about a year, and while I have written a few songs, I haven't really increased my repertoire of covers. So I thought I'd take a leaf out of the NaNoWriMo book (pun intended!) -- having your wordcount on the website for everyone to see really motivates you to get in those 50,000 words -- and make this a semi-public project, so that my friends can watch and poke me if I don't post a video that week. (Having a built-in component of accountability is especially important for this sort of endeavour.)
The rules:
- I will post a new cover song every week. I will do my best to adhere to this schedule (posts will most likely happen every weekend), but I'm allowed to make up for weeks I've missed or anticipate missing by posting more than one cover on some weeks.
- The posts will be public and easily accessible via YouTube.
- During weeks when I'm especially busy, I am allowed to use songs I already know. Given that my current repertoire consists of six or seven songs, that's about a month-and-a-half of free passes. I think that's fair. (Unlike JoCo and Victoria Vox, I'm not a professional musician.)
- I'll try not to cover too many songs by the same artist. (I don't listen to that many artists, though, and not all of them produce uke-able songs.)
- (Not a rule, but...) I'm open to requests!
In addition to learning lots of songs, I'm also hoping that I'll improve my ukulele skills. As it stands, I would consider my current level of ukulele-playing serviceable but not impressive. I would say I've hit a bit of a plateau in the past month or two; I've also been watching YouTube videos of Jake Shimabukuro, who makes everything I've seen anyone do on the ukulele pale in comparison.
I'm also told that I ought to get some sort of (cheap, functional) external microphone to plug into my laptop. Anyone have any suggestions? (Or for that matter, do you think it necessary?)
And that's my New Year's resolution. Wish me luck!
I'm also told that I ought to get some sort of (cheap, functional) external microphone to plug into my laptop. Anyone have any suggestions? (Or for that matter, do you think it necessary?)
And that's my New Year's resolution. Wish me luck!
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Artists on PIPA and SOPA
There's been a lot of buzz about PIPA and SOPA, especially here in Silicon Valley. The online protests, most notably the Wikipedia blackout, have gotten a lot of people interested, if not involved. A perspective that hasn't gotten as much attention as it should, methinks, is that of the artists themselves, whose intellectual property is what's ultimately at stake. This (found via Neil Gaiman's blog) is worth reading:
http://stopthewall.us/artists/
They say it better than I ever could -- internet freedom means free publicity. I'll just add that I've discovered some of my favorite songs and musicians (such as Heather Dale and Jonathan Coulton) via YouTube, and some excellent television online (such as the BBC's Sherlock). If it weren't for the internet, if not for YouTube, I would not have gone and bought a Heather Dale album on iTunes, or bought some tracks from Jonathan Coulton's website. That would have been a net loss for the music industry. (Yes, I acknowledge that YouTube, being more akin to a streaming service than a downloading site, isn't necessarily what people mean when they say "pirating music.")
The greater part of the illegal download problem in America, and in the Western world at large, is not piracy so much as accessibility. By and large, we in the developed world don't balk at paying $0.99 for a track on iTunes, or $9.99 for an e-book; compare those to a $12 CD with about a dozen songs on it or an $8 (mass-market) or $12 (trade) paperback. What is problematic, rather, is when music, books, or films are not readily available for purchase -- leading those who really want to obtain said materials to seek other means to get them. (This, as far as I'm aware, often becomes an issue where foreign rights and such are concerned.) By and large, if there is a convenient venue for purchase at a fair price, Americans will pay for the electronic media they consume.
A side-note to the above: one of the truly significant illegal download problems in the developed world, is that of children or teenagers who don't have their own source of income. In the past, they would have asked their parents for money, or saved up their allowances, or done a bit of babysitting in order to purchase the media they want. I'm sure many adults today have fond childhood memories of going to the record store, for example, and buying that album they wanted with their hard-earned cash. Nowadays, it's much easier to bypass the work required to get the money to buy books or music by illegally downloading. I agree that children who don't grow up with a certain moral framework in which content creators should be compensated for their work might one-day become income-earning adults who pirate all of their media despite having the funds to pay for it. But in that case, much as children who commit petty crimes (vandalism and disruption of the peace come to mind) are generally granted more legal leeway than adults who do the same, I don't think that PIPA and SOPA are the right tools to use to crack down on underage media pirates. That's in the realm of killing an ant with a sledgehammer. Also, I would argue that children and teenagers without income fall somewhere towards the middle of the spectrum of "consumers who can afford to pay for all the content they want" and "consumers who would not consume content if it cost money."
In other, mostly developing countries, the concept of copyright is still rather hazy in the public consciousness. Photocopying -- or pirating -- of textbooks, DVDs, &c. is the norm, rather than the exception. Citizens of many of these countries wouldn't buy these products even if they were impossible to pirate -- they're prohibitively expensive. If people in, say, China were prevented in any meaningful way from illegally accessing copyrighted American media, they would just turn to other shows, other books, other music -- non-American media. The income for artists and media companies wouldn't substantially increase as a result of the largely outwards-facing bills. In these markets, increasing profits would mean substantially lowering prices, perhaps to a point where there would be no point in producing said content for these consumers, because it would not be cost-effective.
While PIPA and SOPA are largely well-intentioned -- an attempt to secure for creative individuals the rewards of their work -- they're very problematically written. They were written by politicians -- not the artists they're supposed to protect, or the technologists who are supposed to enforce it. In their current incarnation, they cause more harm than good, especially where censorship and due process are concerned. Additionally, as most of my techie friends would tell you, meaningful enforcement would be basically impossible. As the internet has become an essential component of life in this country and around the world, the law needs to reflect an understanding of how to govern the web. Someone in Washington really ought to put the lawmakers, the technologists, the media companies, and the artists all in the same room to hammer out a solution that addresses everyone's needs and comes with a thorough understanding of current technology. That's the only way it'll work.
http://stopthewall.us/artists/
They say it better than I ever could -- internet freedom means free publicity. I'll just add that I've discovered some of my favorite songs and musicians (such as Heather Dale and Jonathan Coulton) via YouTube, and some excellent television online (such as the BBC's Sherlock). If it weren't for the internet, if not for YouTube, I would not have gone and bought a Heather Dale album on iTunes, or bought some tracks from Jonathan Coulton's website. That would have been a net loss for the music industry. (Yes, I acknowledge that YouTube, being more akin to a streaming service than a downloading site, isn't necessarily what people mean when they say "pirating music.")
The greater part of the illegal download problem in America, and in the Western world at large, is not piracy so much as accessibility. By and large, we in the developed world don't balk at paying $0.99 for a track on iTunes, or $9.99 for an e-book; compare those to a $12 CD with about a dozen songs on it or an $8 (mass-market) or $12 (trade) paperback. What is problematic, rather, is when music, books, or films are not readily available for purchase -- leading those who really want to obtain said materials to seek other means to get them. (This, as far as I'm aware, often becomes an issue where foreign rights and such are concerned.) By and large, if there is a convenient venue for purchase at a fair price, Americans will pay for the electronic media they consume.
A side-note to the above: one of the truly significant illegal download problems in the developed world, is that of children or teenagers who don't have their own source of income. In the past, they would have asked their parents for money, or saved up their allowances, or done a bit of babysitting in order to purchase the media they want. I'm sure many adults today have fond childhood memories of going to the record store, for example, and buying that album they wanted with their hard-earned cash. Nowadays, it's much easier to bypass the work required to get the money to buy books or music by illegally downloading. I agree that children who don't grow up with a certain moral framework in which content creators should be compensated for their work might one-day become income-earning adults who pirate all of their media despite having the funds to pay for it. But in that case, much as children who commit petty crimes (vandalism and disruption of the peace come to mind) are generally granted more legal leeway than adults who do the same, I don't think that PIPA and SOPA are the right tools to use to crack down on underage media pirates. That's in the realm of killing an ant with a sledgehammer. Also, I would argue that children and teenagers without income fall somewhere towards the middle of the spectrum of "consumers who can afford to pay for all the content they want" and "consumers who would not consume content if it cost money."
In other, mostly developing countries, the concept of copyright is still rather hazy in the public consciousness. Photocopying -- or pirating -- of textbooks, DVDs, &c. is the norm, rather than the exception. Citizens of many of these countries wouldn't buy these products even if they were impossible to pirate -- they're prohibitively expensive. If people in, say, China were prevented in any meaningful way from illegally accessing copyrighted American media, they would just turn to other shows, other books, other music -- non-American media. The income for artists and media companies wouldn't substantially increase as a result of the largely outwards-facing bills. In these markets, increasing profits would mean substantially lowering prices, perhaps to a point where there would be no point in producing said content for these consumers, because it would not be cost-effective.
While PIPA and SOPA are largely well-intentioned -- an attempt to secure for creative individuals the rewards of their work -- they're very problematically written. They were written by politicians -- not the artists they're supposed to protect, or the technologists who are supposed to enforce it. In their current incarnation, they cause more harm than good, especially where censorship and due process are concerned. Additionally, as most of my techie friends would tell you, meaningful enforcement would be basically impossible. As the internet has become an essential component of life in this country and around the world, the law needs to reflect an understanding of how to govern the web. Someone in Washington really ought to put the lawmakers, the technologists, the media companies, and the artists all in the same room to hammer out a solution that addresses everyone's needs and comes with a thorough understanding of current technology. That's the only way it'll work.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Code Monkey (song)
Jonathan Coulton is amazing, talented, amazingly talented, etc. Here is his song about, well, writing code for a living.
I have so many computer scientist friends, and listening to this song, I'm tempted to simultaneously laugh at them (or with them, and in the best way possible) and fear for their futures. While they all have the potential to make it big in the start-up world (knowing them, and how awesome they are, I really wouldn't be surprised), I'm also a wee bit scared that ten years down the line, they, too, will end up as code monkeys.
Then again, they probably have more secure job prospects than I do, fuzzy that I am. (At Stanford, we call humanities majors "fuzzies", and sciences majors "techies".)
I have so many computer scientist friends, and listening to this song, I'm tempted to simultaneously laugh at them (or with them, and in the best way possible) and fear for their futures. While they all have the potential to make it big in the start-up world (knowing them, and how awesome they are, I really wouldn't be surprised), I'm also a wee bit scared that ten years down the line, they, too, will end up as code monkeys.
Then again, they probably have more secure job prospects than I do, fuzzy that I am. (At Stanford, we call humanities majors "fuzzies", and sciences majors "techies".)
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