coxy's blog

We (as in Dave and I) are progressively making some changes to video games website, Gamestyle. I need to buy a new computer after my desktop at home decided to die, but we'll hopefully have something fresh up before the new year - if not, shortly after.

In the meantime, we have a Twitter account that you can follow and also a Facebook page that you can 'Become a Fan' of. If you did this, or at least told some of your friends about the site, I would be most grateful.

Oh, also, you can talk about video games with other gamers in Gamestyle Forum.

Another day, another great find on Amazon - but this comes in the form of a customer review titled The Secret saved my life!, written by Ari Brouillette of Kensington, CA United States.

Please allow me to share with you how "The Secret" changed my life and in a very real and substantive way allowed me to overcome a severe crisis in my personal life. It is well known that the premise of "The Secret" is the science of attracting the things in life that you desire and need and in removing from your life those things that you don't want. Before finding this book, I knew nothing of these principles, the process of positive visualization, and had actually engaged in reckless behaviors to the point of endangering my own life and wellbeing.

At age 36, I found myself in a medium security prison serving 3-5 years for destruction of government property and public intoxication. This was stiff punishment for drunkenly defecating in a mailbox but as the judge pointed out, this was my third conviction for the exact same crime. I obviously had an alcohol problem and a deep and intense disrespect for the postal system, but even more importantly I was ignoring the very fabric of our metaphysical reality and inviting destructive influences into my life.

My fourth day in prison was the first day that I was allowed in general population and while in the recreation yard I was approached by a prisoner named Marcus who calmly informed me that as a new prisoner I had been purchased by him for three packs of Winston cigarettes and 8 ounces of Pruno (prison wine). Marcus elaborated further that I could expect to be [...] raped by him on a daily basis and that I had pretty eyes.

Needless to say, I was deeply shocked that my life had sunk to this level. Although I've never been homophobic I was discovering that I was very rape phobic and dismayed by my overall personal street value of roughly $15. I returned to my cell and sat very quietly, searching myself for answers on how I could improve my life and distance myself from harmful outside influences. At that point, in what I consider to be a miraculous moment, my cell mate Jim Norton informed me that he knew about the Marcus situation and that he had something that could solve my problems. He handed me a copy of "The Secret". Normally I wouldn't have turned to a self help book to resolve such a severe and immediate threat but I literally didn't have any other available alternatives. I immediately opened the book and began to read.

The first few chapters deal with the essence of something called the "Law of Attraction" in which a primal universal force is available to us and can be harnessed for the betterment of our lives. The theoretical nature of the first few chapters wasn't exactly putting me at peace. In fact, I had never meditated and had great difficulty with closing out the chaotic noises of the prison and visualizing the positive changes that I so dearly needed. It was when I reached Chapter 6 "The Secret to Relationships" that I realized how this book could help me distance myself from Marcus and his negative intentions. Starting with chapter six there was a cavity carved into the book and in that cavity was a prison shiv. This particular shiv was a toothbrush with a handle that had been repeatedly melted and ground into a razor sharp point.

The next day in the exercise yard I carried "The Secret" with me and when Marcus approached me I opened the book and stabbed him in the neck. The next eight weeks in solitary confinement provided ample time to practice positive visualization and the 16 hours per day of absolute darkness actually made visualization about the only thing that I actually could do. I'm not sure that everybody's life will be changed in such a dramatic way by this book but I'm very thankful to have found it and will continue to recommend it heartily.

The BBC have launched the beta of their new BBC Music (beta) website that drags in data from a combination of different services - primarily MusicBrainz, Wikipedia, and their own music database - displaying it all in a nice, presentable format, which will undoubtedly become a great resource for both listeners and artists.

For those that want to dive straight in and explore the site, visiting BBC Music (beta) will just return a splash page that clicks through to a charts of 'Top artists played across BBC Radio' (ew, Coldplay), but there's actually a page for every artist in the MusicBrainz database. You can find your favourite artists by searching MusicBrainz and grabbing the MBID from the url...

musicbrainz.org/artist/83e72d2b-501e-4715-9bdf-8e6ffca42881.html

...then paste this into the BBC url below:

bbc.co.uk/music/artists/83e72d2b-501e-4715-9bdf-8e6ffca42881

Each page contains artist information; a biography and imagery from Wikipedia, a list of Album and Single releases, colaborations, weblinks and related artists from MusicBrainz, and radio play data from the BBC database; showing play counts for each BBC radio station and play counts for each DJ on said radio stations.

Matthew Shorter of the BBC offers a little more insight:

Currently our offerings around individual artists tend to be dispersed and hard to find. This leads to poor search performance for BBC music content, which means that users will typically only find content if directed by broadcast, or serendipitously by browsing brand sites.

Persistent unique URLs for artist pages which automatically aggregate what the BBC has to offer around individual artists will lead over time to much improved search performance and facilitate wider syndication of our content, building reach to brands. Automation and dynamic publishing means the pages can be created and maintained with a fraction of the manpower and server load of the current generation.

Building good interrelated metadata for artists and programmes will also help greatly to enrich the music offering of radio & TV sites, offering such things as a chart of artists most played by a network, further information behind tracklists, rich now-playing information and so on.

All the information that's currently displayed on the site is great to geek out on, however I can't help but one thing is missing; I would love to see social music revolution Last.fm incorporated.

Immediately I noticed that a few of my favourite artists were lacking a artist description or photography because they haven't got a Wikipedia page yet - or have had it deleted by moderators as the bands haven't yet made 'a significant contribution to music' yet (don't get me started on Wikipedia's moderation) - where Last.fm has a wealth of biography information and photography due to the nature of the site.

What's more, further incorporation with Last.fm would allow BBC Music visitors to find events in their area for each artist, watch music videos, view more accurate data for the 'related artists' feature and listen, using the most obvious feature, a music player. Though, I guess incorporating a music player deters from getting people to listen to BBC Radio.

The site is still in beta and is only semi-public, and so it would be nice to see Last.fm incorporated in future - and obviously a method of searching artists wouldn't go amiss (also, would a BBC radio data open API be viable?) - but as it stands, it's nice to see the BBC using a valuable, underrated service such as MusicBrainz and making it's own radio data open to the public.

Read more...