Is this illegal?

Just wanted to share this:


Peace Train By Cat Stevens

Now I've been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun
 Oh I've been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be, some day it's going to come
Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again
 Now I've been smiling lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun
 Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Yes, peace train holy roller
 Everyone jump upon the peace train
Come on now peace train
 Get your bags together, go bring your good friends too
Cause it's getting nearer, it soon will be with you
 Now come and join the living, it's not so far from you
And it's getting nearer, soon it will all be true
 Now I've been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating, why can't we live in bliss
 Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again

#ADN dance party set to shake, rattle n roll Christmas across continents

 

The news dropped into the final half hour of tonight's #MondayNightDanceParty (MNDP) on App.net (ADN) -- the weekly bash is set to go global for the first time on Christmas Eve, said disc jockey @jdscolam, adding that his tag-team alternates for the 24-hour event will be DJs @sham, @po and @michelelewis. 

For weeks, virtual MNDP tunes have been spun by Oklahoma-based @jdscolam, making it difficult for those outside the south-central U.S. to participate. 

The DJ trio plan to play tunes using the MNDP.tv Vidcast interface hosted on ADN, conceived and developed over the past few months by @duerig, @33mhz, @q and @ryantharp.

The setup allows users to post music requests via a chat room within which they can also interact. Requests and related chatter can also be broadcast into the main update streams of ADN participants.

The Christmas Eve event will be semi-automated, @duerig said, adding: "We'll have DJs in several timezones ... interacting and mostly letting it go on autopilot so people can have it on in the background to listen to."

Users are also being urged to post Christmas greetings using the hashtag  #MNDPHolidayGreeting or to upload via a specially set up Patter room, so they can be compiled and played during the gala event. 

"It can be a song, or anything you want," @duerig said. " A 30-second video of yourself is the idea. But could be you doing anything. Just post the YouTube link. And if you want to just do audio, we've got a way to upload that, too." 

@Sham will kick off events at 1300 on Dec. 24, 2012, in Singapore. @po will broadcast later in the day from Brighton Lewes in the UK. 

"The playlists will start about 1pm in each of our local timezones, though @po and I may not be on and hanging out right then" said @jdscolam. "We'll announce the hangout times later."

In general, outside of the official MNDP event, users can post YouTube songs on ADN with the hashtag #jukebox and they will play automatically in a Vidcast environment, becoming part of a stream of songs.

Visiting http://vidcast-app.net allows users to create a stream event that others can join. If users want to try "jukebox mode", which will play the tunes as if by an automated DJ, they can visit http://vidcast-app.net/view and the feed will play YouTube links with the #jukebox hashtag.

App.net was set up by developers, for developers, as a sort of online refuge independent from advertisers -- allowing creative freedom and more entrepreneurial activity. It was launched as a subscription service in the summer.

It was also meant to strike at the heart of Twitter, which has become increasingly commercial, exclusive and more difficult for developers to use as a platform for innovation over the past six years.

ADN allows for 256 characters as opposed to Twitter’s 140, meaning there is more in-depth conversation – less broadcast, more chat. 
  
For more info from the organisers, visit #MondayNightDanceParty Christmas Special

Related posts:

My first #hackathon via #ADN

Being @po

Patter of tiny feet, lulz in App.net 3rd dimension

App.net: User utopia? 
Posting a picture from BlackBerry to Shrtmsg.com, app.net

Late to the App.net #MondayNightDanceParty

At this point -- four days after the fact, in the wee hours of Friday morning -- the App.net (ADN) MondayNightDanceParty seems a bit of a blur.

But I know I had something really important to say about it.

If only I'd taken notes.

#MNDP is a virtual party -- people send in song requests to @jdscolam with a hashtag. Then @jdscolam (shouldn't his name really be @djscolam?) plays the tunes by streaming them on his site.

Everybody at the party on Monday flocked into a Patter room, which had been specially enhanced with a themed page for the event, to chat in a kind of parallel universe.

A new broadcast button feature added by its creator @duerig allows people to share from the Patter room into the ADN global stream.

MondayNightDanceParty is not British Summer Time (BST) friendly given that it's broadcast from Central Standard Time (CST) -- starts at about 2 a.m. BST and seems to last for several hours.

Since I had to work in the morning I felt it was time to leave when @wife and the heavy drinkers showed up -- it could have gotten ugly :)

I was there long enough to take the screenshot above from @adrianus' Appnetizens.com -- it shows that Patter was the most popular client being used to post to ADN during the party, surpassing the commercial NetBot.  

TapBots had released Netbot, an iPhone and iPad app for ADN two weeks ago. A flood of new users arrived almost simultaneously raising questions among some users about the integrity of the ADN mandate.

App.net was set up in the summer by developers, for developers, as an environment independent from the influence of advertisers -- allowing creative freedom and more ownership. It was also meant to strike at the heart of Twitter, which has become increasingly commercial, exclusive and more restrictive for developers.  

Some general users are also feeling a certain frustration with Twitter because they are constantly under siege from spammers, auto DMs and viral urls.

The musical experience can be replayed here -- maintained by @33mhz -- for those too busy or tired to participate IRL. Each date has a drop-down menu which lists the featured bands.

Not sure what will happen next week now that @q has launched Quick Communities which has a #MNDP group.

I might have to stay awake and find out.
_____

Related posts:

Patter of tiny feet, lulz in App.net 3rd dimension
App.net: User utopia? 
Posting a picture from BlackBerry to Shrtmsg.com, app.net

#Vlomo11, Day 18, The Necks

Interlude

It's all too beautiful . . .

Sounds of London

And did those feet?

Summer in the city

I removed a few posts because they were too work-centric. Since then, I haven't written much because I've been busy procrastinating whenever I sit at my computer.

Somehow the winter of record precipitation levels has become the summer of record precipitation levels. Weird that I don't really feel like there's been much rain.

I was reminiscing today about the first rock concert I ever attended. It was David Bowie's "Heroes" tour. I saw him at the Ottawa Civic Centre. It was before general admission seating was abolished at concerts (which eventually happened due to some people getting crushed to death at a Who concert, I seem to remember). I went with a friend . . . have no idea where he is now.



I had a weird general admission experience when I went to see Graham Parker and the Rumour at the Civic Centre a couple of years after the Bowie concert. Parker was opening for Cheap Trick. I wasn't interested in seeing Cheap Trick, but most people there were. I got there early with some friends and we made it onto the floor right up to the edge of the stage.



It was a fabulous place to see the show, but what happened was not fabulous. It was very crowded and hot at the front among the crush of fans.

Some people wanted to get up to the front for the Cheap Trick part of the evening. They asked a great hulk of a guy standing next to me if he would trade spots with them. I can't remember what they gave him to help them to the front.



His way of making space for them was to ram me to the side by slamming me in the chest. I was winded and blacked out as I fell.

Fortunately, a friend I was with had the presence of mind to grab onto me and pull me to my feet as she shouted out: "This girl will die if you don't get out of the way for her."



The crowd parted for me and I was back at the front again gasping for breath. It was very weird.

Great concert and we left after Parker finished playing.

Four times to the opera in a week

For a period of time when I was a child, my father and I would set out on our bicycles on Saturday afternoons to tour various used book and antique shops—or junk stores as they were then called—in the Glebe and Centre Town neighborhoods of Ottawa.

One of my favourite shops was an antique store on Third Avenue, just west of Bank Street, called The Gay Blade.

At the time, the term “gay blade” referred to a dashing young man. I don't recall if the proprietor of the shop fit that bill.

I’d paw through the odds and ends in The Gay Blade with the sound of grand opera blaring, broadcast, then as now, on the CBC FM radio show Saturday Afternoon at the Opera.


One weekend we arrived and the shop was silent. My father asked the owner why he wasn't listening to opera.

The owner explained that CBC was broadcasting an Italian opera. Being German-Canadian, he did not think it worth listening to, in fact, he didn't even consider it to be opera.

I was reminded of that incident this week after attending the dress rehearsals of Richard Wagner’s four-part German 19th-century epic Ring Cycle at the new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto.

Sitting through 15 hours of opera in one week seemed a daunting prospect at first, but I wasn’t bored once.


The singing, music, sets and costumes combined to create a spectacular experience. Of the minor characters, I particularly liked the forest bird who helped Siegfried.

It’s been a long time since I’ve sat through rehearsals.

A photographer snapped hundreds of pictures during the performances. I took mainly photos without flash when the lights were up in the house. I didn't risk it during the performances.

During one intermission, I rode the elevator to the top level and walked down floor by floor.

The upper floors are edged with perilous, low glass half-walls which give gut-churning views of the front-of-house foyer on the orchestra level.


Vertigo kicked in on the top floor. Sickened by the altitude, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the precipice to take photos of the view through the glass wall.

A storey lower, on the fourth level, I was told by an usher not to take photos because, she said: "the theatre is under copyright" ~