Life Without Keys

Industrial engineer, inventor and generally uber-impressive renaissance man Jacque Fresco held two lectures in the Oliver Thompson lecture hall in the Tait Building, University of London on October 3rd. He was joined by Roxaxnne Meadows to discuss the Venus Project, societal values, human progress and the like.

This is a high fidelity audio recording of the first lecture, which took place at 1pm. Fresco and Meadows then held a 1 hour Q&A which is also available below as a download.

Left click to play on the site, right click to download.

Lecture Audio

Q&A Audio with Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows

DOWNLOAD THE 2009 DOUG STANHOPE BOOTLEG HERE!

After what seems like an age, but is in fact only a year, Doug Stanhope graced the Leicester Square Theatre in London in the first week of September 2009. It was a welcome return after Stanhope decided to skip the usual financial H-Bomb referred to in some circles as the “Edinburgh Fringe”.

After a shaky start to the set, something that permeates most of his shows these days, Stanhope launched into three or four particularly strong ‘bits’ that will no doubt find their place in the new CD, and DVD offering.

Look out for venom against the modern perpetual habit of videoing everything on your mobile, an extended dark poetic riff on what sex with Doug Stanhope must be like these days, sniper sex, and the (literally) climactic “Blort” routine, destined, we suspect, for the ending of the new CD. A clever bit on George W Bush and the Queen, most likely destined for UK shores only, offers some new and counterintuitive but correct thinking on throwing stones whilst abiding in a glass house, and look out for the thinly disguised attack on Britain’s Got Talent too.

Whilst looking much older than in 2002 (compare his babyfaced energy in Word of Mouth, a mere 7 years ago), coughing like a madman and clearly unnecessarily down on himself after two rough sounding shows at Reading and Leeds Music festivals (with Jamie Kilstein, an up-and-comer who was Stanhope’s support act in the 2005 Austin Incident video Bootleg and an acerbic New York wit in his own right) Stanhope is nevertheless still a billion miles ahead of most stand-up comedy. If pressed, we can only name his equal in Louis CK, whose show in November in London we will also be covering (and hopefully someone will bootleg it for us again.) Apart from that, there is, as Bill Hicks would say, a “real big fucking drop-off” after those two.

A fan recording of the 3rd September exists and is available at this location for free download – the 68 minute set has been named (by Stanhope himself in the recording) “Doug Stanhope – Before Turning the Gun on Himself”. We will upload the raw .wav file as well in due course, in case anyone else can adjust the levels better than our resident “sound-idiot” – and naturally there will be a torrent with tracks divided up.

Enjoy the hate.

Podcasting has opened up a whole pile of free content ever since it became ubiquitous on the internet. Vast swathes of radio shows, lectures, talk radio shows, audiobooks, film trailers, video sketches, news media and other audio-visual media can now be downloaded automatically to your computer or audio devices through any one of hundreds of applications, making the acquisition of a vast galaxy of sound and video both easy and gigantic.

There are a few problems with this, of course. The first is choice; since there are literally thousands of outlets for free content, choosing what is good is very difficult. The second issue that us culture hounds have is the storage of such a massive pile of content, which can rapidly get out of control. So, in addition to some listening behaviours and thinning down techniques we find useful, we’ll first look at a few iTunes settings that can keep your stash in check without you missing out on too much, whilst not being overwhelmed either.

1. Rate the items you’ve listened to.

If you’re using iTunes, make sure you add a star-based rating column in your podcast library (right click any column header and select “Rating”) – that way you can mark which episodes you want to keep when you listen on the go or at your computer, and which you’re happy to delete. We tend to rate either 5 Stars (keeper) or no stars for ones we’re binning.

Right clicking allows you to add columns

2. Stream instead of Download

If you’re at your computer, or have an iPod or iPhone with Wifi available, most podcasts can be streamed as well as downloaded. On your iPod/iPhone, click the title rather than the download button, and the episodes will play over your connection. Saves space, and retains the quality. See more here. And here.

3. Set time-sensitive episodes for auto-deletion after a certain time

iTunes lets you set auto-delete options after a certain time unplayed. If you have news or current affairs podcasts, let them expire after a week or two. iTunes has a setting for this, and the rule can be applied to specific podcasts or all podcasts by default.

4. Order your mp3 player’s menu to bring podcasts to the forefront

iPods have been customizable since the word go when it comes to menus. The Zune seems to be able to do this too (mostly through the use of building “quicklists”), although most of the Youtube videos on the subject are inscrutable on layout customization. If you’re a Zune owner, however, you probably know your shit on this subject anyway. If you don’t, Engadget’s Zune interface video seems the most comprehensive.

5. Conglomerate your podcasts with one application

If you have some podcasts in iTunes, some in Odeo, a few on BlogTalkRadio and maybe a batch of channels in iPodder (now called Juice, or Juice Receiver) chances are that, unless you’re massively disciplined, you’ll never sign into all those platforms. We tend to use iTunes, but, as long as there’s a “subscribe to feed” ability, any and all aggregators tend to be equal. Check out The Apple Blog for a roundup of apple-based aggregators, many of which (like Juice, which is cross-platform) are also available in some form for the PC.