Making One Spammer Pay: AOL to Give Away $47,000 Porsche Seized in Settlement

this is another one of those title-speaks-for-itself articles. Worth reading, and will certainly make you feel a warm and fuzzy feeling against spammers.   ¶ 12:25 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Net music piracy 'does not harm record sales'

well, the title speaks for itself. Harvard researchers tracked downloads and cd sales and found no effect of downloading on cd sales. Interestingly, at the highest end of blockbuster albums, they found that increased downloads correlated with increased sales.   ¶ 2:01 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Swoon 039 - March 29, 2004

Phauna - Need Rain (Play Records)
Jackmate - A Love Supreme In Mind (Resopal-Schallware)
Radioactive Man - Radio Eins (Rotters Golf Club)
Bochum Welt - Mannequin (Device)
Beef Terminal - Lines Of Division (Noise Factory)
Millimetrik - L'abondance d'une Minorite (Statik)
K.I.A. - Dubmarine (Neuphoria)
Casino vs. Japan - Map Happy (Attack Nine)
Galerie Stratique - Train Sous La Pluie (Statik)
Abfahrt Hinwil - Planquadrat (Toytronic)
Squarepusher - Iambic 9 Poetry (Warp)
Lego Feet - Keyop (Skam)
Air Liquide - Geigerzaehler
Blue Haze - Messy Textures
Michael Mayer- Twin Peaks (Kreisel)
Wintersun - Can't Stand the Pain
Aphasia - Acapulco (Hooj)
Manual - Burn (Darla)
Rechenzentrum - Tiefenscharfe (Mille Plateaux)
Andrew Duke - Shuffle (Cognition)
Squarepusher - Every Day I Love (Warp)
  ¶ 10:15 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  I took some pictures last night from Michigan Beach in St. Catharines. The time was shortly after sunset, about 7:30 p.m.

First up is the moon, Saturn below it, and Venus at the extreme right.
Next is Venus at the top left, and Mercury, a fuzzy dot to the left of lower part of the recently restored lighthouse.
And finally, a picture of the moon, taken through my 85mm refractor.

I also did a little observing later. The transparency was good but the seeing was not. I thought I set up too close to my house, but it wasn't that. Although the ground level air was still, up high there was some real churning going on. I had a look at Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, M42, M43, and many of the double stars in Orion's waist and legs. Also split some doubles, gamma Leonis and Mizar and Alcor.   ¶ 1:36 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  I have begun a gallery of light pollution in the Niagara Region. So far there are pictures of St. Catharines and Welland. Unfortunately, there are more examples of bad lighting than good lighting, but hopefully that will change some day.   ¶ 2:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Swoon 038 - March 22, 2004

AFX - Analogue Bubblebath 3 Track 1 (Rephlex)
Kid Spatula - Kid Spatulet (Planet mu)
Casino vs. Japan - Rouge (Wobblyhead)
Slam - Narco Tourists (Soma)
Gescom - TR2A (Skam)
Jega - Evil Lee Kirtcele (Skam)
Squarepusher - Menelec (Warp)
Millimetrik - Dans La Profondeur, Tout S'Eclaircit (Statik)
Pub - Film (Ampoule)
Basic Sound Unit - Whateva (Do Right!)
The Notwist - Red Room (Domino)
Dub Taylor - Before You Go (Force Tracks)
Akufen - Tournee 3
Blue Haze - How To Escape Yourself
Habersham & Numinous - Leaving Tifton
Emrock vs. T William - Opus (Sounds Good)
New Order - Blue Monday (Cass mix)
Jamez - Levitate (Future Groove)
Phauna - Notion of Love (Play Records)
Lisa Gerrard and Patrick Cassidy - The Song of Amergin (4AD)  ¶ 10:21 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  The Mars Rover Opportunity also has a weblog. Kewl! ~*~opportunity~*~: "Tuesday, March 9th, 2004 8:08 pm

argh!

NASA's making fun of me now with their wake-up music! OMG, I am soooo dusty and disgusting right now!! I have red grime everywhere, especially under my abrasion instruments! It's no wonder I can't grind anything! I find evidence of past water, but I can't even find a puddle to splash my treads in here! I so need a shower. And a manicure. OMG, what if Stardust saw me like this?!

And I can't add all my rover budz back on LJ without getting some kind of limit exceeded error when I hit 750! Man, this day has just been awful.

Current Mood: dirty"  ¶ 2:18 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Swoon 037 - March 15, 2004

Neotropic - Under Violent Objects (Ntone)
Millsart - Asteroid (Music Man)
Holy Garage - Surprised (Isolee mix) (Playhouse)
Amon Tobin - Sordid (Ninja Tune)
Meaty Ogre - Track 3 (Galapagos)
Pest(e) - Hovercraft (Suction)
Millimetrik - Regards Infideles (Statik)
Sqarepusher - Ultravisitor (Warp)
K.I.A. - Goa-Di (Neuphoria)
AFX - Analogue Bubblebath 3 - Track 4 (Rephlex)
Andrew Duke - Britlur (Cognition)
Dope on Plastic - Wave Dub
Eddie Richards - Gateway (Jay Tripwire mix)
Bjork - Kindness Kind (Dislokated Impostors mix)
Syntax - Bliss (Felix da Housecat mix)
Adam Freeland - We Want Your Soul (Infusion mix) (Marine Parade)
Emrock vs. T. William - Disko 3000 (Sounds Good)
Coldplay - Clocks (Gabriel and Dresden bootleg mix)
Jello - Conokut (Peacefrog)
Orbital - Otono (ffrr)
Neotropic - Saucer Song (Ntone)  ¶ 11:26 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  I was wandering in the house a week ago when I heard a song I certainly recognized as Amon Tobin playing from a different room on the television. I walked over to see what it was, and it was a commerical for BMW's X3. I tried looking through my Amon Tobin discs for the proper track with no luck, since I was browsing quickly. Luckily, a quick search of the Internet brought me to www.whatsthatcalled.com which identifies many songs used in commercials. The song is Sordid, from his Permutation album. I'll probably play it tonight on my show.   ¶ 1:49 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  A few people have begun talking about the upcoming lineup of all the naked-eye planets. I've been asked by a few people too. So, here's a good article from space.com explaining the what, where and when of what to look for.   ¶ 4:32 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Wednesday night was my first pleasant night outdoors this year, in Ontario at least. Temperatures were around freezing in southern Ontario, and the sky was the clearest since Christmas, so I drove to my club's darksky site in the country. It was worth the 35-minute drive, as opposed to my backyard in St. Catharines.

Equipment: 8" Orion Dob, 21mm Pentax XL, 14mm Radian, and 7mm orthoscopic, which revealed it's time to collimate.

Here's what I saw, roughly in order, with a few comments: M41, M42, M43, NGC 1973 nebulosity just north of there, Sigma Orionis, M78, maybe the Flame Nebula, Saturn, M1, M45, M79 (1st time ever, nice compact glob), M93, M46, M47, M50, M48 (another 1st, individual stars were quite bright), Jupiter (great banding and the GRS), to Gemini for Struve 1124, NGC 2420, NGC 2392 (Eskimo Nebula), to the Northeast for a bunch of galaxies (many first time views) including M51 and NGC 5195, M101 (big), M63 with some definite mottling, NGC 5005 and 5033 with 5005 being brighter, Cor Caroli, M94 (woo that's a bright one), NGC 4485 and 4490 make a nice pair, NGC 4449 which is obviously irregular (my notes says "angry smudge"), possibly its nearby faint companion 4460, M106, then maybe some of its companions including 4346 and 4282, then over to Leo for M65, M66 and NGC 3628 (perfectly framed with the 21mm), and finally the surprise of the night came while I was hunting for M106, got lost on my guide star and randomly found NGC 3893, a magnitude 10.9 mottled splotch near Chi Ursae Majoris. It took a lot of next-day research to figure out what it was. This is the field, and the galaxy looked a lot like this.

I also did some scouting for a potential Canadian trip to see Omega Centauri from the north shore of Lake Erie. With my finder I could definitely see stars to -41 degrees. The cluster is at -47, so it could happen....

The moon cleared the trees after 11:15, and my right hand fingers were frozen, so I went home.   ¶ 3:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  this week Rick Mercer visited my alma mater, Queen's University. Two segments, both are extremely good, and probably more funny to me since I lived what they're talking about. You can stream the general one here, and the one specifically about clubs here. I was a member of CFRC, the campus radio station, and Golden Words, the engineering society's humor newspaper.   ¶ 2:07 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Amid all the talk about Todd Bertuzzi's awful hit on Moore, there is lots of talk, but few quotes from Bertuzzi himself. Well, The Globe and Mail got one:

The Globe and Mail: "Nor does it help Bertuzzi's cause that he described Moore as a 'piece of &@&*@' when the incident happened and said he was 'glad' the Canucks had two games remaining with Colorado to settle the score. Or that his teammate Brad May infamously talked about putting 'a bounty' on Moore's head. May later tried to distance himself from his comment by suggesting he was only echoing dialogue from the movie Slapshot and his words were meant to be taken in jest."  ¶ 4:58 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  These results certainly surprise me. I guess many people assumed abstinence meant abstaining from all sexual relations, but as this study reveals, that's clearly not the case.   ¶ 12:12 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Swoon 036 - March 8, 2004

Multiplex - Caps Lock (Toytronic)
Plaid - Crumax Rins (Warp)
Amon Tobin - Precursor (Ninja Tune)
Squarepusher - District Line II (Warp)
Krell - Planete Interdite (Source)
Arovane - Tabl F (DIN)
DJ Serious - The Battle (Do Right!)
The KLF - The White Room (Arista)
Sasha - Magnetic North (Thrive)
Millimetrik - Les Techniques Devenues Folles (Statik)
King Unique - Sugahigh (JBO)
Bedrock - Emerald (Bedrock)
Slacker - A Million Dreams (Jukebox in the Sky)
Thick Dick - Tweekin' (Sondos)
F2 - Dominica (Bellboy)
Luomo - Class (Force Tracks)
Sam Mollison - Words (Medway mix) (First in Flight)
Spooky - Belong (Bedrock)
Salome & Ives - Mystic Roya (Bedrock)
Andrew Duke - Progress (Cognition)  ¶ 9:45 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  I just finished reading Derek Lundy's Godforsaken Sea. It was very enjoyable. Imagine 'Into Thin Air' by Jon Krakauer, but this time without the amateurs, and everybody's sailing boats instead of climbing moutains. The book is about the Vendee Globe race, which begins and ends at the same port in France. Sailors sail south to Antarctica, race around it, and back to France. It takes about 110-150 days, depending on how often boats break down, flip over, or even sink. Other factors include lack of sleep, frostbite, crashing into icebergs, fishing boats, pleasure ships and cargo ships, and launching rescues for other sailors in the ocean. If it sounds tough, it's worse than that. The seas of the Southern Ocean are the worst in the world: 50-foot waves, subzero temperatures and winds that routinely push 100 kilometers an hour.

Without spoiling the ending too much, one sailor dies, another loses a finger, several boats are lost, another operates on his own infected elbow, several heroic rescue attempts succeed and fail, and remember, this isn't just a challenge to yourself, it's an actual race, with only one winner.   ¶ 11:56 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Swoon 035 - March 1, 2004

Freeform - untitled (MASK 100)
Abfahrt Hinwil - Bumperstufe 2 (Toytronic)
Jello - O'verb (Peacefrog)
Andrew Duke - Cement (Cognition)
Soft Cell - Memorabilia Live (Cooking Vinyl)
Model 500 - No UFO's (R&S)
The Advent - Inn Touch (Tresor)
Purform - Knowledge of Knowledge (Orange)
Underworld - Moaner (JBO)
Andro - Allnighter
Sidekick - Respond
LSG - Netherworld (Moshic mix)
Trancesetters - Secrets of Meditation (Hallucinogenic Zoom mix)
Orlando Voorn - Aguila (Underground Resistance)
Matthew Dekay - Higher Thoughts
Laidback Luke - Concrete on Vinyl
Luke Chable and Jono Fernandez - Before You Break On Me
Age of Love - Age of Love (Wrecked Angle mix)
The Notwist - Neon Golden (Console mix) (Domino)
Millimetrik - Le Present qui n'a pas de Futur (Statik)  ¶ 9:21 AM 0 Comments Links to this post