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Archive for October 15th, 2008


Posted on October 15, 2008 - by jono

Awesome

Awesome.


Posted on October 15, 2008 - by jono

Frets On Fire Transcribers Wanted!

One thing I am really keen to do as part of the release of Denied By Reign is to have the songs available for Frets On Fire; the excellent Open Source Guitar Hero clone. I would love to have these available for release if at all possible.

So, I am looking for some volutneers who would like to help transcribe the album to Frets On Fire ready for release. I know this is a lot to ask with a week to go before the release, but if anyone wants to do it, I will send you the full album and you can work on it. You will also recieve an unholy amount of gratification and respect from me and others in the Severed Fifth community. Surely that is worth it in itself? :P Rock on! :)

Any takers? If you can help – email me at jono –AT– severedfifth –DOT– com – thanks!


Posted on October 15, 2008 - by jono

Severed Fifth Sneak Peeks 3 + 4

Continuing the week of Denied By Reign sneak peeks, I have two more for you:

I am also proud to introduce the front and back covers of the album, and these images will be provided in large enough resolution to be printed at the correct size for a CD cover:

Front cover of Denied By Reign

Back cover of Denied By Reign

Thanks also to the following write-ups:

About The Project

Denied By Reign is released on Oct 21st from www.severedfifth.com and the entire album will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license with expressed aim of seeing how far an independent musician such as myself can push and promote an album under the new music economy of free culture. My aims are to help answer some of the questions that are unknown about the viability of a free culture music economy. For more details on the aims of the project, see the announcement.

Severed Fifth needs your help to be successful! Go and join our Discussion Forums and join the Street Team. We will need your help when the album is released to push it as far and wide as possible and just see how much juice we can squeeze out of a free culture album. If you have contacts in the music press, or you know established artists who may be interested in hearing it, do get in touch with me. I am preparing a press pack for the album which we can all send out when the album is released. Oh, and for you Facebook fanatics – go and join the Severed Fifth Facebook Group.


Posted on October 15, 2008 - by jono

Terrible News

Blaze Bayley, former Iron Maiden singer and frontman of his own band Blaze recently had his wife Debbie pass away. While talking asbout this terrible news I found the following one of the saddest things I have ever read:

“Just as things really seemed to be going our way, Debbie suffered a second huge brain haemorrhage. She had brain scans and was taken into intensive care. After this, we think, she suffered another smaller bleed in her brain. However much reality I was faced with I refused to accept that there was no hope for recovery. But when reality is a top consultant doctor, spelling out bit by bit the true magnitude of Debbie’s condition, and when you are in his office with the people, who you have shared the hope, tears, and desperation of these days with you, and when you look at each other without needing words between you. Then it is no longer a case of fighting to keep hope alive, to stop the last shreds of hope being taken from you. But as the soft confident voice says the words that describe the condition of your loved one’s brain, then hope is given up. Hope melts away. It is something so precious but without worldly value and it is replaced silently and cruelly by a desperate fatalistic feeling, that feeling enters the soul that, now, has no hope”.

I don’t know Blaze other than meeting him a few times at gigs, and when I have met him he has been the nicest, most genuine guy I have met. Blaze, if you ever happen to stumble over this blog entry by random, or by someone else who knows someone, who knows someone else passing it on…hang in there brother, you are in our hearts.


Posted on October 15, 2008 - by jono

Ohio Linuxfest = Great

In my talk I asked how many people use Ubuntu. This was the result. Wow.

A few days ago I headed to Columbus, Ohio to take part in Ohio Linuxfest. I was there to provide the closing keynote – a new presentation that I have been thinking a lot about recently called Building Belonging.

OLF is an excellent, excellent event. A great range of speakers, exhibitors and an excellent attendance (1000+) provided a very loose, fun, but informative atmosphere. The organisers knew what they were doing, were running on fumes for much of the time, and were 100% committed to making OLF kick arse. And you know what, it really did. They have pulled off a stunning event there, and attending shows like OLF gets me really buzzed up.

I arrived on Thursday evening, Jorge picked me up from the airport and we headed out with some of the organisers. Jorge and I then spent Friday working, and Friday night we hit the pre-party. I woke up a little tender on Saturday after an evening of Jaegerbombs with the OLF organisers, The Linux Link Tech Show guys, some Ubuntu folks and some other people. I ran through my slides one more time and then headed to the show. Did a videocast interview, interview with The Linux Link Tech Show, lunch with Debra from Prentice Hall and then back for a book signing alongside Mad Dog. I always find signing books a little weird – not sure why, it just feels weird – people like Stephen King should be signing books, not me.

Throughout the day I had some really interesting conversations. The Ohio Ubuntu LoCo team did an excellent job, the Ubuntu BOF went really well, I caught up with Zonker from OpenSuSE and Paul from Fedora, chatted with Mad Dog for a while, met the Dual Core guys and talked Severed Fifth, talked to some guys about community growth in less-tech-orientated areas, and many more.

A little later it was keynote time. The room was huge. Really. Damn. Huge. There was a great turn-out, the audience were fun, and they seemed really receptive to my message. The core of my presentation was exploring the concept of belonging – how we can build communities that are truly participatory with a real feeling of engagement and association. I explored the different elements involved in building belonging – associational life, a gift economy which builds social capital, and exploring how to build a sense of belonging, beginning with teams. As an added bonus (!), on the Friday night when hanging out with the Linux Link Tech Show guys, Dan decided to moon me, so I took a snap of the horror show with my camera. I was all set to get the photo off my phone and include it in the talk, but Bluetooth decided to throw a hissy-fit. So, in the presentation I got Dan up on the podium to re-create that magical moment, and the audience lapped it up. Fortunately for us all, the magic was captured and uploaded to YouTube.

That night there was the after-party and for extra amusement we organised an Open Source Dance Off. It was quite possibly, the most amusing thing I have ever seen. It involved nixternal from Kubuntu, Greg from the CC, Kevin from Forsight and a bunch of other guys. Kevin won. Rich was gutted. I have never, ever seen anyone in my life move like Rich Johnson. It is the pure, unfiltered definition of the statement “what he lacked in rhythm he made up for in enthusiasm“. Methinks this may be replicated at UDS. :)

So, all in all, a great show. Thanks to the organisers, to everyone who was so kind to me there, and I will be back next year for sure. :)