OS Agnostic

I recently asked for suggestions for non English music via Twitter. I like to listen to music with lyrics I don’t understand while writing or coding. I got lots of responses, listed below. I didn’t do any editing for duplicates, but there didn’t appear to be many.

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions!

Twitter

¡Que Corra la Voz! – Spanish ska (@rossnelson)
Bad Shakyn – a bit more just ska, lots of English some German (@rossnelson)
Selda – Turkish revolutionary folk music (@littletinyfish)
Camille for French pop (@sgillies)
La Caravane Passe – French gypsy/klezmer wierdness(@sgillies)
“La Disparition,” by Keren Ann – A French-pop album (@jrep)
Tinariwenone – a group of Taureg musicians from Mali (@J450NK)
Kurt Weill in the original (@benwbrum)
Sigur Ros – they sing in a made up language (@junker1244)
Keren Ann – (early stuff) (@Fiona_Bradley)
Benjamin Biolay (@Fiona_Bradley)
Emilie Simon (@Fiona_Bradley)
Yann Tiersen (@Fiona_Bradley)
Tocotronic – German and pretty good rock n’ roll. (@redheadkitchen)
Ivri Lider – good Israeli pop (@jwiltshire)
Tim Maia and Elis Regina – Brazilian classics (@jwiltshire)
Bossacucanova – is good… (@jwiltshire)
Ravi Shankar – sitar music (@dejah_thoris)
Acoustic Brazil – good guitar music (@dejah_thoris)
The Rough Guide to Australian Aboriginal Music – digeredoo music, including rock music (@dejah_thoris)
Seu Jorge is amazing, in Portugese. http://bit.ly/9F8KoL (@gunderson)

Friendfeed:

Souad Massi has a lovely voice (@Kirsten)
Kiran Ahluwalia (@Kirsten)
Kitka (@Kirsten)
Yael Naim (@cavlec)
Camille (see on youtube) (@Pierre Lindenbaum)

This post was prompted by the article Color: The Next Limited Resource? at Six Revisions. The article is pretty much chock full of misinformation (though well intentioned).

To point out a few things:

• The article confuses copyright and trademark. Common mistake, but worth mentioning. You can’t copyright a color- if you could, every color would already be copyrighted by painters, photographers, etc. since copyright does not to have to be applied for. Whether you can trademark or patent a color… well, you can patent a process for making a color, and you can trademark the use of a color in a certain context. But I have yet to see a trademark on just a color, with no other design elements. (Please correct me if I’ve missed one).
• “Every color you have ever seen used has been indexed and named by Pantone.” The human eye can perceive a lot of different shades and colors. Most estimates put it in the millions, though it depends on how good your color perception is. Furthermore, just because Pantone has named colors, it does not mean it owns them. What they own is a trademark on certain designations (numbers) associated with certain colors. You can still use any of the Pantone colors, you just can’t distribute a list of Pantone colors + designations. So their business doesn’t have a whole lot to do with what colors you can use.
• Brands have been trademarking color for a long time. This is nothing new.
• TMobile did not “[sue] companies like a book-on-demand publisher, and most recently, in the blog Engadget Mobile” as stated in the article. As can be easily determined from the article’s links, both companies got a Cease and Desist letter. This is miles away from a lawsuit. Even if they did sue, the lawsuit would hinge on a lot of things, not just color. Is the company selling a similar product? Does the logo look similar? Is the accused infringer even in the same business?

Anyway, a glance at the comments is enough to tell me that people are taking stuff like this seriously.

Don’t get me wrong. I think our copyright system is broken. But if we jump at every little thing, we’ll miss the really big stuff.

The truth is, if you create anything today, you are at a risk of being sued. It’s probably going to be unusual to go through a creative career without at least one C&D letter to your name soon. People have simply done so much that the chances of your doing something truly original are reaching nil. That doesn’t mean we should stop creating. It means we should arm ourselves, know our rights, and fight for change where necessary.

It also means that, as designers, we should try to avoid becoming the assholes misguided companies we decry in our inflammatory articles. Don’t make “I should sue” jokes. Don’t think about suing when you see designs vaguely similar to yours. Don’t look to lawsuits as a potential future cash cow. Remember that creativity is built on other creative works. That’s not to say you shouldn’t stand up for yourself if someone out and out steals your work, but don’t jump to conclusions, either.

Bonus points: Release some of your work under a creative commons license.

Thanks to beerorkid and Mr. Wilson at Lincolnite, I had to try Lincoln’s new Soda and candy shop, Rocket Fizz. It was full of sugary goodness. For today, I got candy cigarettes (for old times sake) and Chai Cola (pretty good) and Geoff got a Dad’s Root Beer. If you want reviews of sodas, check out beerorkid’s RocketFizz category.

Rocket Fizz
1501 Pine Lake Rd #24
Lincoln, NE 68512
402 328-FIZZ (3499)

So I’ve done it… I’ve moved away from Ubuntu for my main desktop computer. The #1 reason for this was Photoshop – I’m using it more again, and Gimp just does not cut it. There were other little things- mostly related to flash and sound issues. I’m not ditching Ubuntu entirely, of course- my Ubuntu computer is now my always on file server/web server (for development), and I can still get to it through putty and VNC. I’m going to work on “greenifying” the system so it consumes less power. I’d also like to get some home automation stuff going eventually.

I miss a lot of little things about Ubuntu (multiple desktops, the ability to move toolbars around wherever, toolbar applets, the themes,  THE TERMINAL, etc, etc.) but in the end, an OS is an OS, and I can still get things done. I’m sort of looking forward to Windows 7.

I briefly toyed with the idea of going to mac, but that was nixed fairly quickly: my mac mini doesn’t support multiple monitors and is pretty underpowered, and anything else is WAY out of my price range. I’ll be sticking with what I’ve got until it dies or becomes obsolete. The only thing I really liked about mac is the fact that it’s Unix like- and since I have the Ubuntu computer, that’s not as big a deal. Once I upgrade my Ethernet cables to take advantage of the new gigabit router, it should be even less of one- I’ll store my files on the Ubuntu computer anyway and manipulate them through putty.

For now, we’re in “make do with what we’ve got” mode, due tot he fact that the old house isn’t sold yet. Good thing “what we’ve got” is quite a lot.