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Testing a New Theme

FT”A”:

Just Imagine (1930) Directed by David Butler. El Brendel, Maureen O’Sullivan, John Garrick, Marjorie White, Frank Albertson.

Just Imagine is a humorous science-fiction movie musical presented by Fox Film Corporation in 1930, directed by David Butler, to console audiences distressed by the Great Depression.

The film was set in the year 1980, and it depicted the conventional expectations of technological progress associated with that “distant future” date. A large dirigible hangar was used to house a huge, detailed, large-scale model of a modern city, complete with suspension bridges between towering skyscrapers, multi-lane elevated roadways, and a flock of flying machines flitting around above the city as another level of traffic. To modern viewers, the city resembles an implausibly exaggerated version of 1930s New York City.

The plot involves a man from 1930, who is experimentally revived from the dead by a team of physicians who have no interest whatsoever in him after he awakens. Two young men who have observed the process as guests of one of the nurses kindly take him in hand and show him (and the audience) the wonders of 1980. He also gets to travel to Mars, which turns out to be inhabited by friendly humans, each of whom has an evil, otherwise-identical twin.

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Just Imagine (1930)

Now here is something amazing – Coldplay, one of the best selling, record breaking rock artists of the current decade, a huge money-maker for their record label, EMI, has released a completely free live album, without any DRM in it this past week.

I’m pretty sure some pigs just touched down in a nearby airfield, but then again, the media has been telling us about swine flu for sometime, hasn’t it?

All puns aside, this is truly an amazing and progressive move from a label that has traditionally been rather litigious. Is this a sign that record labels are truly ready to stop treating file-sharers as ne’er-do-well pirates and start treating them like fans and customers?

Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of Coldplay. I tend to like music that’s much edgier and a lot less progressive/less suited to clear channel radio.  That said, I did download this album and am giving it a good listen. Perhaps Coldplay will even gain another fan from this?

The “cd” is a live album and comes as a zip download with 9 tracks and album art. All you have to provide in exchange is an e-mail address, which they promise not to spam or sell.

The album is 192 kpbs mp3’s and sound really crisp and clear, actually. Ideally, I would have liked to have seen some more download options, specifically some kind of lossless audio, but let’s not forget – a major label just released an entirely free album.

This just goes to show that the record industry is finally beginning to embrace the future instead of fighting it. The likes of Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead clearly blazed a new trail and now traditional media is beginning to follow. The future is looking a little brighter.

Download Coldplay – LeftRightLeftRightLeft

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Wow, Coldplay got it right!

I found this little gem of a program the other day and just wanted to share it with you all!

It’s no secret that Mac OSX has one of the most streamlined and usable desktop interfaces around, which is why it’s features are so often emulated on other platforms. Gloobus-Preview, a new program from sole developer Jordi Hernàndez does just that by offering up a powerful new plug-in for Ubuntu in the same vein as OSX’s Quick Look. The end result is a sleek little program that’s not only helpful and convenient, but sure to impress your tech-savvy friends.

How to Install:

(Note: this is still a very young program so you might have to get your hands slightly dirty to get this one working. Don’t worry though; we got this program up and running just fine by following these steps:)

PPA doesn’t yet exist for this program (don’t worry – It’s on it’s way!) so you’re going to have to grab your deb files from Jordi’s DeviantArt Page

Hit the download link on the left side of the page and save the tarball file to your computer.

Extract the contents of the file.

Extract the contents of the new file again (doubly-wrapped; I know).

You will now see two deb files, one for 64 bit systems, and one for 32 bit systems. Choose the appropriate deb for your computer and run it.

The program is now installed. To preview a file, select it, then press CTRL+C followed immediately by CTRL+V. This will bring up the preview window. Pressing the directional keys will move your preview window focus on to the next item in your folder. Press ENTER to run the file normally, or press SPACE to close the preview.

If the keyboard shortcuts did not work, no worries; we’ll sort that out here with the solutions below.

First select the file you’d like the preview and press CTRL+C. Then, to make sure the program is installed, open up a terminal and run the command “gloobus-preview” (minus the quotations).

A preview window should pop-up at this point. If it does, congratulations! This means the program is installed and we just need to fix the keybinds. If it doesn’t, try reinstalling the program from the deb.

To set up the appropriate keybinds:

Open up a terminal and input these two commands:

gconftool-2 -s –type string /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 “gloobus-preview”
gconftool-2 -s –type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 “space”

Try to run the program again at this point by using the keyboard shortcuts. If it works, you’re finished. If not; proceed below.

If you are running Compiz, you may have to enable “Commands” for the program to work.

To enable commands, enter Compiz Setting Manager and under “General” you’ll see “Commands.” Click the check box next to “Commands” to enable it.

Now click on the “Commands” button itself. This will open up the “Commands” options.

On the first tab, make sure Command Line 0 is set to “gloobus-preview,” (minus the quotations).

On the second tab, entitled Key Bindings, make sure Run command 0 is enabled and set to “<Control>space” (minus the quotations).

Close all Compiz windows and test your new keybinds out. If all went to plan, Gloobus should be accessible from the keyboard shortcuts.

If it still isn’t, double check to make sure your metacity keybinds are correct.

Open up a terminal and type in “gconf-editor” (minus the quotations). This will bring up a gui for all your system commands. Follow:

gconf-editor>apps>metacity>keybinding_commands> and make sure command_1 says gloobus-preview

As long as your keybinds are correct for metacity and compiz, this program will run. You could set this up for just about any key you wanted through compiz, including mouse binds and screen corner binds.

This program is one to watch and has a whole host of great features under development. If you like it, be sure to support it’s developer and vote for it’s inclusion into Ubuntu on it’s Ubuntu Brainstorm page

Gloobus-Preview at Launchpad:https://launchpad.net/gloobus

Gloobus Homepage: http://gloobus.wordpress.com/

Hey if you liked this post, please share it with someone! Please use one of the share links on this page.

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Step by Step: Implement Mac-like Quick Look in Ubuntu with Gloobus-Preview

Neglected and Forgotten by Neglected and Forgotten from Flickr

Hello dear readers,

I realize apology posts are the worst, but I feel I must for the lack of posts here on Mumbo Jumbo. Things in my life have been a bit haywire, between travel and trying to find stable full time employment. Anyway, I want to let you know I have a full site upgrade planned soon to make MJD better than ever, and I hope to keep bringing you great tidbits from around the world wide web for a very long time. Take Care!

-Bob Cornero

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Neglected Mumbo Jumbo

The clip below is the artist himself, and he gives a sample of what his album sounds like:

Click the picture or link to download the free music from his site:

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Free Music Spotlight: Crepusculum – Sky Diaries EP

My brother recently informed me of this great film, Darius Goes West. It’s the story of a teenager who is living with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy who embarks on a journey west with his friends to get MTV’s Pimp My Ride to trick out his wheelchair. It’s a touching and inspiring story about a courageous young man who seeks to live and enjoy life unrelentingly, despite the fact that he’s never even left his county before in his life. Everyone needs to see this film, and I don’t say that lightly.

The movie has already won numerous independent film awards. Best of all, all the profits from the sale of the film go to research to help cure this disease, which currently has a 100% fatality rate, with most individuals dying in their late teens or early twenties.  It is also surprisingly prevalent in this day and age, and can literally happen to anyone as it is not related to heredity.

The film is currently distributed on DVD for 20 dollars. 17 of that goes to research. 3 goes to the publishing costs of the DVD. Please check out and support this film; spread the word. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

http://www.dariusgoeswest.org/

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Darius Goes West – The Best Film You Haven’t Seen (Yet!)

Again, I’m slow in writing about this, but if you have an iPod you need to fill with great, free music, please direct your attention to the SXSW 2009 festival’s torrents.

Every year since the beginning, SXSW has made every song they play at the festival freely available on their website.  For the past two years, all the MP3’s have been collected by generous users into gigantic torrents for our downloading convenience.

This year, there are 6 GIGS (!!!) of music for a total of 1267 free (and legal!) songs divided up into 3 torrent files. You can grab the torrents here.

For more information of the music and torrents, please see torrentfreak’s original posting.

And on what is perhaps a more humorous note, one intrepid writer has listened to *ALL* the songs and posted 6 word reviews for each of them here.

Enjoy!

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SXSW 2009 Music

I’m a little slow in posting this, but I definitely was right when Trent Reznor hinted on his Twitter feed that NIN would be releasing a new album to promote their next concert series, this time with the reunited Jane’s Addiction and Tom Morello’s new project, Street Sweeper.

It’s a solid EP featuring 6 hard tracks. Of course, this won’t be for everyone as NIN and their ilk are one of those groupd you either love or hate. Great to see big name, forward-thinking musicians releasing free content. The free download is available at http://ninja2009.com/

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NINJA Sampler!

This just reminds me of something straight out of Napoleon Dynamite. Only sometimes life is stranger, and you can’t think up things like this. Anyway, I got a real kick out of it. Enjoy your Monday – at least you’re not in small claims court!

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What’s the hardest part about being you?