The Best Media in Life is Free

ADMIN: Blog is moving!

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:01:00 +0000

Please adjust your bookmarks. This blog is moving here:

E-Finds: Books, Music, Video & Other On-Line Finds

There will be expanded content, including e-book reviews and coverage of video, websites, blogs and all things e-book, free and otherwise. You can use tags to keep track of the topics which interest you. I hope you'll join me!

MISC: iPod Touch Software Round-up

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 02:50:00 +0000

I just got an iPod Touch and have spent the ast few days playing around with the app store options. Some good freebies:

Zenbe: Keep lists of various types, and sync them with the free website. Very handy! I have put in some lists of my favourite meals so that I can plan my grocery shopping on the go.

Stanza and eReader: Good for reading on the go. Stanza is like a library-n-your-hands of free books: just browse the catalogue, pick the ones you want, and download for free. eReader syncs up with fictionwise.com or ereader.com if you have accounts there---just sign in and download books you may have purchased. You can also read freebies from sites like manybooks.net.

Facebook and Wikipanion: Some good web apps on the go, if you are into those sorts of things :)

Sol Free and Moonlight Lite: Solitaire and Mahjong games, respectively. Sol Free has five games and Moonligt is the best of the freebie versions I've tried, with the most configurable options.

So, what did I pay for? There were a few apps I wanted. I think I am done with the buying for now though :) I got an Interval Timer program for the gym (it beeps over your music!), a budget program called Spend (there is a light version available if you want to try it out. I sprung the low price for the full version because I wanted to track by month instead of by week) and a handful of games (Scrabble, which I buy for every platform I use, and two inexpensive clones of Text Twist and Bookworm).

I feel like I am set for now :) Leave me a comment if you feel there is a super iPhone/Touch app I've missed...

MUSIC: Instrumentals for Slide Shows

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:52:00 +0000

I am doing a movie slide show project with some kids at summer camp this year, and they needed some background music to use for their movies. CC-Mixter to the rescue! Found some great instrumental music for the kids to play around with...

Ode to Joy by Pitx
Halehop by Pitx
Robochimp by Duckett
Inspiration by Acradian Burn
Airport Piano a Little Dirty by Kaer Trouz
NH Mandolin by Admiralbob77
Barcelona Mundo by pingnews
Harmonica, 90 BPM by subdues2
Oboe Two Kenobi by Puie
Carrie Freyday (Orchestra Snippet) by ringman

MOVIE: Big Buck Bunny

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:47:00 +0000

From Boing Boing:

"Mike sez, "To show off the open-source animation program Blender, a small team just finished a great ten-minute cartoon, 'Big Buck Bunny.' They were funded by foundation support and pre-orders of the DVD by the Blender community. What's more, the whole thing is Creative Commons-licensed, and all the files for the animation are available."

I watched it just now and it's a very nicely done little production. Now that summer is upon us and I'll have some holiday time, expect to see more regular blog posts from me about this sort of thing. There are a ton of pub domain movies in archive.org that I haven't touched yet.

E-BOOK: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Wed, 14 May 2008 04:21:00 +0000

Cory Doctorow has a new young adult novel out, and it's pretty good. As usual, he's got a Commons-licensed e-version available.

As to the story...I don't want to give it away. I enjoyed it. I thought it was quite creative, and the hacker stuff was fun. But at times, it was a little too exposition-y for my tastes---the story would pause while the character would educate us on wi-fi, or Linux, or rfids or whatever it was. I know that his goal of educating his target audience on tech empowerment is a noble one, but it's so obvious that it takes away from the story a little. It reminded me of this episode I once saw of tween drama 'Degrassi' where the character goes to a party, experiments with a tiny bit of drugs, and disaster ensues. There is this moment at the end where she is confronted by her friends, looks directly into the camera and says something like 'I realize now that drugs are bad and it was wrong of me to try them.' Noble message, okay. But it smacked a little too much of 'now, the grown-ups will tell you what to do.' That may be educational, but it isn't 'literature.' It's a good story, and for the most part I think it succeeds as what it is. But it as not eclipsed Douglas Coupland's 'Microserfs' as my favourite 'coming of age, techie style' story.

MUSIC: New albums by Josh Woodward

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:46:00 +0000

The ever-reliable Josh Woodward has two new albums available for free download. Rock on.

MUSIC: Songs by Allison Crowe

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 05:31:00 +0000

I am back on Jamendo trolling for some new tunes for my swanky new video ipod, so expect to see some more music posts from me in the coming weeks. My first find was this wonderful album from Allison Crowe---kind of twangy folk-pop stuff (you know I like the pop!) and quite a decent find. If you liked my previous posts on Deborah Dalton and Jenny Gillespie, you'll like this girl.

VIDEO: Story of Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 01:26:00 +0000

This 20-minute documentary asks some thought-provoking questions on 'stuff.' The documentary is available for free download under a Creative Commons license. According to their website, over a million people have already watched.

EBOOK: Free French Textbook

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:51:00 +0000

Liberte is a complete and very polished-looking introductory French texbook by Gretchen Angelo. It is available under a Creative Commons license for free download---only as a PDF, unfortunately, but hey, it's a start :) Looks like a great resource!

E-BOOK: City at World's End by Edmond Hamilton

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 01:21:00 +0000

City at World's End is a quick, fun read from the 1950's. A small midwestern town gets accidentally catapulted through time to millions of years in the future, where the Earth is a dying, deserted world. The story follows them trying to rebuild their lives and survive what's happened to them. There are some definite 'product of its time' moments in there, especially as regards the characterization of some of the female characters, but all in all, it's a fun story and an easy one to get lost in. Enjoy!

E-BOOK: Award-Winning Books On-Line

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:36:00 +0000

This page has a list of links to available on-line versions of works by Newberry and Nobel prize winners.

INFO: Celebrity Money Habits

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 05:06:00 +0000

Bankrate.com has a great regular feature called Celebrity Fame and Fortune wherein they interview famous people about their money habits. They have an extensive archive of past interviews from celebrities such as Howie Mandel, Carrie Ann Inaba from Dancing with the Stars, Peter Frampton, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Barbara Taylor Bradford and dozens more. They are a great read! Check them out here.

ADMIN: Bookmarks Update

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 06:23:00 +0000

I'm phasing out the webpage with the blog post index and music index and all of that. Too cumbersome to maintain, and I have been feeling guilty for falling behind. The new thing, simpler, better, is del.icio.us. I have set up a thing there for all my fun free media stuff. Just use E-BOOKS or MUSIC as your starting point and clock away to browse by all music, all books, or any of the sub-categories which come up: tagging makes it easy. Books which are also mysteries? Songs which are also instrumental and come from Magnatune? Click away.

No more 'jot on paper, add to webpage, upload webpage' and all that nonsense. No more keeping straight the music page and the book page and the whatever page. Now, I can just click right from my browser, add it to the collection, and away we go. And all you tag fans will find it very easy to filter the content which most interests you. See? Everyone wins.

Media Booksmarks at Del.icio.us

MUSIC: Songs by Richard Savino

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:39:00 +0000

Found a great instrumental cd on Magnatune while doing some research on holiday songs for my French classes. I am normally not an 'ambient' type of music fan. When I do go for this sort of thing, it's usually fast-paced stuff like fiddle tunes. This is multi-instrument, but very much in that style. If you enjoyed my earlier post on the Dongas Tribe, you'll like this one!

Richard Savino, Murcia: Danza y Diferencias

Check out the first track. It's rockin'

E-BOOK: The Mouse in the Mountain by Norbert Davis

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 01:05:00 +0000

Since the demise of Black Mask, an on-line pulp fiction site, Manybooks.net seems to be picking up the slack and is sporting a growing pulp section. They have been featuring more of these titles on the homepage, and it's there I found The Mouse in the Mountain and was introduced to Doan and Carstairs. I found this introduction to the works of Norbert Davis which gives some valuable context into the pulp fiction market at the time (warning: sad ending!) It's too bad he wasn't born fifty years later, because hard-boiled humour in in these days. Doan is an affable is fairly laid back PI, and his partner, Carstairs, is a judgmental, irascible, pony-sized dog. Carstairs is right up there with the best animal companions in fiction, and his scenes are amusing. The memorable bits in this first installment involve Doan playing director to Carstairs to help a father control his unruly son.

The plot, such as it is, involves a bus trip in Mexico that ends in murder. There are some fairly stereotypical heiresses, colourful locals, obnoxious Americans and such, but the real star is Doan and his companion. Additionally, there is a bus driver who speaks delightful "school" English (correctly but in an over-the-top fashion) who steals his scenes, and the occasional period glimpses (Carstairs helps train army dogs for the 'war effort') add colour and character. I suppose the one drawback would be that mystery fans these days expect to be able to solve the case along with the detective. The ending, when it does come, comes out of nowhere in the "Actually, it was Professor Plumb! In the Library! With a candlestick!" type of vein.

I did love the dog though. The three novels in this series are definitely worth a read.

MISC: My Freeware Palm Device

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:02:00 +0000

I recently bought a used Alphasmart Dana on ebay, and have started playing around with freeware Palm applications. The main mecca on-line seems to be Freeware Palm, and most of the goodies I found were from that site. So, what have I been using? Program-wise, these are my pics:

dsScribbler (for freehand sketches/notes when needed)
Exercise (a rep timer/counter for the gym)
Metro (a subway map, info available for many cities)

And for games:

Blackjack (very basic version)
Checkers (still looking for a good version, the on I found is a little slow)
Gin Rummy (a wonderful implementation of te card game classic)
Grouper (quick-playing puzzle game)
Hearts (a very basic but serviceable implementation of another classic)
Marbles2 (like SameGame, this was the best version I found for BW screens)
Patience (many solitaire games in a collection)
Rally100 (Fun card game)
Star Mahjong (Rules not explained well on site, but a fun game once I figured it out)
Vexed (puzzle game, a bit frustrating sometimes!)
Word Wiggle (Boggle clone)

If you are interested in reading my review of the Dana, check out the Teleread Blog, where I have just started contributing. And leave me a comment if you think of any can't-miss Palm freeware I haven't mentioned!

RECIPE: Five Great Lunchbox Favs

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 18:34:00 +0000

I ave begun posting some of my favourite recipes to Recipe Zaar, a popular recipe sharing website. You can add your own recipes, browse and save other people's recipes, search and filter the large database to your criteria and in general just pick up new cooking ideas. It's my favourite of the recipe sharing websites, and I have found many neat recipes in its depths.

It does have its limitations. Advanced features such as multiple cookbooks come with a fee, the forum is not as active as I would like in the areas which interest me, and it takes only very specific recipe formats (so, many of my mix-and-match recipes would not be shareable). But it is overall a great cooking resource. I have shared about a dozen of my own most-used recipes, most of them lunch ones: I have food allergies, so packing my own lunch is necessary, and I like to take good food and make it feel special.

Here are my top five so far:

Red Lentil Thermos Soup: Grated vegetables add bulk, but minimal calories. Pre-grate the night before, and this soup can be ready to pack in your thermos within five minutes.

Couscous Onigiri: Do you like those fun shaped sushi balls, but lack the patience to make real sticky rice? Use couscous, and some cookie cutters, for the same effect.

Sweet Lunchbox Noodles: An easy dish to throw together with leftover spaghetti or fast-cooking ramen.

Choco-Nut Banana Spread: A cookbook find, suitable as a dip for fruit or crackers, or as a filling for a wrap or tortilla.

Single-Serve Cookies: Adapted from a cookbook called "Small-Batch Baking." Mine makes only two cookies (no tempting leftovers!) and uses only one bowl and 2 spoons.

PODCAST: Quirks and Quarks

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:51:00 +0000

Quirks and Quarks is a a weekly science show appearing on CBC Radio. It is concise, well-produced and very accessible to the average listener. It has long been one of my favourite podcasts, and there is an extensive downloadable archive of past shows available at their website. I highly recommend this one!

Here are some of my favourite past episodes:

The Perils of Preemies

Exorcizing Myths About Exercise

Milking the Benefits

The Autism Diaries

The Decline of the Autopsy

The Placebo Effect

Cure for Aging

Documenting the Dinosaur’s Demise

The Science of Dreaming

Why Athletes Choke

Recipe for a Mummy

Melting the Iceman

Chris Craft: My Life in Mission Control

The Red-Headed Gene

The Return of Thalidomide

The Limits to a Longer Life

ADMIN: Exciting announcement!

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:42:00 +0000

Hi everyone! Sorry again for the long hiatus. I had to move very suddenly, and between that asnd the start of Nanowrimo, it threw me a little. Anyway, I have some exciting news for you. This blog will be expanding its scope a little in the coming weeks. I continue to find great Creative Commons and public domain materials on the net, and will post those as I find them. But there is a ton of other great, and free, information available out there on social sharing sites and other public platforms. A number of you also said you wanted more editorial-type content from me. So, the blog will be expanding it's coverage to include not just the CC-and-free, but the cool-and-free as well: podcasts, cool websites, interesting blogs and items from social sharing sites on a variety of topics, such as youtube (video), recipezaar (recipes) and scribd (documents).

All psts will be tagged, as they are now, so you can quickly and easily filter the posts and find the material you are looking for. As always, I take suggestions for links and items worth posting, or blog carnivals and/or commuties I should get involved with. Ready for some great freebies? Stay tuned for my first podcast post...

MISC: My Open-Source Mac, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:24:00 +0000

To finish up my mac posts, the non-necessary but still fun stuff :) All of these are available for Unix and PC platforms too...

Tux Paint: Similar to Kid Pix. A fun little art program with sound effects, colouring pages, stamping tools etc. Extensible via add-ons---drop in your own stamp sets and starter pages, or download off the net from a growing user community.

Tux Racer: The most fun, bizarre little game ever. It's a racing game where Tux the Penguin basically slides down giant ice mountains on his tummy trying to collect little fish. Great graphics, fun and simple gameplay.

Enigma: A puzzle game. You roll this marble around trying to hit pairs of coloured bricks. Many, many levels are included, and more can be easily added. Beautiful graphics and some interesting game options.

MISC: My Open-Source Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:28:00 +0000

My last computer post for awhile, I promise :) Anyway, a quick round-up of the freeware/open source stuff I have installed on my shiny new Macbook :)

NeoOffice: An essential, imho. Runs pretty speedily for me, but my machine is brand-new, so perhaps that's a factor. Works well with my Word docs, and is handling basic page layout stuff without a problem. I wish you could directly launch a new spreadsheet from an icon though---the different modules do not have separate icons, and if you want to do anything but word process, you have to either open an existing file, or open a new document once the program (i.e. the Writer module) starts up.
Kompozer: A webpage editor similar to Dreamweaver or Front Page. I have not figured out how to use the site manager yet---I edit my few websites off-line and then transfer them manually, and I think the site manager is designed to let you edit pages directly on the web. Still, this is a very fully-featured and easy to use program. Open source really is a miracle of the modern age, that you can equip an entire computer for free like this :)
Page Packer: Make pocket-sized mini folded booklets using this really neat little app. You select from over 50 templates (calendar, address book, notepaper etc) and drag them onto a grid. It prints out your page, and you follow their guide to get it folded. You can also put your own documents (in PDF form) or images onto one of your mini-pages. I can see so many uses for this thing! Great little program.

MISC: Open-Source Software for Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 20:33:00 +0000

In honor of my shiny new Macbook, some open-source apps for the Mac. I am running smooth as can be with Firefox and NeoOffice, but am still looking for Mac replacements for MS Publisher (I make a lot of booklets for teaching) and Front Page. I suspect I might be able to tinker with Neo Office to get the job done, but there has to be a more elegant way...

EBOOK: Overclocked by Cory Doctorow

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:56:00 +0000

I have blogged about Cory Doctorow before, and was delighted to find his latest short story collection in print recently. It was a worthy buy. If you want to check it out, he has done his usual e-release on-line under a Creative Commons license, and you can download it in a variety of formats thanks to ManyBooks.net.

I found myself disagreeing with many of the Amazon.com reviews. I found the generally panned "I, Row-Boat" to be a charming and original idea, reminiscent of "Someone Comes to Town. Someone Leaves Town." It took me awhile to catch on to the concept of the concept of how humans work in the tale (and I do have a few questions, such as propagation of the species under such a model, which go unanswered). But I loved the idea that inanimate objects could develop consciousness, and there were two lines in particular (among them, the final of the story) that made it completely work for me.

Most of the Amazon reviewers in contrast loved "After the Siege" and I confess, I didn't get it. At all. The writing was vivid and lovely, but the concept never quite gelled in my mind, and I just didn't get it. Can't win 'em all, I guess :)

Anyway, it's a great little collection. If you do enjoy it, I humbly suggest you pick up the print version and show authors like this that Commons distribution works.

REVIEW: Open Office Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 17:11:00 +0000

I just bought a shiny new macbook, and after some rather clunky experimentation with the demo version of iWork it came with, I downloaded NeoOffice. And...so far, so good :) It seems a little more stable than Open Office was on a PC, and so far, I am enjoying it.

I think the problem I had on my PC was that I kept trying to run Office too, and the import capabilities bugged me a little. On this Mac, I do not have MS Office and am only using NeoOffice. So, no worrying about the imports :) The rare time I need to share files with my computer at work, it's mostly text-based anyway, and even Open Office on a PC never had problems with that.

Granted, the transition has not been perfect. Any file involving tables imported a little oddly, and most of these will need to be fixed at some point. But this was a good lesson to me in being realistic. Is it a problem if complex graphical layouts do not transfer perfectly between MS Office and Open Office? In theory, yes. But how often will I really want to do that? The last time I made a file with any sort of graphic, it was a birthday card, and I printed it on the spot, at home, and never even saved the file. 99% of the time, I work with plain text, and the 1% of the time I use graphics, I do it on personal stuff that doesn't really need sharing.

I'm sure the file import/export features are among the top priorities for ongoing tweaking, and the problem will fix itself over time. So, I'm not worried. It'll get fixed. For now, I just have to handle the graphics-heavy stuff at home, I guess, and accept that my tables will have to be tweaked a bit. On the plus, NeoOffice on a Mac seems much more stable then Open Office did on a PC. No crashes yet! And a fairly good user experience, too. A few of the preferences still seem a little clunky to access (there has to be an easier way to add to the Gallery!) But overall, I am happy and I think I will enjoy using NeoOffice on my shiny new toy :)

MUSIC: More from Josh Woodward

noreply@blogger.com (Ficbot) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:17:00 +0000

As a follow-up to my previous Josh Woodward post, I will be blogging the best of his two new albums. First up is 'Not Quite Connected.' My top picks:

Josh has both cd's available for free download by track or as a whole album zip file, and if you like the music, you can buy the album for the price of your choosing.

Each song has a helpful descriptive tag giving a suggested genre. I found these helpful. If you find a song you like, you can look for similar styles of song by matching the genre tag.

One tip for navigating his site, if you click on a song title, it will take you to a lyrics page where you can preview the song without leaving the page and then choose to download it.

Enjoy! And if you do like the album, support Woodward's alternative distribution methods by buying the CD. I bought his last one and really enjoy it. This is fun rock-acoustic stuff that's very radio-friendly.