Metafilter pointed me to the interesting Let Me Sing It For You speech synthesis toy, which converts a typed sentence into sound samples from popular songs. The sample list is far from complete, so I tested some of the most common words in the English language with it. All the words that I found are below. The list is very incomplete, so feel free to fill in any missing words you’ve found in the comments. (Preferably at least ten at a time.)

Continue reading “Let Me Sing It For You” →

Jesper interviewed me for his excellent Under the Iron interview series, along with two new interviews with Feedster’s Scott Johnson, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, and the always great Jeffrey Zeldman. Not sure how I ended up in such great company, but it’s flattering.

In other self-publicity news, I mentioned in the sidebar that an article/interview about Upcoming.org was in the New York Times last week. Strangely, that was my fourth appearance in the NYT this year, all for completely different reasons. The others were January 18 (Mickey Mouse/Eldred), January 30 (Lost Friends), and May 19 (Star Wars Kid). Can you still be considered a media whore if they contact you?

Anton Maiden represented the ultimate in geek DIY culture. Using MIDI files of Iron Maiden songs cribbed off the Internet and a microphone plugged into his PC, 19-year-old Anton Gustafsson created energetic and excitable versions of his favorite band from his home in Sweden. His unusual recordings became a cult hit in the United States, mostly with college radio DJs and fans of “outsider music.”

Anton is dead at the age of 23, after being reported missing for over a week. His homepage remains unchanged, though this article has more information. If you can confirm these reports, e-mail or IM me. His death is confirmed (thanks Tomas), and it appears to be suicide.

High-quality MP3s of the Anton album (Allmusic.com review) are available, thanks to Dan H. Warning: negative comments about Anton’s music will be deleted.

The following 14-minute masterpiece is the pilot for “Kids Show,” a deranged version of Sesame Street developed by comedy writers Vernon Chatman and John Lee for USA Networks, but recently sold to MTV for a six-episode contract. The quality of this video isn’t very good, but it doesn’t matter. (Warning: Not for the easily offended.)

Watch the video: Windows Media, 24MB (mirror)

The Smoking Gun unmasked the name of the Cubs fan that interfered with a foul ball in Tuesday night’s Cubs game, and the Chicago Sun-Times printed far more information. The entire world now knows his name, age, employer, Little League team, and neighborhood. They also published a neighbor’s name, Ron Cohen, which exposes the fan’s home address, as well. A quick glance in Usenet shows that he has a long posting history, so we even know his likes and dislikes. (Update: It’s not the same Steve Bartman… Thanks, Jon.)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t he still considered a private person? And doesn’t the Chicago Sun-Times article tangibly endanger his life? I’d love to hear from someone familiar with privacy law. Is he considered a limited public figure by appearing in a public place and trying to catch a foul ball? I’d say he has a decent case against the Smoking Gun and the Sun-Times for negligence.

At any rate, he’s rapidly turning into the net’s newest celebrity. The Photoshop remixes are coming fast and furious… I’ve compiled a list of them below. (My personal favorite.)

Update: DPS notes that SteveBartman.com/org/net domains have all been registered in the last few hours.

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Paypal has frozen the account of micropayment service BitPass. Scott McCloud, one of their advisors and its most prominent user, stated that Bitpass was given seven days to provide Paypal evidence that their service isn’t a violation of the U.S. Patriot Act. Is this because Paypal is genuinely concerned that Bitpass could be used for money laundering, or are they interested in shutting down a potential competitor?

Scott reported this information at this O’Reilly’s Foo Camp over the weekend, and doesn’t appear to have hit the web anywhere yet. Please let me know if you find any more information about this story.

Update: Abe Burmeister spoke to Bitpass and confirms the report.

October 14, 2003: Paypal employee Patrick Breitenbach posted a comment on my site, stating that Paypal reactivated the Bitpass account this morning. Patrick said that Paypal didn’t intend to disrupt payment process, and claimed the decision to suspend their account was unrelated to competitive issues. Though the End of Free points out that their Senior Manager for Biz Dev is speaking a micropayments conference next month.

I added a miniblog to my site, which will be a list of interesting links as I find them. Subscribe to the RSS feed, if you like. If you like this blogging style, Cameron posted many other great examples.

As if Valve Software wasn’t already suffering enough from the leaked Half-Life 2 source code and today’s announcement of an expected April 2004 release date, Neowin broke the news that a fully-playable beta release was leaked today. It was apparently spread via IRC channels, and will likely soon hit Usenet and the rest of the Net. There are several screenshots of in-game play available.

October 8, 2003: The leaked release is functional, but barely. You have to load maps manually from the console (e.g. ‘map e3_bugbait’), and most maps don’t load at all. The E3 tech demo maps appear entirely scripted, with enemies moving into predefined positions and otherwise ignoring you completely. This indicates that either the AI code is incomplete or overridden for purposes of the E3 demo. A 15-minute movie of in-game play shows that several other maps can be played, but it’s not immediately obvious how they were able to load them. I expect that a guide to tweaking the alpha release will be published soon.

October 9, 2003: Here’s a very brief guide to getting the game to run. (Basically, just double-click each map in the /hl2/maps directory.)

My new site has launched! Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar, where anyone can add the music/sports/arts/film/drama events they’re going to, find out who’s going to the same events, and browse the event listings of other people with similar tastes. After adding events to your list, you can use the generated RSS feeds to list them on your own weblog. By adding people to your friends list, you can track your friend’s events as they add them (also available via RSS).

Along with a group of about 20 friends, I’ve been using the site to manage my concerts and find new concerts for the last couple weeks. The feedback has been very positive… Sign up, add an event or two, and let me know what you think!

And if you’re in the Los Angeles area, come out tonight for drinks to celebrate.

Update: Matt posted a glowing review, and Andre talks about why Upcoming is not Friendster. Also: Many to Many.

As Hurricane Isabel slams the North Carolina coast, you can keep an eye on the storm via several webcams online. Here are all the active webcams in North Carolina I’ve found. Add more in the comments! (Inspired by Mat’s entry.)

Continue reading “Hurricane Isabel Webcams” →