When you hear the words “Clear Channel,” you probably don’t think “Indie.” But on Christmas night, Clear Channel’s Los Angeles affiliate KDL switched from a failing dance format to Indie 103-1: “Your Independent Radio Station.”

Take a look at these two hourly playlists, to get a grasp of the new format. It’s not college radio by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a more eclectic mix of music (e.g. Postal Service, Polyphonic Spree, Jeff Buckley, X) than any other commercial radio station in Southern California. And, even more shocking, the station will be running without on-air “personalities” or commercial interruptions for the next few weeks.

The switch seems distinctly out-of-character for “radio’s big bully”, known for its secretive payola schemes. Why the sudden interest in providing an outlet for new music?

In Los Angeles, the “alternative” market has long been dominated by Infinity Broadcasting’s KROQ. In the last few years, it’s evolved into a corporate rock nightmare without any competition. Without an adequate alternative to the non-stop stream of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park clones, many listeners simply turned off their radios.

One of the new taglines for Indie 103-1 is “bringing the alternative back to Los Angeles,” a direct jab at the new KROQ. By providing a more diverse station, Clear Channel will likely be able to profit off new bands that aren’t getting exposure from KROQ, while attracting KROQ’s alienated audience.

If you’re interested, I highly recommend reading Los Angeles Radio-Info, a message board for local radio insiders. They’re following the story closely, with tons of great commentary and speculation. It’s an interesting glimpse into the feud between radio’s two biggest conglomerates. If successful, Clear Channel’s “Indie” experiment may have surprising consequences across the nation’s radio landscape.

December 31, 2003: The Entercom-owned Seattle station “The End” switched to a similar format this week. It’ll be interesting to see how the ratings for both stations develop in the next few months.

An anonymous reader wrote in with some excellent insight into the situation, mentioning that Clear Channel is leasing the frequency from Spanish-radio giant Entravision in order to work around the FCC’s current regulations. I’ve posted the entire e-mail below.

January 1, 2004: You can view KDLD’s real-time playlists on Yes.net

January 4, 2004: Someone on the radio-info list found this mockup homepage of the Indie 103.1 website, which indicates they’re planning to stream the station. (Thanks, Boogah.)

January 7, 2004: Their site is live. A streaming radio feed was supposed to be added yesterday, but never went live.

March 30, 2004: I’m not affiliated with Indie 103.1, and I don’t know anyone that is! You can stop e-mailing me with song requests now, thanks.

Armin Meiwes, a computer technician in central Germany, liked to meet other men online. But instead of using Match.com or Friendster, he posted his personal ads on sites like “Cannibal Cafe,” “Guy Cannibals” and “Torturenet.” And instead of dinner and a movie, he preferred to slaughter and eat his dates.

Unlike other cannibals, Meiwes used the Internet to meet his (very willing) victims. So I went looking for his original message board postings, but the three sites he mentioned in his testimony have shut down in the year since his arrest. He also posted messages to a Usenet group called alt.sex.snuff.cannibalism, where several of his posts are archived by Google Groups.

The newsgroup, like many others, is so overwhelmed with spam that the active users started prefixing their posts with “ASSC” to separate out the noise. If you look around, you’ll find an active community of cannibal fetishists, with their own forms of fan fiction, creative writing, poetry, and the occasional “stab” at humor. Compared to this kind of creative output, Armin Meiwes’ posts are downright dull.

December 18, 2003: PETA is trying to convert him to vegetarianism.

Everyone’s been making a big deal about Berkeley Breathed’s new Opus comic, but the comic is completely unavailable online. So despite their magic DRM ink, I was able to scan in Sunday’s strip.

Some comics fans are upset about the removal of several long-running strips from local papers to make room for Opus, including Mary Worth, Prince Valiant, Herman, Marvin, Ziggy, and other desperately unfunny strips.

January 2, 2004: The Opus comics are available in a new archive. Here’s a backup archive.

April 6, 2004: I got a cease and desist from the Washington Post, and was forced to remove the Opus archive. I posted the PDF in the Opus archive directory.

February 27, 2006: The Opus comic is now published in digital form.

A couple weeks ago, I ordered a Japanese magazine called Bloggers Volume 1 from Amazon.co.jp. I just received my copy in the mail, and it’s even neater than it looks. The interviews with Ben and Mena Trott, Anil Dash, Howard Rheingold and Joi Ito are in full color, and there are in-depth reviews of Typepad, Blosxom, RSS readers, and more. Of course, I can’t understand a single word, which makes it even more exotic.

I scanned in the cover and the first six pages, which is an interview with Ben, Mena, and Anil. Enjoy.

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.)

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.

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.