Time-Lapse Shows Sandy Battering NYC and the Lights Going Out

http://www.petapixel.com/2012/10/31/time-lapse-shows-hurricane-sandy-battering-nyc-and-the-lights-going-out/

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Hawkwind, Arthur Brown and more for HRH Prog festival

Classic Rock's sister title Prog Magazine is proud to present a new boutique event, the HRH Prog Festival, which will take place at the Magna Science Adventure, Rotherham, on April 6-7 2013.

It's being run by Chic Festivals, the team behind acclaimed weekend events Hard Rock Hell and Hammerfest, plus the annual week-long HRH: Road Trip to Ibiza.

The event aims to offer an interactive experience using the Magna Science Adventure's unique setting, while offering the broadest possible range of progressive music.

Already confirmed are Hawkwind, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, The Enid, Caravan, Mostly Autumn, TesseracT, Aeon Zen, Enochian Theory, Order of Voices and Antlered Man for the inaugural event – with many more to follow.

Chic Festivals CEO Jonni Davis says: "We have always felt that the UK market was missing a dedicated prog festival, and as huge fans we wanted to put on something that honoured the world of prog, both old and new.

"We needed a special location to house this style of event. The Magna Science Adventure, a renovated steel foundry will different interactive zones, is the perfect setting for a new experience."

More announcements will follow at www.hrhprog.com.

10 reasons Led Zeppelin will never reunite

Acclaim: Led Zeppelin in 2007

The surviving members of Led Zeppelin gathered yesterday for the first time since their acclaimed reunion show in 2007 – and offered ten reasons why they'll never do it again.

Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones played a one-off concert that drew over 20 million ticket applications, although only 12,000 people saw the performance with Jason Bonham playing drums in place of his late dad John.

The three founding members answered questions at a press conference to mark the upcoming release of Celebration Day, the movie recorded on that night in London's O2 Arena.

And in the question-and-answer sessions they offered ten good reason why no one will ever see Led Zeppelin live again. See below for a clip from Celebration Day and a full transcript of the press conference.

1. It was a relief to get through the reunion show.

Robert Plant: "It's a terrible thing to say, but in truth, the idea of actually being where I am now in my lifetime, to get back in the middle of that music, was a spectacular experience. I was approaching it from a different angle, so to get through it and come out the other side was something not much short of miraculous, I think. But great fun."

Jimmy Page: "I remember walking up the steps onto the stage, and then the moment right at the very end of it. The rest of it had passed very, very quickly, actually, but I knew, and the lasting memory of it was that I knew we did what we intended to do: go out there, stand up and be counted."

John Paul Jones: "My lasting memory: getting through it all. It was pretty good. It worked out really well, but it was a relief at the end of it."

2. It's part of their past.

Plant: "We don't see each other too often, but no sooner do we start talking than some little innuendo creeps in. Some old memory pops up, and you go 'Whoa, that's one to forget!' There's lot of those things drifting around."

3. Stairway to Heaven doesn't mean what it used to mean.

Plant: "I struggle with some of the lyrics. The musicality and the construction of it is peerless. But maybe I didn't feel quite the same about the lyrics later on in life, as I got further down the road. Maybe I'm still trying to work out what I was talking about… every other fucker is!"

4. The passage of time doesn't mean much.

Jones: "Five years is five minutes in Led Zeppelin time."

5. They didn't know how to rehearse without new material.

Plant: "We didn't have any material, did we?"

Page: "Well, not really, we were just doing whatever. But it was just the intensity of what was going on: the communion, if you like, of the four of us. It was very intense, right from the start."

6. You just can't be Led Zeppelin without John Bonham.

Jones: "Jason was great – all the songs we played throughout the Zeppelin years, we would end songs in a different way to accommodate the next song. We would play something and say, 'Well, how does this one end?' We'd all look at Jason, and Jason would go, 'Well, in 1971, you did this, and in 1973, you went into this…' He had this encyclopaedic knowledge of everything, and it was just a real compliment."

Plant: "He's got some great bootlegs. Some great Beatles stuff too. He's a mine of information. I don't know which band he's going to be in next – but he's really got it down."

7. It was more fun in those days.

Page: "We weren't having to follow up a single or any of this stuff. We were there to make music. It was a much easier process – and more positive for musicians."

8. Nobody thought about reunions.

Plant: "The people we met along the way were brigands to some degree. Everybody was just having a great time, and the concept of looking back, and asking about what you said about, 'Don't you think you could do it again?' There was no thought about 'What do you think about it now?'"

9. They look back on their inspirations differently.

Page: "The very early blues and rockabilly, I can still put on and really get excited by it, now, still. Except – along the way, I think, each and every one of us, our tastes became more eclectic across the board. But it was that music that I heard when I was 12 or 13 that really seduced me. And it did a good job of seducing me."

Plant: "So many more doors have opened in the last 40 years to access singers like King Solomon Hill, and some fantastic guys from the delta who maybe only cut four or five sides. But they shaped so much for other people. Willie Brown – who Robert Johnson sings about in Cross Road Blues – I think he cut five or six sides, and he was great . But everybody was out to play all sorts of different kinds of music along with the blues. Robert Johnson used to play all sorts of stuff, including songs of the day. To me, it's a home of the heart. I really still feel moved by what their lives and their worlds and their aspirations might have been. Like we do, they came from another time. We can't come from another time, really now."

10. The journey was over.

Plant: "We just hugged each other and went: 'Pffft'. There was a real feeling of camaraderie and, actually, successful adventure, really. As Jimmy was saying, it was nuts that we didn't do any warm-up gigs or anything like that."

Page: "There was a massive party that went on afterwards. There were lot of celebrities there. They must have had a great party while we disappeared off into the evening."

Next page: Press conference transcript

Supercomputer Genius Watson Is Headed for the Cloud [Supercomputers]

Watson, the Jeopardy-winning supercomputer developed by IBM, could become a cloud-based service that people can consult on a wide range of issues, the company announced last week. "Watson is going to be an advisor and an assistant to all kinds of professional decision-makers, starting in healthcare and then moving beyond. We're already looking at a role for Watson in financial services and in other applications," says John Gordon, Watson Solutions Marketing Manager at IBM in New York. More »

This Tiny Telescope Implant Gives Eyesight to the Blind [Monster Machines]

Getting old isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sure, you get a hefty discount at the Country Kitchen Buffet. But you also suffer from stuff like age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a retinal disease that afflicts more than 10 million people a year in the US alone. There's hope for the eyes of America's elderly, though: A new pea-sized ocular implant can restore vision to the those who have lost it. More »

Disk Falcon is a nice looking disk analysis app for Windows 8

There are probably a dozen or so free disk analysis tools available for the Windows operating system. These programs display a visual representation of the used disk space on a hard drive or a selected folder, giving users options to find out which programs and files are using most of the hard drive space.

What's so special about Disk Falcon that it needs to be reviewed here on this blog? The main reason is that it is the first app for Windows 8 that visualizes the disk space usage of folders or hard drives. As you know, Windows RT users can't install desktop programs at all, and even x86-based Windows 8 users may find an app useful that is highlighting the biggest files on their drives.

The first thing that you need to do after installation is pick a folder or drive that you want to analyze. Some reviewers of the app noticed that the data gathering part is rather slow, and that they'd recommend to only select folders and not whole drives for analysis.

The program was reasonably fast on a test system with a 160 Gigabyte Solid State Drive. It took a couple of minutes tops before all folders of the drive were processed.

Disk Falcon displays the data in a pie chart by default, which you can change to a bar, file type or age-specific display using the top menu buttons. Both the pie chart and bar display allow you to navigate through the structure, to look closer at specific folders of interest.The right sidebar displays color coded folders, their total size on the disk and percentage values.

The app lacks options to delete or move data right from within its interface. Considering that it displays in full screen, it is less usable than desktop programs that offer similar functionality. Regardless of that, it is the first app of its kind for Windows 8 and therefor the only option for Windows RT users right now to analyze the disk space of their system. (via Dottech)

Skype for Windows 5.11 beta released: Messenger, Facebook integration | LiveSide.net

http://www.liveside.net/2012/09/13/skype-for-windows-5-11-beta-released-messenger-facebook-integration/

 

Skype for Windows 5.11 beta released: Messenger, Facebook integration

Sep 13, 2012 11:21 am by Kip Kniskern | 11 Comments

A new beta version of Skype for Windows has been released today, according to a blog post on the Skype "Garage" blog.  It looks like we're beginning to see Windows Live Messenger and Skype come together, as the beta has support for sending and receiving messages to WLM, along with the ability to log in with your Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live ID):

• Sharing Instant Messages with friends with Messenger You can now sign in with your Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live ID), and see presence as well as send and receive IM messages from your friends who are using Messenger, Xbox, Hotmail or Outlook.com.
• Improved Facebook integration You can now sign in directly with your Facebook account log in, without needing to first create a Skype account.
• Support for 6 new languages We are excited to support our growing community around the world with new localized versions of Skype in Thai, Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, Catalan and Slovak, bringing the total languages Skype supports to 38.

The new beta version comes with more improvements to clean up the look, make it work better with Facebook and WLM, and offering a way to save telemetry information to help Skype improve the quality of their product:

• Sign in with a Microsoft or Facebook account.You can now sign into Skype directly using a Microsoft or Facebook account, without having to first create a Skype account, making it easier to connect with friends on Skype without needing to setup a new Skype account.
• Link Microsoft and Facebook accounts to a Skype account. If you sign in with a Microsoft or Facebook account you will be offered the option to link your Skype account. If you choose the link option then Skype will display a combined list of friends. This is an area we are still working through so please let us know about your experience.
• Updated visual design.We have refreshed and flattened the Skype UI with a simpler and less cluttered look.
• Removal of the online user count.We have removed the online user counter at the bottom of your Skype Contacts list to unclutter the UI and make more space for your friends within the contacts list.
• Display previously created profile pictures.When you change your profile picture, we will now show you all of your previous Skype profile pictures so you don't have to look through old files if you want to use a previous image.
• Improved telemetry.We are constantly looking for ways to improve the quality of our product. To that end we are adding additional "opt-in" telemetry reports for users who choose this option: "Tools>> Options>>Advanced>>Tick "Help improve Skype…" The reports may contain your Skype ID and or Microsoft Account ID but we will not use it to identify you or contact you.

You can download and install Skype 5.11 beta for Windows here.  Are you using Skype?  Will you consider switching from using Windows Live Messenger to Skype now that you can IM with your Messenger friends?  Do you even use IM anymore?  Let us know in the comments

Neil Peart on introverts, learning to improvise, and why people should be nicer to one another - The Interview - Macleans.ca

http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/08/13/on-introverts-learning-to-improvise-and-why-people-should-be-nicer-to-one-another/

 

Neil Peart on introverts, learning to improvise, and why people should be nicer to one another

Rush's drummer and lyricist talks to Mike Doherty

by Mike Doherty on Monday, August 13, 2012 11:10am -

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

Rush's 20th studio release, Clockwork Angels, hit No. 1 in Canada in June—not bad for a steampunk, progressive rock concept album. Its story, about a young man who flees a land designed to function in perfect mechanical order, reflects the philosophy of drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. Now living in Santa Monica with his wife and daughter, the native of St. Catharines, Ont., is preparing with his long-time bandmates, bassist-singer Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson for a concert tour that starts next month. At a Toronto rehearsal studio, he granted a rare interview about musical integrity, freedom and his fight to escape precision.

Q: Thirty-eight years ago you joined Rush, and the next day you went shopping for instruments for your first tour. What are your memories of that time?

A: I remember all of us riding in the truck down to Long & McQuade [a music store in Toronto]. What a young musician's dream, to say, "Look at those chrome drums. Look at that 22-inch ride cymbal. I'll have those." It was one of those unparalleled exciting days of your life.

Q: Did you feel you were embarking on a great, lifelong journey?

A: No, nothing like that. When I was young, my ambitions were very modest. I thought, "If only I could play at the battle of the bands at the Y, that would be the culmination of existence!" And then the roller rink, and you work your way up branch by branch. Whereas if you're [thinking], "I want to be a rock star"—those kind of people just want to know how they can start at the top, and they're doomed not even to get to the bottom.

Q: That said, the hero of Clockwork Angels, called Owen Hardy in the novelization [by friend and science fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson, to be published in September], says, "I can't stop thinking big."

A: Ah, the classic dreamer, and one of the lovely distinctions that Kevin and I wove over the character with reflection to our own pasts. When I was in the band J.R. Flood in St. Catharines, where we were doing pretty well, I said to my bandmates, "Let's go to London [England]." I did, on my own, but it surprises me to this day that no one wanted to go with me. I went hungry and wasn't finding fame and fortune as quickly as I'd fantasized, but there was nothing daunting to me at the time. Like Owen, I did stumble into things, and a trail of events that could not have happened otherwise in one sense led me toward the person I am today. I lived away from home for the first time; I got a real job and proved myself in a workday situation, and thus I was never afraid anymore. As crises came up later on—"Oh, we have to compromise, and the record company wants to do this," I'd be like, "No, I don't have to."

Q: It sounds ideal—having had such a long career without ever needing to compromise.

A: Well, it's an unending and awful battle, because sometimes you're up against everybody in the whole world—even your friends and family are saying, "You need a single." You feel sometimes incredibly alone. When we first got into the professional music business and saw how calculated people were, we called that "the sickness." We grew up in the '60s where music was for music's sake. To us it was pure, and dedicated to getting better, and all of the good ambitions that later became subsumed in the "progressive" moniker.

Q: It seems as though now, with your full-length concept album, Clockwork Angels, you're swimming against the musical tide.

A: Yeah, but it grew from the bottom up. The reverse is how we worked in the '70s: I would think of a grand plan and then build the pieces to fit it. This started as a simple [idea]—the steampunk image and aesthetic I liked, I suggested to the guys as the basis for some kind of extended work. It built up to [the album] piece by piece by organic expansion. All the music was created by Geddy and Alex jamming in the studio, and many of the lyrics were just extemporized over email. There's so much life experience in this story—it's not just a far-blown fantasy. Wish Them Well [offers] a very mature response to the world that it took me a long time to learn. In a lot of our early stuff, my lyrical inspiration was anger, for sure. [laughs] There's still a lot I'm angry about, a lot of human behaviour that's appalling and despicable, but you choose what you can fight against. I always thought if I could just put something in words perfectly enough, people would get the idea and it would change things. That's a harmless conceit. With people too, you constantly think, "If I'm nice to people and treat them well, they'll appreciate it and behave better." They won't, but it's still not a bad way to live.

• Read our list of Rush's six best concept songs

Q: You've mentioned being influenced by Voltaire's Candide and John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor—both humorous works. The album's lyrics, however, are rather dark.

A: They have to be. People don't realize the limitations of 200 words, and the way they get chiselled down into a song that has to be sung. I love jokes as much as anyone, but I don't want to hear my snail jokes [he's collected 16 so far] every day. But I might want to hear a good song every day. We're just about to film comedy clips like those we used on the last few tours, and of course we necessarily have to ramp them up every time into more ambitious things. To me, the highest expression of life is art with jokes. It's very rarified, very difficult to accomplish if you want to be more than just funny, and more than just jokes about human gaseousness.

Q: Is there a link between writing about a land that's meant to function like clockwork and your goal to become a more spontaneous drummer?

A: It's absolutely coincidental. I have been on that campaign for four or five years. [In the past], my ambition was not a humble one, to try to play with superhuman perfection in the studio and then reproduce that every night. Once I had defined myself as a compositional drummer, I thought, "Well, I want to be an improvisational drummer." I think in the recorded drum parts on this album, you can sense the excitement and danger: "This guy never played that before, and he just barely made it." I'm going to cut myself completely loose this tour; I'd always composed and choreographed a tour solo and then improvised within that framework, and this time, I'm throwing that out.

Q: Are you afraid of disrupting generations of air drummers who've memorized the classics?

A: The old stuff will remain. A song like Tom Sawyer I don't need to change. It's always hard; it's always satisfying. Why mess with it? And I play some of those songs now so much better than I did then, because I was approximating a style and a feel that now I understand.

Q: Rush received a Governor General's Performing Arts Award in May. What was it about giving an acceptance speech that made you nervous? After all, you play for several thousand people night after night.

A: I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums. Standing in front of a microphone where every word or every slip that you make, especially in these times, is with you forever—you want to say the right thing. I fell into having to extemporize, and it came okay because of tools I've learned. I said [to myself], "Remember [to mention] mom and dad."

Q: You have a reputation for being a private person, but in your blog posts and memoirs, you're quite forthcoming. In some ways you're the most open member of the band.

A: It is true, but I'm less comfortable in a gregarious social situation, and you can be introverted and still share everything. It just means that you're guarded. Certainly there is a line that seems perfectly clear to me about what's to be shared and what isn't, but it's not always so clear to others. Extroverts never understand introverts, and it was like that in school days. I read recently that all of us can be defined in adult life by the way others perceived us in high school. I know [people] who had the popular, good-looking path in high school; they tend not to do so well. It was a little bit too easy for them, where for those of us who struggled in every sense, perhaps our determination and self-reliance and discipline were reinforced by that.

Q: Clockwork Angels deals with concepts of fate, circumstance, and free will, which you've been writing about throughout your career. What are your thoughts on these issues now?

A: I remain the optimist: you just do your best and hope for the best. But it's an evolving state of mind. I still totally believe in individual rights and individual responsibility and in choosing to do good. On the liberal side of things, they go to an extreme of how people need to be led, and they can't handle freedom. Pure libertarianism believes that people will be generous and help each other. Well, they won't. I wish it were so, and I live that way. I help panhandlers, but other people are, "Oh look at that—why doesn't he get a job?" While I believe in all that freedom, I also believe that no one should suffer needlessly. A realization I had lately: it is impossible to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and be a Republican. It's philosophically absolutely opposed—if they could only think about what they were saying for a minute. That's when you get caught up in the webs of what people call themselves and how they behave. You just become adaptable and try to lead a good life in ways that make sense, regardless. Because I know at the end of it, if I'm going to meet Jesus or Allah or Buddha, I'm going to be all right.

Fill Disc Scratches with Peanut Butter [Video]

If you're trying to watch a DVD with lots of light scratches you can usually skip the skips by taking the DVD out of the player with peanut butter. More »

This Is the Most Expensive Penny in the Universe [Space]

 

This is the most expensive penny in the Universe. It's now on Mars, after an exciting $2.5 billion ride. Previously, the most expensive Lincoln penny in history was a 1943 copper-alloy cent that was sold for $1.7 million in a 1996 auction. That's peanuts compared to the cost of putting this coin up there, however. More »