MöBio (info in English) is the 7th instance of probably the best Czech psytrance festival. The date is 23rd to 25th May 2008, and the place is a children’s summer camp Tišina, near Kožlany and Rakovník (map), just as in past few years, and just as in past few years, there will be lots of other interesting things besides just a dancefloor with incredible, trance-inducing psychedelic music played incredibly loud on some incredible speakers. Anyway, if you’ll be in Czech republic at that time, visiting Prague or something, you won’t regret dropping by. 
And yeah, there will be another Boom Festival in Portugal this August, another “not just a party by far” place worth visiting. If you don’t know what to expect, you can read my report from Boom 2006. With a few friends from Výtvarný kroužek čtvereček, we’re hoping to arrange a kind of game there – it’s not yet approved (and far from finished) though, so keep your fingers crossed. And yeah, there should be another one at MöBio, so that’s also a reason to come – it will be in both Czech and English.
Beatless ambient music set ‘vitaminek’ download
After several years on the drawing board, this ambient music set has gotten its final form. Composed of birds’ tweeting, twinkling textures and warm, soothing pads, it’s intended to invoke silence.
UPDATE: Just when I began thinking about a proper cover, I encountered mandalas from starwheels.com, and the choice was obvious. But the important thing is, I even got a permission from the author, Aya. Thanks.
UPDATE 2: New beatless ambient set – kerray – synaecstatic
kerray – vitaminek ambient set (2007, 75:09, 120MB VBR MP3) tracklist
Feature request for Google Earth
Wouldn’t it be nice, if you could not only save places, but also bookmark your favorite content simply by marking it with a star, like in Google Reader and GMail? And what about sharing? Having a RSS feed of your shared places and items, no uploading hassles, all automatic, perhaps with some more social features, like those you’re most probably adding to Google Reader right now – statistics of most shared/starred items with global tagging…
The “Information Artifact” Game – Bios 2007
This year’s Bios party wasn’t (at least from the viewpoint of our psychedelic decorations crew Vytvarny Krouzek Ctverecek) as hectic and full of work as previous years, and so I used the time to prepare a slightly different kind of project.
The party was in the middle of beautiful woods, but most people tend to spend the whole day around the camp, drinking beer and socializing. Not that there’s something bad about it, I just thought they could like a change. So I prepared a game, a “treasure hunt”, like those played in summer camps for kids. The goal was to introduce a story, which would engage people a bit and give them a challenge, and take them for a walk. I also wanted the story to help with a proper set & setting for the night, so it’s in my favorite “psy-fi” (psychedelic fiction :) style.
Only a fragment of people went for the walk – I knew about 6 groups, but perhaps a few more went too. But this was expected, and I was curious whether someone would like the idea at all. The reactions were “OK” to “very good”, just one team complained that the “walk” was actually quite long (about 2 hours) and not trivial – however, that was the point, and it seems that I managed to strike the balance quite well – it wasn’t too easy, but it wasn’t hard either. Most of the game was about following colored-paper marks, and I was pleased when I was told that it was quite possible to use intuition to find the next mark.
The story itself was composed of two parts. First, there were messages and comments left by someone, who went ahead of the players. The second part was information, leaking from the “Information Artifact”, which advanced the story itself.
First comment was available in the camp, together with the key to first cypher, which was placed on a rock above the camp valley and contained first part of the actual story.
Those are the messages as you would meet them on the way. By the way, if anyone has photos from the game, please let me know.
Vim – next level in text editing
As someone who spends considerable time in front of a computer screen (or two), I knew that there were two groups of people, supporting two text editing systems – Vi/Vim and Emacs. The relations between these two is like the relation between Windows and Linux – both are considered superior by their supporters. I knew that both are supposed to take text editing, particularly for coders, to the next level in speed and possibilities, and that both are supposedly harder to learn, because most people are used to “classic” style of working with text using arrows and ctrl-arrows, shift for selecting, home/end, etc.
I also knew that this style of text editing is very limited – getting the cursor to the right place on a page full of text takes numerous arrow- and ctrl-arrow key presses, or requires you to grab the mouse. For a large group of computer users, this is no problem. However, if you’re using your computer for programming, and are interested in seriously boosting your productivity (not to mention other advantages, like being able to switch between platforms), everyone who’s made the jump will tell you that it’s worth it.
Internet Marketing Resources For Musicians And Labels (Draft)
This post is meant to provide a collection of resources and concepts and basic ideas about how the Internet can be used in music marketing. It is meant for musicians, producers, DJs and labels, hopefully without too many genre-specific things. However, the general ideas about Internet marketing mentioned and linked to in this article may be useful to people in other fields besides music too. Currently, it’s a draft, so if you encounter errors, or if you think we should expand on some sections, if you have any questions, or ideas, tips, links etc. which we didn’t mention, please tell us, or feel free to leave you’re note in the comments. If some of the points aren’t anything new for you, good – because there still seems to be a lot of artists and labels big and small, for whom most of this will be new. You don’t have to care about the bleeding edge of IT to be able to make use of the excellent (and often free) marketing opportunities of the Internet. However, this post is just for you if you do understand that there is a lot of potential in the Internet, but you could use some help finding out some inspiration and also practical tips about what can be done and how. We’ll offer you some general concepts of marketing on the Internet, and we’ll talk about how to make yourself present at the places where people could be looking for you and how to make the most of them. Read on…
Invitation to the Kruh festival
fullmoon electronic music festival | 29.6.-1.7.2007 | Ostrovec, Loc: 49°25’56.1″N,14°8’1.39″E Another festival invitation? As if there was nothing else to write about… well, don’t worry, other posts are coming :) This post itself is just a stub anyway, I’ll prepare more detailed info. However, get ready for this festival – it’s going to be big. http://www.last.fm/event/220344 UPDATE: The party is behind us. Everything went almost unexpectedly well, and all who took part in organizing this event can now bathe in the overwhelmingly positive feedback. Particularly Prenatal did a pretty good job of steering all the involved people so that things got done. A big thumbs up also goes to Quix for great sound and overall professionality of their work. We managed to attract probably the largest amount of people on a Czech psytrance party yet, and had also success in bringing in several groups of foreigners (which is still a relatively uncommon thing), who were then asking about future parties. There was also a lot of people who didn’t come because of psytrance, and ended up enjoying it immensel – which is quite funny, since the music wasn’t too good most of the time. But I may have a kind of “professional deformation” towards what good psytrance means… I’ll upload some pics and videos, for now only photos by others: : Alef, Kussanda, techno.cz, Fill, Rodrixs
After Bios
I’m probably not going to write much about the party. For me, it was everything I hoped it would be, and there are lots of (almost exclusively) positive reactions from other people. I didn’t participate in taking pictures or shooting vids this year, so I’ll just link to whatever I’ve seen passing through the forum… And oh, there’s another interesting event coming – check out the Kruh festival.
Collected by Perplex – http://www.psytrance.cz/clanek.php?ret=in&pos=1&id=1006
http://www.psytrance.cz/clanek.php?ret=in&pos=1&id=1007
Perplex – http://www.psytrance.cz/clanek.php?ret=in&pos=1&id=1005
Alef –http://www.hypno.cz/psy.html
Rodrixxs – http://rapidshare.com/files/32735672/BIOS_01.zip.html – http://rapidshare.com/files/32738620/BIOS_02.zip.html
Boti – http://vitos.tv/bios.zip
Dude – http://dude.rajce.idnes.cz/BIOS/
Kussanda – http://kussanda.rajce.idnes.cz/Bios_07/
Neuro – http://flickr.com/photos/8064739@N05/sets/72157600234340172/
Ambra/Hacecko – http://hacecko.rajce.idnes.cz/BIOS_O7/
Zahrada – http://www.mysticalwaves.com/photos07-3.htm
Youtube playlist – http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7A5BB877625B0095
Flight mode in Google Earth
Just a little tip for your next Google Earth visit. Besides the normal Google Earth navigation mode (Ctrl-T) there’s a “flight mode”, which can be turned on by pressing Ctrl-Alt-A or just Ctrl-A to start from current position.
You can control your plane using arrows, but usually you’ll need more precision. In flight simulator mode, when you click the left mouse button, your mouse cursor will take the shape of a cross, and every mouse movement now controls the plane. Another left click will switch the control mode off – the cursor will be an arrow again.
It takes a while to get hold of the controls, because even with the mouse everything is really sensitive, and you have to count with certain inertia. Basically, first you’ll want to make your plane fly straight. Using Ctrl-A to start from a flat angle, and then levelling the plane using just up and down arrows is a safe way to start, although in order not to loose height you might also want to increase throttle (using Page Up), close flaps (using Shift-F), and retract landing gear (using G). You can then use Ctrl and arrows to just look around instead of changing direction.
Use Ctrl-H to reach the complete help for GE flight simulator. There you can find more help and all the keyboard shortcuts. Enjoy!
UPDATE: With the release of Google Earth browser plugin, more interesting “simulators” are available – for example, you can visit http://www.paraglidingearth.com/ for a worldwide directory of paragliding sites, and use Google Earth as a paragliding simulator by clicking on “Fly this site”!
Another interesting use of the GE browser plugin, not a simulator, but a rather interesting visualization of various statistics, can be found at http://www.earthatlas.info/
Need more help with Google Earth? Visit Video tutorials for Google Earth at Google Earth Blog or Google Earth Basics page
Evaluation of ‘Influence of Web 2.0 on Business’
The evaluation of my Senior Project (Influence of Web 2.0 on Business) has arrived some time ago, and although I’ve received a C+, the evaluation mentions its because of finishing half a year after the deadline. On the other hand, I believe it was worth it -the paper may not be perfect, but the reviewer obviously liked it :)
Mr. Matysek chose to do his final paper on “The Influence of the Internet on the Business Community”. His topic examined how the Internet has changed the landscape of business and what current trends seem to be indicated for the future. A major focus of the paper discussed how the Internet has grown in its use as a marketing tool and the future growth expected in this area. The sources in support of his topic were gathered from current literature and the internet and were documented appropriately throughout her presentation. He included several supportive grafts and charts which nicely depicted certain elements of the presentation. The final presentation reflected a carefully written presentation that was not only informative but also well organized and developed. He gave good examples and illustrations, describing the history of current practices and what circumstances exist today that have brought about the proposed changes. Overall, he provided a good objective analysis the strength and potential of the internet and its influence on the business community. The major deterrent was the lateness in which it was submitted.