Post updated, because they ARE SHOWING THEM AGAIN! It doesn’t end there, because on May 10th at May 10th, 2020 – 11:00PM JST / 4:00PM CEST / 10:00AM EDT / 7:00AM PDT they will post another one: LIVE AT WEMBLEY – ONLINE LIVE. Recorded at THE SSE ARENA, WEMBLEY on April 2nd, 2016, this will be another streamed-for-free live concert available to watch for 24 hours only.
BabyMetal just posted (15 hours ago as I write this) their Live at Tokyo Dome – BLACK NIGHT and LIVE AT TOKYO DOME – RED NIGHT concerts, in their entirety, for everyone trapped at home around the world to enjoy! Part of their Stay Home! Stay Metal! project, this was recorded live over two nights in 2016, and is being streamed for this extremely brief period (about one day; the streaming schedule is 8:00 PM (JST) April 11th – 7:00PM (JST) April 12th, 2020, so you still have about 8 hours to enjoy it before it evaporates). The two shows had completely different setlists, so between them you get about 3 full hours worth of BabyMetal goodness! I hope you manage to find this wonderful gift before it is no longer available, and enjoy it as much as I am.
Thanks to COVID-19, many of us are trapped at home for the next month or 3, and are looking for a productive way to spend our time or keep the kids occupied. What better way than learning new skills in something you are really interested in doing while spending no money for the training? Pluralsite is one of several companies offering such training, in their case for any kind of computer skill set you can imagine. For some of us that means training in a wide range of IT jobs that you can do remotely, which could mean additional income during the current crises. Then there are things like video game creation, 3D modeling, and programming, all across a range of platforms, that can grab the imagination of anyone who wants to become truly creative. You don’t need to give them a credit card to sign up for the free courses, just an email address, but you only have until the end of April to take the classes; come May 1st it will go back to costing money to get access to them.
Thanks to the folks at Games from Scratch for the heads up on this opportunity. I am including their YouTube video on the Pluralsite offering, where they go into some detail about what you will actually have access to there. They also mention several of the other training opportunities, such as 3 months of free classes on every aspect of making games for the Unity Game Engine with free courses, projects and tutorials to get you creating with style.
Yoko Kanno is one of the most amazing composers and band leaders ever, and it is always a treat to discover someone new singing her praises by playing her music (and yes, I do mean that literally). Back in 2009 a band called Platina Jazz got together to create covers of the best Jazz music in Anime, so I figure at least half of their music has to be created by her. Let me show off a few of their tunes so you can get an idea of who they are.
Starting off with the single most recognizable tune from Anime Jazz, Yoko Kanno’s TANK:
Then there is Inner Universe from Ghost In The Shell : Stand Alone Complex, another track composed and originally preformed by Yoko Kanno!
And another killer classic from Cowboy Bebop, Knock A Little Harder:
If you don’t already know the questions this anime answered 30 years ago and continues to answer today, this video will explain it to you. This exploration of the Ghost In The Shell universe was created by Beyond Ghibli, and he has many more where this came from.
Ben Hamm had a cat problem, which he solved using AI. This was his presentation of the project from Ignite Seattle, and thanks to the team at i-programmer for the heads up on this.
You can take a free online course in Asteroid Defense 101 courtesy of the Planetary Society. It is one of the first in a series of courses they will be offering, with this one taught by Bruce Betts, author and Planetary Scientist. The course is free, and presented on line.
It has been a while since I featured her here, but Tessa Violet has come up with a couple of new world class songs and their associated music vodeos lately, so it is more than time to do it again. The first is her latest, I Like (the idea of) You, an absolutely hypnotic tune and video. The second is Bad Ideas from last November, another tasty little song. Enjoy!
The Sweet Life Society is an ElectroSwing band out of Italy who have done a number of fun songs, I figured I would share a few of them. The first is 2012’s My Sound, which is an effervesant tune that keeps bubbling up into your head when you least expect it, and it may even be an original tune. That would be unusual, since most ElectroSwing songs start off being a classic Swing tune which then gets sampled and remixed. The second song is 2014’s Prima di ogni prima, probably also original and definately infectuous. To finish it off we have their 2017 song Hard On; that album took a sharp turn away from ElectroSwing and went face first into Ska. Enjoy!
