A short piece of audio of the Discovery landing, which took place in June of 2008. Just one of a large collection of interesting sound files you can access from Hark Dot Com.
Provided I can get this player properly embedded, of course… should be just above this text.
Bet you didn’t know Psy’s world wide surprise hit Gangnam Style had a parallel recording, called Oppa Is Just My Style. It features the actress/singer Hyuna, who was also in his video, just like he is in hers of this same song. If you are a fan of energetic dancing, you should check out the rest of Psy’s videos; the man is an absolute maniac on the dance floor, at least in the majority of his music videos. My favorite parody is still Klingon Style, of course. The second video was one he put together to honor the Korean competitors for this years Olympics, and it is both kick ass and shows you a completely different side of his musical talents. I wanted to add a third MV of his here, We Are The One, but could not find the original studio video version on line to embed. They are running it several times this week as part of the Psy Music Block on M-Net, so you still have a chance to see it. BTW, Psy is the primary judge on Superstar K4 so expect lots of aspiring artists there to do versions of Gangnam Style. Another more serious song you can watch online but which I could not embed is Urbanite, it is quite nicely done.
It started out with Starship Sofa, a wonderful podcast that had both a news and a Radio Play segment. Later they added Tales to Terrify, with audio stories for the horror fans. They have now launched District of Wonders, which includes both of the aforementioned series as well as two new ones: Protecting Project Pulp with some wonderful gold and silver age SF and Fantasy stories from the pulp magazines, and Crime City Central, which is the same thing from the True Crime type pulps. Whether you prefer the individual sites or the aggregate collection, these are some classic and world class stories you will really want to hear for yourself. And if you like those, don’t forget to check out Holodeck Workshops if you are one of the aspiring writers out there. Thanks to SF Signal for the heads up on this one.
Jonathan Coulton writes and performs some truly excellent science fiction music, including the theme song to John Scalzi’s new book, Redshirts. Scalzi liked it so much, he did his own cover of it, on a Ukelele no less. And then he recently interviewed Coulton on his Tor Press blog/podcast segment, which you should read, then go back and listen to. It is good to know there are some people having this much fun while earning their living; it gives the rest of us something to aspire to!
The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences has an audio book available as a podcast series that I would like to recommend. It has all the Steampunk goodness of the written format without the need of focusing your eyes on the printed page, and thereby getting distracted. Not terribly surprising, considering the author had a hand in creating PodioBooks and went on to write several physical books on the topic, starting with Podcasting for Dummies. Personally I love the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences books and universe, and hope you will find it as fun to hang out in as I do.
Not long ago I mentioned the Robert A. Heinlein Radio Archives, and a bit before that it was the Ray Bradbury Radio Archive, both part of the new Radio Archives section of the Sci-Fi London web site. They have expanded their collection yet again, this time with classic radio plays from Issac Asimov and Frederik Pohl. The Asimov stories include Pebble In The Sky and Nightfall, the Pohl include Tunnel Under The World and The Map Makers. You can listen to them online, download them for your permanent collection, or if you have an Ubuntu One account you can have them delivered there to enjoy through the cloud. You should also be aware that Sci-Fi London 11, the new incarnation of their annual film festival, runs from March 1st through the 7th. Wish I could be there for it.