A worthy project...

A worthy project to be sure…  This is a crowd-source project to continue the funding of Kirsten’s viewer.  Easily the best quality viewer in sl.  Kirsten’s viewers have been cutting edge as well as solid in my opinion (he was solving issues with  the original V2 viewer within days of release).  

If you are a machinima maker or virtual world photographer then you are likely familiar with this viewer.  As some of you may know circumstances have change on the home front for the developer of Kirsten’s viewer.  I have a lot of empathy for his position… I myself have been on bit of a (work imposed in my case) hiatus from SL.  While I’ve been continuing to play with my Processing projects I’ve been less involved in SL.  Basically I am down to a weekly visit (to clear out my IMs), and I will return to continue exploring soon.  

Enough about me…

I was very pleased to see Lee has gone forward with this CrowdsFunder  project.  Not everyone will be able to participate, but I do encourage anyone with an interest in supporting and improving the infrastructure of virtual worlds to pitch in with whatever you can spare.  See the links below.  For those of us in the US the payment amounts are in British Pounds, but PayPal does the conversion for you based on the day’s exchange rate. 

No Depression in Heaven & other musical thoughts...

As most know the world lost Amy Winehouse last week.  Clearly it is too easy to speculate why… because it is.  Simple.  Painful.  Sad.  Music is powerful stuff.  I believe that power is due to music’s source within our deep core selves.  At least for me music has a direct line to my emotional self.  So this week I found myself listening to her music a lot (my favorite song being:” Love is a losing game”).  Take the power of music; mix it with a troubled soul, money, fame, addiction… and some do not survive.  Her loss this week was an all too eerie reminder of the “27 club”… Robert Johnson, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain (to name some of the more famous) and now Amy Winehouse… all dead at 27.  

This blog short post at the No Depression music site was great and hooked me up with this moving clip. (embedding of this clip was disabled by request so off you go to YouTube). FYI...the title "No Depression", refers to a song written by southern gospel pioneer J.D. Vaughan called "No Depression In Heaven.".  Truly one hopes there is “No Depression in Heaven” for Amy… RIP.

Given I am cursed with the need to seek balance  (I figure I could be cursed w/ much worse)…I eventually found some musical balance and was uplifted today when I ran across another talented singer -  Y’akoto. (her website is in German w/ some English Translation).  She is German/Ghanaian & mixes deep soul, blues & Jazz coming up with (to my ear) an authentic fresh sound .  I hear Billy Holiday’s phrasing at times, with an African soul/blues feel.  Music like wine defines language… it must be experienced.  So with that note… check her out.  I have listed a few resources because I’ve struggled finding good sound quality samples.   The only full song I found where “Baby Blues” and “Tamba” on this Okayafrica profile (found via this brief but good Spotlight in the Afropop blog).   Definitely someone worth keeping an ear out for. 

More later - robward