Springpad shutting down, June 25, 2014

Yet another reason not to trust your data to a startup: Springpad has announced it's shutting down effective June 25, 2014. They are providing some options on exporting your data.

Lucy meet Neo meet Will Caster

I was intrigued by the similarities between the July 2014 movie Lucy, the 1999 film The Matrix (Neo) and April 2014 movie Transcendence (Will Caster). Lucy combines elements of both films and even shares a co-star from Transcendence, that of Morgan Freeman. Of course The Matrix also featured Black co-star Laurence Fishburne who was Neo's teacher regarding the terrible truth of the world in which he lived and learned to manipulate just as star Scarlett Johansson's character does in Lucy. In Lucy and Transcendence Freeman's character is a scientist, though more of a professor in the former. I was somewhat disappointed by Transcendence, which also had an element of the TV series Revolution in it. The trailer I saw for Lucy showed Scarlett Johansson at her formidable best a la her Black Widow character from The Avengers.

New, full track, "Into the Clouds of Jupiter", uploaded to SoundCloud.com

I worked on this one for a few days. It's mostly comprised of some royalty-free music loops along with some sounds generated by software synthesizers. I called it "Into the Clouds of Jupiter" as it's supposed to evoke the first descent into the clouds of the planet Jupiter. I uploaded the full track, just over four minutes, and disabled downloading.

Uploaded dancehall instrumental excerpt to SoundCloud

Here's a short excerpt from a dancehall instrumental piece I've been working on and uploaded to SoundCloud. Have a listen.

Another piece of new music posted to SoundCloud

Don't know what's gotten into me, but I really like the simplicity of Sony ACID Music Studio and being able to throw some loops together and get a track down very quickly. Of course I'm not a sound engineer so my mixing and mastering skills are about at an elementary level.

I posted another piece new music to SoundCloud, simply an except of an uptempo, chillout piece created today (February 10, 2014). Hope you enjoy it.

My new music on SoundCloud

Seems like forever since I created some music for posting on SoundCloud.com. What can I say. Retirement's been keeping me busy as has a part-time job I started in September 2013. Last year we also sold our house and downsized.

Since I'm running out of title ideas, I just called this one DowntempoChilled-Feb092014. This is an excerpt taken from the last 1:45 minutes; the total duration of this track is 5:45 minutes.

Update about 8 hours later: I noticed that this piece has already have 4 Favoritings, which I think is pretty good for an older newbie.

Illuminating Shadows: The Calotype in Nineteenth Century America book

Carl Mautz Publishing has issued another terrific looking volume on the history of photography in the United States. Authored by David R. Hanlon, the book is titled Illuminating Shadows: The Calotype in Nineteenth Century America. The book weighs in at 246 pages and will set you back $50 U.S. There's also a collector's edition available for $200 U.S.