Month: August 2002

Techno Internet Radio

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

I haven’t brought my CD player in to work yet (when you have to leave for work at 7:30am, mornings always seem to be a rush), so I was jonesing for some music this afternoon.

Figuring that I wouldn’t mind hearing some non-mainstream, a quick Google search turned up Digitally Imported, which has all kinds of techno — trance, hard trance, hard house, eurodance, and so on. I listened to eurodance for a while, and I’m listening to hard house at the moment — but they’re both very good.

If it weren’t for the poor audio quality of streaming MP3s (compared with Redbook CD audio), I would be half-tempted to leave my CD changer at home and just try streaming Internet radio for a while ;).

PS If you have any techno or melodic death metal streaming-radio stations to recommend, please post them in the comments :).

European Vacations

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

On NPR’s radio show “Marketplace” yesterday, there was an interesting bit on European vacations. I can't seem to find the segment in that show’s text archive, but I’ve confirmed that it’s in the RealAudio version (at about the 10-minute mark).

I agree with almost all that the author of piece has to say. Americans are being stifled by such short vacations, and Euopeans probably are well-rested after theirs. However, contrary to what the author suggests, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that a 4-6 week vacation should become law.

Marconi Not Doing Well

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

From The Register, it looks like telecom company Marconi isn’t doing very well. Though their stock price reached $17.70 in 2000, it’s now fallen to $.03. I did web development work for FORE Systems (now a part of Marconi) during the summer of ’99, and I hope they can pull out of this slump.

Once a cash-rich operation, Marconi ended with 4.3bn pounds ($6.6bn) in debt following an acquisition spree when it paid $4.5bn in cash for ATM-switch maker Fore Systems Inc and $2.1bn for Reltec, a manufacturer of last-mile access products. At the time, the company bragged that the deals would move it up into the same league as Cisco, Nortel and Lucent. […]

Songs in Commercials

Ashley Bischoff2,515 Comments

From a thread on MetaFilter, songs in commercials are becoming a phenomenon all their own — Cadillac is even becoming popular with some younger buyers due to their use of a Zepplin song in an ad.

There’re also websites that help people figure out the artists that performed songs heard in commercials. At first, I was happy to discover SongTitle.info as there’s one song from a GMC Yukon commercial that I’m still trying to track down (the commercial featured the hulking beasts driving in choreographed circles, synchronized-swimming style).

SongTitle has an entry for “Our Day Will Come” by Ruby & The Romantics (with a link to a sound sample) for the Yukon. But, after listening, I ruled that one out. I don’t hold it against SongTitle, but I suppose they just don’t have the details for that particular commercial.

Even Volkswagen has a CD of collected songs from its commercials. Some of the more obvious ones — such as Mr. Roboto — are on there, but I may just get it to discover some new techno artists (good techo is just so hard to find these days).