Ok, I was wrong. There’s a little something about the Year Zero as a physical object and not just a sticker. Thanks to Kwyxz for pointing this one out.
Yes, that’s true. After being heated, the CD changes color. <private joke>So no, this isn’t a technology used only to check if the beer isn’t too cold</private>.
Some people tend to say that this is the end of the CD as a distribution media for music. And once upon a time, I used to be a fan of Nine inch Nails physical records. The packaging of Broken and (still) The Fragile were somewhat disruptive and interesting. But it feels like they are going away from this kind of difference. With Teeth was one the most simple packaging. Year Zero isn’ that much better (although we can note the come back of the booklet) and doesn’t differ much from other CD except for the Bureau of Morality sticker (this is a bit more funnier, but still conventional).
However, some bands still conceive original packaging. The perfect example is Tool with 10,000 days which is just also a pretty nice physical toy.
Sometimes, this isn’t just physical. I have recently purchased Die Warzau’s album, Convenience. Well the packaging isn’t so much original, but it is still interesting (apparently, it would be called a super jewel case). But reading the small notes is also an interesting thing to do. I won’t talk about the political standout which can be found inside, although it can be resumed by two phrases after the track listing:
No Christians have been harmed in the making of this record. This won’t stop them from killing, raping and destroying, however.
But what is the most interesting, in fact, is the “rights” declaration (and I hope they won’t sue me for quoting it in its entirety):
All rights reserved to the extent that it does not interfere with fair use of the music by the consumer. Purchase of this recording constitutes an implicit understanding on the part of the consumer, the label and the artist that the consumer has perpetual rights to possession of the music in its digital format. The songs on this album may be freely exchanged on file sharing networks under the condition that no premium is charged, they are not altered in any way and a link to www.pulseblack.com is provided. The songs on this album are available for non-commercial use. Please contact Pulseblack for commercial use. Pulseblack does not recognize and is not bound by any RIAA negotiations.
Compare this to the disclaimers found in most DVD’s (or other media) which almost assume that most people are just robbers and pirates.
I may look forward buying more stuffs from Die Warzau (and probably Pulseblack) just for talking to me, as a consumer, this way.
I have, at last, been able to mix favorably Textile and SyntaxHighlighting. In fact, another wordpress plugin would go over posts to add unneeded <br/> tags. Well, the highlighted code still can’t contain empty lines, but one thing at a time!
Things are getting closer to be in working order. I just can seem to get SyntaxHighlighter and Textile to be friendly with each other. Grmbl.
I’m almost satisfied with the layout now, and I have restored some colors (even though they are not that warm and fuzzy). IE rendering might be broken. Do I really care? In the meantime, I’ll try to correct the comments thing.
Changing a thing or two around here… A few (hey…) things may not work currently, but that’s not like it would be a real problem!
Nothing else to add, after all…
“Rudi was a sort of ‘golden youth’,” said Richard. “You know what I mean? His had been the world of sports-cars, tennis, country-house weekends, summers on the Riviera. He was a half-Jew; There really was no reason for him to be there. Except that in 1938, after the Austrian Anschluss, he had fallen in love with a girl from Vienna who was Jewish. He married her the day before the regulation came into effect that Jews had to wear Stars of David on their clothes. Of course, he didn’t had to wear it, but the day after his wedding he had the Star sewn on all his suits and coats. When she (though not he) was ordered to Theresienstadt, he went with her. And when she (not he) was ordered to Treblinka, he came with her there too. She was killed immediatly.
— Into that darkness, Gitta Sereny.
Recently purchased CDs:
I felt a bit surprised by the date of my last post. I hadn’t seen the time pass that fast. A quick look at my (misc) TODO list:
I had a small technical article recently, ready to publish (or almost) but the Gods of Safari and Flash ruined it.
I also have a gig review to write, but I’m just lazy.
In the meantime, I have smoothly upgraded this piece of software that is running this blog to its version 2.0.1 (or something). It went ok, even though the new administration interface is soooooo Web 2.0 lookalike, with those flashy “yellow fade” thingies and those toolbars that don’t seem to work.
But anyway, If you can nonetheless read this, it’s ok for me.
PS: In fact, I just hate this !@# visual editor. I want my Textile©, not this dumb visual thing!