Woodkid - An Awesome Musical Find

(Woodkid, aka Yoann Lemoine, via Wikipedia)

I always enjoy discovering new music that speaks to me and makes stop and just listen (rather than having it on as background music). I don't usually talk about it, however, but maybe it's the fact that the MTV Music Video Awards are on tonight, and are apparently atrocious, that is inspiring me to highlight something that's actually good.

(Note: I say "tonight," because I'm writing this on Sunday night, yet the post will publish on Monday morning)

It's even more amazing when such a musical discovery comes from a source that you wouldn't normally think of. When the E3 video game expo was held this Summer, one of the highlighted games was Assassin's Creed: Revelations, a game I've been anxiously awaiting for some time. The trailer that was released was super cool, showcasing some awesome graphics and the promise of a story resolution that has been anxiously awaited.

Yet it was the music that grabbed the attention. Music by somebody named "Woodkid." And it is powerful, moving, and haunting at times too.

Woodkid is the stage name for a French music video and film director named Yoann Lemoine, who is best known for directing Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" and Taylor Swift's "Back to December" videos.

However, he is also a musician, and under the Woodkid guise, has released a few tunes on iTunes.

The song that became prominent in the trailer is called "Iron," and here's the original video for it. The song is superb, and gripped me from the first drum beat until the final one.



It's rare when the music in a trailer upstages the images, but with a song this good, that's what happened. Lemoine does sing in English, though it can be hard to understand sometimes. It doesn't matter, because it's the music that gets you.

Here's another song of his, "Brooklyn".



It's so much different than the dark tones of "Iron," almost whimsical and nostalgic, demonstrating his range. (If you click on "Watch on Youtube" at the bottom of the video, the description has the entire lyrics).

This guy is awesome, and I hope that he finds continued success through the exposure that Ubisoft (the game company behind Assassin's Creed) has given him.

He deserves every bit of it.

Finally, if you're interested, here is the Assassin's Creed: Revelations trailer with "Iron" in it.

They did a terrific job of relating the video game action to the music, and it made my anticipation of the game even harder to bear.

It was a Dark Sunday Night

It's one of those weird, yet interesting nights for me tonight. I'm sitting here alone in the dark, a baseball game on TV (but muted). I'm watching the constant stream of tweets about the MTV Music Video Awards on Twitter, all of them coated in derision and scorn. I get the feeling I'm not missing much. In fact, I know that I would not recognize any of these people unless they've become famous for other things (like Lady Gaga or Kanye West).

It's been a busy weekend. We spent yesterday reorganizing the living room, making it a lot more spacious. We got rid of two pieces of furniture and only brought in one piece, so I'm quite happy. I look around, and I feel content at what we have accomplished.

But like all the other times we've done stuff like this, it's stressful, though almost all of that can be put on my shoes, as I allow myself to stress about things that don't really need to be stressed about.

(Thanks to AzTeen)

But it's done, and as I look around, I can see that it is good. I'm doing my regular "oh my God, I haven't been participating on Twitter recently!" activity, tweeting up a storm. And then I decide that I've got thoughts longer than 140 characters that I'd like to get out, so I sit down and blog.

The desk is still by the balcony door, so I look out at the lights of the city that never truly sleeps. It's getting darker earlier now, not even 8:30. I hear the honking of the horns outside; smell the barbecue smell from some other balcony in our building, and the occasional gross-smelling fish (it may taste good if you like fish, but it smells foul). It's the sounds and the smells of Summer in Vancouver, and it strikes me that it will be ending soon.

We're less than a month away from Fall, and school starts in another week. My work has been relatively slow this last month, but next week is when it starts getting busy again.

But for now, I'm at peace. Bowling's on now, but I'll be playing a game of my own soon. I look out at the building across the street, seeing the lights shining from numerous balcony windows, and knowing that nothing is coming out of ours, I feel content. There's something about the dark, with only the TV and monitor brightness shining through, that adds a sense of calm to life.

Something that will end tomorrow when it's back to work.

Maybe I'll be able to recapture it tomorrow night.

One can hope.

Book Review - Dead Iron by Devon Monk

I've been a huge fan of Devon Monk's "Allie Beckstrom" novels, set in a modern Portland, Oregon, where magic is quite prominent. When authors move out of the zone that they're known for, it can be a hit or miss proposition. So when I saw that Monk had written a Steampunk novel with magic, I knew I had to pick it up.

Called Dead Iron, it's a mix of mechanical beings and magic, the walking dead, werewolves, and even more in between all of that.

It's also quite obviously the set-up to a series of books about the collection of characters Monk has created. In fact, it almost feels like a pilot episode of some TV show.

My review is now up on Curled Up With a Good Book.

From the review:

Cedar Hunt is a man with a problem. Cursed with lycanthropy, he has to chain himself into his house three nights every month to prevent his bloodlust from affecting the good people of Hallelujah, Oregon. He's a bounty hunter, making his way from the East and running from the fact that he's responsible for his brother's death - until a trio of eccentric miners in town offer him the possibility that his brother may still be alive. This chance will force him to cross the path of Shard Lefel, a railroad tycoon who is threatening to bring civilization to Hallelujah. He also plans on using the railroad and what he's found in Hallelujah to allow him to get back home, as he is a banished member of the Strange, something he has to do before his time on this Earth is ended permanently.

Overall, I loved the setting and writing, which is just as good as Monk ever is.

Unfortunately, where she fell down this time is in her usual strength: the characterization. None of the characters leaped off the page at me, and I can only hope subsequent books bring that more to the forefront.

Read the review to find out the rest. And let me know what you think!

Podcast stuff - Episode 17 of Down the Hall (Radio EPLT)

It's that time again! Another episode of Down the Hall has now been posted.

The highlight for me is the interview I have with Elaine Decker about comedy in the classroom (basically, using humour to help your teaching practices). Elaine was my first real boss up here in BC (I don't count my Christmas job at Chapters). We don't reminisce much, though, as I wanted to stay on topic. But I'm immensely grateful to her for everything she gave me when I was first starting out.

Plus, she's just a hilarious person. The interview's a lot of fun.

For our discussion, Jenny and I talk about classroom management techniques, with school starting up soon (or already started for some of you folks). I think it's an interesting discussion, and will hopefully make you think a bit.

You can find the episode here. Let us know what you think!

Don't forget that you can also "like" us on Facebook! Why not go do that right now?

Book Review - Eclipse 4

I love me some SF short stories, mainly because they're more easily digestible than novels sometimes. A few pages here and there, maybe thirty, and you're on to the next one.

While I especially love "Best of the year" anthologies, because you know the stories are going to be good (even if not all of them are to your taste), non-themed anthologies can be fun too.

Jonathan Strahan is becoming one of the go-to editors in the SF field. In addition to doing at least one "Best of" anthology every year, he is in his fourth year of collecting stories for the Eclipse anthologies. None of these collections have a theme, but they all have great writers in them.

Unfortunately, the stories in Eclipse 4 aren't nearly as good as they could be. The first three are extremely weak, and many of the others are forgettable. Thankfully, there are six excellent stories in the bunch, and even the forgettable ones are mostly worth reading once.

My review of the book is now up on Curled Up With a Good Book.

If you're an SF fan, you should definitely check the book out. Just be prepared to not like all of the stories in it.

Lazy Sunday, Klout, and Social Media

It's Sunday morning, and I'm sitting here at the computer just goofing around. Reading some stuff, looking out the window at the sun-drenched city, feeling a little bit of a breeze coming through the door.

I don't drink coffee, but I've got my Diet Pepsi beside me, I'm listening to some great instrumental music (David Arkenstone does some great stuff). When I'm done with this post, I may listen to a podcast or something, once I'm not worried about it distracting me.

I'm also in a social media mood. I've been on Twitter a lot this morning. I've been reading blogs. I've just been having fun shooting the breeze with people. I've written two book reviews this weekend, something that I've been having trouble getting in the mood to do recently. I wrote a blog post last night on Game Informer (gaming fans with Fall 2011 gaming expectations might want to check it out), I'm doing this one now.

This is what Sundays are for, isn't it? Assuming you're not a church-goer, of course, in which case Sundays are church days! No, just spending a peaceful day with hardly a care in the world. Relaxing. Trying not to think about anything too taxing, but just doing things that you enjoy.

It's actually kind of nice.

My social media presence goes in massive up and down waves, and you can see it on my Klout score. When I take self-imposed breaks (not all of them voluntary; sometimes it's just laziness), the score tends to drop off pretty quickly. Then I decide to start interacting and posting again, and it starts to slowly go up again. I've been having fun discussing all this on Twitter this morning, which has been part of the pleasantly peaceful way to spend it.

But thinking about it also got me tweeting about other things. Not that the score means *that* much in the grand scheme of things. I'm not driven to the point where I must have influence! And if I don't, I'm nothing. It's not that.

It just reminds me that I'm not doing something that I actually enjoy doing. And that's not a good way to spend life.

So I'm reading blogs, tweeting them if I find them interesting. Making comments about this and that. Something that I don't do on Facebook that often, because I don't want to spam my friends (if you really want to see the extent of my wit and wisdom, follow me on Twitter).

This is also a long-winded way of saying that the final episode of the One-Hit Wonders of the 2000s has been postponed for yet *another* week. I'm just not in the mood to work at it today. I want to be lazy. I want to enjoy the fresh air, and the requirement to do nothing that I don't want to.

Which is as it should be.

Blogging: Comments and Conversations - Moderating Comments

Commenting on blogs is always fun, because it can give you a way to converse with the blogger, letting them know what you think of what they said. Some great conversations can come from this, and people can learn things from each other.

My favourite example of this is my "The more attractive you feel you are, the more likely you are to expect to have dinner paid for" blog, because it's the only post that's sparked a long comment stream, though not exactly much debate. It's not like anybody was dumb enough to take the *other* side in that one against such powerful forces.

But this is talking about personal blogs, relatively low-traffic blogs that aren't part of a company or organization. What about blogs like political blogs, gaming blogs, popular media blogs, and the like?

Most of them that I'm familiar with, they don't moderate their comments. They may police them and delete offensive comments after the fact, but they don't moderate them and not post ones that may offend people.

Most of the political blogs I follow are Conservative, but I would bet that Liberal blogs operate in a similar fashion. Some are no-holds-barred comment fests where offensive comments may be deleted after the fact, but commenters are able to get involved in free-for-alls among themselves. The bloggers themselves rarely comment in the threads, though I'm sure they do read them (unless they're paying somebody to monitor the comments for them).

Hot Air is a blog like this.

This can create quite the community, and it can also instigate some valuable give and take between the commenters involved.

Other blogs, like National Review's blogs (I mainly read The Corner, though I do peruse the others sometimes) recently opened comments on their individual posts. They do moderate, but the moderation is generally very quick. I've posted a few comments there and there has usually only been a brief period between me posting and it actually showing up. Sometimes it almost seemed instantaneous. This became the norm after some complaints about how long it was taking to post.

In a blog where individual posts from contributing members can drive previous posts down the page fairly quickly, a delay in posting comments can kill any interplay between the commenters. It would be very hard to get a debate/conversation going when it takes hours for a comment to appear.

Which gets me to what drove me to write this blog in the first place.

What's the point of allowing comments if they're going to take forever to post? Especially when you don't offer the "subscribe to comments" feature on each post?

I went over to the American Enterprise Institute's blog this morning because one of my favourite writers, Jonah Goldberg, posts over there. I saw that none of the posts had comments on them! There were just a bunch of big, fat zeroes.

So I thought I would contribute my thoughts to a couple of them. Since comments are so few and far between, maybe the writers might actually engage!

That was five hours ago. They still haven't posted.

No wonder there are no comments. Nobody's interested when there's no chance that it will facilitate any kind of discussion. This is a political/policy blog! I would think posts there would spark some lively discussion!

But there's nothing.

There are a *few* posts that have one comment, so I know the comment system works.

But it's kind of pointless, isn't it?

I have the page open and refresh it periodically to see if they've finally posted. But I doubt I'll go back once I leave work and see if anybody responded. For one thing, even if they did, it won't appear for a while.

For another thing, again, what's the point? Who's interested in getting involved in a discussion that takes place over multiple days? Where you have to bookmark each individual page if you want to find it again, because it will be off the front page soon enough? If you comment a lot, that's a lot of bookmarks!

Obviously they're not that interested in fostering discussion, and that's fine. But then why allow comments in the first place? Is anybody going to read them? I guess it keeps their email inboxes from filling up with diatribes (though they do offer the ability to contact contributors directly by email anyway).

I'm befuddled.

Any of you have any thoughts on this, and the moderating of comments in general?