The latest Mercedes-Benz Mix Tape (21) is up at http://www3.mercedes-benz.com/mixedtape/mixedtape.html, along with the latest music magazine. As per usual, it’s a brilliant mix of new, fresh, eclectic, and FREE music. Small taste below:

If you like that, here are a few of his other priceless tid-bits:

• Covered in Bees
• Bilingual
• God and the Dinosaurs

There's no Church of England fundamentalism. We can't have Church of England fundamentalism. You know, like they have Islamic fundamentalism. Jihad! … Ah ha …Church of England fundamentalism is impossible because you can't have: "You must have tea and cake with the vicar... or you die!" Tea and cake or death! Students with beards, "Tea and cake or death! Tea and cake or death! Little Red Cookbook! Little Red Cookbook!" Ca – you know, 'cause, "Cake or death?" That's a pretty easy question. Everyone, – anyone could answer that. "Cake or death?" "Uhh, cake please." "Very well! Give him cake!" "Oh, thanks very much. It's very nice!" [points] "You! Cake or death?" "Uh, cake for me, too, please!" "Very well! Give him cake, too! We're gonna run out of cake at this rate. [points] You! Cake or death?" "Uh, death, please. No, cake! Cake! Cake, sorry. …" "You said death first, ahaaa, ahaaaa, death first!" "Well, I meant cake!" "Oh, all right. You're lucky I'm Church of England! Cake or death?" "Uh, cake please." "Well, we're out of cake! We only had three bits and we didn't expect such a rush! So what do you want?" "What, so my choice is 'or death?' Well, then I'll have the chicken, please." "Tastes of human, sir. Would you like a white wine? There we go thank you very much. Thank you for flying Church of England, Cake or Death? Cake or Death? Ah, Mr. Hitler, here's the vegetarian plate for you...”

UPDATE: They're back up Their servers seemed to have died under the load for now - guess they're having teething problems

The absolutely brilliant, FREE, Mercedes-Benz mixed tape 19 is out! The team took a few months off as they re-designed what they were going to do with the mixed-tape concept, and they've definitely come up with a winning combo. Where the old mixed-tape was simply a free downloadable album of new music, with a website available for online listening, the new format is an entire video music magazine show AS WELL AS the free downloadable album. There are videos from famous, as well as up-and-coming artists, all tied together by an overarching theme (Soul this month) and a brilliant presenter adding background info to the music.

I was very worried, when these albums stopped coming out, that Mercedes had simply stopped funding the project and it was going to die. However, I'm now more than ecstatic to see it back in this new, much improved format.

A small taste below:

Radiohead started the trend, with In Rainbows, of sidestepping the usual music distribution model and releasing their album online first. The added twist was that customers were given the choice of how much they wanted to pay for the album. This sort of distribution model is likely where most of the industry will turn as the ever-greedy record labels continue to alienate their customers with DRM'ed tracks and RIAA sponsored lawsuits against file-sharers.

Nine Inch Nails has taken the model one step further by only making their new album (Ghosts I-IV) available through their website - Radiohead, on the other hand, shifted to a standard distribution model after a few months. This new model allows money to flow directly to the artists who produce the work. However, more than being a simple example of where music distribution seems to be going, this new album is actually fantastic. It is unlike anything NIN has ever released, and should garner them fans from demographics they've never touched before.

I'd definitely recommend giving it a try - there's a free 9 track download (essentially the full first disc.) The entire 36 track album can be had for $5 as a download in ridiculously high quality 320kbps (un-DRM'ed) MP3, FLAC lossless, or Apple Lossless formats.

It's only through progressive thinking like this by Trent Reznor that the music industry is going to be able to survive the catastrophic changes that have been affecting it so adversely. Other artists seem to be following suit, with such big names as Madonna ditching their labels. Now, if only those bloody record company execs would catch on!

Either way, I'd recommend giving the free download a test-listen - you've got nothing to lose.

I had an absolutely incredibly trip to Indonesia for a month for work. I loved every second of it - eating crazy food (getting food poisoning,) sitting in traffic jams, clubbing, shopping...It's a great country, and the people are definitely some of the friendliest I've ever met. A selection of photos from the trip are available at http://www.gregsmithies.us/photoalbum/jakarta/index.php

One of the things I love most about using a Mac is being able to use Safari as a web browser. It's fast, standards compliant, innovative, has RSS feeds, and is beautiful. Well, the wonderful software gods over at Apple decided to bless the Windows world with this wonderful masterpiece with the recent release of a version that runs on both XP and Vista. But don't trust me on it's merits, the numbers don't lie - as shown below, on VeriTest's iBench results it's twice as fast as Internet Explorer, and one can never ask for too much speed! Check it out for free: http://www.apple.com/safari/

Today I was given the news that someone I grew up with, from just down my street, was brutally gunned down in an attempted robbery only hours after his wedding. See http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=vn20070508042256527C468092 for the full story. A few months ago, myself, my school community, Prince Charles, and the world historical community at large were stunned with the gratuitous execution of David Rattray (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=431880&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true) during another botched robbery.

Now, anyone who knows me well knows that I am one of the largest advocates for South Africa and the wonderful things that have happened in that country. I see a bright future for it and firmly plan on returning to have a productive life there one day. But one has to draw the line at a certain point and lose some of the love one has for a country when the crime seems to have spiraled completely out of control. All I ask is, how many more must die before president Mbeki decides to make crime a number one priority in South Africa. Further, how many more of my friends and acquaintances have to lay down their lives in this hidden war before the glimmer of the rough diamond that is South Africa wears off completely and even the people like me, the ones who really do see a future there, are driven away, never to return?

I am shocked, disgusted and losing my optimism very quickly.

More Stories:
Bride mourns as robbers kill man at resort
Honeymoon ends in tragedy
Rattray's death was a hit - report
In cold blood at Rourke's Drift
Finally, the media gets angry about crime

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney

I just released the second version of my Jajah Dialer Mac OS X Dashboard Widget. The Widget allows you to place calls to any phone in the world using the Jajah internet telephony (VoIP) service. You can get more information and download it at the Jajah Dialer Page.

Update: Apparently there's problem with the links to the page that are being shown in the RSS feed, I'm working on it and will hopefully fix it soon.
Update: With a lot of sed editing and shell scripting, I've fixed the problem.

It's not every day that someone claims to have created a new, clean and cheap energy solutions. It's still even rarer that the inventors claim to do it through a violation of one of the most fundamental rules of physics - conservation of energy. Well, that's exactly what Steorn, a new start-up tech firm is claiming. Not only is their method of creating cheap and clean, but "energy produced is done so without recourse to external source" and "with the exception of mechanical failure the technology will continue to operate indefinitely." Wow - some pretty mightly claims!

The company then goes on to do some other very interesting things. For one, they act like a completely proprietary firm that is aiming to make millions licensing the technology. This, in itself is not strange, it is probably what I would do were I sitting on such a potential gold-mine. In order to protect their interests they are conducting private third party validation of their technology, which is also a logical move, especially for such lofty claims. However, what is strange is that they claim to eventually release the technology under a modified version of the GNU General Public License (GPL). I'd beg the question, how modified, because as it stands, the GPL leaves very little room for an individual or company to make money from an invention in anything other than the supplying of support services.

Well, good luck to them either way - apparently all will be revealed at the end of the first quarter 2007. Every part of me wants to laugh this off as a complete hoax, but the idealist in me loves to ask - what if?

So it's Oscar nomination time of year again, and many of us are going to pile into crowded cinemas in West Philly to hear people shouting at the heroine "Don't open the door girlfriend!" or laughing in the sad parts, or screaming in the scary parts, of this years nominations. Then, when it actually comes to oscar night, you still haven't seen three quarters of the movies, especially not the foreign language ones, which are never showing anywhere nearby and are generally the best of the lot. And finally, to top it all off, the final judging is done by a panel of people who, it seems, were selected expressly for their lack of touch with reality and inability to give the honours to the people who truly deserve them most. All in all, a balls-up.

Well, along come those fantastic Swedes who started the Pirate Bay torrent site. They've started a new site called OscarTorrents.com. You can go there RIGHT NOW and download every single movie that is up for an oscar nomination. After watching them, you can then vote for which you think should win in each category. They have every single nominee available, illegally, but available nontheless. So, grab your favourite BitTorrent client, and head over to OscarTorrents.com. It'll help you a lot with your procrastination efforts!