This morning I received a invite to Google Wave, thanks to the lovely IamKat (She doesn’t have invites left, so don’t hassle her with requests). I’ve had a wee play, and my first though is that it’s still got a way to go before it has a hope of changing the way people work. Going forward I shall be having a play with integrating this with WordPress for this blog and ObscureInternet.

I’ve spent the last few hours tidying up the look of the blog a little.

The main changes are in the sidebar. I’ve add the Category Cloud Widget, Flexo Archives and the Get Recent Comments plugins. Reorganised the order of the sidebar items and used Ray Cheung‘s free social media icons to  link to my Social profiles.  To get the most out of the Category Cloud Widget I’ll have to ot amended the categories of a lot of old (pre-wordpress) posts, as most are still set to the default category which is Random.

Finally I’ve added a little CSS to make blog comments look a little clearer and use gravatar images too.

ObscureInternet has been recently upgrading to 34sp’s new professional hosting package. This gives me a lot of new things to play with, including lots and lots of sub-domains, more web space and bandwidth.

So I’ve took this opportunity to bring back my top ‘cash cow’ websites, which I foolish got rid of a while back. The websites are the Konnie Huq and Zoe Salmon Unofficial fan sites. There are using a pretty basic design template at the moment, but I’ll sort out some snazzy new designs for them, if they show any signs of bringing in a bit of dosh.

As anyone who is remotely aware of my existence could tell you, I love the Commodore 64, and I especially love C64 music. In the early 21st Century, thanks to Internet, I found out that there are a lot of other people who share this strange passion. I also discovered there are a large number of websites that are made just for people like me. Over the last few years more and more of these websites have popped up, so I thought I make a list of my favourite sites, and share them with you. 

Original C64 music

HVSC – The High Voltage SID Collection - The most complete SID tune collection, containing over 35000 SID files.

SidPlay Linux/Windows/Source - SidPlay MAC - SidPlay iPhone - SID Music player, required to play C64 SID tunes.

Stone Oakvalley’s Authentic SID Collection - MP3 recordings of all SID tunes from all versions of the Commodore 64 SID sound chip.

The SID 6581/8580 Recordings Archive - MP3 recordings of a small selection of popular SID tunes.

Remixed C64 Music

c64audio.com - The biggest record label dealing with Commodore 64 music and remixes. The place to go for the best C64 remixes money can buy.

remix.kwed.org  - The definitive guide to free C64 MP3 remakes.

OverClocked ReMix - Video Game Music Community - A video game music community with tons of fan-made remixes and information on video game music on all formats.

Radio Stations

Slayradio.org -  The original C64 radio station dedicated to playing c64 remixes, also has regular live shows were you can request your favourite tunes.

SceneSat Radio  - SceneSat Radio plays music from the demo scene including game remixes, game soundtracks, demotracks, netlabels, and tracks from music compos at demoparties.

The SID Station - An Internet only radio station that plays only Commodore 64 SID music.

c64 bands, artist and remixers

Press Play On Tape - The original and best Commodore 64 Revival Band

Machine Supremacy -  An alternative rock band, who cover various C64 tracks.

Reyn Ouwehand -  C64 musician, former member of Maniacs of Noise and all round genius.

C64 Music News and Community

Remix64 - This site is a portal to the surprisingly unified world of Commodore music remixing and music, containing news, reviews, charts and chat, and this file is your guide to the scene we love. 

c64music - A blog about Commodore64 related geek music projects, featuring DIY, schematics, releases, 8bit music bands, retro software reviews, SID based synths. Has been updated in a while.

Commodore 64 Music – A new Commodore 64 Music blog.

That’s it for now, but I’ll be adding further links when I think of them. If you have any suggestions for links to add please leave a comment.

For the first time in over a month I’ve been working from home all week. As well as giving me extra time with the family, this allows me to get back into doing some Wii Fit. I’ve managed to a couple of hours worth this week, and I seemed to have got straight back into it. During the week I’ve beaten four personal bests and equaled two others, however when I weighed myself was surprised to find that I’d managed to put the 2lb I’d lost last week back on. This is most annoying as I wouldn’t say I’ve been eating a great deal this week, but I’m not going to worry too much about it. I’ll be working from home again next week, so I’ll try and put more time in exercising and get rid of those pounds again.

Being doing a lot of work on ObscureInternet, adding wordpress plug-ins and features, to try and get people to stay and have a look around the site once they’ve landed on it. I’ve also got some work to do on Orchestralmedia.co.uk to do. I need to add new functionality to the site without changing the design of the site, which will be interesting given the constraints of the site design. 

The family is still plodding along. Conor is still going to Karate twice a week, and he is now reading the third Harry Potter book after reading the first two in the last couple of weeks. We are also starting to think and plan for christmas. We’ve all got to make up our wishlists of presents (orders from mother).

It’s been almost a month, and I’ve been finding it more and more difficult to blog. I guess I’ve just let myself get out of the habit, which in retrospect has been a massive error. Therefore I’m forcing myself to do this update in the hope that more will follow. 

So on to some real news; I’ve made some changes in the design of the blog. It’s mostly minor CSS changes, but I think they make it look better. Please leave me a comment to tell me what you think.

I’ve got some big ObscureInternet.com news for you.

ObscureInternet is now under new management. Rather than being managed and owned solely by myself, It is now owned and managed by a team of Lazarus, Pete_off_the_Wallet, Scribbler and myself. We’ve also recruited a number of editors. This will help the site will move forward and it will no longer by a victim of my procrastination.

Also in related news BrokenInglish is back, with a new home (it was finally evicted, like this blog, from ObscureInternet) and a promise of more updates coming soon.

You have probably noticed that over the last week or so that I have been blogging more. I think it is because of the change in the weather. My procrastination seems to decrease when the Sun makes an appearance, I hate the dark winters.

I'm still working on the new design for the blog, but I thought I'd better finish the new version of ObscureInternet that I have been working on for ages (I hate to think how long it is) first.

I was listen to some of the HansIsland Podcasts earlier this week, and I realised that it's been over a year since the last one, which is a great shame. I hope it's not gone forever, mainly because I was in the last one and I would hate to think I killed it. I've also been looking into possible starting an monthly ObscureInternet podcast, I think it would be a lot of fun If I can get it arranged.

You remember the car I purchased last year, well I've just discovered by car does have a rear screen window wiper. I genuinely believed it did not have one, despite it being clearly viewable on the back of the car. How embarrassing.

This year the ObscureInternet forum members decided that this year we should have a 'Secret Santa', the main rule being The present sent must be something you already own. The value of which is entirely up to you.

Anyway fast forward a few days, this arrived;

Look at the address, it could only be my secret Santa gifts! So I hurried to open it, and I found the following;

A pen making light of serious problem of cats being killed by dogs wearing clowns clothes in hit and run incidents.

One of those fashionable (a few years ago) wrist band things, that is extremely tight even on my girly wrists. This one is for beating off bullies or some such thing. 

Some chewing gum, which was sent no doubt to hide my offensive breath.

Disappointingly, none of the chewing gum was missing.

Some Boots Spa washing gear, so not only do I have bad breath, my body also smells. Great!

Soup. Soup that is worth 25p. Soup that is worth 25p which was won on a raffle.

Some 'Fiz Wiz', I'm not down with the kids but I can only assume that this is some sort of new drug, that they are taking at their Rave parties. I will put this in the wife's tea to see what happens.

A coin, with a picture of a disfigure man on it. I mean seriously that scar is bigger than his entire face.

The finally gift, was a pound coin sized token with a picture of smiley face that has been shot in the forehead. Is this warning to tell me not to get too happy or is it a message to tell me I should go shopping with the wife more often.

All in all, I couldn't be happier with my 'Secret Santa', I think this fits the bill perfectly and I can't wait for next years!

Link: Join the community!

I have been aware of a problem with the comment system for a while, comments were not being added if the contain certain characters (like quotes). Now I have added the tiny_mce module which should solve all these issues, give it a go and tell me if you have any problems!