I had never heard of this site until I went to download the newest subatomicglue album, but as of tonight I have been introduced to Jamendo, and it’s an amazing site.

Take a bunch of music, allow people to download it for free (Creative Commons rocks my world), and make it super easy to donate for the albums you end up keeping.

Beyond that, artists can opt into a program that gives them 50% of the advertising revenue generated by their page views (for free), and of the money donated to the artist, only about half a Euro goes to Jamendo.

This is an amazingly cool experiment in free music. Go check it out now. In only about an hour I’ve already found five or six albums that were good enough to download and may end up being good enough to donate for. And don’t be surprised if a couple music reviews show up here; Jamendo allows automatic integration with blogs. How cool is that?

Perhaps you are wondering why I haven’t updated this page in freaking forever. The reason is simple, and one word long: thesis. Thankfully, the end is in sight: it’s due next Wednesday. This also happens to be a very frightening proposition.

However, the novel is written, so what I am working so feverishly on is mainly small revisions (proofreading the novel, changing a few small things that I’d noticed as I was writing) and hammering out the addendum (which is the real pain in the ass).

In other recent news, I relaunched the Idol Bat (although haven’t been able to update it since spring break thanks to the damn thesis), have formed my own web design company called One Crayon to hopefully make some money after college (website went live at the end of last month; Beckist Productions is officially no more), and gotten addicted to Lego Star Wars II after my sister visited and forced me to buy it in order to play it with her.

And sadly, that’s all I really have time to write. Back to the novel! I will hopefully have time for a more involved update after the thesis is finalized and turned in. I also will hopefully be able to keep up on my LJ friends a little better; I’ve forgotten to check my friend’s page for a few months, but I finally got around to adding you to my RSS reader today, which I check religiously. I’m tired of being disconnected and overworked.

Beckist Productions is no more! It was a klunky name, and that globe at the top of the page was getting tired (I’m pretty sure I didn’t even make it originally; it was an example project for a long-defunct free 3D modeling program).

Instead, Beckism.com is now published and designed by One Crayon. The little logo is a Blurburger original, the site is running an all-new custom CMS, and I’ll be trying to do web design full time for the near future. Check it out!

Although this isn’t really news, I’ve added a new badge to the site sidebar when you’re viewing Dirt Man to link to the fabulous program Avenir. Avenir is a piece of software for writing fiction, and it’s pretty amazing. I’ve been writing Dirt Man using it since the beginning, and the series is much tighter and better plotted because of it. I strongly recommend checking out Avenir.

In other news, I’m hoping to get Dirt Man up and running a bit more in the near-ish future. I’ve got a good idea where the story is going, and I’ve been doing incremental work on it. We’re very close to the end of Season 1, too! My goal is to finish Season 1 before the end of this school year, and then to start Season 2 off with an episode published every month (since after I graduate I will presumably be able to handle that).

Wow, been a while since I updated this thing again. I just can’t seem to get into the habit of keeping stuff up-to-date on here. Ah well. I suppose it gives me something to do when the boredom sets in while I’m working.

Tonight the day shift guy ahead of me wanted to attend some event this evening, so they asked me to come in a couple hours early. It’s surprising how much difference (in a bad way) two hours can make. I feel like it’s 3:00 or 4:00 and it’s only about 1:30. Yeesh.

Fortunately, the clients have been really easy so far tonight. Here’s hoping that the dude doesn’t get a bee in his bonnet. If he sleeps through until I’m off shift, that would be wonderful.

As far as other life goes, I’ve been pretty busy. The classes I have this semester aren’t really difficult, but they certainly take up a fair amount of time. Then there’s always dance, percussion ensemble, a novel to write, and so on and so forth. Very vexing.

Fortunately, life is looking up when it comes to time. I registered a week or two ago, and things worked out far more perfectly than I would have guessed possible. Originally I thought I was in trouble because the only two real classes that I wanted to take (Advanced Creative Writing and Thesis for Soc) happened at the exact same time. Then I discovered that the Thesis class only meets about 10-12 times in the semester and that both sides were willing to compromise. Add to that the fact that the registrar only requires a tiny little form with signatures from both professors, and I was able to register for a semester in which I will only ever attend three hours of class a week. Hot damn.

Of course, I’ll be pretty busy nonetheless. The reason that I was hoping for such a tiny schedule was because I want to devote the lion’s share of my time to doing my thesis. It’s going to be a very thesis-oriented semester, since all of my classes (except for dance) are focused on the thesis (Thesis, Creative Writing, and an independent study for soc). This makes me really happy. Being able to learn how to make my own schedule is going to be great, particularly since it’s a skill I’ll definitely need after college. That I get to experiment in the safe environment of Whitman is about the best thing ever.

In less happy news, I wasn’t able to find transportation home for Thanksgiving thanks to the fact that I wasn’t willing to give up either weekend of work. The good side of this is that I’ll be able to do a bit of subbing for VRS during this week, so I’ll have a little extra income. On the other hand, I don’t get a Thanksgiving dinner, which sucks hardcore. Maybe I’ll be able to find other people who are Thanksgiving-less and we can figure something out. That would be nice.

Sadly, thanks to my being busy, I have had to take the Idol Bat off the air for this semester. This is a damn shame, since I really love the Idol Bat and there has been some really juicy stuff going on at Whitman that I would have loved to satirize. Ah well; perhaps I shall get it back up and running next semester (I’m certainly hoping so).

I went to see the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale, with my remaining housemates yesterday, and was really surprised when it was a really good movie. Who’d have thought a Bond movie would have some actual character in it? I was very surprised. I haven’t seen a Bond movie since Goldeneye because they’re usually so terrible on so many levels. I was really glad I agreed to go see this one.

Thanks to the fact that I’m a shareware junkie, I’ve been finding some really cool software recently. The best one that I’ve found recently is Mac-only (so no use to any of you silly PC-heads), but it’s about the perfect software for writing and planning academic papers, theses, or whatever. Ironically, I don’t really have much use for the program (thanks to the fact that Avenir and VoodooPad serve all my thesis needs), but I’ve been recommending it to all sorts of people. The program is called Scrivener, and the latest beta (it’s very close to release) is available here. Definitely give it a try if you write stuff and use a Mac.

SpamSieve and MailTags were my other two hot finds. There’s so much sweet software out there. It amazes even me, sometimes. SpamSieve in particular has been a God-send; I haven’t had a single piece of spam make it to my inbox since installing it, and it’s only had two falsely labeled messages. So nice.

And I think with that it’s about time that I called this monster a post and figured out how else to kill time. Maybe I’ll watch a movie. My brain is certainly too fried to do much else.

Since the time that I was intending to spend working in the library on my thesis and an assignment that’s due tomorrow for a class has turned into me messing around with Automator, I’ve decided that I may as well drop an incremental update into here instead of using the fifteen minutes I have to do work. There’s always later tonight for working diligently.

I didn’t do much over four-day, except for try to implement a game idea that Matt and I have been thinking about for quite some time. We working just about the entire weekend on it, but unfortunately the game engine we’re using is being recalcitrant and doesn’t want to render as many enemies on screen as we want. Grrr!

On the other hand, we did manage to get a number of silly-looking rubber chickens swarming around the map chasing the player, and the shotgun that Matt made was pretty cool (if without a model). Maybe someday the game will finally be done; it’s not looking like we’ll get any more time now that Four Day is over, though.

In happy news, this is the only day of class that I have this week since I will be going to Seattle to provide moral support to my fellow dancers at the Men in Dance performance going on. My dance teacher choreographed a thing for a friend, and taught me his part just in case he couldn’t perform (he’s been having medical issues). He’s fit as a fiddle, though, but despite the fact that I will be entirely extraneous she wants to take me along for the ride anyway. I had no problem with this thanks to the fact that any day I get to somewhat legitimately miss class and also get a chance to see my parents is a pretty good day. Also, Seattle is a cool place and the college is paying for meals.

So I’m not arguing.

Bad things: the Idol Bat is now approaching two weeks late, and I’m not sure if I’ll have internet access over the next few days. I may have to buy a hot chocolate or something at a coffee place just so I can steal their WiFi. Ah well.

Worse things: I have a fractured rib, thanks to an entirely innocuous seeming lift in dance. This sucks; I don’t feel it most of the time, but falling asleep has not been fun because the only position that is really comfortable is lying on my back and I’m a side sleeper. Grrr. I’m hoping against hope that it will be healed in time for the dance performance in early November, or things will be Super Lame.

And now I must run. To the Ian-mobile!

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to let Beckism.com lie pretty much fallow for this semester. If I’m lucky I’ll get around to updating some stuff come Thanksgiving or Christmas, but there’s no guarantees. Thanks to school, life is just really, really busy right now.

I am going to try to keep the Idol Bat up to date, but since it is currently running late it seems I can’t make any promises there, either. Major apologies to anyone who is disappointed by this. I truly wish I had more time in my life, but school has finally utterly hijacked me.