Corvidae | Software | Games | Books
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Thoughts | Friends | CV | Misc.
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Blog | New | Links | RavenBlack Corvidae | Software | Games | Books Animation | Graphics | Digital Poetry | Prose | Art | Sculpture Thoughts | Friends | CV | Misc. |
Copy my taste in all things. | |
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RavenBlack Recommends... | |
[ Books | Music | Movies | Websites ]
| Books | ||
| The Image And The Likeness David Wood, Ph.D. |
A very unusual book, particularly entertaining to me because of the main corvid characters, but a good read even if you're not corvine. Set in an unusual post-apocalyptic world, focussing on a society who has turned to nature as salvation, and the 'invasion' of the whole-world collective 'for their own good'. With a side-focus on the corvid society. | Own site |
| The Anubis Gates Tim Powers |
Fantasy. Excellent book. Consistency abounds, despite the quantity of paradoxical and unlikely things. Good twist at the end. The writing style is slightly old-fashioned (in a good way), which makes the oddness of the fantasy elements stand out particularly well. Egyptian mythology meets science, magic and time-travel, in 18th century England. | half.com ($5ish) |
| The Turing Option Harry Harrison And Marvin Minsky |
Sci-fi. What happens when Artificial Intelligence models the human mind, and the human mind is artificially enhanced? Superb book, bringing a little of Harry Harrison's humour into the dry world of Artificial Intelligence. Though-provoking in places, emotional in others. Skip the last page though. | half.com (v. cheap) |
| The Dice Man Luke Rhinehart |
Modern fiction. A psychiatrist endeavors to deconstruct his personality by making gradually more and more decisions on the roll of a die. I felt much more free after reading this book and applying a little self-analysis. Maybe you can too. | half.com (rare) |
| Music | ||
| Ophelia Burning | A lovely goth band, with quite a lot of songs online; a duet and exchange of male and female vocals, along with acoustics and synthed well-mixed. Good test-song; Anima Sola. | mp3.com Own site |
| Paris Burning | A goth band (though they won't officially classify themselves so), with sheeny vocals and music, sometimes reminiscent of The Cure, and... well... listen for free. Play 'Sleeping Beauty'. | mp3.com Own site |
| Gossamer | Another gothy band, who I place halfway between Sisters of Mercy and The Cure. Doubtless other people will disagree. Still, give it a try. Play Memoir. | mp3.com Own site |
| Adrian Alexis | A bizarre fellow, sometimes gothic, sometimes mock-gothic, sometimes not even a bit gothic. There's a lot of his songs on mp3.com, more than half of which I like. Most recommended are (click to play) I Want To Be A Vampire for the comedy intro, Whoever Said Tomorrow's Dead, for the lovely imagery in the intro, and Now You're In Heaven for the general pleasant sound. Also recommended for the amusing ubergoth text descriptions of the songs. And (as I browse his page as I write), there's some nice raven pictures too. | mp3.com Own site |
| Voltaire | It's a gothy fellow... Alas... With a sense of humor and self-mockery. Apparently even better live, though it's hard to believe, most of the man's songs cast a humorous eye at pain, misery and angst. "I do it all because I'm evil... And I do it all for free." Download sample from When You're Evil. | Amazon-$12.99 Own site |
| Dead Girls and Other Stories | An up-beat (yet still gothy) band with excellent wispy female vocals. I liked the song 'Fly' enough that it was First Dance at my wedding (thanks go to Melissa, who actually showed up and played it for us). Many people present summarily asked her if they could get the song on CD, so one assumes they like it too. Get Fly from mp3.com. | mp3.com Amazon-$10.99 Own site |
| Tri-state Killing Spree | A distinctly Cure-like band. My Socrates is a good example of their music at mp3.com. | mp3.com Own site |
| Deus Ex Machina | Some really odd music - the soundtrack from a Spectrum computer game made in approximately 1984. You can download both sides of the tape from Here and Here. They're hosted at this place where you can also get artwork and a Commodore 64 version of the game for emulators. If you want to play the game, I recommend finding the Spectrum version as a .tap file, and Warajevo (the only Spectrum emulator I could find that supported it properly). The Spectrum version is far superior. | |
| Movies | ||
| The Game Starring Michael Douglas |
An intense movie, fast and uncommonly unpredictable. A rich man in a position of control and power is given an unusual present - a game. A game which slowly strips away layers of his life and his sanity. A must for roleplayers, a should for everyone else. | Amazon(VHS)-$13.99 Amazon(DVD)-$20.96 |
| Drunken Master Jackie Chan |
My absolute favourite Jackie Chan movie, enjoyed by everyone I've shown it to, male, female, martial arts fans and otherwise. Except Holly. Similar story to most of the old Jackie Chan movies, but with particularly fine execution. Plus it's cheap and you get 'Rumble in Hong Kong' as well when you buy it from Amazon. | Amazon(VHS)-$8.49 |
| Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Starring Gary Oldman Written by Tom Stoppard |
Excellent excellent movie. Full of subtle jokes, well worth watching more than once. Especially if you're familiar with the popular tales about Newton and friends. ("Eureka"). The movie demonstrates the principles of probability, gravity, and... er... psychiatry. | Hard to find. Laserdisc available. |
| Websites | ||
| AllAdvantage | Free money, essentially. $12.50 per month for having adverts on your screen for 25 hours in the month. ICQ me (#3105892) for more info on this one. (If you sign up, your referrer ID is EOS-767) | |
| FaqSys | A programmer's source of mathematical and technological 'stuff'. Particularly for 3D graphics things. Very useful. | |
| DriverZone | Source for hardware drivers. Handy for people with freaky hardware like mine. | |
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