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Cyberpunk Librarian – Episode 57 – A Prescription for Your Subscription Addiction
Cyberpunk Librarian

 
 
00:00 / 47:36
 
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Are you tired of paying for content? Do you have four or five services you subscribe to for music, eBooks, or movies? Maybe even more than five? Feeling a bit burned out pitting one service over another? Well Dan has just the thing for you: Free digital content from your public library! Release yourself from all (or at least some) of those services, and check out what’s on offer from your local library! You’ll be amazed how you can download eBooks, listen to music and audiobooks, watch movies, and more… and all you pay is the price of your library card!

YouTube

Listen to the show on YouTube.

Links

Audiobooks

  • OverDrive – Audiobooks, eBooks, and more
  • RBDigital – Audiobooks, eBooks, magazines, comics, and more
  • Hoopla – Audiobooks, eBooks, music, comics, and more

eBooks

Magazines & Comics

  • RBDigital – Audiobooks, eBooks, magazines, comics, and more
  • Hoopla – Audiobooks, eBooks, music, comics, and more
  • Magazine Rack – The Magazine Rack at the Internet Archive. Tonnes of classic magazines.

Movies, TV, & Video

  • Hoopla – Audiobooks, eBooks, music, comics, and more
  • Kanopy – A fantastic collection of indie, arthouse, classic, and documentary film

Music

  • Freegal – Download and stream music, free and legally
  • Hoopla – Audiobooks, eBooks, music, comics, and more

Music

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Cyberpunk Librarian – Episode 56 – The FOSSiL Projects
Cyberpunk Librarian

 
 

00:00 / 37:27
 

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The Cyberpunk Librarian is back and he’s talking about software… His own software! Join Dan for a look at The FOSSiL Projects and discover what he’s been working on for the past couple of months! And hey, maybe there’s something in the Projects that can help make your library life just a little easier!

YouTube

Listen to this episode on YouTube.

Links

  • iAWriter – My writing app of choice on the iPad.
  • The FOSSiL Projects – Free and Open Source Solutions in Libraries. The primary website for information about the projects.
  • FOSSiL Projects on GitLab – The FOSSiL Projects repos on GitLab.
  • CargoCult Demo – Try this thing for yourself!
  • PHP – Write some code, find some frustrations.
  • Python – A better brand of misery.
  • MariaDB – It’s MySQL, without Oracle.
  • Ubuntu MATE – It’s so… green!
  • WordPress – Sure, there are other CMS solutions, but this is the one I like.
  • GitLab – Host your code in an versioning system that’s 100% open source.
  • Download GitLab – Host your code in your own hosted versioning system.
  • GOGS – Simple, easy to use, git style versioning system. Works pretty much everywhere.
  • VirtualBox – Run virtual Linux servers using open source virtualization software. It’s VMware, with Oracle.

Music

Sounds

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A row of stalls in the bathroom.

A rare look inside the data centre for an online advertising network.

I consume a tonne of online content every day.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone. I’m sure many of you reading this do too. Hey, you’re having a look at this post, so I assume you’ve read other things before this and that you’ll click on something afterwards. I seriously appreciate you taking a few minutes to read my drivel and I appreciate others who share their thoughts, creativity, journalism, and work on the web.

But I’m blocking your ads, and I’m sorry.

Continue reading

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Music is, oddly enough, an incredibly important part of the shows, or at least it is for me. I say that it’s odd because, well, these are shows about libraries, technology, cyberpunk, Generation X, and librarians in space. Sure, lots of podcast have music breaks or a musical intro or outro. But for me, the music is just as important as the subject matter. I’ll go through dozens of songs, making notes, trying to find ones for the show I’m working on or a show that I have in the pipeline. All for some twenty to thirty second bumpers between sections and maybe a little something for the episode’s conclusion.

It might be because I’m a musician.

Carl Sagan

This guy changed my life…

I remember becoming fully aware of music as a thing when I was five years old. I was sitting on the floor of my parents house watching PBS. Not because I was a precocious, bright little child who showed an early love of learning. No, I just knew that if I watched PBS long enough, then I would get to see Muppets. That’s it. I had no concept of channel schedules, or that certain shows came on a certain times. PBS showed Muppets on the regular, so I’m watching PBS… can’t miss the Muppets. And one night, another show came on. There were no Muppets, not a single one.

Vangelis

But not as much as this guy changed my life.

But there was space, and spaceships. There were stars. There was a guy who invoked a groove like a scientific Mr. Rogers. And there was music. Fantastic, wonderful music like I’d never heard before. The show was an episode in the award winning documentary series, Cosmos. It was hosted by Carl Sagan and featured the music of Vangelis.

Decades later, I compose, record, and listen to a lot of space music.

I include a lot of it in the show which also features downtempo, chill-out, chiptunes, and the occasional composition by me. A while back a listener wrote in asking if I had my own music available somewhere for listening and downloading, or if I had a catalogue of the music I’ve used on the podcasts. At the time, I didn’t.

But I do now. I’ve compiled a selection of tracks that I’ve recorded over the years, along with all of the albums I’ve recorded. I’m warning you, some of these sound rough, man. Because the earlier stuff involved me trying to figure out how to plug a Yamaha keyboard into a computer and trick both the computer and the keyboard into recording multi-track audio.

And then there’s the list of music that’s appeared on every episode of every podcast. I’ve even alphabetized it because, you know, I’m a librarian or something. Alphabetizing lists is something librarians do.

So sit back, click, listen, and enjoy.