Melbourne Writers Festival

On Monday I'm travelling with some year 9 and 10 students to the "Melbourne Writers Festival - Schools Program". I look forward to this for a number of reasons. I always enjoy taking the students on excursions, because they are always engaged and at their best. We can only take a small number of students, so only those who are really passionate about reading and writing have gone to the effort, or been selected by their English teachers. I expect this will make for great conversation on the 2 hour + bus trip. I will also enjoy listening to the authors speak about their books. I'm not sure yet, which sessions I will be attending, but I will be sure to tell you after I've been.
For those who live a little closer, "Melbourne Writers Festival" is for adults also and there are plenty of sessions to cater for all. Check out the program on the webpage.

Amanda Bloom - WoW

Last night I heard Amanda Bloom's 'Magdeline' on the radio. It is an amazing song. I loved it on first hearing. I remember the first time I heard Tori Amos and it was a similar experience. She is like Kate Bush. I love Kate Bush.
The lyrics of 'Magdeline' are moving and you can read all about them on her myspace blog.

She is a Sydney woman. Her voice is magic and I look forward to hearing more. I would buy a CD of hers today if I could. The Triple J radio announcer said last night she was classically trained. You can hear that discipline and excellence. I can't say enough. If you go to Triple J Unearthed, you can download Magdeline and listen for yourself. I am going to register today and vote.

Ted Talks

Considering what it costs to see Anthony Robbins live, this is good value. It's free! He tells a very touching story. I've listened to a few Anthony Robbins tapes over the years, but not until today did I hear him say the F word. So that was interesting! I kinda liked it. Made him seem more human to me. I know, I have issues.
Actually you can watch a video of Tony Robbins. He looks good too.
I have been checking out TED Talks again today. I watched a video there the other day, I don't know if I mentioned it here but it was about Happiness by Dan Gilbert and I really enjoyed it. This is a valuable resource. There are quite a few great speakers on this site and I think you could treat yourself to the time it takes to listen to a half hour or so, or download a podcast.
Oh and since U2 is in Australia, you might like to celebrate that by watching Bono here.

Camille

I heard this artist on triple J so many times on my way to work and it has taken incredible effort to track down the name. I can't find much online about her but I discovered this clip on YouTube


Enjoy, I hadn't seen the clip, I quite like the naked knitting theme in the video. There is another cool clip of the song but can't put it here, so if you're interested click here. It's playful and I really like it.

Listen Up!

Tonight I have discovered a new website that has downloadable audio files of audio books. Librivox:

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net (via podcast and catalog). Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books. We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.

The Internet is really making life interesting. Pandora is another great listening site that customises radio stations to your taste musically. I have actually discovered some new artists that I like on Pandora. You enter the artist you enjoy and it selects other similar artists as well as your favourite and plays a range of music.

ThoughtAudio.com - an audio book publisher providing free audio book downloads and podcasts of philosophy and classic literature titles.

If you enjoy listenting to books read to you, download these to your MP3 player. I love audio books. You can listent to them before you go to sleep, in bed and don't get cold hands from having them poking out from under the covers.
ThoughtAudio.com - an audio book publisher providing free audio book downloads and podcasts of philosophy and classic literature titles.

Discovering Podcasts

I have been aware of them for a while, but until I went away and actually listened to the dozen or so I had collected, I really had no appreciation for podcasting. It is a very cool thing though and tonight I have tried to find them but found it a bit difficult. It seems I have to stumble upon them as I did with the two I mentioned in my last post.

But I did find this Yahoo! Podcasts and whilst I haven't fully explored it yet, it looks like a very good starting point, so I thought I would put the link here. If I find anything really good specifically I will mention it here.

The ABC website have lots too and I listened to a couple of Triple J ones as well as listening to New Dimensions (can't download though) and The Book Show. I love the ABC website.