listen to this.

“fall of efrafa is a heavy atmospheric post hardcore band influenced by the mythological and political overtones in the book ‘watership down’ by richard adams, it is a concept project, a trilogy of records known collectively as ‘the warren of snares’ – owsla, elil and inlé. the narrative follows an iron age society oppressed by a theocratic rule, dying at the hands of ignorant ideology, their struggle to overcome both physical and mental hardship and to strike out against the ultimate enemy, the encroachment of man.”

i imagine at this point you will have marked, painfully, the inclusion of the ‘concept project’ definition and emitted a heavy, collective sigh, as is wholeheartedly appropriate. ‘concept art’ is, customarily as a rule, a paper-thin facade, administered by someone of questionable talent to fraudulently bestow their (knowingly) lackluster handiwork with a prestige otherwise undeserved. as yahtzee would affirm, it habitually carries with it “the stink of the auteur”. not so with fall of efrafa. everything about the ‘warren of snares’ is to be applauded, not least of all (as any ‘artist’ worth their salt would know) that they finished it at all.   

the trilogy now complete, the band are splitting. “because we have now completed the trilogy, which is cyclical, it would not make any sense to add anything else to this. we always planned to break up after ‘inle’, but we have decided to play a few more shows before we call it quits“.  

you can download the entire trilogy, three-plus albums’ worth of exemplary post-hardcore off the official efrafa website, and for free to boot. the lyrics that form the narrative are also there, with asides and additional (possibly essential) mise-en-scene.

and they fucking own live.

its free right?

mp3 extractor

“listen to your material (e.g. recorded radio shows, live performances, dj sets) through winamp and with the help of mp3extractor, find the portions, parts or tracks of interest, drop markers at the desired start and stop times of these takes and optionally add track information. mp3extractor includes many features for navigating swiftly through even lengthy input files, checking and fine tuning marker positions. when you’re done, mp3extractor will copy the corresponding mp3 frames to new mp3 files properly name and tag these output files and optionally write track information to a database list.”

and also, bit late on this but plenty (43) of enhancements for windows.

cheers, lifehacker/freewaregenius.

isten to your material (e.g. recorded radio shows, live performances, DJ sets) through Nullsoft Winamp and with the help of Mp3Extractor, find the portions, parts or tracks of interest, drop markers at the desired start and stop times of these takes and optionally add track information. Mp3Extractor includes many features for navigating swiftly through even lengthy input files, checking and fine tuning marker positions.
When you’re done, Mp3Extractor will copy the corresponding MP3 frames to new MP3 files properly name and tag these output files and optionally write track information to a database list.

its free right?

there has to be some use for that.

photojojo has a nice list of where to get free photos.

cheers, bb.

its free right?

spacesniffer

i’ve been using treesize for years, but i prefer the visual representation in spacesniffer. i just found call of duty 2 on my hard drive.

storybook

last night i was thinking about some writing i had done a while back and that i should maybe get back to it. this morning i came across this, and having played around with it for a bit i’d recommend a dl. the simpsons demo looks pretty complicated but i’d recommending the review from fwg.

cheers, freewaregenius.

its free right?

picnik

i was browsing for some polaroid border effects for photoshop and came across picnik.

its a really good tool for editing photos, lots of features and its easy to use. i can see myself using it from now on.

there’s also a firefox extension.

cheers, makeuseof/geeksugar

its free right?

i heart open source

i found this old article on freewaregenius and have started loving unlocker. i use quite a few of the others already, but am working my way through the list.

nice.

and here’s 104 free fonts.

cheers, fwg/instantshift.

its free right?

cd art display

change your settings in winamp so it only appears in the system tray and you can control everything through cdad. plenty of skins on the site too.

cheers, deviantart.

its free right?

wesabe

i’ve just finished sorting out my new wesabe account. i tried getting a mint.com account after reading good things on lifehacker, but they don’t do uk banks yet. wesabe does.  there’s a bit of a problem with auto-uploading my hsbc account but it just means i have to check my account regularly and update using the firefox plugin.

there’s something about tagging my purchases and seeing my outgoings in graphs and piecharts that helps/shames me into wanting to change my ways.

there’s also a nice community of people to share spending/saving ideas with (ie fellow cheapskates).

its free right?

i just got round to catching up with the lifehacker feed:

hotspot

lets you watch us only content. ie, the daily show.

quick media converter

does most things.

also:

lifehacker readers favourite free software list.

exhaustive list of free microsoft downloads.

cheers, lh.

its free right?

kramixer

freeware dj mixing software.

cheers, nerdden, del.icio.us

its free right?

xtvideoservicethief

also, a wikipedia page screensaver.

cheers, lifehacker.

its free right?

i was looking for a new screensaver and came across these two:

polarclock

uniqlock

if i had a permanent connection, there’s a couple more listed at SM that seem really cool too.

cheers, smashingmagazine.

its free right?

“…if it appears twice on your computer then duplicate cleaner will find it”

i’m on my second external and am too lazy to do this myself (like a rug on valium baby).

cheers, freewaregenius.

its free right?

outside.in

“radar puts you at the center of the map and shows you everything going on nearby, wherever you are—from the stories on your street, to the events in your neighborhood, to the headlines in your city.”

cheers, lifehacker.

(also )

its free right?

its a good training programme. i’m on week three, day one, column two. weeks one/two were easy, week three hurts already.

i use this timer along with it to keep track of the rest periods. why look at your wrist to tell time when you can install this free program, double click on it, then click again to start the timer?

the best use for this timer is the two minute rule. in short, if you have a job/chore that needs doing and it can be done in two minutes – do it.

it works. try it.

cheers, lifehacker.

its free right?

lifehacker has a couple of good lists worth checking:

top 2008 posts so far.

five best windows maintenance tools.

oh yeah, and here’s pocket wikipedia with 14m words and 24,000 images.

its free right?

jamendo.

and here’s a bunch of podcasts by DJs.

cheers, torrentfreak/listeningpost.

its free right?

firefox 3 out tuesday. get it here.

here’s a field guide to get you started.

cheers, lifehacker/monkey_bites.

its free right?

gnaural.

“is a multi-platform programmable binaural-beat generator, implementing the principle of binaural beats as described in the october 1973 scientific american article “auditory beats in the brain’“.

can also be used for sleep.

john’s background switcher.

“changes your background at the time interval of your choosing. you tell it where to get pictures from and how to show them – maybe you just want to see one photo at a time or maybe you’d like to see a ’snapshot scrapbook‘ of photos thrown across your desktop.“

.
very handy. i recommend the snapshot scrapbook. can dl from flickr, picassa, yahoo image search, phanfare, smugmug too.

cheers, lifehacker.

its free right?

accelerando – by charlie stross.

i read this last year and praised it to all who would listen.

its excellent. i’m reading it again.

cheers, wikipedia.

its free right?

liberated games.

wikipedia also has a list.

i played two hours of frontier: elite II the other day. it felt good.

you’ll probably need dosbox to get it running in xp.

its free right?

cheers, compiler.

its free right?

filehippo.com

“our aim is to provide you with the simplest method of downloading the newest versions of the best software – without the usual excessive popups or spyware and without the low quality software”

its good. use fortnightly.

crosuS

“is a complete game management system. It provides a central download and update mechanism for an ever-expanding list of games and mods, plus it displays a browsable list of games along with screenshots, descriptions, user ratings and comments to help you find new things to play”

same as above, but for games.

its free right?

open source living

“Open Source Living is a dynamic archive of Open Source software (OSS) spanning all major platforms, inclusive of small to large scale projects. It aims to introduce and inform new users about viable OSS alternatives to corporate, closed source software.”

cheers, compiler.

its free right?

FeedDemon

“The easy-to-use interface makes it a snap to stay informed with the latest news and information. You can completely customize the way feeds are organized and displayed. Set up custom news watches based on keywords or use the powerful search to find articles. You can even download podcasts and audio files and have them show up on your portable audio device.”

its really good.