The WordPress to MySpace Auto Crossposter plug-in that I just recently authored got a nice little mention in this week’s WordPress Wednesday column over at The Blog Herald.

People have been downloading the plug-in from all over and I’ve made several improvements over the past week as a result of user feedback and requests. I’m glad to see that this has become such a popular plug-in, and as its popularity only continues to grow I’ll certainly be putting more energy into it - as time allows - to assure that it is as robust and solid as it can be.

Let’s not forget to thank Greg Sidberry for making available the MySpace Access Class and allowing me to use and modify it, along with all the other folks who have written in with their feedback and suggestions (Andrew, Adam, Jamie, et. al.)

The project page is here.

Interest in the Wordpress to MySpace Auto Crossposter continues to grow and others have now submitted their own mods to the code.

Since this seems to be a pretty hot item, I’ve just recently rewritten part of the code to be more organized and modular ( though it’s still not where I’d like it to be – see the code comments for notes ). Today I made available MySpace Crossposter v1.1a.

At the urging of Greg “Sid” Sidberry, I’ve submitted the code to WordPress as well as the WordPress Plugin Database – though it’s still not quite “plug-in worthy” in my opinion. However, it does indeed work great and gets the job done.

As it’s now been submitted, the original post is serving as the official plug-in page and the most current word on the project will always be available there. Today’s changes are also reflected there.

“If anyone thought Manson was down for the count, think again.”

The most surprising aspect of Marilyn Manson’s latest album, Eat Me, Drink Me - his sixth studio release – is that it’s decidedly human.

Gone are the fire and brimstone theatrics, heavy production and the Satan-spawn stereotype. Eat Me, Drink Me is an extremely personal, very mellow album and is close to, dare I say it, an album of love songs.

Granted, they are dark, morbid and creepy love songs filled with horror, death and blood stains - but they are love songs, or at least songs about love, nevertheless. Which has led some to call his latest work Emo, but I’ll have none of that label – it’s still Marilyn Manson, which means it’s probably too much for actual modern emo fans to take. In fact, one of the tracks on the album - Mutilation Is The Most Sincere Form Of Flattery - was written with My Chemical Romance in mind, of whom Manson had this to say:

NOTE: Newest Version is LOCATED HERE.

Everyone knows that MySpace has a terrible reputation for being a closed system and not allowing developers access to any API. As a result, those of us who run our blogs centrally on self-hosted WordPress installs, as well as many other I’m sure, face the tedious task of manually crossposting to MySpace if you maintain a presence there as well.

Some developers have tried to write plug-ins to do the job, but MySpace is constantly trying to thwart the attempts by relentlessly changing their system.

Fed up with it, I decided to write my own such system and base it on a pretty standard, straight-forward mechanism with the hopes that changes on the MySpace side of things wouldn’t have much effect on the functioning of my code.

My good friend Courtney over at Twisted Stitches just recently posted a great two part series on how to price your own artwork. She had the pleasure of speaking with Reed A. Prescott III, a Vermont-based artist who has succeeded in making his work very commercial, and she summarizes very well his words of wisdom.

While Mr. Prescott is a painter, his advice is equally applicable to many types of art and even “craft”. Cruise on over to twistedstitches.net to read the two part series.

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By complete coincidence, the Saturday, June 2nd edition of the New York Times featured right on their front page (web edition at least) two stories that are near and dear to my heart (being both a Vermonter and a sword swallower).

The first is a ridiculous (but I couldn’t help laughing in delight) amateur rap video produced by three Montpelier, Vermont high school students. In the video, two extremely white boys walk the streets of Montpelier “rapping” about all the stereotypes of Vermont and Vermont life.

My good friend Cliff first blogged about it last month, long before it ever hit the NYT. If you’re a Vermonter you’ll probably get a kick out of it. Why the New York Times would cover it I have no idea.

Back in the early 90’s I had a guilty pleasure - yes I was only a young kid - of drinking a Maxwell House product called Cappio. It was a ready-to-drink iced cappucino beverage sold in supermarkets which came in a curiously large, brown tinted glass bottle that looked oddly like a “40“. Purchasing this coffee beverage when I was a mere fifteen years old was always a hoot because the cashiers invariably wanted to card me. I had to politely explain to them that it was coffee, not alcohol.

In fact, so strikingly similar to a large bottle of beer was this beverage that one time, during my daily “supermarket-to-library-to-park to read” routine I was approached by one of the most polite and unusual gentleman I’ve encountered. “Excuse me,” he said. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I couldn’t help but notice that you’re drinking a beer. I’m an alcoholic and was wondering if you’d be so kind as to share.” After just as politely informing him that it was coffee I was drinking, not beer, he continued by saying “so sorry to bother you. Have a good day.” Whereupon he casually walked off. True story. That’s Massachusetts for you…

To see the iPod as an agent of isolation rather than a symptom of, or a clever adaptation to, that isolation is to confuse cause and effect.

Kevin J. H. Dettmar
from Earbuds and Mosh Pits

Back in 2004, I wrote a rather rambling, free-form article about the role of the iPod in the promotion of social isolation ( available here: iPod Isolation ). I haphazardly thought out-loud about the power of the iPod to augment reality in an empowering way versus its traditionally conceived role in narrowing one’s reality in a socially awkward way.

Similarly, a new article in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Southern Illinois University at Carbondale professor Kevin J.H. Dettmar, entitled Earbuds and Mosh Pits, questions the role that iPod technology plays in promoting and/or suffocating social interaction and community building.

Most artist statements are bunk. With a few stellar and authentic exceptions, the art world seems awash with inauthentic pretentiousness, poppycock and piffle when it comes to artists’ statements of their own work.

Though many would argue the point and counterpoint to their grave (and do, and do, and do and do…), I think that it’s hard to disagree with a statement like Matt Linderman’s over on Signal vs. Noise (original post here):

The thriving art scene here in NYC has exposed me to a lot more art shows than I ever experienced before in my life. And I’ve gotta say, the art statements that I read generally make me a bit nauseous. Sure, they can sometimes be helpful. But all too often they have that grad-student-thesis-feel, full of impressive-sounding words and pretentious ideas but somehow there’s no there there.

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photo © 2002, John Freeman used with permission

Being a traveling artist myself, I have the opportunity to see many remarkable - and many more less-than-remarkable - performances in cities throughout the world. New York City, of course, presents a profoundly high incidence of these works of public and private art, being the cultural center that it is.

Street performance is one particularly colorful and active scene in NYC, and though I would be hard pressed to draw a comparison between the juggler on the corner and Andras Schiff at Carnegie Hall (unless that juggler is Michael Moschen), I do delight in some uniquely fun, witty and original shows - and I’m happy to show my support.

I met this gentleman a few years back in Baltimore and was intrigued with his setup - which involved a large, clear hemisphere - and his work with silicone balls. By sheer happenstance I came across a YouTube video of his and that was all it took to push me over the edge to share his work with you here.

Greg Kennedy is a two-time Gold Medal-winning IJA juggler with a particular interest in working with surfaces. From his website:

In an effort to redefine people’s preconceptions about juggling, Greg Kennedy fuses logic and creativity to synthesize new forms of juggling manipulation. In the early 1990’s, Greg spent several years working as a professional engineer, in addition to his juggling career. His fascination with the geometry and physics of object manipulation lead him to ground-breaking work with original apparatus, expanding the realm of juggling. “He is a visionary who can see the possibilities in props and movement that are obscure to the masses,” writes Bill Giduz, Jugglers World magazine.

Since the 60’s, Australian performance artist Stelarc has been publicly exploring the boundaries of the human body and human experience while simultaneously investigating means by which to extend and transform it. His latest exploration involves the implantation of an organic ear on his forearm.

Much has been written in the blogosphere about the ear implantation and the soon-to-be realized modifications of Bluetooth integration and subsequent ‘net broadcasting of heard sounds, with many writers questioning - through posts and comments - the utility of the ear, placement of the ear and choice of technology. As interesting as those particular “innovations” may be, however, they are secondary to the thread of significance that has connected all of Stelarc’s work from the beginning.

In late 2003 and 2004, comedian Bill Bailey toured a show entitled Part Troll, which featured a good deal of his brilliant musical humour. Among the gems of musical mash-up, satire and spoof was one piece in particular – an encore actually – which deserves mention here (they all deserve mention, actually). It is a tribute to the groundbreaking German electronic group Kraftwerk.

Of course, the clip is best if you watch the entirety of Bill’s show and - if you are not familiar with him - get to know him as a person, but it stands on its own quite well too.

I’m not going to give away the punch line, but after you watch the video, visit this site to read about how David Bamber (who passed away this week) of the Telegraph thinks that the original of this tune is a parody of the Catholic Church’s Latin Mass.