Geek musician/singer Jonathan Coulton (Skullcrusher Mountain, Re: Your Brains) lives in Brooklyn, New York, which isn't all that far from the Lehigh Valley. Yet to the best of my knowledge, he's never played here, which is something I'd like to change.

There's a Lehigh Valley "demand" for him in Eventful:

http://eventful.com/demand/D0-001-000000412-0

This is basically a webified way of asking someone to come play in your area; by accumulating votes we can show that there's enough folks in the Lehigh Valley to make it worth his while.

Click the link and vote if you'd like to see him perform in the area.

I've been losing myself in BioShock for the last three weeks or so, fighting my way through a pseudo-Randian dystopia that's as engaging as it is beautiful. Part of what makes the game so exception is its soundtrack, which is by turns cinematic, classical and terrifying. Now you can enjoy composer's work outside of the game by downloading the soundtrack for free from the BioShock web site. And yes, I will be figuring out someway to include this in a future role-playing game session...

Midnight Syndicate will be teaming up with Hollywood FX legend Robert Kurtzman (Dusk till Dawn producer, co-founder of the KNB EFX Group) and his production company, Precinct 13 Entertainment to produce the horror-suspense film, The Dead Matter.

Development has been underway for several months and pre-production officially began March 1st. Principal photography is scheduled to begin in Northeastern Ohio this August with a projected release date sometime in 2008. Edward Douglas will be directing the film and producing it through the newly-formed Midnight Syndicate Films division of Entity Productions, Inc. The company is currently in talks with Doug Bradley (Pinhead from the Hellraiser series) and Andrew Divoff (Wishmaster, Air Force One, Lost) to star.

Bum Rush the Charts is a grassroots effort by bloggers and podcasters to demonstrate the power of independent media by sending one track by an independent artist to the top of the iTunes Music list for a single day (or longer, if possible).

The bum rush begins March 22 at midnight as everyone involved with the effort buys the track "Mine Again" by the band Black Lab. If you buy the track via an iTunes affiliate link on the Bum Rush web site, the organizers will get a cut of the funds, which they're then putting into a college scholarship.

My iPod finally decided to connect to my PowerMac, allowing me to finally download a bunch of new podcasts to listen to. First up on my list were for Dragon's Landing Inn, Misfit Brew's Round Table, Fear the Boot and Geek Fu Action Grip.

J.C. Hutchins' podcast novel 7th Son will get a little touch of the Verse on Nov. 14 when Firefly's Nathan Fillion recaps "the story so far" for the book's listeners. This isn't the first time Hutchins has had such notable guest narrators; others include Robert J. Sawyer (Mindscan, Neanderthal Parallax trilogy), Mike Resnick (Santiago, the Starship series), Tracy R. Hickman (Dragonlance series) and Jeph Loeb (writer/co-executive producer for NBC's Heroes, Batman: The Long Halloween).

According to Hutchins:

7th Son is a free weekly podcast novel. The story chronicles the lives of seven strangers who have been brought together after the recent assassination of the U.S. president. These men quickly discover they all appear to be the same man, with identical childhood memories. Unwitting participants in a human cloning experiment, these "John Michael Smiths" have been assembled to catch the man who murdered the president. Their target? The man they were cloned from ... the original John Michael Smith, code-named John Alpha."

Cory Doctorow's short story "0wnz0red" is available as a four-part podcast. He describes it as "a story about trusted computing, geek culture, and getting root on your body", which sounds nicely weird. I haven't listened yet, but I've got it queued up and ready to go for today's workout at the gym.

If listening to fiction isn't your thing (yes, I'm looking at you Berin) then you can always try subscribing to the episodic, RSS-based version of Doctorow's exceedingly strange urban fantasy novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. The feed delivers a few pages to you each day until you've completed the book. Read my review of the dead tree version of the book.

If you've ever wanted to know what ol'Uncle Bear sounds like, now you can. Berin Kinsman co-hosts Dice Make Bonk #20 with Cameron Goble. They discuss ditching a few thousand feats as part of an effort to reduce d20 to its fundemental core.

Visitors to Uncle Bear will have read much of this before, as it tracks with our conversations over the last few months (particularly since the dire shark jump), but you've never heard it before.

A new report by Nielsen/NetRatings looks at the online behavior of podcast and vlog consumers. It's got some interesting statistics: the most popular web site for podcast listeners is Macworld.com (not the most popular podcast; they didn't report that information) while vlog viewers like to hit StarTrek.com, which surprised me since Star Trek has been in the doldrums for the last few years.

The following was submitted as a press release

On February 15th, the Silent Universe--an edgy science fiction drama with a "choose your own adventure" twist--will premiere on www.silentuniverse.com and iTunes. In the series of monthly episodes, agents of the secret counter-terrorist organization "SERENDIPITY" will fight to undermine the deadly efforts of dictators, assassins, warlords and political extremists. But what makes this dramatic podcast truly unique is that its audience will be able to guide the storyline by giving ideas and feeback through a dedicated set of internet forums.