• jp2a — JPEG to ASCII converter - Like ASCII Art? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art) You'll like this program!
• ImageStamper | Stay Copyright-safe - Great if you're worried about copyright of your images on flickr
• Home : Harry Blackett - An artist living and working in Birmingham. He work specialises in archives and architecture. Check it out!

And I instantly saw this:

The Shape of Digbeth, ladies and gentlemen, is a cat. If you should encounter this cat please have a supply of catnip with you.

Yet deviantART continues to nab the attention of the press. Could it be that the media focuses too much on traffic and membership numbers instead of investigating how legitimate an art site is in the art world—like the connections it has or the opportunities it offers artists?

Sadly, I think that is the case.

In some ways I agree with what they’re saying. I doubt deviantART will ever be featured in a prestigious magazine and I doubt you’d find many of the best fine artists using it. However, there’s one thing which deviantART and similar ‘amateur’ services do provide and that’s a sense of community. I consider the fine art world, both in real life and online, to be a scary, big and sometimes hostile world. To have a place where you can show new work in a friendly environment is something that is needed.

I’m still writing something more about it but it’s proving to be a gargantuan-sized task! Feel free to debate and discuss

• Open of Course - This definitely needs to be promoted more in schools and other educational institutions. Tutorial writers should also consider submitting their write-ups here
• Freemind: Freemind Tutorial - As well as PNotes (http://pnotes.sourceforge.net/) I've been using Freemind a lot. It's a great application for mindmapping and getting your ideas in an organised manner. This is a link to a tutorial pdf
• BIAD Exhibition’s space - This looks like it's been set up by some of the students at the university. Hasn't been updated in awhile, but still worth keeping an eye on

• How Blending Modes Work, Part Two. (Dodge, Burn, Soft Light, and Hard Light) - It's great to see people in the Fine Art world adopting and promoting the use of Open Source software!
• Nerd tips for things you probably won’t use: Open Source Art - This idea is quite interesting. It's like taking Photoshop tennis to a new level. For those not familiar with Photoshop tennis it's a 'game' where one creative produces an artwork and then sends it to another for modification. This process is repeated until they call it quits. I can see this new idea being a good one as it isn't just limited to images. There's definitely need to be some sort of central website to go looking for 'games' but once that is up I can see wide adoption of it.
• Tuitman.org - ideas about comics, books, programming, and much much more - Having just completed a series of comic workshops I was looking for a free alternative to Comic Life for Mac/PC (http://plasq.com/) and found this open source alternative. it's very basic and could do with a bit of 'prettifiying' but it gets the job done!

I did a search online and could only find an abandoned website (currently down) and a MySpace that hasn’t been updated since early 2007 (you can even see a comment left by me). I went to their official website and downloaded a few of their tracks.

I did a bit of snooping around their Myspace page to see if any of the members had joined other acts. I came across Sugar Beats on Myspace (their official website is down), which features almost all of the Kanopus lot, minus Lizzy Parks, and learned that they were doing a gig with Giles Peterson and the Town Hall reopening. Before that, however, through Leo Altarelli’s Myspace page I found that he was doing a gig at The Tower Of Song supporting The Beautiful Word. I managed to go to that gig and it was great! Since moving down to Brighton he’s now getting ready to release his solo album, which is preceded by the release of the song Cabin Fever. He also recently did a gig at the Songwriters Café

I next found some information about Lizzy Parks (again, through Myspace). All I could find when I visited the site in 2007 was that she was releasing an album at some point. This actually happened recently with the album launch as part of Resonance Events. Unfortunately I couldn’t go, but will be getting her album as the previews sound good.

What about the band? Y’know the ones that play instruments. Following the departure of their vocalist Leo Altarelli, Sugar Beats performed at Gigbeth 2007 as The Sub Ensemble. They’ve recently released an EP that features Leo on vocals and also Sara Colman, who performed with Kanopus at ArtsFest in 2006.

So, the next crumb in this trail comes in the form of Leo playing a gig at The Cross in Moseley on 14th. I’ll be going! Maybe through that I can find some other great funk/jazz artists.

All of this investigation is really just an attempt to try and understand a genre of music that is quite alien to me. I’m sure there are many other great Jazz/Funk/Acid Jazz acts out there in the world, and probably quite a few in Birmingham, but I haven’t found them yet…