Fire On The Lifeboat reveals THE site for those sick-days.

Having caught some awful virus which has rendered me unable to speak, eat or sleep without a great deal of discomfort, I shall make this brief. Coming to my rescue today, as it has many times in the past, is Abandonia.

Listing literally hundreds of abandoware games (computer software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder), the site offers free downloads for nearly almost all of them. If retro and 8-bit is your thing or you owned a computer in the eighties, this will be the best thing you've ever found on the web.

Disclaimer: While this site may be the perfect cure for boredom, illness and bitmap nostalgia, Fire on the Lifeboat cannot be held responsible for job-loss or relationship-breakdown as a result of rediscovering Dune, Final Fantasy, Elite, Dizzy or Ultima.

Contributed by Fire on the Lifeboat.

Listening hard to murmurs along the media grapevine, Fire on the Lifeboat highlights some calls for media submissions from the visual art/film world.

Young artists in remote areas of the UK often find it hard to receive funding or capture an audience for their work, due to their lack of proximity to a large media-infused city. However, there are often more calls for artistic submissions than you might realise in any given area and often geography isn't a factor in selection. If your work is relevant, properly presented and good, it stands as good a chance as any. Why not take a look at the following calls from the Northern region of the UK?

Isis Arts have put out a call for artist film and video on the theme of 'Every man's home is his castle'. The theme lends itself to a broad interpretation from the exploration of different national boundaries to individual's private personal space, from isolation to Big Brother, from a refuge to a 'show house'. ISIS support artist residencies and projects across northern England.

Northern Lights Film Festival showcases work in all genres and visual forms, including narrative, documentary, experimental and design-oriented work. They have a call for the North Star Short Film Award, a short film prize totalling £40,000!. Entries can be live action or animated, or hybrid and may be shot or created in any format: film, analog/digital video or entirely on a computer.

Aberdeen's SoundAsArt conference welcomes papers on the topic of sound art that address questions of origin, exploration of boundaries between related practices, investigations of current practices, and speculation on the future development of sound art for the more academically minded of you out there.

And finally, if you really want to look further afield, Bangkok-based DIME 2006 International Conference on Digital Interactive Media and Arts are looking for interactive installations, interactive cinema, and any other emergent art form that focus on the use of innovative technologies. They are also looking for papers on a whole host of headings including "Entertainment Art and Technology", "New Media Emerging Technologies", "Code Art" & "Interactive Stories". What better way to get a sun-tan?

And don't forget, submit your blogs/showcase sites/myspaces to noisefestival@hotmail.com and get some well-deserved exposure with compliments from NOISE!

Contributed by Fire on the Lifeboat

On the day that Maoists seem set to join the Nepalese government, Fire on the Lifeboat highlights the role the internet has in maintaining freedom of expression.

Why Nepal? Two reasons:
 

i) Nepal’s situation is one of the political issues of our time. Engage with the world and inform yourself about the climate you live in politically, socially and artistically – the world is a small place. If you are to become relevant in any way to whichever field you choose to pursue, an interaction with the issues of the day are essential.

 

ii) The range of information. The internet plays host to a realm of opinions, documents, fictions and facts – none or all of which could be accurate. For instance, take at look at Nepalgov and FreeNepal, two websites dealing with the same country and conflict in vastly different ways. Blogging is at the forefront of the push for freedom of information. Radio Free Nepal is a simple, free blogger.com site that can be established within five minutes. And yet, as the blog claims, Radio Free Nepal is one of the only sources of news from within Nepal that is not censored by the monarchy. This interview with one of the authors provides a fascinating insight into its operation.

 

However, as this fictional blog piece warns, beware of anything that claims to be the truth. There are no facts, only versions of events. However, along with a healthy dose of cynicism, the internet and its spectrum of information is one of the most vital tools in remaining balanced and informed about local and global situations.

 

So, some advice: Establish a blog, read everything, write something.

(And in the meantime, while you wait for the submission of your new political blog to upload to noisefestival@hotmail.com, investigate the Irrepressible campaign and pledge your support against political censorship on the internet.)

 

Contributed by Fire on The Lifeboat