| There is no better torrent search engine than Google.
Now that Oink no longer exists, I find that the fastest way to find music is to enter part of the artist's name, part of the album title, and the word torrent into a basic Google search. I usually get what I'm looking for in the first two or three results. If not, I just add a little ingenuity to the mix, the kind that comes naturally with five years of Googling experience behind me, and I can usually find it in two minutes. In thirty, I'm rocking out to an ill-got album.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/pirate-bay-futu.html With stories like this making the news without anyone reading them, it's clear that we're all used to the idea of the record companies attacking anyone and everyone in an effort to but the kibosh on this whole torrent business forever. But they're not going after the most useful torrent search out there. And there's legal precedent.
The law as interpreted by some conservative judge says you can be penalized for pointing people in the direction of pirated material. But no one's going after Google even though it does that. Obviously Torrent trackers specifically direct people to put up torrents, and torrents are most often copyrighted material. Google on the other hand just makes it possible to search anything, and torrents fit into the category of "everything," but it doesn't take much effort to see the contradictions. The unspoken line has been drawn arbitrarily, to exclude Google, and include The Pirate Bay.
The press, even liberal barking dogs like Keith Olbermann are too crotchety to see that invisible line. Without the savvy to catch the finer points of internet culture and jargon, they can try, but in the end they shrug their shoulders and say "I guess it's illegal. What can you do?"
You can sue Google. You. You there, can SUE Google. It won't take much legal trickery to coax that judge's ruling into fitting Google's example. They do make it possible to access copyrighted material freely and easily. And the argument that must be made is that Google is not there expressly for that purpose. But in that case what about the legal torrents you can download over the Pirate Bay? Since Sixteen Military Wives, bands like the Decemberists have been distributing their own music videos over bittorrent. This can be proven.
The ruling would then be overturned and seen as the first amendment issue it really is, and always was. No one wants to bring down Google. We love Google. And if Google doesn't deserve to be shut down, neither does the Pirate Bay. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| First one, you had to be there. But I'll tell you anyway:
Over the past two months I've scrambled to make sure I can get to South Korea by next week. I've just exhausted myself packing, buying plane tickets, moving out of my home, and I've deposited myself quite obtrusively on an air mattress at my parents' apartment, where I await departure day.
My mom is clearing files off her desktop, and one comes up that's obviously mine.
"Did you apply for a visa in Korea?"
I think about the days of driving to and from Los Angeles, the fees, the phone calls she witnessed, the suspense, her questions on the phone, wondering, will I have time? I think about showing her the watermarked, paper stamp in my passport yesterday. And now she asks me If I applied for a visa.
"No. I never applied for a visa."
"Oh."
She should be in a panic, but she says Oh.
"OF COURSE I applied for a visa! You just saw it."
"Oh! A visa! Of course you applied for a visa. For a second I thought this was a credit card application..."
Yakkitty Shmakkity dooooo... Like I said, you had to be there. Understand though that I've used the word visa, meaning endorsement to enter a country, so many thousand times in the last six weeks that I completely forgot the word meant anything else.
Story 2 is a little funnier.
Extra is on. We haven't changed the channel because we're both mesmerized by the soothing piano music as Mark McGrath reminds us that Heath Ledger has died, as though we hadn't heard it before, and then again all day.
As it goes to commercial We get flash images of all the celebrities that have shockingly dared to leave their houses in the past 24 hours. One of them is Britney Spears. She's shouting at photographers from the driver's seat of her car.
My mom chimes in. "Look how far forward she's sitting in her car."
"Britney Spears could be wearing a deflated beach ball on her head and I wouldn't look twice."
"No, she's sitting like an old lady. I think it's strange when anyone does that."
"Well she was being surrounded by hundreds of photographers maybe she was leaning forward to shout."
Thank God for Tivo. My mom rewinds so we can see Britney Spears again. She hits play. As the image flashes by again, she points.
"There, see, that's her seat there, against her body."
"No. That's a shadow. Her seat's reclined."
"That was the back seat."
"Give me that remote," I say. I pause it on the still image of Britney, frozen, screaming, empty booster seat next to her. I walk up to the TV. "There, See? That's her headrest."
"Ohhhh..." She doesn't seem embarrassed. In fact, when I push play again, she smiles like she's won the argument.
She says "Well I'm glad we cleared that up." | | comments: Leave a comment |
| the second video blog. no police confrontations, but check it out anyway.
right now i'm at shawn's, and there's THE BIGGEST HURRICANE IN WORLD HISTORY going on. i woke up several times last night and thought "this building wasn't built well!" only to realize that the 200 dB sewing machine noise outside was the wispy translucent forcefield of a brutal wind whining its way around the corners of the building.
i can see out the window, and people aren't out. it's the kind of day where you call in sick to work because you just want to stay inside and let shawn's cat massage your arm. but i'm supposed to go to ian's and wait for his tv to be dropped off. i wonder if i'll follow through on that. looking back, i remember going out on a limb, unprovoked, and saying i'd "claw my way through hell" to get to ian's today. i guess that probably means i should figure out a way. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| I've made a video blog. Is it okay to do that ever? Who can say? Soon I'll be in Korea, and I'll communicate with everyone entirely by blog, video blog, myspace, and any other internet cliche i can think of.
There it is. please forgive me. What I've started, I can't stop. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| This Wired.com article has taught me some things about agriculture. Mainly I learned that farmers trust a system of complex measurements to predict the seasonal behavior of plants, and that the unit of measurement in this system is called the "Chill Unit." However, it did not serve to explain why no band in history has named itself "The Chill Unit." Until now.
Devon, if you read this, we're starting a new band called The Chill Unit. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| so people say "i'm gonna bring the audio cassette back." you hear this, but nothing ever comes of it. yeah yeah yeahs released demo versions of their most recent album on cassette so it would be harder to pirate, and it worked. there's still pop-culture value to the VERY outaded format i grew up with, and i can't bring it into the spotlight unless someone who knows about these things can make it happen: a hand-crank powered cassette player? right? am i crazy? it's hip, it's ironic AND it's totally green.
i googled it and i got this result: http://globalrecordings.net/topic/messenger2 hand-crank cassettes for jesus. courtesy of australians. not exactly what i had in mind, but it tells me that the technology is feasible, and inexpensive (they're doing this for no profit). it just needs shrunk down, and headphones are to be added, but headphones produce less sound than a mono speaker i would think, so perhaps less energy is required. look i leave it to the mythbusters to figure it out. i'm just the genius who came up with the idea. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | download wes anderson's 12 minute prequel to "the darjeeling limited" for free from itunes. it stars j. schwartzman and n. portman. with a decent internet connection it should start immediately after you begin downloading it. it's not top notch filmmaking, but i'm not exactly a disinterested party.
if you're still not convinced to download it immediately, behind this cut is something that will send you scrambling for your itunes, but beware minor spoilerz:
( Read more... ) | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| this is the first election since the real proliferation of web2.0, and the candidates are obviously aware of that. we've all seen their presence at the myspace splash page, it's actually been pretty boring. everyone wants to look informed and hip. the sites want to be in control of things.
but right now everyone's being nice.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/09/mtvmyspace-audi.html
i remember thinking the internet was going to be a huge factor this election, but how exactly that going to go down remains to bee seen because everyone's still playing get-to know-you games. the internet's roll in this thing is not going to end up being anything like john edwards saying "yeah let's do a thing on the myspace." it's going to be ugly, and awesome.
youtube, and not the youtube debates, that's one place it's going to get ugly, but only once everyone is in their corner and loyal to someone. where's the high profile "obama girl" parody? or i should say where are the 300 billion parodies? because that's what i expected. it didn't happen because obama's not a threat to anyone's way of life yet. there's a low level rumble, but it's going to get really fun when it's a fight between two candidates. there's going to be some new piece of political webcest every day. maybe every hour. and if a candidate actually says "asshole in public" or takes a glance down someone's shirt, or so much as looks near a guy's ass it's going to be a tidal wave. because wherever it is, and whenever it happens, someone will be there recording it on a cell phone. it's going to be brutal. i'm stoked. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| lately when i get to be around my family, it's less and less like an obligation and more like a rare pleasure. i talk and i talk about everything that's on my mind, and they talk too. everyone laughs.
once these people were authority figures, and they controlled me. i guess they finished the job. they still try and influence my decisions, but i think they're often right, and i usually ask their advice anyway. whereas before i (like anyone else) had overlords, it's gotten to where i have cheering section. a group of people watching my actions carefully, who are very biased in my favor. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Ever since i first got out on my own I've lived according to "my own schedule," which is actually "no schedule," or to be more precise: "never doing anything." And I liked it for a while. It was like my life was a never-ending weekend, where on some of those weekend days i still had to get up and do something. I've always managed to squeeze in tasks without ever managing to have an answer to the question "what'd you do today?" that wasn't embarrassing.
I imagined a time when I'd have tasks every day to complete, a reason to wake up in time to buy breakfast in most restaurants. I realize now I have those tasks. I let them pile up, then do them in the course of big compound tasks that should be simple. For instance, preparing the house for a party, which should involve setting out the necessary supplies and making a playlist, becomes an all-day chore that includes doing laundry in order to clean my room, doing dishes in order to clear the counters, shopping in order to have food and drinks, and on, and on.
It's not so bad, you might say. I have chore days, and lots and lots of non-chore days. That would be fine if in the meantime I didn't live in squalor, waking up at one in the afternoon to watch Youtube videos all day, eat my first meal in my underwear at 3:00, and go days at a time without stepping outside, except to get Netflix.
It's not that I believe the only alternative to laziness in the absolute is rigid adherence to a schedule, but I thought maybe, having had this revelation on a Sunday, maybe it'd be a good idea to give myself a week's trial period on a strict, self-imposed regiment.
Rather than at 5:00 in the morning, I'm going to crash at midnight tonight (shocking). And, assuming I don't get called by a school district (I safely can assume this), I'll get up at 8:00. Then I'll keep the following schedule (regimented people follow 24-hour timekeeping):
8:00 coffee. breakfast
8:30 morning jog
9:00 see to hygiene
10:00 go to Starbucks and write
12:00 eat lunch
13:00 see to memos and tasks I've written down for myself (I already have some of these)
14:00 hour designated for free use of internet
15:00 household chores
17:00 read
18:00 eat dinner
19:00 watch a movie
A little experimentation here and there. I've never in my life chosen to exercise in the morning. It's happened that I've had PE scheduled in the morning, but generally if I work out on purpose, it's in the evening. It's always seemed like working out in the morning might be invigorating, so I'm giving it a shot. And two hours is a lot of time to set aside for chores, but my chores have really piled up.
Nothing on this schedule can be moved unless something comes out of left field, and it might. I'll still try to just move everything back a half hour, or shift things around. At any rate if I realize I haven't thought this through I can write a completely different schedule for Tuesday. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| the english language needs a punctuation mark that separates a rhetorical question from its answer without starting a new sentence. i would call it a semiquestion.
EXAMPLE
fisherman: i told you to watch my bait. not eat it!
bear: what can i say? i'm a bear.
not that the utterance falls apart in the reading without the new punctuation mark, but it implies the pause that goes with the end of a sentence. when a person (or in this case, a bear) says something like that, they seem to say it in one sentence, without a pause.
bear: what can i say; i'm a bear.
which works better, but isn't gramatically acceptable. not that normal semicolons are welcomed with open arms by all english professors everywhere.
the semiquestion draws itself. it'd be a question mark with a comma below it instead of a dot. i'd also probably make the question mark part a little smaller and/or thinner so it wouldn't be mistaken for a regular question mark. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| 
today, google launched a technological breakthrough in marketing. DIRECT BANNERS feature actual photographs of the people they're marketing to. using technology similar to their controversial "google street view" they have covertly gathered pictures of five million internet users. google technicians then altered the pictures to present potential customers with exciting visions of their future should they buy the product or service advertised.
"we're very excited," said larry thompson, google's marketing president. "the new ads don't present internet users with a fantasy, but a vision of a possible reality, and we think people will really respond to that."
unlike "street view," the photos were gathered from users in their homes and offices, rather than on the streets, from a van. "our photographers went to 300 thousand parties over the last two years, carefully photographing internet users when they were at their best. we also had teams in 50 thousand offices, capturing people at work. these are the photographs people are most likely to respond to, because this is when they're well-dressed and happy," said thompson.
when asked if he considered the new ads dishonest, underhanded or invasive, thompson wasn't concerned. "what's dishonest is presenting people with pictures of models and actors. these are real people doing real things, altered tastefully to be doing other, possibly better things."
the ads hit myspace today, and are expected to pop up on user profiles everywhere from flickr to amazon by december. "by that time," says thompson "we're hoping to feature pictures of people's kids. you know, for christmas shopping." | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| far be it for me to say anyone missed me especially, but if you noticed i've seemed withdrawn lately it's because the music video for "january heart" by carina round swallowed up my summer. tomorrow, however, is the very last day of production. we need one more shot (!) and then photography will be done. somewhere between september first and fifteenth i expect editing to be wrapped up. after that you can hope to see it on TV, which i know you'll rush out to do, but i will of course be posting it on here as an imbedded youtube video, and also imposing it on my friends by instant message.
it has been a grueling...ly fun month of intensive labor. round about mid july we started sawing and painting in earnest, and we haven't let up a day since. independent production means that you can claim a lot of creative responsibility when and if something turns out well - not that our crew isn't the finest ragtag bunch of tinkerers i've ever had the pleasure to boss around - but it also means putting in endless hours conceptualizing and building sets and (if i may say) elaborate props.
the house is trashed. everything is caked inches deep with music video residue, and we're beginning to feel remorse. afterall, five people live here, and only two are making this monstrosity. the living room is strewn with the fodder of twenty trips to Michael's and Home Depot. The backyard is sprinkled with splintery wood and sawdust. My room is absolutely trashed, because the things i use to keep the place tidy and orderly have been cannibalized and turned into props. tuesday is our day for "takedown," (that's lingo, i think) but we'll need all of wednesday to clean.
the day draws near when i can finally stop trying to explain my inexplicable work like a mad scientist. all indicators are that what we were attempting when we set out, we're going to accomplish. whether we were heading in a good direction to begin with remains to be seen. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Adblock is a great plugin for firefox. if you don't already have it, it blocks almost all ads. occasionally though it interferes with an application i'm trying to use, and i have to turn it off. then i go browsing again, and i forget it's off, and for a second i remember what it's like being any old internet explorer-using schlemiel:
Wow, yeah. that WILL keep me organized. I circled the ad because i think you're probably stupid. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| i just read The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by Milan Kundera, and in it was a section about the Czech word litost. Kundera says he can't find a word for it in any other language, but that without it, one can't "understand the human soul."
More or less, Litost is the the shock and frustration that arises from realization of one's own inadequacy, stupidity or general misery. upon feeling listost, a person will become angry and sometimes seek revenge, or internalize the anger and become bitter. Bitterness in fact would seem to be a close approximation, but it leaves out a lot.
Litost is something that until recently, I experienced a lot. About a month ago I began to notice it in others. When someone, lets say, makes an ill-timed joke about cancer, and their friend says "hey. can you watch it with the cancer jokes? my mom has cancer and i'm having a rough time." the person who made the joke is likely to experience litost. He will say to the friend "Listen, fucker. if you can't take a joke about it, then fuck off. it was only a joke." They'll get into a stupid fight and cease being friends. It won't be because the joker genuinely feels like the friend needs to learn a lesson about not taking himself seriously. it's just that the joker feels guilty for hurting his friend's feelings, but isn't mature enough to deal with feelings of guilt, and lashes out.
the more i thought about it the more I realized that my own litost has, throughout my life, made me competitive and unpleasantly argumentative. Being wrong or misinformed makes me feel inadequate, and I fight tooth and nail against the notion - the affront - of my own wrongness. that one would think me wrong about something feels like a personal attack, and has nothing to do with concern for truth and accuracy.
The key is to become bored by and indifferent to your own ignorance and failure. Kundera writes: "Anyone with broad experience in the general imperfectability of mankind is fairly well protected against its excesses. He accepts insights into his own miserable self as ordinary and uninteresting. Litost, in other words, is characteristic of immaturity. It is one of the ornaments of youth." | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| tomorrow:
before you use the word "less," stop and consider that "fewer" might actually be the correct word.
thanks! | | comments: Leave a comment |
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youdontsmellbad's journal
