Category: tunes

Music. Bands. Songs. Concerts.

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all the better to see you with


Sunday afternoon and I’m done mowing both lawns before wunderground.com tells me the approaching clouds plan to loose their loads. Mowing with haste under the threat of grey skies makes a man sweat, warrants a shower before he heats up some leftover fajitas for lunch.

Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m gonna wake up and head into work early tomorrow, give myself a couple “bonus” hours on the day. I don’t like to do this, but the week ahead dictates it I’m afraid. I’d planned on working some tonight, getting that head start, but I have fundamental thing against using my weekend to do work. I know, if my issue is with work cutting into “my time,” the weekend or pre-8am are the same. I don’t think it’s that though, it’s more: work for five days, rest for two. Don’t work on those two, just don’t. So it ends up being that I don’t mind pulling longer hours during the “work week,” as long as I can sufficiently atrophy over the weekend.

Folks, I’ve decided what I’m going to do with the loot I’ll get from selling off my CDs (a shoddy, never-finished, out-of-date and incorrect webpage explaining this can be found here). Yup, that $1300 was calling all kinds of things out to me: HDTV, Keaton’s college education, downpayment on a new vehicle, etc. But, while showering Saturday morning it hit me: I’m going to use the money to get Lasik surgery. Last time I went to the optometrist, he casually mentioned that I’d be a great candidate for the newest Lasik procedure (apparently even less invasive, or something), and that piqued my interest. Plus, it seems that, within the past year, my eyes have grown less and less tolerant of contact lenses – I used to not even know they were in, and now I can’t stand them after ~12hrs.

Anyway, ever since the idea graced my brain, it’s been all I can think of. The thought of camping or hiking or going to a concert and not having my contacts dry out and bug me, not having to deal with my eyes tiring of them each evening – I’m so pumped. I think my vision plan will actually match a certain percentage up to an amount, and I plan on checking into it tomorrow (today, as you read this). I’m actually really excited, and would do this before I left for Germany if there was any way to… but I doubt it. As it is now, I really am going to try and get something scheduled as soon as I get back – this bug has really bitten me. I keep thinking how awesome it’ll be to be able to wake up and see again, no more worrying about fumbling for my glasses when that burglar breaks in before I can aim my gun and cap him.

This weekend, I set out to make my mp3 collection all the better. By normalizing the volume not just of individual files, but all my files relative to each other. Most MP3 normalizers just adjust individual mp3s to a peak level within each file, but not necessarily relative to other files in that album, or other files from other albums. This used to confuse the crap out of me, I’d normalize my files to 89dB thinking now I wouldn’t have to adjust the volume on the iPod when switching from the Moody Blues to Nine Inch Nails… but t wouldn’t work like I wanted it to – the Moody Blues were still half a spin of the knob quieter than Trent. Then, this weekend, I discovered the open-source MP3Gain, which allows you to normalize all your albums to an average 89dB while preserving each file’s relative album volume (i.e. it doesn’t just “amp” all the songs on an album to a certain volume). This little program is awesome, and it’s volume adjustments are not only lossless, they’re completely undo-able should they break something (MP3Gain stores some undo info in the mp3 tag itself). I also used Zortam to auto-import album cover art from Amazon for my entire collection. Took all weekend, but now I just have to completely empty the iPod and repopulate it with the volume-corrected albums… bummer, but worth it.

It’s nearing the end now, running out of steam. Let’s finish this off with a random bit I wrote Saturday.

I thought the local Tapei newpaper’s April Fool’s joke was pretty good. They pretended to “out” a top-secret government weapons program based on betel nut spit, or Operation Bin Lang Fen Nu. I’ve written about betel nut before, so just the fact that I “got” the joke made it funny for me. The device is described as “an aerosol-dispersal device to shower enemy positions with red betel-nut juice, leaving enemy personnel feeling slightly ill, while possessing them with an uncontrollable desire to sing at a KTV.”

Goodnight.

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invested


I love my blog; I really do. Sometimes, I just point Firefox towards it at random times during the day. I’ll re-read my own posts maybe three times during each given workday. Sometimes I do it under the guise of “looking for errors,” but really I just like reading my own stuff – I’m that full of myself. Every night, I check the day’s blog stats: who visited, how long they stayed, what they’re reading and searching for; I eat it up. During the day, I’ll take quick notes on my cellphone, things I want to write about (yesterday my cellphone chirped at 6pm, flashing a cryptic two-word reminder: “island sex”). I like to imagine people reading it and smiling or laughing, I like to imagine the little green s|f icon sitting in peoples’ favorites. I like to imagine people thinking, “I wonder what Dave wrote today.” I like all these things because I’m arrogant, conceited, and self-centered – traits which I think a good portion of bloggers likely share (blogs are for an audience, after all). I don’t care though, I still love my blog – and see no end to it, even as we march onward towards three years together.

This weekend, I sent off a note to an online used CD store. In it, I included a text list of all the titles I’ve ripped and verified from my extensive collection – and asked what kind of price they’d give me for the lot of ’em (some ~500 discs). Their original offer came in a tad low, so I countered and raised by about ~$400. In the end, it looks like I’ll be lucky to make ~$3 per CD upon selling them. Surprisingly, this doesn’t disappoint me that much… I mean, I’m done with these plastic things, they’ve served me well, and certainly given me $15 worth of entertainment over the years – if I can get 20% resale on them after all this time and use, who am I to balk at it? So, in the end, I’ll be dumping nearly half my collection (the other half being mostly Beatles, bootlegs, or CD-R copies of albums I accumulated via online trading) for roughly ~$1500. That’s a $1500 windfall, as far as I’m concerned. Plus, I get rid of ~100lbs of plastic and paper and can sell my specialized CD racks on Craigslist. All in the spirit of simplifying, well that and a corrupt “make a copy and then sell it” sense of capitalism.

Don’t tell anyone, but I bet I got at least 100 of those CDs by scamming the Columbia House and BMG music clubs. Back in middle/high school, I’d join up each service multiple times, under multiple pseudonyms with fake variation addresses of my folks’ house (y’know, Ian Ichamore in “suite B” and the like). I must’ve been a member of each club four or five times over, sometimes maintaining several memberships simultaneously, each one garnering my 12 free CDs. But Dave, what about the commitments you had to fulfill to get out of the club? How could you keep getting the free discs without buying anything? Easy, I had a few standard excuse letters that worked brilliantly each time. My favorite was the, “I’m in the US Navy and am spending the next 16mos aboard a carrier in the Pacific.” I also used the, “I’m in the Army and have been relocated to Japan/Germany/South Africa” bit – but usually my excuses involved compulsory military service – so as to lay on the guilt should I not be absolved of my commitments. Worked like a charm every time. (Dang! I thought I already wrote about this!)

Like the day I discovered I’d been spelling the word “won’t” wrong for my entire life, yesterday I realized that, in my some 30 years of writing, I’ve been using the word “desert” to mean both an arid, dry/hot area of land, and a sweet post-meal confection. Somewhere along the lines, the lesson about there being two Ses in “dessert” missed me. As of tonight, I’ve gone back through the entire blog and rid myself of this embarrassing faux-pas. Isn’t my face red.

Goodnight my friends.

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the mountainfolk of wal mart


Long entry today, some boring some not. Hit it:

This weekend I up and torrent’d the entire Dick’s Picks series, which I already own, but figured would take longer to rip than just download. I wonder if that’s illegal? Likely so. Anyway, now that my “big storage” has evolved to 3/4 of a terabyte, I don’t mind holding multiple gigs of Dead shows – it was harder to stomach previously when >10% of my entire drive was live Dead shows. The Dead have always been pretty progressive with their intellectual property: allowing taping, abiding trading tents, restoring and releasing live shows on CD and radio broadcasts, etc. They even offer digital downloads on their website, in multiple formats – including FLAC and WMA-lossless. Pretty much anything you can buy, you can download (prices are equivalent to buying the actual discs). Not bad dead, hopefully we’ll see more of this. I’d honestly think I’d be more likely to purchase digital copies of albums than buy CDs – maybe it’s because online money seems all “virtual” and just spends easy…

New dads out out there, especially those of little girls, I got a question for ya: How’d you get back into… taking care of business? I mean, dang… the third trimester was… slow, at best; and the doctors, in their infinite wisdom, mandate a six week moratorium post-baby. So, how? How? When? Where? For crap’s sake, I have trouble when the cat saunters into my action – I can just feel those judgemental green eyes on me whenever she’s in the room. Aware of even cat eyes, you can imagine what having an infant daughter in the house is like – it’s just not fair. I’m reminded of the opening scene from American Beauty: a father, starting off his day in the way I’m sure many fathers occasionally do… at least that gives me hope that one day I’ll learn to live within these strange new boundaries which have been imposed upon me. There, I wrote around the whole thing – had that drafted for a couple weeks and was just trying to find a less-sensational way to do it. I think I managed it, eh?

This weekend, I lost a good bit of the hate I’ve been harboring in my heart for Wal Mart. I hate Wal Mart, get the “creepies” simply walking those carny-filled aisles, staring up at the double-overhead stacks of cheap, Made in China, merchandise. I’d be willing to wager that even the Wal Marts in the Hamptons is full of gut-over-pantline, sparsely-toothed, barefoot mountainfolk (I don’t know what “mountains” have to do with this, but the word “mountainfolk” was too awesome not to get into this sentence). Anyway, let’s move off my hatred (lest it return with a vengeance), and get onto my newfound appreciation for the small-business-raping beast.

Sharaun and I have several family members who are computer… challenged. All the digital pictures in the world mean nothing to someone who can’t check e-mail. These people can’t be bothered to log onto the internet, they’re probably too busy getting up to flip their LPs over, filling their iceboxes from the truck that comes by, and hauling their wash back and forth to the stream. Making fun of old-timers aside, it really is a shame that we couldn’t get some visual aids to our kin, and I figured, in this digital age, there must be a way to transmute these new-fangled “paperless daguerreotypes” into something our dinosaur relatives could enjoy. Wal Mart to the rescue! Wal Mart allowed us to upload pictures of our choosing and print them at any store across this great nation. Our e-nothing family could then crank over the horseless carriage, strap on their motoring goggles, and sputter right in and pick them up – pre-paid for by us. The prints are excellent, and the price is right. Using Wal Mart’s handy service, we were able to get photos in the hands of our family in hours, thus moving Keaton from their imaginations right onto their refrigerators.

Wal Mart, I take back (some) of those nasty things I said about you. Who cares if you smell like Filet-o-Fish because there are McDonalds’s inside of you? And, where in the rule book does it say cashiers should be able to make complete sentences with their mouths? Nowhere, that’s where. Anyway, I hope you’ll forgive me… I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t buy 1000 nightlights for 17¢.

Wait wait wait – I started this whole “we can print pictures from Wal Mart” deal to talk about some great new software I found. Let me explain: when there’s not enough natural light for photos, most people like to use the flash. I hate the flash on my camera, it’s too “flashy,” and paints the photos in some eerie, undead glow. So, I tend to turn on all the artificial lights in the room and take the photos in manual mode at a higher ISO speed equivalency. This works great, but the indoor lights tend to make the photos yellow (a white-balancing issue). I used to live with this, because the yellow tint isn’t all that unattractive, I had no idea how to fix it, and it’s still worlds better than the flash. Just recently, I discovered the “tungsten” white-balance setting on my camera. This special white-balancing mode for indoor, tungsten-type, bulbs completely eliminates the yellow tinge to my flashless photos. Using manual mode with white-balance in tungsten mode, and the ISO speed set to 400 – I can take great flashless photos that mimic natural light and are well balanced in terms of color. This makes me extremely happy.

Wait wait wait – I started this whole “I found the right way to white-balance” deal so I could talk about some great new software I found. Since Sharaun had grown tired of yellow-tinted baby photos, the tungsten-balancing was just what I needed to appear a baby-documenting genius. Problem solved for the future, I now wanted to try and address the yellowy images we’d already taken. Used to be, back in the day before I got clean, I’d use my pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop and choose “auto levels” and “auto contrast” to do quick fixes on poorly shot photographs. However, since I went all freeware and open-source, I don’t have a “one click” photo fixit app. Enter the app that spurred the last four paragraphs of tangential blather: PhotoFiltre. Talk about a full-featured photo editing application, this thing does things both novices and experts would expect to pay dollars for – and it’s completely free for personal/non-commercial use. Installing it merely for its automatic level/contrast controls – I was blown away by what all it could do. If you’re looking for a nice, free photo retouch/editing tool (not necessarily a Photoshop replacement, for that use the GIMP) – this is it.

By the way (nerd stuff ahead), that “Dave goes freeware” thread I linked above is pretty out of date. CDBurnerXP Pro is still great, but the Cheetah software is probably just as nice and slicker looking. There’s now a completely viable free alternative to Norton Ghost by way of DriveImage XML installed on a WinPE bootable disc (try Bart’s WinPE) – although TrueImage is still good if you want to make runtime backups. And, turns out the K-Lite stuff has some bootlegged junk in it, but it doesn’t matter because you don’t need it if you run VLC Media Player. And FileZilla is better than WSFTP LE. So, there you go – a little freeware update for the conscientious nerds out there.

Goodnight.

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that’s no lie


I’ve truly, truly got nothing today… debated even posting what little I did have – mostly cobbled together from one-sentence notes I hadn’t had the time to develop over the week. Tonight some friends were over, part of the feed-the-new-parents drive. While here, they held and heaped praise upon our new daughter. After they left, we both talked about how much we love hearing people fawn over her. I swear I can already see her changing: bushier eyebrows and longer lashes, fuller hair and a rounder face – and more active all the time. And, anyway, she’s deserving of such prattling on – I’m convinced.

In part, I hate that awesome albums are always so short. Then again, maybe the shortness actually helps with the awesomeness… afterall statistics do dictate that the more music there is, the better the chance some of it will blow. Short and sweet, maybe that’s what it’s about. Anyway, this new Tapes ‘n Tapes album is short, I mean, like, I listened to it maybe… 700 times today, so much that I now hate it – to death. I seriously don’t want to hear it again until listen 1 of 700 tomorrow morning ’round 8am – and that’s no lie.

Know what I hate about the iPod? I hate that, after playback has been paused, hitting the play/pause button doesn’t immediately restart playback. Nay, it instead “wakes up” the iPod, whereupon it returns to its paused state. This means I have to hit play/pause twice to make the music happen again… and that’s unacceptable. Hey Apple, you think I have time to hit buttons twice? I’m a busy young guy, money to spend, and fickle tastes – show me a digital music player where the buttons do what they say on press #1 and I may just take my dollars elsewhere.

I don’t want to write, don’t really even know if I’m gonna end up posting this. Goodnight.

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hand and foot


Good evening folks. Good cold, clear evening; dark and quiet but for our daughter crying and Sharaun shushing – I don’t mind the sound. Lots of random stuff today, nothing all that interesting among the mess of it.

Since the last of our family left sunny California, our friends stepped in and starting doing dinners for us on a weekly basis. Three nights out of the week, for three weeks, they’re bringing us dinner. In all honesty, we’re ready now to go it alone – but it’s so awesome that we’ve got friends who volunteered to take care of us. It is nice to not have to worry about dinner, and to have company to fawn over the baby. Isn’t charity awesome?

I am absolutely in love with this Tapes ‘n Tapes song, Insistor, it’s simply outstanding. In search to verify the lyrics I’d managed to decipher, I stumbled on this blog, and this post, which expand on the story told within the song. Funny that I’m writing about the Tapes ‘n Tapes in March, and he back last December – guess I know I’m B-list on this one, eh? But guys, this album is fast growing on me. Sounding like what I imagine the Wolf Parade might sound if they hadn’t had big guns production, at times reminding me of the Arcade Fire and even Pavement – it’s really an album worth checking out. I should’ve listened to the hype and bought it long ago, but it seems like the rave reviews their SXSW show is getting will continue to feed the buzz furnace, so maybe I’ll appear to be on the cusp afterall.

That kee-razy comment from yesterday is surely spam, or at least fits the bill. The misspelled nostradamus.com domain that makes up the commenter’s email suffix is a not-so-cleverly disguised redirect/spam site (with some really odd crap on it that I can only guess is script-generated). Unlike the sole other spam comment I’ve let live on its comedic merit, this one does not appear to be unique to me. Even though it sounds a little Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I think it’s just “my Rice Crispies are talking to me” enough for a chuckle – so it stays.

While not as funny as yesterday’s politics bit, I devoured this interesting article over at Slate (yes, it’s about the war in Iraq). I do detect a hint of “I can’t be wrong” in it, as it comes off a bit too self-assured and smug, but, for the most part, the points are interesting and relatively valid.

And, don’t know if you caught Radiohead’s tour announcement, but it had some interesting tidbits from the band I so adore:

We’re excited to be touring again, especially to play new songs to an audience. For the first time, we have no contract or release deadline to fulfil – it’s both liberating and terrifying. To keep things more fun and spontaneous, we will be playing new songs that are work in progress. We will also be releasing music to download when we are excited about it, rather than wait twelve months for a full blown album release. Music’s not just about all-time greats – it’s also a document of its time, and we want to be able to put out a song when it feels right.

Amen guys, maybe they’ll be able to start the revolution. A top act like Radiohead, unsigned to any major, releasing music as the make it, because they are excited about it. Sharing the creative process moreso than ever with their fanbase, and eventually still asking them to pony up dollars for their efforts. No execs running tracks through radio “fingerprinting” applications to judge their mass-appeal, no deadlines from promoters or holiday selling seasons – just a band writing, playing, and releasing music because they enjoy it. I can see the suits at the round table with their faces red in anger, reading the latest article in Wired praising Radiohead for their pioneering distribution model.

Goodnight.

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smarter, not harder


First off, I finally added some new pictures to Keaton’s gallery. Now onto the junk.

I walked out of work today to the kind crisp air that follows an afternoon of rain, that clean smell was on the wind – like everything had a good rinsing, and I could see my breath against the grey clouds. I plugged in the iPod and queued up the new Tapes ‘n Tapes album I’d “got” the day before. It’s no news to those who follow the indie buzz that the Tapes ‘n Tapes are the music blogs’ darlings this month, stealing at least some of the Arctic Monkeys arguably-underdeserved hype. Tonight’s our first night where we won’t make up tomorrow and have new or pre-existing guests in the house, our first night where, tomorrow, it’s us and the baby for the foreseeable future; bona-fide parents.

Work is hectic… frantic even. I’m speeding along trying to juggle things as best I can, trying to tie off all the loose ends. There are really three main states of “stuff to do” that I deal with at work, in order of painfulness:

  • Having a ton of stuff to do with no idea how I’m going to do it
  • Having a ton of stuff to do with clear ideas on how to get it done
  • Having everything done

When I got back from baby-vacation, I surveyed my task-landscape and took stock – my situation falling into the first class of “stuff to do” above. When I’m in this situation, things just flapping around with no closure in sight – that’s when I start freaking out. I feel out of control, aimless, at a loss and overwhelmed. I hate being in this situation. So, I start working. And that brings us to the present.

As of now, I’m somewhere in between the 1st two with my current “to do” list. The work I’m currently scrambling to do is merely plans for doing the actual work I have to do. As wrong, or backwards, as that may sound – I’ve learned it’s actually essential. For me, it’s easier to make a first-pass at the list, identifying paths to closure for everything and then acting on those paths in parallel, rather than taking them one item at a time serially. I think lots of people would begin attacking things one-by-one, closing each out in turn and moving to the next. I, however, like to take tasks like this and move them to my second stress-class: a pile of things to do with clear plans on how I’ll get each one done. Once I get there, I feel much better. Not only does it make me feel better, I actually believe it makes me work better. It’s like the Chinese acrobats who set plates spinning atop sticks: they run from stick to stick and get each plate spinning, then step back and watch for the first plates to being to slow and give them a second spin as they do. For me, it’s easier to manage several things at once, as long as the effort was put in up front to get them pointed in the right direction initially. I guess multitasking is just part of the modern workplace.

To close, some crumbs of stories:

I got my free iPod from freeipods.com the other day, or got Sharaun’s free iPod – since I’m now able to return the favor she did me a while back. In some respects, I can’t believe it actually came. And, they send a nifty t-shirt and mousepad to boot.

In other iPod news, although it’s been around for a while – I recently personally discovered the great iPod software SharePod. A 300k executable that you put on, and run from, your iPod. Once run, you have direct access to all music on the iPod, and can do everything you can with iTunes, and more: add songs to your library, delete songs from your library, play songs, and the most important – copy songs from your iPod to a PC (something iTunes doesn’t support). And, since ephpod hoses 5G ‘pods, this little piece of software is brilliant for getting your music back off your iPod. But, the real beauty of the app is the fact that it runs on the iPod, meaning you can plug your iPod into anyone’s computer and take/give music with ease – all without said person having to have any software installed on their end. Brilliant, just brilliant.

The Daily Show does Bush vs. Bush:

Also, I wanted to thank the fine folks over at Cheetah for sending me a free registration code for their great Cheetah DVD Burner software. Their policy is to send registration codes for links to their software, or kind reviews on download sites. So, in an attempt to round out my Cheetah line, I’m now linking to their CD burning app – which, in trial form, appears to be equally as awesome (and free!) as the DVD app. If you’re looking for slick, guilt-free alternatives to whatever app you’re currently pirating – check out the peeps at Cheetah for some awesome non-soul-damning software.

Goodnight folks, I loves ya.

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realize the model


With this baby, I wonder: Older babies coo and giggle when you play with them; smiling and laughing in response to attention. I wonder if Keaton’s doing the same thing inside, but her little face and vocal cords haven’t learned the motions yet. I play with her like she can: zooming my face close to hers until our noses touch with a loud “boop” sound (don’t ask me what “boop” means, I think it’s kind of onomatopoetic for the kind of soft fleshy impact sound two noses may make, in the exaggerated children’s-cartoon world of sound). Even though her little face doesn’t give away anything, I like to think, on the inside, she’s feeling those same feelings that will later get translated into smiles and giggles – when the proper neural pathways connect the emotions and expressions. So, I forgive her for not visibly reacting – at least for now.

Uh-oh my leet pirate friends, looks like the digital-pirate spotlight is beginning to shift in dangerous directions. In an article in the Boston Globe, the writer examines an “obscure data network technology” called Usenet. Hint: this is what you’ll see me refer to on sounds familiar as “absmi,” “the groups,” “binaries,” or “the newsies.” It’s an interesting article, with some relatively insightful commentary on the day-to-day of the newsies:

The Usenet has long been one of the primary sources for the illegal files found through peer-to-peer services… [it] also has long been a center for illegal file swapping. …huge numbers of illegal video and music files are traded every day on the Usenet. [It] offers the downloader an extra measure of privacy, because the Internet address of his machine is known only to the Usenet server and can’t be intercepted by investigators.

Hollywood’s attack on the Usenet companies [is like]… ”a strategic strike to cut off the supply, like a drug cartel. This is top of the food chain stuff.”

They even have some ideas about news users, and what’s said to be a rise in Usenet usage:

”A common misconception among people who use networks like these is that they’re in a group that is above the law,” said movie industry association spokeswoman Kori Bernards. Indeed, she said the popularity of the Usenet as a place to swap illegal files has grown recently, perhaps because the music and movie industries have successfully shut down several distributors of peer-to-peer software, the most popular means of file swapping.

It’s obvious the article isn’t written by a binaries guru, as there are some misconceptions – but it is somewhat worrisome that terms like NZB, Usenet, and piracy are all being used in mainstream media articles.

Until now, it’s been relatively difficult for ordinary Internet users to get at illegal Usenet files. They aren’t indexed by Google, and downloading them is often a slow, painstaking process.

Usenet trading of illegal files hasn’t become a a large-scale problem yet. One reason is that NZB downloading isn’t free. The NZB search sites charge membership fees… By contrast, peer-to-peer systems are free.

Read the entire article if you’re inclined (if boston.com won’t let you access the article, try using one of these bugmenot logins).

Slow? Painstaking? Not free? Fingers crossed everyone; let’s hope they don’t find out. You take my newsies and I may be forced to go straight… the horror, the horror. When the story hit the front page of digg.com this past weekend, the digg user comments echoed my thoughts above. Some of my favorites:

First rule of Usenet is you do not talk about Usenet.

Ok, WHO TALKED?

waves fingers
You didn’t see any USENET.
disappears into the shadows

this is not the warez network you are looking for, move along

Never heard of it. Move along, nothing to see here.

But, of all the comments, one stood out as particularly insightful to me:

this is crap. why can’t the industry understand. I have “a friend” who uses newsgroups. “He” pays a subscription fee to a nzb provider, and pays a monthly fee for access to “the usenet”. now what does this mean? it means that even people who are called pirates are WILLING to pay for a service that provides reasonable pricing and CHOICE. driven by demand and request, and not dominated by a drm technology that impedes the ability to listen or watch content on the medium of their choice. these stupid organizations need to take a lesson away from their so called “discovery” of usenet. idiots, realize the model and present a compelling alternative, and you get subscribers.

I couldn’t have said it better myself, seeing as I also have a “friend” who follows the same model. What a great comment. If someone is willing to pay ~$15/month for unlimited access to illegal binaries, wouldn’t stand to reason that they may be willing to pay the same for unlimited access to legal files? Sure, there’d need to be a huge selection, and they’d need to be DRM free – but the model is already working, just illegally. Flip that, folks, take that and do it within the boundaries of the law – and you’re a rich man. Too bad there are so many middle men and so much payola in the music business that it’s unlikely a Utopian agreement like that will ever be able to happen.

Everybody catch England’s newest hitmakers on Saturday Night Live this weekend? Coolfer has some interesting commentary about the Arctic Monkeys craze (which I’ve written about previously here and here), and how their US success is much slower-coming, if coming at all, than it is across the pond. This band is more hyped than anything I can recently remember. Every time I hear something new about them, I pull out the album again… in an attempt to hear the greatness so many extol. I plan to check it out again tomorrow, just to be sure. In related news, The Four Stages of the Arctic Monkeys:

Goodnight.