Too Legit To Quit
One of the constants about Internet access in Australia is that our Usenet news feeds suck. This is how it is now, and how it has always been. If you want to get a decent news feed you need to sign up to servers in the US.
When I was living in the US I was signed to excite @home err AT&T Broadband err Comcast’s network and got unmetered access to their news servers. During this time I confess to a habit of copyright violation. At first I used to do a bit of copyright violation, at parties mainly. I thought I could handle it. Before I knew it I was downloading mostly music from the various .mp3 groups but also certain TV shows that I couldn’t get on cable at the time. I’m cured now.
The TV shows I mostly watched then deleted. The music, on the other hand, accumulated. I ended up with gigabytes of this stuff. Arr, me hearties.
[Aside: Last week NTK declared that talk-like-a-pirate-day was ‘so over’. I’m inclined to agree, but allow me to present talk-like-hulk-day into the memesphere. Chris and I have found it very handy to revert to Hulkese on certain occasions, such as “Windows domain migration make Hulk ANGRY!” and “Hulk SMASH customer requirements document!” So now you know what kind of place I work at. And next time you hear the phrase talk-like-hulk-day you’ll know where you heard it first.]
Anyway, a while back I sacrificed some tax refund for the greater good, and bought a new PowerBook. Later it was supplemented by an iPod. I don’t know what it was about these two, but for some reason I didn’t want to sully my pristine Apple hardware with my dirty pirated mp3 collection. So far I haven’t.
Instead I have been working through the mountain of pirated mp3s, purchasing the music that I liked, and discarding if it wasn’t appealing enough to justify a purchase. In the last 6 months I’ve bought lots of new (to me) music, including the following highly recommended gems: Puppy - the latest from Fluke, Ensi by a Finnish producer called Blamstrain, and of course Otherside by some other Scandanavian crazies called Mr. Velcro Fastener.
This is all good for the soul (incidentally Soul Trader by ILS is another recommendation) and you knew that already and you’re probably wondering what the point is. Well I just noticed that in re-listening to the music I had downloaded I was being a lot more critical and I had in fact re-discovered several albums that were, lets say, languishing in the, lets say, bowels of my, lets say, mp3 collection. Lets say bowels again just for fun.
So the lesson learned is that unless you’re paying money you’re not really investing in the effort required to appreciate the music. I’m sure that says something about art appreciation in general. Or that I need to go blog about something more interesting.
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