Skip to main content

Bit Torrent and the return to vinyl

After the Imesh fiasco earlier this year, I was off looking for another place to download music. Superman had mentioned Bit Torrent a couple of times and I had heard of it through some other sources, so I decided to give it a try.

I went looking for a song... figured I'd throw up a softball and see what happened. Didn't find the song. Huh. Searched for another. Well, it found the whole album -- I just want the song. Searched for another... and another -- it's not finding any of them. I have about 40 songs I'm looking for currently -- It didn't find any of them.

I try my 'baseline' check: I put in the search term "50 cent". It comes up with more than 1000 hits. Hmmm... so that's how it is.

So I go looking for some pornography. Well, it finds those search terms just fine. So I pick out a file and start to download. Now, I'm not embellishing here -- it literally took 1 hour and 5 minutes for a 35meg file. It should have taken less than 10 minutes.

The client I used was called 'utorrent'. This was the worst download client I've ever seen. It was rich in detail where it didn't need to be and lacking information I was looking for. It gave me a very nice line graph of upload and download speed (very close to WinMX) but I never knew what I was uploading. It gave me all these great statistics on upload speed, seeds, alternates and a bunch of other things and only gave me download speed in kilobits-per-second.

I'll admit that I'm not the most intelligent person on the planet but this client was confusing. I've dealt with other download clients like Napster, Morpheus, Imesh, WinMx and BearShare -- I can say with clear conscience that this Bit Torrent client I was using was the worst.

I got to looking at my list and noticed that most of the songs on the list (if not all) I already have on vinyl. A couple of months ago I had 'downloaded' an album on vinyl and burned the MP3's to a CD for some acquaintances of mine (friends of Superman?).

Anyhow, the equipment was still set up to record to the computer so I searched through my collection for some choice cuts. I had not heard some of this music in... 10 years? It takes a while to record because you have to listen in real-time (gasp!). No downloading a 4 minutes song in a minute and a half.

People who are not of the age do not understand the warmth of an album. It's not hard for us hybrids to convert albums to CD but I just want to know why this isn't done more often. The latest-and-greatest stuff comes out all the time but we're looking for the oldest-and-obscure stuff. The stuff WE grew up with. Aahh... nobody cares.

We need a new musical era. It seemed to me growing up bands were coming out all the time that changed the musical landscape. I can't remember the last 'supergroup' to come out with an album. Where are they?

I'm easing very nicely into a curmudgeon. Look out Andy Rooney!

Popular posts from this blog

Top 10 Cartoon Duo's

This time out the subject is Top 10 Cartoon Duo’s. I was only going to make this a Top 5 list but I had so many entries to work with, I added the last 5. Here’s the list is no particular order – wait, that’s not right… 10. Ren & Stimpy: Call this entry the ‘Odd Couple’ of the group. A cat and a dog (I think) living together and making their way despite their obvious instincts to be sworn enemies. I have to admit that this cartoon was hard to watch sometimes because of the ‘gross’ nature of both characters – pooping and boogers a big part of the vernacular. “Oh, Re-e-e-n?”, “Yes, Stimpy!” 9. Inspector Gadget & Penny: An uncle and his niece go around solving crimes against Dr. Claw. It was actually Gadget and his dog, Brain, that tried to solve the crimes and Penny that actually solved them. She would tell Brain the solution and that crazy dog would expend a great deal of energy trying to make the Inspector understand the solution. Finally, when Inspector Gadget would ‘stumble...
Read more

Another Run

Well, after my last successful date, I figured we ought to try it again. In fact, at the first date I told her that it wasn’t up for debate – that we WOULD go out again. And we did. It was the Saturday following the first date. She had been out with a friend of hers on Friday night and they must have gotten a little wild with the drinks because she appeared to be “hurtin’” come date-night. I suggested a couple of places and we settled on a laid-back little place where we could just hang out and talk. Before we get to the date, I have to explain what I was doing beforehand. Superman had invited me to a corporate function of his wife’s work. It was given a renaissance theme. That was fine but the woman who was doing the announcements had a very screechy voice… AND she was amplified… AND she was yelling. We ate the obligatory hot dog and hamburger and generally made our presence known – then got the hell out of dodge. I think if it wasn’t for the screeching woman we would have stayed long...
Read more

Lunch with a side of awkward

Last week I was sitting in my office wondering what to eat for lunch since I didn’t bring anything to eat. I happened to be in our break room and saw a collection of restaurant menus and began thumbing through them for suggestions. I came across a place that I had heard of but had never been to, so I decided to go there – mostly because of how close it was to the office. I walked in and looked around. The place was empty. There was a table of 4 ladies in the corner who looked like your basic bridge-playing women. Sitting in the booth next to them was another couple that looked like they were wrapping things up in order to leave. Finally a server appeared and seated me at a table across the aisle from the foursome. By then, the other couple had left. As I looked around, I noticed a lot of the place was made of or covered in wood. It’s the kind of a place you might find overlooking a body of water, but all that was outside this place was a parking lot. The server was tall, thin, dark hai...
Read more