P2P v Torrent

LimeWire
I'm not sure about everyone else, but LimeWire was the application that started my love for music. This application started it all, well for me at least. Before my dad introduced me to this I was listening to Fatboy Slim CDs through my portable stereo in my bedroom. Then one day dad comes into my bedroom and is like
"Hey! Look at what I got!"
, then he leaves my room expecting me to follow him and I do. By the time I realise where he is, he has already downloaded my at the time favourite song. 'Oh Yeah' by Yellow, AKA the Duffman theme song. I walk into the room and hear what but this song playing through the computer speakers and I'm like
"Hey! How'd you get this song?"
and dads like
"Easy! Watch This" and cracks his fingers
"Name a song?" he proudly shouts
"Nu Flow by Big Brovaz (one of my favourites from my 'So Fresh' Compilation albums)
and in a second dad has it and is showing it off to me and my brother.

And from that day onwards my music collection grew and grew and grew. Pasing on through many P2P clients. such as

Morpheus (P2P) - shit.







Ares (P2P) - too slow.







Frostwire (P2P) - Still use today occasionally. Changed from Limewire because its lighter.







Emule (P2P, I think??)- Couldn't figure out how to use.








Soulseek (P2P) - Still use when I can't find it on frostwire.








µTorrent (Torrent) - I still use today on my dad's PC. Nice and Lightweight.








Azureus (Torrent) - Found µTorrent better.









and now my current Application

Transmission (Torrent) - Good. Really simple and light Weight. Mac OS X compatible.








As you can see I have moved from P2P to Torrent. I prefer using Torrents they are; reliable, come with all the track info, come with album artworks, are usually high quality tracks. I have never downloaded a virus via torrent, but there are not so many out there that fool you into downloading (unlike P2P). Although torrents can be quite slow I still think they are really good and are the best way to download things.

P2P is; unreliable, have a lot of viruses, a lot of the time are songs that are recorded of the radio or really bad quality, often come with out any track info except the name, never have album artwork, a lot of files are ads 'steven spielberg gets prank called', 'TRACK 1', 'COOL HIP TRACK', 'What ever you search, but with underscores'. I only use P2P now-a-days to downloads things that are not on Torrent.

Air - Pocket Symphony

For all of you out there unaware the the electronic Band 'Air'. Here is a short bio of the band.

Air, a French Electronic/Ambient band formed in 1995 in France. The band consists of two members, Nicholas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel. The band became famous for their Electronic Sounds all over the world with the release of their second album in 1998, Moon Safari.

Now in 2008, after 5 amazing albums. Air has released yet another unique, catchy and relaxing album, Pocket Symphony. 

Pocket Symphony like their other albums is a soft album. Perfect for sitting back on your bed and dozing off to, but on the other hand it can also be listened to as quite a funky and syncopated album.

Personally I think that this album is perfect for casual background at a party or gathering, coming off not to strong and not to dominating. In other words can be easily blocked out unlike other conventional party music such as Hard-style or Rave music.

For all the Air fans out there, this album is a little different to some of there other albums such as Moon Safari or Virgin Suicides. But none the less is still a great album, just in a slightly different style from their other albums.

My favorite song off the album is 'Once upon a time' which is the second track and was the first single of the Album. There are several things I like about this song. Many of them I can not put a name to, I just like it and don't know how to put a name to it. The things I do like about this song is the laid back and relaxed mental image that appears in your head after listening to it for a minute or so.

When I first heard this song I had just uploaded it onto my iPod and hadn't listened to it yet. I left the house and started walking towards the bus stop with the first song of the album playing 'Space Maker', a Trip-Hop sounding song which really fits as an intro to this album. I was about two thirds through my walk when I saw the bus slowing down towards the bus stop. I looked at my watch and realised that if I didn't catch this bus I was going to be late for school, so I started to run for it. In doing this my headphones fell off from the top of my head (I have big headphones like DJ's have). By the time I had gotten to the bus st op the bus had gone, the bus stop was completely deserted and the next bus didn't come for another twenty minutes. I took a seat and chucked my school bag on the floor in anger and then placed my headphones back on my head. The song had changed and was now about 30 seconds through the second song, 'Once upon a time'. Instantly I knew that this was a good song, so much so that I got my iPod out of my pocket and rated it 5 Stars.

Personally I quite like this album, but that's just my opinion. Other people may have a totally different take on it, like my mum who found it stressful to listen to? You have to really be into this sort of music to like it I think. It's not your usual music that you hear on your radio so it could take a little bit of time getting used to if you new to Air, or any electronic/ambient band. If you are by any chance new to Air, start with Moon Safari it's a really good album and is a little easier to listen to for your everyday listener.

Pocket Symphony by Air.

★★★★ - 4 Stars out of 5. "Perfect for sitting back on your bed and dozing off to"

Wonders of .ogg

I would like to send a thank you to all those brave humans who spent their time and effort into bringing the .ogg file into existence. I owe a great deal to .ogg files, and they remain my first choice for sound files for my programs.

I would like to share the explanation behind the mysterious logo:

The 'Thor-and-the-Snake' logo is drawn somewhat from Norse mythology; the real symbolism is the sine-curve shape of the snake. Thor is hefting Mjollnir about to compress the periodic signal Jörmungandr... See, it all makes sense.
- www.xiph.org

My Introduction To Music

I've always listened to music. It's a really big part of my family's lifestyle.In the beginning I wasn't really a real music buff. My Father like any other full grown adult had his music tastes and I had full access to all his music. The thing is that, I never really got into his music collection. Don't get me wrong, he has a really wide and interesting music taste, but I just never got into it. I think the main reason for this was because he was my dad, and I probably thought it was uncool to listen to the same sort of music as him.However a little further down the track (probably year 4 or 5, so that's around 10 or 11), I realised that his taste wasn't all that bad.

What had happened was that I had discovered a few Weird Al Yankovich songs he had bought as a joke. He had all the classics from 'I ran over the Taco Bell Dog' to 'Elmo's got a gun'. Before this I had just blankly listened to radio. Neither loving or hating any songs played. But now I had found an artist I had actually liked.

I'm not sure when it happened but, I was listening to the radio in the car one day and I heard one of the Weird Al Songs. I felt really strange, It was a song that I knew so well being played for everyone to hear. Back then it was a really nice feeling. From then on I would listen to the car radio hoping to hear my favorite Weird Al song.

Soon after for christmas I received a radio from my Nana. It ended up being a really important part of daily routine. I had placed the radio on my bed side table and was listening to it every night. I would pop my pyjamas, hop into bed and switch the radio and listen to it until I got tired. This was an alternative to the simple bedtime novel, which just didn't cut it most nights.

After realising how crap Weird Al was I moved onto better things that I was listening to on the radio. I found various artists to be good song writers such as, Eminem, The Black Eyed Peas, Green Day and Spiderbait. For a while these were my favorite bands, I Just couldn't get enough 'Black betty'.

It was not till later that I was going through my dads iPod and I disc

overed a song called "around the world" by a band called Daft Punk. It was a pretty good song. It was one of the first electronic songs I had ever listened too. It wasn't like one of thoses songs that you listen to and think it's alright to start with and then slowly fall in love with. I listened to it once and straight away I knew I liked it.

From there my music taste changed. I was interested in electronic music, I had all these questions like; How do they make it? Do they use any real instruments? How do they peformed one stage. I decided to take another look through my dad's iPod again. This time I found an electronic song called 'zombienation' by a band called kernkraft 3000. This time the song was a lot faster and had a progressive rhythm, little did I know was I listening to trance music. My brother and I picked up that the song was progressive, we could hear how each instrument was introduced on its own all through the song (if that makes any sense). We had a dance. Each instrument would be some sort of weapon. The fast drums would be a machine gun and we'd do a machine gun action as the dance. The keyboard were lasers and we would pretend to shoot a laser for the dance.

My music taste soon changed again. This time I had found metal. One of my friends 'Samuel' had discovered a band called Rammstein. We both loved it. The first song we heard from them was 'Du Hast' which, like all their songs was sung in German. We couldn;t understand what they were saying, but we still loved it.

I soon realised that Rammstein was 'Industrial Metal' a sub genre of Metal and with this I discovered that there were all sorts of kinds of Metal like 'Death Metal', 'Black Metal' and even 'Power Metal'. A year or two passed on and Sam had found Black Metal. It wasn't long until I caught on too. Some of the Black Metal Classics included 'Emperor', 'Satyricon' and 'Immortal'. By now I was in year 10 or so. So about 15 years old.

Half way through year ten started to drift back to electronic music. This time I discovered a Psychedelic Trance band called Infected Mushroom. Their first song from them for me was 'Acid Killer' which is still one of my favorite songs. I remember bringing my Zen to school camp and listening to it all the way to there on the bus.

Now-a-days my music taste Is split between Metal (pretty much all Scandinavian Metal, whether it be black or heavy) and Electronic (like daft punk and infected mushroom).

I'm not reading through what I just wrote because it's heaps long. Well not for now atleast. So if there's any thing wrong with my grammar or spelling. woop woop.