The Evils Of File Sharing

“Mp3 is the new radio.”

– Chuck D, still an Enemy of the Public after all these years.

Funny to see the rifle cross-hairs lining up on a piece of software, lines of code, but the record companies made sure they were deadly accurate when it came to Napster, the original data gangster, that came to symbolise file-sharing online. Being centrally organised meant that a target was even possible, but what to do with this next generation of decentralised file-sharing apps – where there are no central servers for record executives to close down?

Next Gen P2P
There’s a veritable army of apps out there vying for attention – each with their pros & cons – best be reading up about them to what suits your needs best. There’s also a wide array of p2p news and advocacy sites. These are some of the best:

www.slyck.com – Nothing to do with pizza, but includes a great range of Slyck guides for a range of apps like KaZaA, eDonkey, SoulSeek, Morpheus & a stack of others, as well as how to share files in Newsgroups and irc chat channels.

www.netweed.com/filesharing, www.zeropaid.com and http://p2pnet.net/index.php both offer a very extensive range of file-sharing links, articles and related news snippets.

www.xfactor.cc – is one of the better mac p2p apps, and www.mac-p2p.com gives a good overview of mac p2p possibilities – including a very helpful “History of P2P” article.

Bit Torrent
This app is interesting, and worth looking at all by it’s purty lil self – unlike traditional file sharing systems, its primary intention is to provide an efficient way to distribute the same file to a large group of people by having everybody that downloads a file also upload it to others. Which means it is great for downloading really large files. This is a quick n easy guide to bit torrent downloading (available on most platforms ).

Part 1 – get bit torrent:
http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=BitTorrent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorrent
http://sarwat.net/bittorrent/
http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/download.html

Part 2
Download torrent files from places such as:
www.suprnova.org
www.Isohunt.com
www.Filesoup.com
www.Torrentreactor.com

Part 3
Leave your torrent file running a while after your download is complete – until the size of your download has also been uploaded elsewhere. This way the whole network benefits from sharing bandwidth / download speed from u a little.

Part 4
Make a torrent ‘seed file’ about one your files, and send that to the network, so the network can share your creative juices / booty. ( see www.torrentaid.com )

buon appetito~!

Miscellaneous P2P Tips

“It’s just like the internet – except it’s real…”

– the guy behind me @ Dizzee Rascal, Prince of Wales, Melbourne, Jul 22, 2004, in response to the ‘on-stage talent’ during Dizzee’s ‘shake it’ competition for ‘all tha fine Australian ladies in the house’.

Yes indeed, our online habits continually creep into our ‘real-world’ perceptions and experiences. All the more reason to avoid bad online habits, such as attracting the odd virus here and there. Regular P2P users would be well advised to read up on security and privacy matters, as many of the peer to peer apps are notorious for allowing various kinds of unauthorised access to your computer. Google is your friend, and while there, grab yourself a ‘download manager’ which will improve your web downloading and allow you to resume downloads even after that browser has crashed for the 7th time.

by Sean Healy, July 20, 2004 0 comments

Bruce Haack Attack @ MIFF 2004

Aye, the Melbourne International Film Festival’d be on again, hapnin from Jul 21- Aug 8 2004 (see www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au ), wiff another plethora of fine feelums. Could-be-standouts include a new Lars Von Trier piece, Breaking News(Hong Kong), a doco on the Yes Men, A Page of Madness (Japan) featuring live score performed by In The Nursery (UK), Coffee & Cigarettes by Jim Jarmusch, The Adventures of Iron Pussy (Thailand),a Gibhli studio animation showcase (Japan) and Haack : The King Of Techno – a spirited doco about Bruce Haack, the prolific composer behind a huge span of wildy creative, emotive electronic music from electronic childrens songs to satanic music, as well as being an inventor of weird musical instruments ( full list-o-weirdness at www.brucehaack.com ). Philip Anagnos shot, directed, edited, animated & produced the doco, and was happy to yak from LA about his labour of love:

How’d you get so hooked up into the world of Bruce Haack?
I did a lot of partying in the rave scene, and got really turned onto electronic musichaack.jpg… at some point I was looking to take it to the next level and started investigating the culture’s history – which is where I found Bruce Haack’s work.. there was something totally unique and intriguing about it – children’s music made electronically… I found it resonated a lot with what I liked about rave music – pushing boundaries and being made in a really fun way. A DJ friend at a moog conference in Los Angeles played me a whole album – Electric Lucifer – and I was hooked.

That was a concept album about heaven and hell wasn’t it?
Yeah and it was his most successful album, the only album to really get radio airplay. That was actually part 1 of 3, part 2 was released in 2001 and we’re remastering part 3 now for release at an appropriate time. It’s such amazing music. I’ve been doing DJing sets of rare and unreleased work of Bruces after film screenings – would love to do that in Australia if possible.

An artist with such a prolific output, yet so little visual record must’ve presented some doco_challenges?
Yeah – I tried to round up all the footage I could find, and tried to really milk everything, I used just about every image I could find from all the friends in his network, and his two appearances on classic early American TV shows, but in the end I had to rely a lot on the interviews and animations I made from his songbook. The documentary only shows a limited story of Bruce – there are some extremely dark and melancholy aspects of Bruce that I couldn’t cover with the documentary – it was too dark – so I feel almost responsible to tell the full story – so I’m writing a screenplay to turn it into a feature.

What was so dark about him?
When you hear the music you can tell straight away this in an intriguing person, and must have an intriguing story behind them… Half-way into the research for it I began to uncover and realise his darkness wasn’t going to be appropriate for the doco … and so I started treating the doco as a first step towards getting a feature made about his life and music. He had an intense life from birth on… claimed he could hear folk music in his head, he took peyote at the age of 12 on an indian reservation, then eventually ended in New York and entering the entertainment world which he grew to despise… eventually turning to harder and harder drugs to cope. The screenplay has been mapped out, and now we’re just looking at people to attach to it. In an ideal world I’d love Philip Seymour Hoffmann to play Bruce, I think he’d be great… and Sofia Coppola’s people have shown some interest in the project, but we’ll see.

There’s an impressive list artists contributing covers or being interviewed in the film – Beck, Money Mark, Mouse on Mars, Anubian Lights, Tipsy, Dj Me Dj You. Were they tough to nail, or all keen to be involved?
As a first time director it was tough to get some of the bigger names, but they were mostly very willing once you got through to them in person. I was disappointed I didn’t get a chance to interview Beck, although I hope he might appear on the DVD.

And you did the animation yourself as well?
Yeah, 98% of the animations in the movie are from his songbook which he never published – only gave to friends… it’s a cut n paste collage thing he made with pictures for every song…. so I’ve taken lots of these and animated them to his music. It actually helped because I didn’t know where to start with his mammoth musical output, so I ended up using whatever music had pictures in his songbook.

MIFF 2006 Review
MIFF 2005 Review
MIFF 2003 Review

by Sean Healy, July 20, 2004 2 Comments

Intuos 2 Tablet Review

“Be still my dog of war. I understand your pain. We’ve all lost someone we love. But we do it my way! We do it my way. Fear is our ally. The gasoline will be ours.”

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior’ resonates eerily today, not so much because of characters like the hockey mask wearing leatherboy ‘Humungus’ who spoke these lines, but for it’s emphasis on battles for oil. Nevertheless, even a brute cartoonish villain like ‘Humungus’ would have little trouble adapting to contemporary graphics tablets. If ‘Humungus’ was a graphics boy, a tablet would speed up his processes considerably.

Hand Eye Co-Ordination
tabletQuake and Counter-strike advocates are quick to point out to critics, the benefits of long hours before the screen. And perhaps our generation may indeed enjoy ‘improved hand-eye co-ordination’, but even hardened mouse and joystick users will still require a little getting used to a pen and graphics tablet. The Intuos 2 is mapped out in such a way that the tablet represents the entire screen. Move your pen over particular section of the tablet, and the cursor will appear over the equivalent section of the screen. Simple enough, and you get used to it quickly, but still a little strange at first. The model I tried was the Intuos2 6″x8″(inches), which means the area you can move your pen over is roughly ‘A5’, or half an ‘A4’ page.

Features
The tablet & pen work straight away in true plug n’ play form, but kick in better performance when you load the latest drivers from www.wacom.com, offering more refined control. The pen itself has a twin button on its side which can be modified to become often used key commands, or clicks / double clicks. The end of the pen is an eraser, and both it and the ‘ink’ end of the pen are highly adjustable. The pen features 1024 levels of tip and eraser pressure, tilt, angle and direction – meaning you can squeeze out a high degree of variable lines when drawing.

For the illustration challenged, the tablet also allows very easy tracing of images – it works by detecting the pen’s location when it is half an inch above the tablet, which means u can tape a piece of paper to the tablet and actually trace a picture outline and then see this image recreated on the screen. And built into the device is a durable transparent overlay so that you can easily slide photos and art under the overlay for tracing. Each Intuos2 tablet also features menu strip buttons above the active area of the tablet for easy access to your favorite shortcuts, just set each button to whatever you want and click on it for immediate access.

Included Software: PainterClassic, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, ComicStudio mini

What Else Can Tablets Do?
tablet Graphics tablets are potentially useufl input devices in many ways. Because the tablet very effectively mimics the screenspace, they can make very effective Controller devices for audio and video – where you can have quick and accurate access to the X & Y co-ordinates of the screen and control parameters within an audio or video program. Unlike a mouse though – when you lift your pen and lower it elsewhere on the tablet, the cursor doesn’t drag along to the point, it jumps to it – allowing for different ways to approach FX.

Within video programs such as After Effects 6 and its Vector Paint function, tablets can be used to record your drawing as video – for creating moving handwritten names as titles, or creating graffiti shapes that unfold as you watch. For vector based art fans – there’s now a free download available of Expression, a great vector/bitmap program – which has supposedly “the best tablet support of any of the graphics apps.” www.microsoft.com/products/expression

System Requirements for Intuos 2 tablet (USB Version)
* PC – Windows XP, ME, 98 or 2000 (95 not supported); USB port, CD-ROM drive and color monitor
* Mac – OS 8.5, 8.6, 9.X, 10.x or later; USB port, CD-ROM drive and color monitor

Where?
The Intuos 2 Tablet & pen are distro-ed in Oz through : www.videobytes.com.au – rrp: $419

This week’s Technoscape Theme song:
Bastard pop remix of ‘Star Wars’ & ‘US forces’ by Peter Garrett. Australia & the US have just signed a pact to develop a controversial missile defence shield. Stay tuned for the next Fridge Magnet terror awareness pack.

TWT Theme Movie: Spiderman 2 in Lego..

by Sean Healy, July 20, 2004 0 comments

HipHop Vs Tony Hawk

You skate like a monkey, your ollies are wak. Think you’re underground – try skatin round Vice City sometimes, see how long u last?


Guerilla News Network
Something like an adbusters for the music video world, GNN produce a whole range of clips for socio-politcal provocation and maintain a fascinating collection of online clips and links. A tad on the conspiratorial tip at times, though there’s plenty to chew on here. Of late, even hip-hop has come under their radar – with 3 interesting clips. ‘When the Smoke Clears’ is a ‘scathing indictment of the current state of Hip Hop by one of the most political voices to hit the mic since Chuck D and KRS-1’, featuring some of Hip-Hop’s most memorable video clips dug from the crates of the 80s and 90s. ‘White Amerika’ is another GNN production, an animated clip aiming to “place the viewer in the body of Eminem as he moves through the media-drenched environment that is the subject for his critique of American society.” And even ‘Fitty Sent’ gets a workover – but sayeth the GNNers – “The only problem was that the track, HEAT, is basically a spray of threats levelled against 50 Cent’s enemies. As soon as we got a first look at the chorus of the track, we knew that it was going to be a trick to turn the message around and say something political.”

Instead of trying to downplay the violent posturing of 50’s cut, GNN used it to comment on the culture of violence that is the foundation of modern rap and video game genres and to profile the relatively unknown history of US government involvement in inciting black-on-black violence through its covert CoIntelPro operation – which was designed to “neutralize political dissidents”, such as the Black Panthers and Martin Luther King Jr. In more recent history, it has been alleged that CoIntelPro still operates, only now it has rap music and the celebrities who dominate it as targets.

Urbandictionary.com
Curious about the quality of milkshake Kelis serves up? Overhear people on public transport sayin sheeet like ‘fo shizzle ma nizzle?’ Pop this one in yer bookmarks then. Interesting thing about this site is that *anybody* can upload their own definitions of phrases, so you can see many different perspectives on what something might mean, but also invent / propogate / upload – your own in-joke / in-bred / weird-assed phrases and bent Australiana rhyming slang ( see http://ausslang.tripod.com ) etc ‘fo’ shizzle my nizzle’?
1. affirmative; For sure, ma nigga.
2. A modernized and extended version of the infamous Shakespearean Hamlet line, “To be … or not to be?” “Fo’ shizzle … o’ no’ fo’ shizzle? Dat be the quizzle, my south-central British nizzle.”
3. Homie#1 “Yo, dogg, let’s score some wizzle and smoke us a jizzle.”
Homie#2 “Fo’ shizzle my nizzle.”

Gold Teef Fangaz
http://www.goldteethusa.com/caps.php
Think I pimped this URL already some time ago, but I still can’t get over finding a magazine in a friend’s Tasmanian house that offered the chance to buy the ‘finest in quality of gold and platinum teeth caps’. “Our gold teeth are unique and custom made. Each gold tooth is made to fit your teeth individually to the shape of your teeth. They are not one size fits all product that looks fake. Our caps are guaranteed to fit your teeth like a glove.” Remember all the fun you had last time you had a glove in your mouth?

Samplerism
Ze cats at illegal-art.org have made available for free download, two fine albums of controversial audio. First up : Dj Danger Mouse’s ‘Grey Album, which combines the Beatles ‘White Album’ & Jay Z’s ‘Black Album’ to great effect. Click again and you getz 1x historical compilation featuring a who’s who of sonic violators from recent years. Check out the original Negativland track that got U2 on their legal ass, enjoy collage supremo Steinski, cult Djs Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Wobbly, People Like Us, John OSwald, The Evolution Control Committee, Del La Soul, The Tape Beatles, The Beastie Boys, Dummy Run & many more crazed sampling fiends, as well as a huge range of related reading materials, controversial videos, links to other samplin fiend archives.

Keepin It For Wheel(s)
What a difference one ‘S’ can make. For example, if your name looked just like that of a celebrity, with just one extra letter tailing it – inevitably you’d be gettin’ yrself used to a lot of mistaken identity. When that celebrity is the most famous skateboarder in the world, and you have a website – http://tony-hawks.com – then, it’s kinda predictable that you’ll end up getting the occasional request for grip-tape autographs, playstation trick tips and maximum respect duuuuude ( maaaan, that ollie spiral staircase sequence was sikkkk++ ) etc. Click on his skatemail button to browse the 15 pages of emails and replies Tony Hawks, a 40 year old British folk musician lives with from day to day.

by Sean Healy, July 20, 2004 1 Comment

Make Your Own Paint, Photoshop Yr Funnybone, Stream Ascii Video

This week’s mission, should you choose to accept it, is to transfer soma_da colours from behind your eyelids – to the splendid autumn canvas that is Melbourne ( free transport & accomodation below ). Ready to cream those caffeinated cobblestone alleys? Your time starts ….

Make Your Own Paint
When you first wake, leave your eyes closed, what do you see? Nobody else knows, and what a wonderful experience to externalise that imagery, to invite others behind your eyelids. Practice safe eyeballing as a priority though, taking heed from the abundance of eyeballers out there who’ve mapped their techniques for others to share.

Step 1: Avoid commercial paint, which is full of toxins such as cadmium, mercury, phenols, chlorine, sulphur, formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds.
Step 2: Google ‘make your own paint’, and choose a recipe from the dozens available. (eg www.ata.org.au/articles/64paint.htm )
Step 3: Collect the simple non-toxic ingredients such as builder’s lime, skim milk, plaster of paris & pigment.
Step 4: Combine and experiment – paint your fridge, stereo, bicycle, ceiling, your battered car and your neighbours.
Step 5: Hone your techniques – in your local streets, on train rides to suburbs you don’t often visit, in places people’d never suspect to wander across such shapes, such splashes of colour.

Photoshop Yr Funny Bone
Step 1: Visit the top 3 photoshoppery contest sites. Check out the constant challenges thrown out to image warping demons. Piss yourself at the galleries of submitted pieces:
www.somethingawful.com, www.fark.com and http://b3ta.com/challenge/dvdextras
Step 2: Crank out a couple of gems.
Step 3: Upload images to your favourite site.
Step 4: Upload images to www.peripheralvision.net.au for outdoor projection in Melb_alleyways during the Next Wave festival.
Step 5: Email us the URL ( not the image), so we can print ’em here too.
Step 6: Consider image as stencil, print & cut-out. ( Homework: www.toysatellite.org/leigh/stencils )

Beam Your Own Ascii Video South
Step 1: Goto http://dynebolic.org and download the free 612mb Dyne:bolic Linux CD.
Step 2: Copy this free multimedia enhanced software operating system onto a CD.
Step 3: Restart your windows machine with this CD inserted ( choose start/boot from CD).
Step 4: Wear your best Linux grin – you are now using a free operating system ( it’s really that easy).
Step 5: Read up about the extensive free audio and video software included, such as the free video input to ascii converter. ( Think matrix – video as scrolling numbers and text icons).
Step 6: Run this very easy to use software and you are now streaming an ascii video stream to the web.
Step 7: Let some Melb_kids know about it.
Step 8: Drop a line to da wonderful rastafarian coder behind all this, Jaromil from http://rastasoft.org, & click .

Come On Down
Step 1: Visit the massive www.nextwave.org.au program from May 18-30 to check the best dates for your journey. eg Ladies Skipping League Tour of Booty: May ?? @ Fed Square.
Step 2: Scope some of the still dripping Melb-stencil & graf hotspots at cleansurface.org & www.stencilrevolution.com &
www.theemptyshow.org.
Step 3: Check the extensive next wave gallery/exhibit/theatre/etc launches for good spots to meet drunken Melbourne artists with spare rooms, or spare pillows.
Step 4: Consider the next wave night program for good venues to snooze at the back of.
Step 5: Get yr hitching thumbs ready, or snare a lift thru hitching sites @ google.
Step 6: Arrive, deposit sediment from behind eyelids, marvel at the colours.

by Sean Healy, July 20, 2004 0 comments