December 27, 2005

Well So Could Anyone

If you want to watch a rather engaging piece on the making of the Pogues song "Fairytale of New York", you can have a look at it here. Distributed and capped by UKNova, as far as I know, but someone reposted. It really is a lovely song, and the Pogues definitely grow on you. Wonderfully used in the Wire.

Posted by subtitles at 6:31 AM

December 20, 2005

TVTAD is Back!!

Apparently they've been sneaky for some time now, but I've been too out of it to realise. TVTAD.com. Only thing is now you have to supply your own RSS feed - via TVRSS.net. Off to screw the man :).

Posted by subtitles at 1:21 PM

June 28, 2005

Download Nigella Interview From NPR

nigella.jpgJust for fun I thought I'd upload Nigella's interview off NPR, which I found via her Wikipedia article. It's at points rather moving, and she gestures in a way that I find quite wrenching.

I had been reading up on her in part because I've been watching very early episodes of HIGNFY, and they seemed to take great delight in pillorying Nigel Lawson, her father, who was, or had just recently ended his tenure, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. I don't wonder that she would have turned out as conservative as she probably is. Or that her appearance on HIGNFY so many years later would have had the tenor it did. Though certainly it could well be the case that nothing had really anything to do with anything.

So yes, sure you could listen to the stream but this way you can keep the file - though you could as easily rip the thing with NetTransport, as I did. You'll probably have to register first, and then say hi to me, so I can make you a VIP.

Image from the BBC, found via my new favorite thing, the MSN image search.

Posted by subtitles at 7:18 AM

June 27, 2005

when it comes to the eyepatch-jockey stuff - The Sky is Falling, Apparently

This was really just the last straw:

The Supreme Court ruling is set to have a devastating effect on P2P networks. Though hobbyists may continue to write file-sharing software away from American jurisdiction, reputable investors are likely to steer clear of any commercial P2P operations for fear of legal repercussions there. The legitimate uses for P2P technology will suffer a severe setback and developers of any future technologies will have to consider possible illegitimate applications before unveiling innovative software or gadgets.

Those "hobbyists" are the ones who actually do most of the work of software authoring, whether for pay at their day jobs, or as contributors to Open Sauce Projects. To be honest I'm glad that corporations can no longer participate in the grubby business of bundling spyware into half-assed P2P apps. As critical as I can be of Open Sauce, when it comes to the eyepatch-jockey stuff, there's really no beating them. If you want the bleeding edge stuff, you're doing to find it in eMule and Azureus, not from Microsoft.

One of ISOHunt's taglines pithily sums up the reality of the situation: "Where did half the internet's bandwidth go?"

If people are moving to using crippleware services, that's up to them, but the overwhelming majority (let me say that again: overwhelming majority) of what is going on is still going on far beyond the ken of geriatrics. People who say otherwise are just plain lying and spreading FUD - or worse, don't even know they're lying.

There are times when you might think the Economist is simply trying its best to steer a moderate course through extremity; but sometimes they are just cluelessly, and comically, out of touch. And they had to annoy me with that fucking hair.

One word, 3 letters: Arr.

Posted by subtitles at 10:50 PM

June 18, 2005

New TV Site That Works With Azureus' RSS Plugin

Calls itself, and tags its files, as CTV - though the url is http://centraltracker.org/. Importantly, it has The Inside, so yay. If you need me to explain what Azureus is, or what a plugin is, what the RSS plugin is, or what RSS is - then god help you, I'll bash your fucking skull in. The feed url is http://centraltracker.org/rss/index.php.

Obviously The Inside has made me much more receptive to my rewatching of Wonderfalls.

Posted by subtitles at 8:30 PM

June 15, 2005

Remote P2P management appears to have moved on

My planned setup is to have a gateway, probably the old computer, with a large disk added on. This gateway would run all the things you'd expect, the P2P apps, probably Skype if I can be bothered, and it would always be on. Which is fun, except I don't want to have to be physically in front of it to manage it, since that would sort of defeat the purpose of using it as a file server for my media etc.

Hence the wonder that is Azureus' Swing Web Interface, a remarkably easy to install plugin, where I can just go to the gateway address, ie: 192.168.0.1 and append :blah for the relevant port. Most important is the fact that now the clipboard monitoring works, when it didn't before, which is a godsend. And with the RSS plugin, a number of things don't even need prompting. Unfortunately I've yet to bother to find a suitable TV site that links torrents in their feed. The web interface doesn't seem to allow you to configure the RSS plugin, but that's not strictly necessary.

eMule's web interface has also leapt forward, in the sense that you can use the simple web interface, with gzip enabled, and the page loads with incredible prompt. Everything is much streamlined, so adding links etc. is much more fun. But eMule has been playing a smaller role than it had done.

So other than swapping a few disks and the graphics card, everything should work out to be quite ideal. Hopefully my notebook is spanked up from lying in a box. Though at some point I might just spring for the Dell, or an Intel powered iBook (yes, the reality distortion field's effects are slow to fade this time).

Oh, and dyndns.org's official client is really good, and remarkably easy - even the tray icon "is *so* fetch". Thank goodnes I no longer have to pirate the older one I was using. Whatever it is, it just works now, so hoorah.

Now what's the chances that SBC (or whoever) will be offering 25 mbits by the time I get there? Anyone?

Posted by subtitles at 8:44 AM | TrackBack

Eyepatch Jockeys

There's no point being coy about it - if you're a fan of "extended trial periods", this is definitely a place you'd enjoy for all of the latest. You have to register, but that's harmless, and it's better than the search engines that cover these things. Basically very good for up to date stuff. And pretty reliable as well. Though obviously there are things that you can't beat P2P for. These guys very conscientiously deal mostly with direct downloads, from what I can tell. I think they used to be at a slightly different url, but then these things are always moving.

Posted by subtitles at 1:41 AM

May 18, 2005

unfortunately still referential - Penultimate House

And so House decided to do interesting things. To be honest I preferred the jumpy pumpy to the revelation, but who would have guessed, eh? I can't say it's the most innovative way of presentation, but it was okay - unfortunately still referential, but then most things are. It's always more fun to play than to play for a reason, though playing for a reason in roundy circles without saying uncle is as good a way as any. Is playing for playing another kind of roundy circle? I've not thankfully made myself lose all interest and find it all tedious.

And so they picked up on the odd ambivalence of Sela Ward's empathy. Are her eyebrows really like that? And so it occurs to me that as with so many times, I probably liked or thought I liked more than came out and chiseled.

I recommend for convenience the TorrentSpy.com directory. For House.

Posted by subtitles at 7:48 PM

May 17, 2005

Louis Now Has His Own Bittorrent Tracker!

Who's a clever monkey? The wonderful tutorial is here. The source/files are here. Not even as difficult as installing say Movable Type, though I did get a number of things messed up. The database stuff was pretty confusing, since my ISP sets things up so that things are much simpler than they represent.

But yes, voila, biffing.fallingbeam.org. Currently the only thing I'm seeding is Dion's Nikon Booth Babes, but all are welcome to it. It's a registration only tracker, so deal with it. For this, I only provide telephone support, my typing can't handle it otherwise - but it's simple, just sign up and things should just work out.

Posted by subtitles at 1:06 AM | TrackBack

May 6, 2005

Murder One and Igby Goes Down

Both are now available online, so check out Murder One at Realworld starting with the pilot, and Igby Goes Down at ShareProvider. It's just because I love these both so much - I actually have them on DVD. I actually did a previous post on Igby, if you can be bothered to search for it.

Posted by subtitles at 10:51 AM | TrackBack

Google Web Accelerator Just Exploiting ISPs' Local Cache? - Important Limitation for Bittorrent Users

I wrote about the GWA in a previous post, one that seemed rather popular with the Opera users in the forums. Hence an update.

Apparently their "web accelerator" might be doing something as simple as exploiting your isp's local cache. When I browse using it, my IP gets redirected to a different IP, identified as cache.myisp etc. Which makes me wonder first who's doing most of the work, whether my ISP should be offering this rather than Google etc. But I suppose ISPs are looking to minimise support issues as much as possible yes/no? And they probably don't mind people being efficient and using their cache. Still, it seems to take the mystique out of google's little miracle app.

Well, what this means is that if you belong to any registration based BT site, you're going to want to turn GWA off for those sites. Because if you don't you might not be able to down/upload, and your stats might not get counted - basically you'll be registering the site with a different IP than your BT client. You turn GWA off for those sites by going to the settings menu - right click on the system tray icon, under preferences. It'll launch the local web page with your settings in it, and you should add in the domains that you want to exclude, eg: .filelist.org, .uknova.com. Simple enough, but took me a bit to realise. That preferences menu is also quite useful to twiddling the settings of the app.

Adding the urls to the bypass list in Proxo isn't the way to go apparently, since that didn't make a difference (obvious to some, probably, but not to me). I'm assuming passing Azureus through the proxy would be ill-advised. If only because it'd clog up the traffic through the cache, and I think the cache is clever enough to stop that - well at least it was with the Uni network back in the old country.

Oh, and I find out that it makes a hash of handling me going to my admin panel on my forums, so that's out as well.

Posted by subtitles at 2:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 4, 2005

Opera on Bittorrent - And P2P Generally - Tetchy Was Right, Opera *Is* Free

I suppose that's one of the questions I would have asked Tetchy: how he feels about the people out there who undoubtedly feel that Opera is worth pirating, and well, that it needs pirating. So yes, he's right, it is free.

In many ways I think that nowadays, in terms of a piece of software getting noticed or popularised, being well placed on a BT site, say TorrentSpy or ISOHunt, would be about as prestigious/useful as being featured on Download.com used to be. What disappoints me is that it doesn't seem as popular as you'd think, with not that many seeders, and even fewer leechers. Though I suppose being so tiny, that most people don't feel the need to stay too long.

Obviously these are people who either find it convenient, or don't know what astalavista is. By the way, Opera's keygen-ed serials seem to last forever (I'm told), unlike other applications (Nero for example) who blacklist serials in every other release. I think the last time they did it was when 6 turned into 7 (allegedly).

As far as my interest in this goes, as long as they're using Opera I don't see a problem, they're still upping the market share and telling their friends. I know friends who have been turned on to Opera by getting it off P2p, and friends who are annoyed by the ads (which is most of them), somehow find a way towards getting an extended trial period. Funny how that works. I wonder if the Mozzarella Foundation gets revenue from the Google searches from FF.

I'm still blown away that BT sites are linked to on Wikipedia.

As to how this fits in with me talking about Opera in an economic sense, that's a longer conversation.

Posted by subtitles at 11:55 AM | TrackBack

Deadwood Sabotaged on Bittorrent - 2x09 - Amalgamation And Capital (Part 1)

Apparently someone seems to be out to sabotage people who want to download Deadwood via Bittorrent. I've had a number of torrents going for days trying to get it, and it seems stuck at a particular percentage, even though there are supposed to be seeds. Of course this might just be me or the new version of Azureus, but I doubt it.

The solution for me was very simple. ed2k. so here you go, RealWorld is still tops. I respect that The Man is getting wise to the fact that frustration is their friend and that roadblocks/humps are more effective than you'd think, but they really need to get a fucking clue.

Posted by subtitles at 7:40 AM | TrackBack

April 22, 2005

TVTorrents Closed

This sucks. Have a look at the main page for the announcement. I have a mirror that I'll put up if it goes down. This is what it says:

TVTorrents - Closed Permanently

Sorry, but TVTorrents is down. No, I will not return. Sorry for any hassles. Thanks for all the memories and good times we had together in #tvtorrents. As of now, the channel will remain open, but stay +m (no talking).

Again, sorry for having to leave, but it became necessary. If you can donate to help with the pending settlement, please do so!

This is confirmed on TVTAD.com, what was formerly their feed reading client. The good news is that TVTAD is now (as of sunday apparently), going to support www.btefnet.net with version 0.5 of their software. I'm assuming BTEfnet is less vulnerable since it's based (I think) in the UK.

But if all else fails, (as they say in star wars) "there is another". VeryCD.com does quite a few series, and ISOHunt will index whatever is out there. Failing all that - RealWorld is still good an reliable. I'm sure something will pop up to take its place anyway. It's a pity it and TVSwarm are both gone though.

Posted by subtitles at 2:14 AM | TrackBack

April 20, 2005

Fuck Me - Bittorrent Sites Listed on Wikipedia

This is almost too good to be true. I don't know if it constantly gets moderated out - I assume that "links are not copyright infringement", and that Wikipedia finds some way to stay above it all. I must say the list is really quite exhaustive and very up to date.

It's in the wiki for Bittorrent. There's some info on rss feed based TV downloading, which I'll need to take a closer look at. This is a link to a site that monitors the ups and downs of the prominent BT sites that I found a while ago but never bothered to post.

Posted by subtitles at 12:00 PM | TrackBack

March 16, 2005

Bittorrent Sites after Suprnova/Lokitorrent

My old bog has been getting a bunch of hits from people looking to find Mininova.org, so I thought it's about time I provided a list of good current torrent sites:

Open Sites (No Registration):

My favorite is ISOHunt - probably the broadest search and aggregation site I know of, and the RSS feed allows you to view by category. If you want the search bar in your Opera Personal Bar, look here. It's best for searching and monitoring via RSS, the listing UI isn't great, for which you might want to try MiniNova, which is sort of subsidiary of ISOHunt, or:

TorrentSpy, another very good indexing site which I tend not to use because it's main "torrents for today" page is split into different pages, but otherwise it's very "Suprnova-Like". Didn't have RSS last I checked but that might have changed.

For TV, there are 2 main sites, which amongst others are also indexed by the above sites - TVTorrents, and BTEfnet. I prefer TVTorrents because it has an autodownloading application via RSS (TVTAD). Also TVTorrents tends to only post proper files, and well seeded, whereas BTEfnet tends to just go for prompt releases. I monitor both though, since sometimes one has something the other doesn't.

Registration Required:

The big ommission above regarding TV is UKNova - it requires registration, which means that if they're not taking new members you're sunk, and your ratio actually matters. But it has what the other TV sites lack: UK TV in spades.

Filelist.org does very high quality releases. They only release "scene" stuff, so mostly it'll be things in 15mb rar files - but they'll be the proper stuff. I go there to get good quality games and movies, especially movies that otherwise aren't available in WideScreen. Oh, and pr0n. The download rates, as long as you're a member in good standing, are off the charts fast, because of their very sensible ratio system.

Notes:

There are plenty of other sites, but these are the ones I use most often, and are most familiar with. There are many many more sites, especially niche sites and wannabe sites - feel free to add them as comments and I'll be updating this post as and when anyway. In particular there are a lot of new registration sites - but it doesn't make sense to join too many of those if they aren't comprehensive though. These are only BT sites, I'll do a seperate post on post-Sharereactor/Shareconnector sites later. I personally use Azureus as my client - be sure to do a clean install of the latest Java before you use it. If you're looking for NFO's, this is the place to go. When I have time, I'll hunt down the RSS links for you guys, especially since some of them aren't very prominent.

Posted by subtitles at 1:44 AM | TrackBack

March 13, 2005

Without The Rough Boys

I'm sure I'll get around to doing a more informative post about the state of torrenting, but right now the big news for me is UKNova.com. Everything that's good about living in the UK without the rough boys. It's absolutely heavenly, so that I'm now able to get at all the shows I had gaps in, not to mention the iching rips of Shameless Season 2.

The RSS feed is a bit tricky, but have a look at the forums and you'll find they did pretty cool things with it - and bothered to document it properly. Now if only there were an agnostic tool for harvesting torrent links from feeds. I'd link to everything, but unless you're registered, there's no point, so register (if they're still offering memberships) and go bananas.

Posted by subtitles at 6:20 AM | TrackBack

March 7, 2005

China Power - VeryCD.com - BritWhere?

Obviously if you've ever searched for movies on eMule, you've bumped into VeryCD.com, the only drawback (for me at least) is that it's in Chinese. The titles are frequently in english though, so that helps. I recently got Clean from there, which is downloading like bitchcakes, so China Power really knows how to spread 'em. The subs are in chinese, so I'm assuming the film won't be. But they release like Sharereactor used to, so worth keeping an eye on - I think people are even releasing TV over there, which is nice.

If anyone can tell be where the hell they're releasing a lot of the british stuff, I'd be ever so grateful. I can find them via search, but they're not spreading well, and I don't get notified. I'm looking for, or been getting things like Ideal, Shameless and According to Bex. Shameless gets on the-realworld, but otherwise.

This also inaugurates the P2P section, and I'll eventually put up definitive posts, probably one about Mule, another about torrents etc. Also about choice of clients I suppose, and how to clean install Java.

Turns out the copy of Clean is encoded with the french subs, which sucks, and there are no english subs for the french bits of dialog, so more sucking, but otherwise pretty much as advertised.

Posted by subtitles at 8:52 AM | TrackBack