the techy challenge of checking how greener the grass is on the other side

I like to give back, to friends, non-friends, people I don't like and mainly people I like a lot. Love is the (only) one I have been failing to do so with.

(music) Artists are the valid targets of a payback too. I am a music downloader, I confess, but it's all in a try-before-you-by philosophy. I know people who (seem to) follow the same mind stream and thus deserve to get the best means to reach the music.

MySpace is excellent but you need to be online.
Triple J actually has some MP3s available, but they're all from aussie (new) bands (nothing wrong about that though).
Stereogum has regularly some good MP3's, considering it's an indie-oriented site, some of the tunes are quite... hum... alternative:p

So a combination of magazines and friends giving band names and/or track titles, myspace for an initial listening, allmusic to get a comprehensive discography/Bio, a decent p2p software and the seek&enjoy can start.

As some of my friends are (moving) into MacOS, my best source of songs, soulseek, does not seem so easy to setup, so today I found one and it worked really well, ssX (mind the subliminal message).
Download, install, setup and download. Bang, there you go!
I made a happy puppy out of my friend Bron. I know she spends money on artists and actually buys the albums of her favorite ones.

It's not that ethical to actually influence somebody into music downloading, but considering that she would get into it anyway, I prefer to supply her with decent and "safe" tools. Fuck emules, edonkeys and other kazaa-like shit, they're all only good to download viruses, not to forget the immense exposure to the public and supposed artist copyright protection organizations.
So we spend a couple of hours on my couch this morning, connecting her nifty MacBook to my home network and exchanging/learning stuff on MacOS.

A mental post-it to Mac obsessed:

• whoever gets an iJesus (aka iPhone) just because it's new (and promises to change the world), is definitely a religious zealot;
• never mind the bullocks, updating a new MacOS required 2 reboots;
• updating iTunes, now bundled with Quicktime, can involve reboots (on Windows) and a 30MB download each and every time; Don't get me wrong, the automatic detection of updates is a must and very welcome. I don't feel a false sense of security anymore, like Apple products are frequently supplied with;

enough for today's rants (while listening to Morphine on Radar)

n.