Posted by DraconumPB on 04/17/09
Categories: General 127 views
OK. It seems there is a wildly popular video going around with a crazy amount of responses and comments "HULU TUBE - PHASING YOU OUT OF YOUTUBE". I'm not going to bother linking because it should be easy enough to find.
Essentially, a guy who thinks he is really important made a whiny video about how YouTube is going to marginalize him by changing the priority and placement of various site navigation links in such a way that it would be easier to find sponsored content and harder to find community-created content. While this is an unfortunate trend, and no YouTube user can really argue that it isn't, it's the ridiculous way that this man and his followers (i.e. everybody who has mirrored/responded to the video and commented with blind support without considering all aspects of the situation) go about complaining that bothers me. Essentially, a man posts a video claiming that he knows what the YouTube home page will eventually look like (without any backing evidence, for once). He shows a self-made prototype of what the new homepage will look like, all based on speculation. He acts as if what he says is fact, and if we don't do something RIGHT NOW, what he says will come true.
And of course, he now has tens of thousands of supporters chiming in with blind support, believing every word he says. It's not that I disagree that such changes would be negative, but it's that I think he's wrong to parade his speculation as fact and to try to rally up people around that, and it's wrong for people to follow others with such blind, trusting devotion, offering their full support to a guy they don't know who, for all intents and purposes, may be talking right out of his ass.
Additionally, it's worrisome that users of a website can claim that "YouTube can't do this" and "YouTube must be stopped", when, in reality, we all know that YouTube as a commercial entity (owned by Google) will do what is best for YouTube, commercially, as is dictated by, well, the way free market works. What these people don't realize is that they are being provided a service which gives no guarantee of, well, anything, for the most part. For free. That they can use and abuse to their heart's content (with a few exceptions). I think YouTube is more than justified in manipulating it's own site layout and content in whatever way it sees fit.
What does free market also dictate? That if enough users are pissed off, they'll leave (one might hope) and form a new sector of the market, where a new website can rise up and be everything these crybabies want it to be. Of course, no one will go to it, because of its focus on shitty AMVs, pointless home videos, and self-important, "opinion-paraded-as-fact newsblogs" and other videos most people have no interest in watching.
One might call this blog post, in and of itself, guilty of being no better than the videos and users I'm criticizing. However, that's why I have my own website. I can opine on pointless nonsense like this all I want, and nobody else has to care. :)
So to all the 'disenfranchised masses' who don't think YouTube is looking out for their needs anymore: Make your own damn website, and pay for some hosting for once in your life, you fucking freeloader.
Posted by DraconumPB on 04/02/09
Categories: General 133 views
*cough* -- In REAL news, I'd like to announce that my track, Rising Tide, is getting signed to FeralCode Records and should be released this month on most top dance music download sites (yup, so Beatport, etc). It's on a release called Amulet, along with Another Sad Toy by Masque and Air Born by Seba Rebolero. I will most definitely make a posting when it is available to buy. ;)
Posted by DraconumPB on 04/01/09
Categories: General 115 views
Hey all,
Great news. I've just signed an exclusive record deal with Sony-BMG (http://www.sonymusic.com/). They will be working with me to flesh out and produce my first artist album, and will be holding all the distribution rights of my music. This is a 10-year contract, so everything I produce between now and 2020 will belong to Sony-BMG, however, in this rapidly-changing music business, it's necessary that we rely on big record labels to get our music out there. Only those labels will truly grant us fame and fortune. I realize now how naive I was to think that trying to independently distribute my music would get me anywhere in life. Now that I've signed this contract, I feel like I can go places with my music, once and for all.
Even better is, Sony's cut me a great deal. I'll be making 38% royalties on sales of my music, before distribution fees, promotion fees, and other miscellaneous charges, which will come out to about 1.09 cents for every download! Once I can manage to sell around a million downloads, I'll have made thousands of dollars, which is a goal I think I should be able to achieve. I'll finally be able to upgrade my computer!
The downside to this is that I'm going to have to take down all the music I've posted to the site... it now is property of Sony-BMG, and as stated, they have exclusive distribution rights to it. Unfortunately this also means you guys have to delete any copies you may have of those songs, and you'll need to rebuy them when they become available on iTunes. The good news is that they will be available on iTunes soon, for the price of 99 cents each, as protected 128 kbps files, great for listening to on your iPod (tm) or home computer.
Another unfortunate side effect is that Sony-BMG now owns my website's 'look and feel' (they're going to use it for promotional material) so I've got to change the design to something else for now. However, I won't have to worry about it too much longer, Sony is also buying the domain from me and in a few months, they'll be handling my website. One less thing I have to worry about! So, I should mention that you guys will want to get anything important off the server while you have a chance.
Guys, I have all of you to thank for this becoming a reality. Wish me luck on my journey, I can only hope it is something that happens for everyone else here as well.
Posted by DraconumPB on 06/21/08
Categories: General 570 views
Hey guys. This next week I am gone (until Monday, June 30th).
I will be in Bayfield, Canada for a few days, then on Wed I am going to Pittsburgh for Anthrocon. Don't expect me to respond to anything until Monday, though if I get internets I might respond sooner.
Posted by DraconumPB on 05/28/08
Categories: Computers/Internet 4857 views
Sorry guys. I love my Crackboo- er, Macbook now. I know that I said I'd never go to Macs, even if they made me do it, but, well, I take that back. I'm all about the Mac OS now. It's pretty hot stuff.
Now my only gripe is the price point. Fix that and we have a surefire winner.
The funny thing is, I am starting to feel like my money was more than worth it, even when I could have spent half as much on a Win-based laptop.
(PS: There's only one reason for this: Mac Saber. jk.)
Posted by DraconumPB on 05/20/08
Categories: Computers/Internet 4796 views
I just got a Macbook a couple weeks ago. I love it to death (despite my previous inhibitions regarding Macs.. mainly due to latent and not-so-latent feelings of hatred towards the general mac-using populace..).
However, I just now had a very close call. I was actually close to calling (gasp!) Apple's tech support.
I really want to be able to use my external hard drive right now, but guess what? It's formatted with NTFS, so I, er, can't. Yup. I simply can't write anything to my external hard drive. So I thought I'd check out this tool: http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
Neat, huh?
Well, sortof, if it wern't for the fact that it borked the fuck out of OS X's Finder. As soon as I installed the damn thing and rebooted, Finder would not start successfully, no matter what. Hell, I couldn't even reboot the thing without holding down the power button. Needless to say, I felt like I was thrown back into the days of weird Windows problems, only worse. Honestly, I can't say there's ever been a time when I had a Windows problem I couldn't solve using some ingenuity.
Unfortunately, one thing about OS X that does bug me is that being able to troubleshoot problems yourself seems next to impossible. Heck, I couldn't even download/run anything... because any downloadable application comes as a .dmg which needs Finder to be opened! And I only had the Dock accessible, not my full list of Applications, because that too requires the Finder.
So, my first task was to get to Terminal. I couldn't browse for it, BUT I could do something else... I went to go download an application using Firefox (which was thankfully on my dock - else I'd have been royally fucked). Firefox prompts you for what app to use to open .dmg files! I clicked on 'Choose' and was brought to a mini filebrowser which apparently was not dependent upon Finder. I told Firefox to use Terminal to open the dmg file. When it was done downloading, it followed my orders and opened up Terminal (obviously not opening up the dmg file as that's not what Terminal does, but that's besides the point). So from there I browsed around in the System dir until I found the directory (/System/Library/Filesystems/...) where the installed ntfs-3g files were kept. I just did sudo unlink and sudo rmdir to every file/folder related to ntfs-3g, and rebooted (and prayed to Steve Jobs, if He even exists.)
Posted by DraconumPB on 04/30/08
Categories: General 914 views
I hate it.
"How's your day?" or "How are you?" or "What's up?" are questions that I loathe. When people ask me them, I have to spend a bunch of energy trying to come up with a succinct answer that actually sums up my day in about three words.
Now, I can tolerate them if they are simply the icebreaker to a real conversation. But they, in and of themselves, are not conversation. Do not IM me to say hi if you have nothing else to say, as having to deal with small talk from umpteen-billion people is a waste of time and energy.
It even bugs me when people do this at work, say passing by in the aisle-way between cubicles. "Hi" I can tolerate. "Hi, how's it going?" is slightly less tolerable, however. I generally ignore it and treat it as part of the greeting these days, though. Which usually ends up making my response either nothing, or "Good." I haven't the time (literally, we're talking about a quick pass-by in a hallway here) nor the energy to come up with a meaningful or accurate response, and honestly, you don't really care to hear what it is, I'm sure.
Every once in awhile is fine. But if you're repeat offender, be aware of the fact that I probably consider you to be really annoying and don't have it in me to tell you so directly.
Posted by DraconumPB on 04/21/08
Categories: General 4828 views
I recently attended Penguicon 6.0 in Troy, Michigan. It was a convention where all kinds of geeks got together and celebrated whatever they wanted to celebrate, and partied all weekend long.
While there, there was a table filled with little advertising pamphlets and other cards. There were also a bunch of burned DVDs, simply labeled "WDET". WDET are the call-letters for my local NPR station, which, until last year, was the home of interesting, locally-produced content including several lovely music programs. At some point (I don't remember exactly when it happened), WDET killed off nearly all of its original programming and became a station full of nationally syndicated talk-radio, making it just like every other NPR station. Everybody that loved WDET for the things that made it great was soon in an uproar, but there was no turning back.
Well, these WDET discs that could be found contained something very special.
From the file Readme.txt found on the disc:
" What's this?
This is a piece of history. For decades, WDET was known as the home of locally produced "college" and alternative music programming in Detroit. From techno to bluegrass and everything in between, WDET dedicated lots of airtime to it. They carried some NPR news and talk, of course, but music was the bulk of their schedule.
In March 2007, changes were announced. Five of WDET's signature music programs would be canceled, and the schedule filled with more NPR during the day, and the BBC World Service overnight.
But nobody in southern lower Michigan was hurting for NPR programming during the day, or the BBC world service at night, because that's exactly what Michigan Radio (WUOM/WFUM-FM/WVGR) already provided! WDET was turning itself into a clone of Michigan Radio. Comparing the two stations' schedules for an entire week (168 hours), in 2005 their schedules only overlapped by 39 hours, mostly Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation.
By 2006, the weekly overlap had increased to 61 hours, and as of April 2007, the overlap is 103 hours. Well over half of WDET's schedule now mimics Michigan Radio's. WDET's coverage area is a subset of Michigan Radio's.
Five great music programs went off the air at the end of March, and this is a collection of their last days.
The files are in WMA format, exactly as they came off WDET's streaming server. Playlists for each show have been saved, as this data is no longer available on the site."
That's right. This disc I now am in posession of contains many hours of the last two months of original WDET programming, including a torrent file designed to help people who have a copy of the disc complete their collections and share them with others. If I can figure out how to work that thing (I rarely use BitTorrent), I will post more info on how to obtain and share these files.
IF YOU ARE THE PERSON WHO LEFT THESE DISCS ON THAT TABLE AT PENGUICON, I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU. I want to find you and give you a hug. You are a kindred soul. Please be in touch.
Posted by DraconumPB on 03/31/08
Categories: General 497 views
Guys,
I think this is it for me. I've realized that I can't seem to accomplish any of my goals, so I'm done trying. I'm taking the site and forums down in a week, so collect everything you want to before I do. (Including the music FTP'ed up to the server).
There is some good news, however. I've gotten an offer to move out to New Mexico and help run one a convenience store that my uncle owns. He assures me that I'll get decent pay, and first dibs on 'expired' dairy products that we can't sell. (Little known secret - unopened milk can sometimes go a week or two after the date!).
Anyway, send me an email if you'd like my phone number.. I'm going to be getting away from the Internet entirely.
I didn't actually think I'd get to do two years in a row, but.. well.. the proof is in the pudding, my friends. Or something like that. Anyway, whatever, I get to DJ Anthrocon again! And people won't hate listening to what I have to play (I hope!) At anthrocon, if you don't like the music - come back in an hour :)
Posted by DraconumPB on 01/17/08
Categories: General 3390 views
Lemme explain this one:
So you all know that I go by "Draconum", right? Well, a lot of people assume this means that I'm supposed to be some dragon-type thing. Which is, of course - not true. The confusion arises from the fact that my handle came from a game (Mage Knight), from a class of character called "Draconum" - which are dragons. Basically, I just started using the name as a handle in online games and messageboards, and soon enough, I was known as "Draconum"!
Then I got into furry, and decided that my furry persona was definitely a husky. But everybody knew me as Draconum, so I was not about to go and change my name. Heck, I even call myself that occasionally (and sometimes my friends - IRL - do too!). Heck, I GOOGLE OWN "draconum" (check it if you don't believe me).
So I was talking to a couple furry friends of mine, joking about being drawn as a "drusky" - of course, a dragon mixed with a husky. I've always liked dragons, sure, just never considered it to really align with me or represent me at all. But it sounded like an interesting idea. Apparently, it's already been done, as a fursuit even. That is Really, Really Cool.
Posted by DraconumPB on 01/15/08
Categories: General 545 views
I've been getting, occasionally, bounced emails from various servers/places saying that the message I sent was rejected by its spamfilter.
Why? It appears that some jackoff spammer is using my domain as his origin-address on his spam emails, so everybody that gets them sees 'draconum.net' as the sender of the email.
No spam email ever originates from Draconum.net, ever.
In fact, our DNS stuff is set up so that our email services are actually hosted by Google, so it would be impossible for my server to actually send out email in the first place.
If you recieve spam email appearing to originate from Draconum.net, it's not sent by me! It's sent by some spammer using my domain name as the return address. So, yeah. Hopefully anybody who thinks I'm a spammer reads this.
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