Alden Bates' Weblog

Last Friday, as well as going to see Cloverfield, I went to the Big Day Out in Auckland. No, seriously. Look, I even have photographic proof:

Yes, I bought a Björk T-shirt so that if the mood takes me, I can dress up as the cover of Volta. Woohoo!

Continue reading "Big Day Out '08"

A while ago I got hold of Björk's latest album, Volta. Volta is very good, however its packaging is not. Maybe I'm traditional, but I prefer my CDs to come in a standard jewel case and not some overblown artsy packaging. Volta has the silliest packaging I've seen so far on an album.

Once you get the shrink wrap off, you have a bright-red cardboard box with two flaps on the front. The flaps are held together with a metallic sticker of Björk dressed as a multicoloured vegetable with blue feet. Assuming that, like me, you don't want to tear the sticker, you have to gentle peeeeeel it off on one side in order to open the box. Personally, I peeled it off completely and stuck it onto one of the flaps to stop it from getting torn.

Inside the box is another series of cardboard boxes in a sort of Russian doll effect. On one side of each box is a picture of Björk in a crochet wearable art outfit, and on fire. Yes, someone's also photoshopped the pictures to make it look like she's on fire. At least I hope it's a photoshop. "OK, we've painted her face and put her in the wool outfit. Is it artsy enough yet?" "No. SET HER ON FIRE!"

Inside the Russian doll boxes are a booklet and the Volta CD in a plain white paper sleeve (and the DVD version, if you got that version). I have yet to determine how to store all this. I'll probably simply stick the CD and booklet into a jewel case and put the rest of the packaging away somewhere. Meh.

Lots of short items which I can't be bothered writing full posts for:

Prime TV is going to start screening Series 3 of Doctor Who on August 19th. You can read more about it here (I know the page layout sucks - I'm going to tidy it up on the weekend).

Blogger: Please add a bulk submittal version of your spam reporting tool, so I when I get spammed with 200 blogspot URLs, I can report all of them at once.

I believe the hacker who's been trying to hack into my site to be a Brazilian who goes by the handle Nicksom2d. One of the scripts used to try to hack in was located on a hacked site, with a main page title "Owned by Nicksom2d from Brazil". Nicksom2d also wrote there "I never really hated the stupids admins but I hate the admin that make a website and ignore all the possibilities of invasion, sometimes I would be a hacker... just it..." Word.

Stone Age, one of my favourite groups, has a new album out, Totems d'Armorique! And it's, like, almost totally different to their other albums.

The NZDWFC site had 7720 unique visitors last month, beating its previous best of 7624 set in May.

Apparently there are approximately four times more people searching for Transformers Robot Heroes than there are for Transformers slash. This proves Robot Heroes are better than sex.

The Bill Gates eyes program I made years ago on a whim got downloaded over a thousand times last month. No, I don't know why.

Three search queries of note used to find my site in July:

• wallet with masturbate (eh?)
• how to pronounce earth (It's "urf")
• alden porn (I'm flattered, but... no.)

I don't usually embed videos, but this one is officially the most awesome thing I've seen today:

Alanis Morissette covering the Black-Eyed Peas hit 'My Humps'. Simultaneously brilliant and insane! (Thanks to AgentCompassion for pointing out that).

I'm trying to decide if that video is weirder than Keith Richards confessing that he snorted his dad's ashes with some cocaine. That's really great, Keith. (and thanks to Meg for pointing out that one!)

So, back in the mid 80s when I was a young lad, and I realise I'm dating myself here¹, my parents gave me a tape deck for Christmas, and an aunt gave me a compilation tape called "The Hottest Summer On Cassette"². I played it many many times, which probably goes some way toward explaining why I like 80s music so much³.

Surprisingly it has no copyright date on it⁴, but I would guess by the songs on it that it came out around '86 or '87. I've never seen a CD version, so I guess CBS Records Limited never released one.

Since I'm wallowing in nostalgia at the moment, here's the track listings:

Side 1

1. Dr & the Medics, Spirit in the Sky
2. Wa Wa Nee⁵, Stimulation
3. Spandau Ballet, Fight for Ourselves
4. Pet Shop Boys, Suburbia
5. Belinda Carlisle, Mad About You
6. Berlin, Take my Breath Away
7. Grace Jones, I'm Not Perfect
8. Miami Sound Machine, Words Get in the Way

Side 2

1. Kenny Loggins, Danger Zone
2. Duran Duran, Notorious
3. Owen Paul⁶, My Favourite Waste of Time
4. Billy Joel, A Matter of Trust
5. Cyndi Lauper, True Colors
6. Don Johnson, Heartbeat
7. Glass Tiger, Don't Forget Me
8. Queen, A Kind of Magic

So when anyone asks what warped my mind, I can truthfully reply "The 80s"!

1. File under "You know you're getting old when..."
2. Worst music-related pun ever.
3. My poor mind!
4. in fact the copyright symbol doesn't appear anywhere on it. Ah, those were the days!
5. They were big in Australia at the time, apparently.
6. Who?! *google* oh.

The UK music show Top of the Pops has been screened here by TVNZ for years and years. Then a couple of years back, TVNZ opted to start making their own version, which used a NZ presenter and combined performances from the UK version with live performances from Kiwi bands. But then they stopped playing it, and the last TV Guide responded to a letter by saying that TVNZ weren't bringing it back. This made me saaaaad.

But! I emailed C4 to ask whether they're going it pick it up, and they already have! It starts on the 6th of May. Hooray!

... will not be gracing my music collection, despite the fact I spotted a copy in the store the other day. Not only does it contain Copy Corruption technology (or "Copy Control" as it's more commonly known) but it also contains the evil Sony rootkit malware.

Amazon UK have it, but it's listed as an import and I'm not game enough to order it without knowing where they're getting it from and whether it has Copy Corruption/Rootkit crap on it.

It's a shame because I really enjoyed Melody A.M..

(via Bob01): Poll Examines Music Buyers and Their Needs

While one-quarter of the nation's music fans say they've downloaded songs onto their computers — legally or otherwise — a new nationwide poll suggests music executives should look elsewhere to explain their business woes.

Three in every four fans complain that compact discs are too expensive, and 58 percent complain that music in general is getting worse, according to the poll conducted for The Associated Press and Rolling Stone magazine.

So the problem's not downloading but the fact that CDs are too expensive, and music's getting crapper? Perhaps they should stop putting crappy DRM products on their CDs and take a look at making the music better, hmm?

As Boing Boing reported, Sony BMG has put in place a program to allow customers to exchange infected CDs with CDs without the rootkit crap on.

Which is sorta sporting of them, but as I pointed out previously, Sony said they were abandoning copy protection last year, so who knows what future Sony releases will have on them. It's entirely possible that they'll take a lesson from the extraordinary amount of bad press they got this time, but (and excuse me for being cynical) I'm not holding my breath.

Enquring minds want to know:

The UK release of Light + Shade has 13 tracks on Light, and 9 tracks on Shade.

The NZ release of Light + Shade has 8 tracks on Light, and 8 tracks on Shade*.

Enquring minds therefore want to know why we here in NZ miss out on 6 tracks which the UK dwellers get? I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, seeing as it is a double CD, but...

* The Smokecds listing appears to be missing Nightshade, but then the Marbecks listing shows the UK track listing...

Normally I don't like promoting breaking the law, but if you want to hear a CD controlled by Sony's copy protection it's safer to download it from the Internet.

Via Antiwesley:

Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

Using a Sony copy protected audio CD may install hidden software without your knowledge. Attempting to remove the software (which is extremely difficult) may result in the non-functioning of devices on your system. The installed software could easy be used by viruses and other attackers to hide files from antivirus software, allowing them to go undetected.

This is additionally surprising to me, as in October last year, Sony announced they were abandoning copy protection on their releases. I guess they changed their minds, huh?

On Amazon, the reviews for Van Zant's album are currently expressing their disgust. Sony have already released a patch to "unhide" the installed malware. But this doesn't change the fact that it's installed without the user's knowledge, and obviously if the user doesn't know it's there, they don't know they need a software pach. And I see nothing about them providing software to actually remove it.

See also: BBC News: Sony slated over anti-piracy CD, TechWeb: Security-spooked Users Slap Sony CD On Amazon.

• MT 3.2 seems to have solved my problem with new entries showing entry #1 as the next link.
• Since the R4 run of Justice League: Starcrossed was frelled, I ordered the R1 version from Amazon - this turned out to be in the original movie format and have both widescreen and full screen versions. Much better than the R4 Justice League DVDs.
• As a side note to the whole Hotel experience, I saw the other week that Geri Halliwell's latest album has come out here, but I didn't buy it, because it had the same copy protection on it. Sorry, but I'm not paying $30 for a CD which may or may not work.
• Yahoo fixed the login issues with Yahoo mail not long after I complained about it. Both Briefcase issues are still there.
• LiveJournal still doesn't have trackback support, 8 months later.

So Moby's latest album Hotel came out. I'd already decided to get the limited edition version, because it comes with an extra CD of ambient music and it's also in a lavish cardboard slip case. Unfortunately, it also comes with the dreaded "Copy Control" rubbish on it.

Hotel played... I won't say fine, because the intentional errors in the data manifested as clicks and ticks in the sound. This is especially obvious on the quieter tracks where the graceful strings are intermittently interrupted by a sound similar to a spark jumping between two wires. Then I tried to play the ambient CD, and my player wouldn't recognise it at all. When I put it in my PC, Windows reported it was corrupt or an invalid format. I bought the $40 Limited Edition version for an extra CD which turned out to have all the properties of a coaster.

OTOH, I also bought Daft Punk's new album "Human After All" yesterday. Not only was it only $25, but it is damn good. I'll have a review up on my music page (which is now valid XHTML! Woo!) soon.

Previously, Moby's said "if i release a cd and it has copy-protection on it, it's not by my choice.". Well, it looks like his new album "Hotel" has, indeed, got copy protection on it. *sigh*

Edit: and guess what.

Moby has launched Moby Hotel to promote his upcoming album "Hotel". It's a Flash-based site cunningly structured to resemble a hotel. Instead of registering, you sign in to a room which becomes your password (though it does seem a lot like registering... :)

On offer are samples of tracks from Hotel including one track you can buy and download, information about Hotel, and ambient music from the bonus CD which comes with the limited edition.

Edit: see also my experience buying Hotel.