31.12.06

Song of the Day - It's The End Of The World As We Know It

R.E.M

Well ok, maybe it's just the end of the year, but a whole bunch of things have been hitting the fan lately. Hussein was made a saint, Bush choked on another cookie and Gorbachev celebrated 16 years with a Nobel Peace Prize. Castro is about to die, Google bought its first party plane and Americans keep getting fatter.

No offense intended, it's just the word on the street.

Love to stay and have a chat, but I still have about a week to spend in the States and I'll try to keep it busy.

I'll keep posting (consistently) when I get back to Somewherein, in the mean time, here's R.E.M.




Svaj

28.12.06

Song of the Day - Man of The World

Fleetwood Mac

Ok, I'm just gonna stop saying "this is a great song" and stuff like that every time I post a Song of the Day, because, well, if it's here it IS great.

This is Fleetwood Mac at its best, the Beat Club performance in 1969.




The dude.

22.12.06

Song of the Day - Sonne

Rammstein

Amazing song, I just HAD to make it song of the day. Watch this very powerful live performance from England.




Cheers

21.12.06

Song of the Day - Beds are Burning

Midnight Oils

I didn't know them either, but this group was apparently very popular in the Australian underground hacking scene in the 1980s, as I found out in this book (Underground by Suelette Dreyfus - get it free here).

There's an interesting story about one of the first computer worms released in the wild, which paid homage to the Midnight Oils by sending annoying messages with the text 'Oilz' to infected users.

The song is all right, the video could have been better...




Svaj

20.12.06

Song of the Day - Wild World

Cat Stevens

Outstanding live performance of this now classical tune (from Tea For The Tillerman).

Stevens wrote this [song] about searching for peace and happiness in a crazy world. Much of it was a message to Patti D'Arbanville, an actress he had been dating.

This was one of the songs that convinced Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam, to release a boxed set of his songs in 2001. He stopped making secular music in 1979, but came to realize that people find strength and inspiration in the songs he recorded as Cat Stevens.
Wild World Song Facts




Svaj

19.12.06

Song of the Day - Seether

Veruca Salt

I met them through the Australian Music show and thought they were underground Aussies, but apparently they're from Chicago and pretty much mainstream.

No difference, it's still cool to listen to a nice rock group with hot girls as lead-singer and guitarist. Seether was their first single from American Thighs (1994). Enjoy.




Svaj

18.12.06

Song of the Day - Wild Horses (cover)

Bush

You've probably already heard this mellow song by the Rolling Stones. I'd put up their version, but I love covers so here's one by Bush that's actually pretty good too.




Svaj

17.12.06

Song of the Day - Ja Sei Namorar

Tribalistas

Arnaldo Antunes and Carlinhos Brown have joined Marisa Monte to form a secret trio that will take over the world. Well, maybe not the whole world, but their melody will stay in your head for a while, so click at your own risk.




Svaj

16.12.06

Song of the Day - Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Or Iz as he was later called, grew up to be a 1.88m 340kg Hawaiian singer, and like Poppa Chubby managed to outgrow his body physique into a persona that was larger than himself (and that is no easy task!).

Permanently attached to his ukulele, he has blessed us with this magical rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

Unfortunately he died prematurely (aged 38) due to weight-related problems. To Iz.




Svaj

15.12.06

Song of the Day - So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

Simon and Garfunkel

Today's Song of the Day is the tribute song to Frank Lloyd Wright by Simon and Garfunkel (1970, Bridge Over Troubled Waters).
Interesring facts:

  • Art Garfunkel dared Paul Simon to write a song about Frank Lloyd Wright. This song was the answer to that dare.
  • This song can also be interpreted as a good-bye from Paul to Art since "Bridge" was their last album together. The phrase "I remember the nights we'd harmonize till dawn, I never laughed so long, so long, so long..." The repeated use of "so long" can be interpreted as a goodbye.
  • So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright Song Facts


Svaj

14.12.06

Song of the Day - Nah Neh Nah

Vaya con Dios

This is probably one of the better known songs from this Belgian group who sings in English and has a Spanish name. It's in the album Night Owls, and without further ado, here's today's Song of the Day.


Svaj

13.12.06

Song of the Day - Never Let Me Down Again

The Smashing Pumpkins (cover)

Originally by Depeche Mode, this song rates as one of their masterpieces. But, sorry Depeche Mode fans, The Smashing Pumpkins have done it better!

Don't believe me? Hear for yourself:

Smashing Pumpkins version (just listen to the music, the video was made by some cracknutte)




Depeche Mode version:

Have a gay day!

Svaj

12.12.06

Song of the Day - One more cup of coffee

I've decided to put up a "Song of the Day" section to set the mood and keep the posts coming when I haven't finished writing other posts/have nothing to write about (yikes, there, I said it).

So, by nature, these posts will be much shorter than my other posts so they'll be faster to read/write, and maybe (just maybe) allow you to discover a precious gem you may not have otherwise known.

Well, enough about that, on with today's song of the day: one more cup of coffee either by The White Stripes or by Bob Dylan, listen to both and choose for yourself.

Is there anything in One More Cup of Coffee that’s not perfect? Well yes, in the verses, the lyrics on occasion drag (“He oversees his kingdom / So no stranger does intrude / His voice it trembles as he calls out / For another plate of food”). But apart from that, the sentiment is compelling, Scarlet Rivera’s violin is beautifully scored and played, the tune is to die for, and the backing vocals are by Emmylou Harris, who you can bet is going to be here in the 5-✭ series one of these days. And while there’s not much middle ground on the subject of Dylan’s singing, if you like it, you’ll really like this song.
Ongoing - One more cup of coffee
The White Stripes' version is, well, very White Stripie... If you like them, you'll love the cover of this amazing song.

Greetings from the Svaj, and enjoy.

6.12.06

Ethics is what we do when nobody is looking

But somebody is always looking. Specially on the internet.

Your sister may have decided you shouldn't do something on the internet. Or maybe your company filters everything and doesn't let you post to your blog, or thinks you shouldn't have access to certain pages. Or maybe even your country has decided to stop you from doing such things. Anonymity is hard to get these days.

Happily, there are some ways to bypass this. I am talking about things like Anonymouse.org, The Onion Router, and I2P.

Anonymouse was put together in a week by Alexander Pircher, a computer science student from Germany in 1997. It has since grown to become one of the most popular point your browser to when you need to surf anonymously. The principle is simple: you just type in an url and it'll fetch it for you, anonymously.

That solves web-surfing to blocked sites from repressive countries. It slows down the process of actually seeing the webpage, but, technically speaking, you're only visiting Anonymouse.org - your request is stored on a proxy and that cached copy is what you access. If you don't mind going back to the website every time you need to surf anonymously, it is a great and simple way to do it.

The Onion Router is another alternative to achieve anonymity. It is developed on the concept of routing onions (wikipedia), which are "data structures used to create paths through which many messages can be transmitted". Messages are encrypted and passed from one server to the other, forming a layered structure in which a message can't be deciphered without knowledge of the previous' server encryption - hence the name onion router.

Installation is straight-forward and available for most popular operating systems (windows, mac, linux). And usage for anonymous web-surfing is further facilitated with the installation of a Tor Button extension on Firefox - which lets you switch with the click of a button between anonymous and public modes. Tor's proxy also lets you anonymize other aplications - like a chat client for example - just by pointing that application to the local tor proxy.

Still on the line of anonymizing applications, but going a step further lies the I2P network. It no only lets you set up anonymous web-surfing and other applications (like the chat client) through the use of a local proxy, but it is designed to let you do a number of things (anonymously) on the net. Like anonymous blogging, anonymous Bit Torrent, and hosting web-pages, anonymously. You could also do some of these things with Tor (like anonymous Bit Torrent) by simply pointing the client to the local proxy, but they discourage it because it puts too much of a load on the network - and I2P is specially designed for this.

There are more differences between the two last alternatives I mentioned, so, to get a more in-depth idea of what these are and which you may actually need to use, take a look at this Network comparison between Tor and I2P.

In all, your online presence can be masked (although you will pay the price on speed, as these methods slow down your internet experience). But the real question behind this is... Should we do it?

I mean, what's legal and not just depends on your country's politicians. The same way your sister or your company may have decided what you should and should not do, someone (somewhere) in your country decided that you shouldn't download this or see that. And I'm not just talking about The Great Firewall of China and other countries which censor nearly everything like Cuba, Iran, Tunisia, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.

Not being able to see/download something is censorship nonetheless, and you have this in a number of countries (from USA to France to South Africa to Australia). Groups like RIAA and MPAA and local governments keep an eye out on the internet to try to "catch" "criminals" doing such "illegal" things as downloading an mp3, or making a digital copy of a movie. But the game has no sense when what's "legal" and what's not is defined by them anyway. It's like trying to play chess while the other person keeps making up new rules as they go along.

Sure, legality is a way of enforcing ethics. But it's got no sense when they indiscriminately sue for making a local copy of music they have legally bought. I personally think there's nothing ethically wrong with downloading, for example, Popa Chubby's Stealing the Devil's Guitar if you've bought the cd and your little sister sat on it and broke it. Or playing your old snes games on an emulator - taking for granted that you bought these in the past and, for example, your snes broke down and you can't play them anymore.

I guess I'm trying to say that legality should correspond to what is ethical, not the other way around. And, well, if your country doesn't allow you to make a choice, you've got a couple of choices to help you become anonymous and do what you think is ethical. After all, ethics is what we do when nobody's looking.

5.12.06

Popa Chubby



He's fat, bald, ugly, and likes to insult people with a wave of his hand. But he's sold his soul to the devil and now plays the blues from New York.

If you watch him live, you'll become addicted to his energy; if this guy doesn't pause for a minute, he's gonna have a heart attack soon. He's put out 6 albums in the last 6 years, with no decline whatsoever quality wise.

In "Stealing the Devil's Guitar" (2006 ), some songs will remind you of ZZ Top (Virgil and Smokey), some sound a bit like Tom Waits on Get Behind The Mule, others may even remind you of The Fun Lovin' Criminals (when they're not being gay) running the drug business (Smuggler's Game). And all of them have the devil's fingerprints on his axe.

I hope you listen to my advice and pick up a copy of this man's music. And most of all, I hope you like it if you do.

In the meantime, greetings from hell.

Svaj

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