Irregular Verbiage

So I’ve dipped my toe into the online-drm-free-music market. I decided to have a poke around magnatune.com because I didn’t need a subscription and because I could get the music I bought in the format I really wanted: Ogg Vorbis (it’s available in other formats too including MP3,FLAC and WAV).

I had a brief look around the site (you can listen to all the music via their flash player) and quickly found an album I really liked and bought it: “I don’t what I’m doing” by Brad Sucks is extremely impressive.

Magnatune describes Brad Sucks as sardonic indie rock. It hasn’t changed my life but it is a great album; every song is good. I’ve thought a bit about how to try and describe it; “Sick as a dog” reminds me a little of the Presidents,”Look and feel years younger” reminds me a bit of Depeche Mode’s “Barrel of a gun” and a few of the other songs have the feel of REM’s Up album. That last sentence proves that I’m no music reviewer – it gives an inaccurate feel of what the album is like. Instead of watching me struggling to describe it I think you ought to listen to it yourself – the first track that you’ll hear (“Making me Nervous”) is probably my favourite.

The official Irregular Verbiage rating is 8/10. That might seem harsh given my glowing praise but I plan to listen to more music from Magnatune and from Brad Sucks and I want scope to award higher marks once this blog becomes the definitive place to read clueless reviews.

(Technically having bought it from Magnatune, I’m allowed to give the music to three other people but I plan to waive that right – you can listen to the music for free on their website and seeing as they seem to live up to their “We’re not evil” slogan, I’d love to see as many people as possible buy the album.

…download their music these days.” So I was told last night by a friend of mine and it has more than an element of truth to it – iTunes was swamped by the increased demand after Christmas.

DRM doesn’t feature on a lot of people’s radar but maybe it should? I guess the geeks have to be better at promoting the alternatives. The two obvious alternatives are eMusic and Magnatune, I haven’t used either – I haven’t bought much music recently (download or otherwise) but Em’s just got a new PC and it’s wired up to the stereo so I guess now is the time.

I see on the blog of the CEO of Magnatune that the Rhythmbox music player now has the ability to buy Magnatunes tracks – cool, but the new version of Rhythmbox isn’t included in Fedora yet, I guess we might have to wait for Fedora 7? Hope not!

It’s been a good, if uneventful Christmas, still at my parents, done a little coding and last night met up with some old friends (Dave, Paul & Tanya), just before Christmas Adam came to visit. I’ve seen a lot of old faces but not everyone I’d like to have, I’m going to have to make sure I get in contact with everyone

P.S. I’ve heard that if you’re using eMusic on Linux then eMusic-GNOME is the slickest way to do it – will have to have a play

My last post in which I complained about Tiscali Broadband and their inability to disconnect me was insanely optimistic though I didn’t realise it at the time. It actually took until last week for them to get the markers off the my line. So for more than 3 months I’ve been without internet access at home. It’s been frustrating and I’ve spent so long listening to the musak that Tiscali play you on the phone while you are in a queue that my IQ has probably halved. My new broadband supplier is A&A, so far they’ve been excellent; really friendly and got us quickly connected. A&A are more expensive that Tiscali but it seems to me that paying 2 shillings for reliable internet access is better than paying 1 shilling for frustration and aggravation.
I’m now going to go and read the 2000+ blog entries I’ve missed – it seems that the internet doesn’t stop when I’m not reading it!

It’s been quiet on this blog as I have no internet connection. Having got tired of Tiscali Broadband’s repeated outages and phone operatives that bring new meaning to the phrase “reading from a script” I’ve tried to move to a different Broadband ISP.

If only it were so easy. Apparently because of local loop unbundling, I can’t migrate from one provider to another. I have to cancel it – wait for them to clear the line and then start from scratch. Grrrr. I phoned Tiscali to find out why it was taking longer than the 10 days they said it would take and it turns out they’d managed to screw up my request to cancel.

In short, don’t ever consider doing business with Tiscali Broadband  – ever. You have been warned!

After work yesterday I raced up to London to have a curry with friends from uni. It was a good restaurant (Bengal Village) on Brick Lane – if you’ve never been there before it’s quite an experience. Lots and lots of restaurants in a row – competing for passing trade.  Looking on the web, I couldn’t find a website for the restaurant but I did find this list of recommendations for particular places to try.
Walking back from the train station late at night, I ended up listening to Mark Lamarr’s late night radio 2 show. I loved it. I notice the tagline on the website reads, “The best music you never knew you loved from the last 70 years…”. True in my case. I’d never heard of the band the Ethiopians but I loved their “Last  train to  Skaville”. I was literally dancing down the “mean” streets of Winchester. When I don’t get a chance to listen to this music when it’s broadcast then I suspect I’ll catch up via the internet.