Taciturn

I'm really enjoying A Perfect Circle's Emotive. Initially I thought it was just a bunch of anti-war hippy crap — indeed every song illustrates that theme, but within lies good music!

Perhaps it was because I went to Woodford and became some kind of doomsday theorising tree-hugging hippy, but I don't think so. I don't enjoy the music solely because of its lyrics, theme, or inspiration. It's nice music.

I didn't buy it in a shop, and I didn't buy it online. I downloaded it; using some torrent from LokiTorrent. I don't feel guilty about it because I did buy Mer de Noms (APC's first album) a few months ago and have hardly listened to it because of its copy protection (ie. the CD is dud). It duped my burner (Lite-on 48x dooby) into thinking there was no disc in the drive, so I wasn't able to rip it easily. Fortunately my very-expensive-when-I-bought-it Sony 8x burner could read&rip, so now it's on my iRiver. Anyway I've hardly heard it, and TBQH didn't enjoy it a lot. Maybe it's as wine-like as Emotive. Maybe one day I'll be hitting next on random mode and it'll start playing and I'll enjoy it. Who knows.

And I got a credit card. This means all my good-natured instincts to donate to stuff that's good are being tested. Today, my first transaction — to LokiTorrent. Not because I've downloaded lots of stuff from there, or because their registration process guilted me into it, but more because their case is likely to determine the outcome of future rulings. I don't want them to have to fold just because they can't afford the fees.

Whenever I'm going to donate to something I try to choose a reasonably random figure to give, instead of having a hard-coded donation of $2, $5, or whatever. I thought I'd start off with a modest... 5, or 6 dollars and... (thinking) 80 cents. Better make it 6 so I'm not a cheapie. Load up the donate page, see that the donation amounts are hard-coded to various values. There's a $5, and there's a $10. Nothing in between, so I chose $5. PayPal informs me that at the current exchange rate it'll cost me $6.83. Wonderful. Hocus Pocus, that's more-or-less the value I was thinking of, and I certainly haven't been following the exchange rate.

Well, that's about it for my night's story. I guess it's a celebration that I'm actually at my computer on a Mon-Thu evening, and a result of the fact that no-one else is.

Here's to donations for free software and services!

Oh yeah, I'm negotiating a deal with Rick of Tenant to get their EP (This Just In) either as FLACs so I can roll my own Oggs, or to get the proper pressed CD in the mail, posted across the great Pacific ocean. To this I am looking forward, and I'll by paying by PayPal again. <3

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Update: LokiTorrent kindly sent me an email containing this content. I don't think I'll be donating to them next month.

<p><script language='JavaScript' type='text/javascript'> <!-- if (!document.phpAds_used) document.phpAds_used = ','; phpAds_random = new String (Math.random()); phpAds_random = phpAds_random.substring(2,11); document.write ("<" + "script language='JavaScript' type='text/javascript' src='"); document.write ("http://media2.lostfrog.com/phpAdsNew-2.0/adjs.php?n=" + phpAds_random); document.write ("&amp;what=zone:50"); document.write ("&t;amp;exclude=" + document.phpAds_used); if (document.referer) document.write ("&amp;referer=" + escape(document.referer)); document.write ("'><" + "/script>"); //--> </script><noscript><a href='http://media2.lostfrog.com/phpAdsNew-2.0/adclick.php?n=aecdce77' target='_blank'><img src='http://media2.lostfrog.com/phpAdsNew-2.0/adview.php?what=zone:50&amp;n=aecdce77' border='0' alt=''></a></noscript>