It’s slowly getting closer to a year since I started posting here. So far, I have no clear pattern in what and when I post. I doubt I will ever get to a stage where I have a strong pattern, but I don’t strive for that. What I was thinking about is giving it some kind of loose pattern that would work as a general idea, not a rule.
So, what could it look like?
Yesterday, I was reading an article that YouTube intends to increase ad frequency for users that use it primarily for listening to music. The supposed explanation is simple: they create internet traffic that’s mostly unused as the video transferred is not being looked at, those having the music on background usually doing something else either on other browser tab or completely out of the browser.
The points is to direct those users to specialized (and potentially paid) music services, yet here comes another great misstep: they are not available in all countries, or are severely limited in some. Trying to push users to a service only to show them “not available in your country” only makes the step more fickle and will only make people look for ways to bypass it. Some might use adblockers, some might try to use VPN or something for bypassing country limitations and some might go back to pirating music.
It’s a few months ago when I was thinking about piracy when it comes to e-books, where, fortunately, the issue was limited by the immense choice and lower cost of self-published books. Yet, it was probably the music industry – way sooner than gaming and movies – who was hit by this the hardest. The music industry made several massive missteps on the way, which in fact supported piracy in its inception, so I would say.
I would start in late 90s or early 2000s. Back then, I still used portable CD player, which could play mp3s and read DVDs so I could stuff a bunch of CDs into single mp3 DVD. Not as efficient as mp3 players, but decent solution. Eventually, the player was lost when we were burgled and I eventually bought my first mp3 player. As it could show the name of track, album, artist and such, it meant I had to get these information to the music track itself.
In those early days, CDs sometimes had some kind of protection to prevent ripping mp3 files. To prevent them being copied illegally, but it had the side-effect of preventing legal owners to put them to their portable players. Or create a copy for their car player, because no one would risk damaging an original in their car. What was worse, the track information was not there, and it took several years before that changed. Combined with the slow conversion, downloading pirated mp3 ‘CD’ was eventually much faster than ripping the original and filling in all the data as all the pirated sources had that filled in, including cover image. Absurd as it might look, the approach of music publishers made even owners of legitimately bought CDs download mp3s for convenience.
Music industry had several more mistakes which were aimed at pirates but hit pretty much everyone else. A small local band got into a trouble for not announcing a “public music production” (or how exactly the law names it) and threatened with large bill for breaching copyright laws. For playing THEIR OWN MUSIC, to maybe two hundred people.
I eventually bought an iPod touch back in 1/2009 (maybe it was 2010) which I still have and still use. I know that these days, online streaming services are there, but even these have some limitations. Not so much about their libraries, but about the fact that they are online. They can work well at home or in office, but the main upside of mp3 players is that they work anywhere. Train, bus, plane, high in the mountains… you’re not limited by the need to be online. Something I know well myself. I was writing at the end of summer about my holidays where even phone signal was weak at the hotel and pretty much non-existent in the hills, now think about internet connection.
Try to use Spotify here…
Not to mention that in my country, mobile internet is still extremely expensive with quality that goes to hell once you move out of a city. For me, as someone who listens to music while hiking, mp3 player is irreplaceable.
So, long story short, companies supposed to help the authors get their deserved money are doing very poor job and often going against what they try to stand for. That is being said by me who goes to concerts and buys band’s shirts to support them. Said by me who goes to cinema to watch movies while some people pirate them on day two and later sees the DVD cost double the cinema ticket, for movie I already saw and with no doubt that the anti-piracy effort inflated the price significantly. By which, I am posting this image from 2010 that is probably still very much true.
Too true…
The “best” part? Software that allows to cut all these unskippable parts took a few seconds to find and was so foolproof that anyone who would want to skip all of these could do that by creating a pirate copy of his own, legally-bought DVD. Talk about shooting yourself in the leg, huh? Closing thought: all the trailers on a DVD with movie are outdated and irrelevant in a few months and make them even more annoying.
BONUS: I remember a case where one such anti-piracy company was sued for breaching copyright laws by using an image for their campaign without the author’s permission…
That’s one random mesh of thoughts over, next time I guess I’ll be writing about something more usual for me.
Okay, so after some time, which was much less than I expected, windows offered me (okay, not offered, it started downloading the moment I did “check for updates”) the Creator’s fall update (or what’s the exact wording).
Now before I go on about how that went (though the title gives it away), I need to mention that I was waiting much longer for the spring update, which made sense. My PC is getting close to its 6th birthday (bought after Christmas 2011) with a help of friend as mix-and-match of components to give me stronger where I would need it and save where I would not (student’s budget…). It included said friend’s used HDD (for him, 1TB+ was necessary while for me the old 750GB was at least two times more than enough). Said HDD was the first to be replaced, over time followed by power source and graphic card, so now it’s a mix of components of varying age, up to 6 years.
For that very reason, I expected it’ll take months before the Fall update is offered to me, but it came quite fast. I let it do its thing and as my father was home, I just went to Uni as usual, hoping that when I come back home, it’ll be finished.
Well, it was. But even the very basic functions were failing massively. First, it somehow splintered the account settings, adding a Schrödinger’s copy of my default account that was not visible in settings, but was active, with all my settings now on default for this ‘new’ account. So, I started to put things back in normal, and in time, Start button (including through the Windows key) stopped reacting. Eventually, even folder browsing was starting to behave weirdly, and so I decided to use the restore to roll back the update.
NOPE!
The Schrödinger’s account thing completely blocked that. It asked me to remove the newly created account, sending me to settings – where it could not be seen.
Long story short, three hours later I decided that there’s only one solution: Format the whole C: drive and make clean W10 install, only getting to the spring update and then blocking the Fall (from now on to be called Fail) update. I am now sitting here, installing some essential programs and drivers while waiting for W10-1703 update to download (Not sure which big pack it was, but I know that FAIL is 1709 and I believe the working one before is 1706).
Oh, one thing: before I started the reinstall later today, I went to the hills, my favorite ultimate solution. It cleared my mind, which is nice.
With that, I end this post and go back to installing stuff.
Oh, it’s this time of year again. The wet and dry November, not cold enough for snow, but cold enough to make rain feel more unpleasant than ever. Luckily there was not that much of it. But these darker days tend to take my mind away from the reality.
For the past days, before Blizzcon, they were occupied by speculations about what will be announced, for me especially about World of Warcraft next expansion. Now, a week later, the speculations are dying down, limited to thinking about some more vague statements and what could be true (while there’s still the possibility that it’ll change anyway before beta).
So, my mind moved back where it usually is: my own world. Since the decision I made some three weeks ago to completely change my approach to the beginning of the story, I finally wrote another chapter, and quite a short one. My visible progress is now close to zero, something I don’t expect to improve much in the coming weeks. I am in the stage where more progress is done thinking about how to solve the troubles and plotholes that appeared. I guess I might look even weirder than usually, with the gloomy weather, my wild facial hair and absent-minded neutral face.
I guess that contributes to the fact that I might get to revisit some darker stuff in the coming days, starting with re-read of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ which I plan for the next week. I think with the theme the book has, it’ll be quite nice match for the darker November weather and the brooding mood that comes with it.
So, the last few days were a bit busy for me. I finally did what I promised for two months and created the few maps for next year’s hikes, but that’s not as important. Weather was now suspiciously great for this time of year. It’s not too often when mid-October would be with temperatures around 20°C in central Europe, even more rare to end up around 25°C.
Autumn scenery.
So, I went for another hike during the Saturday. It was not that interesting to give it separate post, merely a relaxing walk through the colourful forests. As as it tends to be in this time of year, it’s great time for picking some edible mushrooms and in that place they grew in such numbers that one could go harvest them with a scythe and wheelbarrow.
That day, it was probably somewhere around 18°C. It was even warmer during the days after, and in the end it was the perfect way to get some fun in the sun, maybe last time this year. Maybe, because I said it during the previous hike…
Perfect weather for outdoor sports.
I guess that these days, no one really knows what the weather will do. Anyway, I guess that’s all from me for now…
So, two days back I went to watch the 3D remaster of Terminator 2: Judgment day. I admit it was mostly out of curiosity to see how it’ll work out with converting a 26-years old film to 3D version, and it ended up quite nicely. Writing comments for the film itself is quite pointless as there was said much about it during the time it was first released (in that time I was still in the crib).
It was somewhat strange going to cinema to watch a film I knew pretty much inside out and could replicate most memorable lines at any time, in both English and Czech. When it comes to 3D itself, I was mostly waiting for it to show when T-1000 took a hit, but to me it was most prominent by the end where the temporary mist from liquid nitrogen was floating around.
Since I usually watch films at home on my PC with headphones, the biggest jump in quality was actually the sound and I realized I heard details I never noticed when watching it at home.
To wrap it up, I think that for someone who likes the series, going to watch the 3D remaster is nice addition. Especially if you don’t have at least 5+1 sound system at home.
Anyway, T2 was supposedly a test and James Cameron might decide to convert more of his films to 3D in time. We’ll see. Rumors are that he’s planning more Terminator sequels as well…
In the last few days, I kept myself quite busy. From Wednesday to Sunday, I went for a hike, read two books, went to cinema, visited music festival, wrote two chapters and sorted out my thoughts for several more. I’ll post the book review in the coming days, hopefully.
As for the film I saw, it was Valerian and the City of a thousand planets. Since I have great memories of Fifth element as a great and often quite hilarious Sci-fi by Luc Besson, I decided to go see this. I never saw the comics it was based on, so for me it was just going to have some easy fun with a film that was from trailer very likely to be a lot about shiny graphics and myriad of alien creatures. The intro was touching, the multi-dimensional bazaar chase was interesting and fun. I am not sure if it was just me or if that part was a weak spot, but for some reason I knew who the traitor is when the command room of Alpha was attacked. From there, it was mostly about if/when/how he’ll be dealt with more than about finding out who it is. Still, good one.
I won’t say much about the concert. I will say that my neck and hands are still a bit stiff, something my fellow metal enthusiasts will understand. I was not exactly in the front row all those 10 hours but I was not holding back either. RAISE YOUR HEAVY METAL HANDS!
Anyway, for a person who likes ‘normal’ and quite regular sleep habits, two nights with this disrupted (returned around 23:30 from the cinema and 3:15 the next day after concert) I was quite sleepy the whole Sunday as the sun and heat did not allow me to sleep for long. There was a hint that colder days might be coming – and by colder I mean 22°C down from 30+ but that hope lasted maybe two hours.
Anyway, they were fun days definitely.
