W. Randy Hoffman (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mrgoodwraith) wrote,@ 2008-04-25 12:47:00 |
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A lot of effort for a little egoboo, but I'd do it again
I've been wanting to send John Kovalic (muskrat_john) a copy of my song "Perky Goth" for years; the song is half-inspired by his "Dork Tower" character Gilly the Perky Goth, after all. But, what with my emails to him getting lost and one thing and another, it just never happened.
Well, I decided last week I was going to see the process through. So I scrounged up my keeper copy of "Scratch [These] Vocals" and tried to rip the whole album. Nero v6 said, essentially, "What are you trying to do?"; then, when I got it to perform a function semi-analogous to what I wanted, the "free trial" of its MP3 encoder expired halfway through the album. And I ran out of free space on my C: drive anyway.
So...while I tried to buy a copy of the encoder, or upgrade the whole program, I listened to and deleted pirated music to make room for it, as I've been doing for several months. Let me explain: One of my cousin's coworkers worked at a radio station, and when he left that job he took MP3s of all the music he wanted with him -- many Gigs' worth of ripped albums. He then, um, shared the bounty with his friends. When my cousin visted us last summer, he brought a 500-GB portable hard drive with him, and dumped a bunch of that stuff over to me -- so much that it maxed out both my C: and D: drives.
I don't believe in stealing music; it's not my intention to keep permanent copies of anything I don't pay for, and not having any room on my hard drives is a major headache. I debated just deleting the entire catalog wholesale. But I thought to myself, "Hey, this is like having a whole closetful of CDs on loan. Listen to them, pick out songs you want to buy, and delete the rest." Which I have been doing, slowly but surely, ever since. I've found several songs that are just gold, including a duet by Dave Mason and Cass Elliot titled "Too Much Truth, Too Much Love" that I can't get enough of, and I've tossed a whole mess of...things I've liked a lot less. (10,000 Maniacs: Well-written material, but I don't enjoy listening to it. Aerosmith: A couple of interesting numbers did not stop me from trashing their entire discography. Billy Ocean's Greatest Hits: According to whom??)
While I was churning my way through a 2-disc set of mostly soggy 90's pop last night (Taylor Dane...urk), a poke-round on the Ask Software website revealed that the v6 MP3 encoder would cost $20 and the whole Nero v8 package would only be $64. So I sprang for the whole enchilada, downloaded it on the third try ("I'm sorry, Dave. I can't let you do that...until you delete the *less accessible* B-52s material."), and was not disappointed. (v8 is VASTLY more user-friendly, feature-rich, and intuitive than v6!) Ripped "Perky Goth" at long last, emailed it to John, and asked him to let me know if he got it and how much (or little) he thought it sucked. Got word from him this morning:
"Not only does it not suck...it rocks! Awesome stuff!"
Yay. Is to hum gleefully.
I've been wanting to send John Kovalic (
muskrat_john) a copy of my song "Perky Goth" for years; the song is half-inspired by his "Dork Tower" character Gilly the Perky Goth, after all. But, what with my emails to him getting lost and one thing and another, it just never happened.Well, I decided last week I was going to see the process through. So I scrounged up my keeper copy of "Scratch [These] Vocals" and tried to rip the whole album. Nero v6 said, essentially, "What are you trying to do?"; then, when I got it to perform a function semi-analogous to what I wanted, the "free trial" of its MP3 encoder expired halfway through the album. And I ran out of free space on my C: drive anyway.
So...while I tried to buy a copy of the encoder, or upgrade the whole program, I listened to and deleted pirated music to make room for it, as I've been doing for several months. Let me explain: One of my cousin's coworkers worked at a radio station, and when he left that job he took MP3s of all the music he wanted with him -- many Gigs' worth of ripped albums. He then, um, shared the bounty with his friends. When my cousin visted us last summer, he brought a 500-GB portable hard drive with him, and dumped a bunch of that stuff over to me -- so much that it maxed out both my C: and D: drives.
I don't believe in stealing music; it's not my intention to keep permanent copies of anything I don't pay for, and not having any room on my hard drives is a major headache. I debated just deleting the entire catalog wholesale. But I thought to myself, "Hey, this is like having a whole closetful of CDs on loan. Listen to them, pick out songs you want to buy, and delete the rest." Which I have been doing, slowly but surely, ever since. I've found several songs that are just gold, including a duet by Dave Mason and Cass Elliot titled "Too Much Truth, Too Much Love" that I can't get enough of, and I've tossed a whole mess of...things I've liked a lot less. (10,000 Maniacs: Well-written material, but I don't enjoy listening to it. Aerosmith: A couple of interesting numbers did not stop me from trashing their entire discography. Billy Ocean's Greatest Hits: According to whom??)
While I was churning my way through a 2-disc set of mostly soggy 90's pop last night (Taylor Dane...urk), a poke-round on the Ask Software website revealed that the v6 MP3 encoder would cost $20 and the whole Nero v8 package would only be $64. So I sprang for the whole enchilada, downloaded it on the third try ("I'm sorry, Dave. I can't let you do that...until you delete the *less accessible* B-52s material."), and was not disappointed. (v8 is VASTLY more user-friendly, feature-rich, and intuitive than v6!) Ripped "Perky Goth" at long last, emailed it to John, and asked him to let me know if he got it and how much (or little) he thought it sucked. Got word from him this morning:
"Not only does it not suck...it rocks! Awesome stuff!"
Yay. Is to hum gleefully.
