Define irony

I’m an avid recycler. In fact, I now actually cringe if I have to put a glass, plastic bottle or tin can in the regular trash. I go so far as to take my recyclable rubbish with me if I’m not able to recycle it there on the spot.

I think it’s true to say of most people who recycle that they’re inclined to make a little bit of extra effort in order to do their recycling. Indeed, in most cases where recycling pickups don’t happen, you will need to keep your recycling in your house until such point that you can take it to a nearby recycling centre and then deposit your stuff in the appropriate bins. This certainly requires extra effort, and perhaps, recyclers do feel a tad smug about their apparent helping to save the planet. I’m not saying they’re on the same level as the sanctimonious wankers who drive a Prius – I don’t care what you say Top Gear reporter Paul Horrell, it’s a shit car, stop saying it’s good – but nevertheless, the very fact that people are prepared to put the extra effort to separate your stuff and then actually take half an hour out of a weekend to go and deposit it, says something.

Well, it says something about some people. I’m not sure what it says about these people:

Recycling madness

In case that’s not clear… virtually all of the visible plastic bottles in the near-overflowing plastic bottle recycling bin still have their plastic tops on, despite the BIG sign that says please remove bottle tops (presumably because they can’t be recycled).

So, the types of people who care enough to actually separate and keep their recyclable material, take it down to the recycling centre on their own time, put it in the right bin… can’t manage a further 3 seconds just to remove the bottle tops and put them in the regular trash.

Idiots.

Your video may have music that is owned or licensed by WMG.

Argh, WMG can suck my balls. I must admit that in *all* the years of the DRM / Copyright / file sharing / Napster debate, I’ve never really been hit by it. Although in principle, DRM or similar is kind of annoying – I mean, I paid for it – I should be able to do what I want with it, right? Well, no, not at all – you just bought a license to listen to the music. The reason I’ve never really got in to downloading music – either illegally or legitimately through iTunes is two-fold – 1) I don’t trust myself to remember that I’ve bought some music in case I start deleting stuff and 2) I have an ever growing CD collection which I’m proud of, and I like having the actual CD.

OK, slight tangent there. Anyway, I’ve just been bitten – albeit algorithmically – by the copyright debate. Shortly after I got my new Macbook Pro, I was farting about with iMovie HD and making some silly videos. These included a bit of my brother’s dog, and a trip when we went to a shooting range, and shot some guns. Hardly ground-breaking or Cannes-winning stuff. In fact, they’re so amateur that they’re pretty laughable now. But nevertheless, they were good fun when I was putting them together, part of which was figuring out the soundtrack. I spent ages working out the best tunes to back my brother’s dog running around in a park (Jungle Brothers) or being driven around in a car (Passenger, by Iggy Pop).

Anyway, some of my videos got WMG’d at YouTube. On some of these videos, I now just see a message that says

Your video, Seven Stages of Dog – Part 2, may have audio content from Growing On Me by The Darkness that is owned or licensed by WMG.

Obviously referring to the part where Iggy (a 2 year 50lb bull terrier / shepherd mix plays with Dante, a 130lb Italian Mastiff, with humourous consequences).

So the point is, WMGs access to YouTube and its algorithms to analyse all videos to find illegal use of their music has caught me out and the music to the video is muted. And that makes the video even more dull than before. What’s unusual however, is that there are other videos I have made that use exactly the same styles, but they didn’t get flagged. And a cursory search of YouTube shows thousands more videos with copyrighted music on arguably much bigger or questionable videos. So obviously whatever software they’re using isn’t perfect.

But I’m still struggling to understand how my use of the music for my crappy “home videos” can really be damaging them and I’d argue that my use is “fair use”. It’s not for profit, it’s clearly not for anything sensible or real, it’s just a bit of fun for me and anyone who might be interested (which, judging by the view count, is not many) and whereever I use music, the artist is credited for it. If anything, I’d go the opposite way and say that for the odd few people who actually watch these videos, might think “oooh Ocean Colour Scene, haven’t heard them in a while” and go and buy a CD. (Or fire up Limewire I suppose.)

Well needless to say, I find it all very crap. This sort of thing can only stifle the creativity that places like YouTube are slowly opening up. Fat little kids who previously had no lives are somehow “cewebrities” because they get creative with a webcam. (Ooer!). But no, WMG can’t monetise it (yet) so their decision is to pull the plug. Of course, you can use the “AudioSwap” – i.e., a list of public domain tracks that are free for use – but how long before they’re used up and everyone’s videos starts to look very very similar. In fact, it gets worse. I saw one poor who had her videos deleted for singing her favourite bands music!

If I really cared enough about this, I’d find a list of all WMG’s artists and never buy their music again. But I don’t, so I won’t. But still, it’s tiresome and officious, and is nowt but a sign of things to come.

So on a lighter note, here’s another video I made that doesn’t have any copyrighted music. It is obviously a blatant rip off of a movie, so quite how long it stays out there, well, who knows.

Nothing changes

It seems I’ve always been an angry man. I recently received several copies of the same stupid damn email. You will have seen it, it’s the “Bill Gates is going to give you some money for forwarding this email” bullshit. Here’s a sample..

Title: PLLLLEEEAAASSSSEEE REEEAAADDD! IT WAS ON GOOD MORNINGAMERICATODAY!

After scrolling through pages and pages of email addresses you get to some text:

“To all of my friends, I do not usually forward messages,

But this is from my friend Pearlas Sandborn and she really is

an attorney.

If she says that this will work – It will work. After all,What have

you got to lose?

SORRY EVERYBODY.. JUST HAD TO TAKE THE CHANCE!!! I’m an

attorney, And I know the law. This thing is for real. Rest assured

AOL and Intel will follow through with their pr omises for

fear of facing a multimillion-dollar class action suit similar to the one

filed by PepsiCo against General Electric not too long a go.

Dear Friends: Please do not take this for a junk letter.

Bill Gates sharing his fortune. If you ignore this, You will repent

later .

Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies

and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the

most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail

beta test.

When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will

track it (If you are a Microsoft Windows user) For a two weeks

time period.

For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay

you $245.00 For every person that you sent it to that forwards it on,

Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives

it, You will be paid $241.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact

you for your address and then send you a check.

Regards. Charles S Bailey Genera l Manager Field Oper ations”

Blah blah blah etc. Obviously such a load of crap. Yahda yahda.

Why am I mentioning this? Because I was blogging about the same damn thing, way back in 2004! So I was just as angry then, and people nowadays are still as stupid. Nothing changes.

Stupid adverts. Poo at Paul’s.

I’m actually lost for words. People shouldn’t be allowed to make adverts. Glade, you should be ashamed of yourself.

It’s oddly captivating though.

Job. Not hero.

So the story is that of the Airbus crashing into the Hudson river. Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger and the crew did a great job in ditching the plane in to the Hudson river, after it struck a flock of birds. All 150 people onboard survived, with about 80 of them needing medical attention for minor injuries. So yeah – it’s a remarkable story, and no doubt, it’s a freak accident which fortunately ended OK, thanks to the skill and training of the pilot and the crew of the plane, not to mention the good design of planes so that when they land in water, they should float. All round pats on the back, lads, well done (or in US speaky “great job”), everyone get down the pub for a booze up.

But I have some problems:

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Guernsey needs sewage treatment

The debate has raged on long and hard for years, but the simple fact of the matter is: currently, Guernsey, a well-developed financial centre of excellence, pumps raw sewage in to the sea – a sea the 2nd biggest market in Guernsey – tourism – relies on. There are many different water users round here – not just boating – where Guernsey is obviously a popular destination – but surfers, kayakers, swimmers, windsurfers, kitesurfers, not to mention casual beach users.

From the latest Surfers Against Sewage newsletter:

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Warning: secondhand mobile phones

I have a mobile phone. But I don’t use it so much. So part of the reason for returning my iPhone, I must admit, was that the thought of a £36 a month contract over 18 months suddenly worked out to make bad financial sense. I’ve been on pay as you go for a long while now, and actually, it suits me very well, especially as, for some unknown reason, Cable & Wireless now give their PAYG subscribers free texts. Bizarre, but I’m not complaining.

But that didn’t solve the problem of my existing phone being shagged. I moreorless knew what phone I wanted – the Nokia 6500 Slide – pretty much the N95’s little brother – but at nearly £200 new from the shop, it was more than I wanted to pay. Obvious solution? eBay!

My mistake was that I naively assumed that phones were phones were phones and that a locked (to a network) phone could easily be unlocked. Emphasis on the “naive” and the “assume” though, because when I received the Nokia 6500 Slide I won from eBay, that was tied to 3, unlocking it was not a straightforward task. Unlock codes? No. (Try unlocking it with a cheap code you bought off a dodgy website locks it up even tighter? Check. Don’t whatever you do, think that an unlock code, such as one you might buy from MrUnlock will work. On the Nokia 6500 Slide (and Classic), it won’t. It won’t, it won’t, it won’t, no way no how. Seriously.)

Now, after some research, it seems that certain high end mobile phones are incredibly hard to unlock.
It also seems that phones that are tied to 3 (Hutchison Telecom) are incredibly hard to unlock.
So, combine high end Nokia phone and the 3 network – and you got yourself some issues.

So the only solution? Have it professionally unlocked with a DM3. Does anyone in Guernsey have one of those gizmos? Hahaha. Only solution? Send it away for the princely sum of thirty squids.

Will update when (if?) I get the phone back. Fingers crossed.

On a similar note, whilst trying to figure this all out, I found some very useful software over at B-Phreaks. If you just want to check the status of your phone, or remove certain lock restrictions, then they have the software and service to help. But don’t expect any decent support from them – when the .ask to .rpl service failed for an “unknown reason”, I heard diddly squat from them. Fortunately it was only 2 euro, but one does wonder if it always fails, and they just coin in the 2 euros.

My advice (other than the usual buyer beware pish associated with buying from eBay) – if you’re buying a mobile phone that is not yet unlocked – do some research and make damn sure you can unlock it before you buy.