Getting started with Ogg - A good intro to Ogg Vorbis via the Play Ogg audio format campaign. I want to be down with Ogg, but the support isn't there (yet).

Recently I finally got off my ass and wrote a thingmabob to track MP3 downloads. Here is the fallout: China, you are cut off.

Seriously, I've never to my knowledge received a single nice email from anyone in China about my music or sold a CD, yet you guys make up like 60% of my bandwidth usage via sites like QQ and Baidu and Yahoo China Music.

I mean maybe if I felt like I was huge with this silent mass of Chinese I'd just roll with it, see where it takes me, but the fact of the matter is that every MP3 on my server gets hammered 24/7 by the same blocks of IPs, over and over again. Is it just their haywire search bots? Is it proxy requests from very shy Chinese Brad Sucks fans? I don't know!

So for now you're blocked, go sit in the corner and think about what you've done.

Interesting article over at Pitchfork: What Do You Look for in Music Writing? As in music reviews, not like, writing music.

Music advocacy (well, it sounds better than "what mp3 blogs do") is exploding. Music criticism on the other hand survived commercially for the past 40 years or so by hitching itself to its own version of advocacy. In an age of limited music supply, the word of an informed expert was invaluable, and the flights of fancy or theory that expert indulged in were part of the deal. Sharply and suddenly, the internet has broken that link.

Since I was a teenager I've thought music criticism was silly. I've never really understood why I should care that someone doesn't like an album, it alway seemed like trolling -- a ploy to get fans riled up and generate attention. I prefer the idea of music advocacy, though I get impatient reading overwrought poetic waxings about music when I could have decided if I liked the music in the time it took to read the article. (Also there are only so many times I can read the word "scintillating" without wanting to puke.)

Lately as I've been working on my album I've been getting existential. Is there still a point to doing albums? Why should they be in 11 or 12 song bundles? What will I do when it's done?

It used to be a bad idea for a musician to release too many songs too quickly. You get the rep as being a prolific genius, but the quality pretty much always goes down. You oversaturate the market with a lot of b-side material, confuse potential fans and make it hard for anyone to find the songs they'd like.

But now that music advocacy is the name of the game, are things different? It seems like all you have to worry about is if there are enough people interested to separate the good from the bad. The bad gets ignored, the good gets spread around.

This is software I'm using but would be happy to ditch for something better:

Google Desktop - I run Google Desktop because I like the quick program launcher and docking my Google Talk & Calendar in the sidebar. But the sidebar overall feels bloated and slow, the email gadget sucks (slow to update, shows sent items, lacks Gmail integration), the quick launch often doesn't find things I want to launch and the desktop search keeps finding files I've deleted that don't exist anymore. The more I write about it here the more lame I think it is.

ToDoList - I've used this for a while and it works okay, but the options and UI are super complicated. I also can't get it to keep hiding my completed items and I'd like a view that shows me all my due tasks on one page. Having it online and integrated with my other software would be nice as well but I haven't found a better one to replace it.

KeyNote - KeyNote's development discontinued back in 2003 but I'm still been using it. It's done well for me as a notebook and scratch pad, but these days I want to ditch the note-tree paradigm for something that lets me tag my notes and ideally store them online.

Firefox - I love the awesome customization of Firefox, but it's slow, even without my gazillion extensions installed. It can't be denied that IE7 and Opera are both much faster. But I'm tied to Firefox because I can't live without Greasemonkey & Gmail Macros and NextPlease and Adblock and Firebug and Google Browser Sync and All-in-One Gestures and and and...

MediaMonkey - A while back I mentioned I was searching for a new music player, something that would let me shuffle through my library nicely. I tried nearly everything out there and 95% of it was awful. Media Monkey is awesome. Less bloated than iTunes, more feature-rich than Winamp, MediaMonkey has it all. I went from being bored with my massive music library to being entertained again.

Media Player Classic - Make no mistake, VLC should still be installed on every system. But Media Player Classic is a little bit more attractive and faster for jumping through certain video files.

RocketDock - This is a sexy lightweight little program launcher. I always used the built-in sidebars in XP but this is sexier.

Notepad++ - My favorite programming editor. I keep finding new features in it that make my life easier.

Pidgin - I replaced Trillian with this after being horrified by how bulky Trillian Astra looks. I still like the simplicity of Google Talk but this is cool for all the other protocols.

Great collection of old metal show photos in Ye Olde Metal Days. Here are moves and outfits I'd like to pull off sometime:

Thanks to everyone who submitted artwork for the upcoming ccMixter/Brad Sucks remix compilation, there was a lot of great stuff. My favorite was by Katie Sekelsky:

Hooray for almost being done with this project!

Here's a clip last year of us playing Riverpalooza. Fireworks are sweet.

I was helping out at the White Glove Tracking project today, creating white glove data that I'm sure will be used in a way that will better humanity. Anyway, it made me go re-watch Michael Jackson's legendary 1983 Motown Billie Jean performance:

It's still entertaining, but two things stand out:

• Michael is so obviously lip-synching. I don't hear many people mention that when they talk about this performance.
• That glove is huge. Did they have nothing in Michael's size?

The multi-protocol IM client Pidgin (formerly Gaim) 2.0.0beta7 is out.

I switched from Trillian to Gaim last week. I had bought Trillian 3 Pro, but the new Trillian Astra beta completely turned me off. Bloated and silly for something as simple instant messaging.

The new Pidgin beta is very slick looking, lightweight and works great. And it has my sounds in it!

I updated the Brad Sucks Digital Download Store to v.0.02. Some people have been paying me for hosted installations (which is SWEET) so I've been able to take the time to put in some fixes and also add international currency support in the config options.

I also put it on Google Code so you can use SVN to check it out, submit issues, etc. Questions about installation and stuff go in the forums.

Well, after having it pointed out to me that it's at least a good idea to get in front of people who might like my music, I'm now on Sellaband.

My original nitpicking about Sellaband is still valid I think, but I guess we'll see. Have a read through the comments of that post for some rebuttals to my cynicism.

Three years ago I posted about my experience with OfficeMax. I guess it was high up there in searches for "OfficeMax sucks" and became somewhat of a search honeypot. Since then I've received countless angry emails about the replies to the post. From OfficeMax managers who were slandered demanding me to remove posts, to OfficeMax employees who mistakenly slandered their managers under their real name demanding me to remove posts, to the (I guess) OfficeMax-employed trolls defending OfficeMax, it's been a wild and interestingly retarded ride.

Today, after 765 replies (and I'm pretty sure zero albums sold to angry OfficeMax employees), I've turned off comments for that post. Spread your wings and fly, disgruntled OfficeMax employees. I'm sick of hearing from you! Please go away forever!

Other search honeypots I'm aware of on bradsucks.net:

There's Something Wrong - Get one fan in Sweden, attract many more searching for "sweden sucks" I guess. What's there to hate about Sweden?

Record Deals - I'm not sure search this is popular for, but if anyone's looking for a white teenage rapper who can't spell, you might want to check out the comments.

So I got a Wii a few days ago and it's great of course. But I think the best part is watching other people play it for the first time. I took it over to my parents' tonight and watching my mother beat the hell out of a boxer, well, it just about brought tears to my eyes.

If I have a complaint it's the lack of online multiplayer. I'm pretty good at tennis now and I desire to kick international ass.

I just posted a quick faster demo of There's Something Wrong. Trying to find the right feel for this sucker.

I like how previously rare or hard to reproduce things like Dark Side of the Rainbow are just plain on Youtube these days:

I had never seen it before and it works amazingly well. Just enough sync to make it seem meaningful. More links:

Dark Side of the Moon Wikipedia page

List of sync "moments" in Dark Side of the Rainbow

Synchronicity Arkive - dedicated to other video/audio syncs

Magnatune & I will soon be putting out a double CD of Creative Commons-licensed ccMixter remixes of songs off I Don't Know What I'm Doing. It's a pretty awesome project that shows a lot of the super wickedness that can come out of the Creative Commons. Only hitch right now is: OMG we need album art!

I have no visual arts talent, so I'd really appreciate some help. I need four pieces of artwork: the cover, reverse side of the cover, tray card (back) and the CD itself.  (If you need the dimensions they're here under jewel case print dimensions.)

The title is "Mixter Two: Brad Sucks / I Don't Know What I'm Doing". Even if you (like me) have no artistic skills, you could contribute by rifling through the Creative Commons Search (particularly Flickr) for photos or drawings that might make good album art material (make sure to check the two boxes at the top for photos that can be remixed & used commercially).

I don't have much to offer other than eternal peace in heaven. We'll credit you on the album and I'll send you some CDs and buttons and maybe a letter explaining how nice I think you are.

Post anything you got in these comments, my forums or email me directly. Thank you!

Wow, check out this Stevie Wonder Drum Solo.

I already knew he played the drums on a lot of his recordings, but it's still awesome. [via kristin]

Making The Hypothetical Band is pretty funny. Choose Your Own Adventure books as band names. Asher Sarlin is a favorite of mine, his Elephantitis of the Mind comic is funny.

Had one of those "this is all garbage, maybe I should bail on this album and start over fresh" musical panic attacks yesterday. So I think I'm right on track to release my second album around 2010.