No witty tagline for this post.
Posted on December 31st, 2008
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 3:35 pm
This morning at about 9am, my grandfather on my father’s side – the person for whom I’m named – passed away at age 94. I’d be a liar to say it was unexpected, as he has been having health issues for the past few months, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with ultimately. I have no idea how this will play out with university in the mix, but I hope I can make the funeral. He was a great man, and it’s because of his wise investment that I even have the resources to go to school.
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99 (- about 90) Problems
Posted on December 30th, 2008
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 3:14 pm
So, if the rush to school wasn’t enough of a hassle, we can now add a dead APC to the stack. At least I caught it before I was in Portland (where, frankly, the price of tech is not nearly as sweet as Seattle. Atleast they’ve got a Fry’s.) Oh, and I still need to get the brakes on the red Escort straight. So fun*.
*=that was the joke.
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A comic about my current situation
Posted on December 30th, 2008
Filed under: General,Pictures — Karl Olson @ 3:06 am
Needless to say, I’m now busting my can getting stuff square. It’s gonna be “get the apartment, move in, go to school.” So much for having breathing room, not that the weather would have afforded me any anyway. I’d have been packed faster though.
And oh man, it’s going to be sweet to have basically a bed, computers/printer, a table for computers/printer and some tubs o’ clothes. Maybe some small electrics (rice cooker would be good to have, electric razor will come with, hopefully the apartment has a microwave.) By sweet, I imagine I’ll be up to Seattle on the weekends as time affords to get some other stuff down (like a dish set/silverware set.)
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Speaking of Nekodashi Being Back
Posted on December 25th, 2008
Filed under: Music News — Karl Olson @ 4:57 am
14 releases are up for download there right now, some of it even in a decent bit rate, some of it never available free previously.
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Nekodashi’s Back/Pay for downloads?
Posted on December 24th, 2008
Filed under: Music News — Karl Olson @ 5:27 pm
So, as many people know, nekodashi has been down for a long time. Well, I recently picked up the nekodashi.info domain and I intend to eventually put the site back up. Now, this where things get interesting. I don’t think I’m going to buy hosting explicitly for it – I’ll probably just have it redirect to a sub-domain here at karlrolson.com. As such, any music available for free would probably just be hosted on various file sharing services (probably zshare with mirroring on megaupload and rapidshare.)
However, there is a service called PayLoadz that allows you to sell downloads containing anything that doesn’t violate their TOS, including music. My question is, would people willing to pay to download my albums via this service? Keep in mind, this could get stuff like Revision4920 available separately from the Complete Collection, and could even used to allow people to bypass the wait and hassle of the free download sites as well. Theoretically, it might even allow me to monetize individual tracks too.
TL;DR: who here would be interested in paying for deliciously DRM-free, 320kbps mp3 (or I could even do FLAC for some of the content) downloads?
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Carriage Return/Compiled
Posted on December 23rd, 2008
Filed under: General,Music News — Karl Olson @ 12:20 pm
In as much as my horseless carriage and I have returned to Kirkland. Amazingly, even though the Seattle-area had been long done with snowfall after I had arrived there, driving here seemed (still seems actually) sketchier than the driving I did in Spokane and Castlegar. Maybe it’s the fact that the temperatures hover around melting point, creating exceedingly treacherous and nasty conditions, though I’m inclined to say the people trying to push 40 on sideroad in their SUVs with California license plates may be a contributing factor as well.
Additionally, I have a new song on RhymeTorrents v.8, disc 3. It is available here. Lyrics after the break.
(more…)
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Short Extended Vacation.
Posted on December 20th, 2008
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 11:56 pm
So, I very sadly had to cut my time with Danielle short so that I could make it over the boarder before the RCMP felt compelled to put me in cuffs. Pity, as it was really nice hanging out with Danielle, working on music with her, eating her delicious homecooked meals and watching copious amounts of satellite TV with her. It was lovely.
However, this does not mean I am home. I ground down from Castlegar to Spokane, where upon I called home and found out Snoqualmie Pass is closed. So, I am at my aunt and uncle’s, watching Fred Claus on in-demand with them, using the internets.
Will Karl be home for X-mas? Find out, next time on KARLBALL Z!
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“I am not a criminal, but I get treated like one
Posted on December 11th, 2008
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 10:39 pm
Every time I’m at the border, they hate Ultraklystron.” – Me, some future track.
You know, if I fit a profile that made any sense, I might not be so bothered by this, but I don’t. My horrendous car combined with otakudom, musician-status and unemployment shouldn’t be read as “drug dealer and/or internet pedophile” more just as nerdy loser and media pirate, at worst (and since I’m not a pirate, all they are left with is nerdy loser.) But no, they go through my car, try to bate me into giving them some kind of incriminating evidence by asking me “what is the definition of obscenity?,” “have you viewed any obscene content recently?,” “is there any obscene content on your laptop?,” amongst other anyone-with-half-a-brain-knows-right-and-wrong-answers questions, and they go through my laptop and thumbdrives, something that really leaves me irritated because who is to say they didn’t any one if not all of the following:
1. Steal personal data. I don’t have laptop save cookies from many sites, but I do have it save some because I don’t want to be on open wi-fi at an internet cafe or public hotspot, transmitting passwords in plain-text. However, this also means they could have copied my cookies for insertion into another browser, looked through my email and via my email pulled passwords for any other site I visited by using password recovery. I’d like to think that border cops aren’t that crooked, but it cannot be ruled out.
2. Plant spyware/viruses on my computer. Normally, the virus and anti-spyware software on my computer is pretty much a joke. It has nothing to with me doing something stupid to compromise my security and everything to do with the fact that you never know when some new exploit will hit that can’t even be stopped with safe browsing (like browser, image and plug-in exploits.) However, before I did anything else, I ran scans with all the software I had installed, downloaded more software to run scans with, and am now, for the first time in years, browsing with a 3rd-party firewall, so that in case the scan miss anything, hopefully I can catch it anyway.
3. Plant evidence to find on a future visit. This would be, of course, the most immoral, illegal, unjust thing that could be done to me, but the fact is, there is no way you can rule out at the least possibility of it occurring. They had access to my computer, they could have done whatever they wanted to it. They could have done anything from copying some pirated movies to adding a true-crypt partition to my hard drive with all manner of super-illegal banned-in-Canada content. I’ve done what I can to search the computer, but the fact is, short of reformatting the laptop and doing a reinstall, there is no way to be totally sure. Some seemingly everyday file could now have something prosecuted appended to it.
Anyways, this results in the following new rules for me when traveling abroad.
1. Stop taking the 1988 Ford Escort. It seems to be a magnet for getting me flagged, where as 1993 Ford Escort isn’t. Additionally, when I drove my mom’s 2008 Honda Civic up to both pick up and drop off Danielle a few month back, I was given no trouble, in spite of the fact that my passport should have been flagged from the last time I was up in the 88.
2. Clear the laptop of any cookies, even the ones I’d rather keep. Odds are, I’ll be able to hit some kind of secure internet once I’m up there, and if I can’t, well, I doubt I have any emails that important for me to check.
3. Bring a recovery disc or flash drive. This way, no matter anyone does to the computer, I can simply reset everything.
…assuming they aren’t so talent as to some how flash in a diseased and evil BIOS. Oh, and since I’m not a citizen of Canada, I’m sure my recourse is exceedingly limited should any of my concerns ever be legit.
PS: I did have an awesome day with Danielle in Nelson, BC. We had fun shopping and walking about the town. Danielle found a very cute hat, and we both got some very cool sunglasses for a good price. I hope the rest of my stay (which thanks to the stop can be no longer than 23rd, lest a warrant be put out for my arrest – hope I don’t get snowed in,) is just as wonderful. Border dramas aside, I do always have a good time with Danielle when I’m up here.
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Sale’s over, sort of.
Posted on December 5th, 2008
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 7:39 pm
I’m boosting the cost on the thumb drives to 30 bucks. Why you ask? So I neither have to runaround all over town looking for the most insane deal on a 4GB thumb drive, nor do I have to buy them in bulk, resulting in money tied up in stuff that might not move for MONTHS at a time. As I shall be soon returning to college, I’d like to keep my finances liquid.
Flipside is, I’m keeping the CD prices lower, and adding some other cool options.
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Bonus sale days.
Posted on December 2nd, 2008
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 7:09 pm
I’ve decided to extend the sale til this coming Friday. 😀