Author name: hubs

2014 SXSW Music Torrent

So the SXSW Music Torrent is on some shaky ground this year. According to the SXSWTorrent.com (where I have gotten most of my previous links to SXSW Torrents):

Starting this year SXSW is replacing the sample tracks they have provided for years with links to Soundcloud pages. While there are certainly known ways to download those samples, Soundcloud goes through considerable trouble to prevent that from happening. Since these torrents have always been about providing easier access to otherwise readily downloadable samples instead of outright piracy, this regrettably means that, if SXSW sticks with this new design, we will be unable to provide torrents in the future.

So this year, SXSWTorrent.com has a single torrent with 783 tracks and there will likely not be a second installment this year.

There has been an effort to get a playlist together over on Spotify. So far there are 1800 tracks on that list.

Additionally, Pirate Bay has links to a torrent that claims:

Unofficial SXSW 2014 Music Showcase – over 1200 songs from 1200 different bands from the upcoming Annual music, film, and interactive conference and festival held in Austin, TX. More complete than www.sxswtorrent.com – contains rips from youtube, soundcloud, and the SXSW site itself.

There is lot of overlap between all these sources, however, each source also contains songs the others don’t. Hopefully next year we’ll have a single, comprehensive list once again.

UPDATE: The Pirate Bay torrent has a bunch of missing file information so @pronoiac gathered it all up and put it in a spreadsheet. Additionally NPR has put out a list of 100 downloadable songs from bands at this year’s SXSW.

Bister Mungle

“On our intermission break either go out to the entryway for cookies or stay and sit and watch Mister Bungle.”

This historic video must be the first known recording of a Mr. Bungle show. Mike Patton (acting like a young punk and actually playing the guitar), Trey Spruance, and Trevor Roy Dunn play at the Eureka High School Talent Show circa 1984. Although sound is not quite refined, you can see the band had already enjoyed mixing various genres together and were beginning to have a stage presence.

Highlights include a cover of the Monkees, a partial cover of Motley Crue’s “Shout At The Devil”, and lots of bad skateboarding.

via brainphreak

Mirror Displacement Protest

Image via wsj.com

I like this idea of showing law enforcement personnel their reflections.

Protesters in Kiev, Ukraine spent 30 minutes holding up mirrors to militarized police lines in commemoration of when riot police used excessive force to breakup a peaceful rally in Independence Square on November 30th.

Protesters also held up signs saying “Who and what are you protecting?” and “God, is it really me?” The gesture was used to remind the police of their violent actions and force them to see themselves through the protesters eyes.
via Greg.org

2013: The Year In Blogging

During 2013 Artifacting saw 1,530,685 absolute unique visitors to the site. While this number is larger than last year is doesn’t show the growth seen in earlier years. Below is a graph of my total number of absolute unique readers throughout 2013.

2013 Visitors

The spike on July 7th came from the “Today I learned” Sub-Reddit discovering my post about Venezuela’s Never Ending Lightning Storm.

Below are the top ten most visited posts published on Artifacting in 2013.
Google Street View At Night
Every Human Being
2013 SXSW Music Torrent & Radio
Denver Has The 3rd Best Looking Flag In The Nation.
Climbing The Mercury City Tower
Museum Of Endangered Sounds
Rare Color Film Of The Three Stooges
Gravity Is A Mistake
United States Of Electoral Votes
Bruce Springsteen <–> Dolly Parton

Referring sites sent 165,029 visits from 1,469 different sources during 2013. Less than last year.

2013 Referrals

The top ten referring sites to Artifacting (with search engines removed) during 2013 were:

Stumbleupon
Yahoo Answers
Reddit
Facebook
Squidoo
WikiHow
Just Free Stuff
Metafilter
Disneyland Fanclub
Pintrest

This year Pinterest, Wikihow, Just Free Stuff, and the now defunct Disneyland Fanclub were all newcomers to the list over the past year.

General stats for Artifacting are as follows:

Year # Of Posts Avg. Length Of Posts Total Length Of All Posts Comments (Mine)
2013 30 4,889 146,682 115 (2)
2012 88 2,093 184,142 273 (7)
2011 96 3,369 323,412 304 (13)
2010 172 1,900 326,775 326 (20)
2009 105 1,828 191,907 285 (19)
2008 135 956 129,117 363 (34)
2007 248 835 207,145 568 (124)
2006 221 927 204,804 536 (122)
2005 39 1,392 54,292 295 (0)
2004 117 1,673 195,757 955 (0)
2003 144 1,473 212,112 701 (0)

If you’re interested I also have the similar year-end stat posts for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

2013: My Year In Photos

The trend of taking more photos with my phone than my point-and-shoot camera continued in 2013. I’ve also been taking a lot more video this year. I have posted a lot more to Instagram this year while locking down my Flickr account to mostly private and using it as a backup to my harddrive. Here is a short video of my top 5 most favorited pictures from from my Instagram account taken over the past year (as created by Statigram):

2013: My Year In Music

I have been scrobbling my listening habits to last.fm for almost seven years now. Below I have listed the bands that I listened to most during 2013. Two of the bands in my top ten this year were also on last years list.

  1. Ratatat
  2. Ween
  3. Songs: Ohia
  4. Against Me!
  5. Make Up
  6. Built To Spill
  7. Kanye West
  8. 10 Ft. Ganja Plant (6th last year)
  9. Beastie Boys (4th last year)
  10. Cloud Cult

Below is a wave graph of the top artists that I listened to over the last year (click for a larger image). It’s a great way to visualize the trends in my listening habits throughout the year.
2013 Wavegraph

Additionally, here is a list of my most listened to songs of 2013:

  1. Ratatat – Wildcat
  2. Ratatat – Tacobel Canon
  3. Ratatat – Tropicana
  4. Brassy – Who Stole the Show
  5. Ratatat – Swisha
  6. African Bush Doctor – Not for Sale
  7. Ratatat – Nostrand
  8. Cat Power – Good Woman
  9. Ratatat – Loud Pipes
  10. Junior Toots – This is Fire

Some of the best live shows I’ve seen this year included:
Dinosaur Jr.
Vampire Weekend
Of Monsters And Men

You can also see similar lists put together for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.

2013: My Year In Cities & Towns

My travel was light again this year. Below is a list of cities and towns I’ve visited in 2013. I spent one or more nights in each place listed and those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

Edwards, CO*
Niwot, CO*
Vail, CO*
Winter Park, CO
Salt Lake City, UT
Nassau, Bahamas
Alice Town, Eleuthera, Bahamas
Dumore Town, Harbour Island, Bahamas

I also have city and town lists for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.

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