The site can be found here: ipxer.com

I’ve found a great solution using two programs, GNU screen and bittorrent-curses. GNU Screen is a terminal multiplexer that allows one to run several terminal sessions within a single window. It also allows one to completely detach from a terminal session, and reattach at a later time. Bittorrent-curses is simply a BitTorrent client programmed with the curses library, making it suitable for command line interaction. Using both of these tools together makes a pretty slick and lightweight torrenting solution that can be completely managed through ssh.

First, you will need to install both screen and bittorrent-curses. Many systems may already have these packages installed. In the Ubuntu or Debian world, you would need to execute the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get update #first, update package libraries.
$ sudo apt-get install screen #install screen
$ sudo apt-get install python-bittorrent #install python-bittorrent

Now that these programs are installed, you can start torrenting files in the background and resume later. First, enter a screen session:

$ screen

You will be greeted with a welcome screen. Hit enter to continue, and a new terminal will appear within screen. From this session, you can run up to 10 terminal sessions concurrently, and the completely disconnect from the server without terminating any processes. For our purposes, let’s process a torrent file.

$ bittorrent-curses 'http://www.example.com/somefile.torrent' #remote file
$ bittorrent-curses somefile.torrent #local file

Now, you should be greeted by a curses window, similar to this one:

From here, you can do a number of other things while this bittorrent session continues. If you like, you can attach to a new session. To do this, press ctrl-a and then c. A new session will start. Or, you can detach from screen altogether, while your programs continue to run. To do this, press ctrl-a followed by ctrl-d. You may also close your ssh session without any repercussions. To reattach to a running screen session, simply run:

$ screen -r

Then, control any of the existing sessions in screen by pressing ctrl-a followed by the number of the session you wish to control, 0 through 9. Not too hard at all. For more detail on screen, take a look at tha man page.

I use my PlayStation 3 primarily as a media player. Aside from its inability to playback some of the more common open-source media codecs, such as OGG and FLAC, it is a very flexible machine, and will readily playback the most common audio and video files. A full (and frequently updated) list of file formats is available at the Sony site here. However, initial hard drive space on the PS3 is meager, especially if you consider game data and demos alongside your audio and video files. Furthermore, the PS3 isn’t exactly portable, if you’d like to quickly take your media files to another machine.

Thankfully, Sony has learned from past lessons (namely the ATRAC/Minidisc failures) and opened up this platform a bit. The PS3 can play files from an array of supported media, including USB hard drives, USB thumb drives, and CF/SD/MS cards. You will first need to create Sony’s prescribed folder structure on the media, and then drop in your corresponding files. The directories should look like:

/MUSIC
/PICTURE
/VIDEO


When these folders and files are in place, connect your devices to the PS3. It will automatically scan the drive for playable media. When finished, simply use the XMB to navigate to the proper category. A new icon will appear representing the new drive.

Note: The media must be formatted as FAT32. Most portable drives are formatted FAT32 at the factory. However, if you’ve reformatted the drive with Windows, it may be in the incompatible NTFS format. If you decide to reformat your drive, know that you will lose all existing data on the drive.

Off-topic file of forgiveness:
MGMT - Kids (Burntpianos Robo Remix)
found via theworldfogot.com
Get at Insound!

wget is a rudimentary program used to download files from the web. It can be configured to simply download single files, or, with the right options, much, much more. If used with the complete indiscretion, it can be turned into an efficient web spider, following links and voraciously downloading in an attempt to download the entire web. wget is available (and is sometimes standard) on most UNIX/Linux systems, including Mac OS X. Windows versions are available as well, but with some more work.

For our purposes, the following script downloads all of the mp3 files linked from a single webpage (www.keptshut.com), and places them in the current folder:

wget -r -l 1 -nd -A mp3 http://www.keptshut.com/

The items between the invocation of the wget command and the final URL are options that describe how wget should behave. In this case, we want wget to download recursively (-r), one link deep (-l 1), all mp3 files (-A mp3) found at www.keptshut.com. We also want the files to be placed in our current directory (-nd), rather the remote directory structure, as wget does by default.

Here are some other examples and explanations. Full documentation for wget can be found here.

Download all mp3 and wav files in the URLs listed in sites.txt. Copy the webserver’s directory structure:

wget -r -nc -A mp3 -i sites.txt

Follow all links indefinitely (spanning domains), starting at URL, and save all mp3 files in the current directory. This one can fill a hard drive quickly, and can be considered abusive:

wget -r -nd -nc -H -A mp3 URL

And, because I got off-topic, here’s a song by Danish Band, SMALL.
SMALL - Comic Girl

The ever industrious Damon Albarn is on another side of the globe, again working with new people, sounds and styles. Monkey: Journey to the West is an “Operatic” adaptation of a Chinese folk story dating back to the Ming Dynasty. Albarn collaborated with Chinese director Chen Shi-Zheng and Gorillaz’ Jamie Hewlett on the production, which also includes the talents of numerous Chinese acrobats and musicians.

Samples of the recently released soundtrack (based on the production pieces) can be found on the official site here. Among them are the particularly charming song here:

Heavenly Peach Banquet

Previously, Albarn collaborated with numerous Malian musicians on Mali Music. Perhaps unknown to most, he also lent a strange and haunting soundtrack to Ravenous, an odd film about cannibals in the early American West.

Damon Albarn - Boyd’s Journey

TEXT - We have explosives! - Schmexplosives_.mp3
Buy It At Insound!

young buck, t.i. & ludacris - stomp

notorious b.i.g. - party & bullshit

notorious b.i.g. - allure

z-ro, devin the dude & juvenile - the mule

young buck - shorty wanna ride

beanie sigel & jay-z - glock nines

despot - freestyle


slim thug, t.i. & bun b. - three kings

young jeezy & bun b. - over here

kanye west - diamonds

beans - freestyle

notorious b.i.g. - dead wrong

saigon & u.g.k. - we gon ride

Daytrotter has an excellent studio version of Sunset Rubdown performing their song “The Mending of the Gown.” It’s much slower and more organic sounding than the (in my opinion) artificially manic version included on the album. However, in this slower version, the listener may be quick to judge the band on a whole, since it’s easier to understand (at least phonetically) the sprawling, obtuse lyrics. I still have no problem with it at all.

It can be found as the encore on their session page here.