Giving away music on the internet is hard.  Not as difficult as, say, selling it online, but still pretty hard.  The reason is because technology hasn’t yet caught up to ideal intuitiveness.  We’re getting there.  Really close, actually. But we’re still burdened by middleman steps.  Namely, .zip files, downloads, searches.

There needs to be a universal program¹ that easily allows someone to grab your music and listen to it immediately.  Now you say, “Josh, that already exists, it’s called streaming.”  And I reply: streaming sucks.  Ideally.  Pragmatically, it’s a great way to instantly listen to music, but what if you want to put the track on your computer?  Especially if it’s a free track?  This isn’t too hard, you just download and click on .. you know what, I’m confusing myself with this worthless preamble.  Let’s just get on with my idea.

A music bin. Which exists maybe on the toolbar, since toolbars are pretty universal.  When you come across a website that has music that you can download, all you have to do is click and drag the music link up to the toolbar, and it “dumps” the song into the bin². The song gets downloaded and immediately updated in your music program of choice (iTunes, Winamp, WMP, whatever [or maybe all three]). Maybe it has a setting where the song is played immediately. Either way, you have downloaded the song and don’t have to worry about finding it in your computer, transferring it, or really messing with it at all.

Now (and this is why I thought this up), if a person is offering a free ALBUM, or EP, they ususally send it as a .zip file.  This music bin program would unzip the file, extract the files to place in whatever folder you deem worthy, and updates your music program. This is important because it eliminates the stupid step of opening Windows Explorer, opening the .zip file, C&Ping the tracks, moving them to your folder, etc etc.

… wait a minute.  I just described a torrent file. Good god I’m an idiot.

I won’t lie: I google myself.  A lot.  Usually in the dark with a glass of merlot.  Without pants on.

What’s cool about my name is that it’s very difficult for people to remember how to spell.  Most people desperately want to spell my last name “Bellville”, but that’s just not how it’s spelled.  My name is spelled Belville and there’s just no way that’s going to change.  I don’t like the Bellville spelling.  It seems off somehow.  Belleville is better but I’m just not that French.  And so I have my bastardized surname of Belville, which is also a line of Lego toys for girls, if you didn’t know that already.

I bring this up because if you google “Josh Belville”, this website is the first result.  More importantly, the first page is all me: Myspace, Facebook, last.fm, thesixtyone, even burn out sites like The Next Big Sound and LinkedIn.  It’s all me.  Whoa, I even make the whole second page!  And the third page!  And the fourth!

Even if you don’t put quotes in Google when you search my name, it still is all me.  If you search “joshua belville”, the first site that pops up is my acting/music website.  Point being not so much that I have mastered the art of SEO, but more that I have just the right amount of Unusual to my name.

Unfortunately that means bunk if you don’t know how to spell it.

If you search “zornog”, with the notable exception of King Zornog from the Star Wars comic books¹, it’s all me for the first page.  And the second.

So the question becomes: how important is this?  How important is it to be so integrated into Google when no one knows how to properly spell your name?  Should I add “bellville” into my meta tags so that people can essentially misspell my name and still get to my website?  Actually … that’s probably a good idea.  But the point is, should anyone wish to find me through the internet, their chances of doing so are Extremely High, but only if they spell my name correctly.

Alternately, they could search for “zornog” and effectively find me.

… In other words, I’m doomed.

In 2004 I purchased a computer using my sweet, sweet financial aid money.  It cost me around $750 dollars.  I named it the Fortress of Consternation.  It had two drives (one a partition of the other).  I named the C: Gondolora and the D: Panda Bears.  I’ve had this computer for five years, and most of the time it was damaged, freezing on random occasions, making my life a living hell sometimes.

Well, the Age of Gondolora is over.  I have purchased a new computer, for nearly half as much money but twice as much power.  This computer is called Magrageeves, and it rises from the fiery ashes of Gondolora.  It has only one drive, but it is Large, and I need to name it.  Right now it’s called Pencil Bandit, which I think is kind of funny, but not really appropriate.  Suggestions?

The Fortress of Consternation is not dead, however.  From all ruins come new civilizations.  Gondolora and Panda Bears shall be razed, and on their ground shall be built new cities, under the watchful eye of Ubuntu, lord of Free Operating Systems.  There peace shall prosper and man shall learn how to access Terminal and receive Root.  And life will be good.

Really, I’m just stoked cause I can play Morrowind again.  Morrowind!

Okay, some big changes are coming to this website.

Most importantly, I have (finally!) registered joshuabelville.com.  This will now be the central site for my music and acting.  It will be a website resume, bascially.  zornog.net, meanwhile, will house my personal stuff, like this blog, and comics, and writings, and etc etc.  That doesn’t mean jb.com won’t be active, it’s just that it will be specific for my music and acting.

So!  Be prepared to bookmark that site.  I imagine it will go live in February or March, depending on how busy I am in February.

I have also, for my own protection, registered zornog.com and zornog.org.  My site used to be on zornog.com, before it expired and some bastard parked on it for years.  Now it’s free and I have it!  Hoorah.  (for the record: someone is currently parked on joshbelville.com, or else I would’ve bought it instead of joshuabelville.com).

Okay, so if you haven’t checked out Test Comic yet, you should click that link.  What was originally an attempt to make good speech bubbles has become a mind of its own.  I won’t explain anymore, I’ll just ask you to click the image and check it out.  I think it’s pretty funny.  But then again, I find it hilarious when I fart, so to each their own, I guess.

Okay, I’ve spent enough time here; I must go memorize lines.  Go read the comic!  Be ready for joshuabelville.com!  Do other things that are awesome!  Okay bye!

The fine fine people at Artists House Music Tweeted this article and it immediately caught my attention.  I wanted to reply to them but 140 characters is not enough for what I want to say.  Then I thought, I have a blog!  Yay!  I’ll just write something there.

AND THE REST WAS HISTORY.

So I’ll just reprint what the article says, since it’s pretty short and some people (like me) don’t like to click on a bunch of links sometimes.  It reads:  

A few legislative notes:

Yesterday (the very day the CMA Awards were hosted in Nashville) Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen signed into law SB 3794, a bill that requires all public and private universities and colleges in the state to take proper steps to assure that their networks are not being used to illegally trade copyrighted material. It also requires each school to develop and enforce a policy for computer usage, network usage and ethics. The House IP subcommittee was abolished and will be bumped up to a full Judiciary committee.

My immediate thought upon reading this was: they’re gonna screw it up and get a bunch of college students pissed off at them.

Continue Reading »