You know what I’m talking about. The scene. Being able to open Now magazine to the centre pages, or going to the Toronto section at stillepost.ca. Listings upon listings of bands of all shapes, sizes, and sounds.

My last months in Toronto, were actually spent up in Richmond Hill, so I didn’t get to see many shows. My brother is friggin OD-ing on them these days, as I watch, jealously.

But alas, I keep my thirst quenched by listening, weekly, to the CBC Radio 3 Podcast. CBC Radio 3 used to be an online magazine that featured beautiful photography and music in gloriously beautiful, and immersive, full-screen flash form. These can still all be accessed in the archives (goto the link, and click ‘magazine archives’ at the bottom).

My most favourite thing by far was the live sessions they had with various bands. To name a few of’em: The Decemberists, The Weakerthans, Death from Above, the Arcade Fire, Mogwai Stars, Sigur Ros, franz Ferdinand, Neko Case, Interpol, The White Stripes, Deathcab for Cutie, Sonic Youth, etc, etc. If you goto the archives Volume 3 Issue 19, one of their last issues, features the magazine’s 101 favourite sessions, and man, it’s such a wonderful list to listen through.

However, CBC Radio 3 has since changed form. It is now a weekly hour long podcast, chock full of Canada’s best up-and-coming, little-known, and some-more-known-but-still-not-known-by-many-who-should. Hip hop, rock, electronica, you name it, as long as it’s Canadian.

My latest little discovery via said podcast has been a little band called ‘The Guest Bedroom‘. There’s a few mp3’s on their site. Grab’em, and dance to’em.

Danceable rock is a great, great thing.

Too bad the only scene they have in Korea is some kind of punk-core scene or something. That’d be interesting to see, but the last place any ’scene’ would go would be Gumi, South Korea. Unless it was the Fish-cake-street-vendor scene.

December 27th, 2005 | Music | 2 comments

Bot. Short for Robot.

Automated programs to do various things. On the Internet, they fulfill mundane tasks like crawling the internet to keep search engines updated and such. You know sometimes, when you’re registering with a website or message board or something, somewhere along the line they make you re-type the text that you see in a box where you see like, the words ‘unicorn 93′ or something nonsensical and all distorted and stuff? It’s a security measure to prevent bots from automatically registering and spamming their service, whether it’s a message board, or whatever.

Now here you are. Browsing MySpace looking for cool people or nudie photos or something, and you get a message. And it goes a little something like this:

Hey there, I have to use this profile to get on line, so just so you know this isnt me it’s a friend. I’m not too sure about this online thing so I am not ready to commit to signing up for an account of my own yet. I can’t believe I am back in the dating scene again. Seems like forever. I hate the whole process of trying to find the right person. Never knowing if it’s going anywhere. But you can’t beat all the great sex anytime that comes with having a significant other:) That has got to be the best part of the relationship. I do know though, that doesnt come easy, and we have to work at it to get to that level. I liked your profile and wanted to say hello. If your interested even just a little bit you should email me at my email: heroinefantasy@yahoo. I was going to attach some pitures here, but I dont know how all this works, so when you email me, I will send some from there. I am more familiar with that then this. hehe.

Bye for now…
Kris

I might as well totally expose this thing, and say the email came from ‘Freida‘. Now, after a friendly and curious reply, you get another email:

Hi Eric ! Hey you found me! I was a little worried you wouldn’t be able to so, how are you? I’m ok.. I’m sneaking a email in at work before my boss comes back in, so sorry if it’s a little short! I promise to write more later So I promised you some pics:P well I will have to send you some of me when I get home (don’t have the pics here at work). In the meantime you can check out my personal homepage. It’s kind of playground while I’m taking this intro to HTML class, kind of like my blog page. Here is the link: http://www.honesthost5mb.com/kristenssite It’s not much yet but it’s getting there. hehe So tell me more about yourself, are you a work to live or live to work kinda person? What are you looking for in a girl? Do you like myspace? I think I’ll make a profile soon, it’s free right? and you can add your own HTML? That would be cool.. Anyways, enough with the 20 questions right? oh, I prefer to chat on IM, its more personal you know? Do you have AIM? im xxxxxxxx on there, msg me sometime ok? Well I should log off and get some work done.. Write back soon! and take care! xoxo ~ Kristen

Whoa, wow, ‘this chick’s cool’, you think. THen you goto her ‘website’.

Which brings me back to the original topic, Bot’s. This particular bot lures you to pages like the one our friend here ‘Kristin’ has. The kicker is that to view her more ‘naughty’ photos that she has apparently posted, you needed to go through some sort of registration company that she ‘uses for own security’.

Bots people. Personal information: keep that shit safe. Don’t be fooled by a bot.

Btw, this whole incident was taken from my friend here. Even more classic is his reply:

Hey Kristen,

I went to your personal site and it asked me to signup for an adult pass, however i’m not looking for any adult pictures.

I’m more of a live to work kind of person, i work for the government, in the IT security group. It’s all very exciting. My job is pretty neat, i track down people that create spam and unsolicted emails and start lawsuits against them. I’m like the email police Don’t worry you dont have to worry.

Myspace is a great site its huge though there are so many people on the site, i also find there is so much nudity on the site, its a amazing what people will put on the internet these days…

write me back

eric

ha! Golden.

December 27th, 2005 | Random shiz | 2 comments