Previously part of the ‘We All Kissed a Girl’ compilation, as an exclusive I thought I’d release this separately for those of you who one KP mash is possibly too many…basically I made Katy Perry angry and kiss L7 who are all about being a monster, grrr…with a few interjections from those Lesbians on Ecstasy.

Instamatic – I Kissed a Monster

What do you use as a decent (ie not crappy onboard) soundcard?

I just bought an Indigo DJ on eBay, arrived and I’d made the SAME mistake, it’s PCMCIA and I need fucking ExpressCard, it’s a totally useless format since no-one supports it, especially for soundcards apart from a very badly reviewed Creative Xi-Fi and given my history with that company, the response is ‘no fucking way’ to buying one.

I cannot believe that companies like Echo Audio *are throwing this chance away – all new MacBook Pros don’t have PCMCIA slots anymore, and new laptop PCs too. They all have fairly useless unsupported Expresscard/34 slots. Grrr.

So I’m left with either:

• Buying a dodge looking PCMCIA to Expresscard converter from HK, thus totally spoiling the whole point of buying an internal card in the first place
• Selling it and buying an external USB device – again spoiling the whole point – I mean laptops are supposed to be PORTABLE right? Not attached to big heavy lumps of metal and plastic with knobs on them.

So what’s a wannabe laptop DJ supposed to do? Sigh. Tempted to sell this lump o’ crap and get an older laptop or a faster MacBook, but for the latter I don’t have the money, definitely not now with this economy and lack of work…sigh.

* And their response? Use their Firewire devices – totally useless for me as PC laptops don’t have full powered Firewire slots, so I’d need to also lug around a power adapter. This is not good for gigs.

Back with attack and a very big Mack(intosh), it’s a new Odds and Sodz show with an exclusive from Phil n’ Dog, an exclusive new mashup from me (now released over at AudioPornCentral), and loads of great tunes, in the LONGEST EVAH Radio Clash at over 2 hours…in honour of the mighty mighty WOBCast (well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it)

What is a Cherry Chopstick anyways? (103Mb,  130Min)

• Phil n’ Dog – Bleeding Rascal (EXCLUSIVE!)
• Negativland – Richard Nixon Died Today (from Thigmotactic)
• Senor Coconut and his Orchestra – Around The World (Rumba) (from Around the World)
• People Like Us – Singin’ In The Shower (via WFMU)
• Fosforo – Desconocido (via WFMU)
• Vampire Weekend – Everywhere (Fleetwood Mac Cover)
• David Byrne and Brian Eno – Strange Overtones (from Everything That Happens Will Happen Today)
• Wally Whyton – Don’t You Push Me Down (from Fred Deakin’s Triptych)
• Joe Meek – Keep Your Sunny Side Up
• Negativland – It’s Not a Critique (from Thigmotactic)
• Senor Coconut and his Orchestra – Moscow Discow (Mambo) (from Around the World)
• Ame – Fiori
• Jonathan and Darlene Edwards – Tiptoe Through The Tulips
• Negativland – Kind Of Grumpy (from Thigmotactic)
• Instamatic – I Kissed a Monster (EXCLUSIVE!) part of Guilty Pleasures – Volume One: We All Kissed A Girl at APC
  
• Finitribe – De Testimony
• Handbook for the Recently Dead – Hell is Other People
• Chase and Status – Indian Dub aka Eastern Jam (from their Radio 1 Essential Mix)
• Braintax – Decade (from Panorama)
• Deman Rockers – Iron Lady (from Ragga Twins Step Out)
• Kid Carpet – Nelson Street Space Invaders (from Ideas And Oh Dears)
• George Michael – Cars And Trains (from Patience)
• Negativland – Basketball Plant (from Thigmotactic)
• Dusty Springfield – Am I The Same Girl
• Soko – I’ll kill her
• Finitribe – Hypnopaedia (from An Unexpected Groovy Treat)
• Air - Alone In Kyoto (from Lost in Translation)
• Finitribe – Mellowman (from An Unexpected Groovy Treat)
• Fleetwood Mac – Save Me a Place (from Tusk)

It’s ages since I did a mashup – and prompted by AudioPornCentral which will be featuring this and other KP mashes, I did an exclusive Katy Perry ‘I Kissed a Girl’ mashup included in the APC Guilty Pleasure compilation with 17 other Katy Perry mashes! (a pink kissing overload? I wonder…)

Yes, yes, the song is awful, but sounds a LOT better with L7’s Monster and a few brief interruptions from Lesbians on Ecstasy. Basically an angry lesbian sort of mix, unlike the original which is just straight-bloke wank fodder

I Kissed a Monster (L7 vs Katy Perry vs Lesbians on Ecstasy) at APC (with 17 other I Kissed a Girl mashups!)

Something I hate about commercial ‘free’ software, like FTP and Anti-virus programs when they say ‘free for uncommercial use’ – so I happily use them at home (not commercially of course) for several years, lured into a false sense of a happy-warm-fuzzy-glow towards the company.

Then some marketing wonk in the company obviously freaks out, saying ‘We’re not making enough money!’ and then they change the license; and as most programs force auto-updating (which is annoying, but hey you’re getting it for free, right?) and so you’re left with nothing, with all your data or bookmarks left inside the now-payment-only software; and left with either coughing up, which in my case I’m loathed to do – not because it’s expensive, but I hate these sorts of techniques to ‘force’ people to pay for something the company was quite happy for you to use for free – or finding alternatives.

And then the said ‘pay’ software fades into obscurity – these kind of things go down badly with consumers and usually it’s the last you see of that…although I suspect the marketing wonk jumps ship beforehand to another company, and so the cycle begins again. The only company to do this so far was Eudora, who brought in a free-ad supported model and a Paid mode, like Livejournal. That DOES work and means you can use it for free if you want. and if the ads annoy you then you pay.
I think that’s a fair model, and doesn’t wind up people as much as suddenly changing the license and forcing them to choose.

So this has now happened to SmartFTP – a great program, one I would normally be happy to pay for but their forcing of payment and forcing of mandatory updates annoys me (it’s a licencing model so I expect you’d only have it for a year and then have to cough up again? Anyway I don’t like being forced to pay for something that was previously free). So I’ve found a few great alternatives – open source – one is FireFTP – which works with Firefox as a plugin and seems to do everything SFTP does. And the other is Filezilla, not really tried it much yet, but looks good if less polished than SFTP. But it’s free.

And it seems rather strange if there are open-source FTP clients that even commercial companies can use, then why are SmartFTP shooing away most of their install base? DOH.

TIP: If you want to export your Favorites – FTP sites from SmartFTP into these, you can, although it’s not as easy sadly as ‘File…Import’!

Before your copy expires (if not install the trial off the website, it seems to reset it for 13 days) goto Favorites – Manage Favorites. Click on ‘Export’ in the Tools menu in the popup window. Select either HTML option and give it a name (that threw me initially).

Then open the HTML file in Firefox, and click on each of the links. As the window opens, right click and select ‘open this in FireFTP’ or somesuch – and there you are! You can then edit the ‘Account’ info by clicking edit, but most of the details should be there, unless it needs some special setting.

I have no idea how yet to import into Filezilla…can you do it via FireFTP?