Truck Bearing Kibble

Yesterday, I chance upon Truck Bearing Kibble, a webcomic that is almost as good as the Perry Bible Fellowship. In many ways, TBK looks inspired off of PBF, such as the penchant of non-explicit, but really twisted humour and the painstaking detail of artwork (for a webcomic).

There aren’t many comics out, so I went through the archive in like half an hour. I can’t pick a favourite, there are so many great ones! Almost all of them are parodies of some or the other pop culture phenomenon, most often a mash-up of a franchise with something completely unrelated. That, along with the read-between-the-lines  black humour makes for a damned intriguing comic.

It’s not as good as PBF, I’ll say and most often requires you to have good knowledge of the media being parodied, or you won’t get the jokes. I also love the instant comments feature at the bottom of the comic – something more comics should be doing. It also needs an About page, whose content has been promised.

Ultimate Dinner

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

One of my favourite sonnets ever, purely because of the raw power it holds before it – a power that has been eroded to nothingness by time, and still exists in a jaded monument that does not know of this. The simplistic poem has many layers into it, which beckon the attention of anthropologists, poets, historians, archaeologists, artists and sculptors alike.

Tasty

The Cars That Eat People

Awesome.

Bug

Ballad of The Rider – Part I

He rode on through the pale moonlight,
Accompanied by his horse
His boy battered and his heart torn,
This night, it cannot last long.

He rode amongst the men, his friends,
Or so did he them call,
He rode slower than the rest of them,
He had a destiny, he said.
His mind raced faster than the rest of them,
This night is cold for me, only now

He was the rider of the dark,
The knowing man who knew no light,
“It soon shall touch upon my brow,
And then those fools, they will surmise.
Ride into the brightened dawn,
I shall be the one to be furthest of all.”

Sand in his eyes, a shiver in his spine.
The rider knew no peace.
His safety torn, one false gleam
Of hope had he but seen.

And his heart had grown so bitter now,
That he cast it all away-
No friends are these fools of mine,
This light that I shall face shall be new.

He threw away all his miseries,
A new world of light was awaiting him,
The illumination of this sun,
It bathed him a holy stream.
And he regretted the night that he now so missed,
And the world of darkness he had lived in,
The world that was once a dream,
Now seen for its reality.

The sun’s brutal rays on him,
The rider made his way,
His mind ever so dizzy now,
His fear of darkness cost his freedom.

The world of light was terrifying,
And the shadows of the past
Kept him awake in his sleep,
Would it have been a better future?

The rider crawled unto the sand,
His horse had died miles ago,
He surely had come close to his dream,
But was it really worth all this?

The darkness, the cold was so charming,
The rider felt the sandstorm coming,
And he lamented on what he had now become
And his dreams now thrown further,
The darkness gone farther,
And the shadows more sinister.

Mortal Thoughts is meh.

So I saw Mortal Thoughts, a thriller/murder movie starring Demi Moore as the friend of a woman whose abusive husband is killed and the two women become the suspects. The first thing that I appreciate about the movie was its unsually storytelling style. Cynthia, the protagonist is being interrogated by detectives and is revealing the facts as she knows them. After a chunk of talking, the detectives counter her statements and try to get her to admit she was involved in the murder, which brings a different light on the developing story.

Additionally, half the movie takes place in flashbacks, and some of the twists in the story are cool because they are hinted at first in the interrogation, before the flashbacks detail them. Moore and Glenne Headly, who plays Joyce have performed pretty well, with their performances mirroring multiple layers across the story. Bruce Willis makes more of a cameo appearance than a full-fledged role, which doesn’t last more than a quarter of the movie. Still, he was very convincing and as the character required it – annoying.

The movie is pretty atmospheric, with a smooth pacing that grips you to it through the entire 102 minutes. I don’t recall being particularly bored at any point during the movie, which is surprising considering I would have turned off the TV had I known the somewhat generic premise. The movie chooses to make the experience multi-layered and sympathetic, as opposed to the usual murder dramas.

Not a bad movie overall, just not entirely satisfying. With its twist ending, it leaves a few loose threads, but that is bearable, I suppose. The movie ends appropriately enough and doesn’t leave you cringing for more, neither does it leave incomplete. Not a bad watch for a bored afternoon, but not a DVD I’d want to own.

Planet Caravan

Listening to Planet Caravan by Black Sabbath gives me a high. The song is so cool.

We sail through endless skies
Stars shine like eyes
The black night sighs
The moon in silver trees
Falls down in tears
Light of the night
The earth, a purple blaze
Of sapphire haze
In orbit always

While down below the trees
Bathed in cool breeze
Silver starlight breaks down the night
And so we pass on by the crimson eye
Of great God mars
As we travel the universe

How to spot Fake Torrents!

I’m becoming incereasingly pissed with all the fake torrents that litter the Internet. Yesterday, as I looked for Cloverfield torrents, I could see dozens of fake torrents. What the hell is up with that? And many of these fakes even take up names of the more reputed rippers.

Half the torrents are malware scams, like the WinZix one I blogged about before. The ones that are more annoying, though are the ones where you have 700 MB of garbage data. Many of the fakes I saw had a “sample” video, that was actually a slightly edited version of the 4-minute Cloverfield trailer. And there was 700MB of utterly useless data. I suppose the uploaders get a kick out of reading the comments saying “FAKE”.

Edit: Did some editing to add on to the post, seeing as how it’s gotten fairly popular.

How do you spot a fake torrent? Here’s what I’ve learned:

Always check the Comments first
Always check the Comments for whether the file is fake. The BitTorrent community consists of good guys (well, mostly so) and fake torrents are immediately pointed out in the comments section. And that’s why you should not download from sites that do not support comments.

If you encounter a fake torrent, notify that in the comments ASAP. Similarly, if you find a legit torrent, link to it in comments for fake torrents to help misled downloaders. Also comment back on the legit torrent’s page assuring its quality. Do not tag good torrents as ‘fake’ and fake torrents as ‘high quality’. You are being an ass.

Many sites also support reporting of fake torrents now (at least most major sites), using that option is a good idea, as that’ll get the torrent off the site faster. Using private or semi-private sites like Demonoid is also a good idea as they have better moderation. I’ve yet to see a fake torrent on Demonoid, but moderation’s pretty good on sites like The Pirate Bay, isoHunt or Mininova nowadays too.

RAR/ZIP files
Reputed rippers never put their video files in RAR archives. It will always be a straight and clean AVI. If you see a movie torrent with the main file being a RAR, abort it immediately.

This does not mean that RAR/ZIPs are not used at all in the community, they are used fairly often for software and games, usually if their sizes go beyond a gigabyte. Compressed archives are fairly safe for software and games, but definitely not for movies.

There are also many legit movie torrents that are compressed in multi-part archives, but I generally don’t support them because it’s a pain to unzip them and then seed the archive when you could be seeding the movie itself and saving tons of valuable space.

Suspicious Instructions
Many fake torrents will have files (especially HTML files) named “IMPORTANT – READ ME FIRST” or “READ THIS” or “UNRAR INSTRUCTIONS” etc. Firstly, most rippers put their info in an NFO file, with a minority doing TXT files. The HTML file is first indication something is wrong.

Secondly, rippers generally put information about the movie (running time, cast, synopsis etc.) in the NFO/TXT file first, in a systematic manner before their personal comments. This may be ignored by some rippers (especially casual rips of rare/obscure movies), but is something to check out all the same.

If the Readme file tells you that the file had to be compressed to RAR because of MPAA threats – that’s utter bull. Same goes if it tells you that you need special codecs, because these codecs are nothing but malware.

Password Protected
BitTorrent is all about freedom, and unless a torrent is private and meant to shared in a small, closed community, no torrent should be password protected. If you see anything about a password in the Readme, Title or Description, abort. Even if the Readme says “You may be asked for a password”, it means “You will be asked for a password.” This is a fake, a sham and needs to be discarded. Even if it is legit, do not seed Password Protected Torrents, just because they need to get the hell out of the Internet.

Screencaps
Most legit torrents have screenshots or links to screenshots in their descriptions these days. Checking is out is usually a good idea. While theoretically even fake torrents can have these (steal shots from trailers, promos), I’ve yet to see a fake torrent with screencaps.

Remember the general quality guide: CAM and TS releases will have poor video quality while DVDRips, Screeners and other releases will have high video quality.

Do not seed fakes!
As soon as your download is done, verify it is real. As soon as you get the slightes clue it is fake, delete it and stop seeding it ASAP. The only way you can make the world a worse place is to seed a fake torrent.

Use VCDQuality
VCDQuality is a good site in that it serves a database for working, high-quality torrents from reputed rippers. It does not host any torrent or download. It is only a great way to check if the movie you want has a working torrent yet.

Serve the community well, report bad torrents, download lots and kick the spammers out!